Tools Davinci Resolve, TouchDesigner, AI Voice Over

Year 2024

When in Berlin is an experimenting film documenting my feelings in/about Berlin. The keywords of this project are love and loss, memory and space. The concept of this piece comes from my recent feelings, derived from those intimate moments and departed people, restlessness and fantasies, and the inappropriate timing of intimate relationships. The video focuses on the connection between space and memory, particularly personal housing and domestic spaces. It is about closing and opening up one's private parts.

Inspired from a segment of a brief introduction and interview focusing on the squatting movement that took place in West Berlin in the early 1980s. At the end of 1980, groups searching for free space occupied empty houses on the streets. The squatting movement mainly occurred in Kreuzberg. These occupiers turned a large number of empty houses into their community bases: party venues, art centers, and bases for expressing political stances.

The squatting movement left numerous traces, graffiti, and architectural remnants in Berlin. These physical traces linger in the space, echoing over Berlin. These spaces were occupied and altered both physically and emotionally, forming a thread with my personal experiences. In this piece, I also focus on how the traces in my life have occupied and transformed the physical space I was in— Berlin —how they have become haunted moments lingering in my mind and the physical space I am in.

Voiceover Script

Late Winter

When the snow melt down

When I woke up from the grass

Everything is short here, short stays, short feelings

QUICK MODIFICATION

Those spaces took you in, the openness and the closure

The fragmented building pieces

Broken broken broken

Time doesn’t exist here

The giant steel sculptures

When you choose to establish the temporary

Erased erased erased

The delusional existence that only in your head

My body left traces in this space

And they are part of it when i left

The sudden disappointments of being here

The sudden feeling of disabled

The moments i try to write but i can’t

Hazel Xinyi He

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