Unscene Berlin

Left: Dr. Pimenta. Right: Dr. Sikora T his news roundup from Channel 4 News popped up in my recommended feed and I was feeling homesick for ole' Blighty, so I sat down to watch its interpretation of the border closures in Europe, and Boris Johnson's Covid-19 'policy'. I use that word loosely 'cos, since when is doing nothing a 'policy'? This video starts off more like a parade of national stereotypes than a news report: there's the French guy expressing his fears about the virus whilst smoking furiously on a traffic-choked street; there's the Italians, finally learning how to queue because it's easier to socially-distance that way; there's the German skinhead sitting in an empty pub, sipping from a bierstein of pilsner with a look of utter satisfaction, oblivious to the lack of human company. (Don't snicker like that, European readers: your mass media ain't any better in how it portrays its close neighbours. If I have ...

Here in Berlin, it was a mixed start to the #coronapocalypse, as it is affectionately known on Twitter. It was a sunny and warm-ish Saturday for the first time in ages, so everybody was out taking walks, jogging, smiling, laughing, making daisy chains, preparing altars for Summer Solstice, etc. Typical spring stuff.  But as we all learned yesterday, everything that is unnecessary for the city's running will close down next Tuesday: bars, restaurants , nightclubs (yes  even Mensch Meier ). Schools and daycare facilities will close, too. So a lot of parents are panic buying at the moment. The rest of us are collecting bottles and going on a diet until we hear more about government compensation plans. I did all my shopping the other day but today, I had to go to the shops twice to pick up a few things I forgot: once in the morning at 11 am and once at 6 pm. In the morning, everyone was happy and relatively calm, like Sainsbury's before a long bank holiday weekend. People were...

As the co-inventor of the gentrification model currently reshaping Berlin, Bloomberg.com's views on the subject of rent control activism are inherently biased. Yet neither the site nor its writers seem willing to admit it. I've just read No City Hates Its Landlords Like Berlin  on Bloomberg website. A few things grabbed my attention as being, um, less than impartial about it. Who you wouldn't have guessed from the title, right? For one thing, it overuses the word "expropriation". The piece repeatedly uses "expropriation" as a shorthand to describe Berlin's plans to buy back certain properties from its biggest private landlords. "Expropriation" is an archaic word that apparently reached its peak usage around the 1950's. And it definitely seems like Bloomberg has dredged it up to try and revive the frenzied McCarthyist mood of that era, for this piece.  I'm familiar with a lot of big words but I decided to look up...

Nuit Debout. Wikimedia Commons photo Maybe it's because I smile a lot, but Germans seem to enjoy telling me, with near-zealous amounts of fatalism, that the world is going down in flames. And if you're in Australia  right now then yeah, that must seem pretty true. They must figure that I am oblivious to all of the latest apocalyptic news flashes - but nah, that's far from true. It's just that I look at the world with both eyes open: the one that sees the negative shit that is happening out there and  the one that sees humanity's equal and opposite reactions to it. Yes, I'm talking about activism. Again. The media pretty much always leaves activism out of the picture. It speaks about the concerns of the wealthiest 1 percent almost exclusively. Therefore, it sees everything with one eye closed, or one eye 99% closed at the very least. As everyone looks back on the past year and  the past decade, that tendency will surely be amplified.  So join me, if...

This past Friday, I went to a demo and then a party . At the demo, there were 50,000 people wearing different clothes, waving different signs, playing different kinds of music, making different statements and taking different actions. All of them were sharing the same space, the same venue, because they shared a common cause: saving the environment before it's too late. At the party I went to later, I saw hundreds of people wearing different clothes, playing different music, making different statements, performing different sets and dancing different ways.  Everyone I talked to there agreed the party was largely excellent, even if it wasn't 100% tailored to their personal preferences at all times. But when I turned the conversation the demo, their responses were roughly the same. "Oh, I would have gone except I didn't like the name,  catch phrase or the symbolism," "Oh, I don't think I'd like it, don't agree with a statement that a pers...

Can any democratic society live up to its claims of freedom and equality when it forces masses of people into clubs, just to express themselves? A few days ago, I watched Radical Living's video  about the endangered Berlin club scene. In the comment section, I saw someone had made a comment to the effect that the club scene here will always survive, even if it has to move to the edges of the city. That's certainly the theory that many people here seem to be working on, but experience tells me that they are probably living in la-la land. The theory that the Berlin club scene will always find a way to survive - to pull in the 'market' and meet its 'demands' because it makes so goddamned much money - rests on the presumption that the club scene is nothing but an industry. If it's an industry, so the theory goes, it should function just as well on the outskirts of town, alongside all of the other factories churning out mass-produced crap. Right? Erm...

DAVE the Drummer Breakxit's   organiser Liam always manages to put together a lineup that lures Berlin's lurking, seditious UK expats out of their various nooks and crannies around the city. His third Berlin  event  will pull together many strands of the UK's dance music underground, to produce the sonic equivalent of one of those contemporary art pieces that looks like it's exploding and coalescing, all at once. DAVE The Drummer  will be headlining, this time around. Even before the days when  Hydraulix records were sticking up at the front of everyone's DJ bags, DAVE the Drummer's reputation was already affirmed by the very full dance floors that faced him wherever he went. With an almost mischievous, straight face, he'd transform digitally altered beats into legit percussion sections, live or in the mix. Henry, as he's known by partiers and non partiers alike, lives up to his DJ name well: he's also a serious drummer  - a skill that...