EXBERLINER Issue 130, September 2014
Berlin's monthly culture and reportage magazine. Germany's largest English-language publication. Founded in 2002.
Berlin's monthly culture and reportage magazine. Germany's largest English-language publication. Founded in 2002.
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<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>130</strong> • €2.90 • <strong>September</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
MICHAEL OBERT: “I saw Louis at his worm-eaten table in the Rembrandt<br />
light of his lantern listening to this music, and I got goosebumps.” (p.36)<br />
DIGITALISM:”Now we work a little bit 9-5, or sometimes 5-9.” (p.44)<br />
ALEXANDER DUVE: “Working with an artist is like being in a relationship<br />
– these days it mostly doesn’t work out.” (p.48)<br />
THE WAR ON<br />
WHISTLEBLOWERS<br />
An MI5 spy and a workplace<br />
hero tell the truth – and get<br />
punished for it<br />
NSA’S LAPDOG?<br />
How Germany does<br />
America’s dirty work<br />
COVER UP!<br />
Seven encryption<br />
tools you should<br />
be using<br />
Berlin’s<br />
digital<br />
rebellion<br />
Whistleblowers, cypherpunks<br />
and hackers: The post-<br />
Snowden resistance is right<br />
on our doorstep. Are you<br />
ready to join the fight?<br />
www.exberliner.com<br />
JACOB<br />
APPELBAUM<br />
Our interview with<br />
the exiled hacktivist<br />
and new Berliner<br />
WHO’S<br />
WATCHING<br />
YOU?<br />
The government<br />
agencies (and<br />
Berlin start-ups)<br />
stealing your<br />
data<br />
What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage<br />
100% made in Berlin.<br />
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20 From Stasi to NSA… and back?<br />
Stasi expert Hubertus Knabe<br />
22 Big Brother in Berlin How the state<br />
spies on us<br />
ISSUE <strong>130</strong>, SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong><br />
24 Confessions of an MI5 whistleblower<br />
Annie Machon tells her story<br />
REGULARS<br />
02 Werner’s political notebook<br />
How the state and businesses collude<br />
04 Best of Berlin Coexist, Crazy Bastard<br />
Hot Sauce, Dimension Alley, Kallasch&<br />
52 Berlin bites Oui, Madame, Masel Topf,<br />
Vego chocolate<br />
54 Fashion What’s hot and what’s not<br />
55 Spotlight Teepeeland<br />
59 Amok Mama Don’t call me Jacinta!<br />
PAGE 18<br />
CW-DESIGN, PHOTOCASE.DE<br />
26 Germany’s should-be heroes Why<br />
workplace whistleblowers get punished<br />
28 You are the product The Berlin<br />
companies collecting your data<br />
30 Encryption for everyone Seven tools<br />
to take back your anonymity<br />
31 The disruptors The Berliners who<br />
play the system<br />
WHAT’S ON<br />
32 Events calendar<br />
SPECIAL: SNOWDEN<br />
AND SURVEILLANCE<br />
06 Intro The new Berlin dissidence<br />
08 Verbatim Jacob Appelbaum<br />
14 Snowden’s defender The whistleblower’s<br />
EU lawyer, Wolfgang Kaleck<br />
16 Where the spies are A map of Berlin’s<br />
surveillance hotspots<br />
34 Film<br />
40 Stage<br />
43 Music and nightlife<br />
48 Art<br />
12 Leaked but locked up Open the<br />
18 America’s lapdog The intimate<br />
56 The Berlin Guide<br />
Snowden files!<br />
relationship between the BND and NSA<br />
60 Letters to the editor<br />
DEUTSCH IN ENGLISH!<br />
MAXIM GORKI THEATRE<br />
WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES<br />
SEE yOU bACK fOR<br />
THE <strong>2014</strong>/15 SEASON!<br />
www.gorki.de<br />
1
An MI5 spy and a workplace<br />
hero tell the truth – and get<br />
punished for it<br />
How Germany does<br />
America’s dirty work<br />
Seven encryption<br />
tools you should<br />
be using<br />
www.exberliner.com<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>130</strong> • €2.90 • <strong>September</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
MICHAEL OBERT: “I saw Louis at his worm-eaten table in the Rembrandt<br />
light of his lantern listening to this music, and I got goosebumps.” (p.36)<br />
DIGITALISM:”Now we work a little bit 9-5, or sometimes 5-9.” (p.44)<br />
ALEXANDER DUVE: “Working with an artist is like being in a relationship<br />
– these days it mostly doesn’t work out.” (p.48)<br />
Our interview with<br />
the exiled hacktivist<br />
and new Berliner<br />
The government<br />
agencies (and<br />
Berlin start-ups)<br />
stealing your<br />
data<br />
THE WAR ON<br />
WHISTLEBLOWERS<br />
NSA’S LAPDOG?<br />
COVER UP!<br />
Berlin’s<br />
digital<br />
rebellion<br />
Whistleblowers, cypherpunks<br />
and hackers: The post-<br />
Snowden resistance is right<br />
on our doorstep. Are you<br />
ready to join the fight?<br />
JACOB<br />
APPELBAUM<br />
WHO’S<br />
WATCHING<br />
YOU?<br />
100% made in Berlin.<br />
Printed on recycled<br />
paper.<br />
What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage<br />
ISSUE <strong>130</strong><br />
Cover art by<br />
Agata Sasiuk<br />
PUBLISHERS:<br />
Maurice<br />
Frank, Nadja<br />
Vancauwenberghe,<br />
Ioana Veleanu<br />
Printed in Berlin<br />
100% recycled paper<br />
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nadja Vancauwenberghe<br />
BUSINESS MANAGER Maurice Frank<br />
ART DIRECTOR Erica Löfman<br />
COPY/DEPUTY EDITOR Rachel Glassberg<br />
WEB EDITOR Walter Crasshole<br />
OFFICE MANAGER Sara Wilde<br />
FEATURES EDITOR Ruth Schneider<br />
SENIOR/MUSIC D. Strauss<br />
FILM Eve Lucas<br />
STAGE Nathalie Frank<br />
ART Fridey Mickel<br />
FOOD Françoise Poilâne<br />
FASHION Jessica Saltz<br />
SALES & MARKETING EXECUTIVE Ines<br />
Montani<br />
AD SALES Marissa Medal, Ilektra Simou<br />
DESIGNERS Cristián Recabarren, Agata Sasiuk<br />
PHOTOGRAPHER Michal Andrysiak<br />
CONTRIBUTORS Tatiana Bazzichelli, Mary<br />
Biekert, Dan Borden, Michael Hald, Mike Fleck,<br />
Seymour Gris, Seán Kenehan, Ben Knight, Dominic<br />
Mealy, Camille Moreno (art), Rory O’Connor (film),<br />
Hanna Westerlund, Krystian Woznicki, Document<br />
Leaks: Anonymous<br />
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■ Werner's political notebook By KONRAD WERNER<br />
How the state and<br />
businesses collude<br />
in Germany<br />
Bernie Ecclestone says he grew to like Munich in<br />
the last few months, when he was forced to spend<br />
a couple of days there every week. No wonder. It<br />
turns out there are few nicer cities when you’re on<br />
trial for corruption. Last month, the head of Formula<br />
One wrapped up his bribery case by bribing<br />
the city’s court with €75 million of his €3.6 billion<br />
fortune. Not an out-of-court settlement, because<br />
it was (ahem) with the court, and<br />
not a fine, because Ecclestone<br />
wasn’t convicted. It was a straight<br />
payment to the Bavarian judiciary<br />
in exchange for dropping<br />
criminal charges against him. You<br />
might want to try that if you ever<br />
get arrested in Munich.<br />
Speaking after the trial, Bernie<br />
expressed mild unhappiness<br />
about paying up. But then again,<br />
he observed wisely, “It’d be worse<br />
not to have the money. I actually<br />
find this capitalist system good.” It definitely<br />
works for him, anyway.<br />
Germany is very proud of its successful businesses,<br />
which is why German businessmen don’t<br />
really take it too seriously when one of those many<br />
surveys come out revealing that Germany is in the<br />
same league as Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and Namibia<br />
in the world’s corruption charts. The disconnect<br />
between perception and reality is striking – in the<br />
<strong>2014</strong> Global Fraud Survey carried out by accounting<br />
firm Ernst & Young, we learned that only six<br />
percent of German firms thought fraud was widespread,<br />
but 26 percent reported serious fraud cases<br />
in the last two years. That was not only more than<br />
almost everywhere else in Europe, but also more<br />
than Russia, with 16 percent.<br />
Ernst & Young – being a German company –<br />
downplayed the figures, saying they were just a<br />
sign that German businesses had increased their<br />
IF YOU’RE<br />
TOO CORRUPT<br />
FOR BRAZIL,<br />
YOU KNOW<br />
SOMETHING<br />
IS UP.<br />
“awareness” of the<br />
problem, as if they had<br />
merely started to realise<br />
what corruption was.<br />
Besides, the apologists<br />
argue, the stats show<br />
that German companies<br />
are cracking down<br />
on corruption more<br />
than ever before. One<br />
example consistently held up is that of Siemens, a<br />
company that became legendary for its corruption<br />
scandals in the past decade, but is now presented<br />
as model of corporate compliance. So it’s odd that<br />
earlier this year a court in Brazil<br />
excluded Siemens from competing<br />
for government contracts in<br />
the coming years. If you’re too<br />
corrupt for Brazil, you know<br />
something is up.<br />
The German government is<br />
mainly happy for German firms<br />
to deal with corruption internally,<br />
and German firms do all they<br />
can to keep cases away from the<br />
public (try getting details on the<br />
cases behind the above surveys –<br />
the firms never publicise anything beyond the raw<br />
data). That might be one reason why Germany<br />
remains one of only a handful of countries in the<br />
world that has signed but not ratified the United<br />
Nations Convention Against Corruption (UN-<br />
CAC) – a select group that includes Sudan, Bhutan<br />
and Syria.<br />
