Unscene Berlin

Unscene Berlin recently met with artist Penny Rafferty to talk about her new collective, Punk Is Dada.  What is Punk Is Dada, though?  Is it art, movement, festival or anti-fashion statement?  As it turns out, Rafferty’s not too sure herself.  That’s part of what makes it so exciting... Still from Punk Is Dada's new video 'Just F*ck It' Unscene Berlin first encountered Penny Rafferty, artist and co-founder of Berlin's Punk Is Dada collective, in December 2012.  She had organised an anti-consumerism Christmas spectacle at Mitte's ZMF club entitled Cult of the Personality .   Every product that was on offer at the event - from the clothing to the zines to the music by the drag dance band that played at the end - was created to articulate a clear viewpoint on a social or political issue that its creators believed in.  And not one of the artists involved in the event resorted to the textbook tedium of politic...

The Weird An increasing number of street artists in Berlin (and worldwide) seem to be putting up designs that are well executed and eye catching, but strangely lacking in meaning.  I'm not really sure why, but I find this unsettling.  Same goes for the many streetart prints that I have seen described as 'a piece for your living room' by decor websites and artists, alike.  Isn't streetart supposed to speak to the world ?  Or is it just there to make the world look more interesting?  I think that the answer is 'both'.  In either case, the living room is the wrong place for it. XOOOOX The relevance of streetart lies not in its aesthetic but in its ability to speak to passers-by via its aesthetic (and by passers-by I mean regular people too, not just art critics).  To do that, it should say something that 'everybody knows' but  they have never seen written or illustrated anywhere else.  Scrawling that view on the outside, underside or...

Winter is the season when Berlin gets that famous post-apocalyptic look to it:   the streets are empty, the wrecked buildings that people used to work in loom visibly over the more discreet, tidy ones they now live in; everywhere you look, the city's mottled grey shell is exposed by bare branches.   In the streets, nothing seems to move except a few furtive pedestrians, camouflaged in dark clothes that blend in with the post-industrial grime.   The crows and sparrows are silent, saving their energy to keep warm; the pigeons sip spilled beer and peck fallen drugs outside of clubs to blot out their existential despair.   Even the trains seem to have a touch of winter blues as they sluggishly creak their way between stations.  It's a bit bleak, if you get my drift. These weather conditions are perfect for checking out an exhibition like X Lab’s solo show of Ken Plotbot's work , this Saturday the 26th.  The show's “ dark nuclear graphic and post industria...