Exberliner Issue 171 May 2018
1968-2018 Berliners look back POLITICS REPORTAGE ZEITGEIST ART MUSIC FILM STAGE DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY From sugarbaby millenials to old school Lebenskünstler, from bitcoin speculators to Instagram influencers - Meet the Berliners who thrive without a proper job 171 €3.90 MAY 2018 WWW.EXBERLINER.COM 100% MADE IN BERLIN PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
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- Page 8 and 9: 1968 - 2018 “They would call peop
- Page 10 and 11: 1968 - 2018 DON’T WORK, MAKE MONE
- Page 12 and 13: DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY have kids,
- Page 14 and 15: LEBENSKÜNSTLER Life after Tacheles
- Page 16 and 17: DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY There was
- Page 18 and 19: CRYPTO MONEY The Berlin bitcoin bro
- Page 20 and 21: DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY was basica
- Page 22 and 23: DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY beginning
- Page 24 and 25: DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY SOCIAL MED
- Page 26 and 27: Interview “Every stage seems to b
- Page 28 and 29: WHAT’S ON — Film Editor’s Cho
- Page 30 and 31: DON’T MISS Tranny Fag (Bixa Trave
- Page 32 and 33: WHAT’S ON — Music Editor’s Ch
- Page 34 and 35: WHAT’S ON — Music DON’T MISS
- Page 36 and 37: GIG LISTINGS April YOUR GUIDE TO CO
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- Page 44 and 45: WHAT’S ON — Calendar Calendar M
- Page 46 and 47: ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide Ad
- Page 48 and 49: ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide RA
- Page 50 and 51: BERLIN BITES BREAKFAST Taking back
1968-<strong>2018</strong><br />
Berliners<br />
look back<br />
POLITICS REPORTAGE ZEITGEIST ART MUSIC FILM STAGE<br />
DON’T WORK,<br />
MAKE MONEY<br />
From sugarbaby millenials to old school<br />
Lebenskünstler, from bitcoin speculators<br />
to Instagram influencers - Meet the Berliners<br />
who thrive without a proper job<br />
<strong>171</strong><br />
€3.90 MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
WWW.EXBERLINER.COM<br />
100% MADE IN BERLIN<br />
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
#theatertreffen<br />
Berliner Festspiele<br />
4.5.–<br />
21.5.18<br />
Berliner Festspiele<br />
are funded by<br />
Theatertreffen<br />
is funded by<br />
Media partner<br />
Foto: Raul Guillermo ++ Design: Eps51
CONTENTS<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong> - MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
1968-<strong>2018</strong><br />
06<br />
Mrs. Rudi Dutschke<br />
The widow of Berlin’s most iconic<br />
revolutionary talks about his politics,<br />
their beginnings and taking care<br />
of his legacy<br />
08<br />
My <strong>May</strong> 1968<br />
Three 1968ers look back<br />
at the events in Berlin<br />
50 years ago<br />
Don’t Work, Make Money<br />
12<br />
After Tacheles<br />
Mitte’s famed alternative space<br />
closed six years ago. Where are the<br />
protagonists now?<br />
16<br />
The Berlin Bitcoin Bros<br />
Once the domain of anarchists and<br />
dark-webbers, bitcoin has gone<br />
mainstream<br />
19<br />
The sugarbabes<br />
Millennials in Berlin provide the<br />
v“girlfriend experience” for cash<br />
22<br />
How to be a Berlinfluencer<br />
Making a living with Instagram,<br />
Youtube and blogs – does it work<br />
for hip Berliners?<br />
Regulars<br />
03<br />
Konrad Werner<br />
Rising inequality<br />
04<br />
Best of Berlin<br />
A retro listening bar, a virtual art gallery<br />
and chocolate gone Bezirk<br />
48<br />
Berlin bites<br />
Three new brunch spots<br />
and real baguettes<br />
50<br />
Save Berlin<br />
Dan Borden on what the city is<br />
doing to improve cycling conditions<br />
51<br />
The Gay Berliner<br />
Walter Crasshole<br />
explains Xposed<br />
51<br />
Comic<br />
Instabunnies<br />
52<br />
Letters to the editor<br />
Readers take offense<br />
to our trailer<br />
and our last issue<br />
What’s On<br />
24<br />
Volksbühne the movie and<br />
two very German exhibitions<br />
Film 26<br />
Music 30<br />
Stage 35<br />
Art 38<br />
42<br />
Events calendar<br />
44<br />
The Berlin Guide<br />
PERFORMANCES<br />
ZUM<br />
SPIELEN<br />
NICHTS<br />
Foto: »Monster« von DeLaVallet Bidiefono, © Christophe Pean<br />
GEHT<br />
MEHR<br />
MAY<br />
9–13<br />
SOPHIENSAELE.COM<br />
1<br />
DESIGN Jan Grygoriew | jangry.com
BERLINS ONLY OPEN AIR-CINEMA SHOWING MOVIES EXCLUSIVELY IN ORIGINAL VERSIONS<br />
PROGRAM MAY<br />
25 years of Freiluftkino Kreuzberg! To<br />
celebrate, we’re screening the coolest<br />
film from 1994, the year we started out:<br />
FRI 4.5. 9:15 PULP FICTION (1994) Engl.OV<br />
The best thing is: it’s on us. To go into the<br />
draw for free tickets, visit our website.<br />
SAT 5.5. 9:15 THE SQUARE English,Swed./German subtitles<br />
SUN 6.5. 9:15 ZWEI HERREN IM ANZUG Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
MON 7.5. 9:30 LUCKY Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
TUE 8.5. 9:30 BLACK PANTHER Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
WED 9.5. 9:30 THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE<br />
EBBING, MISSOURI Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
THU 10.5. 9:30 SHAPE OF WATER Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
FRI 11.5. 9:30 AUS DEM NICHTS In the Fade Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
SAT 12.5. 8:30 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST <strong>2018</strong>:<br />
OUR ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF EUROPE’S<br />
FINEST AND TRASHY MUSIC. Admission free!<br />
SUN 13.5. 9:30 THE DEATH OF STALIN Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
MON 14.5. 9:30 CASTING Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
TUE 15.5. 9:30 GOD‘S OWN COUNTRY Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
WED 16.5. 9:30 DAS SCHWEIGENDE KLASSENZIMMER<br />
The Silent Revolution Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
THU 17.5. 9:30 I, TONYA Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
FRI 18.5. 9:30 THE FLORIDA PROJECT Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
SAT 19.5. 9:30 PHANTOM THREAD Der seidene Faden<br />
Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
SUN 20.5. 9:30 THE POST Die Verlegerin Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
MON 21.5. 9:30 CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
ADDRESS<br />
The Freiluftkino Kreuzberg is located near Kottbusser Tor U-Bahn-station, in the courtyard of Kunstquartier Bethanien on Mariannenplatz<br />
ENTRANCE FEE e 7,50 | with social pass (Berlinpass) e 5,00 | Surcharge for long fi lms e 1,00<br />
ADVANCE SALE<br />
Online tickets available at: www.freiluftkino-kreuzberg.de | The cinema box offi ce only sells tickets for the day’s screening, no advance sales.<br />
BOX OFFICE OPENS AND ENTRANCE 30 min. before showtime<br />
MULTI SHOW TICKETS<br />
OPERATOR<br />
CONTACT/GROUP DISCOUNTS<br />
FOR SCHOOL CLASSES<br />
at the cinema box offi ce and „Koka36“: 5 Shows e 30 | 10 Shows e 55 (Please note: not for groups!)<br />
Piffl Medien GmbH An induction loop is provided for the benefit of hearing aid users.<br />
kreuzberg@piffl medien.de<br />
TUE 22.5. 9:30 THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER<br />
Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
WED 23.5. 9:30 UNA MUJER FANTÁSTICA A Fantastic<br />
Woman/Eine fantastische Frau<br />
Spanish /Engl.+Germ.sbtls<br />
THU 24.5. 9:30 ANNE CLARK - I‘LL WALK OUT INTO<br />
TOMORROW Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
FRI 25.5. 9:30 DARKEST HOUR<br />
Die dunkelste Stunde Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
SAT 26.5. 9:30 3 TAGE IN QUIBERON<br />
3 Days in Quiberon Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
SUN 27.5. 9:30 WONDER Wunder Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
MON 28.5. 9:30 HAPPY END Fren./Germ.sbtls<br />
TUE 29.5. 9:30 Nelyubov LOVELESS Russian/Germ.sbtls<br />
WED 30.5. 9:30 WILDES HERZ - FEINE SAHNE FISCHFILET<br />
Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
THU 31.5. 9:30 THE BIG SICK Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
OUTLOOK PROGRAM JUNE<br />
FRI 1.6. 9:30 LADY BIRD Engl./Germ.sbtls<br />
SAT 2.6. 9:30 TRANSIT Germ./Engl.sbtls<br />
WWW.FREILUFTKINO-BERLIN.DE<br />
25 Years<br />
Berlin
COLUMN— Political Notebook<br />
Why are so many<br />
German people so poor?<br />
Konrad Werner explains German politics.<br />
This month: rising inequality<br />
Foto: Ludwig Binder/Stiftung Haus der Geschichte<br />
Editor-in-chief<br />
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Graphic design<br />
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This month’s contributors<br />
Alison Bell, Francesca Elsey, Wladek Flakin, Ella Joyner,<br />
Liam Kelly, Lily Kelting, Emma Lawson, Taylor Lindsay,<br />
Emily <strong>May</strong>, David Mouriquand, Robert Rigney, Jane<br />
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This is obvious but people keep forgetting:<br />
Germany is awash with money.<br />
The federal government commands<br />
huge tax surpluses and has stopped taking<br />
on new debt, while the health insurance<br />
companies, both state and private, are making<br />
huge profits. Germany has geared the EU<br />
to function in its favour, which is why, unlike<br />
virtually every other economy nearby, this<br />
country is doing much better than can possibly<br />
be expected after the world-changing<br />
economic crisis in 2008.<br />
It’s in this slightly crazy context that two<br />
things happened last month.<br />
One, 20,000 Berliners took to<br />
the streets because people are<br />
being priced out of the city, and<br />
two, a new debate about Hartz<br />
IV broke out.<br />
Both of these things are<br />
good. The first came after a<br />
well-timed “Global Residential<br />
Cities Index” showed that<br />
in no other city in the world<br />
were property prices rising<br />
as fast as in Berlin – 20.5-percent rise in<br />
2017. That’s out of control, and shows that<br />
this city is sliding into London conditions:<br />
luxury homes being left empty as speculative<br />
investments; people on benefits getting<br />
kicked out of their homes by landlords who<br />
use any trick they can to raise the rent:<br />
more homelessness and more middle class<br />
people neurotically having to chase more<br />
and more money.<br />
<strong>May</strong>or Michael Müller claims that Berlin<br />
is already taking all the legal measures it<br />
can but the problem is that the rent cap that<br />
the federal government got through is too<br />
weak. That isn’t exactly the whole problem:<br />
Müller’s SPD is the same one that presided<br />
over the sale of Berlin’s public land over the<br />
last decade, and the rules for building new<br />
affordable social housing aren’t exactly being<br />
imposed well. But at least we have a city government<br />
talking about it (there’s talk of<br />
an extra tax on land if nothing is built on it).<br />
Müller, apparently growing into his role as<br />
mild Merkel-irritant, was also the one who<br />
in late March suggested that it was time to<br />
ditch Hartz IV – the benefit that the longterm<br />
unemployed get – and replace it with<br />
a state-funded job. True to the<br />
obfuscating nature of your average<br />
centrist politician, Müller labelled<br />
his idea a “basic income,”<br />
which it definitely wasn’t – a<br />
basic income is supposed to be<br />
unconditional, whereas this is<br />
just a new state job where you<br />
have to do something fairly<br />
boring for €1,500 a month. It<br />
at least started a debate about<br />
Hartz IV. Germany is in need of<br />
any debate that is, at least tangentially, about<br />
the fact that too many people are scrambling<br />
for money while the economy is flooded with<br />
it. Of course, that hasn’t stopped right-wing<br />
parties like the FDP and the CSU from trying<br />
to turn the debate into something about<br />
refugees or Islam (they want to reduce Hartz<br />
IV for immigrants).<br />
There’s a deep anxiety spreading through<br />
German life, an unnerving feeling that<br />
everything is good but they’re likely to lose<br />
it any second. Germany needs some radical<br />
restructuring, or else the poverty and social<br />
disconnect will get a lot worse yet. n<br />
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BEST OF BERLIN— <strong>May</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
BERLIN<br />
BEST RETRO<br />
LISTENING BAR<br />
A<br />
welcoming<br />
dark haven on a residential street,<br />
wine bar Rhinoçéros – named after its location<br />
on Rhinowerstraße – has been drawing a loyal<br />
collection of locals since it opened, replete with a<br />
cosy fire, last November. The bar fuses Martina’s and<br />
co-owner and husband Bénédict’s interests: wine<br />
and jazz. So far, so French: Bénédict’s youth was<br />
spent in the wine-abundant Rhône valley, but the<br />
couple are particularly enthusiastic about showcasing<br />
German wines. A white Scheurebe tasted by<br />
<strong>Exberliner</strong> is a perfect accompaniment to lengthening<br />
spring days. Don’t set your heart on it, though,<br />
because the wine list is in constant flux. A glass is<br />
€5-10 and for an extra €4-16 you get a plate of cheese<br />
or meat arranged as perfectly as a French still life.<br />
Rhinoçéros’ soundtrack displays the couple’s passion<br />
for jazz; records ranging from stalwarts such as John<br />
Coltrane to more obscure musicians are played on<br />
the beautiful 1970s soundsystem. On Wednesdays<br />
and Thursdays the volume gets turned up for special<br />
listening sessions. They reveal the real inspiration for<br />
Rhinoçéros: not the French wine bar, but the Japanese<br />
kissa – small jazz cafés that function as listening<br />
rooms, which were established in the 1950s but are<br />
now nearly extinct. The menu pays tribute to their<br />
spirit with Japanese whiskies such as the €7 Suntory<br />
Hibiki. Rhinoçéros may not serve your usual glass of<br />
Pinot Grigio, but offers excellent alternatives for a<br />
summer nightcap. — EL<br />
SOPHISTICATED HANGOUT<br />
Rhinower Str. 3, Prenzlauer Berg, Wed-Sat 18-late, check<br />
Instagram for upcoming listening sessions<br />
Anastasia Chistyakova<br />
VIRTUAL REALITY<br />
BEST GOGGLE ART<br />
Can you think of any truly revolutionary invention coming out of Berlin –<br />
apart from döner? Right. Neither can we. So it’s all the more exciting that<br />
we have the world’s first virtual reality gallery with an actual physical space:<br />
Synthesis Gallery. Recently opened by Giorgio Vitale on Köpenicker Straße, it<br />
aims to snatch VR from the corporate world and claim it for the higher purpose of<br />
art. If you’re more of an app than a painting person anyway, you can buy the apps<br />
(read: artwork) on show there, grab yourself a basic pair of VR goggles and take the<br />
art home with you. The opening exhibition “Same but Different” by Swiss artist<br />
Marc Lee consists of different virtual reality apps portraying cities morphing into<br />
generic non-places – rather fitting social commentary for gentrification-resistant<br />
Berlin. With the new medium, Vitale brings a first taste of the future of digital art<br />
here – and there’s no doubt it’s an immersive Erfahrung. The current space is a<br />
little underwhelming, but after its inaugural exhibition and aside from a collaborative<br />
project with Galerie Mitte, Synthesis Gallery will be on hiatus until after the<br />
summer, when Vitale plans to move into a more permanent space here in Berlin.<br />
Either way, who needs an impressive space when the goggles come on? — FE<br />
Köpenicker Str. 95, Mitte, Tue-Sun 11-19, check website synthesis.gallery<br />
for upcoming exhibitions<br />
4 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
BEST OF BERLIN— <strong>May</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
VOLKSBÜHNE<br />
Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz<br />
Paul Rossaint<br />
BEST KIEZ-KISSED<br />
CHOCOLATE<br />
Ever wondered what your neighbourhood would<br />
taste like if it were a chocolate flavour? 49-yearold<br />
Berlin-born novelist and chocoholic Tanja<br />
Dünckers is here to answer that question for you:<br />
stemming from her synesthetic imagination, each of<br />
her 15 original Preussisch süß concoctions epitomises<br />
one of Berlin’s idiosyncratic districts: a lavender bar<br />
to reflect the Wilmersdorf widows, white chocolate<br />
with roses as a homage to Schöneberg’s gay community,<br />
and a dark chocolate Tempelhof containing<br />
raisins, referencing the 1948/49 airlift's Rosinenbomber.<br />
“You’ve got to embrace the clichés!” Tanja<br />
jokes. Some of the more far-fetched recipes could<br />
really only spring from a novelist’s mind: Charlottenburg’s<br />
roasted onions and pistachio (red and<br />
green for 1968) and “edible paper” for Friedenau (a<br />
nod to former resident Kurt Tucholsky). Though<br />
the kid-friendly milk chocolate Prenzlauer Berg bar<br />
with vanilla and toasted almonds is an unsurprising<br />
bestseller, some flavours may pose an existential<br />
challenge to parochial residents unwilling to betray<br />
their Kiez for the sake of flavour; we weren’t fans of<br />
Freidrichshain’s particularly pungent blend of sour<br />
cherries, pink pepper and nana mint oil. The original<br />
collection is produced by artisanal chocolatier Christoph<br />
Wohlfarth who uses only ethically sourced,<br />
organic Criollo, Trinitario and Arriba Nacional cocoa<br />
beans from the Peruvian rainforest (which explains<br />
the €3.95 price tag for 50g). If your hood hasn’t yet<br />
been “chocolatised”, fear not: Dünckers is working<br />
on more districts to be ready by Autumn <strong>2018</strong>,<br />
including, for example, Hohenschönhausen (here’s<br />
hoping no asbestos)! — EM<br />
Susanne Kennedy<br />
Women in Trouble<br />
05.05.18<br />
06.05.18<br />
29.05.18<br />
30.05.18<br />
Susanne Kennedy<br />
Die Selbstmord-<br />
Schwestern<br />
08.05.18<br />
09.05.18<br />
Available from preussisch-suess.de and selected shops<br />
including Wohlfarth Schokolade, Choriner Straße 37,<br />
Prenzlauer Berg<br />
SWEET TREAT<br />
Sarah Eick<br />
5<br />
www.volksbuehne.berlin
1968 - <strong>2018</strong><br />
“They would call<br />
people like Rudi<br />
‘terrorists’”<br />
Gretchen Dutschke on the day they shot<br />
Rudi, the man behind the 1968 icon and how<br />
she thinks he is still being misportrayed.<br />
By Robert Rigney<br />
Karolina Spolniewski<br />
Rudi Dutschke was already one of the most charismatic leaders<br />
of the Berlin student movement, when an almost successful<br />
assassination attempt on April 11, 1968 catapulted him<br />
to iconic status (10 years ago Berlin even named a street after him<br />
which runs next to the headquarters of the conservative Springer<br />
Verlag, the newspaper publisher held morally responsible for the<br />
shooting at the time). A hero for some, he’s also still misrepresented<br />
by many, says Gretchen Klotz (known as Gretchen Dutschke), his<br />
American-born widow and the mother of his three children who<br />
came back to Berlin nine years ago after many years in the US. Her<br />
lifelong effort at righting the narrative about both her husband and<br />
the student movement has taken the shape of two books and regular<br />
tributes. We met the 78-year-old in her Friedrichshain apartment for<br />
a chat about her latest book 1968, Worauf wir stolz sein dürfen (“1968,<br />
What we Can be Proud of”) and her memories of Rudi.<br />
In 1996 you already told your story of Rudi Dutschke in Wir hatten ein<br />
barbarisch schönes Leben. Why a new book now? It’s about how the<br />
anti-authoritarian movement has changed Germany. Up until recently<br />
the student movement has either been forgotten or demonised. Three<br />
years ago, Deutsches Historisches Museum had an exhibition on the RAF<br />
[terrorist cell Rote Armee Fraktion]. In the brochure, they had a picture<br />
of Rudi, and the way it was presented, it implied that he was a terrorist!<br />
I spoke to one of the organisers and I said that I was the wife of Rudi<br />
Dutschke, and I found this very upsetting. And he said he did too and<br />
he encouraged me to complain to the museum. The next day I got an<br />
answer and they said they would change it. They threw that brochure<br />
out and made a new one where Rudi wasn’t shown to be a terrorist.<br />
Having Rudi portrayed that way must have conjured up some bad memories<br />
from the 1960s when he was already called a terrorist, right? Some<br />
people were violently opposed to students like him... Absolutely, and it<br />
was encouraged by the Springer press. There was a very strong antistudent<br />
sentiment, fostered and sustained by their publications. They<br />
would call left-leaning students “terrorists” and even “Nazis”, which<br />
was completely ridiculous, of course.<br />
What was society like back then? Nazi. It had only been 19 years since<br />
the war had ended, and people hadn’t changed. They had no reason<br />
to do so. But of course at the same time there were all these young<br />
folks coming to Berlin because they heard about the student movement.<br />
There were clashes and a lot of aggression. Rudi would be<br />
attacked. Once he was in a taxi and a whole bunch of people tried<br />
to corner him. And then we just had people throw shit in the hall or<br />
1942 Born in Oak Park, Illinois.<br />
1964 Meets Rudi at a bar in Charlottenburg.<br />
1968 Rudi is shot down on Ku’damm, the family<br />
leaves Berlin for England, then Denmark.<br />
1979 Rudi dies aged 39 in Arhus, Denmark, from the<br />
injuries sustained in the shooting.<br />
1996 Publishes Wir hatten ein barbarisch schönes Leben<br />
2009 Returns to Berlin.<br />
<strong>2018</strong> Publishes 1968, Worauf wir stolz sein dürfen.<br />
scrawl “Death to Rudi” on the walls. Things like that would happen<br />
all the time, even before Rudi’s picture was all over the news.<br />
And you blame the Springer press for adding fuel to the fire? The guy who<br />
shot him said he had read [Springer tabloid] B.Z. That’s where he got<br />
the idea to do it.<br />
When one thinks of German terrorists, the RAF come to mind. What did<br />
Rudi think of them? He actually knew some of those people. He talked<br />
to Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler before they went underground,<br />
trying to convince them not to use violence, that it was a really a big<br />
mistake which would destroy the movement. He was right, of course,<br />
but they didn’t listen to him. Later, when they were in jail, he still<br />
tried to make them acknowledge that they had made a mistake. After<br />
all, they still had an influence on people who were joining the RAF<br />
then. Rudi said they were so wrapped up in their own thoughts that<br />
they were incapable of listening to anyone with a different point of<br />
view. He was very sad about that.<br />
What do you remember from the day that Rudi was shot? Rudi had a cold<br />
so he went to get nose drops, but he also had to go to the SDS [Socialist<br />
German Student League] house to pick up some papers or bring<br />
some papers there. So he left to do both of those things. I had a baby<br />
that was only a few months old, so I waited for him at home. At some<br />
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point I got a strange phone call from someone<br />
saying that Rudi was dead. I thought it<br />
was a joke and didn’t believe it. Then Rudi’s<br />
friend Gaston [Chilean writer Gaston Salvatore]<br />
came by. There was another phone call<br />
about Rudi being dead and Gaston said he<br />
thought it might be true. He called the police<br />
and they confirmed it. By then I was screaming,<br />
completely beside myself. Gaston called<br />
the morgue and found out that Rudi wasn’t<br />
dead, but that he was in hospital.<br />
So you went to the hospital to see him. Gaston<br />
took me. There were already hundreds of<br />
people there. When we got in, the doctor told<br />
us he had to operate to remove the bullets<br />
from Rudi. He had two in his head and one<br />
in his shoulder. He didn’t know how bad the<br />
brain damage was and if Rudi would survive<br />
the operation. All we could do was sit there<br />
and wait. At one point, I had to go home<br />
because the baby needed to be nursed. After<br />
many hours, the doctors came and told us<br />
the operation was done, but they still didn’t<br />
know how he might be affected because he<br />
was unconscious. Of course he got better, but<br />
never entirely recovered as you know.<br />
Can you tell us about how you and Rudi first<br />
met? You had come to Germany to study philosophy,<br />
right? Yes, my plan was to go get a<br />
graduate degree in philosophy and I came to<br />
Germany in 1964 to learn German. I first met<br />
Rudi at a Kneipe on Steinplatz, where many<br />
Gammler (the German equivalent of beatniks)<br />
and Marxists and all kinds of artists used to<br />
get together. The bar had beer tables outside<br />
and there were so many young people there,<br />
it was hard to find a place to sit. When I did<br />
find an empty space, it happened to be next to<br />
Rudi. He had a huge pile of books in front of<br />
him, and I think I must have asked him about<br />
them. He was studying sociology at Freie Universität<br />
and told me he was a revolutionary. It<br />
was pretty much love at first sight.<br />
As someone coming from a conservative family<br />
in suburban Illinois – how did it feel to meet<br />
a self-dubbed “revolutionary”? Well, I could<br />
have said that it was all too crazy for me, but<br />
it was really rather exciting. It is true that<br />
my own upbringing was extremely conservative<br />
and religious. But I actually started<br />
being a beatnik in high school. I remember<br />
this article in Life Magazine about beatniks<br />
and the girls in the photos wearing black<br />
tights. I got myself a pair, and it caused a<br />
scandal at home. My mother wouldn’t let<br />
me go to church that day – for fear of what<br />
people might think! When I got to college, I<br />
involved myself with the student movement<br />
there and took part in demonstrations, that<br />
was in ‘62 and ‘63. So I understood right<br />
away what Rudi was all about, and it wasn’t<br />
all news to me.<br />
What were your first impressions of Berlin back<br />
then? That it was really poor. I lived in a warscarred<br />
building in Spichernstraße, Wilmersdorf,<br />
where the top floor didn’t exist; it<br />
had been bombed away. It looked pretty bad.<br />
The Wall hadn’t been there that long, and I<br />
remember it being quite scary to be at the<br />
frontline of the Cold War. At the same time<br />
I was just really curious. I went over to East<br />
Berlin and saw how bleak it was. Very, very<br />
grey. And black, too, from the bombs and<br />
fires, I guess. Demographically speaking, the<br />
city was a pretty old one, and although young<br />
men from West Germany<br />
were coming<br />
to Berlin to evade<br />
military service,<br />
overall there were<br />
more young people<br />
leaving. There<br />
weren’t many job<br />
opportunities, and<br />
compared to now<br />
there were also very<br />
few children here.<br />
What did Rudi’s political involvement look like<br />
at that point in 1964? He was part of a small<br />
group called Subversive Aktion and they<br />
had a small magazine, Anschlag where they<br />
would publish their theoretical ideas on<br />
Marxism and socialism. They were also big<br />
into the Frankfurt School – Horckheimer,<br />
Marcuse, Adorno. Rudi was in favour of<br />
democratic communism and criticising<br />
what was being practiced by authoritarian<br />
regimes like the GDR.<br />
“We had people<br />
throwing shit in<br />
the hall and scrawl<br />
‘Death to Rudi’ on<br />
the walls.”<br />
Was that why he left East Germany? He was a<br />
refugee. He had fled the GDR because his<br />
religious background meant that he wasn’t<br />
allowed to study there. You see, he had<br />
belonged to the church and a Christian youth<br />
group. His religious upbringing also informed<br />
his political perspective. I think he liked the<br />
idea of combining Christianity and socialism.<br />
I don’t think the press at that time mentioned<br />
that at all. Anyway, the guy who shot Rudi<br />
was a member of a neo-Nazi group which<br />
supplied the weapon. The Stasi knew they<br />
were handing out guns but didn’t prevent it.<br />
He was also part of the Socialist German Students’<br />
Union and organising demonstrations.<br />
Yes, it was the idea for a demonstration that<br />
brought him in touch with the SDS. In 1964,<br />
Congo’s prime minister Moise Tschombé, the<br />
guy who had murdered Patrice Lumumba, the<br />
Congolese independence leader, was due to<br />
come to Berlin, and Rudi wanted to organise<br />
a protest during the visit. You see, Lumumba<br />
was socialist and wanted to make changes in<br />
his country, especially against the colonial<br />
powers that were still influential there. So<br />
Rudi went to the African students association<br />
and the SDS and asked them if they were interested.<br />
And that demonstration marked the<br />
beginning of the German student movement<br />
everyone now associates with 1968.<br />
And do you remember that demonstration?<br />
At the time, I was visiting home in the US,<br />
but I remember Rudi being angry because<br />
the police didn’t allow them to demonstrate<br />
in front of Rathaus Schöneberg, where<br />
Tschombé was expected. His idea was to<br />
march at the back of<br />
the demonstration on<br />
its permitted route<br />
and then turn around<br />
and walk towards the<br />
Rathaus anyway. He was<br />
hoping that everyone<br />
would follow him, and<br />
they did. There were<br />
only a couple of police<br />
in the back and they<br />
couldn’t stop them.<br />
When they saw that<br />
Rudi was the ringleader, they tried to catch<br />
him. But he was a really good athlete and he<br />
ran. They didn’t get him.<br />
What were his strengths as a leader? His<br />
strength was that he had no fear. He was very<br />
strong. He could also talk loud so that people<br />
could hear him. I think that people were very<br />
impressed by him when they heard him talk.<br />
How would you describe the man you were married<br />
to? Was he any different in private from the<br />
public persona? Not really. Rudi was someone<br />
who fundamentally cared about people,<br />
couldn’t bear to see suffering and never<br />
held a grudge. He even ended up exchanging<br />
letters with Josef Bachmann, the man who<br />
had shot him! He was hoping to help him<br />
see how he had been the object of Springer<br />
propaganda and become more aware of his<br />
own position [Bachmann committed suicide<br />
in his cell in 1970]. Other than that, Rudi was<br />
a good father. He would spend a lot of time<br />
with his children. He loved to play football<br />
with them. And he helped in the house. I’m<br />
a lousy chef, so his cooking skills were especially<br />
appreciated!<br />
What do you think really drove him?<br />
I think that it was probably his religious<br />
background. Jesus’ message was to love your<br />
neighbour. And if you love your neighbour<br />