Or it might be that German politicians think of<br />
business as a branch of public life anyway, seeing<br />
as so many of them move so easily from one to<br />
the other. Most recently, Ronald Pofalla, Angela<br />
Merkel’s chief-of-staff, moved directly to a top<br />
job at national rail operator Deutsche Bahn, while<br />
minister-of-state Eckart von Klaeden moved to<br />
Daimler. The EU has complained regularly to<br />
Germany about this state of affairs – but cases<br />
like Ecclestone’s show that when the state and<br />
big business collude, the government is happy to<br />
simply shrug. ■<br />
2 • FEBRUARY 2013
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BEST OF BERLIN<br />
BY THE <strong>EXBERLINER</strong> EDITORIAL TEAM.<br />
Best 1990s flashback<br />
If you’re what the internet calls a “Nineties Kid”, then stepping<br />
into Friedrichshain clothing store COEXIST, with its<br />
purple plastic blow-up chairs, rainbow shag rugs and a VCR<br />
recording of Clueless playing in the corner, will send you into<br />
full-blown reverie. Crocheted crop tops in candy-necklace<br />
pastel colours, shiny Gwen Stefani-inspired bras and skirts<br />
trimmed with faux fur, itty-bitty backpacks – they’re all here.<br />
But Coexist is also a showcase for the designs of hip German<br />
owners Indira Töreki and Anna Heise, who met at the<br />
Schwerin Design School and combined their talents (and their<br />
names) to create the label Indyanna. After a few crucial years<br />
in London, they made their way to Berlin, opening Coexist<br />
in March. Each of their pieces is guaranteed hand-sewn,<br />
mostly made from upcycled materials; a craft that can often<br />
be witnessed live in Töreki and Heise’s back-room sewing<br />
studio. Their store also houses other independent designers,<br />
including LuLaLoop (which has clothed the likes of indie-pop<br />
princess Grimes). Even if you’re not one to wax nostalgic over<br />
flashy print leotards (€65-70), bomber jackets hand sewn out<br />
of vintage scarves (€126) or punk-y denim vests with a political<br />
twist (€85), the shop is still worth a visit – and those of us<br />
of a certain age will find it hard to resist the infamous tattoo<br />
choker necklace (€2). MB Coexist, Grünberger Str. 88, Friedrichshain,<br />
U-Bhf Samariterstr., Mon-Fri 12-20, Sat 12-18<br />
Best Neukölln bar in Moabit<br />
Okay, sure, KALLASCH& (whose name comes from the red sign<br />
on the back wall, scavenged from a nearby abandoned restaurant<br />
supply store called Kallasch & Jonas) boasts some signifiers<br />
you might recognise from Weserstraße: stripped walls, mismatched<br />
furniture, back-room concerts. But stick around and<br />
you’ll notice that a) everyone actually listens when someone’s<br />
playing; and b) you might even end up talking to someone you<br />
didn’t come in with. This is Moabit, after all, where despite a<br />
recent spate of rent increases, the streets remain quiet and the<br />
populace “down-to-earth”, as co-owner and barwoman Luisa<br />
Traumann puts it. Starting with a crumbling Eckkneipe, she and<br />
fellow Moabiter Dominik Borrmann planned and renovated<br />
tirelessly from the bar’s inception in October right up to its<br />
official opening in July, and the whole place still buzzes with a<br />
scrappy “can you believe they’re letting us get away with this?”<br />
energy. While the weather still allows, sip a Berliner Bären-Bräu<br />
(€2.50) on the outdoor patio while watching the sun set over<br />
the former train station that now houses the ZK/U art centre.<br />
Then head inside for music, probably played by a folky veteran<br />
of Borrmann’s three-year-old Musique Maudite concert series,<br />
and one of Berlin’s better Mexikaner shots (€1). AJ Kallasch&,<br />
Unionstr. 2, Moabit, U-Bhf Birkenstr., Thu-Sat 19-close<br />
4 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
Best hot stuff<br />
Chilli fiends and locavores unite: Berlin’s<br />
finally got its own artisanal hot<br />
sauce. Irish expat Jonathan O’Reilly<br />
first began the culinary experiments<br />
that would lead to CRAZY BASTARD<br />
SAUCE three years ago. The final<br />
product – a paprika-tomatillo-habanero<br />
concoction with a pleasantly fruity<br />
burn – has been available since January,<br />
and a sweet-hot jalapeño-date version<br />
will be hitting the market soon.<br />
How good is it? A 100ml bottle sent<br />
to the Exberliner office disappeared in<br />
days, emptied out onto sandwiches,<br />
stir-frys, burritos… everything,<br />
basically. Order it online (€5/100ml,<br />
€9/200ml, plus postage) or pick up a<br />
bottle at Neukölln’s Cabslam (€6) – a<br />
fitting natural habitat for a hot sauce<br />
created by a “reluctant illustrator/<br />
dedicated barman/sometime musician”.<br />
JS Crazy Bastard Hot Sauce, www.<br />
crazybsauce.com<br />
von ensemble mosaik<br />
ERICA LÖFMAN<br />
Best 3D selfie<br />
There’s an odd moment – somewhere<br />
between doing a 360 degree full-body swivel<br />
whilst being scanned from head to toe, and<br />
when you witness a miniature version of<br />
yourself being squirted out by a printer –<br />
where you think, “Jesus, is my posture really<br />
that bad?” If such revelations hold no fear<br />
for you, then we’ve got a café that’s right up<br />
your alley… DIMENSION ALLEY, that is. The<br />
future of the selfie is here, nestled unassumingly<br />
in Prenzlauer Berg, and predictably<br />
enough it’s 3D. Offering a variety of digital<br />
fabrication workshops that cater to children<br />
(upon request) and adult novices (€40), the<br />
world’s third “fab café” goes to great lengths<br />
to walk you through the potentially infinite<br />
applications of 3D printing: organic tissue,<br />
aeronautical engine parts, even entire buildings.<br />
Then, they give you the opportunity to<br />
design… a keychain. Yet the more technically<br />
savvy can rock up with preconceived<br />
designs and bring them to life with the help<br />
of the outfit’s affable owners, examples of<br />
which can be seen around the workshop:<br />
the aforementioned mini-me (from €25),<br />
miniaturised landscapes, a Mars Rover and<br />
models of actual bone scans, to name but a<br />
few. Height and width were good while they<br />
lasted, but modern Berliners need something<br />
more: they need depth, and that’s exactly<br />
what this techno-caff is serving up, in<br />
viscous thermoplastic form. SK Dimension<br />
Alley, Liselotte-Herrmannstr. 1, Prenzlauer Berg,<br />
S-Bhf Greifswalder Str., Mon-Fri 10-18, Sat 11-18<br />
Filme: Distruktur – Melissa Dullius,<br />
Gustavo Jahn<br />
Künstlerische Leitung: Bettina Junge,<br />
Thomas Fiedler / Kommando Himmelfahrt<br />
Clemens Gadenstätter:<br />
Sad Songs (2012)<br />
Mark Barden:<br />
viscosity (<strong>2014</strong>)<br />
Mauro Lanza / Andrea Valle:<br />
Regnum vegetabile (<strong>2014</strong>)<br />
3. & 4. <strong>September</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
20 Uhr im Berghain<br />
Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin<br />
Eintritt 9 € – Karten an der Abendkasse<br />
Eine Produktion des ensembles mosaik<br />
in Koproduktion mit dem Internationalen<br />
Musikinstitut Darmstadt; gefördert aus<br />
Mitteln des Hauptstadtkulturfonds.<br />
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK<br />
5
ARTICLE FROM THE TAG EDITOR<br />
BERLIN’S<br />
DIGITAL<br />
REBELS<br />
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CATHERINE FRANCK<br />
Berlin might well be home to the highest concentration of<br />
“Snowdenistas” in the world – starting with the small circle<br />
of trusted confidants. There’s Edward Snowden’s first ally, US documentary<br />
filmmaker Laura Poitras, who in January 2013 received a pseudonymous<br />
email, trusted a certain whistleblower’s story and met and filmed the<br />
young NSA runaway in his Hong Kong hotel room – resulting in a video that<br />
was to make history. After being on a watchlist, detained and interrogated<br />
countless times, she made Berlin her base. There’s Sarah Harrison, the Wikiangel<br />
sent by Julian Assange, who spent 40 nerve-wracking days in Moscow’s<br />
Sheremetyevo airport while escorting Snowden to safe haven. Advised by her<br />
lawyers that it wasn’t safe to return home to the UK, Harrison decided to<br />
go to Berlin, joining another exile, the US hacktivist Jacob Appelbaum (see<br />
interview, page 8), a close associate of Assange and friend of Poitras. There’s<br />
also former MI5 agent Annie Machon (see page 24), herself a former whistleblower<br />
turned outspoken anti-surveillance campaigner.<br />
It is not a coincidence that so many Snowden allies have ended up here.<br />
Berlin has always been a centre of crypto-dissidence – starting with the<br />
founding of the Chaos Computer Club 30 years ago, now represented by<br />
the likes of Andy Müller-Maghun and Constanze Kurz. Add to these Daniel<br />
Domscheit-Berg, WikiLeaks spokesman turned renegade, now a member of<br />
digital transparency champions the Pirate Party. They form the nexus of a<br />
constellation of collectives and organisations from the non-profit Digitale<br />
Gesellschaft to the international NGO Tactical Tech, a collective focused<br />
on technology and activism, to the Courage Foun dation, an international<br />
whistleblower support organisation set up by Harrison last June – not to<br />
forget the benevolent techies who patiently teach Berlin’s crypto-illiterates<br />
