LOLA Issue Two

ISSUE 02 A/W 2016

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Thomas von Wittich

Roc Roc-It

Real Junk Food Project

DENA

Pornceptual

Andreas Greiner

Pansy

Symphoniacs

Coco Schumann

Culture Night Belfast

Pit Bukowski

RUBBING BERLIN

UP THE RIGHT WAY

Have you ever danced to classical music?

SYMPHONIACS

A NEW DIMENSION IN CLASSICAL

AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC

A NEW

GENERATION OF

YOUNG CLASSICAL

VIRTUOSOS

VIVALDI MEETS

DAFTPUNK?

Das Album des Ausnahme-

Projekts · 11 Tracks

WWW.symphoniacs.com

Autumn/Winter 2016

Editorial

‘WE’RE ALL ON THIS

RIDE TOGETHER’

On a typical U-Bahn journey in Berlin there

is the distinct chance that you will brush

up against anyone from any walk of life.

The carriages are like a microcosm of the melting

pot that is the metropolis. Hardcore punks sit beside

full-on drag queens, suited and booted office

workers stand alongside street musicians. Young,

old, rich, poor, every nationality, every religion,

every background – everyone is on the U-Bahn,

and let’s not forget the dogs. It’s a democratic experience

that we’re all in together.

This same diversity of life and people in Berlin

is something that we aim to reflect in the pages

of LOLA. In this issue a characterful sideshow

performer, a talented classical virtuoso, a renowned

drag queen, an international music star,

an award-winning artist, a legendary jazz swinger

and more are all hanging out alongside each other.

Of course, it’s not a perfectly representative mix of

the breadth of culture present in the city, but we’re

still at the early stages of our journey, and there are

many more stories to be told.

Every person we feature has a different connection

to Berlin and a different story that ties

them to the city. Of course there are overlaps and

similarities, but for everyone there is some special

hook that has brought them here, that holds

them, and inspires them to stay. Whether that is

the freedom to express yourself in ways that your

country of origin doesn’t allow, to work in a space

where you can develop your artistic practice

without limits, or the ability to live and survive

in an anarchistic Wagenplatz, everyone has their

reasons and motivations.

So the next time you are on the U-Bahn, take a

look around and think about the stories you can

see and the lives people are living. You never know

who you might be sitting beside. Jonny

Publisher &

Editor In Chief

Jonny Tiernan

Executive Editor

Marc Yates

Associate Editor

Alison Rhoades

Sub Editor

Linda Toocaram

Photographers

Fotini Chora

Zack Helwa

Julie Montauk

Viktor Richardsson

Robert Rieger

Tyler Udall

David Vendryes

Writers

Hamza Beg

Brian Coney

Alex Rennie

Nadja Sayej

Jana Sotzko

Stephanie Taralson

PR & Events

Emma Taggart

Special Thanks

Leila Bani

Greg Dennis

Paul Irwin

Jack Pendleton

Lilian Syrigou

LOLA Magazine

Blogfabrik

Oranienstraße 185

10999 Berlin

For business enquiries

jonny@lolamag.de

For editorial enquiries

marc@lolamag.de

For PR & event enquiries

emma@lolamag.de

Cover photo by Tyler Udall, jacket by Sara Armstrong.

Printed in Berlin by Oktoberdruck AG – www.oktoberdruck.de

Autumn/Winter 2016

1

2 Issue Two

Photo by Fotini Chora

Pansy commanding the stage at SO36.

Get the full story of her tireless passion

for drag on page 30.

Contents

04. berlin through the lens

Thomas von Wittich

“The city appreciates urban art

more than other cities, or at least

it’s fighting less against it.”

8. local hero

Roc Roc-It

“I just give them my tattoo machine

and say, ‘I really like you, please

paint on me.’”

11. Real Junk Food Project Berlin

“It’s always a nice atmosphere, as

cooking and eating together always

creates very strong connections.”

14. DENA

“It’s one thing to appreciate a good

song and another to really be

struck by it.”

16. Pornceptual

“We’re trying to encourage people

to produce their own porn.”

20. cover story

Peaches

“People need to not take it for granted

because it’s still one of the most

free and creative cities in the world.

If people want to pretend it’s a bourgeois

nightmare, then they can just

go away. Don’t treat it that way.”

26. Andreas Greiner

“I’m bringing nature into the

white cube.”

30. Pansy

“It’s really beautiful to see so many

people getting dressed up and

looking silly and being themselves

and doing their thing.”

34. Symphoniacs

“I think a lot of electronic musicians

came up on electronic music, but

to have a Tonmeister – someone

with a classical background – it’s a

completely different approach.”

38. Coco Schumann

“I was the drummer in one of the

hottest, high-octane jazz ensembles

of the entire German Reich.”

42. dispatches

Brian Coney in Belfast

“Every venue and space is emanating

music and life, the art galleries

are rammed with people, and the

atmosphere is electric.”

44. the last word

Pit Bukowski

“For some reason I never watched

Scorsese’s Cape Fear until last week.”

Autumn/Winter 2016

3

Berlin Through The Lens

Thomas von Wittich

“Fun things usually happen when you leave your

comfort zone,” says Thomas von Wittich as he

recalls scaling rooftops and moving trains with

the Berlin Kidz, the latest subjects of his adrenaline-fuelled

photographs. In viewing Thomas’ work,

we get a unique glimpse of Berlin’s street art as it’s

being made, and get to experience the rush of what

it’s like to be there climbing walls with the pros.

BERLIN THROUGH THE LENS:

THOMAS VON WITTICH’S

BERLIN KIDZ

4 Issue Two

Thomas von Wittich

Berlin Through the Lens

To get the perfect shot, Thomas keeps

one eye on the viewfinder and the

other on the easiest escape route, and

in doing so he captures some of the most exciting

scenes of our city in expressive black and

white. Just before his aptly titled Adrenaline

exhibition, we stole some precious daylight

minutes with Thomas to learn more about how

he got in with Berlin’s secretive graffiti crews.

How did you get involved in Berlin’s street

art scene? I left home quite early and had

hundreds of different jobs to support myself

while I spent my free time painting graffiti.

I was a cook onboard a ship, I was loading

trucks, I worked in the meatpacking industry,

I worked in a company making chicken

nuggets, I sold cameras, pumpkin seed oil, and

ice-cream. Then I quit painting and started as

an assistant to a music photographer who was

working in the goth scene.

I spent three years in his studio or at concerts,

taking photos and developing and printing

in the darkroom. When I started to work

as a photographer I was really just shooting

rap artists, which turned out to be the reason

I moved to Berlin: there was not too much

happening in my hometown.

When I came to Berlin, I met Alias and

some other street artists, and I decided to go

out with them at night to take some photos of

them painting. From that point on I started to

shoot more street and graffiti artists and fewer

musicians.

Autumn/Winter 2016

5


Thomas von Wittich

What do you feel is special about the

scene in Berlin? The city appreciates

urban art more than other cities, or at least

it’s fighting less against it. On one side it’s

easier to paint in Berlin than in other cities

because of the freedoms; on the other side

it’s harder because of the competition. I

feel like people don’t really work together

or support each other too much.

How did you gain access to the people

you document? When I moved to Berlin

eight years ago I was walking in Kreuzberg

with a good friend I used to paint with and

we saw some of the first Über Fresh (ÜF)

rooftops. He said: “This looks like shit, but

trust me, if they keep going, this will get

interesting.” So I followed their career pretty

much from the very beginning. Three

years ago I tried to make contact but it took

a few months before I found someone to

introduce me. I went to shoot one action

with them and told them that I would be

very interested in following them with my

camera, and a year later they called me

back and said, “OK, let’s go.”

The first action I took photos of after the

call was when they painted the huge façade

in the Cuvry Brache, directly after Blu

let his famous artwork get painted black.

Nobody told me before what was going to

happen, we just met in front and they told

me that they were going to repaint the wall.

And that I would have to climb a bit.

We climbed ‘a bit’ over three pitched

roofs in the dark, rain and cold. It was my

first time walking on a roof, so I followed

them so slowly. When I finally arrived

at the spot, it took like two hours before

they started to paint while I was just

sitting in the rain waiting. The first thing

they wrote on the wall was ‘FUCK YOU

DU FOTZE’. At this point I was questioning

the whole thing, like, seriously? I was

risking my life for that? Until I realised

that an investor wanted to build luxury

apartments with the view of Berlin’s

famous graffiti – the Blu artwork – so they

wanted to make a statement and paint a

huge middle finger for him.

The longer I followed them with my camera,

the more comfortable I became on the

roofs, and when we went on the same roof

some months later I could walk and take

photos at the same time.

Did you have to work hard to gain

their trust? They document pretty much

everything they do by themselves, so it was

nothing really new to them, except for the

6 Issue Two

Thomas von Wittich


fact that I was taking photos instead of filming.

I got introduced by a mutual friend and I think

in general I have the image of being trustworthy.

But I had to prove somehow that I was fit

enough to follow them over the roofs, so I was

not a risk for them.

We’ve read that you are pretty fearless in

chasing the perfect shot. Have you ever

put yourself in danger when shooting? I

wouldn’t describe myself as fearless, I just do

what I think is necessary to get the shot I want. I

don’t really feel that I put myself in danger, but

that is relative. They estimated my fitness very

well and told me before whether I’d be able to

manage it, something I knew that I could trust

them on.

Who do you think are the best street artists

working in Berlin right now? I don’t really see

it as a competition, and urban art is in general

a wide field, so I don’t want to point out people

saying they are the best. But I like LES MISERA-

BLES a lot.

Why do you choose to shoot your photos in

black and white instead of colour? I never

did anything else. I started to work as a blackand-white

photographer 12 years ago and I never

felt the need to change. When I shoot urban

artists, I’m not interested in the final colourful

artwork in the streets – there are plenty of photographers

and usually the artists themselves

take care of documenting the work. I want to

show the atmosphere and the circumstances of

how it was created. I want to show the process

and the artists – things you usually don’t see.

For me that works very well in black and white.

Have you always been attracted to subcultures,

or is it this specific moment in street

art that interests you? I have always been

attracted to culture in general. But I grew up

with graffiti, it’s what I know, what I like and

what I completely understand. And I am really

fascinated by the effort people put into creating

their art. Some actions are planned out like

bank robberies, but in the end it’s just to bring

some colour to the city.

Do you have any new projects in the works?

I’m for sure gonna continue to document urban

artists, but at the same time I don’t want to plan

too much. I started two new series in the last

four years which are both unreleased and very

far removed from what I was doing before. I

might just experiment with that for a bit.

Be the first to see Thomas’ latest late-night

adventures by following him on Facebook at

facebook.com/thomasvonwittichphotography

Autumn/Winter 2016

7

Local Hero

Roc Roc-It

LOCAL HERO:

THE STREET LIFE

OF ROC ROC-IT

8

Issue Two

Roc Roc-It

Local Hero

Street performer, cabaret act, circus sideshow, and a true character: Roc

Roc-It’s life has taken him across the world on a wild ride with enough

stories to fill a book. On stage he lives up to his name: a rocket firing on all

cylinders with the crowd in the palm of his hand, but off stage is an entirely

different affair. He’s a livewire, but he also has real softness, warmth

and openness. We meet with him in the infamous Berlin Wagenplatz he

calls home to hear a little about how he got to where he is today.

words by

Jonny Tiernan

photos by

Robert Rieger

Where are you from originally? I was born in the

Black Forest and grew up close to Cologne. It’s a small

town in a little valley – forest on one side and the other

side mountains with vineyards, a river in the middle.

When did you move to Berlin? Eight years ago. I

heard lots about Berlin. When I was 13, me and my

friend were little punk rockers so we decided to run

away. There were two ways we could go: to Hamburg

or Berlin-Kreuzberg. We went to the highway and

hitchhiked, but we didn’t have a clue which way the

highway went. In the end we didn’t get to Berlin or

Hamburg, but instead ended up somewhere south in

a shitty little town. Luckily we knew somebody there

and we managed to sleep under their stairs until our

parents picked us up. We were ready for a revolution

when we were 13. Then we grew up, got girlfriends

and started skateboarding. In the early ‘90s we got

trapped with the techno and the drugs, and the revolution

disappeared a little bit.

How deep into the techno scene did you get? I was

a techno and house DJ back in 1993. I played loads

of parties, and I thought I didn’t need a house, just a

backpack and my record box. The next biggest towns

were Bonn and Cologne, and I actually lived on the

S-Bahn between them. I always made a point that I

would be the last DJ of the night, and after the party

I would go to the subway, put my record box down,

put my feet up, and go to sleep. Then at the end,

somebody would wake me up and tell me it was the

last stop, I’d change platforms, take the train back and

sleep. I did this for a whole year.

What did you do next? I did a winemaking apprenticeship

in the mountains. On my test scores I was the

third best winemaker in Germany. From there, I went to

school to become a winemaking master.

And how did you get started as a performer? Some

friends of mine were organising a party and wanted a

fire breather. I knew a guy, but then I couldn’t get hold

of him. I was doing some fire stuff – not fire breathing

– but I had promised them a fire breather so I decided

to step up and do it. I learned fire breathing for this one

show, but the adrenaline from getting everyone riled up

got me hooked on performing in front of an audience.

How did you make the change from winemaker to

performer? During my summer break from school I

didn’t have any money but I wanted to do something,

so I hitchhiked to Barcelona. On the way there, my

backpack got stolen and I lost everything except my

juggling box and my fire equipment. I was halfway

there, so I decided to keep going even though I had no

money. I spent the first night sleeping on the roof of

a casino, as it had nice padded grass and some palm

trees. In the morning I woke up and I was like, ‘Fuck,

OK, now I’m in Barcelona, I only speak German, I have

a few skills but I don’t have a show, I don’t know anybody,

but hell, I’m here now so let’s see what’s up.’

I randomly walked through the city and I stumbled

upon the Las Ramblas area. Every 20 metres there

was a human statue, a musician, a magician, a street

show, a juggler – the whole street. I thought, ‘Man, this

is fucking paradise, all these people are making money

doing what they love to do, and back home I am walking

up and down the hills carrying heavy shit on my

back. Fuck that, I’m staying here.’ And that’s what I did.

I forgot school, my apartment, my car, and everything

I had back in Germany. All that stuff just wasn’t important

anymore, so I stayed in Barcelona.

Where did you live, and how did you get by? I lived

on a park bench for the first three months. I met a guy

playing didgeridoo, and alongside him I started doing

some fire devil stick, fire breathing and fire eating.

It wasn’t a real show, just didgeridoo, music and fire,

but we made enough money to get some breakfast,

Las Ramblas

A series of short streets

around the tree-lined

pedestrian mall La Rambla.

Spanish poet Federico

García Lorca once said that

La Rambla was “the only

street in the world which I

wish would never end.”

Autumn/Winter 2016

9

Local Hero

Roc Roc-It

beers and tobacco. We met a lot of people

doing other shows and from this I learned

little by little. You meet other people and

you exchange things. Somebody teaches

you a trick, you teach that person a trick,

or you tell that person a joke they can do in

their show. It was a big interaction of people.

