The Bard College Berlin Student Blog
A film belongs to the dark and can only be fully absorbed in the isolation of and submerged submission to sitting in a black room in front of a large bright screen. And so I search out these dark rooms. It involves a little fieldwork, scrutinizing some pamphlets, saturating my search history with movie theater websites…
During my first year at Bard College Berlin, I lived in the Waldrasse 16 dorm, or as we BCBers affectionately call it, W16. There I experienced for the first time sharing five bathrooms and one kitchen with around eighteen other students. I remember arriving at the building and thinking: this is going to be a mess.
“I’m going to the Thai Market.”
I didn’t react with a start. I merely cast a brief glance at the eager visitor in the doorway of my room and nodded silently, hopefully a nod that conveyed, “Have fun.” I was sure that I had heard incorrectly; the idea of home in a city so far away from the likes of my past seemed impossible. I returned my eyes to my computer screen, continuing my fervent search for activities in which I could partake on my first weekend in Berlin. I had an especially vigilant eye for anything that indicated hints of home.
“Do you want to come along? I could really go for Thai food right now.”
The images and videos of the protests are overwhelming. Human beings flood the streets in unity. They unite across generations and across nations. Children, adults, and the elderly from Dheli, Sydney, Tarawa, Nairobi, Johannesburg, London, Prague, Mexico City, Istanbul, Lahore, Seoul, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Jakarta have gathered on the streets. The list goes on and on. People march, lead, chant, sing, shout, and demand their right for a safe future. Each person is a drop in a sea of protest that draws our attention to a world-wide emergency. Climate change is happening and it threatens our very existence on earth.
As activists around the United States mobilize against the unacceptable conditions inside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, the agency continues its operations on the ground in American cities. On September 5th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot Jose Fernando Andrade-Sanchez in his car as he attempted to leave the Food Lion parking lot in Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.
Hopes and dreams trapped in objects: waiting to be unleashed, or ready to be discarded? Easier just to keep it all, stuff it in dresser drawers and cupboards, hide it under a duvet at the back of the linen closet, until one day, through some trick of fate, it ceases to be invisible again …
My father moved to Itacoatiara, a small town neighboring Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, in 1987 and for five months the Amazon Rainforest was his home. As we read about the most recent fires in the region, now three decades later, my dad paints me a picture of a completely different Amazônia.
