​Live Drawing the Other

​Watching and Being Watched
Drawing as a tool to collect and reflect on how we see.

We use live drawing to observe what we see, and to notice what it is that we are observing.

Teufelsberg is a hill made of war. Built from the rubble of a bombed Berlin, piled over an unfinished Nazi military college, it became one of the largest Cold War listening stations in the world, a place made to watch. Under its domes, British and American intelligence spent decades intercepting signals from the East, watching people who never knew they were seen. And because it watched, it was watched in return: Soviet cars circled the forest below, listening for the station that was listening to them. Today it stands abandoned, covered in graffiti, climbed over and photographed by everyone who visits. The watcher is now the watched.

This session sits inside that relationship: between watching and being watched, between looking and surveilling.

We begin by finding our own spot and spending 40 minutes drawing what we see, while remaining visible to others and to the space around us.

For the next 40 minutes, we conceal ourselves. We take a position that lets us watch without being seen, and we draw from there. How does what we see change when we are hidden? How does the act of looking change when no one can look back?

To look is to receive. To watch is to take.

Drawing is one way in. You can also take part by observing and recording, counting and noting what you see. At the end we gather and share our observations, internal shifts, drawings and data.

Un-tutored. All levels welcome.

​Basic materials provided, or bring your own

​Important notes

​The Camp format is a volunteer-developed prototype and intentionally simple in how it is organised. Please bring your own food and drinks, and feel free to bring something to share.

​Please register as well for the walk up and walk down from S Heerstraße to Teufelsberg of this day. So you can participate in the held structure of the camp, we can tune in together and cross pollinate across the sessions.

​The Public Vitality Camp is a shared learning space for people already working on societal, institutional, technological and ecological challenges. Across the sessions, we work on concrete questions and tensions and explore what enables people, institutions and communities to remain capable of acting under increasingly difficult conditions – and how decisions made today expand or constrain future possibilities.

​Here you can discover further sessions and register or apply to participate.

​This session is part of the Public Vitality Camp 2026 and hosted by nextlearning e.V.