the wolf is at your door

Been to Berlin Zoo today. I must admit I am a great fan of zoos. Whenever visiting a new city, I try to find out whether there is one, and here I am, staring with fascination at all the poor ones, amit bored children and parents trying madly to remember what they have heard about just this weird Lama thing some years ago. After all, this is a place to spread knowledge, they seem to think.

Apart from that, with all the emphasis on knowledge and the necessity to learn, people foremostly want to fight their bad conscience. Bad conscience is what zoos are made of. This is colonialism pure and simple, the whole world brought to the Western metropolis. And then there's the animals. The question, always thought, sometimes made explicit: are they ill? Such small cages. And this is not their natural habitat, is it?

Of course it isn't. And not only because zoos aren't in Africa, but also because they are in the city. The zoo is an essentially urban concept. The urban here is creating and integrating an urbanized version of wildlife (not only or necessarily from Africa). In Berlin, the urbanity of the concept zoo is becoming particularly strong. For here, the zoo is engraved deeply into the urban structure. The zoo is dominating the inner city of West Berlin. The station is called Bahnhof Zoo. The zoo is the city here.

In general, I think the zoo is a fitting metaphor for life in contemporary cities. Everybody watching everybody. Lify is taking place largely behind virtual or real gutters. The idea of an escape is always there, but everybody too lazy to eventually doing the great escape. And then, there is the occasional act of frantic mass murder.