The Wall Live in Berlin

AsterFliers Art, Review

I wrote my final assignment for the brilliant course Audience & Spectatorship on The Wall (just as I did my Theatre Design graduation on the topic), but this time it was on the 1990’s Live in Berlin version. It was a breath of fresh air after having to design a thing I was, in the end, not quite satisfied with. Not because I was unhappy with my work, but because there were a few problematic flaws with my plan and the way I looked at the original piece. In this assignment I remedied that. Besides the word count being way over the limit (yet not enough to connect the dots in the way I wanted to), my article did finally conclude that in the translation of the original concept album to performance, something was lost. But because of the transformative, almost ritual quality it gained by being performed in Berlin on top of an SS bunker in no man’s land only shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall, it gained a meaning it never before or since had in live performance. I argued that the piece was, if not sight-specific, then something very close to it. There was also a lot of discussion of the visual elements of the piece (masks, wall, lighting, Hitler-esque satire) and I really enjoyed writing it, even if I wished I’d had even more time and definitely more words to spend on it. In the end I could not add my final note. So I have added my final note here for you to read because I enjoyed writing it so much. Imagine a 4000 word piece on the mechanics of audience perception and framing through the use of masks in The Wall prefacing this final extra note.

Ps. I love Bryan Adams and when I grow up I want one of my own. I think his rendition of “Empty Spaces/What shall we do now?” is the best version of that song ever performed and one of the high points of the performance in Berlin. I also think that the lyric I mention in the note from “The Tide is Turning” is terrible and problematic, and very anti-climactic if compared to the rest of Adams’ performance. It might all have been with the best intentions en within the spirit of the age, but the more I think about it the angrier I get about not being able to structurally eradicate problems like hunger and war on the planet. That said, Live Aid, Band Aid and USA for Africa (on the name alone a piece on solidarity and (post-)colonialism could be written) were very effective in immediately alleviating a lot of suffering and raising money. So I am a cynic, but a happy one who has a lot of respect for what people tried back then even if I think we need to find a more structural way to combat global inequality and even if I totally agree with Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder’s view on charity. Also, Geldof once slagged off The Wall in a cab driven by Roger Water’s brother. It’s a small world.

    Final Note:
    I have decided forgo analysing the extra song that is not on the original concept album but that is added to this performance (“The Tide is Turning” ),(1) because an entire book could be written on it within its socio-historical context. I would gladly analyse how it is somewhat problematic given the current state of affairs regarding the relationship between ‘the East and the West’ (“…who owns the aces, the East or the West? This is the crap our children are learning, but oh, the tide is turning”).(2) And how the overly positive spirit surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the naiveté of the early nineties make it nearly unwatchable for someone my age. The people who have been protesting walls and divisions within nations in my youth have been people like Banksy,(3) and Merlijn van Twaalfhoven,(4) who make a different kind of statement. I was barely conceived at the time of The Wall Live in Berlin, so I have trouble pinpointing how this must have worked for the original concert-goers swept up in a fever of times changing and borders opening up. They were probably less cynical than I am now. Much could also be said, in the context of this song and performance, about the Bob-Geldof-Roger-Waters-connection, with Live Aid organiser Geldof portraying protagonist Pink in the movie-version of the Wall,(5) with Waters having written “The Tide is Turning” for Live Aid (but Geldof turning it down),(6) and with the at best ambivalent relationship the two have.(7) If we see the song in the context of its kindred charitable efforts like “Do They Know It’s Christmas”,(8) and “We Are The World”,(9) there is also a point to be made about a troubling missionary-like attitude towards Africa in the 90’s, similar to the point Aydemir makes in his excellent discussion on staging colonialism in the Africa Museum in Tervuren.(10) But then it would need its own three-thousand words and I have neither those words nor the tools to analyse the song properly with regards to spectatorship at this time.
  1. DVD: Roger Waters, “The Tide is Turning” in The Wall (Live in Berlin), DVD, (1990; Universal Music, 2003).
  2. Ibidem.
  3. Book: Banksy, Wall and Piece, (London: Random House UK, 2007).
  4. Online lecture: Merlijn van Twaalfhoven, VIDEO: Merlijn Twaalfhoven on reconnecting art and life, online lecture (30-10-2025) http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/2009/12/video-merlijn-twaalfhoven-on-reconnecting-art-and-life/
  5. DVD: Alan Parker, Pink Floyd: The Wall (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), DVD, (Sony, 2005).
  6. Roger Waters, “The Tide is Turning” in The Wall (Live in Berlin).
  7. DVD: Julian Caidan, “Pink Floyd: Behind the Wall”, Pink Floyd: The Wall (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), DVD, (Sony, 2005).
  8. Online video clip: Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, Do They Know it’s Christmas ~ Band Aid 1984, online video clip (20-10-2025) http://youtu.be/bjQzJAKxTrE
  9. Online video clip: United Support of Artists for Africa, USA for Africa - We are the World, online video clip (20-10-2025) http://youtu.be/M9BNoNFKCBI
  10. Article: Murat Aydemir. Staging Colonialism: The Mise-En-Scène of the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium.