Hamburg – kooky ‘postmodern’ exhibition, though frankly unlike one I’ve seen before, because normally you can in fact see them.
“Dialogue in the dark” basically means you walk about in – you guessed it – the dark, led by blind people, and have to touch and smell everyday sorts of things. You know, so you know how they feel. (And they get to have a good giggle at you being a clumsy chicken.)
It’s touted as a ‘travelling’ exhibition but we learn it’s been in Hamburg seven years now. We arrive in plenty of time for me to hop to loo a dozen times. I’m nervous, because our guides will be speaking German, and the chances I mishear the warnings and fall into a pit of crocodiles, I feel, are high.
Were in a group of 5. We set off with a lot of giggling and bumping into one another and holding onto each others jumpers. Well, I do anyway. Im feeling a little panicky, I have to admit.
First stop is the smell room, though there’s only one smell – pungent flowers. Then the ‘market’, where we get to fondle bananas and guess what they are. A recording of normal city noise is playing and I find it so distracting I want to shush the world so I can concentrate. One foot in front of the other. Mind the step – klink Wilken around the ankles with my stick – follow the handrail – careful, there’s a vorhang.
What a vorhang is? I ask.
A thing that hangs vor. Like a curtain.
Oh.
We’d been told to hang onto our ticket stubs because we’ll need them for the boat trip, otherwise we’ll have to swim back in the dark. Cor, I think. We dutifully hand them over and are guided onto the boat. Hier rechts, he says, nimm mein Hand.
Wo? Where? Where hand? Hand is where? I say.
Hier, he says. Alles klar. Nimm doch ein Platz.
I sit down then realise I’m still on the wharf, so crawl forward a bit and launch myself into the boat. Alles klar.
We sit all 5 of us, knees touching, squashed. Then a fan starts blowing in our faces and a tape recording of a boat engine starts up. It’s a bit cheesy.
Later, in the sound room, we sit and listen to – yep – sounds. Waves crashing, then some sort of cave water dripping, then a burst of African campfire music. I try to get into the zone but it’s hard with Patrick on my right snickering and Willy on the left scratching his foot, the one with the bad toenail.
Eventually the whimbaweys die down and we move into the bar, also in the dark. We order and hand over €5 notes, then ask doubtfully how she knows we’re not giving her fifties. The sizes are different, apparently. We make mental notes to check on that later.
We grope our way to a table and sit with the guide, who patiently answers our questions. Are you sometime nervous, that you not all see can? I ask.
Ich kenne nicht anders. I don’t know any different.
Wilken nudges me as if to say, der.
What? He might not always have been blind, I whisper indignantly back. Then we realise he speaks English too.
Is it hard for blind people to get jobs? we ask.
Yes, but you can train yourself to work in an office, do physiotherapy, things that need hands and not sight. This exhibition employs jobless blind people for €1 per hour as part of a government scheme.
What about travel? someone asks.
Sometime I go to the Nordsee, he says. A friend of his just went to England to meet his internet penpal. They chat on instant messaging.
There’s silence until someone works up the nerve to say, but how does he read the messages.
Sie wuerden vorgelesen. They’re read out. There’s software for that. Der.
And then it’s over. We troop out and sit in the semi dark room for a bit while we wait for our eyes to readjust. We’ve been in the pitch dark for 90 minutes. Wilken gets up and writes ‘schöne Möbel’ in the visitor’s book.
What’s Möbel? I ask.
It’s like…interior furnishings.
But we couldn’t see the – oh. I see. Good one.
Were you guys nervous at the start? I ask. Because to begin with I was feeling really panick-
Nah, the guys say. No worries.
Oh. Me neither, I say.
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