you cannot see suffering without doing something<br />
about it. That’s what Rudi lived by. n<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
7
1968 - <strong>2018</strong><br />
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
My <strong>May</strong> 1968<br />
Three protagonists look back at<br />
the unrest in Berlin 50 years ago.<br />
By Wladek Flakin and Ella Joyner<br />
It all started in the suburbs of Paris and rolled through Germany's unis, and<br />
hit Berlin hard as the gunshot that met student leader Rudi Dutschke's head<br />
in April 1968. Here too, students craved a new societal order – and fought<br />
on campus and in the streets to get it. We asked three historical witnesses to<br />
shed their own light on the events that changed Germany.<br />
From FU 1968 to FU <strong>2018</strong><br />
Winfried Fluck<br />
In 1968 the Freie Universität Berlin (FU) was a hotbed for the anti-authoritarian<br />
youth movement. Winfried Fluck, now Professor and Chair of American<br />
Studies at FU’s John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies,<br />
bore witness as a student representative whose loyalty was divided between<br />
his role as an assistant professor and SPD activist.<br />
Ludwig Binder/Stiftung Haus der Geschichte<br />
I started my studies at Universität Berlin in 1963 when I was<br />
18. Because of the draft exclusion in West Berlin, it was a very<br />
attractive place for critical young intellectuals who didn’t want<br />
anything to do with the military. I was active in the Social Democratic<br />
Party. I was from a working-class family and I knew university was a<br />
privilege. I wasn’t an unfettered radical though. As a member of the SPD, you<br />
were considered to be on the right in that climate.<br />
From 1965 on we lived in a permanent state of political activism. Constant<br />
demonstrations against the university administration, against the Berlin Senate,<br />
especially after the murder of [FU student] Benno Ohnesorg. We created<br />
a counter-university, the Kritische Universität, where FU students held their<br />
own seminars. I have very strong memories of all the lectures in the Henry<br />
Ford Building. A high point was when Herbert Marcuse came to speak there!<br />
The movement was against the mandarins that ruled over the university. For<br />
my post war generation, they were the embodiment of the type of authoritarian<br />
character that we loathed. One example was Ernst Fraenkel, the founder of<br />
the John F. Kennedy Institute. He was a German Jew who'd fled to the US in<br />
the 1930s, and now taught politicl science and constitutional law at FU. When<br />
students started criticising his seminar in the university newspaper, this<br />
person who deserved our respect and admiration just exploded. Confronted<br />
“We created the<br />
'Critical University'<br />
where FU students<br />
held their own<br />
seminars.”<br />
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with our democratic ideals, he just couldn’t cope and refused<br />
to continue his seminar. He retired soon after and died five<br />
months later. So in a way he was one of the victims of the<br />
whole movement. At one point my Doktormutter [doctoral<br />
supervisor] refused to speak to me for three months because<br />
I had voted along student lines and not with professors as a<br />
representative in the university governing body. Although I<br />
was her assistant! [Laughs]<br />
In <strong>May</strong> 1968 my wife and I were still in Berlin taking part in<br />
numerous demonstrations. However, that is the point when<br />
the Extra-parliamentary Opposition (APO) and the radicalisation<br />
began, which we thought was wrong. So we were happy<br />
to be able to get away to the States in August 1968. When<br />
I returned in 1970, everything had become very politicised.<br />
There were various factions competing against each other,<br />
fighting each other: the Albanian Maoists, the Trotskyists, the<br />
Chinese Maoists. In my view, it became more and more irrational.<br />
I increasingly distanced myself. It was endless fights<br />
among sectarian groups over leadership. In 1970, my professor<br />
told me she would offer me an assistantship. Then I got a<br />
telephone call: ‘This is Genosse [Comrade] Paul. We hear you<br />
are up for an assistantship. Would you be willing to present<br />
yourself to the student body?’ He invited me to a meeting on<br />
a Sunday night in a huge downtown Berlin apartment. It was<br />
arranged like a tribunal. There were four ‘comrades’ sitting<br />
in the front of the room. They interviewed the candidates for<br />
the research positions two at a time. The only question they<br />
were asked was, ‘In case of controversy between students<br />
and professors, who would you vote with?’ Of course both<br />
of them knew what they had to say. The first one said, ‘Of<br />
course with the students.’ But then he had second thoughts,<br />
and added something like, ‘Well, it would depend on the<br />
topic.’ That was the end of him. The other guy got the job.<br />
When I refused to take part in this tribunal, comrade Paul<br />
said ‘Then you’re not getting the job.’ [Luckily for Fluck it<br />
turned out his employment offer was connected to a special<br />
grant and was therefore exempt from the student veto over<br />
academic appointments. He could take up the job.]<br />
Looking back and despite the radical turn it later took, I<br />
believe that the student movement helped make the German<br />
university become a democratic place. Today’s students<br />
are still active in their own way: their political engagement<br />
has mostly shifted from class conflict to diversity issues.<br />
More importantly, the 1968 movement played a huge role in<br />
democratising Germany. When I grew up, Germany was still<br />
an authoritarian country in many ways. The next generation<br />
threw this overboard. I’d grown up as a German ashamed of<br />
Germany. When abroad and asked where I was from, I’d just<br />
say I was “European”. When I see the path of development<br />
Germany has since taken, I am mainly proud. — EJ<br />
From Marxist to feminist<br />
Frigga Haug<br />
Born in 1937, Haug had already been an active Marxist<br />
militant for years when the 1968 student movement broke<br />
in Berlin. Converted to feminism after she experienced the<br />
‘trap’ of motherhood in a small town near Cologne, she ran<br />
back to Berlin and would soon dedicate her energy to the<br />
socialist women’s movement. At 80, Haug is one of Germany’s<br />
foremost feminist intellectuals and regularly speaks<br />
at conferences.<br />
I was in the SDS [Socialist German Student<br />
League] and co-founded the Marxist<br />
magazine Das Argument in 1959 [she’s<br />
still an editor for the publication to this<br />
day]. We covered all the topics of the time, which also<br />
became the questions of the 1968 movement: sexuality,<br />
author-ity and family, education, Poland, the war in<br />
Algeria, fascism, antisemitism, etc. At first, we thought<br />
the 1968ers’ demeanour wasn’t genuine politics – it<br />
was more like a disruption. We were working on analyses<br />
of capitalist society, but more and more people<br />
started going to big assemblies where everyone yelled<br />
over each other and whoever had charisma could take<br />
over. We were completely overwhelmed by the movement,<br />
but were also part of it. Das Argument became<br />
the mouthpiece of the 1968 movement. The print run<br />
jumped from 700 to 18,000.<br />
I was a Marxist before I was a feminist. But it was<br />
women from the SDS who were at the frontlines of<br />
the women's revolt. Media made it look like women<br />
in the SDS were limited to typing flyers and making<br />
coffee. That’s a total myth – I was in the SDS from the<br />
beginning and I never typed a flyer or made coffee.<br />
That said, women and women’s issues were never<br />
recognised as such in the movement and there was a<br />
grand total of seven women in SDS at the time. That’s<br />
when I joined the Action Committee for the Liberation<br />
of Women, which was<br />
just forming, in January or<br />
February 1968.<br />
“The men in the<br />
‘68 movement<br />
tolerated us...<br />
but the women’s<br />
movement was<br />
often called ‘petty<br />
bourgeois’ and<br />
'marginal'.”<br />
Women take action<br />
We questioned all the morals<br />
of the petty bourgeois:<br />
prudery, pettiness and<br />
taboos. We talked about the<br />
power of mass media. Axel<br />
Springer, the king of the Bild<br />
newspaper, was our enemy<br />
number one. We studied how<br />
the press creates submissive<br />
citizens. We believed that<br />
the situation of women was<br />
primarily a result of deficiencies<br />
in education, and we wanted to counter that with<br />
a a “political literacy” campaign. Our slogan from the<br />
socialist Frauenbund (women’s league) was: “Everyone<br />
should know everything!” I would say that men in the<br />
1968 movement tolerated us but didn’t actively support<br />
the women’s organisation. The women’s movement<br />
was often called “petty bourgeois” or “marginal” and<br />
not taken seriously.<br />
In Das Argument we had been studying Marx’s<br />
Grundrisse and Das Kapital, and I took that with me<br />
into the Action Committee. One wing of the movement<br />
wanted to organise a kindergarten teachers’<br />
strike. They believed that from an early age children<br />
were raised to be authoritarian personalities, so they<br />
needed an alternative perspective and way of life. But<br />
I had just escaped from a year trapped at home with<br />
a baby – I didn’t just want to talk about mothers and<br />
children. I wanted to study the big picture: How do<br />
women end up in a situation where, as soon as they<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
9
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
have kids, they end up isolated in the home – no matter what<br />
they did until that point. We had to do something against<br />
that. Public behaviour back in the Adenauer era was defined<br />
by cold prudery. Women didn’t even go to cafés by themselves<br />
and they were under strict moral control. All of this<br />
was swept away by a wave of liberality. The 1968ers started<br />
moving into WGs (shared flats), which would have been<br />
inconceivable before 1968.<br />
The women in the movement weren’t all students. Many<br />
were from around the university, like secretaries and booksellers.<br />
We organised educational groups of 12 women each.<br />
The idea was for them to study for a year and become politicised<br />
until they knew enough to intervene in society. These<br />
groups were to found more new groups, until the whole city<br />
would be full of women’s education groups and form a full<br />
movement. The meetings of the women's movement were<br />
cultural events. We spent many hours reading, discussing,<br />
doing theatre, but also cooking or skiing together. We began<br />
a completely different way of life than that of an isolated<br />
housewife. One of my groups focused on helping girls from<br />
the Hauptschule get their diplomas, instead of just becoming<br />
hairdressers or marrying. This education group, the S9, still<br />
meets up almost 60 years later.<br />
We didn't just go to <strong>May</strong> 1 (International Worker’s Day).<br />
We also demonstrated on March 8 (International Women's<br />
Day) with slogans like: “Nursery, home and stove – that's not<br />
worth a whole life!” and “My belly belongs to me!” We were<br />
fighting against a law that made abortion a crime. That was<br />
the beginning of the women’s movement in Germany. It’s<br />
hard to imagine the desperation girls experienced when they<br />
got pregnant out of wedlock back then – tragedies that we<br />
now only know from literature.<br />
The Berlin unrest<br />
West Berlin became a centre of massive demonstrations,<br />
and young people from many countries joined in. The thing<br />
that had really politicised all of us, both genders, and led to a<br />
break with the normality of bourgeois life, was the murder of<br />
Benno Ohnesorg [on June 2, 1967]. It was a time of intense<br />
student protests against the American war in Vietnam. This<br />
shocked the people of Berlin, who until then had seen the<br />
Americans as their defenders against communism. Berlin<br />
was a fenced-in city, and the West Berlin middle class used to<br />
hate long haired students. “Go over to the other side!” they<br />
Ludwig Binder/Stiftung Haus der Geschichte<br />
would yell. Ohnesorg was at the anti-Shah protest – it was his<br />
first – and he was shot by the police. He was from the protestant<br />
student group and he didn’t have long hair. He didn’t<br />
conform to the cliché of a dangerous rebel. And the shock<br />
woke a lot of people up. That was an incisive experience for<br />
many people: the state just shot a student.<br />
In November 1967, we founded the “Critical University”.<br />
Thousands of FU students went on strike because we didn’t<br />
want to study under former fascists, and we organised our<br />
studies ourselves. On Easter Sunday, 1968, we marched to the<br />
Springer skyscraper, the home of newspaper king Axel Cäsar<br />
Springer, to protest against the lying and manipulative reporting.<br />
Newspapers were burned and the situation became<br />
more radical and violent. The highpoint was the battle at<br />
Tegeler Weg, a street fight with the police in November 1968.<br />
So what did 1968 leave behind? It got rid of the suits and<br />
the formal collars and all the old manners and conventions.<br />
Now you can go to university in the clothes you want. After<br />
1968, women could take a microphone and speak in a public<br />
square. Until then we never thought a news presenter could<br />
be a woman – because news is “objective” and therefore the<br />
domain of men.<br />
So many rules of bourgeois life were toppled by this<br />
enormous protest. Possibilities and freedoms for women<br />
expanded enormously. Recently on the train I heard some<br />
women my age talking about their relief that we have so<br />
many more freedoms now. “That was a gift of the 1968ers”,<br />
they said, which surprised me, because I am used to 1968ers<br />
being hated and feared. — WF<br />
From revolution<br />
to insurance<br />
Michael Prütz<br />
Born 1952, Prütz has been selling insurance from his office in<br />
Graefestraße in Kreuzberg for more than 30 years. He’s also a<br />
life-long revolutionary. He was an organiser of the Revolutionary<br />
<strong>May</strong> Day demonstration in Kreuzberg for four years running<br />
(2013-16), and collected funds for Kurdish militia YPG.<br />
For Prütz it all started in February 1968 when he went to his<br />
first demonstration at age 15.<br />
At my protestant school in Zehlendorf, boys<br />
were expelled for having long hair. That’s what<br />
West Berlin used to be like, but the protests<br />
started around 1966. A few of the older boys at<br />
my high school had contact to progressive students. We gathered<br />
all our courage and went to watch them hand out flyers<br />
on Ku’damm. The West Berliners didn’t like them. “You should<br />
be gassed!” was a common saying. But I was impressed by the<br />
students’ courage and decided I wanted to join.<br />
Although my parents forbade it, I went to the demonstration<br />
against the Vietnam War after the “Vietnam Congress”<br />
in February 1968. I was present at the “Easter Riots” after<br />
the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke. And I was particularly<br />
excited about <strong>May</strong> 1. That was the first independent<br />
leftist demonstration in West Berlin since the construction<br />
of the Wall [in 1961]. We didn’t know what to expect as we<br />
headed to Karl-Marx-Platz in Neukölln. It was absolutely<br />
packed with people – even the bourgeois press talked about<br />
30,000 or 40,000 people. I even saw my grandfather, who<br />
10<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
“Remaining radical<br />
for all these years<br />
is not easy. But I'm<br />
not alone, there are<br />
more Genossen<br />
out there.”<br />
had been a communist in the 1930s. He had a twinkle in his<br />
eye when he waved at me. There hadn’t been a demonstration<br />
like that in Neukölln for decades.<br />
After 1968 we had so much optimism. We were totally<br />
convinced that we would topple capitalism. Around 1970,<br />
we of the Fourth International wrote a document about<br />
European perspectives for the next five years. We were absolutely<br />
certain that socialist revolution would be achieved<br />
by 1975.<br />
So what happened? Most of the 1968ers have moved into<br />
the left-bourgeois camp. They joined the Social Democrats or<br />
the Greens and did their “long march” through the political<br />
establishment. Like my old friend Harald Wolf (Berlin’s<br />
economics minister from 2002 to 2011, Die Linke). We’ve<br />
known each other since 1977 and lived together in a revolutionary<br />
WG in Gneisenaustraße – it used to be a real salon<br />
for socialists from all over! I had convinced Harald to join<br />
the PDS [now: Die Linke], and I guess I didn’t notice how he<br />
turned into a neoliberal moderniser. I really could never have<br />
imagined that. I guess it’s pretty symbolic of a whole generation<br />
of people who have made a career working in state<br />
positions. Now the left is so cowardly, always trying to ride<br />
the coattails of some bureaucrats. But I’m not interested in<br />
capitulating and parroting neoliberal bullshit. I’m too old to<br />
benefit from that. I was in the Green Party briefly, 1986-87,<br />
but I soon got the feeling that there was no room there for<br />
class politics. I joined the PDS in 1990. I left again in 2001<br />
when they formed the “red-red” Berlin government together<br />
with the SPD and implemented the biggest cuts in the history<br />
of the city: privatising public housing, cutting wages in the<br />
public sector, etc. They completely ruined the city – that was<br />
done by Die Linke, not the CDU. I prefer selling insurance.<br />
From the beginning our customers were autonomists, so we<br />
never wore suits and ties.<br />
As an organiser of the Revolutionary <strong>May</strong> Day demonstration<br />
from 2013 to 2016, I had to go to the planning meetings<br />
with the police – that means three or four meetings, two<br />
hours each, with 15 high-level Berlin police, but they were<br />
okay, decent people. That’s the closest I got to stepping over<br />
to the other side of the frontline! Remaining radical for all<br />
these years is not easy. But I’m not alone, there are more<br />
Genossen out there.<br />
The weird thing is that there are more reasons to rebel<br />
today than back in 1968. Back then, there was a functioning<br />
social welfare system, and there was almost no unemployment.<br />
I used to work the night shift as an unskilled labourer<br />
at a Springer printing plant, making the equivalent of €40 an<br />
hour. Now, under neoliberalism, young people suffer from<br />
constant precariousness.<br />
Back in 1968, when you met someone on the street, the<br />
very first thing you would ask is: “What are you doing politically?<br />
Where are you organised?” It seems like young people<br />
aren't as interested in organising long term. They do show a<br />
lot of solidarity though. —WF<br />
TIP<br />
The 1968ers<br />
An exhibition of photography by<br />
Ludwig Binder und Jim Rakete<br />
From the June 1967 mass protest against the Iranian Shah<br />
to the Rudi Dutschke assassination attempt the following<br />
year, from student meetings on the FU campus to the<br />
Tegeler Weg street battle, this exhibition at the Kulturbraurei<br />
chronicles the 1968 student unrest in West Berlin as captured<br />
through the lenses of Ludwig Binder and Jim Rakete.<br />
The 60 black-and-white photographs that have the great<br />
poignancy of showing 'revolution' in action, aka strange,<br />
brave, bygone times when the fight for a better future, for<br />
equality, or against war, wasn't fought in the anonymity of<br />
social media, but on the streets and in auditoriums and in<br />
the face of ruthless societal and police repression.<br />
Museum in der Kulturbrauerei, Prenzlauer Berg,<br />
through October 7<br />
Il barbiere di<br />
Siviglia<br />
Gioachino Rossini<br />
Buy your<br />
tickets<br />
now!<br />
mai 4./21.<br />
all performances with english surtitles!<br />
0049 030 47 99 74 00<br />
11
LEBENSKÜNSTLER<br />
Life after Tacheles:<br />
What’s become of<br />
the artist squatters?<br />
It was an artists’ utopia, a cultural<br />
institution, a tourist magnet: after<br />
over two decades on Oranienburger<br />
Straße, Tacheles was shut<br />
down, the artists kicked out. Five<br />
and a half years on, Taylor Lindsay<br />
tracked down the original clique to<br />
find out what came next.<br />
If you walked down Mitte’s Oranienburger Straße at any<br />
point between 1990 and 2012, you would have likely<br />
noticed a commanding, if dishevelled, structure located<br />
just a short distance from the synagogue. Up until five<br />
years ago, the second-most visited art attraction in Berlin<br />
wasn’t the East Side Gallery or Museum Island, it was this<br />
five-storey building: aka Kunsthaus Tacheles. Taken over by<br />
artists after the Wall fell in 1990, the building was transformed<br />
into a creative commune. It was quintessential post-<br />
Wende Berlin: upon their occupancy, the artists launched a<br />
legal battle for the property and rescued it from demolition,<br />
maintaining a presence for 22 years.<br />
At its peak, Kunsthaus Tacheles had a theatre, a bar, an<br />
event space, studios and nearly 100 creators from over 30 different<br />
countries all under one roof. There was no censorship,<br />
no middleman at the market. The doors to the house were<br />
open 24/7, and artists sold work right out of their studios.<br />
Everyone from critics to tourists, to students, to other artists<br />
wandered in and out of Tacheles, named after the Yiddish<br />
word meaning “straight-talk”. Some say the Kunsthaus<br />
became kitschy in its final years, producing “artsy” works deliberately<br />
catering to the tourist palate. Still, it was the only<br />
place of its kind.<br />
But it didn’t last. The temporary lease, under which they<br />
paid a symbolic 50 cents per year, came to an end in 2008.<br />
For three more years the artists were once more illegally<br />
squatting, peacefully pushing back against investors, opposition<br />
and the city of Berlin (under <strong>May</strong>or Klaus Wowereit).<br />
Their lack of menace didn’t mitigate their determination<br />
– they stayed in the building, even as their electricity was<br />
abruptly cut off and different investors approached artists individually,<br />
offering them money to leave. Except for the café<br />
on the ground floor, most held out. Finally, city officials came<br />
and forced the last of them to vacate on September 4, 2012.<br />
Thousands mourned and protested; the city had stamped<br />
out a crucial subculture and with it, a quintessential spirit. Or<br />
did they? Five years later, don’t look for Tacheles in the bereft<br />
building on Oranienburger Straße, now marooned on the edge<br />
Linda Cerna<br />
of a vast desert of a development site. If you want a glimpse of the spirit today,<br />
look at the Tacheles Berliners who wouldn’t be subdued.<br />
A new Tacheles in Lichtenberg?<br />
Txus Parras, now 55, was one of the earliest internationals to arrive at Tacheles.<br />
At 26 he was travelling the world as an event technician, but he admits<br />
he always wanted to be an artist. Touring with a punk band called “Pogo”<br />
took him from Spain to Poland, and from Poland to Berlin. The first place he<br />
found was Tacheles. “And I never went back to Spain,” he says, grinning at the<br />
memory. He settled in and started creating.<br />
Looking at his work now, it’s hard to imagine a version of himself that<br />
wasn’t making art. For one thing, he’s covered in it: buttons on his hats,<br />
rings on his fingers, lime green pants stamped with political slogans, and his<br />
accordion at hand. He designs psychedelic patterns for clothing, sculptures<br />
made from discarded doll parts, posters in at least three different languages,<br />
and tourist favourites like zines and painted records. The latter he sells at the<br />
East Side Gallery, which is where we first met him. When Tacheles comes up,<br />
he describes it like he was just there hours before. “It was free, it was open,<br />
there was this great feeling. We had the philosophy there that everyone is an<br />
artist. Everyone is an artist,” he insists with a guttural voice, talking with his<br />
hands. “And now we want to make a new artist meeting place, something with<br />
the spirit of Tacheles.”<br />
This “new place” is actually a thing, and the “we” he alludes to includes four<br />
other Tacheles originals: Tim Roeloffs, Peter Rampazo, Lucas Böttcher and<br />
his father Jürgen Böttcher. Named Kulturbotschaft Lichtenberg, the project<br />
began in February this year with a flurry of excitement as German newspapers<br />
12 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
Tacheles in 12 dates<br />
1907 Construction of the 9000sqm building,<br />
designed to be a department store 1909 - 1914<br />
Department store operated by Wolf Wertheim,<br />
auctioned off just before WWI 1928 Building<br />
owned by AEG and used as a product showroom<br />
for electrical goods 1930s Used by Nazi officials<br />
1941 Used to hold French prisoners of war 1948<br />
Taken by the GDR, used for multiple short-term<br />
businesses 1980 Doomed for demolition thanks<br />
to zero renovations 1990 Two months before<br />
demolition, the first Tacheles artists occupy the<br />
building and push for a re-examination of the space<br />
1992 Building examined and deemed liveable (and<br />
a historic landmark) 2012 Artists forced to leave,<br />
building empty. Surrounding stores begin to close<br />
2016 Bank, city and investors announce commercial<br />
intentions, try to invite big name artists to<br />
the space for their own project. Ai Weiwei refuses<br />
<strong>2018</strong> TBD<br />
initially dubbed it “New Tacheles”. There are some major<br />
differences though: the building’s address, Herzbergstraße 53,<br />
puts it right on the edge of the city, and the rent is €10,000 a<br />
month. But the founders moved fast, filling the three spacious<br />
floors with work spanning decades – from 86-year-old Jürgen<br />
Böttcher’s oil canvases dating back to the 1970s to new works<br />
from street artists who Parras met weeks earlier. Paintings,<br />
collage and silk screened shirts line almost every surface that<br />
isn’t a footpath in the artists’ studios. There’s a common area<br />
where the founders and a growing group of almost 60 people<br />
meet and cook together. Everything is peppered with colour.<br />
Fully peopled, it might look something like Tacheles. As for the<br />
rent, they’re making it work, one scrappy manoeuvre at a time;<br />
selling art, hosting events, or making deals with wholesalers,<br />
swapping designs for funds.<br />
“Nobody is Tacheles more than us,” Parras says proudly of<br />
the project. “But it’s not a new Tacheles. We’re just incorporating<br />
the old philosophy of Tacheles; we want to keep the spirit<br />
that made it a social, cultural place, not just a functional one.”<br />
Is this all because he misses the original Tacheles? Partly.<br />
“Nobody wanted to go,” he says of the September eviction.<br />
“But actually, I didn’t really leave till December,” he grins.<br />
“They had to keep coming back for me.”<br />
Tacheles may be gone<br />
but at Kulturbotschaft Lichtenberg<br />
Txus Parras (pic), Tim Roeloffs & co<br />
are training a new generation of<br />
artists in their philosophy.<br />
Lessons from the Tacheles elders<br />
While Parras is the project’s biggest proselytiser, Tim Roeloffs is at its core, though he credits<br />
the others for bringing the Lichtenberg building to life. When Roeloffs got to Tacheles in 1992,<br />
he wasn’t technically an artist either, coming instead from a family of Dutch farmers. His story<br />
is one of Berlin’s most famous: discovered by Donatella Versace at Tacheles in 2007, rocketed to<br />
fame, harangued by real estate sharks since 2011, and recently evicted from his home.<br />
“It’s been a crazy time,” Roeloffs explains. “First I was kicked out of Tacheles. Then, this<br />
year, I got kicked out of my private working space. Then I got kicked out of the next place I<br />
went to work. And then I was kicked out of my home. But, somehow, I’m the happiest man in<br />
the world with this place,” he gestures around the Lichtenberg hub.<br />
Like Parras, Roeloffs conjures up fervour and flavour when he talks about the old days at<br />
Tacheles, beer in hand, gluing together newspapers into canvas material<br />
as he speaks. “It was more than a workplace. You had input and output<br />
and exchange. I didn’t come from the art world; I learned in squats, and<br />
Tacheles was like my university.”<br />
At “Tacheles Academy,” the new programme run by Parras and Roeloffs,<br />
a growing group of 20-somethings learn how to use scrap material and<br />
second-hand supplies to make art for sale. They show up to the Kulturbotschaft<br />
when they want, learn from the Tacheles elders, and spend<br />
much of their time out selling art on the street. “Everyone can do it this<br />
way,” says Roeloffs, who can build €200 wooden frames from roadside<br />
supplies. “You’re not ‘allowed’ to do this, in some people’s minds. Everyone’s<br />
in love with the idea of the starving, poor unknown artist. But<br />
if I make something today, I want to sell it tomorrow. Wanting to make<br />
money doesn’t make me less of an artist.” But these are just five of the<br />
Tacheles old guard. Where are the others?<br />
German Palomeque<br />
The unofficial boss<br />
If Parras, Roeloffs and the Böttchers were the old “spirit” of Tacheles, a<br />
different group of people were more like the bones, the skeletal system<br />
that gave it a distinct – and perhaps controversial – shape in the last<br />
decade. This was a small body of five, handling operations, admin, tax,<br />
PR and politics, all the while artists themselves. Martin Reiter and Linda<br />
Cerna were at the helm of the group.<br />
It’s no secret that Reiter wasn’t always popular with the Tacheles folk.<br />
But he’s unfazed by this today. “My position, if you want it in those terms,<br />
was to play the role of the boss,” he says slowly. “The boss gets involved<br />
with the politics, the market… when things get difficult, everyone needs to<br />
be able to point to ‘the fucked-up boss.’”<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
13
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
There was no ‘spirit’ of<br />
Tacheles at the time. Everyone<br />
is making up their own<br />
reality of ‘What Tacheles Was.’<br />
It became a myth.<br />
When he came to Tacheles in 1993, it was by invitation. At age 27<br />
he was already recognised in Austria for his paintings, sculptures, and<br />
specialty in robotics. He arrived to a slew of internal problems. “All<br />
the Western guys were there for the house and the money, at first,”<br />