the art of online privacy at open workshops they misleadingly call cryptoparties<br />
(no music, booze optional). United by a strange mix of digitally<br />
enabled awareness and cyber-utopianism, they meet with whistleblowers,<br />
human rights activists, academics and lawyers at international conferences<br />
the world over. Here, they socialise at a certain weekly Mitte Stammtisch<br />
or at events across Berlin’s alternative bars, like Citizen Kino’s evenings<br />
of media-subversion. It’s an underworld populated with Club Mate<br />
drinkers who don’t necessarily live in Neukölln, rarely own Macbooks<br />
and don’t exhibit their lives on Facebook. Instead, they send each other<br />
encrypted messages from computers covered in “Tor Project” or “Asylum<br />
for Snowden” stickers. They often carry outdated mobile phones – the<br />
rare smartphone owners take their batteries out, knowing that even a<br />
switched-off phone can easily be turned into a tracking device and a networked<br />
microphone. They want to change the world but fear journalists.<br />
They’re distrustful. Realistic, stoic, idealistic. Often bespectacled. Mostly<br />
male, but not entirely.<br />
The only one missing is “Ed”, as his supporters affectionately call him.<br />
In the meantime, lamp posts are plastered with stickers emblazoned with<br />
an Obama-campaign-esque replica of his face; even my vet has “Asyl”<br />
postcards in his office among the cute cat photos. In the age of ‘normcore’,<br />
digital nerds have grown hotter (I heard it: “Snowden is a sexy<br />
man.”) Snowden-sploitation?<br />
The Berlin literati are catching up: this year’s International Literature<br />
Festival warms up with a Snowden support evening on <strong>September</strong> 8 (not<br />
sure who’s supporting whom here), complete with a panel discussion and<br />
a reading (a collage of Snowden’s wisest quotes). They’ve also initiated a<br />
petition demanding Germany to grant him asylum: we all want him in<br />
Berlin. Except for the German government, that is. Had Snowden been<br />
Chinese, they would have welcomed him with open arms as a political<br />
6 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
Laura Poitras<br />
Sarah Harrison<br />
Jake Appelbaum<br />
dissident (see our interview with Snowden’s lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck,<br />
page 14). The issue is that in many ways, the German political establishment<br />
has remained a lapdog of the US (see page 18) – from Cold War<br />
times, when the NSA had its Berlin roost in Teufelsberg, up till now.<br />
Germany is the NSA’s most important base of operations in Europe. The<br />
infamous XKeyscore is ope rated from the Hesse town of Griesheim, as<br />
revealed by one of the many documents in the Snowden cache.<br />
Now we know about the collusion of the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ, to<br />
a lesser extent Germany’s BND, and half of Silicon Valley in the ambition<br />
to turn the world into what Snowden called a vast “digital panopticon”.<br />
Comparisons with 1984 seem as hackneyed as they’re apt: Big Brotherhood<br />
has descended upon us. We’ve entered the most monitored and<br />
spied-on age in human history. Our everyday habits and deeds are recorded,<br />
sorted and analysed by data collection agencies to the profit of online<br />
and offline businesses without our consent or knowledge (see page 28).<br />
The digital economy has turned into a vast milking operation, and we’re<br />
the cows. Put that information in the wrong hands – we’re dead cows.<br />
Now we know. Does this mean we’re more aware? Beyond the stickers<br />
and the outcry, what measures are we taking? Are we using Tor to<br />
browse the internet or encrypting our email? Or reverting to typewriters<br />
to outsmart the spies, as contemplated by the Bundestag’s NSA<br />
parliamentary commission: back to analogue? For its part, Exberliner<br />
is embracing digital enlightenment: we’re working on an open-source<br />
whistleblower submission system and, from this month on, we’ll be<br />
the first Berlin magazine with full digital privacy. As well as enabling<br />
our journalists to communicate securely when they need to, it is also a<br />
symbolic gesture, an act of political rebellion.<br />
In times of impunity from governments, it is up to us, citizens, to<br />
stand up for our rights. Snowden, like Manning, Assange and many others<br />
before them (let’s not forget local whistleblower Brigitte Heinisch, whose<br />
legal battle changed the way whistleblowers are treated in Germany, page<br />
26) is a classic example of what Albert Camus called a “rebel” – the man<br />
who says “no” in the face of what he considers to be illegal but also immoral,<br />
who fights against the kind of world he doesn’t want to live in.<br />
Citizens of Berlin, join the whistleblowers, cypherpunks and hacktivists<br />
– it’s time to rebel. NADJA VANCAUWENBERGHE<br />
7
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK<br />
“We’ve entered<br />
revolutionary times”<br />
Jacob Appelbaum: New Berliner, exiled hacktivist, passionate idealist<br />
By Ruth Schneider<br />
8 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
A<br />
longtime collaborator of Julian Assange, a close friend of Edward<br />
Snowden confidants Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald<br />
and now himself a trusted ally of the NSA whistleblower, this is<br />
a man with some serious cred on the Snowden scene.<br />
Jacob Appelbaum is a natural-born dissident with a fighting spirit and<br />
serious oratory skills. Starting off as a campaigner for medical marijuana<br />
in California at age 15, Appelbaum spent more time worrying about<br />
planet Earth (later with Greenpeace and Rain Forest Action Network)<br />
and his computer’s ecosystem than his schoolwork. By his early twenties<br />
he was busy helping friends bring technology to Iraq (installing internet<br />
satellites in Kurdistan) or de-constructing Apple’s encrypted disk storage<br />
system. His involvement with the Tor Project (from 2004) and Wiki-<br />
Leaks were soon to follow. In 2010, Rolling Stone tagged him the “most<br />
dangerous man in cyberspace”, a label that still pisses him off today.<br />
He would hate the idea, but the Snowden affair has boosted his career –<br />
as a freelance writer with access to the NSA files, and as a public speaker<br />
who’s been both an expert on and victim of digital surveillance. Appelbaum<br />
was among the few cyber-security brains who engineered the Tor<br />
anonymity software. This and his connection to WikiLeaks earned him<br />
harassment from US intelligence agencies – relentless pressure which<br />
culminated in his girlfriend being spied on in her bedroom. In June of<br />
last year, he decided to bid home and friends farewell and join the likes of<br />
Poitras and WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison in self-imposed Berlin exile.<br />
Appelbaum – a man with over 76,000 Twitter followers – is coy about<br />
his new celebrity on the digital scene. Yet today it’s hard to conceive<br />
of a conference with the words “surveillance” or “Snowden” in the title<br />
without his participation. Like many of his techie peers, he encrypts<br />
his email, and if he does have a smartphone on him, the battery travels<br />
separately in his bag.<br />
“I’m a journalist, a computer security researcher/programmer, as well<br />
as an artist – all three are on my visa,” a freelance visa Germany has just<br />
renewed for another two years.<br />
He’s also bit of a rabble-rouser – like when this year, after winning<br />
the respected Henri Nannen prize for journalism, Appelbaum publicly<br />
expressed his shame at winning an award named after a one-time Nazi<br />
(the famous Stern founder was a Waffen-SS propaganda man in Italy), and<br />
pledged to melt his award together with those of other winners, creating<br />
a new artwork.<br />
In person, “Jake”, as his friends call him, comes across as a rather shy,<br />
aloof type. But get him on topic and this 31-year-old tattooed product<br />
of “generation so-what” metamorphoses into an uncompromising yet<br />
endearing idealist.<br />
Last year, you decided to move to Berlin after<br />
years of harassment by the US government.<br />
Why then? I had enough. For years I had<br />
terrible interactions with the police, with border<br />
control, with the FBI. All sorts of different<br />
encounters that my family had experienced, that<br />
my partner had experienced, who is no longer my<br />
partner now partially due to this stress. Unbelievable<br />
things really.<br />
Can you tell me about one of these unbelievable<br />
things? Sure. A couple of years ago my<br />
mother was arrested in a small town in California.<br />
This is not necessarily out of the ordinary<br />
for her, she is a troubled person. But the police<br />
kicked down the door and arrested her on the<br />
toilet and dragged her out of the apartment<br />
while recording the entire happening on an audio<br />
recorder. I flew to California to try and bail her<br />
out of jail. I thought that this is just what would<br />
happen to any person’s mother in these sort of<br />
circumstances. But it became increasingly clear to<br />
me that there was something else happening by<br />
the way that they treated her. She was handcuffed<br />
and tied down; her wrists and ankles and waist<br />