We were a really nice crowd of 50 street

performers who were all friends and who

were hanging out all day. There was no competition,

everybody made enough money,

and everybody had a good time. I was like,

‘Forget working in a vineyard, this is what I’m

doing from now on.’ That’s 15 years ago and I

don’t regret a single minute.

Where did you go after the park bench?

I met another street performer who was

living in a squat; he said he was leaving and

his room was free. I didn’t actually know

anything about squatting before that, I

didn’t have any idea of the political scene,

but from there I met people and I started

slowly understanding. Then I carried on and

squatted other buildings.

When did you start getting tattooed? I did

my first one when I was 13 using a compass

and the ink cartridge from my pen to make

a little anarchy symbol on my hand, stickand-poke

style. The ink was shit and I didn’t

go deep enough so it disappeared after a

year, but I had the clear picture of myself

in the future in my head, being completely

covered in tattoos from top to bottom. My

idea was to look like the outside of a fridge

and the inside of a public toilet. So like a

bunch of magnets stuck to the outside of

the fridge, and people writing silly shit with

marker pen on the inside of a public toilet.

That was my whole idea of how I wanted to

look. I think I did a really good job!

Where do you get your tattoos? From really

good friends of mine. Many are from friends

who have never done a tattoo in their life,

they’re not even good with drawing! I just give

them my tattoo machine and say, “I really like

you, please paint on me.” All the bits are more

like memories of people than an art collection.

What’s the story behind your rubber chicken

tattoo? I got that on the TV Show Miami Ink

when they came to the Coney Island Circus

Sideshow. The rubber chicken I had been

using in my act had gone missing. In America

they have milk cartons with missing children

on them, so I got this tattoo of a missing rubber

chicken. I started crying on camera and

said, “If anybody knows anything about my

chicken, please call the Sideshow, I miss him!”

One week later there was a mountain of boxes

addressed to me, and each box had a rubber

chicken inside. I had this giant pile of rubber

chickens that had been sent by people from

all over the country. It was fucking amazing.

How did you end up as part of the Coney

Island Circus Sideshow? I was on a trip to

the States, and during my last two weeks in

New Orleans I split up with my girlfriend. The

police were really on my ass and I couldn’t

make any money. I really liked New Orleans –

the music, the artists, the circus community

are great – but the situation was against

me. I had friends living in New York that I

had squatted with in Barcelona, so I thought

I would visit. On the last day of my visa I

decided to go to Coney Island and do a show

on the boardwalk, just to have one nice show

before I left. I stopped in front of the Sideshow

and the boss came out. I had a suitcase

and on the side of it was written ‘The Roc-It

Circus Sideshow’. He came up to me and said,

“Oh, you do sideshow, what do you do?” I

told him what I did, that my flight was in five

hours but I would love to do my thing on his

stage. He said “OK” and took me backstage.

I had ten minutes before they said, “It’s

your turn.” I got the audience really loud and

rowdy and had a great show. Afterwards

the boss said, “So, your flight is later. That’s

a real bummer because I would hire you for

the summer.” That was the moment I had to

decide. I could either remember the US as a

really shit time and go home, or forget the

flight, stay, and create something. I thought

about that moment on stage and how awesome

it was, about the history of that sideshow,

and I decided to stay. That turned into

three years, doing over 1,000 shows a year.

What about Berlin? Have you noticed it

changing much over the eight years you

have lived here? The streets are getting

more complicated. The police and Ordnungsamt

are coming down on amplifiers, saying

you can’t do shows at certain times in certain

places, that the audience is too big. It’s the

stuff I’ve seen in many other cities in Europe,

and now in Berlin. When I arrived here there

were absolutely no rules. You could come

with a big flamethrower and massive speakers

to any place you want and do a show.

What are you working on next? Next month

I’m booked in Barcelona as a birthday clown

for a three-year-old boy! I do anything: street

perfomance, techno festivals, punk rock

shows, cabarets, burlesque, theatre, circus,

freak shows, whatever! It’s not circus or sideshow,

it’s in between, and that’s why it fits to

absolutely every audience.

There’s no schedule to Roc’s shows and you

won’t find him on Facebook. If you see him

perform, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Rubber Chicken

Johnny Carson reportedly

kept a rubber chicken behind

his desk on The Tonight

Show as a comedic

talisman. It was believed

that “a rubber chicken

always gets a laugh.”

10 Issue Two

Real Junk Food Project Berlin

Sustainable Eating

words by

Hamza Beg

photos by

Zack Helwa

REAL JUNK FOOD

PROJECT BERLIN:

TACKLING

FOOD WASTE

ONE TROLLEY

AT A TIME

In a world where an empty shelf means

a wasted sales opportunity, one wonders

how it is physically possible for us to deal

with the sheer amount of food that is so

quickly restocked and replenished in our

supermarkets. So when the lights go out

and the last cashier has neatly pressed

all the notes into the cash register, what

happens to all of the food edging past its

sell-by date? Tobias Goecke knows and is

trying to change it.

When you first meet Tobias

you might imagine that he’s

achieved almost everything he

set out to achieve with The Real Junk Food

Project Berlin. His calm persona and gentle

demeanour give the impression of an individual

totally at ease in their affairs and

business. However, there is a rag-tag charm

about the project that Tobias began back

in June 2015. Talking with him, it becomes

apparent that the Berlin branch get their

hands dirty, work exceedingly hard and

passionately pursue their goal of bringing

about a radical change in the way we deal

with food waste.

Fact: globally, somewhere near 1.3 billion

tonnes of food is wasted every year. This

means approximately a third of all food

produced in the world is never eaten. It

is a startling fact, and Tobias repeats this

information with the air of a man who still

cannot quite believe it. “I think what I find

heartbreaking is that the resources that go

into food production – land, labour and

everything – in the end is also wasted,” he

says. The problem is almost unmanageably

global and thus the only possible response

is one that grows from the ground up: a

local reaction to a global concern.

Having started cooking at a young age,

Tobias developed an interest in food from

simple but hearty dishes – standard pasta

recipes and potato-based meals. He cooked

with his family, experimented with different

spices and herbs, and still remembers

his first attempt at spaghetti. The tomato

sauce was too watery and the pasta was left

swimming in a red sea of bolognese. There

was more work to be done.

Tobias left his native Prenzlauer Berg

to study social sciences in Halle, and

developed a keen interest in questions of

political and social inequality. He travelled

to South Africa for his diploma research

where he met his wife-to-be. He would stay

for two years before moving back to Berlin

in 2014. “I originally come from a background

in journalism and filmmaking, and

then in Berlin I worked in project management

and cultural management which

was not as fulfilling for me,” he explains.

Something that you learn very quickly after

meeting Tobias is that his idea of fulfilling

work is intimately tied to benefitting his

surroundings.

One such example is the Fair-Teiler

project, an early influence on Tobias that

combined his growing awareness of the

food waste issue and his interest in tackling

inequality. Fair-Teiler, meaning ‘fair-sharer’,

sets up shelves and fridges across cities

and encourages people to leave and take

food from them at will. “I was amazed by

how good the food was,” he begins. “Perhaps

it had one little spot but it was still

fine produce and this was amazing for me.”

When he came across the Real Junk Food

Project however, something struck a chord.

It is hard for Tobias to say whether he

chose the project or the project chose him,

but the facts suggest that he did indeed

Autumn/Winter 2016

11

Sustainable Eating


« I THINK WHAT I FIND

HEARTBREAKING IS

THAT THE RESOURCES

THAT GO INTO FOOD

PRODUCTION –

LAND, LABOUR AND

EVERYTHING – IN THE

END IS ALSO WASTED. »

choose it. The Real Junk Food Project rescues

food that would otherwise be thrown

away by big supermarkets, cooks it up into

delicious treats and offers it on a pay-asyou-feel

basis. Having started in the UK,

the project has found legs in various different

locations, and a simple email from Tobias

was enough to bring one into existence

in Berlin. After contacting Adam Smith,

the project’s founder, he was encouraged to

set up in Berlin and through hard graft and

utter dedication, Tobias and his various

volunteers have made it happen.

Tobias’ story and the entire project

itself is replete with an almost bygone

romanticism: “We have arrangements with

two organic supermarkets and we collect

the food that they can’t sell anymore. It’s

always a lot of bread, salad and vegetables

– we usually get a good amount. It’s still a

bit of a drop in the ocean. At the moment

we don’t have a car, so just do it with trolleys

and the train. It’s OK, but there’s only

a certain amount we can carry from the

stores.” He candidly tells us of a time that a

fallen trolley left berries strewn across the

road in Marzahn. The industry and drive it

takes to transport trolleys of food across a

city recalls a time before Berlin’s ubiquitous

DriveNow culture, of which the trolley

is an unmistakeable symbol.

Recognised as one of the greatest markers

of consumer capitalism, the project in Berlin

radically reclaims the shopping trolley.

It moves from being a bound object trapped

within the aisles of a supermarket to a wild,

free-wheeling vehicle for change. Some bizarre

subversion of mass consumer culture

is occurring here as Tobias and his team

fight food waste, one trolley load at a time.

If transportation is the first stage, transformation

is the second. With this plethora

of rescued food, the team find a variety of

different uses for their newly-recovered

resources. The primary aim of the project is

to cook rescued food as a pop-up restaurant.

The team has cooked for a variety of

different events, hosted some themselves

and partnered with other food-sharing

groups in Berlin. But it doesn’t stop there:

“At the moment, as part of the project, we

donate surplus food to other organisations

who provide for homeless people, like

Engel für Bedürftige (Angels for People in

Need). They set up supermarkets in which

they sell this surplus food for a few cents,

redistributing this food to the community.

So we bring them the food, also in trolleys.”

One of the goals of the project could be,

like other Real Junk Food organisations

in the UK, to set up a pay-as-you-feel café.

However, something about the permanence

of a café doesn’t seem to excite Tobias. “It

would be great to have a food truck because

it means you can be flexible and move

around to different locations,” he says. Having

a food truck does seem more in keeping

with the spirit of Tobias’ project, where

12 Issue Two


Sustainable Eating

everything is about flow and movement

of food and people, and most importantly

a consciousness about the way we consume.

For Tobias, there is always a duality in

his approach to the project. First, there is

the principle of not wasting – preserving

and respecting the very nature of the food.

This is deeply personal and informed not

just by his work and experience but an

inner belief in having a positive impact on

the world. Secondly, there is the human

aspect, creating connections between

volunteers, encouraging a consciousness

about consumption and finally, feeding

people: “People get together and get to

know each other through the cooking. It’s

always a nice atmosphere, as cooking and

eating together always creates very strong

connections.”

Tobias works with a pool of around 30

volunteers, which is a good indication of

how popular the project is becoming, given

that it is just over a year old. One of the elements

of the work that makes it so exciting

for Tobias, and for all of those who partake

in the project, is the mix of people donating

their time and culinary skills.

“The volunteers are quite an international

team. We have students from Italy

and Spain, and at every event we have a

different team who bring a different mix of

their influences.” Tobias proudly notes that

even their cooks are a diverse mix of experienced

chefs and almost complete amateurs,

making the whole process of volunteering

appear open and incredibly welcoming.

“I am really amazed when the team starts

working to see what they come up with –

it’s like a beehive buzzing.”

The project has also worked consistently

with refugees from the Refugio

Share House, where Berliners and refugees

live together. When moving people means

moving cultures, there is always an opportunity

for exchange and interaction. For Tobias,

the kitchen is the perfect place for that

to happen. He and his team blend Middle

Eastern, South African and European flavours

with whatever other influences their

volunteers bring. “We work with Cooking

for Peace, who also do intercultural cooking

events. I really enjoy that and support it.

We have other organisations that work in

the sustainability field or the social impact

field, so it is becoming a little network.”

Something about Tobias’ approach to the

entire project leaves such a strong impression

that it becomes almost impossible not

to believe in it. Throughout our discussion

he references a number of different

organisations related to the project, and it

becomes clear that the food consciousness

movement in Berlin has a strong backbone

of support. With dedicated figures like Tobias,

it feels as though we are in safe hands,

and yet we should not relax our efforts.

There are trolleys out there that need liberating,

stomachs that need feeding, food

that needs saving and minds that need

changing. He concludes: “For me it is about

appreciating the food and not considering

it just a product that you buy. It is an essential

thing for all of life.” Tobias’ statements

are so sincere and honest that you begin to

question how you have not yet reached the

same conclusions.

If you are interested in attending a Real Junk

Food Project Berlin event, you can follow

them at facebook.com/TRJFPBerlin. For general

information on the global movement, visit

their website at therealjunkfoodproject.org

Autumn/Winter 2016

13

New Music

DENA

words by

Jana Sotzko

photos by

Julie Montauk

CLOSER TO SOME KIND

OF TRUTH: BULGARIAN

POP ARTIST DENA

It’s been four summers since Berlin-based DENA suddenly

showed up in everybody’s newsfeeds. Her breakthrough

track, ‘Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools’, was a catchy

mix of hip hop beats and Balkan pop in a distinct Bulgarian

accent. The accompanying video was set in a Neukölln flea

market, and it captured the type of ironic, cheap yet irresistible

glamour that is often associated with Berlin.

On an unexpectedly hot late-summer

afternoon, we meet over french fries

and white wine to talk about her

new EP, living in Berlin and the escapist potential

of a great pop song. Despite the heat,

Denitza Todorova, aka DENA, is reflective

and enthusiastic. Her new EP Trust has recently

been released and she is eager to talk

about her musical ideas after having worked

extensively on putting out the new material.

The roots of DENA’s passion for pop

music – the 1990s specifically – can be

traced back to her formative years in the

post-socialist tri-border region of Bulgaria,

Greece and Turkey where she grew

up in a small town. Pirated cassettes and

VHS recordings of MTV shows played a

big role in her musical education, as did

her living situation. Sharing a tiny flat

with her parents and sister, DENA’s early

interest in music had an escapist quality

to it. She elaborates: “There are all these

photos of me when I was little, always with

headphones on, obsessively listening to

Michael Jackson. Listening to music on

headphones created this private space, a

room for myself.” This idea of a headspace

and the physical aspects of hearing music

so close to the ear comes up several times

as we discuss DENA’s own music and the

question of when she considers a track

good enough to release. “You never know

beforehand how a song will resonate with

others. My personal criteria goes back to

that image of me excessively listening to

music through headphones – I want to feel

closely connected to a track.”

Becoming the performer she is today

has not been easy. After leaving Bulgaria,

DENA first found herself studying in

western Germany for a few miserable years.

Unable to pursue any artistic dreams, she

felt stuck and insecure about whether

leaving her home country had been the

right decision: “I was suffering so much

during those first years because German

wasn’t my first language and I couldn’t just

go out there and, you know, present myself.

I was wondering whether I should have just

stayed to apply for the theatre in Sofia.”

Visa regulations (Bulgaria did not join the

EU until 2007) made it impossible to move

unless it was connected with a change of

university. That chance presented itself 12

years ago and DENA gladly took it, ending

up in Berlin quite by coincidence: “Berlin

just happened. I was like, ‘OK, the capital,

that sounds alright!’ The city was surely

already cool in 2004 but still far from the

hype today.”

In terms of finding a means of artistic

expression, the move turned out to be just

what DENA had needed: “I was obsessed

with music and was always writing lyrics. I

just had no idea yet how to combine them

with music. When I came to Berlin I immediately

found myself in bands, and that

link between lyrics and sound was finally

there.” She started playing live, founded

her own label, met producers and fellow

artists, and then in 2012 ‘Cash,

Diamond Rings, Swimming

Pools’ happened. “I didn’t play

it for ten months to anyone

after I’d made it. It was more

of a personal exercise and then

I really was surprised that of

all the songs I’d ever written,

Mocky

Former member of

Peaches’ rock band The

Shit with many notable

co-writing credits and

production collaborations

including Feist, Mary J.

Blige, Chilly Gonzales,

and Jamie Lidell.

this was the one that people wanted to hear

the most. That really says a lot and I’m not

sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” she

laughs. The video was also initially a happy

accident. It was supposed to be shot in

Bulgaria but when the budget turned out

to be too tight, she chose a Neukölln flea

market instead. YouTube viewers and the

local media embraced the result as a representation

of what makes the city special.

Looking back, DENA seems grateful, yet

unsure whether this label was a fitting one.

“I’m thinking a lot about Berlin these days.

When ‘Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming

Pools’ came out, I was in the right spot at

the right time. It was almost like people

wanted Berlin to be branded. Suddenly it

was easy to say ‘this is Berlin’. I didn’t really

understand it back then. Today I’m asking

myself all the time: what is Berlin?”

The implications of location, hype and

the changing state of Berlin begs another

question: does the city influence her

music? Did it ever? “I would make the same

music elsewhere,” DENA says. “My biggest

fear is that I might make better music

outside of here. I started to really concentrate

on my solo project five or six years

ago. It was in Berlin that I did that. Now I

suddenly feel a strange form of liberty and

freedom outside of here. I guess, though,

that it’s not so much connected to the city

itself than to what I am used to. If I feel a

bit of stagnation it might just be enough to

change my apartment, actually.”

It therefore comes as no surprise that

the Trust EP was not written and produced

exclusively in Berlin, but also in New York

and Los Angeles. Take, for example, the

first single, ‘Lights Camera Action’: “I wrote

the whole song on a piano in LA at Mocky’s

house. I was totally in an LA mood at the

time – the lyrics reflect that, too. Then later

in New York my friend played this funky

guitar line over it.” The process of developing

demos and songs over a period of time

is audible on the new EP, which is more

melodic and funky than her earlier releases

and – while maintaining a hip hop-infused

street smartness – also surprises with

classy arrangements and instrumentation.

In the studio, DENA is mindful to keep

everything close to herself while crediting

co-writers’ additions to her songs: “I work

mainly with friends and family. It’s the best

thing ever. I’m actually easy to

convince that something can

work for a song, like in the case

of that funky guitar part or the

horn section in ‘Trust’.” We

talk a bit about the role of the

producer and the challenges

of sharing a song with others

14 Issue Two

Autumn DENA2016

New Editorial Music

« YOU NEVER KNOW

BEFOREHAND HOW

A SONG WILL RESO-

NATE WITH OTHERS. »

– which then brings us back to Berlin as

a creative hub: “I don’t find it difficult to

share my composition with a producer,

otherwise I’d just be sitting in my room

and doing everything on my own. In this

collaborative style we really create pop

music that I enjoy and that is meaningful

to me. Berlin is great for that type of communal

work. It offers a network and community

that doesn’t even always have be

here. It can just be people passing through.

It’s really a blessing and it took me some

years to realise this.”

When asked about her current favourite

musicians from Berlin, DENA is quick

to name Efterklang successor Liima and

Canadian singer Sean Nicholas Savage

as recent inspirations. While she met the

latter at a shared concert in Poland and

immediately felt a connection, her friendship

with Liima has also led to musical

collaborations and mutual remix work.

Whenever DENA begins to talk about music

it becomes immediately clear that she is

still as much a fan as she is an artist. Again,

the liberating potential of a well-crafted

song comes up. “There is something

about the combination of lyrics, melodies

and chords that just stays with you,” she

begins. “It does not happen often but

it can have a physical effect. It’s one

thing to appreciate a good song and

another to really be struck by it. For

example when I first heard Tame

Impala’s ‘New Person, Same

DENA

Old Mistakes’ I couldn’t stop listening to it

on repeat. I was like, ‘this is the most genius

songwriting ever,’ in terms of what he

is saying, the structure, how it sticks with

you. That’s the stuff I’m interested in.”

DENA describes her interest in further

exploring her musical means with visual

arts – adding stylistic tweaks, trying out

new forms and material. In the case of her

new EP, these experiments have led to a

more personal perspective than before. As

the title suggests, the four songs are lyrically

concerned with interpersonal feelings

and communication. Taking on different

perspectives, ideas of trust and attraction

are contrasted with disappointment,

suspicion, and doubt. Tables get turned

before the emotional confusion culminates

in the aptly titled final track ‘I Like You: I

Lied to You’. DENA describes the song as

“an exercise to write from the perspective

of someone else for the first time. I was

practicing different points of view, flipping

them around.” Was she ever worried about

singing rather personal lyrics? Quite the

contrary: “I found it challenging to actually

stop myself from writing things that were

too personal. The EP is my study of not

having filters in terms of honesty. I wanted

to see how it feels to be super personal

about things. I’m interested in writing and

exploring language. With every song I write

I try to get closer to some kind of truth.”

Trust is out now on Normal Surround.

Keep up with DENA’s latest tour dates and

releases at denafromtheblock.com

Autumn/Winter 2016

15

Undressed to Impress

Pornceptual

PORN THIS WAY:

STRIPPING DOWN THE ART AND

POLITICS OF PORNCEPTUAL

Challenging the porn industry with art and simultaneously running one of Berlin’s

hottest queer parties might sound far-fetched, but this is exactly what Pornceptual

is doing. Built by a collective of determined individuals, their project attempts to

reconfigure the way we consume sex and interpret our own sexualities. To better

understand this forward-thinking venture, intrepid journalist Alex gets a first-hand

look at one aspect of the Pornceptual project before meeting the team to learn more.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me

about Berlin is that it’s completely normal

to get up in the small hours of a Sunday

morning and head to a nightclub. Recently I found

myself doing just that, after dragging myself out

of bed and traipsing off to the bathroom. Standing

under the shower, it dawned on me that I’d never

set foot in a sex party. As steam filled the room, the

quasi-virginal connotations of experiencing something

for the first time not only seemed ironic given

the circumstances, but also filled me with a sense of

apprehension.

After a short U-Bahn ride, I alighted at Jannowitzbrücke

and set off towards Alte Münze, an

intimidating building that served as Berlin’s state

mint until the mid-2000s. It wasn’t long before I

spotted a gaggle of people further down Stralauer

Straße who looked like punters – a relief to see

some life after my solitary sojourn. Getting closer,

I noticed a substantial queue. Having bought a

ticket in advance I skipped the line and spoke to

the door attendant, who I’m fairly certain instantly

clocked me as a newbie.

“So what are you going to be wearing tonight?” he

asked. Unsure of what to say, all I could muster was

an unconvincing, “Er, maybe I’ll take my shirt off?”

Answering with a playful laugh and a wry “maybe,”

he ushered me through the door. Crossing the

threshold and into the cloakroom, I was confronted

with the bizarre Neo-Victorian awkwardness of not

words by

Alex Rennie

Left to right; Pornceptual

team members Raquel,

Justus, Chris. Photo

by David Vendryes

16 Issue Two

Pornceptual


knowing where to rest my eyes. People were

stripping themselves of more than their jackets.

The first thing that struck me as I descended

into the old mint’s underbelly was the thick

smell of sweat that filled the air, coupled with

the greasy film of it that clung to the ceiling. As

I weaved through the crowd of revellers, many

of whom were in various states of undress, I

came across an array of debauched attractions,

including a cinema screening arty porno, two

installations and a bordello-style photo booth.

The ensuing rave was a hedonistic maelstrom

of open sex, casual exhibitionism, and loose

dancing, buoyed by a soundtrack of thunderous

techno and pulsating 4/4 house. It was very,

very fun. On the way home a few hours later, I

pondered what it all meant, deeply intrigued to

learn more.

Alte Münze

The building was the state mint for

close to 60 years. In that period it

pressed Reichsmark, Mark der DDR,

and produced post-reunification

currency. Before it shut in 2006, it

was churning out 1 Euro coins at a

rate of 850 per minute.

Top: Photo by Eric and

Chris Phillips from Porn

by Pornceptual. Right:

Photo by Eric and Chris

Phillips from Porn Resistance

by Pornceptual

perspective of a naïve outsider, the tacit carnality

threaded through Carnival and Copacabana

seems anything but inhibited. Apparently that’s

something of a fallacy. “It’s a huge misconception

to think that Brazilians are very free sexually.

It’s one of the most reserved countries when

it comes to sexuality,” Chris explains. “The way

they control sexuality is crazy. A woman can get

arrested on the beach if she goes topless, but at

the same time they sexualise nudity.”

Raquel, who hails from São Paulo, agrees.

“The biggest mistake is when people say Brazil is

such an easy-going nation – it’s not. Everything

is based on the idea that men are further up the

hierarchy than women. And men have the right

to do whatever they want and women have to

just follow,” she says. Chris also explains how

this culture of machismo makes it a dangerous

place for queer people: “Homophobia is rife. I’ve

had so many horrible experiences when I really

feared for my life. I genuinely thought I would be

beaten to death just because of my sexuality.”

This rigid environment inspired Chris to establish

Pornceptual. He says that the project began

as “an online platform for people to show different

sides of their sexuality.” “It felt great that the

project offered me a safe place where I could have

a voice and express myself,” he adds. However,

after a small hiatus, Chris’ decision to move to

Berlin in 2012 afforded him the perfect opportunity

to harness Pornceptual’s latent potential.

There’s much more to Pornceptual than

Caligula-style merrymaking. In fact, when the

project was kickstarted five years ago, parties

weren’t even part of the plan. Eager to get the

scoop, we met with three of Pornceptual’s key

team members: Chris Phillips, Raquel Fedato and

Justus Karl. Sitting in the garden of Kreuzberg’s

Südblock on an unseasonably balmy autumn

afternoon, the trio of twenty-somethings bare all

– figuratively speaking, that is.

Chris, as the founder, is the first to begin on

how Pornceptual emerged in 2011. Originally

from Brasília, he reveals how he initiated the

project in Brazil’s capital as a means of expressing

his own sexuality. “I always say that the

project has a very personal motivation behind

it,” he begins. “I come from a super conservative

and religious background, and I think this really

repressed me sexually.”

Chris’ admission is intriguing; it doesn’t really

fit with the stereotype of ‘sexy Brazil’. From the

Autumn/Winter 2016

17


Pornceptual

Few places can vie with the ultra-liberal

setting that Berlin gifts its inhabitants.

Historically speaking, it’s a city with a

longstanding tradition for being incredibly

accepting and tolerant when it comes

to sexual preferences. In addition, events

like The Berlin Porn Festival, now in its

11th year, showcase a more sundry side to

pornography than the infinite plethora of

hardcore flicks that plague the internet.

Chris agrees that Berlin and Pornceptual

are a match made in heaven. “It was really

important to move to a place like Berlin.

The project is what it is because we’re

here,” he says. “The freedom you get here is

so special. It was great to realise I was in a

city that offers this.”

Though both are Brazilian, Chris and

Raquel got to know each other through

mutual friends soon after relocating to

Germany. “We met at Homopatik and

had this long talk about Pornceptual and

the future of the project,” she explains.

“Chris mentioned he needed someone

who had experience with media and

marketing, which happens to be my

background.” They decided that Chris

would steer Pornceptual’s artistic direction,

and Raquel would preside over the

financial end of things.

Pornceptual’s centrepiece is without doubt

its website. Comprised of a blog and a host of

erotic galleries – both photo and video – the

page is a fleshy cornucopia of artistically

presented figures. With over 32,000 likes on

Facebook and a 14,700-strong Instagram audience,

it also has a substantial social media

presence. The project’s mission statement is

emblazoned across the site’s ‘About’ section:

“Pornceptual presents pornography as queer,

diverse and inclusive. We aim to prove that

pornography can be respectful, intimate and

artistic, while questioning usual pornographic

labels. ‘Can art succeed where porn fails

– to actually turn us on?’”

So why has the porn business become

Pornceptual’s arch enemy? “We want to condemn

an industry that’s plastic, misogynistic

and commercial,” says Raquel vehemently.

Chris adds: “We’re critical of the way the

industry treats people, from production to

the distribution. It’s horrible.” To say that the

porn industry is thriving is a bit of an understatement.

The global porn trade is said to be

worth an estimated $97 billion, and emerging

technologies like virtual reality are opening

new opportunities for growth in 2016 and

beyond. Countless journal articles have also

questioned ‘conventional’ porn’s blatant heteronormativity,

not to mention the dubious,

yet inevitable, educational function it serves

for young people worldwide. This is something

Pornceptual directly opposes.

Curating the photographic content for the

website is pivotal to this objective. “We’re

trying to encourage people to produce their

own porn,” Chris says. “It’s a way of rejecting

the porn industry, especially when people

exchange sexual intimacy through these

images.” Initially, the gallery was solely an

outlet for Chris to exhibit his own work. This

has now become increasingly collaborative,

with work by established artists, amateurs,

and photographs taken at Pornceptual’s parties.

Concerning the latter, Chris adds: “It’s a

way for guests to participate in the project.”

Raquel notes that the only photographers

at the events are Chris and his twin brother,

Eric: “The pictures are taken inside our photo

booth to ensure that anyone who doesn’t

want to be photographed, isn’t.”

Raquel continues by explaining the

struggle of getting a representative

cross-section of models up on the site,

especially when it comes to body shapes.

“Over the next few months we’ll be focusing

on having more diversity on the web

page. Most of the people who’re happy

standing in front of the camera naked tend

to be hot,” she admits. “People who don’t

feel comfortable with their bodies are less

likely to want to pose, and we’ve received

criticism for not representing them.”

Photo by David Vendryes

This kind of reflexivity extends to

Pornceptual’s approach to booking. Having

hosted over 40 events to date, each with a

different theme, the group are keen to ensure

that at least 50% of the acts they roster

are female. “Berlin’s nightlife is sexist,”

Chris claims. “Promoters should book more

girls, but it’s not happening. Even big clubs

like Berghain aren’t doing it.”

Recently, the group launched their

online shop. Showcasing small labels such

as UY Studio’s Berghain apparel, Fifth

Element-style harnesses by London’s Elastigear,

and handcrafted jewellery by French

silversmith Gaëten Essayie (some pieces of

which retail in excess of €600), it’s fair to

say that the store is a bona fide emporium

of fetish wear.

Given Pornceptual’s anti-establishment

positioning and commitment to celebrating

marginalised forms of sexual expression,

it seems a little paradoxical that they’re

selling fetish gear as a fashion accessory.

More to the point, many people approach

BDSM as a way of investigating recesses of

their sexual self that would otherwise stay

concealed. Could the project thus be running

the risk of trivialising a long-standing

subculture and converting it into some-

18 Issue Two

Pornceptual


thing gimmicky for people to flaunt, almost

like fancy dress, at their parties?

Justus, the newest addition to the

Pornceptual team, chips in with a salient

rejoinder. “We’ve been attacked on the

grounds we exploit the fetish scene before,”

he says. “I think it’s a really narrow-minded

stance if you can only see fetish’s so-called

‘realness’ in really hidden spaces. It’s a

weird view on liberating yourself if you can

only partake in fetish behind closed doors.”

Chris is also outspoken when it comes to

this line of critique: “We’re putting fetish

gear in a different context and presenting it

as something you shouldn’t be ashamed to

wear. It’s something you can wear outside

of the fetish scene too. We’re not trying to

change any meanings here.”

Our discussion eventually returns to Pornceptual’s

coveted events. This time, however,

the topic of cultural appropriation arises,

a contentious issue that is by no means confined

to Berlin’s nightlife. Agreed, Pornceptual

isn’t indiscriminately exploiting queer

expressions for material gain. However, are

its loyal partygoers really in tune with the

concept’s underlying principles, or just on

the prowl for Berlin’s next big thing?

“Maybe not all of the people who come,

but I’d say most of them appreciate what

we’re about,” says Chris. “We do have to be

careful, and that’s why it’s important for us

to have a door policy.” Raquel reasons that

cautious selection is central to preserving

the project’s integrity: “We want new

people to join the party. But we also have

to choose the right people. If guests come

with the right mindset and attitude, then

the door is open.” For Chris, it seems that

there’s also an element of protection at

play here. “We don’t want it to become a

tourist attraction,” he admits. “It’s crucial

that people understand the project.”

So what does the future herald for the

ambitious collective? With plans to publish

the third installment of their print magazine,

and proposals to crowdfund a ‘Pornceptual

Academy’ where people can collaborate

with the project offline, things look

characteristically busy. “One day we might

stop being culturally relevant,” says Chris.

“But I truly believe that right now we are,

and there’s still a lot to do.” It’s hard to fault

the ethos behind Pornceptual. Whether it’s

tackling the challenge of queering the porn

industry or throwing a party of unrivalled

decadence, one thing’s for certain: only

in Berlin could such a novel yet relevant

project come into being, and thrive.

Learn more about the project and how you

can get involved at pornceptual.com

«

IT’S A WAY OF

REJECTING THE PORN

INDUSTRY, ESPECIALLY

WHEN PEOPLE

EXCHANGE SEXUAL

INTIMACY THROUGH

THESE IMAGES.

»

Top: Comes Cake. Middle: From ‘Skin

Depth’ by Flesh Mag. Bottom: From

‘Summer Moved On’ by Anton Shebetko.

Left: Photo by Eric and Chris

Philips from Anti-Porn by Pornceptual

Autumn/Winter 2016

19

Cover Story

Peaches

PEACHES

RUBBING BERLIN

UP THE RIGHT WAY

Jacket by Sara Armstrong

20 Issue Two

Peaches

Cover Story

She’s provocative, she’s daring, she’s political; she’s sex,

drugs, and rock and roll. Peaches is back, and with her new

album, Rub, she’s better than ever. A pillar of this city’s musical

landscape and an outstanding example of how it cultivates

talent, here she talks about life, Berlin, making music,

and rolling with the punches.

words by

Nadja Sayej

photos by

Tyler Udall

styled by

Leila Bani

Chilly Gonzales

Pianist, producer, and songwriter

known for high-profile

collaborations with Daft

Punk, Drake and his work

with Berlin-based hip-hop

outfit Puppetmastaz.

At the premiere of Peaches Does Herself, a

rock opera stage show that charted the

Canadian artist’s history through 20 of her

own songs, she stepped onstage at the Hebbel

Am Ufer Theatre in Berlin to a huge unmade bed

illuminated by a spotlight. She hopped onto it in a

tiny pair of pink shorts, grabbed a groovebox and

started hammering out a machine-gun sequence

of bassy beats. The impressive story that unfolded

dates back to her first album, The Teaches of

Peaches, which was recorded in her bedroom on a

Roland MC-505.

In an early interview, Peaches recalled these

musical beginnings: “I was pretty horny at the time

and I was masturbating a lot and smoking dope. I

put the machine on my bed beside me and made

beats. Masturbate, go to the bathroom, smoke dope

and make beats. And record them.” Keen to hear

the rest of the story, we speak with her as she’s on

tour promoting her latest album, Rub, and we ask

Peaches to recall that bedroom, which she says was

in a warehouse, set on an industrial strip in downtown

Toronto: “My apartment had really thin walls.

Anytime I would try and make beats, the neighbour

would call or ring the doorbell and say: ‘Please, the

bass, help stop the bass!’”

Thankfully, she never stopped the bass, but she

did move apartments – and continents. After a stint

living with fellow musician Leslie Feist on Toronto’s

famed Queen Street West, Peaches happily packed

her bags and relocated to Berlin in 2000. “When I

left Canada, there was conservatism happening with

the music and the way I was treated in the underground,”

she tells us. “Chilly Gonzales and I always

called ourselves ‘the weird ones on last’ because

they always put us on at the end of the night. They

didn’t know what to do with our style and music.”

Born Merrill Beth Nisker, Peaches adopted her

stage name from a character in a Nina Simone song

called ‘Four Women’, which features four different

female characters who have struggled through

different troubles. Choosing her namesake from

this powerful anthem allowed her to foreground

her mission; even today, Peaches’ work echoes

Simone’s own struggle to overcome oppression.

But before she became Peaches as we know her

today, she worked as a music and drama teacher at

a Hebrew school in Toronto, teaching during the

day and making music in the evenings. Peaches

started a folk group in 1990s called Mermaid Cafe,

then later a rock group called The Shit. She released

Lovertits, her first EP as Peaches, in 2000 but never

thought her music career would take off. “I wanted

to become a theatre director, that was my dream,”

she says. “I didn’t know anything about art growing

up; there was no musical talent in my family.”

She enrolled in the theatre programme at York

University, but it wasn’t what she expected: “To be

honest, I dropped acid one day and thought, ‘No

way, I want to get the fuck out of this programme, I

don’t want to work with actors, I am going to have a

heart attack by the time I’m 30, this is not what I want

to do.’” She took art classes and fought with many

professors who didn’t understand her approach. She

tackled multimedia from a musician’s point of view,

despite not yet being a musician herself.

On moving to Berlin, Peaches was quickly signed

to Kitty-Yo Records, who released her first bedroom

album, The Teaches of Peaches. Unlike university,

her approach wasn’t questioned in Berlin: “When I

came, it was a big deal what I was doing,” she says.

“It was a kind of sexuality that wasn’t expressed.”

And expressing sexuality is exactly what she did,

in all its brazen glory. One old, black-and-white video

clip of her first Berlin performance has Peaches

standing with her pants undone. She grabs the closest

guy to the stage. “Come here,” she says, “we’re

going to walk around.” She jumps on his shoulders

and continues to sing over an electronic beat as

the man walks stoically through the audience with

Peaches leaning into them with a microphone.

For the uninitiated, The Teaches of Peaches acts as

an introduction to her sound and what she is about,

particularly the album cover, which features a photo

of her crotch in pink booty shorts. The album’s

first track, ‘Fuck the Pain Away’, became a huge

hit. She laughs at how she introduces the song at

concerts nowadays as a ‘Canadian classic’, because

it wasn’t always that way. Peaches started playing

underground shows in Berlin alongside acts like

Cobra Killer, who were decidedly experimental.

Autumn/Winter 2016

21

Cover Story

“They were two girls from the digital hardcore scene,

they did really raw performances, electronic music

that was just screaming,” she recalls. “They were loud,

messy, throwing red wine everywhere. I felt I’d found

my inspiration.”

Since that first release, she’s made a name for

herself by breaking down musical clichés and flipping

the script on sexuality. One might consider her a mix

between the French performance artist Orlan and the

American sex-ed therapist Dr Ruth – always fascinating,

yet educational beneath a veil of humour.

Her stage persona is certainly memorable – a

long, blonde mullet with shaved sides, paired with

pink eye make up that stretches past her temples.

It’s a throwback to Divine, the drag queen who

found cult fame in the films of John Waters. Peaches’

gender-bending performances fuse the fearlessly

unconventional with sexy prose – a stage presence

which is deeply rooted in performance art. We wonder

why she chose pink. “I wore a pink bathing suit

because I thought it was offsetting my aggression on

stage,” she explains. “It was weird and cheap.”

«

THEY WERE LOUD, MESSY,

THROWING RED WINE

EVERYWHERE. I FELT I’D

FOUND MY INSPIRATION.

»

At the time of her first release in the early 2000s,

Berlin wasn’t yet a cultural fairy tale – Berghain didn’t

exist until 2004 and the Euro wasn’t introduced until

2002, Spätkaufs only sold booze and there was no pizza

delivery service. Peaches used her Chausseestraße

apartment to record the music video for her song

‘Red Leather’ with Chilly Gonzales. “I didn’t have any

carpet and it had just turned 2000, so I got this carpet

that said ‘Happy New Year’ in every language with

champagne bottles all over it,” she remembers.

In 2003 her second album, Fatherfucker, was

released, its title a counter-attack on ‘motherfucker’.

Subverting misogynistic, heteronormative or otherwise

problematic terms became her trademark; she

uses the word ‘clit’ in songs where men might boast

about their dicks, and she’s no stranger to using vagina-shaped

costumes.

Backstage in the early years, Peaches could often

be found grabbing a fat black Sharpie and smiling as

she signed fans’ asses and tits. She became known for

encouraging everyone to show their own sex appeal,

and laughs that she created a whole new cliché. She

has been called an angry feminist: “In a way, it was

good for me, people were like ‘Oh no, yikes! I better

not piss her off!’ or they were into it,” she says. “But

I experienced it in a technical way at shows, like, ‘Do

you know what you’re doing?’”

22 Issue Two

Cover Story

Jacket by Manish Arora,

skirt by Sara Armstrong

Autumn/Winter 2016

23

Cover Story

Peaches

Much has changed since Peaches got

her start 16 years ago, especially Berlin.

“Everything has changed,” she says. Which

isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “There is

actually a thriving music scene.” It wasn’t

always that way: “The reason it was ‘underground’

was because there weren’t a lot

of people to meet,” she adds. “And nobody

mixed rock and electro, nobody ever

played rap; there was no rap whatsoever.

Until 2009, there was just German rap.” She

remembers DJing at White Trash Fast Food

and playing rock and electronic together

in the same set: “It was the early 2000s and

people were almost too afraid to mix stuff,

now it’s so standard.”

Although many might suggest that

Berlin’s once-thriving music scene is now

dead, Peaches appears tired of hearing it.

“A lot of people say that’s when the scene

died, some people will say when the Wall

came down the scene died,” she says.

“People say when the 2000s came, that’s

when it died. People just keep saying it.”

However, she is quick to defend the music

scene. “It’s still a great scene, there’s still a

lot going on in Berlin,” she asserts. “People

need to not take it for granted because it’s

still one of the most free and creative cities

in the world. If people want to pretend it’s a

bourgeois nightmare, then they can just go

away. Don’t treat it that way.”

When Berlin gained momentum as the

capital of cool in the late noughties, tons of

North Americans started flooding the lowrent

city. It was then that Peaches released

her fifth album, I Feel Cream, in 2009. Here,

she popularised the art-pop that Lady

Gaga later became known for. In the video

for ‘Take You On’ she gallivants around a

Matrix-like grid with a large Amish beard

while wearing a puffy, glowing outfit. Let

it be said that Peaches did strap-ons and

stage blood long before Lady Gaga took a

more mainstream approach. In challenging

the status quo with gender-bending, Peaches

offers a less conventional perspective.

Maybe people are afraid of her – she has yet

to be on any late-night talk shows (aside

from The Henry Rollins Show) and doesn’t

get booked for big festivals like Coachella

because her work is too sexually explicit.

That’s not to say she’s a pornographer,

or even a dancing gender theorist. While

Peaches counts influences such as ‘no wave’

writer Lydia Lunch, Kathleen Hanna’s

punk band Bikini Kill and Kat Bjelland’s

group Babes in Toyland, she offers a lighter

delivery – a sense of humour. Perhaps this

is why Peaches relates to comedians more

than she does to musicians: humour helps

get the feminist message across.

Despite her rising popularity, Peaches

doesn’t see herself as a celebrity; rather, she

says that the approach journalists take has

changed. She’s an artist who has always had

to prove herself as people hound her with

inane questions: does she take music seriously?

Is she a shock jock using sex for attention?

Does she hate men? Now, she says,

the media has accepted her: “Right now, I’m

important as a trend. When young people

interview me, they say I’m a pioneer. But I’m

not more important than I was before; I’ve

been doing it a while so it’s just what happens.”

Being a trend seems to be something

that she’s not entirely comfortable with. “It’s

weird for me to be called ‘important’ rather

than trying to be understood,” she says.

“We’ll see how long that lasts.”

After a five-year hiatus from music while

she focused on theatre and film, Peaches

came out of the musical darkness to release

another album, Rub, last year. Still pushing

sexual boundaries with tracks like ‘Pickles’,

where she sings about giving birth without

an epidural, and ‘How You Like My Cut’,

referencing pubic hair, she seems to be

24 Issue Two

Peaches

Cover Story

« I ALWAYS SAY THAT I WANT

TO LIVE IN LA IN THE DAY

AND BERLIN AT NIGHT. »

aligned with more star power on this album. There are

tracks, for example, with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon,

and Feist. The video for ‘Dick in the Air’ has Peaches

running around Los Angeles alongside comedian

Margaret Cho, the two of them wearing fake penises.

They put on condoms and penetrate a watermelon.

When people call out Peaches for having penis envy,

she corrects them: she has hermaphrodite envy.

Her videos for Rub have caused controversy: ‘Light

in Places’ had aerial artist Empress Stah performing

with a green laser buttplug, while the video for ‘Vaginoplasty’

had synchronised swimmers wearing vagina-shaped

wigs. The music video for ‘Rub’ also earned

itself an ‘explicit content’ flag on YouTube, thanks to a

lesbian orgy scene.

One has to wonder if all the fuss isn’t actually about

content, but the fact that the person in these ‘inappropriate’

videos happens to be a woman. According to

Peaches, sexism isn’t over in the music industry. “Music

is still a patriarchal world and the music industry is

still run by old white men,” she says. Take her recent

song, ‘Dumb Fuck’. It won’t get any radio play because

of its language, while Big Sean’s ‘IDFWU’ – with the

lyric “you little stupid ass bitch I ain’t fucking with

you” – has been widely played on mainstream radio.

“Take down the patriarchy,” says Peaches, calmly, a

mission clearly at the core of her values.

While she is still pushing buttons, some Berliners

are packing up and leaving the city. Is it still the coolest

city in the world? With luxury developments and

gentrification pushing out the independent art scene,

Stattbad Wedding – a swimming pool-turned-cultural

centre where Peaches had her former music

studio – closed down last year after complaints

from neighbours. “I miss it,” she says. “In Berlin, it’s

getting harder to get studio space. It’s a bummer.” In

the meantime, she might be turning her Prenzlauer

Berg apartment into a mini studio. “Anything to keep

creative,” she adds. “It’s great to have space to do that.”

Not the only space, however. Peaches bought a

small house in Los Angeles a few years ago, where she

recorded Rub with her co-producer Vice Cooler. “I own

a house, I have a room in LA but I live mostly in Berlin,”

she says. “I always say that I want to live in LA in the

day and Berlin at night.”

As our conversation draws to a close, Peaches lets out

a big sigh. She’s had a day off from her tour, but there

are many shows still ahead in South America, the United

Kingdom, Europe and Australia. “It runs through

to next summer,” she explains. But perhaps the testing

circumstances of touring – the constant travel, living on

the go and dealing with a rotating cast – can strengthen

you. “You have to roll with it,” she says. “You have to

remain calm, there are variables all the time.” A good

motto for getting through a tour, but also for getting

through the bumpy ride of life: “There are lots of personalities

and you all live on a bus together. You have to

remember to have fun and enjoy yourself.”

Jacket by

Sara Armstrong

Peaches is back in Berlin to play live at Columbiahalle

on November 24th with special guests. As ever – expect

the unexpected.

Autumn/Winter 2016

25

Prize-Winning Artist

Andreas Greiner

THE SINGULARITY OF THE

CHICKEN: ARTIST ANDREAS

GREINER ON COLLABORATING

WITH NATURE

It’s closing time at the Berlinische Galerie and we’re standing at

the back of the main hall, transfixed. The lush, bioluminescent

skin of a Japanese Watasenia squid pulses and glows, producing

entrancing abstract compositions on a large flat screen while a

self-playing grand piano emits an accompanying score. This is

the alien, captivating world of Andreas Greiner, where encyclopedic

knowledge of the laboratory meets the mystifying seduction

of the aesthetic realm.

Photo by Robert Rieger

26

Issue Two

Andreas Greiner


“

Art was traditionally seen as the difference

between what humans produce and what

nature produces, but now the lines are

being blurred,” says Andreas, as we walk through

the main hall of the Berlinische Galerie where his

current exhibition, Agency of the Exponent, is on

display. We’re talking about the overlap between

art, science, and technology – the main topics

the artist preoccupies himself with. His inventive

cross-disciplinary approach to these themes is

what won him the GASAG Kunstpreis this year.

His fascination with themes as disparate as the

skewed evolution of the industrial food complex

and the uncanny idiosyncrasies of microscopic

specimens has led him to embark upon ambitious

projects that implore the viewer to question their

own relationship to biology, production, identity

and what constitutes a work of art.

On entering the exhibition, viewers are

confronted with a seven-metre-high chicken skeleton,

entitled ‘Monument for the 308’. The skeleton,

a scale model of the breed Ross 308 (the result

of 308 cross-breeding attempts), is taken from a

type of hybrid chicken produced for extremely fast

meat growth. In producing a monument to this scientific

feat that has allowed humans to profit from

the genetic manipulation of farm animals, Andreas

points to the almost artistic yet deeply troubling

evolution of consumer-driven production. “Now

animals are co-produced by humans,” he explains.

“We’re co-creating nature and nature is adapting

to us.” He sees this as a fascinating if upsetting

evolution, one contrary to the history of mankind,

where man adapted to nature. This juxtaposition is

particularly present in this piece, whose impressive

presence dwarfs the viewer, evoking the experience

of confronting a dinosaur in a natural history

museum. This is not by accident; Andreas sees the

animals as contemporary dinosaurs, and suggests

that future generations will take an archaeological

interest in our current production practices. Additionally,

upon enlisting scientist Mag. Dr. Erich Pucher

at Vienna’s Natural History Museum to draw

an anatomical comparison between dinosaur and

chicken, he learned that chickens – a sub-species

of bird – are actually closer to dinosaurs than other

species of birds, evolutionarily speaking.

Andreas Greiner has an impressive résumé,

having first studied art, then anatomy, then medicine.

After two and a half years of medical school

in Dresden, he decided to make his way back to art.

He recalls the moment when he realised he was on

the wrong path: “When we had to take blood from

one another, and I thought, ‘what am I doing here?’

At that moment I went straight into the sculpture

department and said, ‘I’m a young med school student,

but I want to study art.’” He landed a spot at

Universität der Künste in Berlin where he worked

with sculpture legend Rebecca Horn, and went

on to study with Olafur Eliasson at the Institut für

Raumexperimente. As we walk around the exhibition,

however, it’s impossible not to draw links to

Greiner’s background in science. “Now I’m sort of

closing this cycle and getting back to the interests I

had in my early twenties,” he says.

Positioned opposite the impressive chicken-dinosaur

monument is a photograph of another

chicken, entitled ‘Heinrich’. For this piece, Andreas

sought out a producer of broiler chickens, where he

purchased Heinrich and brought him to an animal

farm in Berlin Tempelhof to live out the rest of his

days as a living sculpture. The chicken looked normal

at first glance until, upon closer examination,

you could see that the proportions were all wrong:

the feet and breasts abnormally huge, apparently

so distorted through breeding that he was barely

able to stand. Andreas produced photographic

portraits of the chicken, wrote detailed notes on

his biography, and stipulated how the chicken

should be treated in ‘A Contract Regulating How

An Artwork Is To Be Handled’, drawn up with the

farm where Heinrich was placed. The

artist stipulated that the chicken was to

be treated like a living sculpture with

all the freedom that this entails. Despite

having lived longer than the majority

of broiler chickens, Heinrich had a

relatively short life. After his passing,

Andreas arranged for an autopsy in

order to determine the cause of death.

It is through this subversive act

of elevating an ordinary or typically

unseen specimen to the status of

high art that Andreas questions the

arbitrary nature in which we assign

identity to certain creatures while

dismissing that of others. Andreas

sees this question of singularity versus

anonymity as central to his work. “The

broilers, for example,” he tells us, “they

get abstracted into a piece of meat in

the supermarket. But a dog has a very

strong identity for many people; it has

a name, it has a character and people

get really attached to it, but not to

words by

Alison Rhoades

‘Monument for the 308’ in the

entrance hall of Berlinische

Galerie. Photo by Theo Bitzer


Autumn/Winter 2016

27


Andreas Greiner

« ART WAS TRADITIONALLY SEEN AS

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT

HUMANS PRODUCE AND WHAT

NATURE PRODUCES, BUT NOW THE

LINES ARE BEING BLURRED. »

Above: Andreas Greiner and team next to ‘Monument

for the 308’. Photo by Theo Bitzer. Left: Installation

view of ‘Studies of an Alien Skin’, Andreas Greiner &

Tyler Friedman, 2016. Photo by Theo Bitzer

an abstract piece of meat. Somehow, with this notion

of abstraction, it seems that we’re losing this

immediate relationship to living creatures.”

Another example of this is his series ‘Study (Portrait)

on the Singularity of Animals’, consisting of

stunning black-and-white microscopic scans of different

species of algae. The stark contrast and finite

detail of the images gives a plant that most people

consider multiplicitous in nature the impression

of being entirely specific, a point which is driven

home by the fact that Andreas has titled the algae

with human names such as ‘Lisa’ and ‘Peter’. “By

irritating people with naming algae,” he explains,

“I’m basically playing with this notion of identity.”

His mission reads clearly across all of his work, and

is profoundly humbling. “I’m trying to re-emotionalise

this relationship to living creatures,” he adds.

Andreas’ experimental approach constantly

leads him to new discoveries, allowing the works to

build on each other with an almost narrative thematic

structure: “There’s a natural approach that

I have wherein one thing leads to the next thing.”

For example, he explains, “When I was working on

a piano work with algae [entitled ‘From Strings to

Dinosaurs’], that inspired me to research extinction,

because the piece goes extinct itself towards

the end. It grows exponentially, reaches a climax

and then crashes down.”

Not one to shy away from the unknown, Andreas

welcomes the opportunity to go directly to the

source to execute his projects. “I really like to get

hands-on,” he says, not only by learning all of the

technical skills necessary to execute a project, but

to go to the experts. “If I get interested in something

like algae,” he explains, “then I go to scientists

who research algae, like the Culture Collection

of Algae in Cologne. They keep a large library of

different specimens. Or with the skeleton, I also

contacted the Natural History Museums in Berlin

and Vienna. So my approach is pretty much to

work with specialists. If I have an idea and I want

to realise something, then I’m looking for someone

who knows more than I do and try to collaborate.”

The algae portraits shown at Berlinische Galerie as

part of the open series ‘Study (Portrait) of the Singularity

of Animals’, for example, were produced

in collaboration with Dr. Barbara Melkonian and

Dr. Karl-Heinz Linne von Berg from the Biology

department at Cologne University, the home of one

of the world’s largest algae collections, and ‘Studies

of an Alien Skin’ was produced in collaboration

with composer Tyler Friedman.

“I like to collaborate and, in doing so, to demystify

things, acknowledging that I myself can only reach

so far, and as soon as you join forces and get the perspective

of somebody else then you can reach much

further.” Andreas not only collaborates with other


28 Issue Two

Andreas Greiner


The Death of the Author

Barthes’ best-known work,

this 1967 essay would prove

to be a transitional piece in

its investigation of the logical

ends of structuralist thought,

in light of the growing influence

of Jacques Derrida’s

deconstruction theory.


artists, scientists, and institutions, but sees himself

as collaborating with the material itself. This very

fact makes him uncomfortable accepting exclusive

authorship of his work, and he therefore likes to

share the credit both with collaborators as well as

with nature itself, which he sees as “co-creating” the

art. Take, for example, ‘The Free Plan’ from 2014,

wherein the artist installed a pupated fly maggot

into a temporary David Chipperfield exhibition at

the Neue Nationalgalerie. The fly eventually hatched

and flew around the gallery. As Berlinische Galerie

curator Guido Fassbender describes it: “Living organisms

not only co-determine the creative process

but ultimately they themselves become the artwork.”

Andreas contractually bound the director of the Neue

Nationalgalerie to respect the fly as a living artwork

and ensure its wellbeing. The last point of the contract

humorously renounced his authorship of ‘the

flying artwork’. The same went for Heinrich, whose

freedom as a living artwork is stipulated in clause 9

of another contract: “The living artwork remains in

the possession of no one. It is free.” Though perhaps

a tongue-in-cheek play on Roland Barthes’ postmodern

masterpiece ‘The Death of the Author’, Andreas’

approach reads more as an earnest if covert attempt

to subvert the essentially unchallenged notion that

animals exist merely to serve human beings. By

giving agency to the chickens, flies, and even algae

through shared authorship, he is elevating their importance

to that of not only co-author, but co-creator.

This surrender of control, of acting rather as

facilitator or choreographer, organising situations

in which things occur on their own, is entirely

deliberate, he says. “This is part of my sculptural

approach: to create settings and then let go of

complete control. So part of the artwork that’s living

is unfolding itself in this situation, and I can’t

really predict that everything works out as I hope.”

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan: for

example, when the algae for a particular exhibition

were just too tired or at the end of their cycle

and therefore didn’t produce light for exhibition

viewers on certain days. While it’s sometimes hard

to accept this degree of uncertainty, Andreas feels

that in some way, the core of his practice is pulling

out or drawing attention to the wonder of these

miraculous processes and accepting that they exist

on a continuum. “I’m becoming a gardener,” he

says, “and part of gardening something is also to

live with life, offspring and dying.”

While these aren’t themes that are new to the

discipline of art, Andreas’ take on them is undeniably

fresh. Certainly, bringing a bred-to-eat chicken

into an art gallery is a kind of institutional critique,

questioning hierarchies in terms of what or (in the

chicken or algae’s case) who is considered to have

value. Heinrich serves as an interesting example:

“When I first exhibited Heinrich’s portrait along

with the contract when he was still living, people

would ask me, ‘So where is this children’s zoo?

Can I please go and visit Heinrich? I want to see

this chicken!’ But, it’s just one chicken out of 600

million. No more or less special. It’s just because I

name it and put it in a gallery and call it art.”

«

I DON’T THINK WE’RE

DIFFERENT THAN NATURE

- SO WE ARE ART AND

ART IS NATURE.

»

This brings our discussion full circle, back

to how art and production has evolved over the

centuries, what qualifies as meaningful and what

exactly is the link between art and nature. Andreas

is undoubtedly problematising the role of artist,

producer and scientist, and perhaps conflating

all three and simultaneously questioning their

traditional output. “I’m bringing nature into the

white cube. The white cube is probably one of the

most high-end cultural spaces you can imagine,”

he suggests. “By bringing this ‘natural’ product

into the white cube, I’m saying ‘nature equals art

and art equals nature.’” In a world in which it is

undeniable that humans are indeed “co-creating

nature”, Andreas Greiner is the agent setting up

the aesthetic and conceptual conditions for his

audience to look at the link between the natural,

the man-made, and even ourselves: “I don’t think

we’re different than nature. We are art and art is

nature.” Despite the traditional white cube that we

find ourselves in and all the cultural associations

that come with it, it’s hard not to feel the spirit of

some kind of revolution.

Agency of the Exponent is on display in the Berlinische

Galerie until February 6th, 2017. To see more

of Andreas’ work, visit andreasgreiner.com

Autumn/Winter 2016

29

words by

Marc Yates

photos by

Fotini Chora

EAT IT,

LOVE IT,

DO IT.

The Queen Calling

for Berlin’s Drag

Revolution

It’s a special kind of pleasure to sit with someone with the

sole purpose of talking about their greatest passion. You get to

watch them light up, first their eyes and then their entire body

until they’re brimming over with enthusiasm. Speaking to

Parker Tilghman – better known as Amazonian queen Pansy –

about drag is one such pleasure.

“

Going to a drag show on a Friday night is

really my favourite thing in the world,”

Parker begins. We’re sitting in a quiet café

in the middle of a work day; our drinks

haven’t arrived yet. He is unassuming

and polite, but very much recognisable as

the warm, open, and effervescent Pansy that Berlin

knows and loves, with P-A-N-S-Y proudly tattooed

across the knuckles of his right hand.

The last time we saw Parker he was in full face,

wig, and heels as Pansy on stage at SO36, hosting

a recent Pansy Presents event. Early in the show –

an all-night tribute to Beyoncé – Pansy asked the

audience: “Who’s never seen a drag show before?”

A little less than a quarter of the room raised their

hands, including a pair of young women stood

directly in front of us. “I’m so excited for you,” she

beamed, looking out across the crowd from underneath

heavy false eyelashes. “Your life is about

to change forever.” The show began, and mere minutes

later those very young women were screaming

with delight, turning to each other and laughing.

Such is the infectious joy of a great drag show.

We ask Parker about the origins of Pansy and

what drag in Berlin was like before his parties got

into full swing: “There was a drag scene, it’s not

like I brought drag to Berlin or whatever.” Although

he takes no credit for creating it, people do single

out Pansy as a kick-start to Berlin’s drag scene, and

we’re keen to know how Parker feels about this.

“There wasn’t the kind of drag that I was used to,”

he explains. “It was a different kind of drag – just

as respectable – but I wanted a show where I could

go and laugh and be entertained with stupid pop

songs and shit, basically.”

30 Issue Two

Pillar of the Community

Autumn/Winter 2016

31

Pillar of the Community

Pansy

Originally from a small town in South Carolina, art

school graduate Parker came to Berlin from San Francisco

and found the scenes of the two cities very different.

“There was nothing here in the sense of people getting

dressed up and going to the club,” he adds. “It was fully

legitimate, it just wasn’t what I knew. For me, drag

should not be serious. Drag is stupid and fun and silly,

and it’s to make people laugh. I stress about how I look

and make sure that everything’s perfect, but at the end

of the day it’s just a costume, right? So, I wanted to create

a space where people could do whatever.”

What Parker tapped into by creating his parties and

events was more than a gap in the market. It was an

audience’s desire waiting to be satisfied, notwithstanding

the fact that Berlin is known for things other than

drag. “Don’t get me wrong, the techno scene is critically

important and beautiful in its own way,” Parker continues.

“It’s very special. You go there to disappear and be

anonymous, and this is the exact opposite of that. People

are still figuring it out, but you can tell they want it

so bad.” It wasn’t long before others were gravitating

towards Parker, to collaborate or to start doing drag

themselves. “When I started it was just me. I hoped to

find one or two other people, and eventually it grew

into what it is now; there’s like 15 or 20 girls.” Together,

they are known as the House of Presents. “We’re the

gifts that keep on giving,” Parker adds with a smile.

The group put on a range of shows from screenings

of reality TV hit RuPaul’s Drag Race, to queer dance

parties, to iconic drag tributes such as the Beyoncé

night, but they aren’t a house in the traditional sense

of a drag house. “We all look different,” Parker explains,

“we all have our own stuff going on. Some of the girls

host their own parties, some of them do YouTube stuff

and beauty conventions. A lot of them are so new, none

of them had really done drag before this, and I’ve been

doing it for ten years. I wouldn’t consider myself the

‘mother’, but someone has to keep it going.”

Parker smiles as he recounts the tale of their first gig

together: “The first time we really all performed as a

group we had Alaska Thunderfuck from RuPaul’s Drag

Race come over, it was the kick-off party for the first

year of my music festival. We did this whole routine

to ‘I’m not Madonna’ by Hi Fashion. The whole song

is like, ‘I’m not Madonna, I’m not Madonna...’ and all

the girls were dressed up as different eras of Madonna.

They kept coming out as the song was going on. The

crowd was losing it, it was so amazing. So many people

came up to us afterwards and were like, ‘I’ve never seen

anything like this before in Berlin, thank you so much,’

so it was a lot of fun.”

on the drag style he has refined over the

last decade, “but I also do characters. I

have an 80-year-old woman character,

an overweight lesbian construction

worker character, and I have a baby

character that’s just really disgusting

and gross, but then I like to be really

pretty. It depends what mood I’m in.

That’s what I love about drag – you can

really be whatever you want.”

This aspect of drag – the unbridled

form of self-expression – is something

Parker cares deeply about. Its apparent frivolity is laden

with the political implications of a community coming

together in bold, brash, unapologetic performance

that challenges many sexual and gender norms. He explains:

“My father was a politician when I was growing

up, so I’ve always been very political, but I’m also the

only staunchly liberal person in my family. So throughout

my life I’ve been fighting for justice, if you will – at

school or at home. I see where the power shifts are happening,

where the negativity is coming from, and try to

fight against that, so that’s a natural part of Pansy.”

One of Parker’s proudest achievements to date

is the music festival Yo! Sissy, now entering its third

year as Germany’s queer international music festival:

“I’d been doing this dance party called Sissy where we

played all-female hip hop and R&B, and my business

partner Scout was doing a karaoke dance party called

CherrYO!-kie, and I had an idea that I wanted to do a

music festival. I thought it would be something small

because there are so many cool local performers in Berlin,

and I’d always tried to have one local act at my party

each time, so then we were naïvely like, ‘let’s do it!’”

“Berlin has such a beautiful underground music scene

but it’s also home to a lot of more established artists like

Peaches, The Knife, Pet Shop Boys, and then there are a

lot of people who want to come to Berlin, and queer musicians

who are working together collaboratively from

all over the world, so we really wanted to bring them

together. Yo! Sissy was born from that.” The line-up in

2016 was as impressive as it was diverse, with the likes of

Mykki Blanco, Hi Fashion, Ballet School, Le1f and Christeene

all taking the stage. “There are so many different

Drag House

In drag ball culture, houses are support networks

of LGBTQ individuals loosely arranged

into chosen families. They band together

under a mother and/or father, often adopting

a shared name.

Mother

As a house parent, the mother acts as

mentor, upholds the house reputation, and

may adopt roles traditionally associated with

motherhood. The position is earned through

performance, hard work, and garnering the

respect of junior members.

Since then, Pansy and the House of Presents have built

an impressive repertoire of events with a terrific breadth

of variety. On any given week, you’re guaranteed to find

something to surprise and delight you. “Pansy is what

ties them all together,” Parker explains. “I could do all of

them as me, but that’s boring. Pansy is the character, the

element that allows me to slip into this role.” The role

that Parker is referring to is multifaceted, but inherently

Pansy: hostess, performer, advocate.

“I always like to say that Pansy is an older woman

that dresses too young for her age,” he says, elaborating

32 Issue Two

Autumn Pansy2016

Pillar of the Community Editorial

«

FOR ME DRAG SHOULD NOT BE

SERIOUS. DRAG IS STUPID AND

FUN AND SILLY, AND IT’S TO

MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH.

»

bands, they’re so talented. What I like is

that it’s just about bringing all of these different

people together and mixing them

all up in this one big sweaty mess.”

After the excitement of the festival,

Parker took to social media to express his

gratitude to the people and performances

that made the event such a success. One

post, in which he proclaimed Berlin as

being in a second Weimar era, sparked a

heated debate, so we ask Parker to comment.

“Oh, the Weimar thing,” he rolls his

eyes and smiles, “I said that we’re living in

a second Weimar era because when I was

looking around Yo! Sissy, there were so

many queers just expressing themselves

and looking beautiful, adorning their bodies,

being comfortable and free, and that

moment – that energy – has always been

a part of Berlin, and it’s coming back, it’s

awakening again in a beautiful way.

“Unfortunately when you have that,

the flip side is always present; the more

right wing, the more openly hateful

is there too. What I said that people

seemed to miss was that we have the option

to stand up and say ‘no’. We can live

in this expressive, open society that is

caring and loving, if we so choose to. As

that post showed, it has to start within

our own community. We’re constantly

attacking each other, we’re constantly

saying, ‘You’re not progressive enough,

you’re not un-racist enough, you’re not

using the right language to talk about

these things,’ and of course we’re not

using the right language to talk about

this shit. It’s messy and fucked up and

imperfect; we’re going to make mistakes

as we go along, but we have to be open

and we have to talk about it. That’s why

I create the kinds of spaces that I’m

trying to create.”

Each of the Pansy Presents events are

imbued with a real sense of community,

but none more so than Let’s Talk About

Sex and Drugs, organised with doctor’s

office Praxis Dr. Cordes. Parker explains:

“This is a really important project for me

on a couple of levels. A lot of people in Berlin

like to have sex and a lot of people in

Berlin like to do drugs, and a lot of people

end up doing them together. The problem

I think is that no one really talks about it,

and people have a lot of questions.”

The monthly event takes the form of

an open mic, where audience members

can talk with a rotating panel of medical

experts, activists, performers and

artists about literally anything. “It’s not

really about what’s said on stage,” Parker

continues. “It’s about people mingling in

the middle and asking questions; about

HIV, mixing HIV medication with ecstasy,

everything that people don’t know and

want to talk about: PrEP, bareback, all

this kind of stuff. Things that greatly

affect our community. It’s so funny to me,

people in Berlin are literally willing to

fuck anywhere, but won’t talk about it.”

The response has been overwhelmingly

positive, and Let’s Talk About Sex and

Drugs will continue as a monthly event.

Finally, we ask Parker about how he sees

drag changing in Berlin. “Oh it’s changed

so much,” he says. “There are so many new

queens everywhere, which I love. The funny

thing is, even for me, it still feels funny to be

out on the street in drag. In San Francisco

it didn’t feel this way, but in Berlin it really

does. It feels weird, somewhat unsafe.

Hopefully that is changing, because that is

what it’s going to take for people to go out

in drag – they have to feel safe. My girls are

really pushing it because they’re doing shit

like getting on the train, walking down the

street, full on, during the daytime.”

We wonder if this is Parker’s vision

of starting a drag revolution in Berlin,

something he voiced in a rallying cry the

last time we saw him on stage. He doesn’t

recall: “Oh God, who knows what the fuck

I said!” He laughs, “I would just love to see

people at the club, in drag, just because.

When I first started doing drag I was just at

the club, in drag, just because it was fun.

I don’t want to come in and start complaining

about it and trying to change it, I

want to add to it. I want to bring out what’s

already there. It’s really beautiful to see so

many people getting dressed up, looking

silly, being themselves and doing their

thing, so that to me is a drag revolution –

opening up and expressing yourself. It’s us

coming together and saying, ‘This is who

we are. We’re here. Eat it, love it, do it.’”

Keep up with the latest Pansy Presents

events by following Pansy on Facebook

at facebook.com/pansypresents

Autumn/Winter 2016

33

Genre-Crossing Ensemble

Symphoniacs

ORCHESTRAL

MANOEUVRES:

ANDY LEOMAR’S

SYMPHONIACS

Berlin is a city of contrasts. Cultures,

people and ideas all jostle

for space, rub up against each

other, and occasionally clash. It’s

an atmosphere that allows experimentation

and creativity to

blossom, for new concepts to be

born. Within this environment, it

makes perfect sense that the seed

for Andy Leomar’s Symphoniacs

could not only be planted, but also

grow into something sprawling

and significant. Andy and one of

the group’s principal members,

cellist Colin Stokes, sit with us to

talk about the generation of the

idea and the excitement of watching

it come to life.

34 Issue Two

Symphoniacs


words by

Alison Rhoades

photos by

Viktor Richardsson

Elliott Carter

Prolific American composer

and two-time winner of the

Pulizer Prize, Carter lived to

103. Between his 90th birthday

and his death he published

more than 60 works in the most

productive period of his life.

his city is home to arguably the best club

scene in the world, and its heart thumps to

the beat of techno. There is, however, a long

and rich tradition of classical music that is alive and

kicking. Andy has drawn inspiration from both of

these seemingly disparate arenas to create something

fresh. Classical and electronic music have had

many flirtations and dalliances over the years, but the

level of reimagining and reinterpretation in Symphoniacs

is an entirely new love affair.

It might seem like a simple idea to take chart-busting

dance anthems and place them within a classical

framework, or to take well-known classics and give

them a dance twist, but the depth, deftness and originality

that Andy has brought forth shows that simple

ideas can have the most elegant execution. Working

together with the hottest young talent in the classical

world, he has created immersive soundscapes that

are anything but traditional.

Andy started his music career at the age of six,

studying classical music at a conservatory in his

hometown. In Austria, he explains, it is normal for

parents to encourage their children to play instruments,

citing the well-known lineage of musicians in

German and Austrian culture. “Back then, the only

way to learn an instrument was to do it the classical

way,” he explains, “so you go to a conservatory,

and there they teach you Bach, Beethoven, great

classical pieces.” The introduction to contemporary

music came later, when as a teenager he wanted to

go out to dance and meet girls. He laughs: “I started

with Mozart and ended up with rap and dance

music!” After training in Vienna as a Tonmeister

(translated as ‘sound master’ in English, a specialised

sound engineer), he moved to Berlin to set

up his own studio. “Of course I wanted to produce

pop music, so I did some projects in that genre,”

he explains. “But I always try to combine these two

worlds: the classical, very traditional world where I

come from, and pop music club culture.”

Colin, like many classical musicians, also started

young, already asking for a cello when he was three. By

eight, he was commuting to the nearest conservatory

in Baltimore. Unlike Andy, Colin wasn’t interested in

electronic music until much later: “I did my grad school

at Juilliard, and there I got very into the contemporary

scene in New York.” He credits experimental composers

like Elliott Carter as well as the Greenwich Village

and Brooklyn club scene with piquing his interest in

contemporary classical music: “It’s only classical music

because it’s performed by classical musicians,” he

explains. “You know, you have electric guitar or drums,

and it really sort of blurs the lines of what classical

music is. And that’s when I started getting into more

popular music because I felt like it was important to

inform what I was doing classically.”

Andy remembers clearly when the Symphoniacs

idea began to take shape. He was working with a

young violinist who told him that he had been up late

the night before dancing to classical music. “Dancing

to classical music?” Andy wondered. The violinist

explained that they had simply played classical

pieces like Vivaldi, but up-tempo. “And I thought, ‘this

is crazy’, but somehow, I got a picture in my head and

thought, ‘I like the idea of having classical musicians

playing classical pieces yet making it dance-y so you

can play it at a party.’”

Left to right: Tamas Suha,

Yury Revich, Colin Stokes,

Andy Leomar, Evgeni

Genchev, Konstanti Manaev,

Johannes Fleischmann

Autumn/Winter 2016

35


Symphoniacs

The project started small, with Andy making arrangements

on his keyboard and experimenting with what it

might sound like to play a keyboard synthesiser riff on

a cello, which is a lot trickier than it sounds. Choosing

the songs wasn’t easy either: “On the one hand I was

looking for current dance music, songs that people

know. But it was always the question of whether it

works on classical instruments.” There were also legal

issues, considering they wouldn’t be playing covers, but

entirely new adaptations. They also reinvented classical

favourites: “The classical pieces we chose are pieces

that are well known, but I think it’s good to reach a large

audience with classical pieces they already know,” says

Andy. Colin adds that some pieces seem to have been

made to be set to electronic music: “Vivaldi is so rock

and roll, it’s so aggressive and fast and it’s just begging

for a beat,” he says. The list of album tracks includes

timeless classics such as Vivaldi’s ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’

from The Four Seasons, as well as dance anthems

like Daft Punk’s ‘Aerodynamic’. As soon as drafts of

the pieces were in place, the next step was finding the

talent. “We had worldwide auditions,” says Andy. “We

were looking for the greatest talent of this young new

generation of classical musicians.”