he remembers. Later, sub-groups formed. “The groups weren’t so<br />
much divided by house, downstairs, and yard, but rather: the guys<br />
who just wanted to make money, the guys who fucked up because<br />
they drank too much and thought that made them artists, the touristic-art<br />
guys, the pragmatic and open-minded artists, and the crooks.<br />
The worst were the people who said, ‘I am the Tacheles.’ I never said<br />
that, because no one person could say that and it be true.”<br />
He went to the courts to battle for Tacheles several times: first in<br />
the 1990s for the 10-year lease, and again from 2008 to 2012 trying to<br />
get a new contract. “We won that first battle: we kept the building.<br />
But it was only a 10-year contract. In a speech to the others I said<br />
that we cannot take this 10-year contract, because in 2008 they will<br />
definitely throw us out. But the group didn’t follow that idea, so in<br />
the end we signed the contract. I wanted to keep going until we were<br />
the owners of the house.”<br />
Unlike the Lichtenberg fellows, Reiter dismisses the idea of a<br />
“spirit of Tacheles” existing as such. “These are buzzwords, there<br />
was no ‘spirit’ of Tacheles at the time. Everyone is now doing what<br />
people do with religion. They’re making their up own reality of ‘What<br />
Tacheles Was’, because it’s in the past. It became myth. The facts are:<br />
we squatted a house, we painted pictures, and we got famous because<br />
a small group of people fucked with the economy, the bank and the<br />
politicians of Germany. If we hadn’t done that, nobody would give a<br />
shit about Tacheles.”<br />
But he clearly does, despite the edge in his tone. After the dust<br />
settled, he set up and started managing The Tacheles Archives in the<br />
basement of a small building in Potsdam. Its drawers are overflowing<br />
with artefacts, filled with meticulously filed photos, flyers and<br />
catalogues. Paintings hang on every wall and stacks of files cover the<br />
floor, like a messy bedroom where he can remember “exactly where<br />
everything is.” This is what’s left of much of the art of Tacheles itself:<br />
about 250 works the artists left behind. When he’s not maintaining<br />
the archives, organising small exhibitions, or making a living teaching<br />
robotics, he meets and collaborates with artists from the old days.<br />
One of them is Linda Cerna.<br />
Anastasia Chistyakova<br />
The organisational team had to contend with complex internal<br />
politics at the time. This included enforcing the “rent” system: artists<br />
paid about €200 a month for the electricity, gas, water, and a smattering<br />
of tax necessities. There was more than a little pushback. “We<br />
wanted to be as democratic as possible when it came to the art, the<br />
projects we could make happen. But we couldn’t be democratic about<br />
deciding whether we pay for electricity or not. It’s not just about<br />
making art and welcoming people, it’s about cleaning the toilet and<br />
keeping the power on too.”<br />
And then there was the outer, PR layer: “We contacted politicians<br />
and asked for support. We took all the legal steps we could to save<br />
the house, knowing that in the end the only way to save Tacheles was<br />
if the city of Berlin really wanted to save it. In the end, they decided<br />
not to,” says Cerna, telling us of a particularly embarrassing incident<br />
in which artists sent a set of symbolic keys to the mayor when it<br />
became clear they would be evicted in September, along with an open<br />
letter that said: “The house is yours now, we hope you keep it an art<br />
place for the city.” Two days later, Wowereit had given the keys to an<br />
investor, apparently not knowing that it was a symbolic gesture – the<br />
investors’ hired hands went to the building while it was dark and<br />
tried all the doors with the keys.<br />
Post-eviction, Cerna kept working with the artists both in Berlin<br />
and abroad; she helped set up the archives with Reiter, and she was<br />
invited to the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples to do<br />
a Tacheles-themed exhibition. She now organises communication<br />
for art fairs, including Berliner Liste. She’s disconcerted by the<br />
city’s unwillingness to save the living landmark. “It wasn’t the cost,<br />
because we financed it ourselves. If you look at it objectively, the<br />
project was something the city should have been proud of, it was<br />
special; people don’t come here to visit the shopping malls. It was a<br />
big loss for Berlin.”<br />
Exporting the myth<br />
Of course, the gentrification of the last decade only fanned the<br />
flames of that loss. Some artists left the city after their studio space<br />
idyll was gone. Barbara Fragogna, also a member of the organisation<br />
team, returned to Italy after the eviction. Like Cerna, she too witnessed<br />
the final five years, coming to Berlin in pursuit of an artistic<br />
career and moving into a small flat just down the street from Tacheles.<br />
At the time, no one was doing the tedious work she eventually<br />
After the eviction from the iconic<br />
location on Oranienburger Straße,<br />
Martin & Linda moved art and artefacts<br />
to a Potsdam basement.<br />
Housekeeping in a squat<br />
Cerna came in 2008, as the 10-year lease was running out and the<br />
artists were trying to find a new way to secure the house, buffeted at<br />
every turn by <strong>May</strong>or Wowereit’s unwillingness to help and investors<br />
clamouring to turn Tacheles into a brand for new real estate. A Freie<br />
Universität graduate, she wanted to get into cultural management<br />
and thought an internship would be the best route. “I wanted to go<br />
somewhere that interested me, that I cared about. So, I went straight<br />
to Tacheles. I found Martin and asked for a chance. He just said ‘Well,<br />
you can try!’” When Cerna successfully organised the massive archive<br />
into an in-house retrospective exhibition in a matter of weeks, she<br />
was there to stay.<br />
14<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
took over: running and structuring a programme for the frequentlyused<br />
400sqm gallery and accompanying catalogues. Independently,<br />
she kickstarted exchanges with artists from Italy. She now employs<br />
the organisational flair she brought to Tacheles in her Turin-based<br />
Fusion Art Gallery.<br />
At the mention of another similar project in Berlin, Barbara laughs<br />
kindly. “<strong>May</strong>be if Martin and Linda were doing it, I’d come back for<br />
that. A big organisation like that can only thrive if you have a lucky<br />
cosmic moment, the perfect combination of people… We used to say,<br />
we would vote for Linda for queen of the universe.”<br />
But she remembers the tension, too. “We could have been evicted at<br />
any moment. Everything felt precarious. Once, we were suddenly occupied<br />
by security men from the bank,” she says, recounting the time<br />
a group of hired vandals broke into painter Alexandr Rodin’s fifth-floor<br />
studio. “They were all dressed in black. I could see one of them had a<br />
swastika tattoo. They squatted his studio and destroyed some work. It<br />
felt like living with a parasite.” It took two months of back and forth<br />
in the courts (costs shouldered in part by Martin Reiter) to get a legal<br />
order forcing them out.<br />
“Sometimes we wondered if we should just close it ourselves,” she<br />
sighs. “It’s so psychologically and physically tiring, to work in a place<br />
where you invest all your time and energy and you don’t know when<br />
it’s going to end. During the last days we were planning to improve<br />
the house and solve the structural problems – but we needed more<br />
finances. I think if we’d been permitted to keep the building, we would<br />
have found a way. Even though we lost the property in the end, it’s<br />
impressive how far we got.”<br />
What about the others?<br />
For the artists who aren’t founding a new art centre or hanging out with<br />
the organisational team, there is no single trajectory that accounts for<br />
the last five years. Some started galleries that quickly closed. Some are<br />
still in Berlin selling art or drugs. At least three committed suicide after<br />
the eviction. Some even attempted, unsuccessfully, to create a “New<br />
Tacheles” in Marzahn in 2013.<br />
And some are still arguably thriving, filling the gap left by Tacheles<br />
with their own thrifty solutions to support their creative careers.<br />
Experimental musician and painter Kurihara Takuya remembers it all:<br />
the stressful last days, the loss of electricity, the dissent within the house.<br />
He kept to himself and “stayed out of the politics,” continuing to put on<br />
experimental music shows with friends on Monday nights in the building’s<br />
event space. “I was offered money by the lawyers from the bank’s<br />
side to leave, but I kept turning it down – I wanted to keep my studio.”<br />
When Tacheles closed, he moved his art into his 20sqm apartment<br />
in Neukölln where he still lives today. Pieces are lined up against<br />
the walls about a foot deep into the room where he sleeps. He can’t<br />
afford to create and sell full time, so he supplements his income by<br />
washing dishes nine hours a week at a restaurant and selling his work<br />
on Sundays at Mauerpark.<br />
“Tacheles helped with my future. I have connections to galleries and<br />
clients who visited me back then. Being there forever wouldn’t have<br />
been ideal for me anyway. I wanted to take the next step as an artist,<br />
stage proper exhibitions, go other places. When it closed, it sucked: I<br />
lost the place my income was coming from. But it turned out okay –<br />
better, even. There was no option to go back anyway.” He motions to<br />
his current surroundings. “We all had to go forward.”<br />
It seems, then, that Martin Reiter’s statement was true: the spirit of<br />
Tacheles could be a “myth” in the sense that anyone could make what<br />
they wanted of it later. But those who are actually making something<br />
of it now – recording history, teaching young Berliners, organising festivals,<br />
building Italian galleries, or just simply creating – are using that<br />
myth for something. This seems fair. They are, after all, its authors. n<br />
German photographer Petrov Ahner<br />
on his Tacheles years<br />
“I ran into Tacheles by chance in the winter of 2009.<br />
I’d just arrived in Berlin after 15 years in Paris, I didn’t<br />
know anyone here. As I was walking down the street, I<br />
saw this place that looked so different from anything<br />
I’d ever encountered. It startled me. When I saw all<br />
the tourists just walking in and taking pictures, I put<br />
my own camera away. I went inside not knowing what<br />
to expect. The space was dirty, dodgy-smelling, a<br />
little cold in the winter, but the atmosphere was so<br />
vibrant. French, Spanish, German and English could<br />
be heard everywhere. I talked to Martin and Linda and<br />
proposed a photography project to them. They gave<br />
me the freedom to do it, to do whatever I wanted. So<br />
I started by hanging out there and taking pictures,<br />
becoming the “official Tacheles photographer” – whatever<br />
that means. I ended up spending most of my days<br />
there until the eviction in 2012. The door was always<br />
open and you could hang out there any time, even if<br />
you didn’t have money. There was so much exchange<br />
going on between artists and Barbara really pushed me<br />
to get a better angle on my photography – it was wonderful.<br />
It was a unique place in a unique time. Tacheles<br />
couldn’t be recreated now. It has become a symbol for<br />
all the alternative art spaces that have been driven out<br />
of the city centre by gentrification.” -TL<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
15
CRYPTO MONEY<br />
The Berlin<br />
bitcoin bros<br />
The city has long been a den for<br />
cypherpunks, crypto-anarchists and<br />
dark webbers. But now locals are<br />
getting rich on the cryptocurrency<br />
craze and Berlin has become a serious<br />
hub for the technology. How did<br />
bitcoin become so mainstream?<br />
By Liam Kelly<br />
It’s been over four years since Bitcoin’s market value<br />
jumped from €80 to about €647 and <strong>Exberliner</strong> published<br />
its first piece about “Betting on bits”. At the moment, the<br />
virtual currency is on its way down from €13,600 in December<br />
to around €6,900 at time of press. But despite the drop,<br />
readers who were inspired to quickly invest in this hypervolatile<br />
nascent technology in 2014 would still have enjoyed a<br />
pretty serious return in <strong>2018</strong>.<br />
Anyone with a network in the scene now finds their social<br />
media feeds flooded with pictures of Lamborghinis, yachts,<br />
and prototypical beach vacations all bought from the returns<br />
made from betting on Bitcoin early. Those who are not part<br />
of the community are still trying to understand the phenomenon<br />
and whether they, too, should be jumping on the crypto<br />
bandwagon. Basically, everyone wants to know how to turn<br />
€80 into €13,600 for free and, well, fair enough.<br />
A Kreuzberg pioneer's ideals<br />
Sitting outside his bar in Kreuzberg, Room 77, Jörg Platzer<br />
looks like a man who made a good investment for good reasons.<br />
Everyone in his vicinity seems to be aware of this too:<br />
people coming by pat him on the back or give him discreet<br />
nods of recognition. He is greeted by friends in multiple<br />
languages. This might not seem unusual for a bar owner, but<br />
Room 77 has an added feature: it was the first brick and mortar<br />
business in the world to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment.<br />
In <strong>May</strong> 2011, when Platzer reportedly sold his first pint<br />
in exchange for the pioneer cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was far<br />
from big enterprise. He explains that he would have been<br />
lucky to have one or two customers a month looking to try<br />
it out. But the handful of enthusiasts who came to the bar in<br />
2011 to spend their new internet money had found a home.<br />
They would lug their laptops into the bar and manually type<br />
in their Bitcoin wallet addresses, a cryptographically secure<br />
chain of numbers and letters, and thereby join a movement<br />
looking to overturn our current financial system.<br />
Back in the day, the technology was simply another extension<br />
of a grander ideology, explains Platzer. Posted on the<br />
walls, next to the Bitcoin stickers, one finds quotes from<br />
the likes of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Aaron<br />
Schwartz. There is even a printout of “Free Ross Ulbricht”,<br />
the founder of the dark web marketplace, the Silk Road,<br />
taped to the wall. Below a panel of spirits, a sign reads: “I<br />
BELIEVE IN HONEST MONEY / GOLD, SILVER AND BIT-<br />
COIN.” Platzer considers himself a crypto-anarchist, economist,<br />
and ideological relative of the same utopian values<br />
that the internet promised: “I was never part of any official<br />
Cypherpunk group, but I was part of the movement,” he says<br />
referring to the few people really interested in cryptography<br />
and its technological applications during the 1990s.<br />
The connection to the internet is critical because according<br />
to many, blockchain technology which underpins Bitcoin could<br />
birth a “web 3.0.” It’s still early days, but the hype is palpable.<br />
If not yet opening up a new technological era, Bitcoin does<br />
promise a correction to one of the internet’s original sins.<br />
Platzer explains: “The first mistake we made was not to have<br />
built money into the web. A means of payment. People needed<br />
a way to monetize their content. The only problem was no one<br />
invented the fucking digital cash to do it.”<br />
From idealism to investment<br />
While the logic seems oddly capitalistic, the alternative has<br />
clearly been much worse. In the absence of a native currency<br />
for the internet, banner ads, pop-ups, and click baits have<br />
spawned. Without internet money, Platzer argues, companies<br />
like Google and Amazon have a high incentive to collect<br />
as much data as possible and turn that into money. In 2017,<br />
Facebook alone made nearly $40 billion in advertising revenue.<br />
Platzer is sure that “if sites had had a button to let you<br />
send a micropayment, there would never have been all this<br />
advertising and giving-up-my-credit-card-details shit.” In the<br />
eyes of people like him, Bitcoin provided an anonymous way<br />
of exchanging value on the internet. No one harvests any data;<br />
everyone walks away with clean hands – that was the idea.<br />
What the Bitcoin pioneer is presenting as internet idealism<br />
has actually made him a lot of money. When asked if<br />
he would divulge information on his returns since accepting<br />
cryptocurrencies, Platzer responds abruptly: “Sorry,<br />
that’s not possible. I’m sure your editor understands that<br />
very well.” With a bit of simple arithmetic, however, we can<br />
arrive at a general conclusion: when the bar began accepting<br />
the virtual money, a Bitcoin was worth about €0.80, so<br />
a €4.20 pint would have cost around 5.25 BTC. In 2012, the<br />
price of Bitcoin rose to about €4.25 and that same beer would<br />
have then cost something like 0.9 BTC. So, in the span of 12<br />
months, Platzer enjoyed a fivefold increase in value on that<br />
one beer sold in his bar. Skip ahead to December 2017, when<br />
Bitcoin was worth €13,600 a pop, meaning the Bitcoin valueequivalent<br />
of that same beer sold in 2011 (i.e. 5.25 BTC) was<br />
now worth around €85,000.<br />
As the price of Bitcoin climbed, speculators entered the<br />
scene and the clientele at Room 77 changed. People were<br />
now showing up with their smartphone-integrated Bitcoin<br />
“wallets”, making transactions by conveniently swiping a<br />
Anastasia Chistyakova<br />
16 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
QR code. In 2011, when people showed up for the monthly<br />
Bitcoin meet-up, they didn't see it as a means to make a living.<br />
Now, the same meet-ups at the bar attract start-up recruiters,<br />
libertarians and media representatives from notable German<br />
newspapers. At the March gathering, there even was a guy<br />
from Chad who explained that due to government-induced<br />
inflation of the country’s currency, many of his friends and<br />
family were turning to Bitcoin.<br />
By now, institutional investors from J.P. Morgan and Goldman<br />
Sachs to politicians like Angela Merkel are waking up to<br />
this novel economic instrument – for very different reasons.<br />
Due to the same privacy features lauded by Platzer, Bitcoin<br />
was quickly adopted by the dark web. Things on offer at<br />
places like the Silk Road and Hansa included computer parts,<br />
cars, guns, knives, drugs and even people. In those spaces Bitcoin<br />
was the sole means of payment.<br />
Getting high on the gamble<br />
Longtime Berliner Simon (name changed) works at a bar on<br />
Lübbener Straße near Schlesisches Tor. Going by his job and<br />
when speaking with him, you wouldn’t necessarily identify<br />
this guy as a crypto day trader. He looks nothing like an<br />
overnight millionaire. He is slim, wears skinny black jeans<br />
and a black hoodie. And yet, in between guests arriving at the<br />
bar, the twentysomething talks about the big “bounce” due to<br />
happen in the next few weeks.<br />
The plunge in price is bound to follow a big sell-off by a<br />
“whale” (a trustee from Mt.Gox, the first Bitcoin exchange,<br />
who is currently trying to pay off creditors and subsequently<br />
liquidating swaths of the virtual currency), a shock regulation<br />
passed by China, and just the general chaos of valuating something<br />
that has never previously existed. This is what Simon<br />
is talking about. “It is just like April last year,” he explains.<br />
“Things were pretty boring, not much movement, Bitcoin kind<br />
of dropped a bit. But it’ll go on a bull run before the summer.”<br />
A “bull run” is old school stock market terminology for<br />
a continuous price hike. It’s also the term that earned Bitcoin<br />
prime television slots over the past few months. The opposite<br />
is called a “bear market,” from which we are apparently slowly<br />
emerging now. Both, ironically, come directly from the trading<br />
institutions that Bitcoin was hoping to destroy.<br />
“I’m bullish as long as it doesn’t dip below €6,000,” he says<br />
looking up from his phone. But this recent obsession wasn’t<br />
how Simon got hooked on trading. He explains that “at the<br />
end of 2014, maybe early 2015, I was just buying stuff on the<br />
dark web with Bitcoin. Mostly drugs for my friends. I just<br />
thought it was cool to have this Bitcoin wallet and use this<br />
new type of money.” Plus, Simon explains, it was only on the<br />
dark web that one could buy 100 percent pure cut Colombian<br />
cocaine. “I was basically just giving it away for free and telling<br />
my friends that I bought it with Bitcoin. I was never dealing,”<br />
he confirms. His early stage Bitcoin buying spree included<br />
the purchase of counterfeit money for an art project. The<br />
latter met its conclusion in 2015 after ten heavily armed<br />
Bundespolizisten broke down Simon’s door at six o'clock in the<br />
morning screaming, “Wo ist das Geld!? Wo ist es!?” In response<br />
to which he sheepishly pointed to a paper-mâché mobile he’d<br />
made from fake euro bills.<br />
Apparently, servers for a major dark web marketplace in<br />
Holland had been compromised by local authorities. Names,<br />
addresses and purchasing histories had immediately become<br />
available and with the help of foreign authorities relevant<br />
individuals were arrested. But since the police couldn’t prove<br />
that Simon had been using the money for anything other<br />
than arts and crafts with his girlfriend, he only “spent like five<br />
minutes in jail.” He was lucky not to have been caught actually<br />
spending the counterfeits. But this event, the collapse of the<br />
Silk Road and the arrest of darknet market operator Ross Ulbricht<br />
spelled the end of Simon’s wanderings around the hidden<br />
parts of the internet. As for cryptocurrencies, though, he<br />
found yet another use for them: safe storage while traveling.<br />
Changing bud for Bitcoin<br />
A year after his run-in with the law, Simon and his girlfriend<br />
took up work harvesting marijuana on a farm in Humboldt<br />
County, California. “The work wasn’t too difficult and the pay<br />
was pretty good,” he adds. It was, however, still very much<br />
illegal in California to grow the plant in 2016 and thus the<br />
couple’s paychecks were strictly in cash. “But you don’t really<br />
want to be travelling with huge stacks of cash in your bag. It<br />
just didn’t make sense. So we put it into Bitcoin.”<br />
This process of moving money was performed via the<br />
German online bank Fidor and their convenient relationship<br />
with Bitcoin.de, the German Bitcoin exchange. Customers of<br />
the bank can open an account at Bitcoin.de, transfer any Bitcoin<br />
holdings from their personal wallets onto the exchange,<br />
and then sell these holdings for euros or dollars using a Fidor<br />
account. From there, it’s just like real money. Simon would<br />
first exchange his cash into Bitcoin using localbitcoins.com,<br />
a peer-to-peer exchange now illegal in Germany, and keep<br />
them on his phone before changing them over to dollars<br />
whenever the couple needed it.<br />
This type of activity is exactly what Chancellor Merkel and<br />
global regulators are looking to stamp out in <strong>2018</strong>. While<br />
comparatively lenient, Germany has strict anti-money laundering<br />
(AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) laws to prevent<br />
illegal money from moving hands. These kinds of global<br />
regulations were also a major talking point at the World<br />
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this year. Joachim<br />
Wuermeling, a member of the Bundesbank executive board,<br />
told Reuters in January that “effective regulation of virtual<br />
currencies would only be achievable through the greatest<br />
possible international cooperation, because the regulatory<br />
power of nation states is obviously limited.”<br />
When they finally arrived at New York's JFK airport for<br />
the flight back to Berlin, their plane was delayed nearly ten<br />
hours. With the €647 the airline paid as compensation, Simon<br />
bought Ripple, a cryptocurrency that acts like a share in “a<br />
real-time settlement system and remittance network.” He<br />
Anastasia Chistyakova<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
17
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
was basically buying virtual stock in the next generation Moneygram<br />
or Western Union. And in 2016, this was an excellent decision. He<br />
recounts staking in Ripple when it was trading at less than half a cent<br />
per unit. By January <strong>2018</strong>, the same digital currency reached approximately<br />
€2.50 a unit. This means that, simply by taking the gamble, Simon<br />
turned his €647 into €323,500. Naturally, his interest was piqued<br />
and he began further exploring the fast growing market. “And then<br />
Monero started posting stuff about integrating into<br />
dark web sites and so I bought some of that too<br />
when it was like $11 or so,” he continues. Monero<br />
is perhaps the leading privacy-centric cryptocurrency<br />
and as such is becoming the new alternative<br />
for dark webbers in <strong>2018</strong>. Now trading at €184 per<br />
coin, it has proven another excellent stroke of luck<br />
for Simon.<br />
When asked about paying taxes on his capital<br />
gains here in Germany, Simon is quick to reply:<br />
“Basically, if you hold a coin for more than a year,<br />
you don’t need to pay taxes on it. So I just sort of<br />
pull from the Bitcoin I had from when I started<br />
and only take out little amounts to pay my rent or<br />
whatever.” At the moment, Simon claims to be earning roughly €1600<br />
per month, but “it’s obviously different if I catch a coin on a big run.”<br />
So, why the bar gig? “It’s good to get out and socialize. I’m just reading<br />
charts all day and following different threads. Even at the bar, I’m<br />
still constantly checking my phone. I think I drive my girlfriend crazy.<br />
We’ll be going to Asia for a while, which will be good,” he says. “<strong>May</strong>be<br />
I’ll quit one day, but I like working some hours here and there.”<br />
“The ideal of<br />
freedom has<br />
more or less<br />
fallen by the<br />
way. Nobody<br />
gives a fuck.”<br />
A sobering turn<br />
While Simon contemplates what exactly to do with his new windfall,<br />
others are repositioning entire companies to find the next Bitcoins,<br />
Ripples, and Moneros. April saw the very first C³ Crypto Conference,<br />
“Germany’s largest conference on cryptocurrency and blockchain,”<br />
which allowed participants to get a better feel for how crypto startups<br />
are trying to get their share of all this money. The Station, the<br />
conference venue near Gleisdreieck, is done up in blue banners and a<br />
striking amount of suits and start-up types pour through the venue’s<br />
iron gates. A scene that would probably make cypherpunks, dark webbers,<br />
and the 2011 anarchist folk cringe.<br />
On day one of the two-day event, conference founder Dennis<br />
Weidner talks about his marketing firm Paranoid Internet and why<br />
people in Berlin suddenly are so stoked about Bitcoin. His company<br />
currently represents several cryptocurrency ventures looking to generate<br />
a native cryptocurrency, projects ranging from Holo (decentralised<br />
data storage), to redBUX (a currency for virtual reality porn).<br />
When these tokens are made, they are then put on sale, or “offered,”<br />
at a discount for anyone to buy up with currencies like Bitcoin.<br />
The business model is called ICO – short for initial coin offering<br />
– and, according to Weidner, these discounted<br />
tokens will draw colossal gains.<br />
These ventures are basically trying to recreate<br />
what Simon experienced with Ripple, but start<br />
even earlier, when the virtual shares are worth<br />
even less and the windfall could be even greater.<br />
Weidner is there to translate the crypto jargon to<br />
eager investors. He found a niche left open by the<br />
early crypto-nerds who couldn’t get their point<br />
across: “In 2015 and 2016, all these developers were<br />
screaming ‘Check out this new technology!’ - but<br />
no one understood what they were talking about.”<br />
Berlin, he says, is an ideal base for what he does:<br />
“When I want to know what’s going on in America,<br />
I can find out right here in the city. It’s like a big think tank, everyone’s<br />
exchanging ideas. It’s all about people.”<br />
Despite the promise of fortunes, it's all highly tenuous. With billion<br />
euro sums flying across the internet, a lot can go wrong. So while this<br />
new funding model can be an excellent tool for attracting non-accredited<br />
investors, many ICOs have been shut down for fraudulent behaviour<br />
and down-right shadiness. Even ten years since Bitcoin’s inception,<br />
cyber money is struggling with its identity. Buzzwords like ‘mass adoption,’<br />
and ‘ecosystem,’ are repeated constantly at conferences like C³,<br />
but back at Room 77 they ring superfluous to people like Platzer. He<br />
still thinks there is something much more important at stake: “We<br />
have reached everybody that we want to reach, but while everybody<br />
went crazy about Bitcoin, the ideal of freedom has more or less fallen<br />
by the way. Nobody gives a fuck. I could sometimes freak out about the<br />
surveillance state my government has built with my tax money.”<br />
Perhaps the future isn’t Bitcoin. Nonetheless, in the information<br />
age, it is addressing some of the most fundamental issues facing our<br />
society. Privacy, Big Data, all the Big Brothers: the internet seems to<br />
have opened a massive can of worms. Bitcoin, for what it’s worth in<br />
<strong>2018</strong>, allows us to inspect the depths of this can – even if its value<br />
drops to zero tomorrow. n<br />
June 8 – 10<br />
Berlin<br />
18<br />
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TELLAVISION & DERYA YILDIRIM TIANZHUO CHEN TOM ROGERSON WILTED WOMAN AND MANY MORE …<br />
WWW.TORSTRASSENFESTIVAL.DE #TSF18
CONFESSION<br />
The sugar babes<br />
Being a sugar baby may sound easy – you just have to<br />
show up and look pretty – but in reality, it is a harsh,<br />
competitive world of high expectations and hard work.<br />
Yet many millennials across the world choose to make<br />
a living by it. We spoke to two of them in Berlin. By Anna<br />
Gyulai Gaál<br />
When I first met Samira about<br />
two years ago, I couldn’t help<br />
but wonder about her Gucci and<br />
Louis Vuitton bags, her diamond rings, and<br />
her endless pairs of shoes worth a month’s<br />
rent in Berlin. She was driving a Smart and<br />
renting a beautiful two-room apartment on<br />
Paul-Lincke-Ufer which she wasn’t sharing<br />
