Unscene Berlin

At.Tension 2019  is an arts and performance festival running from September 5th to the 8th. On the website, it is described as a "side specific(sic) biennial, interdisciplinary theater festival, curated, organized and realized by actors."  That's the way they would put it. The way I would put it is this: At.Tension is basically a 'Fusion lite', a packing down and chilling out festival, taking place on the same site as Fusion, about two hours away from Berlin At.Tension takes place every second year and, to anyone who's been to Fusion before, it will be very familiar scenery: almost nothing seems to have changed. Everything and I mean everything that was open at Fusion is open at At.Tension. So if you can't get enough of Fusion, then this is for you.  All of the site's "aircraft hangars, an old runway, various circus tents, as well as various parking and open spaces ... including a swimming lak...

Throw together a building without owner, opening times without curfew, people without limits, music without definition, and you have a squat party. That pair of words conjures up more images than any two in the English language.  Crowded night buses.  Roads to nowhere. Lorries. Dogs. Queueing and smoking.  Haggling. Drinking.  Snorting.  All just a preamble to the main feature: the dancefloor, and all the subplots that spin out of control on it. A stage of pallets and speakers, set for a chemical cabaret.  The fantastical, the fanatical, the enlightened, the dejected - a lineup of gems in the rough - all take their turns and bow out.  Next up: the Old Bill. Their stony-faced dispatch enters stage right: cue first intermission break.  Floodlights glare on flattened beer cans and electrified, blinking stares.  Rolly smoke pirouettes in the air. Eventually they retreat, freeing the party. Regular scheduling resumes: heavin...

Abyss is the watchword for this weekend, it seems.  I blame the seasons, or rather the single season of winter which seems to have settled permanently in Berlin.  These last six weeks have illustrated exactly why the idea of global warming should leave us all cold: because, according to climatologist predictions , it's only going to warm places that don't need it - e.g. India, South America and Australia - while making Northern Europe and America colder than ever. In the face of unreliable seasonal warmth on the surface of Berlin, people seem to be instinctively retreating and burrowing deeper into the city's party abyss - maybe to search out more steady sources of thermal warmth.  (That almost sounds like a metaphor to explain why people move from mainstream to underground culture in the first place.) On Friday, Robot Army Meets Abyss mal @ About Blank.  Although I've slated its door staff on, oh, just about every single occasion that I've encountered them...