Once a group of core members was selected, Andy

set about showing them the first drafts of the material

he’d been working on and was met with enthusiasm

from the young protégés. As he explains the process

– from the arrangements to the technical intricacies

of recording – it’s evident that he’s really a master of

the medium, coming to this endeavour with all the

awareness of a highly trained craftsman. “It’s amazing

working with Andy on a project like this,” says Colin.

“I think a lot of electronic musicians came up on

electronic music, but to have a Tonmeister – someone

with a classical background – it’s a completely different

approach. A lot of producers or recording engineers

don’t have the skill set to record classical instruments

well. It’s very different from a guitar or even a horn. So

to have the classical ear in addition to the skills of an

electronic producer is amazing.”

While one might think that classical and electronic

music are opposite ends of a spectrum, Andy and

Colin maintain that the two genres share a great deal

of common ground: “There is an elegant symmetry in

Mozart, a Classical-era composer, and I think electronic

music is probably most similar to music from that period.

It’s very elegantly structural. It’s not so Romantic,

it’s more about patterns and how they can develop

subtly. So I do think there are a lot of similarities

between classical and electronic music.” He explains

that their project offers them the power to expand

beyond the limits of what is possible within either

genre: “There’s so much range with classical instruments.

You can have such a tender sound, like with the

beginning of [Martin Garrix’s] ‘Animals’. It’s an amazing

piano introduction, and it’s so tender, but we have this

huge range because we can go from the bottom of

what an acoustic instrument can do, all the way up to

everything that Andy can do with the electronics, so

it’s just this massive range that the genres don’t have

on their own, but together there’s such a wide range of

tension and release that’s possible.”

Upon first sight, the Symphoniacs collective look

more like a rock band than a chamber group: all young

and handsome, clad effortlessly in leather jackets,

t-shirts, and white sneakers. All have accomplished

Antje The Four Øklesund Seasons

Despite The concerti having were numerous published

closing with four parties accompanying since 2013

due poems to an that imminent clarified threat what the of

demolition, music was intended the venue to is evoke. still

standing. Although It the is author set to be of the torn

down poems to is make unclear way it for is assumed a new

property that Vivaldi development, wrote them, and as he

will took be great gone pains before to relate the end his of

2016. music Maybe. to the texts. Probably.

36 Issue Two

Symphoniacs


“I « I ALWAYS TRY TO

COMBINE THESE TWO

WORLDS, THE CLASSI-

CAL, VERY TRADITIONAL

WORLD WHERE I COME

FROM AND POP MUSIC

CLUB CULTURE.”

»

careers in their own right, and perform regularly

with chamber groups, orchestras, or solo, and

thus there is a pool of about 20 musicians who are

swapped out based on availability. “This is also

exciting,” explains Andy, “because every concert is

actually unique.” He considers the possibilities that

this offers for experimentation and improvisation

one of the most wonderful parts of the project:

“This rarely happens in classical music because

you are not supposed to improvise or interpret the

great masters, but here you can try out something

new, and every time you play a track, someone

plays it slightly different, and then, if it works, you

try to integrate that into the next performance.”

And what performances they are. Whereas traditional

classical concerts consist only of musicians

on the stage against a sparse background, Symphoniacs

live really is a thing to behold. A full-on visual

extravaganza, cutting-edge lighting design flashes

in time with the beat, sputtering in rainbow colours,

while dual video screens flash abstract images of

splashing paint, seasons and fireworks, creating an

entirely immersive environment. “You have all these

different components to pull meaning out of the

music,” says Colin. “The LED screens and the brilliant

guys and girls who worked on the visuals with Andy

pull a lot out, which is really nice.” Andy agrees that

the performative nature of the project also highlights

the impact of combining these two seemingly

disparate disciplines: “I think it’s perfect because

it represents the club and music scene, but then

you have the clash with the traditional instrument,

this old wood, so it’s both worlds that are far from

each other and to combine them is exciting.” And of

course the musicians are the true highlight. Apart

from bringing their extraordinary technique, they

exude a rock-and-roll spirit and are clearly having

the time of their lives performing on stage.

Andy, who conducts and mixes live during the

performances, likes the prospect of earning the

audience’s trust and playing with their expectations.

“If we ever play the Philharmonie in Berlin, we

would love for the audience to dance with us because

that rarely happens with a classical audience

and we want them to leave thinking, ‘Wow that was

a great time’, but we also want to give them the

quality and intensity of classical music.”

What is it like for a classical musician, groomed

in an environment of stark contrast, to perform in

this context? “It’s amazing,” says Colin, “feeling the

subwoofers behind you is pretty unreal. I mean, it’s

great to play with an orchestra – also a powerful

feeling – but it’s much different to be in a really

large space with these crazy huge sounds behind

you. It’s exciting. And the whole process, every

time we come it’s sort of getting bigger and bigger

with more moving parts, just to be part of a project

this large has been great for all of us.” A bit like

being in a rock band, perhaps? “I think the dynamic

is a lot more like a rock band than an orchestra,”

says Colin, emphasising that they really feel like a

collective rather than the sum of their parts. “I think

we got lucky with the dynamic in this core group;

we bonded pretty quickly and we have a lot of fun

together. Maybe too much sometimes!” Andy jokes,

if you want to combine these two worlds you have

to accept the rockstar lifestyle.

When speaking of the rock-and-roll lifestyle it’s hard

not to think about Berlin, the city where Symphoniacs

started. What role does the city play in the project?

Andy is certain that the birth of Symphoniacs is

synonymous with the city of its conception: “For us,

Berlin represents this young electronic music scene,

but you also have a classical music scene. Some of the

best orchestras are here, some of the best conductors.

Here you can go to a club and a concert in one

night! Berlin also gives you space for creativity and

you still have possibilities to try out new things.” The

international nature of the city is certainly reflected

in the project itself and was also a selling point for

people to join in the first place. “It’s very easy to start

a new project here because you find great musicians

who want to be involved,” Andy says. Colin is in full

agreement, and says that coming to Berlin was part of

the draw for him: “The city has a very distinct flavour.

I think everything in Symphoniacs is flavoured by the

feeling of Berlin; there’s at once an openness and a

feeling of grunge. There isn’t any arrogance; it’s down

to earth.” Andy recalls one musician who showed up

to the audition in a tie, as one normally would in the

classical world. It didn’t take long before the tie disappeared

and the spirit of Berlin took over.

With their debut album launched in October,

the group will soon begin their world tour, bringing

classical music to the masses and perhaps bringing

dance music to the classical world. “I think there

is a sort of initial scepticism of crossover projects

within classical music,” says Colin. “I think in the past

the people who went off the beaten track were not

always so established in the classical tradition. But

I think the classical integrity of this project allows it

to be attractive not only to people new to classical

music but also to strictly classical musicians, and I

think that’s really unusual for a project.” While we are

talking, the sweet, trembling sound of a cello can be

heard through the wall – another Symphoniac waiting

in the wings. It’s just a taste of what life is like in

this world, where music is life and life is music.

Symphoniacs’ self-titled album is out now on

Universal Music

Autumn/Winter 2016

37

Living History

A JAZZ LEGEND AND AUSCHWITZ

SURVIVOR’S REMARKABLE STORY

Berlin, 1950. This city’s most

famous wall is still a decade away

from existing, but the opposing

sides of the Cold War are manning

their ideological positions and

settling in for a standoff. Germany

is divided in two; debates about

rearmament have ignited new

concerns in citizens exhausted by

years of violence and destruction.

Anxious to leave their war-scarred country

and start over, Berlin-born musician Coco

Schumann and his wife, Gertraud, accept

an offer from the Australian government for expedited

immigration. Schumann hopes that his skills

as a jazz guitarist will open doors for him, as they

have in the past.

He’s right. Opportunities come knocking and

Schumann’s musical career starts to take off in

Australia, but the siren call of heady nights in

Berlin isn’t easily ignored. “Things were different

in Australia ... The clock had (already) struck

midnight, not a soul to be seen. St. Kilda Junction,

a small milk bar frequented by taxi drivers was the

only place open in all of Melbourne. I would hang

out there for two or three hours and could only

drink milkshakes … I could not take this for much

longer. In Berlin at this time of night my friends

would be moving on to the next club, and certainly

not the last one!” Just four years after leaving,

Schumann was making his way back to Berlin, a

prodigal son – for the second time.

The Berlin that Schumann had left was raucous

and wild. In the months and years following the

end of World War II, corners of the city began to

be repopulated with pleasure seekers, relishing in

the “careless joy” of being able to play music again.

“All of the clubs and jazz cellars I grew up with had

been reduced to ash and rubble; everywhere people

were improvising. One club after another opened

its doors again ... I played at least eight hours

almost every day, working just like a miner in the

Ruhr district: going down into the mine at night

and coming back in the morning at five. Mostly I

did not make it home because I was so wired after

playing it was pointless.”

The streets were bombed out and the venues

shabby, but the music was swinging hard and

there was an appetite for jazz. “The Armed Forces

Network (AFN) studios in Berlin were continuously

broadcasting all the latest hits from a mobile

words by

Stephanie Taralson

A Jewish-owned business

destroyed during Kristallnacht,

November 9-10th

1938. Image from United

States Holocaust Museum

courtesy of National Archives

and Records Administration,

College Park

38 Issue Two

Coco Schumann

Living History

Coco Schumann in

2014. Photo courtesy

of ProTon Berlin

transmitter that was carried around on a truck ...

One afternoon we went to the Sommerlatte, a small

club next to the Friedrichstadt-Palast. We played

semi-improvised Russian music and tangos – for

good pay: vodka and a couple of potatoes! ... [Then]

the first jobs with the Americans at the Tempelhof

Officer’s Club changed everything. Each of us was

paid with a carton of cigarettes. This was phenomenal.

I could barter it for whatever I wanted.”

This urban playground, itself a heap of rubble

but buzzing with expectations of a new start, was

in some ways akin to what the city had been in

the 1920s and early ‘30s, when western Berlin was

the roaring European capital of avant-garde film,

design, fashion, and literature.

Then the arrival of war, apocalyptic: “We saw

apartment buildings break apart from the force of

the explosions or shoot up in flames like torches

made of straw. If it rained, the billowing smoke

and ash condensed to the ground where it formed

a sludge that stuck to the soles of our shoes. It was

hard to walk, exhausting and bleak ... We kept on

playing even when day was no longer distinguishable

from night, when after an air raid darkness

would fall over the streets like it was evening ... It

was as if we were possessed. The only thing that

counted was today; tomorrow was uncertain.”

The conflict extended beyond the physical

threat of bombings. Nazi control was tightening,

and patrols roamed the streets looking to punish

deserters, minors, and anyone deemed ‘antisocial’.

Once, during an SS-led raid of the Rosita Bar at

Bayerischer Platz, a headstrong Schumann attracted

attention: “... one of the SS men stood in front

of the bandstand, clapping his hands with much

enthusiasm. He brought out the devil in me. I stood

up and said, ‘Actually, you have to arrest me!’ He

looked bewildered. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, I’m a Jew, I play

swing and I’m a minor.’ He laughed out loud and

could not stop laughing at this stupendous joke.

The entire bar roared with him.”

There they were, the two labels that would come

to define Schumann: jazz musician, Jewish. Born

to a German–Jewish mother and a Christian father

from Thüringen, Schumann’s childhood was

“uncomplicated.” “The Christmas tree stood next

to the Chanukah candles; Easter was celebrated

with my father’s parents, Passover at my mother’s

family.” Schumann started playing the guitar as a

precocious teenager with natural talent. But with

the enactment of the anti-semitic Nuremberg

laws in 1935, which sought to define Jewishness

based arbitrarily on ancestry, Schumann suddenly

became marked as a full-blooded Jew.

Schumann’s luck held until 1943. Then, at age 19

he was arrested, ripped from his life in Berlin, and

deported to Terezín – Theresienstadt – a labour

camp not far from Prague. So began two hellish

years trapped inside the extensive network of Nazi

camps. “Even at first glance the conditions in the

camp were intolerable due to the fact that it had

been built to house 7,000 Czechs and now held

about 59,000 prisoners. Nevertheless, the scenery

was confusing. I discovered small parks and – even

though it was locked up – a church. There was a

coffee house in the middle of the camp, and I could

hear familiar music coming from inside, music that

was my music.”

Terezín was indeed confusing. Located in a

converted medieval fortress, it was an anomaly,

a showpiece. This model camp was intended to

soothe suspicious humanitarian organisations

and promote the ‘attractive’ conditions in all Nazi

concentration camps. Although not an extermination

camp for mass executions, the site was

squalid and overcrowded. However, the unusual

management of Terezín left room for “self-organised

entertainment” among inmates, and several

musical and cultural groups had formed within its

walls. Thanks to a new acquaintance, Schumann

quickly found entrée into one of these ensembles:

“He told me the band’s drummer had been put on

the train for Auschwitz a couple of days ago. I told

him I could play the drums. A few minutes later

I had a new job; I was the drummer in one of the

hottest, high-octane jazz ensembles of the entire

German Reich.”

In this respect, Schumann was lucky. By finding

employ as a musician, he avoided the hard labour

that most inmates were subject to. “When I played I

forgot where I was ... We were a ‘normal’ band who

played for a ‘normal’ audience … We performed

for ourselves and to save our lives – like everyone

else in this ‘town’, this cruel, phony stage set for

theatre plays, children’s operas, cabarets, scientific

lectures, athletic events – an absurd social life and

a bizarre, self-administered survival in the waiting

line of the ovens of the Third Reich.”

Ongoing pressure from the Danish Red Cross and

International Red Cross resulted in Nazi officials

allowing a visit to Terezín by organisation representatives.

Contrary to what prisoners had hoped

for, the tour was a perfectly enacted exercise in Nazi

propaganda; to Schumann, an “incomprehensible

Autumn/Winter 2016

39

Living History

success.” “Not even a hint of suffering and misery

could be found anywhere. Wherever the visiting

committee went, they saw actors rehearsing or

acting in a play before a cheering, well provided for

audience. As soon as they left the scene was interrupted

and ‘normal’ conditions were reinstated...”

The triumph of the image presented to the Red

Cross inspired Nazi propaganda strategists to

dream bigger. They proposed the making of Theresienstadt

– ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen

Siedlungsgebiet (Theresienstadt – A Documentary

Film about the Jewish Resettlement) and conscripted

Schumann and his bandmates as musical

actors. Those selected to star in the propaganda

film had been promised “special rations and food

packages;” instead, they were marked for transfer

eastward to one of the extermination camps in

Poland. Schumann and his fellow musicians found

their names posted on the lists of those to be transported

to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Coco Schumann

“I MAKE MANY MISTAKES WHEN I PLAY, AND

I MAKE A LOT OF THEM BECAUSE I LIKE IT

– THEY PROVE THAT THE MUSIC IS ALIVE.”

