Images by Joyce van den Berg

Today, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of the former border between the East and West is still a no man’s land. A painful reminder of times past, the barren strip of land lies untouched, as though someone witnessed something horrible there and swore to never speak of it again.
     Inspired to change this, landscape artist Joyce van den Berg set up the exhibition New Light on No Man’s Land, currently on display at the German Center for Architecture (DAZ) in Berlin. The exhibition shows precisely where the restricted area used to be and how it has changed, and proposes to transform the “landscape of trauma” into a dynamic and organic recreation area.
     Van den Berg wants to construct two bicycling tracks and reseed the ground so that new plants can grow where there is now little else but sand and gravel. The sandy terrain used to be regularly flattened in order to make it easier for the border guards to spot the fresh footprints of East Berliners fleeing to the West.