Scaling the Wall

From the late 1960s through mid-1980s, Japanese American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri taught as an expatriate art professor in West Berlin and extensively documented the wall during its process of structural revamping and aesthetic makeover. His photographic survey brought him closer to his family’s history of internment during WWII and his experience as a veteran while experiencing racial hostility. His project, The Wall Die Mauer Le Mur (1971), represented the Wall as an architectural symbol of a divided world and the partitions suggestive of the history of the United States. This chapter explores how Tajiri’s survey of the Wall with an eye toward its unwieldy structural qualities and exploration of his own artistic and expatriate identity led him to considerations of American power and presence by the Berlin Wall. This approach drew on the interlinked historical experiences, artistic practices, and architectural evolutions of the border. The chapter ends by exploring Tajiri’s multiple approaches to documenting the Berlin Wall, including film and images. His recurrent focus on the border signage of the American sectors brings his experience as an artist and soldier in relation to the effects of U.S. militarism.