Using locative storytelling to resurrect the Berlin Wall
By Joyce Chang
Our project was initially discussed as a way to depict a future event – to show what Chicago would look like if it wins the 2016 Olympic bid – but we’ve also realized that locative storytelling can be a rich tool for envisioning the past.
On May 1, Berlin launched a GPS-based multimedia tour to virtually re-create the Berlin Wall, since very little remains of its physical structure, according to German news site, Spiegel Online. The Mauerguide, a portable device equipped with GPS technology, traces the Wall’s path, offering video and audio eyewitness accounts of the Wall’s creation in 1961 to stop an exodus of people from Soviet-held communist East Berlin.
The Mauerguide tells the story of Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old bricklayer who was shot in the stomach and back by East German border guards as he climbed the Wall in August 1962. He fell back onto the eastern side and was left to bleed to death in no-man’s land as he cried for help.
That is just one of many stories included in the tour. For people who can’t make it to the Berlin Wall site, there are sample tours online. It seems that mostly tourism groups and museums have utilized these types of historical, audio-visual tours up to this point. One reason the media may shy away from using historical locative storytelling is that newspapers generally emphasize current, breaking news, and do not necessarily go into such background depth. But the ability of locative storytelling to provide context for these locations or events makes it a really powerful tool to give a better understanding of history and its lasting effect.
We recently visited the Chicago History Museum to get historical pictures of planned Olympic venue sites. We realized that many of the sites have a rich history, including Washington Park’s role in the World’s Fair in 1893. We also plan to meet with a cultural historian. We will weave these historical pictures and stories into our final project, along with images of the current sites and schematic drawings of what to expect in the future.
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