Right: Friedrichstraße at

night c.1930s. Courtesy

of Deutsche Fotothek

Below: Coco Schumann,

1950s. Photo courtesy

of Trikont Records

Schumann had no trouble isolating what

changed when he was transferred from Terezín to

Auschwitz. “It was the difference between living in

the naïve hope of being set free and trying to stay

alive for the next couple of hours.” Nevertheless,

Schumann again ingratiated himself with the right

people and worked as a musician in one of the camp

bands. “We musicians were a welcome ‘diversion’

from the monotonous, gray, ‘lethal’ boredom of

daily life in the camp, and we quickly became an

essential part of this macabre world … If we were not

playing for the SS while they tattooed the new arrivals,

we usually had to be at the camp’s main gate.”

On other occasions, their band was forced to

perform for higher ranking officials, in “a constant

state of stress” to play well and please their captors.

During one private concert, a notorious and sadistic

SS Rottenführer (corporal) known for his brutal

torture methods approached Schumann and struck

up a conversation about their shared hometown.

“I felt sick. He asked me a question: ‘Say, you’re

from Berlin?’ And after I nodded: ‘Yes? Nice. Me

too. Where did you play?’ ... I finally gathered up

my courage and asked: ‘Herr Rottenführer, do you

think I will get out of here alive?’ He paused, then

answered quietly: ‘I don’t know.’”

Families separated forever by the gas chambers,

an evening concert played inside the delousing

showers, entire barracks of inmates being murdered

to make room for incoming prisoners –

Schumann’s memories of Auschwitz are chilling

and unimaginable. The main camp gate where the

band often played was also located along the path

from the barracks to the gas chambers, the last

journey for many prisoners. “...the children looked

me directly in the eye. They knew exactly where

they were going. These images are burned into my

mind. I can blink as much as I want. Sometimes

it helps when tears start running down my cheek,

but as soon as I open my eyes the image returns.

Something inside of me has been broken forever,

something that can never be repaired.”

As the war slogged to an end, Schumann was

shuffled through the camp system and eventually

liberated in southern Germany. In the summer of

1945, he made his way home to Berlin and his uncle’s

garden cottage in Pankow, which had remarkably

escaped the destruction. “I found my friends

again, friends with whom I had spent carefree

weeks, and I was happy to be with them again, the

Germans. The last thing I wanted was for them to

look at me and feel ashamed for what had been done

40 Issue Two

Coco Schumann

to me and to others. To be honest, I felt ashamed for them: that

what I had to suffer was done in my own – German – name.”

The creative energy of post-war Berlin was a distraction from

the dark memories of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Schumann

met an acquaintance who was familiar with the new technology

being used to modify acoustic guitars – pickups, amplifiers,

the works: “There was plenty of material lying around to tinker

with in those days.” Nervously, he agreed to have his instrument

outfitted with the magnets from an old set of army headphones,

and with that, became presumably the first performer

in Germany to use an electric guitar on stage.

International stars were also making their way to Berlin, and

upon returning from Australia, Schumann joined them on the

bandstand. Marquee names and unknowns alike, everyone

went bar hopping after a concert. Die Badewanne (The Bathtub)

bar was one of the city’s “best-kept secrets”, the type of spot

where one could jam with Ella Fitzgerald, who “sang in a way

that made our knees weak;” Dizzy Gillespie, “an unbelievably

nice guy and a real clown;” or Louis Armstrong, who advised

Schumann, “Coco, it’s not important what you play. It’s important

how you play it.” Schumann himself has a similar perspective:

“I make many mistakes when I play, and I make a lot of

them because I like it – they prove that the music is alive.”

Several successful decades later, Schumann is retired from

performing, having gained fame in Germany and inspired

both a graphic novel and a theatrical Kammerspiele. In the

1980s and ‘90s he was especially active in public education,

speaking in schools and to the media about his Holocaust

experiences.

Louis Armstrong’s advice notwithstanding, it seems that,

for Schumann, perhaps the most important of all is not even

the ‘how’, but the simple fact of music-making. “The camps

and the fear changed my life, but the music has kept me

going, and has made everything good again … I am a musician

who spent time in concentration camps, not someone in a

concentration camp who also played a little music.”

This feature was produced in collaboration with Doppelhouse

Press, who kindly supplied and granted use of excerpts from

Coco Schumann’s incredible story as told in full in The Ghetto

Singer, available for purchase through all good book shops,

online outlets, and as an eBook.

LEARNING

GERMAN!

goethe.de/berlin

Autumn/Winter 2016

Sprache.

Autumn/Winter

Kultur. Deutschland.

2016 41

Dispatches


DISPATCHES:

CULTURE NIGHT

BELFAST

n any normal Friday afternoon, the

streets of Belfast are sparsely populated,

frequented only by shoppers and workers.

At night they can be even quieter, with people

just gathering around the pubs of the area. But

one Friday in September is different. There are

thousands of people thronging around, taking in a

barrage of sights and sounds. On one corner there

is a drone psych band with no fewer than five

guitarists creating a wall of noise for a huge crowd;

farther down the street there is an audio-visual art

installation arresting passersby to stop and gaze

through the studio window; on the next corner

there are medieval fighters clanging swords under

a giant mural. Keep going and you see power

ballad karaoke, wrestling, theatre, chamber choirs,

brass bands, car park raves, fire juggling, street

performers and more. Every venue and space is

emanating music and life, the art galleries are

rammed with people and the atmosphere is electric.

This is Culture Night. This is Belfast. And at

the same time, this isn’t Belfast at all.

With archaic, tourism-stunting 100-year-old

licensing laws enforcing the restricted sale of

alcohol and many areas of the city still scarred by

so-called ‘peace lines’ – walls or corrugated iron

fences topped with barbed wire built to separate

Catholic and Protestant districts – the spectre of

past tribalism and religious dogmatism still looms

large. This is a city that is still feeling the aftermath

of the Troubles, the almost 30-year-long violent,

ethno-nationalist conflict that ended in 1998.

It is a testament to Culture Night Belfast that,

against this backdrop, it succeeds in truly uniting

people under the banner of culture. Launched in

2008 for one night only each year, more than 250

artistic and cultural events take place across the

city, all of them family-friendly and free.

Culture Night programme director Adam Turkington

is aware that Belfast has had to come a

long way to get to this point. As recently as 30

years ago, even the idea of Culture Night existing

would have been, for many, unfathomable. The

stark contrast it paints against the backdrop of

the city’s less-than-colourful recent past cannot

be underestimated, says Adam: “I get lots of

messages every year from people who are of a

certain age saying, ‘I wander around Culture Night

and I can’t believe this is my city, the same one

that ostensibly shut down at 6 o’clock during the

Troubles, where nobody used to live and where

there was no culture in the town.’ That’s a powerful

statement about how far we’ve come. It also helps

people dream a bit more – that we can go further.”

Whilst the city’s cultural health – not least its

dance and electronic scene – is thriving in 2016,

Adam insists that Culture Night Belfast is best

viewed as a snapshot of the latent potential of the

city rather than confirmation of where it is right

now. “I think it shows people how much potential

there is in the city creatively, but also in simple

things like removing traffic from the streets and

trusting artists to do mad shit, to cut through a

little bit of the red tape that seems to tie our city

up and to let playful people out to mess with it

a little bit. People are always like, ‘Why can’t you

do it more regularly?’ And I tell them once a year

is what we can do right now. If you want this to

happen more often then you need to lobby the

decision makers to close the roads and to fund the

arts more; we can only do the things we do once a

year with what we have.”

With this year’s event up 20,000 people on

last year, the boundless magic of Culture Night

demonstrates the purest human drive of discovery

in the simplest ways. “I absolutely love walking

around the place and seeing things that any

normal person in any normal city has no right to

expect to see,” Adam says. “I want people to stop

in their daily lives, question, and be like, ‘I don’t

really understand what’s going on here.’ By closing

the roads, we basically have an urban festival

and stages with everything from fencing to salsa,

wrestling to disco, rock to rave. Every type of

performance art that you can imagine, and quite a

lot that you probably couldn’t imagine. I’ve always

tried to encourage people not to plan. I want people

to have a playful experience, to explore, to turn

a corner and see wonderful things that they didn’t

expect to see. That isn’t an accident. That’s how

we curate it so it feels like this mad rollercoaster

of different shit. Like a rollercoaster, it should feel

scary and a little bit mental, and a little bit out of

control, but at least you should know there’s control

there and you’re in a safe environment where

people are looking after you.” So it’s planned

chaos, essentially? “Almost. It’s actually planned

anarchy,” he says, full of conviction.

Above all else, community, collaboration, confidence

and shared civic space are paramount to

furthering the bigger picture, right? “Yes. What excites

me about Belfast at the minute is that people

words by

Brian Coney

NORTHERN

IRELAND’S

PEACE WALLS

A series of barriers erected

to minimise violence

between Catholic and Protestant

communities. They

were intended to stand for

just six months, but due to

their effective nature they

have become wider, longer

and more permanent.

First built: 1969

Materials: iron, brick, steel

Height: up to 7.6m

Combined length: 34km

Number in early 1990s: 18

Number in 2016: 48

Northern Ireland Executive

agreed removal date: 2023

NORTHERN

IRELAND TOURISM

Growth since the peace

process and signing of the

Good Friday Agreement,

which officially ended the

Troubles in April 1998.

1998

Total visitors: 1.4m

Total spend: £217m

2015

Total visitors: 4.5m

Total spend: £760m

Source: NITB

42 Issue Two


Dispatches

Photo by Peter Laverty

Photo by Ciara McMullan

who are interested in shared cultural space are beginning

to feel more empowered,” says Adam. “People are making

businesses and livings out of creating art and stuff, which

doesn’t come from the establishment and is firmly rooted

in what I believe Belfast is, which is an angry, funky, weird,

messed-up place that I don’t want to be like everywhere

else. I really think that there’s a serious hunger there for

shared civic space now and I think that’s the real message

of Culture Night: that our city doesn’t really do shared civic

space but if you do it then people will come. We need to look

at the fantastic heritage and the wonderful, quirky, vibe-y,

lovely places that we have, and create events and activities

in those spaces that are good for everyone.”

But for all his masterfully coordinated idealism, Adam is

also a pragmatist at heart, and both heart and head must

work together to ensure that things continue to grow.

“Our government and our political parties are rooted in the

idea that people should be separated and there are clearly

defined, designated areas, and they receive their political

mandate by reinforcing those divisions,” he says. “But

there’s a new breed of people coming through – especially

young people who never really experienced the Troubles

– that have a new excitement and confidence to take on

the establishment, and that is extremely invigorating and

encouraging. What’s brilliant about Culture Night is that it’s

a once a year opportunity to do something mental,” he adds.

“My role at Culture Night is to make the impossible possible.

I’ve always said that in eight years I’ve never said ‘no’. My

question is always, ‘OK, can we make it safer and can we

make it better?’ But I’ve never said ‘no’.”

With all the usual financial limitations, traditionalism

and obstacles abound, Adam and his team’s remarkable

groundwork to date – not least this year – is a testament to

their steadfast approach to facing down what might well be

perceived as undoable. But when did anything great happen

by settling for the status quo? “Unless it’s absolutely mad

thunder and lightning next year we’ll do it even bigger and

get around 100,000 people attending with more than 250

free events,” Adam enthuses, without a hint of hesitancy in

his voice. Once more into the breach it is.

Clockwise from top left:

Crowd outside the Duke of

York pub, Commercial Court.

Fire performance, Royal

Avenue. Street art mural in

progress, High Street Court.

Arborist performing live at

Tivoli barber shop

Photo by Neil Harrison

Photo by Peter Laverty

Autumn/Winter 2016

43

Local Celluloid Hero Dream

Pit Roc Bukowski Rocit

THE LAST WORD:

PIT BUKOWSKI

erlin-born actor Pit Bukowski doesn’t

shy away from tough projects. After

making his screen debut in 2003 as

a disaffected teenager in Sie haben Knut,

Bukowski has continued to wow audiences

and directors alike. His impressive filmography

includes roles in everything from

underground indie projects and theatre to

Tom Tykwer’s new TV series Berlin Babylon.

Notable projects include lead roles in the

2014 horror–thriller Der Samurai and 2015’s

cult favorite Der Bunker. Recently, Pit appeared

in Nicolette Krebitz’s film Wild, and

in a rare few moments’ break from work we

ask him to indulge our curiosity.

What was the last film you shot? A Young

Man with High Potential. It’s about a brilliant

but sexually inexperienced informatics

student. He has feelings for a beautiful

new student, but even though they are a

perfect match, she rejects him. After trying

out a sleep-inducing drug he finds himself

in a situation to sedate her, from where he

will start down a dark path. Nice, eh? It also

stars Amanda Plummer from Pulp Fiction,

and was shot and produced by my friends

Linus and Anna de Paoli. It’s the fifth time

we’ve worked together.

What’s the last thing that you felt proud

of? I do feel proud frequently. Usually

it doesn’t last long enough for me to

remember precisely what for. I was and

still am a big fan of Der Bunker by Nikias

Chryssos. I don’t like watching myself on

screen but it didn’t matter in that case.

Must mean something.

When was the last time you felt guilty?

Have you heard of the Hagakure, and the

diary of regret? I try to do as it says and quit

keeping a list of these things.

What was the last piece of great advice

you were given? To visualise that I’ll be

dead in 60 years or probably less. Ah, and

‘It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese’.

When was the last time you cried? I know

it’s lame, but probably in front of the camera.

When was the last time you doubted yourself?

I doubt myself every time I have to

come up with anything that is worth being

filmed or recorded.

What was the last regrettable decision you

made? To buy a mango.

What was the last useless thing you

bought? A foul mango.

What was the last great book you read?

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.

What was the last thing you Googled?

Some Bill Hicks material. Since the age of 16

I can’t quit watching the guy.

When was the last time you danced? I can’t

remember. Real men sit, sweat and curse. :)

When was the last time you sang? I sing in

a band. I also play guitar and write songs.

What was the last good film you watched?

For some reason I never watched Scorsese’s

Cape Fear until last week.

What was the last great album you

bought? Open Mike Eagle’s Dark Comedy

at his concert on Monday, November 17th,

2014. It was also the last CD I bought.

When was the last time one of your heroes

disappointed you? Well, I didn’t like the last

Atmosphere album but Slug and Ant are still

killing it live, so it’s not too much of a letdown.

Who was the last person to truly surprise

you? My little brother.

What’s the last good joke you heard? My little

brother trying to spell our mother’s last name.

A Young Man with High Potential will be in

cinemas in 2017.

LAST ORDERS

Hot Toddy

Add a shot of your favourite whiskey,

peeled fresh ginger and a good

squeeze of lemon juice to a mug. Top

it up with hot water and add honey

to taste. A stick of cinnamon can be

added for a seasonal feel.

THIS ISSUE WAS

POWERED BY…

Beyoncé, antibiotics, black tea, Angst,

one sick dog, fangirling, going off

coffee, going back on coffee, Tinder

coaching, vinyl, home cooked meals,

biscuits and a lot of love.

44 Issue Two

Autumn/Winter 2016

45

LOLA Issue Two

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