were all chained together. At one point she was<br />
interrogated about my role in WikiLeaks. I had<br />
never told my mother about Julian Assange or<br />
WikiLeaks. She doesn’t use the internet.<br />
So they transferred her to a mental hospital<br />
eventually. I met her there and she told me that<br />
they were drugging her against her will. They had<br />
been given an order by the judge to forcibly drug<br />
her. They interrogated her again about my role in<br />
WikiLeaks. She spent 18 months in jail without<br />
a trial. She has been on probation for three years<br />
and because I have left the US, I haven’t seen her<br />
in this period of time. It is a very sad situation.<br />
You were also followed, harassed... When<br />
I was in Iceland, I received a panicked message.<br />
My now ex-fiancée had woken up with men wearing<br />
night vision goggles watching her sleep in her<br />
home. When we travelled together, I would go<br />
through customs with her and they would literally<br />
take me away in front of her and deny to her<br />
that I existed. I experienced this for years.<br />
When did it start? It really started in 2009, but<br />
I had been very quiet about it. It really started to<br />
heat up in 2010 and 2011 and got gradually worse.<br />
In May 2013 I had dinner with my aforementioned<br />
ex-girlfriend, and at this dinner we were<br />
physically followed by at least two agents we<br />
think were with the FBI. We negotiated over the<br />
internet to have dinner at a specific restaurant<br />
“I feel safer in East<br />
Berlin as an immigrant<br />
than I ever have as a<br />
citizen in the United<br />
States.”<br />
at a specific time and she picked me up and we<br />
drove there. The email was encrypted and we<br />
used all sorts of stuff, but it’s clear that both of<br />
our computers were probably compromised and<br />
they knew everything. What is weird is that we<br />
didn’t go to the restaurant that we planned on.<br />
At the last second I had a nervous twitch and<br />
I said, let’s take a left right here and go to this<br />
restaurant. And not 10 minutes later a guy with<br />
a buzz cut sits down right next to us, puts his<br />
cell on the table, the microphone of his phone<br />
directly pointed at me. Twenty minutes later a<br />
woman comes and sits down next to him. And<br />
she also puts her cell phone on the table. They<br />
pretended to be on a first date but they never<br />
said anything about what they do, why she was<br />
late... At some point my fiancée really broke<br />
down crying from the pressure. The day before,<br />
Laura Poitras had come to visit us in Seattle. So<br />
it’s quite clear that this surveillance had been<br />
linked, they wanted to know what had happened<br />
with Laura. And of course that wasn’t the topic<br />
of our dinner conversation.<br />
Was it during the Snowden revelations?<br />
No, Laura was just visiting me. Laura and I have<br />
been dear friends for a long time. That kind<br />
of harassment started much before Snowden.<br />
And this led me to realise that when these leaks<br />
started coming out, something big was happening.<br />
When we learned about Edward Snowden<br />
and Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, I was<br />
actually in Munich – on my way to Seattle from a<br />
trip to India. A friend from the Chaos Computer<br />
Club walked up to me while I was having dinner<br />
and he said to me, “Did you hear the source of<br />
the leaks?” I was travelling with Laura’s producer<br />
Caity, and we were filming together... I think she<br />
even filmed me loading the page of The Guardian,<br />
learning the name of Edward Snowden and learning<br />
why we couldn’t reach Laura all that time.<br />
I put everything together and realised that if I<br />
were to go back now, these years of harassment<br />
about WikiLeaks would be nothing compared to<br />
what was coming next. So I cancelled my return<br />
flight and I never went home again. That was in<br />
early June of 2013.<br />
All those years of harassment – it was because<br />
of your involvement with Wiki Leaks?<br />
The data trail you leave behind tells a story about<br />
you, but not necessarily one that is true. Even if<br />
it’s made up of facts. For years the US government<br />
harassed me because they thought Bradley<br />
Manning, now Chelsea Manning, had given me<br />
documents. But that is not true.<br />
How do you know they thought that?<br />
Because they dragged friends of mine into a<br />
grand jury in Virginia and threatened them<br />
with indefinite detention if they did not testify<br />
against me, waive their constitutional liberties<br />
9
and talk about me specifically. When I realised<br />
that they had a completely incorrect theory and<br />
that they tried to destroy my life for years, I<br />
thought to myself that there will be no end to<br />
what they do to harass and to destroy. So, I felt I<br />
shouldn’t return.<br />
So why Berlin? Berlin has an incredible culture<br />
of resistance. I have been coming to Berlin for<br />
many years because of the Chaos Computer<br />
Club, and I’ve worked with<br />
Der Spiegel in the context of<br />
WikiLeaks. I have a lot of<br />
close friends here in the art<br />
world and in the computer<br />
hacker world and in the<br />
journalistic world. I exist<br />
at the intersection of those<br />
three worlds, and Berlin<br />
makes me very happy. We<br />
often joke that it’s this sort<br />
of last stand for democracy.<br />
Where people are really<br />
having real dialogues. The<br />
people in Chaos Computer<br />
Club, Der Spiegel, taz, Exberliner,<br />
etc. said to me that they were with me, and<br />
so I have been here for a year and have applied<br />
for a temporary residence visa, as everyone does,<br />
and I received it. Frankly, I feel safer in East Berlin<br />
as an immigrant than I ever have as a citizen<br />
in the United States.<br />
You never felt like applying for asylum?<br />
I do not relish the idea of being a refugee. I<br />
hope it never comes to that. I have been offered<br />
political asylum by other countries. I don’t want<br />
to say which ones. The US government is out<br />
to get everyone associated with WikiLeaks and<br />
Snowden in any way they can. It is political<br />
persecution. I think that Germany has done a<br />
good job by letting me stay. I want the same for<br />
everyone who needs it.<br />
It is a beautiful irony to be an exile here.<br />
Berlin has a crazy history of surveillance<br />
from the Cold War to the present day. We<br />
know from the Snowden files that Germany<br />
is the NSA’s closest ally in Europe.<br />
Even with Berlin’s history, even with the intense<br />
irony of East Berlin being a place where we<br />
work on these things now, it is not necessarily an<br />
endorsement that Berlin is perfect. There is an<br />
immense amount of spying here by the German<br />
government and the NSA. We now know how<br />
closely they work together. For example, as far as<br />
we can tell all the American drone assassinations<br />
are relayed through Germany...<br />
You and Laura both worked with Der<br />
Spiegel – how did it happen? Well, Andy<br />
Müller- Maguhn and I had been working with<br />
Spiegel in various capacities over the years and<br />
we both convinced her to come and work with<br />
us. Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark are two<br />
of the greatest living journalists; they are goodnatured,<br />
have good ethics and I trust them both.<br />
Were you ever tempted to join Glenn<br />
“The Guardian<br />
is a petty, shitty<br />
newspaper with<br />
an axe to grind<br />
about WikiLeaks<br />
and Julian<br />
Assange.”<br />
Greenwald and The Guardian? Well, I was<br />
working with Glenn, and I asked The Guardian<br />
for a letter to be covered under their editorial<br />
secrecy privileges, and they declined. I think it’s<br />
because they’re a petty, shitty newspaper with<br />
people at the helm like Luke Harding, Alan<br />
Rusbridger and David Leigh who have an axe to<br />
grind about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and<br />
they decided that that was more important than<br />
anything else including protecting me. When, in<br />
<strong>September</strong> 2013, Leigh and<br />
Harding were here at Hundt<br />
Hammer Stein bookstore for<br />
a reading of their book on<br />
WikiLeaks, they lied about<br />
about Julian endlessly. Do<br />
you know that when Julian<br />
first went to the [Ecuadorian]<br />
embassy, The Guardian sent<br />
him a basket with clean socks<br />
and soap in it? That is the attitude<br />
that The Guardian has<br />
towards serious journalists!<br />
Don’t you think they<br />
did a good job with the<br />
Snowden leaks? They broke the story despite<br />
considerable pressure... Until you consider<br />
the fact that they said they wouldn’t even<br />
touch anything related to Afghanistan or Iraq,<br />
for example. I mean, that’s unbelievable... They<br />
have done a good job in some of this reporting,<br />
but to me it is very sad that they view this as a<br />
competition between news organisations or egos<br />
as opposed to understanding the importance<br />
overall. You see this with Harding’s book about<br />
the Snowden files. What does he know about<br />
Snowden? He has no contact to Snowden, no<br />
idea about any of this stuff, and he writes this<br />
totally exploitative book to try and present to us<br />