with a fellow student. All of this while being<br />
an ancient history student at the Freie<br />
Universität? Samira had come from Tbilisi<br />
one year earlier and her parents weren’t<br />
wealthy. She didn’t have a side job. I wasn’t<br />
left wondering about her glamerous lifestyle<br />
for long though, as she turned out to be<br />
disarmingly open about her source of ‘good<br />
luck’. His name was John * , a wealthy German<br />
businessman she’d met on an online platform<br />
called Seeking Arrangement. She had<br />
a sugar daddy.<br />
“When I arrived in Berlin, I didn’t have<br />
much money. My parents are very supportive<br />
but I knew they couldn’t give me what<br />
I needed for the life I wanted in Germany,”<br />
Dom Okah<br />
explains Samira, her big brown, Bambi-like<br />
eyes screaming the kind of innocence immediately<br />
disproved by her words. “I know<br />
that I am kind of pretty, and I know that I have a brain. I once saw a documentary about sugar<br />
babies and it kind of stuck with me. I was curious whether I could do it. So I signed up to<br />
Seeking Arrangement and within a few days I had a full calendar.”<br />
On sites like Seeking Arrangement, Sugar Daddy For Me and Sugar Daddy Meet, both parties<br />
create a profile intended to appeal to the desired audience. The sugar daddies and mommas list<br />
their annual income, their lifestyle and their marital status, while the “babies” promote their<br />
own “assets”, all the while making their boundaries clear. The idea behind the growing community<br />
of “sugaring” is that it’s based on mutual honesty and a clear transaction between two<br />
people. “The good thing about it is that there are no surprises. Well, most of the time. Sometimes<br />
it is surprising how anxious a man can be despite being successful and rich. It made me<br />
feel very powerful actually,” Samira laughs. Her profile stated that sex wasn’t on the table and<br />
that she was in it for the experience, gifts and some extra cash. She also listed her qualifications,<br />
body measurements and wrote a short essay about her future plans signalling to daddies<br />
that she was the girl to take to fancy dinners, banquets and on trips. “What surprised me the<br />
most was probably the fact that there is a world like this in Berlin at all! I knew the bars, the<br />
junkies, the struggling youth, and then I was suddenly invited to the crème de la crème. At the<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
19
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
beginning I would go on all the dates just to<br />
see what was out there, and then I started<br />
selecting my daddies. Most of them were<br />
usually in town for a few days in between<br />
business trips. Sometimes they’d invite me to<br />
accompany them abroad. Sometimes I would<br />
go and sometimes I would turn it down because<br />
I was in university. But somehow I felt<br />
that a trip could bring the expectation of sex.<br />
And I didn’t want to have sex with them!”<br />
she says, adding that equating sugaring with<br />
prostitution or even escorting is a “hurtful<br />
misconception”. But it was a lot of work on<br />
top of her MA studies.<br />
“I always had to look nice. I had to remember<br />
which client got me which perfume,<br />
dress or accessories and wear those on our<br />
dates. I went to the gym 4 times a week to<br />
be in good shape, to the hairdresser, nail<br />
salon, waxing… it is actually hard work!<br />
I know it sounds lame, but it was tiring.”<br />
Eventually, after eight months juggling six<br />
to seven guys, she reduced the number<br />
of her daddies to three. “I could maintain<br />
that easily and still earn about €2000 a<br />
month from them, not including the gifts<br />
and meals. These were all under 60, strong,<br />
charismatic and attractive men. So yes,<br />
I did sleep with them eventually…”<br />
Samira had no intention of taking on<br />
a new sugar daddy when she met John<br />
on Seeking Arrangement. “He was very<br />
persistent, so I gave in. And to be honest,<br />
he did sweep me away on our first date. He<br />
was amazing: polite, well-read and welltravelled,<br />
he spoke many languages. The<br />
next night he invited me to a big event in<br />
Frankfurt and soon he insisted we meet<br />
every night he was in town.” By the end of<br />
that week John had made it clear that he<br />
wanted a more serious commitment and<br />
offered to rent an apartment for Samira<br />
and cover all her expenses with an extra<br />
allowance to boot. “All I had to do for it<br />
was to be there whenever he was in Berlin,<br />
travel with him when he wanted me. And,<br />
of course, sex. I slept with him on my first<br />
night and it was actually good.” Two weeks<br />
later Samira moved out of her tiny room in<br />
a flat share into her dream apartment. “He<br />
made me promise that I’d stop seeing the<br />
other guys, he made me delete my profile<br />
and he would check on me all the time. But<br />
it was okay. John was a very generous sugar<br />
daddy. He supported my studies, and always<br />
seemed proud to have me on his side. I<br />
got to see and experience many things I<br />
wouldn’t have without him!” So it went on<br />
for five months: “I was kind of happy... until<br />
I met Jakob!” What started as a spontaneous<br />
flirt on a Berlin dancefloor turned into<br />
the real thing. Faced with a choice between<br />
her arrangement with John and life with<br />
Jakob, she opted for the latter and broke<br />
up with John, leaving behind the flat and<br />
all the nice gifts. “I’d not expected John to<br />
get so mad. He shouted he would kill that<br />
boy and demanded that I leave the apartment<br />
by the next day and wanted his money<br />
back.” Samira and Jakob have been together<br />
for almost two years now. She finished her<br />
studies and they are planning to get married.<br />
Jakob comes from a simple, Bavarian<br />
family and cannot offer her the luxury the<br />
sugaring did. “I wouldn’t exchange my current<br />
happiness for anything money can buy.<br />
That part of my life is over. I am happy now<br />
and who knows – maybe one day I’ll be rich<br />
myself,” she says, though the chances are<br />
pretty slim, being a historian.<br />
Samira has remained in touch with some<br />
former sugar daddies like Peter, one of<br />
the last three men she was dating before<br />
she went exclusive with John. “I am actually<br />
still friends with Samira. I cannot say I don’t<br />
dream of dating her again, but since that is not<br />
an option, we are just friends. We go out for<br />
a coffee sometimes, but she has made it clear<br />
that she wants no gifts or money from me anymore,”<br />
explains the 45-year-old buinessman in<br />
the most casual way. On the phone he doesn’t<br />
sound like a super-rich executive responsible<br />
for multi-million euro oil sales. “I don’t think<br />
there is anything to be ashamed of in the world<br />
of sugaring. We business people often don’t<br />
have time and energy to date, to seduce, to<br />
entertain, to deal with the emotional expectations<br />
of our partners. For me, business is more<br />
important. Sugaring is such a clear arrangement<br />
and therefore I won’t disappoint or fail<br />
anybody. I hurt many women in my youth just<br />
because I wasn’t able to put them first. With all<br />
the travelling and stress my job requires I often<br />
just want to have a nice dinner or a date to an<br />
event, someone who is pretty and intelligent<br />
and can distract me from my everyday life. It<br />
isn’t necessarily about sex! If I want sex, I can<br />
get an A-list escort. I just expect my sugar baby<br />
to be good company.”<br />
Do such expectations go with our current<br />
ideal of gender equality? Or do they just<br />
perpetuate the centuries-old male-dominated<br />
cultural and financial structures the #metoo<br />
movement has been painstakingly trying to<br />
shake? For Peter this is a clean cut case of contractual<br />
business where both parties can meet<br />
at eye level: “The girls sign up, they want money,<br />
the men know what they get and what they<br />
don’t. It’s business. And I am good at business<br />
– terrible at love, but very good at business!”<br />
Reflecting back on her experience, Samira sees<br />
a certain degree of empowerment. “I certainly<br />
don’t think I was a victim of anybody or that I<br />
would have been sexually abused, ever! I actually<br />
feel like I was the boss!”<br />
“With all the<br />
travelling and stress<br />
my job requires,<br />
I often just want to<br />
have a nice dinner<br />
with someone<br />
who is pretty and<br />
intelligent ...<br />
It isn’t necessarily<br />
about sex! If I want<br />
sex, I can get an<br />
A-list escort.”<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
Worldwide, 2.7 million sugar babies are registered<br />
on Seeking Arrangement alone, 1.5 million of them<br />
students. According to Let’s Talk Sugar (a forum<br />
where ‘babies’ can discuss experiences and find tips) there<br />
are “thousands of sugar babies in the sugar bowl”, i.e. about<br />
8-12 sugar babies for each daddy, so competition is tough.<br />
But a new industry is already catering to the community with<br />
courses to learn how to make a profile stand out, and annual<br />
Sugar Baby Summits in New York, Los Angeles and London<br />
with courses, lectures and discussions.<br />
Meanwhile, more and more wealthy gay men and older<br />
women are joining the sugar bowl. Lucas, a 23-year-old<br />
Berliner – blonde, tall, handsome and self-confident – dates<br />
both. “But only over 45! They are more giving,” the fashion<br />
student is quick to clarify. “I do some modelling and DJing,<br />
but I don’t earn much. I like to party and I like nice things!<br />
Lucas’ first sugar daddy was an accident. “I’d just met an<br />
older guy on Grindr three or four years ago and he got me<br />
nice things, he was really like a father to me but I didn’t like<br />
fucking him.” When they broke up Lucas turned to platforms<br />
like Gay Arrangement and Seeking Arrangement. “It<br />
gives me the opportunity to set my own rules. I don’t have<br />
to sleep with anyone if I don’t want to. And I don’t want to<br />
most of the time. I also prefer cash instead of gifts, so I make<br />
that clear, too,” says the cheerful Berliner. You can tell he<br />
works out and has the cash to buy designer clothes. “I actually<br />
made this coat myself!” he says proudly. “I started with<br />
gay men only and then I realised that there are older women<br />
looking for companionship, too. So I changed my status to<br />
‘looking for both daddies and mommas.’” Lucas explains<br />
that the latter are mostly rich widows or women who were<br />
left by their husbands for a younger girl, or who are being<br />
cheated on and ignored. “They’re lonely, they want someone<br />
to compliment them, to pay them attention, to make them<br />
feel that they matter!”<br />
Lucas is glad to provide all the above, but not sex. “I do<br />
sleep with girls, but I’ve never slept with any of my female<br />
clients! With women, age matters more to me. So I accompany<br />
them to the theatre and the opera, to dinner, to fashion<br />
shows, to shopping, I even come over and just chat, but the<br />
most I did was kissing one of the ladies, who asked me very<br />
kindly to make her feel like a beautiful woman. I couldn’t say<br />
no to that!” Lucas has two female and four male clients at the<br />
moment. That means earning just enough for a cosy tworoom<br />
Altbau flat in Kreuzberg, a wardrobe filled with designer<br />
clothing, and eating out every single day. Not such a shabby<br />
life for a student.<br />
“Women give me all sorts of presents, even if I tell them<br />
not to. They can’t get rid of the momma inside of them! Men<br />
are different. They do what I tell them most of the time. I<br />
thought that rich gay men would be very demanding and<br />
controlling in a situation like this, but I totally feel like I am<br />
the one controlling them, because I am young and in a good<br />
shape and they want me so bad. One of my clients is a married<br />
man. His wife has no idea that he is seeing boys. I know<br />
I’m not even his only sugar baby! Another guy wants no sex<br />
at all, he just wants to hold hands and go for walks. People’s<br />
needs are so different and I am happy to please them.”<br />
Does he sometimes miss a real, romantic relationship? “It<br />
would just make life more complicated. This is simple and yet<br />
fun. I am young, I am free, I live in an age where anything is<br />
possible. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a guy who will kickstart<br />
my career and help me launch my own line of clothing!” ■<br />
EINFACH!<br />
DEUTSCH<br />
LERNEN.<br />
goethe.de/berlin<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.<br />
21
DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY<br />
SOCIAL MEDIA<br />
@awesomenberlin<br />
How to be a<br />
Berlinfluencer<br />
Hip Berlin is the perfect subject for Instagrammers, bers and bloggers – but can they make any money with<br />
Youtu-<br />
it?<br />
By Alison Bell<br />
@delicieux_11<br />
Social media has created a new class<br />
of celebrities. Instagrammers such as<br />
Kayla Itsines, Sophie Hannah Richardson,<br />
Murad Osmann and even Marnie the<br />
Dog are household names, showcasing their<br />
enviable lifestyles to a huge online following.<br />
Unsurprisingly, brands have caught on<br />
to the potential of these social media stars.<br />
With a strong following and high engagement<br />
rate, many bloggers and social media<br />
users – aka influencers – provide trusted<br />
content to shape the opinions and purchasing<br />
decisions of their loyal followers. Top<br />
influencers such as Kim Kardashian are<br />
rumoured to earn over €200,000 per post.<br />
Clearly, “influencing” has the potential to be<br />
a lucrative business.<br />
In Berlin the graffiti-lined streets, achingly<br />
hip people and perfectly-formed flatwhites<br />
make for an Instagrammers dream.<br />
But is it really possible to make it as an<br />
influencer here?<br />
Social school<br />
One recent Saturday morning a small group<br />
of aspiring self-publishers have headed to<br />
Charlottenburg to find out how they can<br />
make their fame and, hopefully, fortune on<br />
social media at the Influencer Marketing<br />
Academy. Today’s topic: “Influencer basics:<br />
how to market oneself professionally, grow<br />
and make a living from Insta & co.” Opened<br />
in September, the Influencer Marketing<br />
Academy was established by Sascha Schulz<br />
and Niko Martzy in response to a growing<br />
demand they had noticed for social media<br />
and influencing expertise.<br />
Their influencer courses are “for people<br />
who are either already active in publishing<br />
on social media and want to convert their<br />
voluntary work into a business or people<br />
who are about to start and want to get a bit<br />
more background in perhaps how to create<br />
photos or films for YouTube or how to set<br />
up a media kit and contact a company in<br />
order to receive a booking,” says Schulz. The<br />
goal here is not to make people stars, but to<br />
train them in how to make money with social<br />
media publishing.<br />
While one might expect the Academy to be<br />
filled with scores of manicured Kim Kardashian<br />
lookalikes posing for selfies, it’s not<br />
entirely the case. Yes, the room is predominantly<br />
young and female, but each of the<br />
pupils brings more than model looks to the<br />
table – they all have their own area of expertise<br />
that they’re hoping will help them stand<br />
out in the online world. There’s a Lufthansa<br />
flight attendant who has created a platform<br />
for vegan recipes and nutrition, a cosplay fan<br />
who offers tutorial videos on make-up and<br />
body paint, three young fitness bloggers and<br />
a self-described business influencer. As we go<br />
through the introductions, the modest, common<br />
goal is to earn a bit of extra cash from<br />
sharing the things they love.<br />
Leading the course, Schulz starts by<br />
setting some basics. On the whiteboard<br />
he draws a pyramid. At the top are the big<br />
earners, the two to three percent who can<br />
make a full-time living as a self-publisher<br />
or influencer. The rest can expect or hope<br />
to earn some money but should hang on<br />
to their day jobs. He suggests a monthly<br />
sum of around €600-800 would be feasible<br />
– hardly life-changing and, as he points<br />
out, the trajectory from the bottom of the<br />
pyramid to the top can take two to three<br />
years, requiring some level of dedication<br />
and a great deal of time. One way of making<br />
money is product placement, with Schulz<br />
pointing to tools for helping to monetise<br />
posts, such as Berlin’s ReachHero, an online<br />
marketplace bringing together brands and<br />
influencers. While the average earning varies<br />
enormously according to the platform<br />
and number of followers, as a rough rule<br />
of thumb, ReachHero’s founder and COO<br />
Philipp John says influencers can earn<br />
between €50 and €120 per one thousand<br />
contacts on YouTube and between €5 and<br />
€15 on Instagram. But Schulz is also keen to<br />
stress that being paid to promote a product<br />
is just one aspect of influencer marketing:<br />
there are many possibilities for “increasing<br />
social media value”, such as long copy<br />
blogs, opinion shaping campaigns, such as<br />
public health campaigns, and events.<br />
To be considered for such paid campaigns<br />
typically requires a following of at least 1000<br />
followers or subscribers, depending on the<br />
platform. But it’s not all about the biggest<br />
channel. “Having a large number of followers<br />
is not a sign of quality,” he says. “It can be the<br />
same as printing a magazine with a circulation<br />
of 100,000 and trashing 90 percent of the<br />
print copies. Today it’s more about the degree<br />
of involvement and credibility.” Smaller channels,<br />
with between 1000 and 40,000 followers,<br />
tend to have higher engagement rates (the<br />
total amount of likes and comments). “For<br />
companies to create impact, it’s best to build<br />
networks of smaller, lesser known channels in<br />
order to have the same reach, for less money<br />
and with higher credibility.”<br />
Blogging for fun and cash<br />
One Berliner who fits this criteria is Mary<br />
Scherpe, the brains behind food and fashion<br />
blog Stil in Berlin. Founded in March 2006,<br />
the blog started out as a side project to document<br />
Berlin street-style “I studied art history<br />
and Japanese studies, which is very theoretical<br />
– you write papers and they’re read by<br />
your professor and that’s more or less it. I<br />
wanted to do something that had more to do<br />
with the rest of the world,” explains Scherpe.<br />
Today she has over 120,000 Facebook likes<br />
and almost 38,000 Instagram followers<br />
Content includes a mix of her own recommendations<br />
for food, travel and shopping,<br />
as well as the occasional guest contribution,<br />
combined sponsored content, for example a<br />
Tanqueray-sponsored post on twisted gin &<br />
tonics, and on-site advertising.<br />
It’s with some reluctance that Scherpe<br />
describes herself as an influencer: “The term<br />
‘influencer’ was just invented two or three<br />
22<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
@waltercrasshole<br />
”best franco-german culinary alliance“<br />
The <strong>Exberliner</strong><br />
@mae<br />
years ago. Influencers have a presence on Instagram<br />
or Snapchat or whatever, but don’t necessarily publish<br />
their own long-format content. However, I have<br />
to market myself as this, because it’s what agencies<br />
sell to brands, the whole influencer model.”<br />
When she started back in 2006 the blog scene was<br />
completely different: “The whole area of lifestyle<br />
and fashion and food and consumerism wasn’t a<br />
thing,” she says. “There was a blog in Helsinki back<br />
then who did street style photos, there was one in<br />
London and that was kind of it. I had an idea that it<br />
would probably interest some people, but I wasn’t<br />
entirely sure.”<br />
For the thirtysomething German, the key is to<br />
remain open and diverse while concentrating on your<br />
own thing: “Obviously there are also a lot of projects<br />
that aren’t necessarily visible on the blog, but did<br />
come through the blog. It’s always a mix of things,”<br />
she says. “You’ve got to find your niche in a way,<br />
you’ve got to find a point of view that sets you apart<br />
from the rest. At least that’s what I would hope that<br />
people who want to earn money in this way would<br />
do, because otherwise we’re just going to end up with<br />
the copy of the copy of the copy. Since 2009 however,<br />
the blog has been a full-time job.”<br />
For her it’s crucial to remember that when you<br />
make channels like Instagram or Facebook your main<br />
publishers, that you’re always at the mercy of these<br />
companies’ decisions: “That’s what is happening right<br />
now, they are restricting the reach of people because<br />
they obviously want to sell advertising,” she says. “My<br />
main tip would be to keep that in mind. You shouldn’t<br />
focus all your energy on one channel, but have a plan<br />
B. And I think it’s always healthier, or business-wise<br />
a better decision, to establish channels that you have<br />
full control over so if anything should happen, you<br />
can still find your audience – or vice versa.”<br />
Super-sharer<br />
Another money-making Berlinfluencer is Tulio<br />
Edreira. The Brazilian native from Goiânia came to<br />
to the city after a 13-year stint in São Paulo. Every<br />
month an average of 55,000 people visit his website<br />
Awesome Berlin to check out his tips on food, drinks<br />
and nightlife. He has 44,000 followers on Instagram<br />
(where Edreira’s photos of Berlin landmarks or<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
I personally treat<br />
my platform like<br />
a“Tamagotchi”. I give<br />
it some love every day!”<br />
people hanging out in parks attract thousands of<br />
likes), and 29,000 Facebook fans. Edreira first came<br />
to Berlin to “live an adventure” and was inspired<br />
to launch the site in 2014 by his friend Shoshannah<br />
Hausmann’s site Awesome Amsterdam. During<br />
the first year, he made no money with the site. But<br />
with a background in business it didn’t take long for<br />
Edreira to close his first contract: “In my second year<br />
I was contacted by an agency to create a guide to<br />
hidden Berlin for Wrangler,” he says. “Initially I felt<br />
surprised that I got that kind of an opportunity so<br />
early on. After my first face-to-face meeting with the<br />
agency, I realised that what I had to offer was a great<br />
match to their campaign.”<br />
For him, enjoying what you do is a critical part of<br />
success. “No matter what the trend is, stick to what<br />
you enjoy doing,” he says. “People will get inspired<br />
by you when you do it with pleasure. Plus, that in<br />
itself is a good way to establish a long term self-satisfying<br />
business model. Focus on what you truly like<br />
and create continuous good content. Be consistent.<br />
I personally treat my platform like a “Tamagotchi”. I<br />
give it some love every day!”<br />
With Stil in Berlin, Awesome Berlin and other<br />
contemporaries already established, is there room<br />
for another Berlinfluencer? Back at the academy,<br />
Schulz explains that being an influencer isn’t necessarily<br />
about trying to create something new. For him<br />
it’s more a question of direction, rather than topic. In<br />
this sense, and, judging by the hopefuls at the academy<br />
today, there are surely still opportunities within<br />
various fields - be it travel, food, business or lifestyle<br />
- to earn some level of income from living an enviable,<br />
photogenic Berlin lifestyle. But, if this writer’s<br />
failed attempts to turn her dog (@jackiederhund, just<br />
in case you’re wondering) into an Instagram sensation<br />
have proved anything, racking up the likes and<br />
followers can be an extremely time-consuming and<br />
laborious process. While the real pros make it look<br />
effortless, there have got to be easier ways to earn<br />
some free money. ■<br />
Mon - Fri<br />
5 pm<br />
Sat & Sun<br />
noon<br />
Kollwitzplatz/corner Knaackstraße 37<br />
D-10435 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg)<br />
phone +49 (0)30 442 92 29<br />
www.gugelhof.de<br />
gugelhof@t-online.de<br />
facebook.com/gugelhof<br />
23
Interview<br />
“Every stage seems to be so small<br />
against the Volksbühne”<br />
Director Adama Ulrich on Partisan, the film tribute to<br />
Berlin’s most iconic theatre she co-authored. By Lily Kelting<br />
No matter what your opinion of Frank Castorf,<br />
Chris Dercon, repertory theatre, state subsidies,<br />
neoliberalism, or the future of Europe, one thing<br />
is for sure: the Castorf Volksbühne was a juggernaut. The<br />
Berlinale documentary, Partisan, is a love poem to the<br />
quarter century that was the Castorf Volksbühne: its<br />
actors, directors, crew, the space itself and the aesthetic<br />
language developed there. Filmmakers Lutz Pehnert,<br />
Matthias Ehlert, and Adama Ulrich show that these<br />
clichés of the Castorf era – the chaos, the screaming, the<br />
“butchered” texts, videography, fights in rehearsal, the<br />
nudity and fake blood – are all part of a unique theatrical<br />
language developed on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Ulrich<br />
hopes they aren’t lost forever.<br />
Why did you make this film? All three of us are big fans<br />
of the Volksbühne. I went there for the first time in the<br />
1980s before reunification, when directors like Heiner<br />
Muller were there. What an interesting aesthetic! I had<br />
never seen anything like it. It was amazing. This continued<br />
with Frank Castorf, Rene Pollesch, Christoph<br />
Marthaler. When we learned that this era would come<br />
to an end, we decided to do this documentary about the<br />
Volksbühne from 1992 to July 1, 2017, just to create a<br />
document for people who didn't experience this period.<br />
Why did you decide not to include the drama surrounding<br />
Dercon's appointment? Dercon is gone now, right? Ha!<br />
We're so happy that we didn’t put the focus on the political<br />
decision and Chris Dercon. Otherwise our documentary<br />
would already be history. We just thought—1992 to 2017,<br />
25 years, it’s a good figure, a quarter century. It felt right.<br />
But can you comment, personally? For me, it was a scandal<br />
that somebody like (former senator for culture) Tim<br />
Renner and also Klaus Wowereit and now Michael Müller<br />
made the decision. Of course this is not just my opinion.<br />
You could say “poor Dercon,” the poor but so vain Dercon,<br />
who didn’t even know what the Volksbühne really was.<br />
When he got a call from Renner offering him the position,<br />
he just said, “yes, I can do that!” When he opened his Berlin<br />
office in 2016 and realised (senator for culture) Klaus<br />
Lederer didn't want him there, nor the people working in<br />
the Volksbühne, nor the audience, that is when he should<br />
have stopped and thought, “Well, maybe I'm not the right<br />
person”. But it is primarily the fault of the politicians. It is<br />
a big political scandal to destroy such a great theatre.<br />
The film avoids sheer sycophancy and even shows the chaos,<br />
the feuds and even Castorf's famous fits. Was it difficult to<br />
keep a balance? We just showed it like it was. Of course,<br />
the film is something like a declaration of love. But we<br />
also wanted to show the problems. Twenty-five years<br />
is a long time for one director who was responsible for<br />
everything. So we tried not to just say, “everything was<br />
so fantastic.” There were crises, like in 2008-2009 when<br />
directors and actors left and nobody really knew what to<br />
do. We were lucky to have all the archival materials.<br />
Some say that the ongoing scandal will kill the Volksbühne.<br />
Do you agree? No, I hope now it will all get better. Now<br />
we can bring back some of the actors and directors from<br />
before. It is very good that Dercon is going. Too late,<br />
but okay.<br />
But what about the quote from Die Welt read aloud at the<br />
end of the documentary: “It is enough. Twenty five years is a<br />
long time... Do we want to be told what the avant-garde is by<br />
people who are so old that they snorted coke in the ruins of<br />
the East after the fall of the Berlin Wall?” There was always<br />
something new at the Volksbühne! There were so many<br />
directors there, it was diverse. It was not “enough”. I put<br />
this text in the documentary because it was very typical<br />
of one side of the debate. But, no, I don’t agree with it. ■<br />
24 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Exhibitions<br />
were conceived to help the needy help themselves. And the “virtuous”<br />
history continues in many sobering ways – like the Nazis’ cynical<br />
push to “save” for cars and vacations – branded as Kraft durch Freude<br />
(“Strength through Joy”) – money that would eventually be funnelled<br />
into war-machinery instead. Don’t get fooled by the jokey name –<br />
this is serious stuff, and if you learn anything from what you’ve seen,<br />
you’ll make sure to avoid the gift shop. Who would smash open one’s<br />
Sparschwein for a €25-book on sparen? – Walter Crasshole<br />
Through Sep 16<br />
Oh Yeah! Popmusik in Deutschland<br />
Museum for Communication, Mitte<br />
Through Aug 26<br />
Saving – History of a German virtue<br />
DHM, Mitte<br />
A whole exhibition on that most German of pastimes – saving –<br />
sounds about as thrilling as a trip to the Bürgeramt. But with its selfironic<br />
title, perfect packaging and fussy curatorial concept (fittingly<br />
sponsored by Sparkasse!) this exhibition at the DHM should help any<br />
foreign Berliner get a little closer to understanding Germany’s love<br />
for thrift and its nagging efforts at imposing it upon others (e.g. the<br />
financial austerity it demands of the Eurozone). A copy of B.Z. tabloid<br />
emblazoned with a superhero eagle celebrating both Germany’s balanced<br />
budget and international economic dominance (the former<br />
being a condition for the latter) sets the tone. What follows is a<br />
critical history of the roots of Germany scrimping, from the late 18th<br />
century to today, through objects, texts and advertising (or propaganda).<br />
We’re reminded how savings institutions like the Sparkassen<br />
If you think German pop music is relegated to the sugary Ohrwürmer<br />
of Helene Fischer or the insipid nursery school English of<br />
Scooter: you're half right. Schlager is an undeniable part of German<br />
pop, but not all of it. Exhibition Oh Yeah! Pop Music in Germany at<br />
the Museum for Communication attempts to fill in the gap by presenting<br />
a 90-year overview of Deutschpop, -punk, -rap, and more,<br />
from 1925 through today. Visitors are even given a pair of sanitised<br />
headphones to plug in at various stations. The real tour begins<br />
