The Berlin Wall Goes to Washington and the U.S.-Mexican Border

Last Nov. 9, some 30 years after of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the production house Altered.LA and the agencies Rest of the Word and SCHOLZ & FRIENDS joined efforts with Die Offene Gesellschaft (The Open Society) and The Falling Walls Foundation to deliver a message to U.S. President Donald Trump that was hand-painted on a piece of the Berlin Wall. “I love the idea of making global collaborations” said Sergio Alcocer, founder of The Rest of the World. “Our industry is very wary and it is difficult to do joint projects between agencies, but Rest of the World and SCHOLZ & FRIENDS have collaborated a lot in recent years, even with the exchange of talent. Scholz had a the responsibility to raise awareness about the 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin wall and the idea of bringing a part of the wall to the US came out naturally in our conversations” Alcocer explained. The wall section, 3.86 meters high and weighing 3 tons, traveled 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) from Washington to the U.S.-Mexican border, specifically to the stretch between San Diego and Tijuana. “I think the importance this administration has given the wall along our southern border is one reason why this initiative has caused so much talk in the mass media. More important has been its emotional connection with all who have seen our wall, touched it and felt its rigidity, and who have read the message written on it, and so have understood in a more tangible way how terrible it was,” said Marcos Cline, executive producer of Altered.LA. The Berlin Wall was the most famous wall in the world, first for dividing an entire continent during the Cold War, and secondly because it’s fall showed that walls are no solution. “This piece of history today is more than just a piece of a physical wall – it is a symbol of all things that divide us, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. The message of this piece of wall is optimistic. On the one hand it reminds all Americans that in 1989 the United States vowed to build an open world without walls, and on the other reminds everyone that walls and divisions do not last forever,” Alcocer said. Cline added that the project has had an enormous impact on U.S. citizens. “We watched people’s reaction to the wall and the message on it, and understood that this was going to have a much greater effect than we had originally expected. What was important here was listening to the people and being ready to change plans in order to keep the emotion going that it generated.” This slab of the Berlin Wall has won wide media coverage and “has inspired ideas, artists, and more. We would like to find a way to collaborate with these people and try to amplify their contributions to the The Wall against Walls campaign. Meanwhile we are locating appropriate places to permanently display our wall with the message to President Trump. Once we find the right place we will share it with the media” Cline said.