The Fox
I wasn’t surprised to spot a fox in Berlin. Honestly, I was hoping to see one again. I just didn’t expect our encounter to happen on a busy road between the Bahnhof Zoo and the Universität der Künste on an early evening in early spring.
Deceptional Urban Jungle
When I read Nightwalking by John Lewis-Stempel, I was fascinated by the rural surroundings and his attention to detail, nature and poetry. Our so-called “urban jungle” is urban, and it’s home to unlikely beings. Only that it’s no jungle and not a natural ecosystem either.
Cutesification of the Fox
The fox has been reduced to a clever, cute figure in popular culture. A traditional folk song, in contrast, emphasizes its role preying on geese. In reality, the fox is less a playful urban wanderer than an animal moving through precarious environments driven by necessity. If foxes did drugs and started begging for money, they’d quickly gamble away their popularity. Not that they cared, I guess.
Lack of Interspecific Empathy
Human double standards have been discussed again and again when wild animals make news in unexpected places. People pity a stray whale but not a wolf killing their cattle or a boar digging their garden.
Dogs and doves are among the few urban animals that polarize. What are they? beautiful friends, symbols of peace, or domesticated creatures without a natural habitat, loitering, littering, fighting and making noise?
Lacking interspecific empathy, city dwellers tend to treat animals as a projection screen for their own hopes and fears.
Cold Ray Photography
Here is another picture that I took recently when walking past a neon-lit gas station. Its blue light reminded me of an art exhibition I visited a few years ago, back in Düsseldorf, looking back on the life’s work of the little-known artist Horst Ademeit. His numerous Polaroid pictures meticulously lettered with lengthy descriptions of detailed observations in a miniature handwriting, document modern city life apart from traditional photography subjects.
Ademeit became fascinated by the concept of cold rays. You might know the feeling that touching a cold radiator seems to withdraw warmth from our hands and its surroundings. And we talk of “cold light” meaning neon light, LED’s and blueish colors on the lower frequency part of the visible color spectrum. Whereas candles and light bulbs get hot and emit light in warmer tones like orange, yellow and red that are physically followed by the invisible warm infrared. It seems only logical that there could be some kind of invisible ultraviolet cold radiation. Although that has long been falsified scientifically by modern physics, it still holds in a poetic sense. Like the fear of chemtrails among conspiracy theorists contains valid criticism despite being false in literal terms, there are reasons to criticise the gas stations glowing blue, even if only for causing light pollution.
Fake Polaroid Homage
I tried to create a fake Polaroid as a homage to the artist. I tried and failed, or maybe I didn’t. So, here’s one of my failed fakes, containing a real photograph. I have seen similar pictures on the bathroom wall of a hotel chain, mixing popular and unconventional sights and moments to recreate the feeling of an analog photo wall in an Airbnb or a friend’s apartment. Beyond the cheesy advertisement-style, we can also see it as another critical piece against light pollution.
Düsseldorf to Berlin
I used to live in Düsseldorf, where Horst Ademeit pursued his artistic cold rays investigation. Now I live in Berlin for several years and I keep watching my surroundings both as a local and as an interested stranger.
I haven’t deciphered all of the artist’s scribbles, and I don’t know what the fox was thinking. I only know what I see when I walk the streets of Berlin at night.
Dark Side of Gentrification: Illuminated but Uninhabited
Cold light pollution is a sign of urbanization, not gentrification. In the past Berlin’s Neukölln district was less lit, according to neighbours who grew up here. Still, the gas station might be anywhere, even in a village. but gentrification has a dark side with shops and venues closed in recent years without replacement.
Urban Decay, Dead Cities
The Future Sound of London, an electronic music project, once made an album called Dead Cities. Music, lyrics and cover artwork might be seen as a parallel project turning critical observation into an aesthetic work of art.
Urban decay can have a morbid aesthetic. Cold light can remind us of oceans, disco nights, or of the police. But illuminated emptiness only betrays our society ‘s failings. Illuminated emptiness is still just empty.
Digital Artwork and Critical Photography
Even though they say artists should turn anger into flowers, attempts to vegetate a cityscape are often arduous and futile. I once overheard the term “critical photography” misinterpreted as what’s rather abstract or modern still life photography, albeit with a critical undertone. That’s the kind of subtly critical photography I also see in Ademeit’s polaroids and a style I’d like to explore further in the future.
Future Photography and Artwork Inspiration
I feel inspired to document even more details of urban life, often overlooked by mainstream culture. But for now, I’ve got some more digital artwork to share. The only presentable AI artwork from a surreal fox series shows the nocturnal wanderer in an eerie forest. Inspired by the British book cover of John Lewis Stempel’s Nightwalking, and by vintage computer games, artistically embracing accidental artifacts like the irregular shapes on the pathway. On a closer look, the details don’t fit, but I still like the composition.
Last, but not least, let me share yet another AI artwork. Contrasting the same surreal eeriness and “cold ray” blueish-magenta neon aesthetic with a hint of fire, it shows a dinosaur afire, burning down to a skeleton. Don’t ask me what that might mean. I’m just a hobbyist, embracing coincidence and trying to turn my anger into art, with or without flowers.