the full history and it is completely preposterous<br />
– this is The Guardian. The fact that they<br />
have all these documents but they are basically<br />
done reporting on them – to me that’s another<br />
example of how unbelievably irresponsible they<br />
are as a publication. We don’t need organisations<br />
like these who serve the state, we have enough<br />
of those. We need organisations who serve the<br />
public interest, and this is what the press is supposed<br />
to do.<br />
Why didn’t you follow Laura and Glenn to<br />
The Intercept? I really like The Intercept, and I<br />
think the people working there are of the highest<br />
calibre. I’m glad Pierre [Omidyar] is financing it,<br />
but you’ve gotta ask yourself, why? It is purely to<br />
make money. My interest is very much aligned to<br />
increase justice in the world, to try and improve<br />
human rights issues. So I care very much about<br />
the things that Jeremy Scahill writes on The Intercept<br />
about drone strikes. I care what Glenn is doing,<br />
I care what Laura is doing. I have the utmost<br />
respect for publications that get the truth out for<br />
the public interest. But each of these places have<br />
different limits and different goals.<br />
You are being overly diplomatic now. I’m<br />
not! People who work as effective journalists in<br />
the US are harassed, they are bothered... They<br />
are arrested and they live with serious fear of<br />
repercussions even if they won’t admit it.<br />
So, would you say that’s the reason why The<br />
Intercept withheld the fact that Afghanistan<br />
had been under total NSA surveillance<br />
in their exposure of the so-called Bahamas<br />
story – too much pressure? I think it is quite<br />
clear that organisations like The Intercept are<br />
explicitly under pressure. And The Washington Post<br />
is also explicitly under pressure – they got the<br />
story and actually didn’t publish the names of any<br />
of those countries... When you talk to the people<br />
who work at these organisations they all have a<br />
great deal of fear.<br />
But look, Glenn and Laura are two heroes<br />
of fearless journalism. They proved their<br />
integrity many times and now they’ve gone<br />
on to found a new media platform... you<br />
would expect that organisation to be more<br />
‘independent’. So what does that tell you<br />
about what’s possible?<br />
It tells me that apparently it’s not possible.<br />
That is the answer to the question then. What is<br />
possible for The Intercept, The Washington Post or<br />
The Guardian? There are all different things in<br />
terms of possibilities. Could The Intercept publish<br />
anything they want? Potentially, but there are<br />
consequences that come with it. Political, legal<br />
and maybe even technical consequences. The<br />
reality of the situation is that there is a reason<br />
why WikiLeaks exists. WikiLeaks is a publisher<br />
of the last resort.<br />
So, without WikiLeaks, the Afghan people<br />
wouldn’t have been informed... I am happy<br />
that WikiLeaks exists because they serve as a<br />
balancing factor. Right? When publications like<br />
The Intercept fear to publish something like that<br />
or worry that it could be harmful, WikiLeaks<br />
is able to come in and talk about it. It really<br />
behooves governments not to pressure places<br />
like The Intercept or The Washington Post because<br />
that creates a space where it’s absolutely clear<br />
that WikiLeaks is a necessity, even now. I think<br />
it’s sad that there is an environment where news<br />
publications are not allowed to tell you certain<br />
facts, but it is also the reality of the situation<br />
that we are living in.<br />
What do you think was the most significant<br />
thing about the Snowden files? I think that it<br />
is important to understand that Snowden serves<br />
as an example that it is not only possible to<br />
resist, it is possible to resist and to survive. What<br />
Snowden has done is a brave act of whistleblowing.<br />
He has paid dearly for it, and many people<br />
are working to ensure that he doesn’t pay with<br />
his life. Of course the impact of the documents<br />
was important, but the impact of surviving alone<br />
was just as important in some sense for inspiring<br />
other people. I mean, [NSA whistleblower William]<br />
Binney doesn’t have legs anymore. He is a<br />
double amputee from the diabetes and the stress<br />
of his life. Thomas Drake’s life has been in some<br />
ways completely ruined. Chelsea Manning has<br />
ended up with a 35-year prison sentence.<br />
10 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
But is being stuck in Russia under Putin’s<br />
guardianship really an enviable option?<br />
Well, that’s a really loaded statement; how do<br />
you know that Putin has anything to do with<br />
Edward Snowden? Let me just say that it’s better<br />
to be alive and stuck in one of the largest<br />
countries in the world than to be imprisoned<br />
or to be dead. But some people deny this and<br />
suggest that he is a pawn or a puppet. They<br />
criticise his choice of asylum. But he applied<br />
for asylum in as many countries as possible, and<br />
nearly every single one refused on a technicality.<br />
Sarah Harrison and Julian Assange saved his life<br />
because WikiLeaks takes source protection seriously.<br />
Just imagine, those three people managed<br />
to embarrass the entire intelligence community.<br />
That is so powerful.<br />
Then there are those who say things like,<br />
“Well, what did we learn from Snowden<br />
that we didn’t know before?” There is a<br />
difference between suspecting and absolutely<br />
knowing something like the fact that the Bahamas<br />
are under complete surveillance. There is a<br />
difference between understanding that metadata<br />
programs are being used to help kill people with<br />
drone strikes and speculating about it. There is a<br />
difference between understanding that Chancellor<br />
Merkel is spied on as a head of state in theory<br />
and finding out it is entirely the case. Because of<br />
my experiences, I know something about the difference<br />
between probability and certainty, what<br />
is legal versus what is happening. I, for the rest<br />
of my life, will never lie down in a bed in a house<br />
and not know that my house is monitored. I will<br />
never be able to have a free conversation in my<br />
home for as long as I live...<br />
Stuff like that used to be called paranoia.<br />
So, you’re saying it vindicates the paranoid<br />
ones among us? When Julian Assange and I<br />
wrote Cypherpunks, many people said that we<br />
were crazy, paranoid, etc. Well now, thanks to<br />
Snowden, we know it is no longer unreasonable<br />
to think that our phones are being tapped or that<br />
the internet is being monitored. It is a fact. It<br />
might be oppressive in a sense, but it is still a liberating<br />
phase because it is no longer a question.<br />
Every person who doesn’t work to change it is<br />
complicit. That’s the difference. There is a huge<br />
split between a bunch of cynical people who<br />
say they already knew and don’t need to think<br />
further about it, and a number of not-so-cynical<br />
people who say it’s what we suspected and what<br />
we feared, now let’s change it.<br />
Were you personally shocked by those revelations?<br />
I moved beyond shock. I am horrified and<br />
I want things to change. One way to change these<br />
things is to publicise them so that people know<br />
about them, and another way is to build alternative<br />
solutions to them. And this is what we are doing<br />
with the Tor Project, for example, and many other<br />
people are working on exactly that as well.<br />
So, how do you get people to go to the next<br />
level – from awareness to action? We have to<br />
have a lot more than just individual actions. My<br />
recycling does not save the environment. It is a<br />
useful part of a much bigger picture. We need industrial<br />
action on a planetary scale. For example<br />
we have to re-engineer the way telecommunication<br />
systems work. Why can the NSA wiretap<br />
entire countries? Because the infrastructure is designed<br />
to be wiretapped and they exploit it. And<br />
that needs to be changed. The reality is that most<br />
people trust the defaults of their electronic devices.<br />
Until the architecture is privacy by design,<br />
we will have privacy by policy. Privacy by policy<br />
will always be violated by<br />
people who do not feel that<br />
they are constrained by that<br />
policy. We have to work to<br />
change the way our infrastructure<br />
works. To make it<br />
actually secure.<br />
But many don’t feel that<br />
concerned – as internet<br />
users, they just want to<br />
accomplish certain tasks<br />
and are unbothered<br />
about corporate or political<br />
use of their personal<br />
data.... Saying, “Oh I’m<br />
not interesting, no one will want to watch me” as<br />
a way of coping with this stress is understandable.<br />
But I would re-frame it as “intelligence agencies<br />
are normal people”. The capabilities necessary to<br />
tap a cell phone costs €1000 or less. The methods<br />
are available to everyone – an ex-lover, a competitive<br />
journalist… So, it’s about choice, not whether<br />
or not you have something to hide. There are<br />
