Art and Linguistics at the Berlin Art Hotel in Gyumri

 

In Gyumri I stayed at the Berlin Art Hotel [1]. One thing you've got to know about Gyumri: the city had been hit by a terrible earthquake in 1988 was largely destroyed [2]. Around 25,000 people died at the time. The Berlin Art Hotel is one half of a project that was launched shortly after the earthquake. A polyclinic [3] was built in 1993 with the help of the German Red Cross and donations from Änne Burda (the wife of a German publicist), among others. And later on the clinic was still needed, but not in the original dimensions. The clinic also had to be maintained. Now the Polyclinic for Mothers and Children is financed by donations and the hotel operation. The hotel slowly developed out of a guesthouse. Today it is a hotel, but it also includes other projects. Art is exhibited in the hallways, breakfast lounge, lecture theater and also in the guest rooms.

I only want to mention two objects of art in this blog post: a picture and a sculpture. The picture shows the Tower of Babel. This is already a reference to linguistics in itself, because Babel stands for the confusion of languages or the diversity of human languages. Last but not least, George Steiner called one of his books “After Babel” [4].

And on the other hand, there was this sculpture, which I had already photographed in my first photo, but which I didn’t really notice. Then I first saw it from a distance, egg-shaped with a hole in the middle in dazzling white. But only when you look at it closely, you find finely chiseled characters from different languages -: Chinese, Mayan, Phaistos Disc, cuneiform, Devanagari, Tibetan, Armenian, Albert Einstein’s signature and many other writing samples as well. I have been interested in writing systems since I was young. One of the books that has accompanied me since then is a German book by Karl Faulmann [5]. It is a reprint of an edition from 1880 -: Illustrated History of Writing. Then I read about typography [6], but also about semiotics, after reading more by Umberto Eco [7]. In the end, I hardly had enough time to take a closer look at the sculpture, as I only discovered it when my group left to continue our journey. I definitely have to go there again; but not just because of the sculpture, of course.

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://berlinarthotel.am/about-us/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Armenian_earthquake
[3] The German term “Poliklinik” comes from the Greek polis [πόλις], which means city, i.e. clinic for the city. While the English term “polycinic” goes back to the Greek poly [πολύς], which means many, a lot. Both are correct and simply mean: outpatient department.
[4] George Steiner: Nach Babel. Aspekte der Sprache und des Übersetzens. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2014. ISBN: 978-3-518-29725-6. Title of the original edition: After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation (1975).
[5] Karl Faulmann: Illustrirte [!] Geschichte der Schrift. Entstehung der Schrift der Sprache und der Zahlen sowie der Schriftsysteme aller Völker der Erde. Wien 1880.  Neu verlegt bei Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1989. ISBN 3-89190-633-1. [Karl Faulmann: Illustrated History of Writing. Origin of Writing, Language and Numbers as well as the Writing Systems of All Peoples of the Earth. Vienna 1880. Newly published by Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1989. ISBN 3-89190-633-1.]
[6] Herbert Lechner: Geschichte der modernen Typographie [History of Modern Typography]. Karl Thiemig Verlag, München 1981. ISBN 3-521-04128-X.
[7] Umberto Eco: Die Suche nach der vollkommenen Sprache [The Search for the Perfect Language]. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1997. ISBN: 3423306297. Title of the original edition: La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (1993).

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