Unscene Berlin

As published in Siegesauele, May 2015 edition. May 1st is a time when the spirit of change grabs us. Across Europe, people used to celebrate the day by lighting bonfires to magnify the sun’s life force. From Beltane to Walpurgisnacht, modern versions of these same celebrations embody a pre-Christian tradition of burning out the old, bad energies of winter to make way for new ones in spring. As manmade systems slowly replaced nature as the governing force in our lives, these too were added to the list of things that people yearn to regenerate. Eventually, May 1st was even chosen as International Workers’ Day to symbolize the ongoing struggle for equality between the haves and the have-nots.   That may be why authorities tend to pour cold water on the May Day spirit: they’re afraid that they may get chucked on the fire to make way for something new. That seems to be what happened in Berlin on May 1, 1987 when police brutally clamped down on a pea...

The adjective "overrated" is often used in relation to Berlin's clubs, especially during the tourist high season . It' s the time of year when do zens of pop -up parties suddenly appear, run by peo ple who are in it for nothing but quick cash, an ego injection or the c hance to play God for a while .   To illust rate, I'm republishing this early party report written about an openair party I went to in Apri l 2011.  T he party happened on the site where Kosmonaut club now stands but it was under different management then , so any resemblance between th e old club and th e new one is purely coincidental.  B e warned: this review is so bad that it's almost good agai n (i f you know what I mean). Please don't bother reading past this point if you dis like that sort of thing !

"Time To Dance" paste-up by SOBR, Berlin. "We are not going to demand anything. We are not going to ask for anything. We are going to take. We are going to occupy." Reclaim the Streets manifesto ( Do Or Die ) Here in Berlin, it's always "Time to Dance"... even if you're just waiting at the tram stop at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, and even if you're eyeing your bank account's minus-balance on a graffiti-covered cash machine screen at midnight.  After all, just because the party's ended doesn't mean your buzz has to. The season when it becomes most evident that the beat never stops in Berlin is in the summer, when a series of street parties and festivals acts the main stage, turning the swollen ranks of the clubbing network into mere after-party and pre-party stop-offs on the way back to the great urban outdoors.    And now that we've gotten past the most over-hyped outdoor parade of the year (not naming any names h...

While I was in England recently, I heard that some anarchists in London were putting on a Fuck Parade on May the 1st (see video above).  Now, anybody who reads this blog knows that I'm well into Berlin's annual Fuck Parade .  So it seemed like good news to hear that London's black bloc anarchists decided to swipe the idea of using a techno parade as a way of challenging gentrification, and named the event after Berlin's infamous street party.  So far, so good... But after watching the video of the London Fuck Parade, it seems that the similarity between the two events doesn't go much further than the fact that they share the same name.  The Berlin version of Fuck Parade is big and radical and hard, but it's also madcap fun.  It has a stated set of politics but anyone's allowed to participate in any way that they want, as long as they're passionate about the harder musical styles being played - gabba, jungle, hard techno and acid tek. It celebrat...

Apparently there's a part of your mind that doesn't register time, only experiences.  Its point of view is recorded in pure emotion... a state where people seem frozen in time with sounds drawn out for eternity.  I feel like that's the part of my mind that comes out to play whenever I'm at a party, so this entry is going to be dedicated to places where it would feel at home, this weekend.  Tonight, there's The Long Now , an Atonal-inspired 30-hour closing party at Kraftwerk Berlin (which is the big industrial hall space above Tresor ). The blurb for the event describes this as "a place for the enduring present. A space in which time itself can unfold, where the sense of time can take uncharted paths and even depart".  Well, having been to the last Atonal , I can confirm that it is a pretty apt description of the type of music that they play there.  It's a bit like watching a Bill Viola video through your ears.  You'll want to wear ...

Breaking up with the EasyJet set can be hard, but it's worth it. Do you live in Berlin?   If the answer's yes then you're probably an underemployed, liberal artist of some kind.  You probably eat local, organically-grown, fair trade products.  You almost definitely always return your bottles for the pfand (deposit).  Your flat's energy probably comes from a renewable source.  You presumably cycle from A to B, using public transport whenever you can.  Let's face it, it's probably all that you can afford.   In other words, you don't use up that much carbon every year. So surely, you can afford to take a flight some place warm every now and then.  Right? Wrong. The assumption that flying a few times a year isn't such a bad carbon 'expense' is one that many people - myself included - are guilty of having. Until recently, I used to fly about once or twice a year from one European city to another for the same reasons everyone d...

Plateau Gallery @ The Greenhouse Berlin Greenhouse Berlin Neglected urban spaces seem to capture a large part of the Berlin aesthetic.  That's why the city's endless , derelict stretches are such a huge attraction in and of themselves.  They don't need signposts or missions statements - no, those would just get in the way.  Instead, they speak to us through a special feeling : like you've just reached the final frontier in the last undeveloped European city.  Like there's still something undefined that you can reach for beyond the unyielding bricks and cement, existing only to be experienced.  Like the terms haven't been created yet to describe what lies o ut there... That's why I'm uplifted to hear that more and more DIY, multipurpose event spaces are cropping up on the outskirts of the city, and opting to keep the city's left-wing, activist ethics alive.  T here's a part of the modern Berlin soul that you can only you captu...