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11/09/2009

This Sunday joggers, cyclists, strolling seniors and families making their way along Berlin's Spree riverside did a double take. Some even stopped to stare or take photographs of the giant Ferris wheel in the Spreepark, an abandoned amusement park. After eight years of standing still, the Ferris wheel is moving once again.

Back in the former East Germany the Plänterwald was a popular state-owned amusement park situated on the banks of the river in the Treptow-Köpenick district of East Berlin. After reunification it was renamed Spreepark but was abandoned in 2001 after going bankrupt. Usually passers-by see overgrown rides, toppled statues and dilapidated buildings. However, on Sunday, the long-silent Ferris wheel came back to life.

Berlin-based artists, Juan Linares and Erika Arzt, got the Ferris wheel -- bought in 1989 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the East German state -- turning again, just one day before the launch of celebrations to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The artists -- he is Spanish, she is Austrian -- have been living in Berlin since 2004. Their art often looks at how people relate to different locations, whether they feel like they belong there and what those feelings depend upon. The artists obtained a grant from a cultural center, Centro Cultural Montehermoso, based in Vitoria, Spain, to get "The Wheel"project, as they call it, started in earnest.

'We Almost Couldn't Believe It'

The couple then contacted the former owner of the Spreepark, Norbert Witte, who now lives on the property. "And he said he knew someone -- a friend -- who could fix anything," Linares explains.

Witte put them in contact with a Polish engineer who had worked for him at various times, and the engineer returned to Berlin to try and get the wheel turning again.

"We would never have been able to do this otherwise -- it has been all about luck and contacts. And I guess it's a bit like fixing old washing machines," Arzt says laughing. "Nobody really does that anymore."

The engineers performed the first test on the wheel several weeks ago, after searching for necessary second hand spare parts and patching the wheel up with new motors. For the past two weeks, they have been hard at work ensuring the wheel would be able to rotate. When they finally saw the Ferris wheel in operation at the weekend, the artists said, "we almost couldn't believe it ourselves." On Saturday one of the engineers even took a ride.

A Place to Project Fantasies

They offered Linares a quick spin but he did not accept. "If you look at it carefully," he says, "you can see it's a bit shaky."

Anyway, the point of the project is not really about rides. On Sunday the artists filmed the wheel turning from every angle. The results will be part of an exhibition held at the Centro Cultural Montehermoso next May.

"This (project) can be experienced on many different levels," Linares explains. "I think that some people will just be surprised to see it going. But you could also see the circular motion as important and perhaps even paradoxical," he adds, citing the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall -- which heralded the collapse of communism -- and the global financial crisis.

In terms of the location, Arzt explained that once the amusement park was abandoned, it became a place for lots of Berliners to project their fantasies. "There are lots of these abandoned places in the city and they become places people can use. It would be nice if people see possibilities in something like this," Arzt says.

On this cold autumnal Sunday afternoon, the artists' plan seems to be working. Beyond the fence, a family who hail from Berlin's Wedding district looks on. The parents say they are just pleased to see the Ferris wheel going again.

Near the park's original entrance gate a neighborhood couple note the irony: That a carnival ride bought to celebrate a communist anniversary should be running today after years of standing still. Heading toward the Ferris wheel, they add that it's "just really nice that there is something moving in the Spreepark again."