businesses that exploit people’s lack of knowledge,<br />
and, yes, we should question the centralisation of<br />
businesses like Facebook and Twitter. We have to<br />
deal with corporate surveillance and government<br />
surveillance and the ties between them. It is a big<br />
problem. But it is something we can solve.<br />
You called Facebook Stasibook… Yes,<br />
because of its close collaboration with the state.<br />
They have an entire department that does nothing<br />
but turn over data to police, governments and<br />
other requesting parties. I’m sure that the FBI<br />
went to Facebook for any data that they had on<br />
me. The Department of Justice went to Twitter<br />
and Google for me. I think the big fallacy is to<br />
think that because people use Facebook they<br />
don’t care about privacy. But what is the alternative<br />
for most people? The reality is that if you live<br />
in London, when you walk down the street, it’s<br />
a privacy-violating channel of information. But<br />
what can you do? You won’t stay inside all the<br />
time, which doesn’t mean you don’t care about<br />
the cameras. So, we must build alternatives so<br />
that people can choose. And we can do it.<br />
You seem unexpectedly confident, even<br />
optimistic. I don’t think there is a divide<br />
between the physical and digital world anymore<br />
and history shows us that it is possible to resist<br />
and it is necessary to do so. With the Snowden<br />
files and WikiLeaks we’ve entered revolutionary<br />
times, big changes are ahead.<br />
Do you think that Snowden sparked a<br />
revolution? Yes. I think Julian Assange, Edward<br />
Snowden, Laura Poitras, Chelsea Manning,<br />
Glenn Greenwald and others have all contributed<br />
a great deal to history. We live in times of<br />
extreme upheaval. I see that we have already<br />
built the beginning of alternative structures that<br />
exist already. Like the Tor network. Millions of<br />
people use it everyday. Whistleblowers, journalists,<br />
doctors... It is not a promise of the future,<br />
it is an optimistic reality. I would say there is a<br />
long struggle, and we are in the middle of this<br />
struggle. We may not<br />
win all these battles and<br />
“There was never a<br />
time in history<br />
where this many<br />
people could be<br />
under surveillance.<br />
This is new, and it<br />
is not okay.”<br />
we may not stop mass<br />
surveillance, but there<br />
is an opportunity to do<br />
that, and with those tools<br />
many people are not as<br />
vulnerable to surveillance<br />
as the rest of the planet<br />
is by default right now.<br />
So, it’s about empowering<br />
ourselves<br />
as citizens of the<br />
digital age? The point<br />
is whether you want to<br />
support the fundamental tenets of a democratic<br />
society. If you do, then you should use these<br />
types of programs. What is most important is<br />
to think about the big picture in order to restore<br />
balance to a lot of what has been lost. We<br />
fundamentally need to re-architect and re-affirm<br />
things, we need our policies and our technologies<br />
to line up, we need to re-affirm fundamental<br />
principles about human rights. When I first<br />
went to the European Court of Human Rights<br />
in Strasbourg, I cried.<br />
I thought you belonged to “generation<br />
so-what”. You’re turning out to be such an<br />
idealist! The court in Strasbourg is one of the<br />
most utopian visions. This notion that any person<br />
can lodge a case or a claim, that any person<br />
has the right to have injustices done to them by<br />
states redressed in this manner, and for states<br />
to have to do something about it… well, this to<br />
me is something almost unimaginable. But then<br />
I think of people like Assange, Snowden and<br />
Poitras and I think, of course we need to reaffirm<br />
these values that were hard-won after the<br />
Second World War. We can’t solve it in a cynical<br />
way. There was never a time in history where<br />
this many people could be under surveillance.<br />
This is new and it is not okay. And we can stop it<br />
and we should stop it. Things like cryptoparties<br />
are part of a grassroots response to stop that on<br />
an individual level and they are great. We need<br />
people to do this in law, we need companies to<br />
take a strong stance to ensure that these types<br />
of communications are secure, to have opportunities<br />
for anonymity, that there is a possibility<br />
for a data-retention-free society. These kinds of<br />
things are critical. I think there are actually ways<br />
in which we know how to do it now. We can use<br />
some of the existing apparatuses to change the<br />
world. And it is already happening. Every time<br />
you anonymise, every time you encrypt, every<br />
time you assert your rights and refuse submission,<br />
we’re winning. n<br />
11
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
Leaked but locked up:<br />
Who controls the Snowden files?<br />
Edward Snowden risked his life to leak documents for<br />
the sake of “informing the public”. But how much<br />
wiser are we, the public, really? How much has<br />
actually been leaked so far, and who decides what<br />
gets published and on what grounds?<br />
We first heard about the NSA files in June of last year over two successive<br />
scoops by The Guardian (June 5), and The Washington Post (June 6) that<br />
left the world screaming with outrage. Never had a single leak unleashed<br />
such a firestorm; never had a leaker been turned into such an instant hero.<br />
(His confessional video was uploaded to Youtube on June 9; it has since<br />
been viewed by over three million people). By <strong>September</strong> 2013, Der Spiegel<br />
released the story about Angela Merkel’s cell phone being monitored by<br />
the NSA, scandalising the Germans and their Kanzlerin. More documents<br />
have been published since, bringing ever more shocking evidence of the<br />
NSA’s total impunity in its ambition of total surveillance. It seems that not<br />
a single country, community or activity escapes America’s all-seeing eye.<br />
How many more revelations are still to come?<br />
In other words: how much has been published so far? Does anyone<br />
actually know the exact size of Snowden’s NSA<br />
cache? NSA Director Keith Alexander initially<br />
estimated that the former contractor had copied<br />
anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents.<br />
Today US officials claim it was 1.7 million<br />
– Snowden said he took far fewer, but never gave<br />
an actual number. Wild speculations concluded<br />
that at the current publication rate, it would take<br />
another half decade to go through Snowden’s<br />
bounty. Who knows?<br />
What we do know is that what has been made<br />
public so far is only a small portion of what<br />
Snowden risked his life to tell the world. What we<br />
also know is that the flow and the content of<br />
At the current<br />
publication rate,<br />
it could take<br />
another half<br />
decade to go<br />
through<br />
Snowden’s bounty.<br />
revelations to the public is controlled by those who have access to the<br />
precious archive. “Who’s that?” you might ask. There’s the original duo<br />
Snowden met in a Hong Kong hotel on June 2, 2013 and entrusted with<br />
the leak – documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist/blogger<br />
Glenn Greenwald. They, in turn, enrolled the Washington Post and The<br />
Guardian, which was soon to share the spoils with The New York Times. The<br />
circle has grown to include Der Spiegel, since Poitras moved to Berlin with<br />
the files in her luggage to join old companions-in-digital-dissidence,<br />
cypherpunks Jacob Appelbaum and Andy Müller-Maguhn to work with<br />
the German newsweekly. For his part, and while keeping his cooperation<br />
with The Guardian, Greenwald shared his own set of files with outlets in<br />
India and Brazil (he lives in Rio) and the French Le Monde. Ultimately he<br />
left the UK newspaper in October of last year to concentrate on an<br />
ambitious new venture, The Intercept, an ‘independent’ news site generously<br />
funded by Ebay mogul Pierre Omidyar. The site was launched in<br />
March with Poitras as a co-founder. The presence of both of Snowden’s<br />
initial confidentes on the masthead bestowed instant credibility upon the<br />
new online medium. Its mission statement? “To provide a platform to<br />
report on the documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward<br />
Snowden,” pledging fearless, adversarial journalism.<br />
The pressure on media organisations to not publish information is<br />
enormous. It has, for one, driven The Guardian to do away with their own<br />
copy of the Snowden files in a highly publicised case of spy-media drama<br />
– complete with a self-promotional video showing editors laboriously<br />
destroying computer hardware with angle-grinders and drills under the<br />
watchful eyes of two representatives from the GCHQ, the British NSA<br />
equivalent. We also know that The Guardian and The Washington Post<br />
withdrew some information from articles they published – probably after<br />
negotiation with the authorities, mostly for ‘security’ reasons. But what<br />
about when even the more ‘fearless’ ones succumb to the pressure? That’s<br />
what happened last May, when The Intercept failed to disclose the name of a<br />