after a barrage of music videos (Deichkind included), starting with<br />
the mention of the invention of the gramophone here in Germany.<br />
From there we get a taste of wild youth 'cliques' listening to “un-<br />
German” jazz and swing in the times of Hitler, the influence of<br />
American radio and Elvis on German youth, and the the suffocatingly<br />
soporific Heimat music of the 1950s, designed to calm the spirits<br />
of defeated and dispirited Germany after the war. Post-Beatles invasion,<br />
the exhibition becomes a little too brisk. Ton Steine Scherben,<br />
Einstürzende Neubauten and Rammstein are confined to one wall<br />
on “radical music”. East and West German punk are presented<br />
on the same footing, revolving around “fun punk” like Die Toten<br />
Hosen (sorry, Berlin trailblazers Malaria! and Die Tödliche Doris).<br />
Nena is squeezed in with Neue Deutsche Welle as if she was no<br />
more than a radio curiosity. German hip hop, too, gets less attention<br />
than it deserves. This show is perfect for out-of-town friends with<br />
little-to-no knowledge of German Music. For something meatier,<br />
head to the adjunct “Berlin.Pop.Women” series of concerts and<br />
talks, making up for a noticeable lack of females in the exhibition.<br />
Catch Gudrun Gut and Barbara Morgenstern on <strong>May</strong> 8. – WC<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
OF<br />
NEW<br />
DRAMA<br />
<strong>2018</strong><br />
INTERNATIONAL KICK OFF<br />
WITH GUEST PERFORMANCES FROM:<br />
Royal District Theatre, Tiblisi, Georgia<br />
OKT/Vilnius City Theatre, Lithuania<br />
Nowy Teatr Warsaw, Poland<br />
Radar Ost is part of the Autorentheatertage (1 – 23 June, <strong>2018</strong>)<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
25<br />
All performances with English surtitles<br />
For tickets and more information visit deutschestheater.de/en
WHAT’S ON — Film<br />
Editor’s Choice<br />
Extracting wisdom<br />
from whimsy<br />
Frivolous facades mask earnest intents in<br />
three of this month’s releases. By Paul O’Callaghan<br />
DON’T MISS<br />
Pulp Fiction in the park<br />
Freiluftkino Kreuzberg<br />
launches its<br />
25th season on<br />
<strong>May</strong> 4 with a free<br />
open-air screening<br />
of Tarantino’s 1994<br />
classic. Head to<br />
freiluftkino-berlin.de<br />
to apply for tickets<br />
and to check out<br />
the rest of this<br />
month’s line-up.<br />
The Past in the<br />
Present - New Films<br />
from Algeria<br />
Arsenal Kino offers<br />
a rare opportunity to<br />
catch some of the<br />
best Algerian films<br />
of the past five years<br />
on the big screen,<br />
including Karim<br />
Moussaoui’s Cannes<br />
2017 hit Until<br />
the Birds Return.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 3-6<br />
Anime Berlin Festival<br />
The city’s biggest<br />
anime showcase<br />
returns to Babylon in<br />
Mitte, with highlights<br />
including anarchic<br />
French-Japanese<br />
festival circuit hit<br />
Mutafukaz, and<br />
harrowing postwar<br />
tearjerker Giovanni’s<br />
Island. <strong>May</strong> 10-20<br />
Wes Anderson’s stop-motion<br />
animation Isle of Dogs<br />
envisions a dystopian<br />
Japan in which the canines of fictional<br />
Megasaki City have been banished to<br />
nearby Trash Island by hound-hating<br />
<strong>May</strong>or Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura).<br />
When said mayor’s young ward Atari<br />
(Koyu Rankin) attempts to rescue his<br />
exiled pet, he must rely on the help<br />
of a pack of mangy mutts to navigate<br />
the wasteland. It’s a visually intricate<br />
affair, albeit grungier than you might<br />
expect – diseased animals, rotting<br />
food and even a kidney transplant<br />
are rendered in surprisingly graphic<br />
fashion. And in terms of sound it’s<br />
cacophonous, with a propulsive, Taiko<br />
drum-heavy score, dogs voiced by Hollywood<br />
stars, and Japanese dialogue<br />
either filtered through an interpreter<br />
or left unsubtitled. Consequently, Anderson<br />
stands accused of othering his<br />
Asian characters, but I take the more<br />
generous view that his intent was to<br />
make his own outsider perspective<br />
explicit. Detractors have also been rattled<br />
by the fact that a rebellion against<br />
Kobayashi is led by Greta Gerwig’s<br />
American exchange student, a white<br />
saviour of sorts. But this heroic arc is<br />
undercut by the way in which the plot<br />
uncomfortably recalls the internment<br />
of Japanese Americans in the US<br />
during World War II. And underlying<br />
it all is a surprisingly moving meditation<br />
on self-determination, with alpha<br />
dog Chief (Bryan Cranston) grappling<br />
with his ‘wild’ nature. Certainly,<br />
there’s more going on than it might<br />
appear at first glance.<br />
The same can also be said for<br />
Faces Places (Visages Villages), the<br />
delightful new documentary by and<br />
about legendary French filmmaker<br />
Agnès Varda and enigmatic street<br />
artist JR. Visually, they make for<br />
an unlikely duo – he a lithe, imageconscious<br />
30-something, she a short,<br />
amiable octogenarian – and the film<br />
leans into this incongruity, envisaging<br />
in a deadpan opening sequence what<br />
it might have looked like if the pair<br />
had met in a nightclub. The premise is<br />
straightforward – this newly-formed<br />
odd couple will tour rural France,<br />
photograph regular folk, listen to their<br />
life stories, and plaster their blown-up<br />
visages across the sides of buildings.<br />
Varda is clearly energised by the company<br />
of her youthful partner, but the<br />
nature of their undertaking naturally<br />
encourages reflection and introspection.<br />
Thus, she begins to ruminate on<br />
her life’s work, her failing health and<br />
key figures from her past, in a manner<br />
that’s extremely moving to behold.<br />
Jean-Luc Godard, Varda’s last living<br />
nouvelle vague contemporary, looms<br />
particularly large, with a final-act<br />
visit to his home packing a devastating<br />
emotional punch. Throughout,<br />
the balance between playfulness and<br />
poignancy is handled impeccably.<br />
I Feel Pretty, the latest star vehicle<br />
for controversial comedian Amy<br />
Schumer, reaches for the heartstrings<br />
with rather less elegance. Schumer<br />
plays Renee, a woman held back in<br />
every aspect of her life by deep-seated<br />
insecurities about her appearance,<br />
until a knock to the head convinces<br />
her that she’s been magically granted<br />
the body of her dreams. She’s thus propelled<br />
on a madcap journey that forces<br />
her to confront her obsession with<br />
surface-level beauty. The film’s underlying<br />
message, however, is undermined<br />
by jokes that hinge around the conceit<br />
that Renee’s newfound confidence is<br />
somehow at odds with her (perfectly<br />
healthy) body type. Still, it’s worth a<br />
watch for a sublime supporting turn<br />
by Michelle Williams as a heliumvoiced<br />
beauty mogul. n<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 10 Isle of Dogs HHHH D: Wes Anderson (US, Germany<br />
<strong>2018</strong>) with Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin | Starts <strong>May</strong> 10 I Feel Pretty<br />
HH D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein (US <strong>2018</strong>) with Amy Schumer,<br />
Michelle Williams | Starts <strong>May</strong> 31 Faces Places (Visages Villages) HHHHH<br />
D: Agnès Varda, JR (France 2017) documentary<br />
26<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Film<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 3<br />
7 Days in Entebbe<br />
D: José Padilha (UK, US <strong>2018</strong>)<br />
with Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl<br />
HH<br />
Reviews<br />
How do you make a dramatisation of the 1976<br />
German-Palestinian hijacking of Air France Flight 139,<br />
and the ensuing high-stakes hostage rescue mission,<br />
spirit-sappingly boring? This is the question you’ll<br />
likely be wrestling with after suffering through this<br />
curiously inert thriller. The narrative burdens itself<br />
with stilted situation room scenes (in which the unsubtly<br />
lionised Israeli officials all inexplicably speak<br />
English) and a deadweight subplot that seems to<br />
exist solely so that a stunningly choreographed<br />
dance sequence can bookend the action. By the<br />
time the credits roll, the specifics will already be<br />
fading from your memory. Only Rosamund Pike’s<br />
valiant performance as a guilt-ridden German<br />
left-wing radical comes close to elevating this<br />
above made-for-TV territory. — David Mouriquand<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 3<br />
Only the Brave<br />
(No Way Out)<br />
D: Joseph Kosinski (US 2017)<br />
with Josh Brolin, Miles Teller<br />
HHH<br />
In the Aisles (In den Gängen)<br />
Following hot on the heels of Clint Eastwood’s<br />
godawful 15:17 to Paris comes another rippedfrom-the-headlines<br />
story of real-life American<br />
heroism. However Only the Brave is something<br />
of a pleasant surprise. It’s an unexpectedly<br />
moving tribute to the forest firefighters who<br />
died in the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona. The<br />
cast is uniformly strong, with Josh Brolin and<br />
Miles Teller giving impressive heft to occasionally<br />
creaky dialogue. Working outside the sci-fi<br />
genre for the first time, after Tron: Legacy and<br />
Oblivion, director Joseph Kosinski falls a little<br />
short when depicting human drama but brings<br />
his A-game for the action sequences. The<br />
scenes of raging fires in particular are visually<br />
mesmerising, redeeming the clunkier aspects<br />
of this conventional but extremely watchable<br />
disaster biopic. — DM<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 24<br />
In the Aisles<br />
(In den Gängen)<br />
D: Thomas Stuber (Germany <strong>2018</strong>)<br />
with Sandra Hüller, Franz Rogowski<br />
HH<br />
Set in a sprawling suburban East German supermarket,<br />
Thomas Stuber’s well-intentioned ensemble<br />
dramedy attempts to weave an intricate web of<br />
interpersonal intrigue and small-town realism, but<br />
in doing so relies on sub-Hollywood clichés so tired<br />
that its emotional core comes across as pre-packaged.<br />
The film follows a budding romance between<br />
Christian (Franz Rogowski) a quiet ex-con who joins<br />
the store’s staff as a stocker, and Marion (Sandra<br />
Hüller, brilliant as always) who works the sweets<br />
aisle. The two talented leads do a stand-up job,<br />
but as each beat becomes more predictable than<br />
the last, the subtle depiction of the supermarket’s<br />
bleak-yet-comforting mundanity begins to collapse<br />
under the film’s mediocre storytelling. While there<br />
are glimpses of true working-class struggle to be<br />
gleaned from In the Aisles, we’ve seen drama play<br />
out between shoppers in actual supermarkets that<br />
was more riveting than this. — Cameron Cook<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 24<br />
The Happy Prince<br />
D: Rupert Everett (Germany, Belgium,<br />
UK, Italy <strong>2018</strong>) with Rupert Everett, Colin Firth<br />
HHHH<br />
Written, directed and co-produced by Rupert<br />
Everett, who also dons heavy prosthetics to play<br />
a disgraced and destitute Oscar Wilde in his final<br />
years, this heartfelt passion project boldly follows<br />
the literary giant’s riches-to-rags plight as he’s<br />
imprisoned for homosexuality and subsequently<br />
bullied into exile on mainland Europe. His ill-fated<br />
relationship with the flamboyant young Lord Alfred<br />
Douglas (Colin Morgan), humiliating encounters<br />
with British expats, and the forging of bonds<br />
with fellow creatives are all dexterously intertwined<br />
with the recitation of Wilde’s short story<br />
“The Happy Prince” to two street boys in Paris.<br />
Everett, whose own Hollywood career suffered<br />
after he came out as gay, has a palpable affection<br />
for his muse, and gracefully depicts the playwright<br />
as equal parts tormented soul and incurable bon<br />
vivant. Infused with empathy, the film emerges as<br />
a moving, self-reflexive statement about queerness<br />
in show business. — Yun-hua Chen<br />
The Happy Prince<br />
Lö grand<br />
Bal<br />
Almanya<br />
57 JAHRE SCHEINEHE<br />
– EIN SINGSPIEL<br />
BY BY ÖDÖN NURKAN VON ERPULAT HORVÁTH<br />
AND TUNÇAY DIRECTOR KULAOĞLU<br />
DIRECTOR HAKAN NURKAN SAVAŞ MİCAN ERPULAT<br />
PREMIERE<br />
25/MAY<br />
ADDITIONAL SHOW<br />
27/MAY<br />
ALL PLAYS WITH<br />
ENGLISH SURTITLES<br />
MAXIM GORKI THEATER<br />
Am Festungsgraben 2, 10117 Berlin<br />
Box Office: 0049 30/ 20 221 115<br />
Tickets online: www.gorki.de
DON’T MISS<br />
Tranny Fag<br />
(Bixa Travesty)<br />
Berlin Film Society<br />
kicks off a summer<br />
season of screenings<br />
at Sisyphos with this<br />
rousing portrait of<br />
Brazilian trans hiphop<br />
pioneer Linn da<br />
Quebrada, winner of<br />
the Teddy Award for<br />
best LGBTQ doc at<br />
this year’s Berlinale<br />
<strong>May</strong> 17, 20:00<br />
By-Products of Love<br />
The Akademie der<br />
Künste celebrates<br />
the careers and<br />
legacies of German<br />
queer cinema pioneers<br />
Elfi Mikesch,<br />
Rosa von Praunheim<br />
and Werner Schroeter<br />
with an exhibition<br />
and complementary<br />
programme<br />
of screenings, panel<br />
discussions and<br />
special events.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 3-6<br />
EXBlicks: Partisan<br />
Check out Matthias<br />
Ehlert, Lutz Pehnert<br />
and Adama Ulrich’s<br />
engrossing doc<br />
about Berlin’s most<br />
iconic theatre, the<br />
Volksbühne, and the<br />
25-year reign of<br />
trailblazing artistic<br />
director Frank Castorf.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 28, 20:00,<br />
Lichtblick Kino<br />
Zentralflughafen THF isn’t the<br />
Brazilian director’s first Berlin<br />
film (in 2011 he already paid<br />
tribute to his newfound Neukölln<br />
Heimat with Sonnenallee), but his first<br />
“classic documentary”, as he calls it.<br />
This engrossing feature works both<br />
as a tribute to the iconic airport, and<br />
a document of everyday life in the<br />
refugee camp inside it – with a result<br />
that some have called too cheerful<br />
to be accurate. Benefiting from the<br />
buzz surrounding the transformation<br />
of the old Nazi landmark into both<br />
a hipster hangout and an emergency<br />
refugee shelter, the film caught the<br />
limelight at this year’s Berlinale and<br />
again last month at Achtung Berlin.<br />
Hitting cinemas <strong>May</strong> 24, THF is set<br />
to find its audience among both concerned<br />
citizens and Berlin lovers.<br />
What drew you to Tempelhof<br />
as a topic? It kind of started in<br />
2014; I’m an architect and I’m<br />
actually addicted to airports, I love<br />
them [laughs]. The project was supposed<br />
to be an installation about<br />
the history of Berlin through the<br />
documentation of three airports in<br />
three different phases: Tempelhof,<br />
because it was discontinued; Tegel,<br />
because it was about to close; Berlin<br />
Brandenburg… well you know,<br />
WHAT’S ON — Film<br />
“ I’m actually addicted<br />
to airports”<br />
Karim Aïnouz on how he changed his focus<br />
from Berlin’s three airports to refugees.<br />
By Francesca Elsey<br />
that one that was supposed to open<br />
in 2011, because it was the future.<br />
What made you then focus solely<br />
on Tempelhof instead? Whilst<br />
we were waiting for permission to<br />
shoot inside the [three] airports, I<br />
started filming on Tempelhofer Feld.<br />
In the meantime, Tegel didn’t end up<br />
closing, and the people who had said<br />
yes originally at Berlin Brandenburg<br />
said no. Then one day [towards the<br />
end of 2015] I ended up going into<br />
the hangars because I heard refugees<br />
were living there. It felt very precarious;<br />
people had to take buses to go<br />
to the toilet, and because it was an<br />
emergency situation, the fate of the<br />
shelter inside was literally decided<br />
from one day to the next. I was really<br />
taken by the situation inside for<br />
two reasons; I found it quite ironic<br />
that these buildings and tents, built<br />
for military purposes, were housing<br />
people that were fleeing war. Then<br />
throughout the whole summer [of<br />
2015], I got mad at the way the refugee<br />
stories were told in the news – it<br />
made you feel like you were watching<br />
a sci-fi film where martians were attacking<br />
the planet. The only images I<br />
saw were people jumping from trains<br />
and crossing on boats. There was no<br />
images of the people actually living<br />
here and nothing showing how they<br />
were being hosted. So that was the<br />
trigger for the film you saw… I left the<br />
conceptual project behind and dove<br />
into filming Tempelhof.<br />
Was it easy to shoot inside?<br />
Not at all. The German media had<br />
been focusing on this picture from<br />
above with the cabins, and consequently<br />
neither the inhabitants,<br />
nor the organisation taking care of<br />
the camp, wanted cameras inside<br />
anymore, which I could understand.<br />
My initial feeling was, “I need to<br />
document this, this is an important<br />
moment in history”, but I had to wait<br />
until July 2016, when I finally got a<br />
permit to shoot for three hours at a<br />
time inside — I guess the topic<br />
wasn’t as hot anymore. I had<br />
been going inside for six months,<br />
so people trusted me.<br />
What did you want to show?<br />
It was important [for me to show]<br />
that it was an emergency shelter that<br />
became a home for people, so I wanted<br />
to follow a whole cycle, whether<br />
that be a year, or four seasons… we<br />
ended up shooting until August 2017.<br />
It was my first “classic” documentary,<br />
so I didn’t really know where I was going,<br />
but I just knew that it needed to<br />
be done for a certain period of time so<br />
that I could understand the process.<br />
How did you go about choosing<br />
your two protagonists, young<br />
Syrian Ibrahim and Qutaiba,<br />
the doctor/translator? I have to<br />
say that, until December 2016, I was<br />
still searching for my characters.<br />
With the attack on the Christmas<br />
market in Berlin in 2016, one of the<br />
first suspects was a guy living in<br />
Tempelhof. So the police went in<br />
and there was a massive break-in<br />
between December 19 and 21. But<br />
I felt I knew these kids, it was just<br />
so unlikely that one of them would<br />
have done this. They were accusing<br />
a guy from Pakistan and it felt like<br />
racial profiling, because the Pakistanis<br />
were among the most ‘lost’<br />
there. That’s when it became clear<br />
to me that the film should be about<br />
a young Arab man, and that’s when<br />
I started to follow Ibrahim. These<br />
men are sort of the devils of contemporary<br />
culture and I wanted to show<br />
a different side. Check exberliner.com<br />
for extended interview. n<br />
28<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
Festival previews<br />
WHAT’S ON — Film<br />
<strong>May</strong> 2-7 various venues. Full programme<br />
at visionaerfilmfestival.com<br />
Watkins’ world<br />
Acquaint yourself with the underseen<br />
political docudramas<br />
of Peter Watkins.<br />
G-EAZY<br />
09.05.18 · Columbiahalle<br />
ELISA<br />
10.05.18 · Frannz<br />
BAXTER DURY<br />
15.05.18 · Bi Nuu<br />
ALEX VARGAS<br />
16.05.18 · Bi Nuu<br />
Fresh auteur<br />
encounters<br />
Julia<br />
Visionär Film Festival scours the<br />
globe for under-the-radar talent.<br />
Returning for its second edition, the<br />
Visionär Film Festival continues<br />
to grow as a platform for emerging<br />
auteurs. The six-day fest will showcase nine<br />
debut and sophomore features in its competition<br />
strand, with films from four continents<br />
dealing with everything from immigration to<br />
Samba dancing. Several standouts depict the<br />
tribulations of young women. Elena Martin’s<br />
Julia Ist deftly captures the anxieties and awkwardness<br />
of cultural exchange, as a budding<br />
architect from Barcelona navigates Berlin<br />
as an Erasmus student. Meanwhile, Damien<br />
Manivel’s The Park follows French teens on a<br />
date; what starts off as a contemplative twohander<br />
unexpectedly morphs into a trancelike<br />
allegory about self-discovery, with shades<br />
of Eric Rohmer. Alexandra Latishev Salazar’s<br />
lean, hard-hitting Medea, about a student<br />
concealing her pregnancy, is evocative and<br />
subtly harrowing, with a compelling central<br />
performance from Liliana Biamonte. The<br />
icing on the cake is an homage to indie icon<br />
Agnès Varda, whose 1962 classic Cléo from 5 to<br />
7 opens the fest on 2 <strong>May</strong>. — DM<br />
This month, Wolf Kino aims to bring<br />
Berlin up to speed with an underappreciated<br />
cinematic pioneer. Peter<br />
Watkins has amassed a fiercely loyal following<br />
with his formally daring docudramas,<br />
but his work is rarely shown outside his<br />
native Britain. Kicking off this welcome<br />
retrospective are a pair of potent antiwar<br />
polemics commissioned by the BBC.<br />
Culloden (1964) is a bravura feature debut,<br />
which imagines that a modern camera crew<br />
was on hand to document the 1746 battle of<br />
Culloden, in which thousands of Jacobite<br />
soldiers were slaughtered. Meanwhile, The<br />
War Game (1965) envisages the nightmarish<br />
aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack on British<br />
soil. It’s so effective, the BBC deemed it<br />
“too horrific for the medium of broadcasting”,<br />
and shelved plans for transmission.<br />
Happily, subsequent theatrical screenings<br />
led to it winning an Oscar for best documentary<br />
feature in 1966. Other highlights<br />
include the depressingly relevant Punishment<br />
Park (1970), in which an authoritarian US<br />
government allows dissidents to be hunted<br />
for sport; and Edvard Munch (1974), an<br />
exquisite, epic biopic of the Norwegian Expressionist<br />
artist. Watkins himself will be in<br />
town for an English-language panel discussion<br />
on <strong>May</strong> 5, while lectures and workshops<br />
featuring Watkins scholars will provide<br />
broader context. — PO’C<br />
<strong>May</strong> 5-Jun 30 Wolf Kino. Full programme<br />
at wolfberlin.org<br />
Punishment Park<br />
WE ARE SCIENTISTS<br />
19.05.18 · Lido<br />
UNKNOWN MORTAL<br />
ORCHESTRA<br />
19.05.18 · Kesselhaus<br />
ANDY MCKEE<br />
21.05.18 · Columbia Theater<br />
THE DAMNED<br />
23.05.18 · SO36<br />
WINSTON SURFSHIRT<br />
23.05.18 · Urban Spree<br />
NATHAN GRAY<br />
24.05.18 · Heimathafen Neukölln<br />
SCARLXRD<br />
27.05.18 · Columbia Theater<br />
BABYLON CIRCUS<br />
30.05.18 · Columbia Theater<br />
ANDREA GIBSON<br />
07.06.18 · Lido<br />
HAIM<br />
08.06.18 · Columbiahalle<br />
KIEFER SUTHERLAND<br />
12.06.18 · Columbia Theater<br />
LEON BRIDGES<br />
04.07.18 · Huxleys<br />
D´ANGELO<br />
11.07.18 · Columbiahalle<br />
CAFÉ TACVBA<br />
24.07.18 · Astra Kulturhaus<br />
BAD RELIGION<br />
31.07.18 · Columbiahalle<br />
HILLTOP HOODS<br />
15.08.18 · SO36<br />
DE-PHAZZ<br />
05.09.18 · Lido<br />
JASON DERULO<br />
23.10.18 · UFO im Velodrom<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
WWW.TRINITYMUSIC.DE
WHAT’S ON — Music<br />
Editor’s Choice<br />
Battling for the<br />
right reasons<br />
The month, we take stock of the current state of hip hop in<br />
Germany as well as on the other side of the pond.<br />
By Michael Hoh<br />
Aldo Gutierrez Chacon<br />
MUSIC NEWS<br />
Going south<br />
Compiled by Rio<br />
de Janeiro native<br />
Ed Motta, the fifth<br />
volume of Markus<br />
Liesenfeld a.k.a. DJ<br />
Supermarkt’s Too<br />
Slow To Disco series<br />
goes Brazil. Out on<br />
City Slang, <strong>May</strong> 4<br />
Geo experiments<br />
After a pre-taster single,<br />
“Tar”, in February,<br />
Berlin experimental<br />
sound artist Lucrecia<br />
Dalt releases her geo<br />
inspired album<br />
Anticlines via Cargo<br />
Records on <strong>May</strong> 4<br />
Birthday bash<br />
Pop the corks!<br />
Chicks on Speed,<br />
which today comprises<br />
Alex Murray-<br />
Leslie and Melissa<br />
Logan, turned 20 last<br />
year, and throw a<br />
belated party at the<br />
Volks-bühne on<br />
<strong>May</strong> 10<br />
Is German hip hop in trouble? If<br />
you look at current mainstream<br />
media stories revolving around<br />
Kollegah and Farid Bang’s win at this<br />
year’s Echo, which awards Germany’s<br />
best-selling acts and albums,<br />
and the associated accusations of<br />
antisemitism, you might get that impression.<br />
TV channel WDR recently<br />
aired a documentary about the “dark<br />
side of German rap”, examining antisemitic<br />
tendencies in local scenes,<br />
and even for Bild the whole ordeal<br />
was welcoming front page fodder.<br />
German mainstream hip hop has<br />
certainly come a long way since Die<br />
Fantastischen Vier first blurted out<br />
their nonsensical “Die da?” rhymes<br />
all over MTV in the early 1990s. And<br />
with protagonists spewing misogynist,<br />
homophobic and antisemitic<br />
rhymes at their listeners, parts of the<br />
genre truly took a turn to the dark<br />
side, reinforcing outdated stereotypes<br />
presented as battle rap under<br />
the banner of artistic freedom. But<br />
given that the self-proclaimed Anti-<br />
Deutschrapper of Antilopen Gang<br />
also reigned the charts with their<br />
album Anarchie & Alltag, it seems<br />
that not all hope is lost. Or take Berlin<br />
rapper Ahzumjot, who will take<br />
the stage at Lido this month. On his<br />
latest album, he is more about Luft<br />
& Liebe than on-the-ground insult<br />
battle rap these days.<br />
But what about the state of<br />
hip hop in the United States?<br />
In Germany, hip hop falls behind<br />
rock, pop and Schlager on<br />
the country’s “favourite genre”<br />
list, but just looking at the last<br />
Grammy Awards, hip hop clearly<br />
spearheads mainstream music<br />
culture across the pond. Seun<br />
Kuti, who follows in the footsteps<br />
of his father, afrobeat pioneer Fela<br />
Kuti, taking the stage at Festsaal<br />
Kreuzberg this month together<br />
with Egypt 80 and his new album<br />
Black Times, has his doubts about<br />
the genre’s developments over the<br />
years: “There’s no distinguishing<br />
line between hip hop and pop,<br />
between gangsta rap and Celine<br />
Dion, with their autotune and all<br />
that,” he said in an interview with<br />
OkayAfrica. “I loved hip hop because<br />
I thought it was the music<br />
for change. The time for saying<br />
something relevant is gone.”<br />
That might ring true for the<br />
mainstream-y bulk, but luckily<br />
there’s more below the surface.<br />
Take Big Freedia (pictured), for<br />
instance, who made bounce<br />
music, a highly energetic hip hop<br />
subgenre, popular outside of the<br />
New Orleans city proper via a<br />
guest appearance on RuPaul’s 2013<br />
single “Peanut Butter”. Cross the<br />
Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans<br />
in a straight line and you’ll eventually<br />
hit Guatemala. There, Rebeca<br />
Lane is one of the most outspoken<br />
rappers against machismo and<br />
misogyny. In the past, the sociology<br />
graduate called out fellow MCs<br />
for misogynist raps in her song<br />
“Bandera Negra” and even offered<br />
workshops before her concerts to<br />
educate her audience about the<br />
political climate in Guatemala –<br />
talk about getting your money’s<br />
worth. And here’s a tip for all your<br />
clubbing needs: to dance away all<br />
that battle anger, don’t hesitate<br />
to check out Ratchet at St. Georg<br />
with Caramel Mafia and Shug La<br />
Sheedah - or Tasty at Schwuz with<br />
performances by Prens Emrah and<br />
Haidar Darwish, two of Berlin’s hip<br />
hop parties approaching the genre<br />
from a queer angle. n<br />
Ahzumjot <strong>May</strong> 4, 20:00 Lido, Kreuzberg | Ratchet <strong>May</strong> 5, 23:30 St. Georg, Kreuzberg<br />
| Rebeca Lane <strong>May</strong> 7, 20:00 Kantine am Berghain, Friedrichshain | Tasty<br />
<strong>May</strong> 11, 23:00 Schwuz, Neukölln | Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 <strong>May</strong> 19, 20:00 Festsaal<br />
Kreuzberg, Treptow | Big Freedia <strong>May</strong> 22, 21:00 Club Gretchen, Kreuzberg<br />
30<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Music<br />
Quote<br />
Tobias Bamborschke<br />
/ Isolation Berlin<br />
“In Berlin, not everyone you meet engages you in conversation<br />
or is overly friendly. I’ve never been a very communicative person,<br />
but here it often used to feel like I was invisible. It was<br />
a very anonymous experience amongst this mass of people.<br />
I went to the clubs, I really gave it a shot. But I just didn’t feel<br />
comfortable in the party scene. Not being a fan of electronic music<br />
didn’t help either. When you’re surrounded by party people and you<br />
feel uncomfortable, you become this sad foreign body that everyone<br />
finds almost revolting because you’re such a buzzkill. I had friends<br />
who thrived exclusively within the party scene. I became estranged<br />
from them because I didn’t fit in. All that can make you feel very lost<br />
and isolated.<br />
But how do you escape the city if you only have the money to buy<br />
pasta and tomato sauce? If you can barely make it out of bed, how<br />
are you supposed to find the energy to hitchhike to Italy? Sitting at<br />
home, however, is the worst thing you can do. It’s better to just start<br />
walking somewhere, aimlessly. To take the S-Bahn, get off and just<br />
walk. It calms you down. I do it constantly. I have my regular routes,<br />
but I also try to discover new places. I walk until I don’t feel like it<br />
anymore, then I take a train home.<br />
Of course, with our success, I’m recognised more often in<br />
the streets these days, and that makes me almost laugh out<br />
loud. Isolation Berlin, my ass.”<br />
Isolation Berlin <strong>May</strong> 12, 20:00, Astra Kulturhaus, Friedrichshain<br />
Noel Richter<br />
CineStarCARD<br />
BENEFIT # 2<br />
EVERY<br />
11 th TICKET<br />
FOR FREE! *<br />
Tips<br />
Clubbing<br />
Buttons Garden Opening Berliners tend to get a little<br />
freaky when the sun finally emerges from behind the<br />
clouds. About Blank is no different, celebrating with a<br />
three-day garden opening. <strong>May</strong> 18, 23:59<br />
Lazytapes Boasting anything but a lazy 4/4 beat, join<br />
Peder Mannerfelt, Cera Khin and Ossia for all your experimental<br />
dancing needs at Ohm. <strong>May</strong> 25, 23:30<br />
Kasper Bjørke Whether it’s laid back ambient or deep<br />
house, versatile Kasper Bjørke is a crowd pleaser. At Chalet<br />
he will once again get behind the decks. <strong>May</strong> 26, 23:59<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
Even more benefits:<br />
Film of the Week from 5 €<br />
Save at CineLady & Co.<br />
Save on snacks and drinks<br />
Get your free CineStarCARD:<br />
at the box office, via CineStarApp<br />
or at cinestar.de!<br />
* Average turnover from 10 purchased tickets incl. snacks at a total value of 125 €.
