Erdbeeren

Erdbeeren' [Strawberries] originated in one of the series of street actions that Wolf Vostell started in 1958 aiming at tearing down the barriers between art and life. The happening consisted of a bus circulating on the streets of Berlin for three days; the vehicle was completely clad in lead and communication with the outside was only possible by television monitors mounted on the sides of the bus showing a live transmission of what happened inside it: a strawberry plantation trying to survive in an environment deprived of natural light or air. In the street, Vostell interviewed Berliners about what pleased them most in the city. 'Erdbeeren' is a metaphor for Berlin life in those years: conditioned, isolated and divided by a wall that constituted the most visible manifestation of the political-ideological iron curtain that separated the West and the East from the end of the war until 1989.