Unscene Berlin

March 18 I feel bad throwing out my disinfectant spray bottle with a few dribbles still in it; it may be worth 50 Euros an ounce, soon. Available only drop by the micro-dosed drop in Gorlitzer Bahnhof. Ah, well. March 19 I go for a walk, then work, then go for another walk. Keep finding loads of Z u Verschenken  ("to give away") boxes on the ground, chock full of stuff; probably no one wants to touch other people's old things in case some of it's infected while, at the same time, everybody has more time to clear out all their secret underfloor catacombs and bomb shelters and make way for... even more toilet paper, I guess? A friendly East Indian man sees me eyeing some books in the road near Rummelsburger Bucht. He starts shaking his head gently and saying, ' Aber nicht fassen. Nicht fassen ' as I stop for a closer look. I reassure him, I have no intention of touching those books. Though it's hard to fight the reflex to pocket free stuff wh...

"Come, and trip it as you go / On the light fantastic toe" John Milton 's famous poem seems to have been written as a prophetic motto for the  Garbicz Festival . The creators of this "art festival" like to merge patterns of light - both natural and manmade - with trip-a-delic techno, house, ambient and experimental sounds, to create something that feels like a waking, five-day dream. This photo essay captures a few snapshots of what it was like there, this year. Enjoy!

In English, the phrase "Wem Gehoert Die Stadt" translates into "Who owns the city?" That's a trick question: no one does. Bored brand managers and property speculators are keen to have us believe otherwise.  Since the early 1980s, they've been busy repackaging the urban metropolis as the ultimate consumer product, a source of revenue that can never been owned, only sampled for a limited time by the right people, at the right price. They've turned our high streets into a high concept designer gallery, where everything from the coffee that we drink to the experience of stroking a cat is elevated to the level of status symbol, removed from us behind cool glass walls. Separating the haves from the have nots, the admired from the admirers, the people who can afford to live, from those who can only afford to exist. But returning the streets to the people can be done for free and without breaking a single window... just make it look more interesting tha...

Hard to remember that fact in February though, isn't it? Winter in Berlin means grey skies, grey streets and a grey-black mood. But at least we have our cameras and videos to remember the summer by, eh?  Just imagine this: up until colour photography started being widely used, even the memories that people used to keep of this city on film were grey .  That meant they weren't even able to escape into a vision of the summer that had been (and hopefully would be again) like we can. So we should probably all take a second to be thankful for our smartphones, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube - and for Blogger of course! Technology's transformed the camera since the black n' white days, and made it loads more accommodating to the mind reels of memories that all Berliners collect, to bursting point, each summer. There's never enough time to process all these memories at the time, so why not use the winter lull to try and catch up and make sen...

Berlin has two zoos, but its more exotic wildlife can be found on the streets in between them... Even when there are bricks all around you, it's easy to forget that you're in a city, in Berlin - animistic figures seem to creep into the background from every angle. Here is a roundup of some of the weirder & more wonderful creatures that have flown, hopped, prowled, slithered and trotted into view over the past few years, as I wandered around the city snapping pics. Feel free to share your own on Twitter @UnsceneBerlin or in the comment box below! The Easter Bunny, as seen through the eyes of streetartist Roa Bikes don't have a rearview mirror, so people have to find a more creative place for their fluffy toys. Seen at a demonstration that had nothing to do with unicorns, whatsoever. Add caption Wild things used to come out of the woodwork at Zapata bar (R.I.P.) The elephant in the room at Brunnen 70 The Berlin Bear ha...

Fighting for the right to live, eat, breathe... and party ... at last Saturday's demo On the surface, the Stop TTIP & CETA demo last weekend was a mass uprising in all of the usual ways: there were signs, costumes, chants and dance tunes.  People marched and made demands.  But the demo seemed like it was more than just the sum of its parts. It wasn't just because there were more people there than at any demo I've been to in Germany. Their feelings about the cause were also tangible, full of new variety and depth. They were feelings shared by people that'd never meet any other way : families, kids, teens, pensioners, working classes, black bloc anarchists, ad-hoc hippies... and that's rare in a city where people tend to plan every detail of every social encounter, from the friends that they handpick to share it to the exact second that their train returns them home.  Maybe I'm just unlucky but since leaving England, I've rarely felt a multifacet...

If you were passing through the Wiener Strasse area yesterday, you might have noticed that it was not a day for 'business as usual', down at the local pool.  Semi-nude bathers inside the pool clustered by its windowed walls to goggle at a swirling pool of dancers outside on Spreewaldplatz, making waves of the sonic kind...  Yes, that's right: the Spreewaldplatz was briefly reclaimed by an underrepresented Berlin demographic: the ravers.  Not just the people who go to raves, but those who organize them, as well: living, eating, sleeping and breathing in the liberty that is found in the city's underpopulated, undiscovered nooks and crannies. Around 90% of inner-city Berlin used to be comprised of such nooks & crannies before the relentless march of commercialization began.  So it may be fair to say that many of the people at yesterday's Reclaim the Gorli party embodied the untamed spirit that put Berlin on the map in the first place. As often reporte...