WHAT’S ON — Music<br />
DON’T MISS<br />
The Monochrome Set<br />
The decade sincethe<br />
art-punk pioneers<br />
regrouped in<br />
2008 marks one of<br />
their most prolific<br />
periods yet. They<br />
take the stage at<br />
Monarch with<br />
their 14th album<br />
Maisieworld in tow.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 5, 20:00<br />
Oh Yeah! Berlin<br />
Pop Women<br />
Witness the mesmerising<br />
sound experiments<br />
of Gudrun<br />
Gut and Joachim<br />
Irmler at Museum für<br />
Kommunikation. Also<br />
performing: Barbara<br />
Morgenstern.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 8, 21:00<br />
Exploded View<br />
Frontwoman Anika<br />
once contributed<br />
vocals to Geoff<br />
Barrow of Portis<br />
head’s band<br />
BEAK>. After a few<br />
synthy solo releases,<br />
you can see her<br />
latest collaborative<br />
project, Exploded<br />
View, live at Roter<br />
Salon. <strong>May</strong> 24,<br />
20:00<br />
Freak Heat Waves<br />
With their latest<br />
album Beyond XXXL,<br />
Freak Heat Waves’<br />
synth-laden postpunk<br />
sound just<br />
turned a little noisier.<br />
Catch them live at<br />
Internet Explorer.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 27, 20:00<br />
Interview<br />
“Something has to change”<br />
Rachael Wright<br />
While preparing for imminent fatherhood,<br />
Kele Okereke discovered his love for folk on<br />
his third solo album Fatherland. By Michael Hoh<br />
In 2010, many were caught by<br />
surprise when Bloc Party frontman<br />
Kele Okereke shared his<br />
debut solo album The Boxer, swapping<br />
distorted indie rock for electronic<br />
dance music. After making a name<br />
for himself as a DJ and releasing the<br />
house-y follow-up Trick in 2014, Kele<br />
changed gear again. He said goodbye<br />
to clubbing and settled down in<br />
South London with his partner and<br />
newborn daughter Savannah. In the<br />
process, he found a new outlet in<br />
folk music. We talked to Kele about<br />
writing his third solo record Fatherland<br />
before his show at Silent Green<br />
Kulturquartier on <strong>May</strong> 4.<br />
You wrote Fatherland in 2016.<br />
Why didn’t you release it then?<br />
I went to Justin [Harris], Bloc Party’s<br />
bass player’s studio in Portland. We<br />
recorded it all in 10 days. Then, in<br />
the process of mixing the record, the<br />
world changed: I was heartbroken<br />
when Britain decided to leave the<br />
EU; when Trump was elected. There<br />
was a sense of optimism fading. It<br />
was weird for me then to promote<br />
this album knowing that it’s speaking<br />
about this tranquil phase whilst the<br />
rest of the world is not tranquil at all.<br />
I’ve never felt more frightened about<br />
how things are than I do right now. It<br />
feels slightly incongruous, this album.<br />
But the beauty of music is that it’s forever.<br />
It might be fun to rediscover this<br />
album in 10, 20 years time. It might<br />
make more sense.<br />
So, your next album will be<br />
straight-up political? Mixing music<br />
and politics is a very difficult thing. I<br />
don’t think many people do it well. It<br />
takes a lot of skill to be able to write<br />
about what is happening in the world.<br />
I cringe a little when complex ideas<br />
get reduced to soundbites. Over the<br />
years, I have tried to write how I see<br />
the world, and that’s the most important<br />
thing. As long as you’re writing<br />
from an authentic place, telling your<br />
struggles, I think it’s worthwhile.<br />
Is “Grounds for Resentment”–<br />
a gay love song – still a taboo in<br />
many places? We don’t exist in<br />
an apolitical vacuum. Just because<br />
I’m writing a song about same-sex<br />
desire doesn’t make that any more<br />
political than heterosexual pop stars<br />
and how they see the world. There<br />
might be a spotlight shone on me<br />
because my view isn’t the dominant<br />
mainstream view.<br />
How did you make the transition<br />
from house to folk? Making Trick, I<br />
really immersed myself in club culture<br />
and nightlife, staying out until five in<br />
the morning. I knew when I finished<br />
touring that record, I wanted to go<br />
inwards to make something away<br />
from the dance floor. Having spent<br />
the lesser part of my teenage years<br />
deriding folk music, I suddenly had a<br />
real yearning to listen to singer-songwriter<br />
music like Joni Mitchell, Elliott<br />
Smith, Nick Drake; this incredibly<br />
powerful music framed by a voice and<br />
a story. Fatherland was a way for me to<br />
confront some of the prejudices I had.<br />
I couldn’t stand the music my parents<br />
listened to, like Afrobeat, highlife, the<br />
motown and soul they’d play in the<br />
car, it was something I really tried to<br />
move away from. Now it’s the music<br />
I’m most excited to listen to.<br />
Many of your lyrics deal with<br />
turning points. Even though<br />
Savannah hadn’t been born, I knew<br />
that it was coming. When I think<br />
of this album, it feels like saying<br />
goodbye to a period in my life and<br />
trying to prepare for what would<br />
come next. That’s why there are<br />
so many songs about relationships<br />
ending, having to cut people out<br />
of my life. As a lyricist, I’ve always<br />
been fascinated by the point where<br />
what is happening on the inside<br />
overcomes what is happening on the<br />
outside; when the body realises that<br />
enough is enough, and something<br />
has to change. n<br />
Kele <strong>May</strong> 4, 20:00 Silent Green<br />
Kulturquartier, Wedding<br />
32 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Music<br />
Tips<br />
Classical and Contemporary<br />
Reddress Mixing violin and live electronics, the title is key<br />
to this concert as you literally witness it from the pockets<br />
and pouches of a red garment designed by Aamu<br />
Song and worn by violinist Pekka Kuusisto at Pierre<br />
Boulez Saal. <strong>May</strong> 29-Jun 1, 19:30<br />
Lillenorge This three-day festival at Radialsystem V stages<br />
multi-genre concerts from classical music to folk<br />
with performers from Norway, South Korea and<br />
Germany. <strong>May</strong> 25, 23:30<br />
Philharmonika You’re neither a sailor nor into German<br />
Volksmusik? Then the sound of an accordion is most<br />
likely not part of your Spotify playlist. You can make up<br />
for that at the Philharmonie. <strong>May</strong> 26, 18:00<br />
Preview<br />
All things A/V<br />
From 4D live shows to whizzing drones,<br />
MIRA and the BVMAs have your<br />
audiovisual needs covered.<br />
This year marks the second iteration of MIRA, the<br />
Barcelona-originating digital arts festival spin-off at<br />
Funkhaus Berlin. Aiming to uncover the latest tech<br />
trends and developments on the digital culture front, the festival<br />
presents an ambitious line-up packed into one single day.<br />
Under the banner of “Emotions, Diversity and Social Change”,<br />
the festival features electro and audio-visual-heavy live shows<br />
by Aïsha Devi, Forest Swords, Laurel Halo, Yves Tumor and<br />
more, in addition to a variety of DJ sets and performances in<br />
the 4DSOUND-equipped MONOM space by Eomac, WaqWaq<br />
Kingdom as well as installations by Thomas Ankersmit and<br />
others. MIRA will be rounded off by a conference programme<br />
focussing on “diversity and gender in music, digital art and<br />
technology” with Berlin-based Lyra Pramuk and a lecture<br />
by Shigeru Ishihara on the correlation between music<br />
and instincts.<br />
Taking over Club Gretchen and the former silent movie<br />
theatre Delphi, the Berlin Music Video Awards similarly celebrate<br />
the merging of audio with the visual. Held since 2013<br />
and spread over four consecutive days, the BMVAs screen and<br />
award the best out of 133 submissions in categories as disparate<br />
as “most trashy” and “best VFX”. The award ceremony is<br />
flanked by live shows and DJ sets, O-SHiN, Brunettes Shoot<br />
Blondes and Jylda to name a few, as well as networking sessions<br />
and, believe it or not, a drone operating workshop. If<br />
drones are not up your alley, why not join the after party at<br />
Toast Hawaii, hosted by the always glittering<br />
Cherry-O-Kie karaoke group. — MH<br />
MIRA Festival <strong>May</strong> 5, Funkhaus Berlin | Berlin Music Video<br />
Awards <strong>May</strong> 23-26, Club Gretchen/Delphi, for full programming,<br />
check mirafestivalberlin.com and berlinmva.com<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
ALTERNATIVE MUSIC AND ART AFTER 1968<br />
15.3.–6. 5.<strong>2018</strong><br />
www.adk.de/underground-improvisation<br />
29.08.<br />
In cooperation with<br />
Funded by<br />
HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES<br />
JOE PERRY, ALICE COOPER & JOHNNY DEPP<br />
24.07.<br />
02.07.<br />
12.06.<br />
RUNRIG<br />
SWEET<br />
LENNY KRAVITZ<br />
A PERFECT CIRCLE<br />
NENA<br />
MASSIVE ATTACK<br />
NINE INCH NAILS<br />
BILLY IDOL<br />
AMY MACDONALD<br />
JACK JOHNSON<br />
JOAN BAEZ<br />
STEEL PANTHER<br />
13.08.<br />
WWW.CITADEL-MUSIC-FESTIVAL.DE<br />
29.07.<br />
07.06.<br />
22.06.<br />
ARCADE FIRE<br />
SAVAS & SIDO<br />
SANTANA<br />
MILKY CHANCE<br />
A-HA<br />
FAT FREDDY´S DROP<br />
Funded by<br />
MICHAEL PATRICK KELLY<br />
09.06.<br />
105‘5 SPREERADIO PRIVATKONZERT<br />
17.08.<br />
21.08.<br />
105‘5 SPREERADIO PRIVATKONZERT<br />
19.07.<br />
ZITADELLE | BERLIN<br />
AM JULIUSTURM 64 · DE-13599 BERLIN<br />
AUSVERKAUFT!<br />
AUSVERKAUFT!<br />
AUSVERKAUFT!<br />
15.08.<br />
25.07.<br />
06.08.<br />
18.08.<br />
29.06.<br />
17.06.<br />
24.08.<br />
04.06.<br />
Media Partners<br />
Berlin
GIG<br />
LISTINGS<br />
April<br />
YOUR GUIDE TO CONCERTS<br />
AND EVENTS THIS MONTH<br />
AND BEYOND.<br />
präsentiert von<br />
THE EARLY DAYS, BRIT POP & BEYOND 1980-2010<br />
04.05.<strong>2018</strong> | LIDO | British.Music.Club | King Kong Kicks | Karrera Klub DJs<br />
22 JAHRE KARRERA KLUB<br />
09.05.<strong>2018</strong> | Bohnengold | Free Entry<br />
DJs | Tim | Spencer | Christian & Herr Lhmnn<br />
ISAAC GRACIE<br />
08.05.<strong>2018</strong> | BI NUU<br />
CITY CALM DOWN<br />
28.05.<strong>2018</strong> | PRIVATCLUB<br />
CAR SEAT HEADREST<br />
31.05.<strong>2018</strong> | FESTSAAL KREUZBERG<br />
COURTNEY BARNETT<br />
11.06.<strong>2018</strong> | ASTRA KULTURHAUS<br />
BURT BACHARACH<br />
14.07.<strong>2018</strong> | ADMIRALSPALAST<br />
I HEART SHARKS<br />
15.09.<strong>2018</strong> | LIDO<br />
Info & Tickets: www.karreraklub.de<br />
THE BEACHES<br />
22.05.<strong>2018</strong> | MUSIK UND FRIEDEN<br />
ROLLING BLACKOUTS<br />
COASTAL FEVER<br />
29.05.<strong>2018</strong> | LIDO<br />
Dylyn<br />
20.05.18 Kantine am Berghain<br />
And You Will Know Us<br />
By The Trail Of Dead<br />
11.06.18 Bi Nuu<br />
Mystic Braves &<br />
The Creation Factory<br />
08.08.18 Musik & Frieden<br />
S.Carey<br />
21.09.18 Privatclub<br />
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks<br />
29.10.18 Lido<br />
Neko Case<br />
01.11.18 Bi Nuu<br />
Tunng<br />
04.11.18 Lido<br />
Plusmacher<br />
10.11.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg<br />
The War On Drugs<br />
10.12.18 Verti Music Hall<br />
Ariel Pink<br />
06.08.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg<br />
Scott Matthew<br />
13.05.18 Heimathafen Neukölln<br />
Nakhane<br />
21.05.18 Kantine am Berghain<br />
Johnny Marr<br />
21.05.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg<br />
Sam Vance-Law<br />
26.10.18 Lido<br />
TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE<br />
TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE<br />
JaPanese BreakfasT<br />
09.05.18 Marie-Antoinette<br />
Cavern of anti-Matter<br />
suPPorT: ulrika sPacek<br />
20.05.18 Volksbühne<br />
frankie CosMos<br />
suPPorT: The goon sax<br />
22.05.18 Kantine am Berghain<br />
PaLM<br />
26.05.18 Urban Spree<br />
Pere uBu<br />
28.05.18 Frannz Club<br />
sCreaMing feMaLes<br />
29.05.18 Kantine am Berghain<br />
haBiBi<br />
30.05.18 Arkaoda<br />
The sea & cake<br />
31.05.18 Frannz Club<br />
LoMa<br />
18.06.18 Musik & Frieden<br />
la luZ<br />
02.10.18 Musik & Frieden<br />
DaMien JUraDo<br />
08.10.18 Heimathafen Neukölln<br />
ryley Walker<br />
06.11.18 Frannz Club<br />
TICKETS & INFO: Puschen.neT<br />
naP eyes<br />
02.05.18 Monarch<br />
kaTie von schleicher<br />
07.05.18 Monarch<br />
The Wave PicTures<br />
15.05.18 Privatclub<br />
suPerchunk<br />
02.06.18 Quasimodo<br />
PreoccuPaTions<br />
07.06.18 Musik & Frieden<br />
SchneidersLaden presents<br />
damien dempsey - candice gordon - nina hynes - tau<br />
richie heffernan - dee mulrooney - fontaines<br />
john connors - mary kelly - a.s.fanning<br />
eva garland - turloch o broin<br />
steppenkind - pearly<br />
& many more...<br />
Berlin in English since 2002<br />
music<br />
visual art<br />
theatre - film<br />
poetry - dance<br />
lock-in sing song<br />
sunday brunch wake<br />
alternative Irish music & arts festival<br />
craw spectacle & carnival<br />
22-24 june KultstätteKeller - Neukölln www.craw.space<br />
SELAH SUE<br />
Di. 05.06. Einlass 19:00 Festsaal Kreuzberg<br />
Fritz präsentiert:<br />
KATY PERRY<br />
WITNESS: The Tour<br />
Mi. 06.06. Einlass 18:00 Mercedes-Benz-Arena<br />
Rolling Stone & Radio Eins präsentieren:<br />
DAVID BYRNE<br />
Mi. 27.06. Einlass 18:30 Tempodrom<br />
intro & FluxFM präsentieren:<br />
DIE ANTWOORD<br />
support: Moonbootica<br />
Di. 14.08. Einlass 17:00 Parkbühne Wuhlheide<br />
DEATHPROD<br />
Mi. 24.10. Einlass 20:00 Berghain<br />
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com<br />
tickets > www.tickets.de und 030-6110 1313<br />
SUPER<br />
BOOTH<br />
18<br />
UMPF,<br />
TAKA, TAKA,<br />
BAM BAM BAM,<br />
BRZZZ,<br />
SCHIIEH,<br />
RÖDDER,<br />
MPFMPF, MPF,<br />
PIIEP,<br />
MÖÖP,<br />
LABA,<br />
PALAVA,<br />
SCHINGE-<br />
LINGELING!<br />
03 - 05 MAI<br />
FEZ BERLIN<br />
Moby<br />
Dick<br />
based on the novel by<br />
Herman Melville<br />
Opening night 26 <strong>May</strong><br />
Direction: Jacob Höhne<br />
Music: Andreas Spechtl<br />
Puppetry: Das Helmi<br />
with English surtitles<br />
34 EXBERLINER 155<br />
www.rambazamba-theater.de
WHAT’S ON — Stage<br />
THEATER-<br />
TREFFEN<br />
MAY 4-21<br />
Mittelreich, Judith Buss<br />
A crumbling bastion<br />
of the White Male?<br />
The Berliner Festspiele continues its march<br />
to a more diverse Theatertreffen. By Daniel Mufson<br />
Editor’s Choice<br />
It’s back – Berlin’s Theatertreffen,<br />
the spring theatre festival<br />
that’s been showcasing the 10<br />
most “notable” productions per season<br />
in the German-speaking world<br />
since 1964. The festival’s stated mission<br />
has not overtly changed over<br />
the years, but it has made important<br />
reforms in response to certain<br />
criticisms, like adding a side-section<br />
that highlighs new voices (The<br />
Stückemarkt) to remedy an obvious<br />
neglect of new plays in favour<br />
of big stage classics. The festival<br />
has also become more diverse: four<br />
members of this year’s (admittedly<br />
all-white) seven person jury are<br />
women; four of the 10 productions<br />
had a female director or playwright;<br />
and, for the second year, it’s hosting<br />
a festival within a festival under the<br />
English motto “Shifting Perspectives,”<br />
which seems to deliberately<br />
counteract the historical whiteness<br />
of Theatertreffen with two performances<br />
from the Middle East, two<br />
from Africa, one from Brazil, and<br />
one from Singapore. And it just<br />
so happens that three of the most<br />
intriguing productions this year are<br />
breaking that white male template.<br />
Most salient of all is Mittelreich,<br />
directed by Anta Helena Recke, a<br />
German woman of colour. Mittelreich<br />
was a musical stage adaptation<br />
of a novel that traces a family<br />
of Bavarian innkeepers through<br />
several generations, originally<br />
directed by Anna-Sophie Mahler<br />
and invited to the Theatertreffen<br />
two years ago. Recke has created an<br />
exact copy of that production but<br />
cast actors of colour to take all the<br />
roles in an attempt to subvert the<br />
normative gaze of white German<br />
theatergoers. It’s a must-see if for<br />
no other reason than to understand<br />
the fervent critical controversy it<br />
inspired at its Munich premiere<br />
last October.<br />
In Beute Frauen Krieg, director<br />
Karin Henkel tells the story of the<br />
Trojan War from the perspective<br />
of women who suffer its consequences,<br />
making use of contemporary<br />
adaptations of Euripides’<br />
The Trojan Women and Iphigenia at<br />
Aulis. Different actresses take turns<br />
at playing Helena and Iphigenia,<br />
recalling a cascade of female tribulations<br />
and casting accusations at<br />
the men they blame for them. The<br />
production’s highlight may well<br />
be seeing its German actresses<br />
deploy their techniques alongside<br />
the dynamic Brit Kate Strong,<br />
who started dancing with the likes<br />
of William Forsythe and Johann<br />
Kresnick but has for years been<br />
rocking Germany’s spoken theatre<br />
with her charisma – appearing in<br />
multiple productions that have<br />
been invited to the Theatertreffen.<br />
(She performs in English in this bilingual<br />
production). Finally, Nobel<br />
prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek takes<br />
aim at more than just the patriarchy<br />
in Am Königsweg (The Royal<br />
Road), directed here with a lively<br />
touch by Falk Richter. Written<br />
in the wake of Trump’s election,<br />
the play is less an excoriation of<br />
ignorant, crass authoritarians<br />
(although that’s there) and more<br />
an examination of the inability<br />
of those who know better to stop<br />
them, with Europe coming under<br />
the microscope, too. Between<br />
these three Theatertreffen plays<br />
and the non-European offerings of<br />
“Shifting Perspectives”, you might<br />
finish the festival feeling pessimistic<br />
about the white patriarchies<br />
they critique in the world at large,<br />
but optimistic that at least one<br />
bastion of white patriarchy, the<br />
Theatertreffen itself, seems to<br />
be evolving, however slowly, into<br />
something else. ■<br />
Beute Frauen Krieg <strong>May</strong> 6,7,8 Rathenau Hallen | Mittelreich <strong>May</strong> 17, 18 (with<br />
English surtitles) Deutsches Theater | Am Königsweg <strong>May</strong> 12, 13 (with English<br />
surtitles) Haus der Berliner Festspiele<br />
DON’T MISS<br />
Am Königsweg<br />
Diehard fans of<br />
Elfriede Jelinek will<br />
want to check out<br />
this staging of her<br />
new Trump-inspired<br />
play at the Deutsches<br />
Theater, directed<br />
by Stephan Kimmig,<br />
in order to compare<br />
it to the Falk Richter<br />
staging invited to<br />
the Theatertreffen.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 7, 13 (with<br />
English surtitles)<br />
The Players<br />
The Sophiensaele is<br />
hosting Haifa-born<br />
choreographer Edan<br />
Gorlicki’s exploration<br />
of gambling and<br />
showmanship, which<br />
won the jury and audience<br />
awards at the<br />
6 tage frei festival<br />
in Stuttgart.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 9, 19:30<br />
Potsdamer Tanztage<br />
Potsdam’s international<br />
dance festival<br />
is in its 28th year,<br />
offering dance and<br />
musical performances<br />
as well as<br />
workshops ranging<br />
in style from dance<br />
acrobatics to<br />
Bollywood.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 29-Jun 10<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong> 35
WHAT’S ON — Stage<br />
DON’T MISS<br />
Eddie Izzard<br />
UK Labour party apparatchik,<br />
writer, actor<br />
and comedian<br />
Eddie Izzard is bringing<br />
his latest standup<br />
to the Quatsch<br />
Comedy Club,<br />
performing it first<br />
in German, and<br />
then immediately<br />
afterwards in<br />
English. Show-off.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 7-12, 14-20<br />
The Encounter<br />
Renowned British<br />
theatre director<br />
Simon McBurney is<br />
staging himself at<br />
the Schaubühne in a<br />
solo work that makes<br />
heavy use of audio<br />
technology to tell<br />
the true story of the<br />
odd encounter of an<br />
American photographer<br />
and Brazil’s<br />
<strong>May</strong>oruna tribe in<br />
1969. <strong>May</strong> 17-20<br />
(in English)<br />
Loving the Alien<br />
– The Musical<br />
This glam rock musical<br />
along the lines of<br />
Rocky Horror Picture<br />
Show follows the<br />
exploits of glam rock<br />
alien Ziggy’s younger<br />
brother Iggy – and<br />
was a big hit when it<br />
premiered last July.<br />
Now it’s back at<br />
Monster Ronson’s<br />
Ichiban Karaoke.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 2-4 (in English)<br />
Volker Hartmann<br />
Interview<br />
Society from<br />
the passenger seat<br />
Rimini Protokoll’s Helgard Haug discusses the<br />
collective’s latest back-of-a-truck production<br />
By Daniel Mufson<br />
Berlin-based documentary<br />
dramatists Rimini Protokoll<br />
have been creating existential<br />
exercises for the stage under the<br />
collective name since 2000. Founded<br />
by Germans Helgard Haug and Daniel<br />
Wetzel along with the Swiss Stefan<br />
Kaegi, they have a knack for putting<br />
“real people” on stage to tell their own<br />
stories. And while they’re no strangers<br />
to traditional venues the world, or<br />
rather Berlin, is also their stage, producing<br />
urban tours delivered via headset<br />
(Remote X) or packing the audience<br />
onto the back of a moving truck with a<br />
transparent wall (as in Cargo X, Truck<br />
Tracks Ruhr, and now again in Do’s and<br />
Don’ts: A journey through every trick in<br />
the city.) Helgard Haug met with us<br />
to discuss putting audiences back on<br />
that truck, this time guided by children<br />
explaining how Berlin is governed by<br />
rules – and their limits.<br />
What’s the fascination with this<br />
truck? It’s our little mobile venue.<br />
About 50 audience members sit in<br />
three rows and look through the window.<br />
Driving through a city, you see<br />
in detail what its society is like. It’s a<br />
perfect tool for examining its different<br />
realities. Cargo X was about the lives<br />
and perspectives of two Romanian logistics<br />
truck drivers. For Truck Tracks<br />
Ruhr, we invited 49 artists working in<br />
seven different cities to create works<br />
at different locations. And now we’re<br />
looking at the “rules” of cities, from<br />
the perspective of two kids.<br />
What are the kids like?<br />
The younger kid is 10 and she’s<br />
fascinated by rules – even advising<br />
the grown ups to stop when there is a<br />
red light. We start the tour from her<br />
perspective as she gets to know the<br />
city and understand its rules: laws,<br />
taboos, traditions. With her, we drive<br />
up to a huge construction site and<br />
imagine what would happen if this<br />
area were sold to a private company<br />
like Google or Microsoft in order to<br />
create their smart cities with rules<br />
that are totally determined by them<br />
and not the state. Later, there’s a<br />
17-year-old in a completely different<br />
frame of mind. A very political guy,<br />
he’s questioning those rules, remarking<br />
how stupid they are. He considers<br />
places that show where we might be<br />
headed, like Bahnhof Südkreuz, which<br />
has a very sophisticated surveillance<br />
system. It was very touching to learn<br />
how excluded he feels from the city,<br />
which he sees as lacking free and<br />
open space. The truck driver, the<br />
third party in this piece, always finds<br />
very clever solutions and knows how<br />
he can stretch every rule in a way that<br />
finally meets his demands.<br />
Hanna Lippmann<br />
What made you think of using<br />
a 10-year-old’s points of view?<br />
How much did you influence<br />
what she says? We always think<br />
about whose eyes or whose body we<br />
are using to tell a story. There are always<br />
fictional lines, and we work together<br />
to condense and shape a narrative.<br />
We look for certain types, in<br />
this case a young person with strong<br />
ideas about rules. But it’s still her<br />
own story; her mother comes from<br />
Argentina and so many of her stories<br />
compare life there with Berlin.<br />
But is she even familiar with the<br />
parts of the city she’s guiding us<br />
through? She lives in Kreuzberg, so<br />
when we start at the HAU 1, we’re in<br />
her neighbourhood. But then we go<br />
to Hermannplatz; that’s a place she<br />
wouldn’t go to on her own, because<br />
she’s a little afraid of what she’s<br />
observed there. But we insist on going<br />
there and prompting her to actually get<br />
off the truck. She wouldn’t naturally<br />
do so and the contrast is interesting.<br />
You said yourself that your authenticity<br />
is “prearranged”; similarly,<br />
you don’t fact-check your experts’<br />
stories. Is faux authenticity your<br />
aim? No, it’s not at all about fakery. It<br />
is perhaps on the contrary, concerned<br />
with personal truth, about a person’s<br />
perception of themselves. Fact-checking<br />
is something you must do if you<br />
are a journalist, but as playwrights and<br />
directors, we have a certain license to<br />
play with truth and fiction.<br />
DO’s & DON’Ts – A journey<br />
through every trick in the city<br />
<strong>May</strong> 3-5, 7-9, 11, 12, 14-17, 22, 23, 25,<br />
26, 28-30 (German or German with<br />
English translation), starts and<br />
ends at HAU1<br />
36<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Stage<br />
PALMYRA<br />
by bertandnasi<br />
Preview<br />
I love you, you’re perfect, now change<br />
Two stage adaptations struggle<br />
to improve on their sources<br />
Adapting films and books for the<br />
stage is a bit like marrying someone<br />
you see as a fixer-upper: you<br />
love them so much, you just want to<br />
prove how much better they’d be if they<br />
were a little different. Not a great foundation<br />
for a marriage, and maybe not for a<br />
stage production, either. Films pose more<br />
problems than books: Our familiarity with<br />
successful movies makes it hard for stage<br />
actors to make characters their own. And<br />
then the nagging question: why adapt in<br />
the first place?<br />
Two works struggling to answer that<br />
question right now are Kinder des Paradieses,<br />
the Berliner Ensemble’s adaptation of<br />
Marcel Carné’s 1945 French film classic,<br />
and the Deutsches Theater Kammerspiele’s<br />
staging of Medea. Stimmen, a novel<br />
by Christa Wolf. Les Enfants du Paradis,<br />
filmed in occupied France as World War<br />
II came to a close, has undeniable appeal<br />
to theatre folk: most of its characters<br />
are stage performers, as its plot revolves<br />
around three men – Baptiste, a mime;<br />
Frédérick, an actor; and Pierre-François, a<br />
crime boss – in love with Garance, whose<br />
main activity seems to be dealing with her<br />
suitors. The allure of the film’s milieu is<br />
heightened by the story of its making –<br />
produced under Nazi surveillance with a<br />
gay director, a Jewish set designer and film<br />
composer, and a lead actress romantically<br />
involved with a German Luftwaffe officer.<br />
Director Ola Mafaalani tries to stage both<br />
stories, presenting long stretches of the<br />
film broken up by scenes that detail the<br />
off-screen drama of Arletty, the actress<br />
whose love affair landed her in jail for collaboration.<br />
But there’s too much material<br />
here to treat it all equally: Mafaalani ends<br />
up shortchanging Arletty’s story to recapitulate<br />
most of the film, which doesn’t<br />
benefit from recapitulation.<br />
Director Tilmann Köhler has a slightly<br />
easier task at the DT Kammerspiele.<br />
Christa Wolf’s novel, based on the story<br />
best known to us through Euripides’<br />
play, is itself structured as a series of<br />
first-person narratives presenting the<br />
perspectives of different characters – a<br />
series of monologues, in other words. In<br />
that sense, the book was almost begging<br />
to be staged, and the text undoubtedly<br />
deserves high rank in the tradition of<br />
reinterpreted Greek tragedies: Medea, as<br />
Wolf reimagines her, was no perpetrator<br />
of infanticide but was set up to appear as<br />
such by a xenophobic Corinthian political<br />
elite that panicked when Medea started<br />
prying too deeply into its secrets. The<br />
production benefits from Karoly Risz’s<br />
beautifully simple set design of a shallow<br />
pool of water taking up almost the entire<br />
stage and casting shadows of ripples<br />
against the back wall; the puppetry used<br />
to represent the children is even more<br />
affecting. Beyond Maren Eggert’s poised<br />
Medea, however, the acting is surprisingly<br />
uneven: Edgar Eckert’s Jason huffs and<br />
puffs but doesn’t blow anything down,<br />
and Helmut Mooshammer as one of<br />
Creon’s soothsayers needs to find a facial<br />
expression beyond raising an eyebrow<br />
and bulging his eyes. But at least one can<br />
see why the novel belongs on stage – as an<br />
important addition to a dialogue with<br />
our inherited Medeas. — DM<br />
Kinder des Paradieses HH<br />
<strong>May</strong> 20, 19:30 (with English surtitles)<br />
Berliner Ensemble | Medea.Stimmen<br />
HHH <strong>May</strong> 4, 11, 26, 20:00 (with<br />
English surtitles) Deutsches Theater<br />
MOUTHPIECE<br />
by<br />
Quote<br />
Unquote<br />
Collective<br />
(Canada)<br />
etb<br />
International Performing Arts Center<br />
Two German premieres of the<br />
very best of the 2017 Edinburgh<br />
Fringe Festival at ETB | IPAC<br />
<strong>May</strong> | June, <strong>2018</strong><br />
ETBERLIN.DE<br />
Arno Declair<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Art<br />
Editor’s Choice<br />
Between the storms<br />
Three Berlin exhibitions chronicle the peril and prosperity<br />
that befell the city during the interwar era. By Anna Larkin<br />
George Grosz Schönheit, Dich Will Ich Preisen<br />
ART NEWS<br />
Growing the Gropius<br />
Stephanie Rosenthal,<br />
the Gropius Bau’s<br />
new director, has<br />
announced her<br />
plans for a series<br />
of “architectural interventions”<br />
at the<br />
museum, including<br />
an expanded atrium,<br />
new bookshop and<br />
restaurant alongside<br />
“innovative exhibition<br />
formats”.<br />
Free Hamburger<br />
Since April 5 entry<br />
to Berlin’s Hamburger<br />
Bahnhof is<br />
free of charge on<br />
the first Thursday<br />
of every month for<br />
a whole four hours<br />
(16-20). Sponsored<br />
by Volkswagen, the<br />
VOLKSWAGEN ART 4<br />
ALL scheme will run<br />
until April 2019.<br />
New Humboldt head?<br />
Scheduled to open in<br />
2019, the Humboldt<br />
Forum may have a<br />
new Director. Nominated<br />
by Culture<br />
Minister Monika<br />
Grütters, Berliner<br />
Hartmut Dorgerloh<br />
has been Director<br />
of the Prussian<br />
Palaces and Gardens<br />
Foundation Berlin-<br />
Brandenburg<br />
since 2002.<br />
After World War I, the Weimar<br />
Republic publicly advocated<br />
cultural liberalism in Germany,<br />
but by 1933 artists and movements<br />
such as abstract expressionism were<br />
denounced by the ruling Nazi regime.<br />
Berlin’s interwar period, 1918–1938,<br />
was at once a cosmopolitan, creative<br />
melee of artistic freedom and a time<br />
of censorship and repression: abject<br />
poverty for some and glamorous<br />
excess for others. This month, three<br />
exhibitions approach the city’s artistic<br />
output over these 20 short years from<br />
very different angles. The Bröhan<br />
Museum’s ground floor is filled with<br />
Art Deco and Art Nouveau room<br />
sets, upstairs, however, is the exhibition<br />
Berlin Realismus. Spanning from<br />
1890 to the 1930s, it contains paintings,<br />
drawings, prints, photographs,<br />
collages and films all on the theme<br />
of social critique. Staying true to the<br />
Realist ideals, the works depict people<br />
of all classes and address the hardships<br />
brought about by the Industrial<br />
Revolution: from Käthe Kollwitz’s<br />
tragic 1922 Hunger poster of a barechested<br />
woman in rags, hands clasped<br />
to her upturned face with mouth open<br />
in anguish at the skeletal and lifeless<br />
child in her lap (see more of her<br />
work at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum),<br />
to Bruno Voigt’s Arbeitsbeginn, 1932,<br />
depicting the backs of hunched men as<br />
they defeatedly trudge into a factory,<br />
and Bruno Bötger’s six pen drawings<br />
