Unscene Berlin

Who said, "Tear down this wall?" It hardly matters. All that matters is the people who actually  did  it - people like you and I.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living in an ex-Eastern Bloc country, it’s that the Iron Curtain didn’t fall just because of what any one leader said or did. It also fell because the majority of people didn't want it anymore, and refused to let it stand in their way. I think there is a lesson to be learned there for all would-be activists, but especially those who are frustrated with their government's inaction on climate change.  Not that many English speaking visitors to Berlin realise this, but quite a few people who lived in the GDR believed that the Wall was a necessary defence against the capitalist, militarised West.  That was what their leaders led them to believe. Nowadays, we are so used to thinking of the Wall as a fence that kept people in, we forget that for many people on the eastern side of it, it ...

Ah, the 1990's... ...a time when raves were getting banned, streets were being reclaimed, guerrilla gardeners were re-sculpting urban landscapes, Chiapas was being re-taken by peaceful radicals; a time of mass squatting across every urban centre. It was also a time when half of this blog's readership was still in its diapers! That sucks for them but this Thursday, January 24th, they'll get a second chance to see what the 1990's were like at On the Radical Roots of Rave #2 .  The fact is, even with photography and hand held video cameras - not to mention CD, vinyl, tapes - my generation couldn't capture all the best parts of the 1990's. There were too many parties, riots, happenings and actions taking up our time. And remember, camera phones didn't even exist back then! But this party and exhibit on Thursday aims to share a few of the 'stroboscopic artefacts' that we managed to grab; in particular, the parts that are relevant to sound...

Beginning this Friday December 7th, Datacide and Next:Now are going to be hosting a series of freeform political talks at Vetomat about what's happening in our culture... Nostalgia. Fear. The power that advertising holds to detach us from the present. The power of subculture to free us from it. These are all potent themes in a city like Berlin, resonating as it is with the echoes of alternating eras of warfare and hedonism. Berlin's residents have become used to seeing these themes ruthlessly capitalised upon and recreated by the tourism and entertainment industries. But now, these industries have slid from being a mechanism that lets people remember the past to one that lets them recreate it, dangerously, in a spell of detachment. If one traces a path from European capitals like Berlin, that have been scarred by war, to decadent American metropolises like Las Vegas that exploded with post-war success, one sees the template that dooms the West to re-ena...

Gegen 8ternity flyer. (Artwork copyright: Gegen Berlin) Saturday January 5th,  2:00 a.m. "They have new rooms now, down in the basement," says my wide-eyed friend Rene in a husky voice, before taking me by the hand and leading me down the steps into KitKat's apparently infinite cellar. (My balance is a bit off, it must be whatever I drank earlier). We trace a wavy path through the rambling subterranean hallways, around translucent pennants that hang on alternating sides of the hall, printed with tasteful nudes doing tasteless things, undulating fluidly in the body temperature air.  The hall opens out into a bar, which opens out into a fakeshift hospital ward. We pass doubled-over bodies getting whipped & spanked; protruding buttocks scarred with lashes and splattered with red wax. There are hips rolling on gurneys, glistening bald heads and tossing manes, camp laughter and almost inaudible moans. And then that room opens on to Gegentanz: a wide...

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...

Last Friday, my friend Julian and I went to Atonal experimental music festival, which is starting to become an annual tradition. We saw about seven acts there. The whole night was amazing but just the first act alone cast a long shadow over the rest of what we saw. A duo called Belief Defect was just starting when we walked into that cavern of sound, a venue hewn out of the disused energy plant in Koepernickerstrasse that also houses Tresor. The soaring ceilings of Kraftwerk and the muted air had left some unsettling vestiges of a cathedral behind, but with the aid of intense visuals, the place was transformed into something more like a mystic temple. Their performance was designed to elude description with words, but I'll try! The music was a layering of ambient and industrial sounds, agitating people like molecules in the petri dish to shift and bounce. Flickering red interference patterns blended with the ambient smoke. Rorschach faces shifted in the wind. Eventually, ...

Yesterday, the weather was sunny and mild with a light breeze: perfect conditions for making a few waves about the upcoming G20 events in Berlin and Hamburg. The activist group Top Berlin organized a boat protest, " They Call It Partnership, We Call It Hell ",  to help raise public awareness about the hypocrisy behind two major G20 events that are due to take place in Germany this summer: the African Partnership conference happening in Berlin on June 12-13th, and the G20 conference happening in Hamburg on July 7-8th. Thankfully, cruising from Rummelsburger Bucht to Goerlitzer Park along the Spree's placid waters wasn't hellish at all. It was almost a trip to heaven, with smooth sailing almost all the way. Things got choppy at one point as a couple of police boats pulled up alongside us, but apparently they were just there to make we were safe and sound. I guess some pirates had been sighted in the area...? Not all boat trips can happen under such favourable...