This is Who I Want to be Cremated by When I Die
For years I’ve smirked at this trippy-dippy storefront on colorful Torstrasse, and a few weeks ago I finally picked up a new digital camera that’s capable of capturing it in (almost) all of its nighttime glory. It must be familiar to many fellow Berlin residents, but I feel compelled to share these images to our readers out in the wider world.
In this case I have to wonder if having fun as a window dresser could be costing a business valuable customers. You never know in the east side of Berlin. Is the responsible party in fact winning their business with this unlikely scenography? Or perhaps the people who enroll the services of this undertaker are just oblivious to it all, and are simply taken in by the assurance that the work will be done on the cheap.
Life Death under blue light.
The artistry demonstrated here does nevertheless provide a brave response to the quandary as to how in the name of the lord an undertaker should decorate a shop window. What dreams of death were occupying her subconscious while she hung these curtains of mirror mail? To be sure: as far as purely affective power and the ability to provoke the viewer goes, this work trumps anything you’re likely to see in the trendy art galleries to be found in the same neighborhood.
Next up: Berlin hairdressers’ trashy storefronts. Send us your pics!
didn’t they once have an oversize putti head propped up in the corner of the window?
Yeah, that rings a bell. Nice to know they’re staying active with this.
Great post – I’m glad someone else noticed this place! I used to live nearby and must have walked past it a dozen times before I realised it WASN’T a sex kino.
Actually one of the things that really struck me when I first moved to Berlin was the amount of funeral parlours here. Another one which springs to mind is on Falckensteinstraße in Kreuzberg, which – for reasons best known to the owners – has an ostrich puppet in the window.
I too noticed that they changed the display on Torstraße. The trippy globe-ular urn, that oddly features in many Berlin funeral parlours, is gone.
The Falckensteinstraße parlour, and with it the ostrich puppet, is sadly gone.
Trashy looking funeral parlours are not limited to East Berlin. Once you notice them and start looking, they are everywhere. I was fascinated enough by it that two years ago a did a series of photos of several parlour fronts for a project.
I just noticed the other day that this place changed its display to an owl. The head always seems to be lacking enough neck for my comfort level.
@JC: Sadly, the ostrich puppet is gone. They are renovating the shop. Passing by with coworkers, I would sometimes stop and wonder aloud what weird allusion the ostrich was making. “Seriously, can anyone explain this to me?? Sticking one’s head in the sand?”
My personal favourite Bestattungen shop is the one on Karl-Marx-Alle with the wide selection of coffins arranged in the window. What it lacks in kitsch it makes up for in morbidity.
Thanks for the updates. That’s a shame about Falckensteinstraße – it was always nice to contemplate one’s mortality on a warm summer afternoon over a gelato. I’m also annually amazed by the funeral parlours which have Christmas decorations – I mean, there’s the poor grief-stricken relatives thinking “Ach, our first Christmas vizout Tante Gudrun!” and then there’s a jolly Saint Nick to just rub it in. A little tactless I feel.
@Kristin – the project sounds very interesting. Was it completed/exhibited/put online?
Thanks for the interest in this stuff everyone. Maybe we should start another petition to save (or resuscitate) the Falckenstein Str. storefront!
Kristin, would be great to see some of your photographs. Perhaps I could present them here and write a short eulogy.
And if others can take some decent shots of fucked-up funeral parlors -anywhere in the wide world- I’ll post them and keep riffing on this.
@o.m, jc:
the project was never tightened up as i would have liked it. one of those things i always mean to get back to.
at the moment, i only have prints and slides of the images (woo analog). i’ll see about getting some of them scanned and send them along.
When I first moved to Berlin I was astonished about how many shops there were selling hearing aids. Other active window dressers are the Apotheken (chemists). There’s one on the corner of Bergmannstraße and Meringdam which is currently displaying giant home-made pollen …
@ O.M.: well done on provoking such lively discussion about death. That owl’s giving me the willies. David Lynch would be proud.