There is something comforting about a frame. To frame something is to give it parameters, to give it edges, to contain any subject and make it manageable. When I was I child I was obsessed with films. The black frame around the t.v screen was where I could dwell in worlds where problems were wrapped up effortlessly. The frame around static filled VHS image was where I could count on plots that came to satisfying closures when my childhood seemed to have no predictable script. Sometimes on road trips as a teenager, I leaned back in my seat so that I could see the edges of the car window. I was more at ease taking in the world that way. As an adult I enrolled in the study of contemporary art. A field which categorically must have a frame whether it be metaphorical or literal. Studying work contained in a frame continues to make the uncertainties, questions, plots, and events of life manageable and subjectable in the ever-present personal and global uncertainties.
When British-American art critic Kirsty Bell's apartment began having recurring water leakage, she was called to the frame of her kitchen window. She wrote, "It seemed to draw me into it, away from the calamities occurring inside and towards its offer of a broad sky, treetops and buildings leading toward the horizon." Bell wrote The Undercurrents amidst the wreckage of a broken marriage, and a perpetually flooding apartment. From the vantage point of her apartment on the Landwehr Canal, Bell pulled apart the urban elements contained within her window frame using her analytical skill as an art critic. The Undercurrents is the vulnerable and captivating story of Berlin that resulted from Bell's near obsession with the memories that floated just under the surface of her home. As a fellow non-German resident arts writer in Berlin, I used Bell’s methodology to frame my own study of the city. The Undercurrents was my companion during my time in Berlin, and from my own vantage point on Osloer Straße in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen I found my small place in a city whose history is as sprawling as its geography.
My copy of The Undercurrents by Kirsty Bell, 2022.