country outed by a Snowden document as one of the five targets of total<br />
NSA telecom surveillance. It took WikiLeaks’ insider knowledge and<br />
Julian Assange’s outrage at what he called “censorship” to reveal that<br />
“country X” was actually Afghanistan. The Intercept’s defence, “credible<br />
concerns that it could lead to increased violence”, didn’t impress everyone.<br />
So, who are we to trust? RUTH SCHNEIDER<br />
AGATA SASIUK<br />
12 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
OPINION:<br />
“Open the Snowden Files!” By KRYSTIAN WOZNICKI<br />
More than one year after “NSA-Gate”, access to<br />
Edward Snowden’s documents remains closed.<br />
They have been rendered inaccessible again,<br />
devoid of public control.<br />
A small circle of people decides who can<br />
access, read, analyse, interpret and publish the<br />
Snowden files. Those who belong to this small<br />
circle tend to argue that this has to do with<br />
security reasons – the leaked files have been “secured”<br />
in order to prevent greater harm. There<br />
is also the obvious argument that this method<br />
enables the long-lasting media narrative to<br />
enfold – the “life insurance” of the whistleblower.<br />
But what if, in the very sense that “data is the<br />
oil of the 21st century” – what if the Snowden<br />
files have been privatised by people who try to<br />
exploit them according to their own interests?<br />
Many researchers, activists and technology<br />
experts (not to mention journalists, other than the<br />
“lucky few”) have a great interest to work with the<br />
Snowden files. Imagine the historical impact on<br />
sciences, social movements and IT infrastructures<br />
if those files would become public domain and<br />
serve as material to study as well as to learn from.<br />
In July, I confronted The Guardian’s Luke<br />
Harding (The Snowden Files) with the issue while<br />
at a Netzwerk Recherche summit in Hamburg<br />
(the big gathering of the investigative community).<br />
Harding seemed unprepared to reflect on<br />
the possibility to open the small circle currently<br />
dealing with the Snowden files.<br />
To paraphrase his response: Yes, it is a<br />
dilemma that only few people can look at the<br />
Snowden files and draw their own conclusions.<br />
However, this limitation is a natural result of<br />
their very precarious nature (files containing<br />
state secrets) and a consequence of the influence<br />
exerted by the government. Nonetheless, “if you<br />
have a special project” you could contact Guardian<br />
editor Alan Rusbridger and probably get him<br />
to provide you with the requested material.<br />
A request for files – such a request is usually<br />
directed towards obscure organisations or<br />
corporations, and it is usually articulated by the<br />
press. The request is usually denied at first, but<br />
as the history of investigative journalism shows,<br />
including many successful court cases, one must<br />
fight for one’s right to access information. Now,<br />
you must make these requests to the press itself.<br />
This is absurd. To whom are organisations like<br />
The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York<br />
Times, Der Spiegel and individuals like Glenn<br />
Greenwald accountable? Are they subject to any<br />
democratic control?<br />
I was also able to ask the investigative reporter<br />
Seymour Hersh what he thought of the fact that<br />
the Snowden files are locked away by people<br />
who actually represent freedom of speech: “I<br />
don’t think there is much chance of getting<br />
either Greenwald or anyone at the Times or Post<br />
or Guardian to open up their files. The reporters<br />
and editors will all claim they have done<br />
the public a great service… meanwhile, they all<br />
continue to hoard what they have and share it<br />
with no one. Newspapers turn out to be not very<br />
interested in spreading the wealth.”<br />
What I’m trying to suggest: we should work<br />
out a new model for transferring the Snowden<br />
files (and big data leaks in general) into the<br />
public domain – taking into account the obvious<br />
problems of security, government pressure and<br />
Snowden’s “life insurance”.<br />
All of this should be addressed on an international<br />
level, starting in the countries where the<br />
files are currently being<br />
processed – in the US, in<br />
the UK and in Germany.<br />
Perhaps it should begin<br />
in Berlin, where the<br />
public interest in the<br />
Snowden disclosures<br />
is probably the biggest<br />
worldwide. The main<br />
actors here, including<br />
journalists at Der Spiegel<br />
and key figures from<br />
the hacker scene, are<br />
accumulating what late<br />
French sociologist Pierre<br />
Bourdieu would call<br />
“cultural capital” due to<br />
their exclusive access, while making non-transparent<br />
decisions about what is accessible to the<br />
public and what is not.<br />
Ultimately, “it is the choice of the leaker to<br />
tell the journalist what to do with the material,”<br />
as Stefan Candea, a central figure in the<br />
Offshore Leaks project, reminds us. So we need<br />
to convince people like Snowden to consider<br />
open access to their files. Maybe this is not such<br />
a futile endeavour when you take into account<br />
the fact that Snowden may not be too satisfied<br />
about how his material has been processed so far.<br />
In any case, we are facing a lot of work. We need<br />
to raise awareness among whistleblowers and we<br />
need to craft an adequate concept for platforms<br />
that allow open access to their leaks. In six<br />
points, here is what we need to consider:<br />
1. Any responsible disclosure of leaked source<br />
material should come with information about<br />
the whole body of documents, as long as this<br />
kind of information does not reveal the identity<br />
of the leaker.<br />
2. The public version should be cleared of all<br />
names. Ewan Tarkan, a journalist pursuing (undercover)<br />
research on issues like the surveillance<br />
industry, states: “In the past there have been several<br />
cases in which the names of people who had<br />
just done simple IT services were visible. Their<br />
lives are at stake when documents containing<br />
visible names are published. At the same time,<br />
this can’t be brought forth as an argument to<br />
withhold all the files. As the case of WikiLeaks<br />
shows, it is possible to remove names from documents<br />
before publishing them.” Yet, who decides<br />
Do we have to<br />
decide between<br />
Snowden’s life<br />
insurance and<br />
open access to the<br />
files? Or are there<br />
ways to reconcile<br />
both concerns?<br />
which names should be deleted? Who designs<br />
the interface in a way that is also attractive to a<br />
broad, non-technical audience?<br />
3. The files need to be made accessible in a<br />
manner that allows everybody working with<br />
them a certain degree of anonymity – you don’t<br />
want the files on your desktop, but in the cloud,<br />
at a publicly known location that is accessible in<br />
a secure way. But hosted by whom? For instance,<br />
a public institution like a library?<br />
4. The question how to work with the files<br />
is central to the model: Are the respective files<br />
machine-readable? Or do they need to be rendered<br />
that way? There are various tools that will<br />
solve that problem, e.g. DocumentCloud.<br />
5. You need to understand the language in<br />
which the files are written. Solicit the help of<br />
someone who is fluent,<br />
learn it yourself or have<br />
your machine do it for<br />
you. Needless to say, any<br />
publication would have<br />
to provide links to the<br />
sources, openly accessible<br />
to anyone.<br />
6. In Snowden’s case,<br />
we need to make sure<br />
that the whistleblower<br />
does not lose his life<br />
insurance and consequently<br />
his life. The<br />
next big step would<br />
be to open access to<br />
the files – at least 50<br />
percent of them. In Julian Assange’s case, some<br />
files remained undisclosed in order to back up<br />
his publishing activity. This approach could also<br />
work for Snowden.<br />
Is this all our model needs to consider? Probably<br />
not. But for now, we could start by asking: why is<br />
there only one publicly available counter of the<br />
Snowden files in the world, maintained by John<br />
Young’s Cryptome under the project name Tally<br />
Update? Why aren’t those in the circle of the<br />
lucky few providing such a service? Or at least<br />
helping Young with fact checking? Why are the<br />
Snowden files not handled in a less restrictive<br />
manner? Aren’t there smarter ways to go about<br />
it? And when thinking about public interest: Do<br />
we have to make a decision between Snowden’s<br />
life insurance and open access to the files? Or<br />
are there ways to reconcile both concerns?<br />
The discussion entails reflections on the foundations<br />
of our democracy. It is not the worst<br />
moment in history to rethink most of them. n<br />
Krystian Woznicki is a<br />
journalist, cultural critic and<br />
publisher of the Berliner<br />
Gazette, an online<br />
newspaper he founded in<br />
1999. The Gazette will be<br />
holding its annual<br />
conference, this year<br />
entitled “Slow Politics”, at<br />
Supermarkt on Nov 13-15.<br />
YASUHIRO YAMAGUCHI<br />
13
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
