Unscene Berlin

You are strolling through a seemingly never-ending series of rooms. In the second or third room is a cavernous space where cut-glass minimal tech plays, while lasers glint off of a foil-covered car parked in a corner. Your pagan friend climbs inside the abandoned vehicle and takes it for a joyride, spinning the steering wheel and snarling fiercely as he screeches around an imaginary racetrack. When you have both exhausted the possibilities of this room you move on. You pass through a negative-exposure hallway full of Day-Glo furniture, graffiti scrawled in incandescent ink across the walls. A second hall, embellished with gigantic wall-sketches and lit by candles, stretches off to the right. You are tempted to go down it and find out what is around the bend at the end but then you hear loud noises coming from up ahead and follow them, instead. The hall opens onto an industrial-sized storage space, bare except for a DJ table and a Peter-Murphy like singer. The duo is jamming with experi...

I am afraid that Club Alien has no review for you this week. Here is the story of how that happened - or rather, didn't happen. Last Saturday, after going to the Alte Fleischfabrik and finding that it was once again closed at the last minute, the Alien set out to review Kater Holzig instead. Brandishing a bottle of wine she had stolen from a birthday party earlier, she followed (or was it ‘led’?) a group of merrymakers down the Spree to Koepenicker Strasse. Once inside the club, she held her camera up a few times but, being that she was unable to make the double-vision go away for long enough to focus her camera, she gave up and focused on getting more drinks, instead.  Because quite clearly, she wasn't drunk enough, yet...

Why should history get all the glory? Every November the 5th should be just as memorable as the original... "Remember, remember the 5th of November  Gunpowder Treson and plot I can think of no reason  The gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot... " In England, the 5th of November is a pretty big deal. To celebrate it, people light bonfires, set off fireworks and get plastered outside in the cold and, usually, the rain. It's all a part of the 'Bonfire Night' tradition, introduced by the English government in the 17th century in order to celebrate the arrest of dissident Guy Fawkes. On November 5th 1606, Fawkes was caught under the Houses of Parliament with barrels of explosives; he was trying to blow up the government and instigate a state of anarchy (in the U.K.) by bringing down the fledgling Parliament. And the first punk had not even been born yet...! Snake worshipping, (ex) acid-dealing author Moore More than 300 years later, ...

This entry is really just an excuse for me to post some of the party pics I haven't had the chance to publish this month... and without further preamble, here they are. Enjoy! Above: Entrance to Ritter Butzke, shot on the way into the club's "2 Years Lost" party on October 9th. I seem to have lost a couple of hours of my Sunday there too... and my umbrella! If you find any of the above items, please forward them to Ritterstrasse 24, c/o Club Alien.

October 31st is a day when the underworld opens its gates and spirits are free to walk among the living. In order to keep those mischievous entities distracted so that they don't disturb the living, people don wacky outfits, dish out brightly-coloured goodies, play strange music and stay up really late. Come to think of it, Hallowe'en is not all that different from any other night in Berlin - but it does have a unique history and a damn cool name. In this city, that's more than enough cause for a celebration...

The day had begun with the freakish spectacle of summer arriving in October. The sun was shining and we headed out to sip prosecco and beers in Treptower park where people were grilling; boats full of tourists were sailing; and an openair party was happening under a nearby bridge, just like any other Tuesday in summer. We hung around the free tunage for a while until we realized that some sort of fairground sounds were coming from an enclosed garden nearby where the Wilden Renate crew were holding some sort of birthday party. Carnival music suited the scene we saw as we stepped into the place around 10:00 p.m.  A bouncy castle was slowly sinking to the ground as whooping party-goers flung themselves around inside of it. Hammocks and a boat swayed lazily in the air, suspended from the yard's sturdy trees. On top of the main doorway, a sculpture of a lady dressed in jester's clothes reclined like a magnanimous hostess. Was she inviting us to chill with her... or ...

Deutsch version here Banning indep endent photography in clubs achieves nothing... unless you count the suppression of self-expression as an achievement. Last week I found myself at a decadent party in which surreal sights abounded. Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed inside. No doubt, the privacy of a few individuals who think that a club is not a 'public' space was protected. The price of this privacy was that dozens of potentially inspiring images went unrecorded. They will never be sent to friends via email, or uploaded onto blogs, or hung up in portrait galleries, or published in books. As someone who lives to document underground parties, it is worrying for me to consider the possibility that, when this generation of Berlin clubs (currently under threat from developers) has ceased to exist, the only visual record that will be left will be tidy, promotional images that have whitewashed away all the chaotic beauty that reigned insi...