of an industrial dispute turned bloody<br />
street battle in Schöneberg’s Rote<br />
Insel district in 1924. Representing<br />
the excess and debauchery of the<br />
period are George Grosz’s disapproving<br />
Map “Ecco Homo” series from<br />
1916-22. In stylised caricature, welldressed<br />
gentlemen and prostitutes<br />
gamble, fornicate and preen in front<br />
of crowded dressing tables.<br />
Drawn from the Berlinische<br />
Gallerie’s permanent collection<br />
is the exhibition Art in Berlin 1880-<br />
1980, including over one hundred<br />
works from the interwar period.<br />
Illustrating the cosmopolitan nature<br />
of the city’s artistic community at<br />
that time are mid-1920s works such<br />
as Hungarian constructivist Lajos<br />
Ebneth’s paintings and Russian<br />
avant-gardist El Lissitzky’s prints<br />
and Proun Room installation. The<br />
exhibition also highlights women artists<br />
of the period, delving deep into<br />
the stories of the likes of German<br />
Dadaist Hannah Höch, whose 1932<br />
Bauhaus exhibition was cancelled<br />
and who was denounced as a “cultural<br />
Bolshevist” in Wolfgang Wilrich’s<br />
infamous 1937 Purging the Temple<br />
of Art. German Jewish artist Anne<br />
Ratkowski, a founding member of the<br />
New Naturalists group, was banished<br />
from public art activities in 1933.<br />
At HKW is Neolithic Childhood.<br />
Art in a False Present, c.1930, an<br />
exhibition of works by avant-garde<br />
artists in Berlin, Paris and Prague at<br />
the time. The title is inspired by a<br />
phrase used by German Jewish art<br />
critic Carl Einstein (1885-1940), who<br />
wrote about and exhibited many of<br />
the artists included, such as Jean<br />
(Hans) Arp. The curators assure<br />
me that Einstein was merely their<br />
“trans-historical interlocutor” and<br />
the exhibition reaches beyond his<br />
immediate circle with the inclusion<br />
of artists such as British surrealist<br />
Catherine Yarrow. Einstein wrote<br />
extensively on a harking back to human<br />
pre-history, an artistic response<br />
to the ideological instability, technological<br />
and scientific advances and<br />
fundamentally changing structure of<br />
societies at the time – a phenomenon<br />
comprehensively charted by more<br />
than 800 books, pamphlets, magazines,<br />
paintings, drawings, sculptures<br />
and films in the exhibition. n<br />
Berlin Realismus Through June 11 Bröhan Museum, Charlottenberg | Neolithic<br />
Childhood. Art in a False Present, c.1930 Through July 9 Haus der<br />
Kulturen der Welt, Tiergarten | Art in Berlin 1880-1980 Ongoing Berlinische<br />
Gallerie, Kreuzberg | Käthe Kollwitz Museum Daily 11-6 Prenzlauer Berg<br />
38<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Art<br />
Marc Chagall: Clown mit blauer Gitarre<br />
Highlight<br />
Searching<br />
for the<br />
Exiting perfect<br />
gift shop<br />
This month, an exhibition<br />
flat?<br />
pits Chagall postcards<br />
and tea towels against<br />
some of the modernist<br />
Fast, titan’s easy… originals and in English!<br />
Rooms and flats, all districts,<br />
price ranges, and styles<br />
Friendly, reliable service<br />
In the unassuming Berggruen Museum,<br />
one of Berlin’s smaller state museums<br />
located opposite Schloss Charlottenburg,<br />
is this one room display of some<br />
unsurprising works by Russian-French<br />
modernist Marc Chagall. Much like the<br />
museum, the paintings on display are fairly<br />
small and modest, complemented by a large<br />
decorated folding screen titled Wandschirm,<br />
1963. The exhibition text describes the artist<br />
as a ground-breaking innovator and, without<br />
a shadow of irony, says this is because of<br />
his use of “the decorative image”. This is perhaps<br />
exactly why Chagall has become the tea<br />
towel, fridge magnet, key ring artist that he is<br />
today, and fair enough.<br />
Next door, German photographer Ulrike<br />
Kolb examines the many ways in which Chagall<br />
reproductions are displayed in private<br />
homes, the office of the Federal President at<br />
Bellevue Palace and even on the hilariously<br />
shonky Chagallesque ceiling fresco in Berlin’s<br />
very own Café Chagall in Prenzlauer Berg.<br />
Kolb’s photographs reveal how Chagall’s art<br />
is consumed and displayed today, in reproduction<br />
and at the absolute height of a purely<br />
decorative intention by their owners. A refreshing<br />
take on how to look at works you’ve<br />
seen on a thousand screen savers. — AL<br />
The Modernity of Decorativeness ★★★★✩<br />
From <strong>May</strong> 20 <strong>2018</strong> Museum Berggruen,<br />
Charlottenburg<br />
Ulrike Kolb<br />
© Stuart Nicholson<br />
© Peter Purgar<br />
flatrentals<br />
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18 - 20 <strong>May</strong><br />
Radialsystem V<br />
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T. 030 - 288 788 588<br />
Antje Weithaas<br />
Bugge Wesseltoft<br />
Thorsten Johanns<br />
Festival<br />
Audun Kleive<br />
Max Landgrebe<br />
Ah Ruem Ahn<br />
Erlend Apneseth<br />
Per Arne Glorvigen<br />
IRVING PENN CENTENNIAL<br />
DJ Strangefruit<br />
DER JAHRHUNDERTFOTOGRAF<br />
Konstknekt<br />
24.03.——01.07.<strong>2018</strong><br />
C/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus<br />
Hardenbergstr. 22–24 . 10623 Berlin<br />
Täglich / Daily 11:00–20:00 . www.co-berlin.org<br />
Das Norwegische<br />
Kammerorchester<br />
www.lillenorge.de
WHAT’S ON — Art<br />
DON’T MISS<br />
Depressive<br />
Alcoholic Mother<br />
Becky Beasley’s<br />
show at Galeria<br />
Plan B sees the<br />
British artist present<br />
her graceful photography<br />
and sculpture<br />
alongside a<br />
new floorwork.<br />
Through Jun 9<br />
L’Amour du Risque<br />
me Collectors<br />
Room Berlin hosts a<br />
retrospective of bold<br />
Berlin art couple Eva<br />
and Adele’s 25-year<br />
collaboration,<br />
including drawing,<br />
painting, photography,<br />
video, sculpture<br />
and their ubiquitous<br />
self-made costumes.<br />
Through August 27<br />
Hello World.<br />
Revising a Collection<br />
Hamburger Bahnhof’s<br />
critical look<br />
at the Nationalgalerie<br />
collection’s<br />
strong Western bias<br />
re-curates over 120<br />
works to reveal their<br />
hidden stories, such<br />
as Dadaist Tomoyoshi<br />
Murayama’s<br />
1920s stay in Berlin<br />
and Joseph Beuys’<br />
collaboration with<br />
Nicolás García<br />
Uriburu.<br />
Through Aug 26<br />
Interview<br />
“I feel that people look<br />
down on copy painters.”<br />
Van Eyck<br />
Berlin-based German multi-media artist<br />
Christian Jankowski on why he’s elevating<br />
art from China’s biggest copy village<br />
to the auction house. By Anna Larkin<br />
Christian Jankowski is known<br />
for his performative interactions<br />
with what he calls<br />
the “non-art world”, dealing with<br />
psychology, ritual, lifestyle and massproduced,<br />
luxury commodities in his<br />
work. At the 2011 London Frieze art<br />
fair he displayed The Finest Art on Water,<br />
a luxury speedboat available for<br />
£60m as a boat and £70m if bought as<br />
an artwork. Represented in Berlin by<br />
Contemporary Fine Arts, in 2016 he<br />
curated the European Biennial Manifesta<br />
in Switzerland, the first artist to<br />
do so. In what may seem a departure<br />
from previous work, Jankowski is presenting<br />
a set of paintings at auction<br />
house Grisebach in Charlottenburg<br />
this <strong>May</strong>. The scenes depicted are<br />
taken from photos he found online in<br />
which people have re-enacted famous<br />
paintings by artists including Degas,<br />
Dix, Durer, Hockney and Goya. He<br />
commissioned the oil paintings<br />
themselves from professional<br />
“copy painters” in China.<br />
How did you develop the<br />
concept for Neue Malerei?<br />
A prototype was Chinese Whisper,<br />
a commission I made for the Van<br />
Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. On<br />
the internet I found 10 images of<br />
people re-enacting the 10 Van Gogh<br />
self-portraits in the museum’s collection,<br />
some were film stills, there<br />
was even a waxwork. Also via the<br />
internet, I ordered copy paintings<br />
of these images from Chinese copy<br />
painters. These were then displayed<br />
next to the originals in the museum.<br />
How did you find the copy<br />
painters? I was made aware of them<br />
in 2007, when I was doing a show in<br />
Hong Kong. I read a newspaper article<br />
about this “copy village”, Dafen in<br />
Shenzen. It was a rural farming village<br />
until the 1980s when copy painters<br />
started setting up there. I was very<br />
interested, so I went there and saw a<br />
big construction site in the village, for<br />
a new art museum. I met the architect,<br />
who told me that he didn’t know<br />
what kind of art he was building the<br />
museum for, which I found even more<br />
interesting. So I asked the painters<br />
all around the village if they were in<br />
charge of that museum, what painting<br />
would they put on display? In the<br />
meantime, I took photographs of the<br />
construction site and always left an<br />
empty wall in the centre of the image.<br />
I gave these to the copy painters, who<br />
painted the scene and added the painting<br />
of their choice to the empty wall.<br />
Eventually a curator at the museum<br />
in Dafen invited me to bring the<br />
paintings back there to be displayed<br />
in the finished museum. They were<br />
placed on the very same walls. I had an<br />
immediate friendship with one of the<br />
painters, Yin, and we kept in contact.<br />
I spoke to him about Neue Malerei and<br />
he brought together other copy painters<br />
and managed the project for me in<br />
China. I was in constant conversation<br />
with the copy painters, giving them<br />
feedback as the works progressed.<br />
With Chinese Whisper I felt that people<br />
looked down on the copy painters,<br />
whereas in this project I wanted to<br />
identify them [in the catalogue] and<br />
align myself with them.<br />
What do the copy painters<br />
usually paint? Repeated copies<br />
of masterpieces by artists like Rembrandt<br />
and Van Gogh for hotels,<br />
supermarket chains and<br />
also private commissions like<br />
wedding photographs.<br />
Are you making a conceptual<br />
statement by displaying and<br />
selling the works in an auction<br />
house? Who do you hope will<br />
buy the works? It’s an interesting<br />
context to view something, more<br />
so than a gallery. I hope museums<br />
buy them, so that more people can<br />
see them, like the original works<br />
that inspired them. n<br />
Christian Jankowski – Neue<br />
Malerei Through <strong>May</strong> 12<br />
Grisebach, Charlottenburg<br />
40<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON— Art<br />
Georgina Steytles, Common Birds<br />
Reviews<br />
Through Jul 1<br />
Irving Penn. Centennial<br />
C/O Berlin, Charlottenburg<br />
★★★✩✩<br />
On the 100th anniversary of Penn’s birth, this exhibition<br />
of 240 works is drawn from a major retrospective<br />
at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Over<br />
two floors at C/O, his 70-year career is expansively<br />
celebrated in portraits, still life, fashion, travel,<br />
art and street photography. Penn’s early American<br />
Vogue portraits, with sitters such as Marcel<br />
Duchamp and Spencer Tracy crammed into his<br />
experimental corner backdrop, show his expert eye<br />
in capturing an unguarded moment. The fashion<br />
portraits are exquisite exercises in symmetry, style<br />
and elegance, exactly what you would expect from<br />
one of the 1940s and 50’s top fashion photographers.<br />
His art photographs include numerous<br />
nudes, all headless female torsos. These sadly fall<br />
flat, bringing to mind only a bland version of Bill<br />
Brandt. The text claims Penn made them in reaction<br />
to his daily diet of “skinny girls with self-starved<br />
looks”, presumably including his own wife, supermodel<br />
Lisa Fonssagrives. Similarly, Penn’s travel<br />
photographs are uncomfortably objectifying: a film<br />
shot in Morocco by Fonssagrives shows him rather<br />
brusquely arranging shrouded Berber women and<br />
men into his trademark fashion compositions. A<br />
comprehensive show, but possibly guilty of some<br />
unchecked hero worship inherited from the Met’s<br />
original curation. — AL<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 12<br />
Richard Frater: Common Birds<br />
Oracle Gallery, Wilmersdorf<br />
★★★★★<br />
New Zealander and Berlin-based artist Frater presents<br />
a 40-minute film made up of 330 photographic stills,<br />
taken by himself, Georgina Steytler and Scott Rogers.<br />
Frater initiated the project, but all three “share an interest<br />
in ornithology and birds that have adapted to cities”.<br />
Each shot a specific bird in their respective locations<br />
of Western Australia, Buenos Aires and Berlin over the<br />
same weekend. Reading rather like a particularly literary<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
bird spotter’s diary, the work also consists of texts each<br />
wrote about their quarry, equipment, chosen stalking<br />
locality and exploits over the weekend in question.<br />
There is disparity in the three’s technical ability: artist<br />
Frater’s northern goshawk in Tiergarten is often blurred<br />
in flight or has his back turned to the camera, whereas<br />
professional wildlife photographer Steylter captures her<br />
galahs up close, detailing every shocking pink feather<br />
with perfectly composed shots of them interacting<br />
with one another and the city. Frater’s amateurish innocence,<br />
especially in combination with the unusual<br />
urban wildlife environments and enchanting texts, adds<br />
something fantastical to what could have just been<br />
some pictures of birds. — AL<br />
Through Jul 15<br />
Taiyo Onorato and<br />
Nico Krebs: Defying Gravity<br />
KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Neukölln<br />
★★★✩✩<br />
Spread over two floors of the converted brewery<br />
that is the KINDL are over 30 works by Swiss artist<br />
pair Onorato and Krebs. Comprising photography,<br />
sculpture, film and installation work, the show<br />
includes both new works and their “most important<br />
series of works from the past 10 years”. Among the 10<br />
film projections is the black and white Blockbuster,<br />
one of many pieces featuring Berlin residential or<br />
office blocks shot from a nearby empty plot. Using<br />
a canny camera angle, a man is filmed up a ladder<br />
holding hammers, sticks, rocks and pipes with which<br />
he bashes the buildings behind him. A soundtrack<br />
synced with his blows adds to the surreal humour:<br />
is he building or destroying Berlin? The artists’ wit<br />
is again evident in the excellent installation Colour<br />
Loop, a film intermittently showing falling water and<br />
people entering a descending escalator projected<br />
onto the side of a large drum structure. However, the<br />
extensive collections of what look like – and essentially<br />
are – American road-trip photographs in the<br />
series The Great Unreal seem to have forgotten the<br />
punchline, an exhibition of two halves. — AL<br />
Onorato Krebs, Monument<br />
18 <strong>May</strong><br />
<strong>2018</strong>, 8 pm,<br />
Philharmonie<br />
Berlin,<br />
Kammermusiksaal<br />
Ingenious Masters –<br />
Far From Home<br />
Dering, Philips, Tallis,<br />
Byrd and Monte<br />
Petteri Pitko Organ<br />
Justin Doyle Conductor<br />
Tickets /Service<br />
RIAS Kammerchor Berlin<br />
T + 49.(0)30.20 29 87 25<br />
F + 49.(0).30.20 29 87 29<br />
tickets@rias-kammerchor.de
WHAT’S ON — Calendar<br />
Calendar<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
Picks, highlights and can’t-miss events for this month in Berlin.<br />
Clockwise from right:<br />
Xposed Queer Film Festival,<br />
<strong>May</strong> 24. Ghostfacekillah,<br />
<strong>May</strong> 14. MyFest, <strong>May</strong> 1.<br />
TUE<br />
1<br />
MyFest — Street Party<br />
Kick off your month of<br />
revolutionary struggle in<br />
the classic Kreuzberg fashion:<br />
outside, with a beer in hand, hanging<br />
around Kotti. Stifle any<br />
car-burning compulsions with<br />
DJs, comedians and a kid’s<br />
programme. Starts 11:30.<br />
WED<br />
2<br />
re:publica 18 — Conference<br />
and Festival This year<br />
underpinned by the<br />
succinct motto “POP”, the media<br />
convention’s programme will<br />
take on the not-so-squeaky clean<br />
current state of digital culture<br />
with the help of artists, activists,<br />
scientists, hackers and many<br />
more. Through <strong>May</strong> 4.<br />
Station Berlin.<br />
Pictoplasma — Conference and Festival<br />
Like seeing all your wildest<br />
Pusheen gif fantasies come to<br />
life, gain a “new understanding<br />
of character” at the festival and<br />
conference featuring graphic, toy<br />
and game designers plus<br />
leading animation filmmakers.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 6. Various venues.<br />
Visionär Film Festival —Film<br />
The festival for new auteur<br />
cinema returns for its second<br />
edition. This year proceedings<br />
begin with a tribute to French<br />
director Agnés Varda, with an 8pm<br />
screening of her Left Bank classic<br />
Cléo from 5 to 7 at Kino Wedding.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 7.<br />
THU<br />
3<br />
Superbooth — Electric Music<br />
Fair Know your Moogs<br />
from your MaxMSPs or<br />
your chiptune from your circuit<br />
bending? Then rejoice, dear<br />
modular synthesizer enthusiasts<br />
of Berlin: Europe’s largest<br />
electronic music trade fair is at<br />
FEZ through <strong>May</strong> 5.<br />
FRI<br />
4<br />
Berlin Theatertreffen<br />
— Theatre<br />
Berlin’s annual festival<br />
showcasing a jury’s pick of the<br />
year’s ten most noteworthy<br />
theatre productions is back at the<br />
Haus der Berliner Festspiele and<br />
other venues. Through <strong>May</strong> 21.<br />
SAT<br />
5<br />
MIRA Festival Berlin<br />
— Festival If your ideal<br />
festival aesthetic is a<br />
Commodore 64 loading screen<br />
meets the Funkhaus, the<br />
Barcelona-based digital arts<br />
festival is for you. Laurel Halo and<br />
Forest Swords head up the bill.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 6.<br />
MON<br />
7<br />
Berlin Burlesque Week<br />
— Festival The finest strategically-placed<br />
tassels,<br />
sequins and giant cocktail glasses<br />
Berlin has to offer. Featuring<br />
esteemed performers<br />
demonstrating a plethora of burlesque<br />
genres at venues across the<br />
city. Through <strong>May</strong> 13.<br />
Yo La Tengo — Music New Jersey’s<br />
ever-reliable and critically-feted<br />
three-piece bring the noise-pop to<br />
Heimathafen Neukölln with songs<br />
from <strong>2018</strong>’s There’s A Riot Going<br />
On. 21:00 (sold out).<br />
WED<br />
9<br />
Xjazz Festival — Music<br />
Spread across 11 different<br />
Kreuzberg venues, make<br />
up for the time you spend<br />
overlooking jazz, electronica and<br />
neo-classical in Berlin the rest of<br />
the year. Through <strong>May</strong> 13.<br />
SAT<br />
12<br />
Isolation Berlin — Music<br />
These days probably<br />
feeling anything but<br />
isolated (see p. 31), Berlin’s best<br />
indie nihilists play a homecoming<br />
gig at Astra Kulturhaus in support<br />
of new album Vergifte Dich.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
Eurovision Song Contest — Party<br />
It’s that time again! For our<br />
money, there’s nowhere better<br />
to indulge in this yearly ritual of<br />
epic key changes, tactical voting<br />
and fractious Euro-politics than<br />
Freiluftkino Kreuzberg. Free<br />
Schnapps for the front row.<br />
From 19:30.<br />
MON<br />
14<br />
Ghostface Killah — Music<br />
Nearly four years since<br />
his last visitation, the<br />
unrivalled narrative abilities of<br />
the Wu Tang stalwart finally<br />
return to Berlin at Festsaal<br />
Kreuzberg. Starts 20:00.<br />
THU<br />
17<br />
Digitalism — Music<br />
Kitsuné’s Hamburg<br />
darlings take to the<br />
Funkhaus’ stage, continuing their<br />
mission to convince us earthlings<br />
that the gap between Ennio<br />
Morricone and Justice is easily<br />
bridged by a wall of synths.<br />
18:30-23:30.<br />
TYPO Berlin — Design Festival<br />
Entitled simply “Trigger”,<br />
this deliberately, er, triggering<br />
edition of the yearly design<br />
conference at HKW will<br />
pit the industry against the<br />
twin-pronged forces of media<br />
deception and digital transformation.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 19.<br />
The Encounter — Theatre<br />
Renowned British theatre director<br />
Simon McBurney stages<br />
himself at the Schaubühne in<br />
a solo work that makes heavy<br />
use of audio to tell the true<br />
story of the odd encounter of<br />
an American photographer<br />
and Brazil’s <strong>May</strong>oruna tribe in<br />
1969. Through <strong>May</strong> 20.<br />
42<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
WHAT’S ON — Calendar<br />
FRI<br />
18<br />
Karneval der Kulturen<br />
— Festival Hit the streets for<br />
Kreuzberg’s 23rd Multikulti<br />
festival celebrating diversity in Berlin.<br />
But let’s be real: it’s another excuse to<br />
get lit in public. Don’t miss the<br />
parade on <strong>May</strong> 20. Through <strong>May</strong> 21.<br />
SUN<br />
20<br />
Pierre Boulez Saal — Open Day<br />
If you like your concert halls<br />
more than your chamber<br />
music, then take advantage of<br />
architectural stunner Pierre Boulez<br />
Saal’s second open house. Performances<br />
and activities throughout the<br />
day – plus maybe even a bit of<br />
re-education. 11:00–19:00<br />
WED<br />
23<br />
Berlin Music Video Awards<br />
— Festival Extend those<br />
sessions spent falling down<br />
music video YouTube holes into a<br />
four-day, guilt-free marathon at the<br />
Berlin VMAs, at Gretchen and<br />
Theater im Delphi. Nominees range<br />
from Run The Jewels to Elton John.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 26.<br />
THU Xposed Queer Film Festival<br />
24 — Film 13 years on, Xposed<br />
are still showcasing the best<br />
of queer film from around the world,<br />
My Perfect Berlin Weekend<br />
From 1968er to insurance salesman, lifelong revolutionary Berliner<br />
Michael Prütz has been selling policies from his Kreuzberg office for 30<br />
years while remaining loyal to his political ideals. But who said a<br />
communist couldn’t indulge in the finer things in life? (see page 8)<br />
FRIDAY<br />
12:00 Treat myself to one of the lovely German<br />
cakes at Ela Ent (Graefestr. 18, Kreuzberg) 18:00<br />
Greek dinner at 35-year-old institution Kreuzberger<br />
Weltlaterne (Kohlfurter Str. 37, Kreuzberg). 21:00<br />
End the night at Bierhaus Urban alongside a healthy<br />
mix of Berliners and tourists – no cocktails here, just<br />
beer and Schnapps (Urbanstr. 126, Kreuzberg).<br />
SATURDAY<br />
12:00 Start the day at the Marheineke Markthalle<br />
– lots of stands and lots of Berliners<br />
(Marheinekeplatz 15). 13:00 Head across the<br />
street to Felix Austria, an Austrian café with<br />
great coffee, and lecker breakfast. 14:30 Wander<br />
down the street to LangerBlomqvist book shop,<br />
for new books on discount (Schleiermacherstr.<br />
25, Kreuzberg). 20:00 End the day with dinner<br />
at Cielo Di Berlino – good pizza, good prices<br />
and not too many tourists (Monumentenstr. 31,<br />
Schöneberg).<br />
SUNDAY<br />
10:00 A long walk around Schlachtensee, one of<br />
the most beautiful lakes in Berlin. Sit outside at<br />
with all the glory, camp and<br />
beauty that encompasses.<br />
It opens with feature Phaidros<br />
by Mara Mattuschka. Through<br />
<strong>May</strong> 27. Moviemento.<br />
FRI<br />
25<br />
Disruption Network Lab<br />
— Talk Manipulators,<br />
trolls and influencers<br />
taking the fun out of your Sunday<br />
papers café sessions? Transcend<br />
the limits of your own filter<br />
bubble and learn to love the news<br />
again at DNL’s hacktivist<br />
conference, Hate News. Through<br />
<strong>May</strong> 26. Kunstquartier Bethanien.<br />
CRESCENDO festival UdK — Music<br />
Covering the whole spectrum of<br />
UdK’s musical remit in just 16<br />
days, this year the festival asks<br />
that expectations of perfectionism<br />
be left at the at the door as its<br />
musicians celebrate the joy of<br />
incompleteness, under the theme<br />
of UnVollendete. Through Jun 9.<br />
SAT<br />
26<br />
Berlin Seafood Festival<br />
— Food The Hauptstadt is<br />
not exactly renowned for<br />
its fresh catches,so this is perhaps<br />
the one time of the yearyou can<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
indulge in fresh seafood. Urban Spree.<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 27.<br />
SUN<br />
27<br />
Lö Grand Bal Almanya<br />
— Theatre Director Nurkan<br />
Erpulat has updated this<br />
satirical musical about Turkish life in<br />
Germany that he originally premiered<br />
at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in 2010,<br />
staging it anew for the Maxim Gorki<br />
Theater (with English surtitles).<br />
Starts 19:30.<br />
MON<br />
28<br />
EXBlicks: Partisan — Film<br />
Following Volksbühne boss<br />
Chris Dercon’s recent<br />
departure in April, catch our timely<br />
screening Berlinale doc Partisan,<br />
chronicling predecessor Frank Castorf’s<br />
25 years at the helm of the<br />
iconic Berlin theatre. Lichtblick Kino.<br />
Starts 20:00. (see page 24)<br />
TUE Potsdamer Tanztage — Dance<br />
29 Festival Bring your body to<br />
Postdam to catch a host of<br />
other moving bodies doing their<br />
thing at the international festival for<br />
contemporary dance. Expect<br />
performative explorations of the Big<br />
Bang, gender and more. Through<br />
June 10. Fabrik Potsdam.<br />
Fischerhütte’s beer garden if the weather’s good<br />
(Am Schlachtensee, Steglitz-Zehlendorf). 12:00<br />
Head to the nice and authentic Nowkoelln Flohmarkt<br />
on <strong>May</strong>bachufer, and look for books and<br />
CDs. 16:00 End the weekend meeting friends at<br />
Van Loon, where I can look out onto the former<br />
harbour (Carl-Herz-Ufer 5, Kreuzberg).<br />
Georgia Ginnivan<br />
<strong>May</strong> Programme in English<br />
2.5., 4.–7.5. / HAU2 / Premiere<br />
Gob Squad<br />
THEATRE<br />
Creation (Pictures for Dorian)<br />
Premiere / English and German<br />
3.–30.5. / Start and end at HAU1 THEATRE<br />
Rimini Protokoll<br />
(Begrich/Haug/Karrenbauer)<br />
DO’s & DON’Ts – a journey through every<br />
trick in the city<br />
Premiere / German or German with English translation<br />
4.+5.5. / HAU1, HAU3 DIALOGUE MUSIC FILM<br />
MARX200<br />
Politics – Theory – Socialism<br />
HAU Hebbel am Ufer & Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung<br />
13.5. / HAU1 MUSIC<br />
Tigran Hamasyan<br />
Concert<br />
16.+17.5. / HAU1<br />
Mariano Pensotti<br />
THEATRE<br />
Arde brillante en los bosques de la noche<br />
/ Burning bright in the forest of the night<br />
Re-run / Spanish with German and English surtitles<br />
17.+18.5. / HAU3 PERFORMANCE DANCE<br />
Boyzie Cekwana<br />
The Last King of Kakfontein<br />
English with German surtitles<br />
17.+18.5. / HAU2<br />
Meg Stuart /<br />
DANCE<br />
Damaged Goods<br />
Hunter / English<br />
22.5. / HAU2<br />
Contemporary<br />
DIALOGUE<br />
And (C&) /<br />
Jota Mombaça<br />
C& América Latina Launch / English<br />
23.+24.5., 26.+27.5. / HAU1 PERFORMANCE DANCE<br />
Antonia Baehr,<br />
Latifa Laâbissi &<br />
Nadia Lauro<br />
Consul and Meshie / English, French, Arabic and German<br />
16.5. / HAU2 DANCE PERFORMANCE<br />
Berlin Ballroom<br />
Community &<br />
OPULENCE<br />
THE OPULENCE BALL / Voguing Ball<br />
With Jack Mizrahi, Vjuan Allure, madison moore, among others<br />
30.5.–2.6. / HAU1, HAU2, HAU3, Outdoor<br />
INSTALLATION DIALOGUE MUSIC FILM PERFORMANCE<br />
Detroit – Berlin:<br />
One Circle<br />
Music • Talk • Performance • Installation<br />
• Film • Club<br />
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de
ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide<br />
Advertorial<br />
The Berlin Guide<br />
The new directory to help you find your<br />
way around Berlin. To advertise, contact<br />
ads@exberliner.com<br />
shrimp cocktails and more. Set menus<br />
from €5. During Happy Hour drinks<br />
are just €3.50 after 20:00. Reservations<br />
suggested. Skalitzer Str. 35, U-Bhf<br />
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030 6113 291,<br />
Mon-Fri 9-1, Sat-Sun from 10,<br />
www.morgenland-berlin.de<br />
hain. Delicious freshly made burritos<br />
and quesadillas served by a collection<br />
of fun-loving international people.<br />
Once a week, challenge the NHE team<br />
to a game of rock-paper-scissors and<br />
win a half-price meal! Kopernikusstr.<br />
22, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun<br />
from 12, www.nohabloespanol.de<br />
CAFÉS<br />
BARETTINO — Neukölln<br />
Barettino means “small bar” and in<br />
our case is a unique combination of<br />
everything which makes you happy<br />
between dawn and dusk. A huge breakfast<br />
choice & fine coffee, lunch & dinner<br />
made fresh and with love, plenty<br />
of delicacies, toasted paninis and<br />
homemade cakes, Italian aperitivo and<br />
holy spirits. Join the Barettino family!<br />
Reuterstr. 59, Tel 030 2556 3034,<br />
Mon-Sun 9-22, www.barettino.com<br />
KREMANSKI — Kreuzberg<br />
Kremanski offers tasty breakfast,<br />
high-quality coffee, lunch (Mon to Fri),<br />
homemade cakes and ice-cream, special<br />
beers, drinks, good music and cultural<br />
events. The friendly and talented staff<br />
will make you feel welcome, inspired<br />
and relaxed. The perfect hangout right<br />
at Kotti, all day long! Adalbertstr.<br />
96, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Thu<br />
8.30-23, Fri 8.30-2, Sat 12-2, Sun 12-23,<br />
www.kremanski.de<br />
TO PLACE YOUR<br />
AD HERE CONTACT<br />
ADS@EXBERLINER.COM<br />
for its courteous staff and pleasant<br />
atmosphere in the elegant and<br />
much-loved Literaturhaus villa. The<br />
perfect stop during a shopping trip<br />
on nearby Ku’damm. Fasanenstr.<br />
23, U-Bhf Uhlandstr., Tel 030<br />
8825 414, Mon-Sun 9:30-24, www.<br />
literaturhaus-berlin.de<br />
NAPOLJONSKA — Mitte<br />
Located just off Zionskirchplatz,<br />
this vegetarian café offers organic<br />
and homemade delicacies. Enjoy a<br />
range of hearty breakfasts reaching<br />
from spinach omelettes to pancakes<br />
and French breakfast. Here you<br />
can sip your organic latte in a cosy<br />
atmosphere with the young and old,<br />
locals and travellers. Kastanienallee<br />
43, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Tel<br />
030 3117 0965, Mon, Fri 08.30 -18.00,<br />
Tue-Thu 8.30-16:00 Sat- Sun 09-<br />
19.00, www.napoljonska.de<br />
ATAYA CAFFE — Prenzlauer Berg<br />
With its comfortable sofas and<br />
colourful, gemütlich decor, this vegan/<br />
vegetarian Italian-African fusion cafe<br />
specialises in 100 percent homemade<br />
cuisine, ranging from fresh pastas to<br />
avocado salads and exotic paninis,<br />
rounded off with cakes, smoothies and<br />
bio fair-trade Italian coffee. Come for<br />
business lunch on weekdays, Saturday<br />
buffet breakfast or Afro-Italian vegan<br />
brunch every Sunday! Bring the kids<br />
and dogs. Zelterstr. 6, S-Bhf Prenzlauer<br />
Allee, Tel. 030 3302 1041, Tue-<br />
Fri 10-19, Sat-Sun 10-19, Mon closed,<br />
www.atayacaffe.de<br />
CARAVAGGI NATURWEIN<br />
BISTRO — Prenzlauer Berg<br />
Here is a place to enjoy organic,<br />
biodynamic and natural Italian wines<br />
of the very highest standard. Try some<br />
of our hot dishes, cheeses, prosciutto<br />
di Parma, salami, Tuscan crostini,<br />
fresh vegetables and more from small<br />
Italian producers following the Slow<br />
Food philosophy. Lettestr. 3, S-Bhf<br />
Prenzlauer Allee, Tel 030 2870 4411,<br />
Tue-Sun 17-24, www.facebook.com/<br />
ItalianNaturweinBerlin<br />
RESTAURANTS<br />
SCHWARZES CAFÉ<br />
— Charlottenburg Since the 1970s,<br />
Schwarzes Café on Savignyplatz has<br />
been a cult favourite among artists,<br />
anarchists, foreigners and Charlottenburgers.<br />
They’re open 24/7, have<br />
English menus and serve organic<br />
meat. Kantstr. 148, S-Bhf Savignyplatz,<br />
Tel 030 3138 038, Mon-Sun all<br />
day, www.schwarzescafeberlin.de<br />
3 SCHWESTERN — Kreuzberg<br />
Housed in a former hospital turned<br />
art centre, this spacious restaurant<br />
with big windows overlooking a<br />
lovely garden serves fresh, seasonal<br />
German and continental dishes at<br />
