Unscene Berlin

A combination of the pandemic and policing efforts have left Alexanderplatz looking like a still from the 1960's: empty, windswept. Aimless people, seemingly fresh-awakened to the endless possibilities of city life, are moving with uncertain freedom to the Reclaim Club Culture sound system. I had to bypass what looked to be a " hygiene demo " to get to this antiracist action by RCC, in support of freedom of movement. The hygiene demo was a messy scene, full of aggressive, drunk people trying way  too hard to look like they were having fun.  One can see the different intentions behind the two actions in the way that each group uses its allocated demo space. The hygiene crew use it to scream at passers by to take off their masks and invade their personal space, walking or dancing uncomfortably close. As if they blame you for whatever is going wrong with society. Under the auspices of freedom, they move into the power vacuum of an empty city street, and attempt ...

Ah, the 1990's... ...a time when raves were getting banned, streets were being reclaimed, guerrilla gardeners were re-sculpting urban landscapes, Chiapas was being re-taken by peaceful radicals; a time of mass squatting across every urban centre. It was also a time when half of this blog's readership was still in its diapers! That sucks for them but this Thursday, January 24th, they'll get a second chance to see what the 1990's were like at On the Radical Roots of Rave #2 .  The fact is, even with photography and hand held video cameras - not to mention CD, vinyl, tapes - my generation couldn't capture all the best parts of the 1990's. There were too many parties, riots, happenings and actions taking up our time. And remember, camera phones didn't even exist back then! But this party and exhibit on Thursday aims to share a few of the 'stroboscopic artefacts' that we managed to grab; in particular, the parts that are relevant to sound...

This piece was written by a member of the Reclaim the Streets collective some 16 years ago, when the term 'anti-capitalist' was still brand new.  In it, Andrew X explains his view that "real revolutionary activity is the seizing of the self" rather than the seizing of a cause, and urges readers to give up the divisive mentality that comes with the traditional 'activist' role.  Since this and the other emails posted by RTS are no longer easily accessibl e ( due to the website having been hacked ) I'm re-posting it here so that newer activists can still read it and (hopefully) be inspired by it! Photo from Messy Monday 's channel on YouTube Give Up Activism. Experts The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. To think of yourself as being an activist means to think of yourself as being somehow privileged or more advanced than others in your appreciation of the need for social change, in the knowledge ...

"Peace, joy and pancakes!"     ... was the deliriously random tagline for the Berlin Love Parade, back when it started in 1989.  The Love Parade was founded in 1989 to celebrate DJ Dr. Motte 's birthday.  It was originally billed as a protest and had an ambitiously broad range of demands: global disarmament, unity through music and an end to food poverty.  The solution offered to all these problems was simple enough: bring people together to dance, hug and share. Tomorrow, the Zug der Liebe demo & street party will be doing something a bit similar, but it has made some necessary updates to the template that its predecessors created.  At the time when the first Love Parade happened, its organizers had a glaring example of division, corruption and repression sitting right on the doorstep in the form of the German Democratic Republic, lurking darkly behind its Wall.  After people started streaming through that wall that had been controlled by t...