Unscene Berlin

As published in Siegesauele, May 2015 edition. May 1st is a time when the spirit of change grabs us. Across Europe, people used to celebrate the day by lighting bonfires to magnify the sun’s life force. From Beltane to Walpurgisnacht, modern versions of these same celebrations embody a pre-Christian tradition of burning out the old, bad energies of winter to make way for new ones in spring. As manmade systems slowly replaced nature as the governing force in our lives, these too were added to the list of things that people yearn to regenerate. Eventually, May 1st was even chosen as International Workers’ Day to symbolize the ongoing struggle for equality between the haves and the have-nots.   That may be why authorities tend to pour cold water on the May Day spirit: they’re afraid that they may get chucked on the fire to make way for something new. That seems to be what happened in Berlin on May 1, 1987 when police brutally clamped down on a pea...

The adjective "overrated" is often used in relation to Berlin's clubs, especially during the tourist high season . It' s the time of year when do zens of pop -up parties suddenly appear, run by peo ple who are in it for nothing but quick cash, an ego injection or the c hance to play God for a while .   To illust rate, I'm republishing this early party report written about an openair party I went to in Apri l 2011.  T he party happened on the site where Kosmonaut club now stands but it was under different management then , so any resemblance between th e old club and th e new one is purely coincidental.  B e warned: this review is so bad that it's almost good agai n (i f you know what I mean). Please don't bother reading past this point if you dis like that sort of thing !

"Time To Dance" paste-up by SOBR, Berlin. "We are not going to demand anything. We are not going to ask for anything. We are going to take. We are going to occupy." Reclaim the Streets manifesto ( Do Or Die ) Here in Berlin, it's always "Time to Dance"... even if you're just waiting at the tram stop at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, and even if you're eyeing your bank account's minus-balance on a graffiti-covered cash machine screen at midnight.  After all, just because the party's ended doesn't mean your buzz has to. The season when it becomes most evident that the beat never stops in Berlin is in the summer, when a series of street parties and festivals acts the main stage, turning the swollen ranks of the clubbing network into mere after-party and pre-party stop-offs on the way back to the great urban outdoors.    And now that we've gotten past the most over-hyped outdoor parade of the year (not naming any names h...

While I was in England recently, I heard that some anarchists in London were putting on a Fuck Parade on May the 1st (see video above).  Now, anybody who reads this blog knows that I'm well into Berlin's annual Fuck Parade .  So it seemed like good news to hear that London's black bloc anarchists decided to swipe the idea of using a techno parade as a way of challenging gentrification, and named the event after Berlin's infamous street party.  So far, so good... But after watching the video of the London Fuck Parade, it seems that the similarity between the two events doesn't go much further than the fact that they share the same name.  The Berlin version of Fuck Parade is big and radical and hard, but it's also madcap fun.  It has a stated set of politics but anyone's allowed to participate in any way that they want, as long as they're passionate about the harder musical styles being played - gabba, jungle, hard techno and acid tek. It celebrat...