reasonable prices. Breakfast on<br />
weekends and holidays. Live music<br />
and parties start after dessert.<br />
Mariannenplatz 2 (Bethanien), U-Bhf<br />
Kottbusser Tor, Tel 030 6003 18600,<br />
Mon-Fri from 12, Sat-Sun from 11,<br />
www.3schwestern.com<br />
CAFÉ IM LITERATURHAUS<br />
— Charlottenburg Enjoy a coffee in<br />
one of Berlin’s finest cafés, known<br />
CAFÉ MORGENLAND — Kreuzberg<br />
On weekends and holidays you’ll find a<br />
great buffet here, complete with gourmet<br />
cheese, fresh fruit and veg, crêpes<br />
and other vegetarian dishes, cold cuts,<br />
NO HABLO ESPAÑOL<br />
— Friedrichshain The best California-style<br />
Mexican street food joint in Friedrichs-<br />
PUNE — Prenzlauer Berg The place<br />
to go to, especially on Sundays for a<br />
great Indian buffet after a stroll in the<br />
nearby Mauerpark flea market. They<br />
offer a large menu with various meaty,<br />
vegetarian and vegan dishes, and daily<br />
lunch specials. Don’t skip the cocktail<br />
happy hour! Oderberger Str. 28,<br />
U-Bhf Eberswalder Str., Tel 030 4404<br />
2762, Mon-Sat 12-24, Sun 11-24,<br />
www.pune-restaurant.de<br />
44<br />
EXBERLINER 17
ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide<br />
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030 5482 1866,<br />
Sun-Mon 9-17, Thu-Sat 9-22, closed<br />
Tue-Wed, www.bastard-berlin.de<br />
part bar, the interior is beautifully<br />
decorated with antique tiles. Wühlischstr.<br />
22-23, S+U-Bhf Warschauer<br />
Str., Tel 030 2616 918 Mon-Sun 17-2,<br />
www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de<br />
technology comes to life! Expect the<br />
unexpected! Rosenthaler Str. 39,<br />
S-Bhf Hackescher Markt, Wed-Thu<br />
18.30-21.30, Fri-Sat 16.30-21.30,<br />
www.monsterkabinett.de<br />
LA BUVETTE — Prenzlauer Berg<br />
For a good glass of wine, a romantic<br />
or business dinner, a wine tasting or<br />
a birthday party... come to La Buvette<br />
Weinbar. A cosy French bistrot<br />
where all wines come directly from<br />
France and the food is like mama’s<br />
cooking. Try the famous ‘steakfrites’<br />
with a glass of Bordeaux, or<br />
come on Sundays for ‘moules-frites’!<br />
Gleim Str. 41, S+U-Bhf. Schönhauser<br />
Allee, Tel 030 8806 2870, Mon-<br />
Sun from 18, www.labuvette.berlin<br />
CABSLAM WELTRESTAURANT<br />
— Neukölln The very best California<br />
breakfast slam in Neukölln. Fresh<br />
location at Landwehr Kanal has fused<br />
with Weltrestaurant Markthalle<br />
Kreuzberg! A mix of American and<br />
German cuisine that rocks: burgers,<br />
burritos and more! Innstr. 47, Neukölln,<br />
U-Bhf Rathaus Neukölln, Mon-<br />
Tue 11-22, Wed closed, Thu-Fri 11-22,<br />
Sat 10-22, Sun 10-17, Tel 030 6869624,<br />
www.cabslam.com<br />
BARS & NIGHTLIFE<br />
MONSTER RONSON’S ICHIBAN<br />
KARAOKE — Friedrichshain<br />
Monster Ronson’s is the world’s craziest<br />
karaoke club. Make out on their super-dark<br />
dance floor, get naked in the<br />
private karaoke boxes and sing your<br />
favourite songs all night. Warschauer<br />
Str. 34, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-<br />
Sun from 19, www.karaokemonster.de<br />
SHOPS & SERVICES<br />
BGKW LAWYERS — Mitte<br />
This firm specialises in labour, family,<br />
private building and insolvency law.<br />
The legitimacy of dismissal is the main<br />
subject of labour disputes. In divorce<br />
proceedings, legal representation is<br />
mandatory. We give legal advice in<br />
cases of construction defects and to<br />
all parties concerned in insolvency<br />
proceedings. Prior contract consulting<br />
is often appropriate: Arbeits-, Ehe-, Lebenspartnerschafts-,<br />
Bauträgervertrag.<br />
Markgrafenstr. 57, U-Bhf Kochstr., Tel.<br />
030 2062 4890, www.bgkw-law.de<br />
BASTARD — Kreuzberg From Bastard<br />
with love: whether it’s breakfast,<br />
lunch or dinner, this restaurant is not<br />
just for those who were born out of<br />
wedlock. Choose from the changing<br />
seasonal menu created with love for<br />
fresh ingredients and fine food. Our<br />
tip: try the homemade stone-oven<br />
bread! Reichen berger Str. 122, U-Bhf<br />
HOPS & BARLEY — Friedrichshain<br />
Serving home-brewed pilsner and<br />
dark beer, this is the place to go to<br />
get that proper brew-pub vibe in<br />
Friedrichshain. Cider and wheat<br />
beers are also on tap. Part brewery,<br />
THE GERMAN SPY MUSEUM<br />
— Mitte Immerse yourself in the<br />
fascinating cloak-and-dagger world<br />
of Berlin’s high-tech museum: crack<br />
secret codes, complete the laser<br />
obstacle course and gasp at what the<br />
NSA and Facebook knows about you.<br />
The German Spy Museum charts the<br />
history of espionage in its interactive<br />
exhibition with a floor space of<br />
3000sqm. Unique exhibits such as<br />
the famous Enigma machine are waiting<br />
to be explored. Leipziger Platz<br />
9, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz, Tel 030<br />
39 8200 450, Mon-Sun 10-20, www.<br />
deutsches-spionagemuseum.de<br />
TIB-SPORTZENTRUM — Neükolln<br />
At Berlin’s oldest sport club you’ll find<br />
sports for young and old. Baseball,<br />
softball, ultimate frisbee, tennis, dance<br />
and more. Their sport centre has a<br />
gym, sport courses, 8 badminton and 2<br />
indoor tennis courts, and a sauna.<br />
Columbiadamm 111, U-Bhf Südstern,<br />
Mon-Fri 7:30-23:30, Sat 8:30-20:30,<br />
Sun 8:30-23:30, www.tib1848ev.de<br />
DOLORES — Mitte & Schöneberg<br />
Founded 10 years ago as a street food pioneer in the German<br />
capital, Dolores serves excellent California-style burritos, tacos and<br />
quesadillas – inspired by San Francisco’s Mission district. Recommended<br />
by Time Out, New York Times and Lonely Planet. Voted #1<br />
value for your money by <strong>Exberliner</strong> readers. Rosa-Luxemburg-Str.<br />
7, S+U-Bhf Alexanderplatz, Tel 030 2809 9597, Mon-Sat 11:30-22,<br />
Sun 13-22. Bayreuther Str. 36, U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz, Mon-Sun<br />
11-22, www.dolores-berlin.de<br />
MONSTERKABINETT — Mitte<br />
Join us on a trip to Berlin’s underground<br />
art scene! A unique theme<br />
park inhabited by automatic, singing,<br />
dancing monsters. Your guides: our<br />
performance artists from Transylvania.<br />
Visitors of all ages are invited to<br />
enjoy an invaluable art event where<br />
HUMBOLDT-INSTITUT — Mitte<br />
Total beginner or advanced learner:<br />
the Humboldt-Institut has the right<br />
German course for everyone. Small<br />
classes with intensive tuition ensure<br />
swift and effective learning.<br />
Intensive courses are also available<br />
with accommodation on campus.<br />
Or simply choose a part-time course<br />
in the morning, evening or on<br />
Saturdays. Invalidenstr. 19, S-Bhf<br />
Nordbahnhof, Tel 030 5551 3221,<br />
www.humboldt-institut.org<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong> 45
ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide<br />
RABBI DR. WALTER ROTHSCHILD<br />
— Schöneberg Do you need a rabbi?<br />
Sometimes one might. For private<br />
counselling, for family and religious<br />
rituals, for teaching, for advice -<br />
rabbinic advice, not psychotherapy.<br />
From someone with insights and a<br />
great deal of professional and life<br />
experience. Rabbi Walter Rothschild<br />
is available in Berlin and elsewhere.<br />
contact@rabbiwalterrothschild.de,<br />
www.rabbiwalterrothschild.de<br />
ASISI PANORAMA BERLIN — Mitte<br />
Experience the panorama DIE MAUER<br />
(Berlin Wall) by the artist Yadegar<br />
Asisi in an 18-metre-high rotunda.<br />
The panorama shows everyday<br />
life in Kreuzberg of the 1980s on a<br />
1:1 scale. Immerse yourself in this<br />
monumental Panorama installation<br />
– a perfect illusion of the history of<br />
the city. Friedrichstr. 205, U-Bhf<br />
Kochstr., Tel 0341 3555 340, Mon-Sun<br />
10-18, www.die-mauer.de<br />
FRAUENCOMPUTERZENTRUM<br />
BERLIN (FCZB) — Kreuzberg<br />
The place for vocational social<br />
media and computer skills training<br />
for women. Now offering publiclyfunded<br />
courses for working and<br />
unemployed females: free of<br />
charge or at affordable prices.<br />
Relaxed and flexible learning environment<br />
with dedicated staff and a<br />
great view of the Spree. All training<br />
in German language. Cuvrystr. 1,<br />
U-Bhf Schlesisches Tor,<br />
Tel 030 6179 7016, www.fczb.de<br />
030 6179 7016, www.fczb.de<br />
LPG BIOMARKT — 9x in Berlin<br />
Your all-organic neighbourhood supermarket supplies fruit and veggies,<br />
vegan groceries, meats, cheese and even cosmetics. They offer a huge<br />
selection of local and regional products, preferably from within 200km<br />
of Berlin. Fill your basket with freshly baked bread and treat yourself to<br />
a selection of homemade sweet and savoury goodies. Found already in<br />
8 locations in Berlin to offer you the fairest, cleanest and most delicious<br />
products nearby, from nearby. Kreuzberg, Mehringdamm 20 & Reichenberger<br />
Str. 37 Prenzlauer Berg, Kollwitzstr. 17 Mitte, Alt-Moabit 98<br />
Friedenau, Hauptstraße 78 Steglitz Albrechtstr. 33 www.lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
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46 EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
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MAY <strong>2018</strong><br />
47
BERLIN BITES<br />
BREAKFAST<br />
Taking back<br />
brunch<br />
Once primarily the domain of<br />
Australians, breakfast in Neukölln<br />
is now anyone’s game.<br />
Here are three of the latest<br />
hyped spots (including, yes,<br />
one from Down Under).<br />
EGG KNEIPE:<br />
THE EIER HAVE IT<br />
A spiritual cousin to California’s venerated<br />
Eggslut, this Kottbusser Damm street food<br />
stand celebrates the humble hen ovum in<br />
all its forms: poached, fried or scrambled,<br />
served atop fried potatoes, spinach, spelt<br />
toast from the Endorphina bakery... you get<br />
the idea. The eggs in question come from<br />
a family-run organic farm in Oberlausitz,<br />
and Egg Kneipe’s trio of German owners do<br />
them justice in dishes like “Salmon Delight”,<br />
grilled toast with a poached egg and a veritable<br />
mountain of house-cured Lachs (€7). For<br />
a gluten free option, there's the “Egg Rolls”,<br />
hearty egg, rice and chestnut-flour crepes<br />
stuffed with fillings like spinach, mushrooms<br />
and Allgäu cheese (€5.50). There’s a lowcarb,<br />
low-calorie “Fitness” menu with salads<br />
and bowls as well as a gut-busting “BullEi-<br />
Burger” in which an egg tops a beef Boulette<br />
from Neukölln’s Blutwurstmanufaktur.<br />
Nothing here is over €10 – a bargain for this<br />
quality, though given the size of the place<br />
you may have to eat standing up. Better to<br />
take your breakfast to the nearby canal and<br />
devour it while the yolk’s still warm. –JS<br />
Kottbusser Damm 1, Kreuzberg,<br />
Mon-Sat 11-20<br />
BONA KOLLEKTIV:<br />
THE NEW INSTA-CHAMP<br />
The title for most-Instagrammed brunch<br />
in Neukölln still undisputedly belongs to<br />
the Aussie-owned Roamers, but this Polish-<br />
Italian newbie has all the makings of a challenger.<br />
There is unfinished wood. There are<br />
succulents. There’s writing on the wall left<br />
over from the location’s past life as an HQ<br />
for the SDP newspaper Das Volk. And there is<br />
a massive, colourful “King” platter of toast,<br />
various spreads, salad, chutney-topped Camembert,<br />
Italian ham and a sunny-side-up egg<br />
decorated with sprigs of sage, rosemary and<br />
thyme, served on butcher paper for maximum<br />
visual effect. It’s a little steep at €11.50<br />
but could easily serve two once you take into<br />
account how filling Bona’s homemade sourdough<br />
bread is – made with all manner of<br />
grains, nuts, herbs and spices and leavened<br />
with a starter from Poland, these dense slices<br />
are a meal in and of themselves. A similar<br />
“Queen” plate comes with a croissant, fruit,<br />
yoghurt, muesli and a boiled egg instead of<br />
a fried one. If you don’t mind the techno,<br />
which the staff tends to play even when it<br />
isn’t their semiregular “Techno Brunch”,<br />
you can stick it out till you’re hungry again<br />
and order less-photogenic Polish specialities<br />
like pierogies and zapiekanki cheese-topped<br />
baguettes. –JS<br />
Hermannstr. 178, Neukölln,<br />
Tue-Fri 9-17, Sat-Sun 10-17<br />
THE FUTURE BREAKFAST<br />
Rachel Glassberg Françoise Pollâne<br />
Rachel Glassberg<br />
Eggkneipe<br />
The Future Breakfast<br />
Bona<br />
There's something undeniably endearing<br />
about the backstory of The Future Breakfast<br />
owners Katie James & Florian Tränkner.<br />
The Australian-German duo started off<br />
selling breakfast and coffee from a very<br />
Instagrammable vintage caravan at Markthalle<br />
Neun, Bite Club or pop up brunches<br />
at Isla Coffee in Neukölln. Smart way to<br />
build a following. In March, the Future<br />
Breakfast sedentarised on Böhmischer<br />
Platz in southern Neuköllln. The minimalist<br />
menu matches the spartan, modernism<br />
of the place: four dishes. Always a good<br />
sign. It's also refreshingly free of the usual<br />
avo-toast. Instead they offer Eggs Benedict<br />
(€9.50) that don't just look as pretty as an<br />
Instagram, but are actually tasty – and thoroughly<br />
filling. The innovation here is the<br />
substitution of ham with oyster mushrooms<br />
that have been apparently marinated or<br />
cooked in chipotle sauce. The yolks of the<br />
slightly undercooked poached eggs bleed<br />
over the mushrooms into the home-baked<br />
English muffins – creating an interesting<br />
version of that elusive Benedict fusion. The<br />
matcha pancakes are a little disappointing<br />
though: a mount of greenish doughy<br />
discs, topped with green apples and a giant<br />
blob of sesame-coconut whip., matcha<br />
fans will miss the earthy taste of the green<br />
tea powder – overpowered by the black<br />
sesame – and the pancakes we tried that<br />
day came so doughy that it was hard to tell<br />
if they were just accidentally undercooked<br />
or if pancakes shouldn't be vegan after all.<br />
There's also a hearty Pearl Barley Bowl (€9),<br />
a pantry mixture awash with roasted sweet<br />
potato and bits and pieces like pomegranate,<br />
kale and cashew that's as fillingas<br />
the eggs but easier on the stomach (top it<br />
with two eggs for €11). The food is slow to<br />
come here – the wait can be over 25 minutes<br />
even at opening time – so be prepared to<br />
enjoy a few a cups of (good) coffee (€2.50-<br />
4, from The Barn) to make the wait more<br />
bearable. As for the prices, they're not low,<br />
but the staff is cheerful and hipster-quality<br />
food (organic eggs, lots of Instagrammable<br />
homemade like-bait) has a cost. –FP<br />
Böhmische Str. 46, Neukölln,<br />
Mon-Fri 8:30-18, Sat-Sun 9:30-18, closed Wed<br />
48<br />
EXBERLINER 150 <strong>171</strong>
BERLIN BITES<br />
BREAD<br />
Le Brot<br />
Real baguette in Neukölln<br />
Achhh, the unmistakeable, sweet smell of hot<br />
baguette. Enter the bakery on Fuldastraße,<br />
and inhale: finally, real French bread in Berlin!<br />
While we’d stopped counting cute cafés serving<br />
macarons, canelés, madeleines, quiche and other<br />
handmade patisserie du jour, till last December,<br />
French expats’ creativity had rarely extended to the<br />
craft of bread and croissant-making. One obvious<br />
reason is that whereas any industrious wannabe can<br />
bake a decent cake, boulangerie is a totally different<br />
affair that requires adequate equipment, years<br />
of practice and serious know-how. Improvisation is<br />
not an option. Meanwhile, one had to make do with<br />
German baguettes that had little in common with<br />
the real thing besides the name and shape. Or take a<br />
round trip to the temple of all things French, Galeries<br />
Lafayette, but let’s face it: their bread isn’t quite<br />
artisanal. In short if you ever craved the delicious<br />
French stick – your best bet was to get yourself on a<br />
return flight to France! That was before Le Brot.<br />
With a certified French baker at the oven (imported<br />
all the way from Rouen, Normandy) and a<br />
shrewd German entrepreneur at the helm, Le Brot<br />
has all the assets to succeed. The place is the brainchild<br />
of Jan Schmieder-Balladur, a German family<br />
man whose Francophilia doesn't stop at women (he<br />
married a French gal). Seeing a lucrative niche in<br />
the Berlin market he transformed the former Späti<br />
on his street into a full-fledged open bakery with a<br />
pretty café space in the back. The result is convincing:<br />
each day bakers churn hundreds of loaves, pain<br />
au chocolat and croissants to loyal customers, mostly<br />
locals but also bread lovers who come from across<br />
town for a piece of the bounty. The bread is worth<br />
the trip: the incomparable springy-chewy texture, the<br />
crisp crust, the slight sweet tinge, it’s all there – and<br />
it’s only flour, water and the right mix of yeast and<br />
sourdough. How can it be so difficult? Expert kneading<br />
and longer rising time? According to baker Remy<br />
Guilbeau, the secret to baguettemaking<br />
is in the flour: it’s got<br />
to be 100% wheat and only<br />
wheat – no additives like extra<br />
gluten as is often found in bread<br />
nowadays, especially in Germany.<br />
They import theirs from Moulin<br />
des Trois Rivières, a small<br />
artisanal mill in western France<br />
that bags a pure uncut white<br />
‘powder’ that's certified organic.<br />
The result is addictive and comes<br />
in three versions – “Tradition”<br />
(€1.90), “Campagne” (with 10%<br />
rye, €2) and “Céréales” (mixed<br />
grain, €2.30), each also available<br />
as individual Brötchen (€0.80-95).<br />
You can enjoy them plain (with<br />
butter) or filled with first class cooked ham and/or<br />
roasted veggies (€4-5.50), sandwich or tartine style. If<br />
you’re French, this the place to dip your croissant in<br />
your petit noir (Americano). If you like it sweet, don’t<br />
miss out on the pain au chocolat – a delicious crusty<br />
golden-brown shell filled with the right amount of<br />
melt-in-the-mouth dark chocolate, perfectly flaky,<br />
not oversweet, not greasy. And if you’re not a morning<br />
person, come back at night for a quiche or cheese<br />
plate over a glass of wine… There are so many ways<br />
to enjoy a French lifestyle off of Sonnenallee. n<br />
Fuldastraße 54, Neukölln, Mon-Sat 7:30-22:30,<br />
closed Sun<br />
Michel Le Voguer<br />
FEBRUARY <strong>2018</strong> 49
REGULARS<br />
Save<br />
Berlin<br />
by Dan Borden<br />
On the bike path<br />
to hell<br />
What is the city doing to improve<br />
conditions for cyclists?<br />
Cyclists are saints. With every pedal<br />
spin, they bolster our fragile planet<br />
while strengthening their hearts,<br />
calves and karma. But not for traffic planners<br />
– in their binary world, cars zoom along<br />
streets and pedestrians waddle along sidewalks.<br />
They don’t know where to put those<br />
two-wheeled agents of anarchy.<br />
In the 1980s and 1990s, Berlin’s planners<br />
designated cyclists pedestrians and gave the<br />
newly-united city a network of sidewalk<br />
cycle lanes. They didn’t foresee our bike<br />
population explosion. Half a million now<br />
clog those narrow paths every day. And they<br />
couldn’t predict today’s smartphone-chatting<br />
e-bikers, Deliveroo kamikazes or swarms<br />
of zombie-like bicycle tourists. Bikes-for-rent<br />
pile up on every street corner.<br />
Berlin’s cycling chaos is more than a headache.<br />
It’s getting increasingly dangerous. In<br />
2016 Berlin saw 7500 accidents involving<br />
bicycles, and 19 cyclists were killed – about<br />
one every three weeks.<br />
In December 2015, a golden bicycle appeared<br />
in front of Berlin’s city hall. It carried<br />
a manifesto from the activist group Volksentscheid<br />
Fahrrad, a 10-point plan to make<br />
Berlin more cyclist-friendly and safe. Then-<br />
Transport Senator Andreas Geisel dismissed<br />
the demands, pointing out that the city was<br />
already spending €14 million a year on its bike<br />
network. So the activists raised the stakes.<br />
They gathered 105,000 signatures, enough<br />
to put their proposals to a public vote in<br />
the September 2016 election. Facing likely<br />
defeat, Berlin’s Senate threw in the towel and<br />
adopted Volksentscheid Fahrrad’s plan as law.<br />
Last December, current Transport Senator<br />
Regine Günther signed off on an annual cycle<br />
infrastructure budget of €50 million.<br />
The 10 points boil down to three flavours<br />
of new, street-level bikelanes:<br />
A street of their own<br />
The plans call for 350km of safe Fahrradstraßen,<br />
a network of bicycle-priority routes<br />
converted from existing streets in the city<br />
centre (photo). Residents’ cars and delivery<br />
vans would be permitted, but cyclists are<br />
boss. Berlin already has bike-priority streets<br />
– such as Linienstraße in Mitte and Wilmersdorf’s<br />
Prinzregentenstraße – but they’re<br />
poorly marked and unenforced.<br />
Please mind the bollards<br />
In addition to the Fahrradstraßen, Berlin’s<br />
government has committed to giving all<br />
major thoroughfares two-metre-wide bike<br />
lanes at street level, clearly marked and protected<br />
from four-wheeled invaders (and their<br />
swinging doors) by kerbs or other barriers.<br />
Work is underway on the first, along Kreuzberg’s<br />
Hasenheide.<br />
Cycling Superhighways<br />
Another key demand is 100km of Radschnellwege,<br />
or bike speedways. Planners have<br />
already mapped out eight radial routes linking<br />
the city’s outskirts to the centre, often<br />
through parks or abandoned railyards. The<br />
first is planned to run north from Adlershof<br />
along the A-113 highway, then across Tempelhof<br />
into Kreuzberg.<br />
The law prescribes 350km of<br />
new “cycle streets” by 2025.<br />
Other Volksentscheid Fahrrad goals:<br />
100,000 more bike parking spaces, cyclistfriendlier<br />
intersections, and a city-funded ad<br />
campaign to promote cycling. That last demand<br />
may prove critical. Despite their good<br />
intentions, the saintly activists have stirred<br />
up some bad blood.<br />
High on the list of bike haters are the car<br />
and lorry drivers set to lose traffic lanes<br />
and parking spaces. The three opposition<br />
parties in Berlin’s Senate have banded<br />
together, declaring the bike-friendly proposals<br />
a “culture war against car drivers.”<br />
And imagine the reactions of Fahrradstraße<br />
residents when their centuries-old<br />
cobblestones are ripped out and replaced<br />
by teal-coloured polyethylene pavers. With<br />
their laundry list of demands and lofty<br />
tone, cyclists risk casting themselves as a<br />
privileged minority.<br />
Through clever political maneuvering,<br />
the Volksentscheid Fahrrad got their<br />
ideas carved into law and even funded.<br />
Now comes the hard part: concrete action.<br />
Berlin’s Senate, perhaps burned by having<br />
the plans jammed down their throat, is<br />
dragging its feet. That 2015 golden-bike<br />
manifesto called for Berlin to be transformed<br />
into a cyclist’s paradise by 2025.<br />
Since then, just a single new bike lane has<br />
been approved for construction. Activist<br />
Peter Feldkamp bemoaned the lack<br />
of progress in Tagesspiegel, saying, “If the<br />
Senate keeps working at this rate, it<br />
will take 150 years.” ■<br />
Gitti La Mar / Rabea Seibert / Volksentscheid Fahrrad<br />
50<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
COLUMN— The Gay Berliner<br />
Xpose<br />
yourself<br />
Walter Crasshole<br />
strips Xposed Queer<br />
Film Festival down to<br />
the essentials<br />
If the X in Xposed doesn't stand for eXplicit – and it does<br />
sometimes – it certainly stands for eXperimental, or at least<br />
adventurous. And for a lucky 13th time, it returns to offer up<br />
a serving of queer film far off the beaten path, but all the tastier<br />
for it. For four days (<strong>May</strong> 24-27) at Moviemento, travel that path<br />
through a selection of LGBTQ* features, shorts, documentaries,<br />
discussions and parties, all leading to The Lolly Awards.<br />
Discoveries abound. Even I stumbled upon an auteur I’d never<br />
heard of: Bulgarian-born Austrian Mara Mattuschka. Her <strong>2018</strong><br />
film Phaidros, runs as the feature opener for this year, and plays<br />
like the long lost New Queer Cinema feature we never saw. Hitting<br />
notes of Derek Jarmen and early Todd Haynes, Mattuschka’s<br />
film is a journey through the dramatic underbelly of Vienna’s<br />
theatre and nightlife scene, following Emil – a dead ringer for My<br />
Beautiful Laundrette-era Daniel Day Lewis – and his barbed relationship<br />
with veteran actor Werner Maria Straus.<br />
Mattuschka’s no newcomer. Like fellow Austrian artist last<br />
year, Valie Export, Mattuschka receives the “Experience” treatment<br />
at Kottbusser Tor’s Aquarium and with a filmography<br />
stretching back to 1983, there’s plenty to Xperience.<br />
For a different kind of feature, Drew Lint’s Canadian-German<br />
production M/M, dissects identity and obsession in a tale of two<br />
young gay men in modern Berlin who look exactly like each other<br />
(not exactly a far-out fantasy). How far can love, or obsession,<br />
take you before you consume and ultimately destroy each other?<br />
Two documentaries this year take playful approaches to serious<br />
subjects. Daisy Asquith’s Queerama traces the history of homosexuality<br />
from Oscar Wilde through today, using nothing but BFI film<br />
footage and a killer soundtrack of John Grant, Hercules & the Love<br />
Affair and Goldfrapp. “Documentary” curiosity Terror Nullius by<br />
Soda Jerk is a patchwork of film clips exploring Australia's colonial<br />
history in a much less linear and more in your face manner than<br />
the former. With minimal knowledge of Australian pop-culture<br />
and history, those not from down under should also immensely<br />
enjoy it. As a bonus doc for those with Berlinale blues, Bixa Travesty<br />
(“Tranny Fag”), about devastatingly powerful performer Linn<br />
de Quebrada and Teddy documentary winner of <strong>2018</strong>, also screens.<br />
Shorts have always played an important role in the Xposed agenda<br />
(the original fest was dedicated to them) and this year shorts<br />
come in all sizes and volumes. Case in point, Julia Fuhr Mann's<br />
“Riot Not Diet” is a utopian, empowering vision of fat women in<br />
Germany today, while Olivia Kastebring's “Juck [Thrust]” focuses<br />
on a movement of women in Sweden pushing power out of their<br />
pelvic regions. Both are in the Opening Night Shorts Program.<br />
There’s much more on offer than I can thrust into this column,<br />
so be sure to go down and check it out yourself. And if anyone<br />
tells you to Xpose yourself in <strong>May</strong>, take it as a hearty recommendation.<br />
See you there!<br />
XPOSED Queer Film Festival, <strong>May</strong> 24-27 | Moviemento,<br />
Kreuzberg, see full programme at xposedfilmfestival.com<br />
MAY <strong>2018</strong>
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR<br />
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Letters to<br />
the editor<br />
This month: our cinema trailer<br />
featuring Berlin personality<br />
Rummelsnuff and an article in<br />
our April Brazil issue offend<br />
two readers.<br />
“I don’t want to be<br />
a Berliner any more.”<br />
Guten Tag, I would like to get my opinion<br />
about your trailer off of my chest. I love<br />
black humour and sarcasm but this video<br />
won’t increase your circulation – I assume<br />
that is the point of running it. As a Berliner<br />
I feel pretty bad when I see this commercial.<br />
If the tourists, immigrants and temporary<br />
residents are supposed to see and hear<br />
Berliners like that, then I don’t want to be<br />
a Berliner any more. With that appearance,<br />
Berliners can maybe work as a bouncer for<br />
dubious clubs, but he doesn’t represent me.<br />
Thank you for your attention.<br />
— Sincerely, Peter<br />
“Does this not look<br />
slightly racist to you?”<br />
Dear <strong>Exberliner</strong>, I am Brazilian, a Berlin resident<br />
and reader of your magazine. I bought<br />
April’s edition yesterday to have it as Sunday<br />
reading and to my surprise most of it is about<br />
‘Brazil in Berlin’. So far so good, but then I<br />
reached page 18. There’s a two-page story<br />
called “Why I married my German wife”. It’s<br />
about four Brazilian guys that shamelessly fool<br />
their respective German wives with lies and<br />
betrayals in order to get German citizenship.<br />
Before I even start, let’s do a short analysis<br />
of the illustration that was published with<br />
the story: A dark-skinned man portrayed as<br />
the chesthair-out-of-shirt Latino stereotype<br />
sneaks a passport out of the pocket of a white<br />
skinned woman. Does this not look slightly<br />
racist to you? With his other hand he holds<br />
a ring. A true gold digger act performed by a<br />
darked-skinned male against a white-skinned<br />
female. No need to say this already started<br />
out on the wrong foot. You want to know if<br />
marrying a German person for a visa is worth<br />
it? Well, how about opening the scope a little<br />
and talking about a whole new wave of marriages<br />
that are impulsed by visas, performed<br />
by an innumerous number of non-European<br />
nationalities coming together with European<br />
nationalities, motivated by love, friendship,<br />
political points of view or even money? Off<br />
the top of my head I can give you at least five<br />
examples of this kind of marriage that would<br />
make an exciting, diverse story with no need<br />
to offend a nationality.<br />
Do you even realise how this one-sided<br />
story touches Brazilian people? People that<br />
struggle for acceptance in a foreign country?<br />
How this offends our culture and specially<br />
touches the reputation of Brazilian immigrants?<br />
Why didn’t you hear other stories?<br />
This piece reinforces a bad stereotype<br />
and it’s offensive. I hope <strong>Exberliner</strong> is<br />
capable of an apology, for these miserable,<br />
miserable pages. — Roberta<br />
Dear Roberta,<br />
The article in question wasn’t supposed to<br />
portray “Brazilian people”, how or why they<br />
marry, or who does or does not marry for<br />
citizenship. Its scope was a lot more humble<br />
and limited: under the tag ‘confession’, we<br />
ran a rather anecdotal story of four friends<br />
from Brazil who happen to share the same<br />
story of love and deception – at least in the<br />
way they all boasted marrying their German<br />
girlfriends for a visa. Granted, the story is<br />
pretty one-dimensional – as told from the<br />
men’s perspective. Granted, “marrying for a<br />
visa” isn’t a Brazilian thing. It just happened<br />
that these four were Brazilian, that Alice<br />
Klar knew them (and in some cases their<br />
wives!) and that they were willing to talk to<br />
us (although anonymously).<br />
As for the illustration, you’re totally right:<br />
the guy (intentionally) does look like the<br />
cliché ‘Latin lover’, a cliché used and abused<br />
by the men of the story. The German women<br />
allegedly fell for just that – and all the exoticism<br />
that comes with it.<br />
As for the ‘passport stealing’ – it’s obviously<br />
a visual metaphor. It’s a barter: the<br />
women get to marry a dream lover, the<br />
men get to solve their visa problem. Who’s<br />
the cheater, who’s the cheated? As the story<br />
shows, some of the men end up falling into<br />
their own trap.<br />
All in all, we thought that the material<br />
made for a quite universally entertaining story;<br />
a story that tells us more about the quirks<br />
of the human psyche than it does about one<br />
nationality or another. This is the way you<br />
read it. It’s not the way we intended it.<br />
This was only one story in a 15-page<br />
Brazil special. We also portrayed six talented<br />
Brazilians who call Berlin home and wrote<br />
at length about Brazilian food, culture and<br />
places. Some readers enjoyed it, including<br />
some fellow Brazilians. You didn’t – and<br />
we’re sorry for that. Let us just assure you<br />
that we never meant to offend you or other<br />
Brazilians. If you found this article upsetting,<br />
we can only apologise.<br />
— <strong>Exberliner</strong> team<br />
www.berlindrawingroom.com<br />
52<br />
EXBERLINER <strong>171</strong>
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