Snowden’s defender<br />
Berlin-based lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck is the NSA whistleblower’s legal support in Europe<br />
and a dedicated fighter in the struggle against state surveillance. The co-founder of the<br />
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights regularly takes states and<br />
corporations to court for human rights abuses around the globe from his office on the<br />
fifth floor of a large factory building in Kreuzberg’s Zossener Straße. By Ruth Schneider<br />
Edward Snowden has two American lawyers<br />
and a Russian one. You are officially his<br />
European lawyer – what’s been your role so<br />
far? We’ve been exploring the possibility of him<br />
getting to some type of safe haven in Europe. One<br />
country specifically was under discussion over the<br />
last 12 months: Germany. The German parliament<br />
set up an NSA investigation committee,<br />
and part of their discussion<br />
was to invite him to come<br />
to Germany to testify and<br />
give him some type of<br />
state security. It wasn’t very<br />
realistic, because obviously<br />
the two governing parties<br />
are not willing to have him<br />
here. People tried to make it<br />
happen, but there were still<br />
some legal issues. There are<br />
other European countries<br />
that want him as an expert<br />
and to hear his opinion on<br />
the issues that he raised,<br />
but it seems that for now he<br />
might stay in Russia...<br />
So countries want him<br />
to testify, yet they don’t<br />
want to give him any<br />
guarantee... That is typical<br />
hypocrisy when it comes<br />
to civil liberties and human<br />
rights. My enemy’s whistleblower<br />
is my friend and my<br />
own whistleblower is my<br />
enemy. You should expect<br />
a more principled position,<br />
especially from Western<br />
Europea n countries. This<br />
is not only about Edward<br />
Snow den, it is about a fundamental<br />
principle of transparency<br />
and democracy and<br />
enabling us, the national,<br />
European and global public,<br />
to discuss certain things.<br />
If he hadn’t come out with<br />
these revelations, we would<br />
have had no chance to participate<br />
in these discussions on a knowledgeable<br />
basis. None of us can deny that even our European<br />
democracies are violating laws. We need to<br />
balance that out, and whistleblowers do this.<br />
Do you see hypocrisy in Germany? Sure! The<br />
rule of law played a bigger role in Germany than<br />
in US policy over the last 15 years, that is for<br />
sure. Germany was much more willing to obey<br />
and advocate for international law. There is a<br />
difference between torturing suspects yourself, as<br />
the US did post-9/11, and some actions somehow<br />
evading German law, which is what we are<br />
talking about now. But still in the issue of secret<br />
services there is much hypocrisy, and if their conclusion<br />
from the NSA scandal is to better equip<br />
German, French and Swiss<br />
secret services, then we are<br />
not on the same page. I’m<br />
fighting for a less superficial<br />
critique of the US and a<br />
more principled discussion.<br />
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK<br />
What about the right<br />
to privacy ? Aren’t there<br />
any laws? Privacy laws<br />
do exist, but with a lot of<br />
exceptions. When it comes<br />
to a confrontation between<br />
privacy and national security,<br />
privacy never wins. We as<br />
Western societies allow our<br />
secret services a lot. And it’s<br />
not only a problem in the<br />
US or since 9/11. We had<br />
the problems before, and<br />
it is not helpful to use the<br />
scandal to blame others...<br />
This is much more than accusing<br />
the NSA of collecting<br />
too much data. The idea<br />
that America is the bad guy<br />
prevents you from thinking<br />
and from really considering<br />
the big picture.<br />
What about Snowden<br />
being recognised as a<br />
political dissident and<br />
granted political asylum<br />
in Europe? Not possible?<br />
Unless you are a whistleblower<br />
from China or from<br />
Russia – then, it’s considered<br />
political persecution.<br />
If you come from those<br />
countries you won’t have a<br />
14 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
problem being acknowledged, but if you come<br />
from a ‘friendly’ country you will have a problem.<br />
But there can be other exceptions in international<br />
law where you have the guarantee of a safe stay.<br />
So, concretely, what would happen if<br />
Snowden travelled to Berlin? I don’t know.<br />
This is a political decision. If he took a plane<br />
from Moscow to Berlin, he would run the obvious<br />
risk of being arrested and extradited to the<br />
US. There would be an extradition procedure<br />
where he would have to defend himself. That is a<br />
very realistic scenario.<br />
He wouldn’t have very good chances, would<br />
he? It is not about a good chance. He’ll only<br />
enter the country if he has the assurance that he<br />
won’t be imprisoned or extradited or somehow<br />
rendered to the US.<br />
Isn’t it crazy that in 21stcentury<br />
Europe there isn’t<br />
one country that could<br />
guarantee this? Most of European<br />
history was the opposite<br />
of what Europeans think of<br />
themselves. Yes, they claimed<br />
to follow the various paths of<br />
enlightenment and protect<br />
human rights everywhere… but<br />
at the same time, European<br />
history is a history of colonialism<br />
and post-colonial exploitation. On the one<br />
hand they hold speeches for human rights, and<br />
on the other they exploit indigenous populations<br />
all over the world in order to find cheaper natural<br />
resources. It’s not enough to only see one side.<br />
Here in Germany, there’s a strong pro-<br />
Snowden movement... As far as I can see,<br />
the media and the hype about Edward Snowden<br />
didn’t improve his situation regarding getting<br />
asylum in Germany or elsewhere. The government<br />
didn’t change its stance much from the<br />
beginning. It was a very self-centred discussion.<br />
It was news about nothing. The whole time, he<br />
was saying, “I don’t think I should be in the centre<br />
of this discussion. You shouldn’t discuss me,<br />
you should support the cause of anti-surveillance<br />
and protection of whistleblowers.” And that<br />
hasn’t happened so much. The discussion was<br />
about him, but it wasn’t his initiative... and that<br />
is not in his interest.<br />
From early on he decided to show his face.<br />
Was it a smart gesture? It was a catch-22. If he<br />
didn’t show his face, people would have accused<br />
him of being a coward. Now that he did, he’s<br />
criticised too. I think he has very strong arguments<br />
for the way he did it. It is a good way to<br />
prove that he is a bona fide whistleblower.<br />
Is being recogniseable good legal protection<br />
for him, or just the opposite? It’s not only<br />
about the law; it is law, morality and politics. He<br />
obviously gets a lot of moral support because he<br />
showed his face and is willing to answer questions.<br />
Whether this will lead to the right political conclusions,<br />
we will see. It’s not the end of the story.<br />
“My enemy’s<br />
whistleblower<br />
is my friend<br />
and my own<br />
whistle blower<br />
is my enemy.”<br />
Personally, you don’t think it makes any difference?<br />
No, no, I’m not saying that. I have my<br />
sympathy for someone who does it that way. It<br />
makes it easier to defend him. The political outcome<br />
of these revelations is not Edward Snowden<br />
versus the NSA or Edward Snowden versus the<br />
US – it is the public, the defenders of human<br />
liberties plus Edward Snowden. It is an ongoing<br />
battle. You can’t draw conclusions. It is about<br />
taking up the cause and trying to enforce it.<br />
Hubertus Knabe (see page 20) and others<br />
have filed charges against the NSA… I think<br />
that the litigation so far may not have hit the<br />
right point. There was this interesting piece that<br />
Constanze Kurz [of the Computer Chaos Club]<br />
filed with others in the UK. They went to the<br />
European court in Strasbourg against the UK for<br />
the violation of privacy laws. I think it’s a crucial<br />
problem that we don’t have<br />
appropriate laws. We have to<br />
reform our laws to deal with the<br />
dangers of massive interception<br />
of information by secret services.<br />
This is the perfect time.<br />
Like working on drafting<br />
laws to protect whistleblowers?<br />
The Council of Europe<br />
wants to propose an additional<br />
protocol for the European Convention<br />
of Human Rights. Many<br />
people are proposing reforms, and we have to see<br />
if the Snowden revelations serve as a long-term<br />
solution for whistleblowers. The national parliaments<br />
have to decide.<br />
Are you hopeful? Is the political will there?<br />
I’m not interested in whether the political will is<br />
there or not. My task is to work on it.<br />
When you see what happened to Chelsea<br />
Manning and people forget that Julian Assange<br />
is stuck in an embassy, what are your<br />
hopes for Snowden – and beyond? Whistleblowers<br />
who get into trouble need strong allies,<br />
people who will take a high personal risk, not<br />
for them, but for the future. It is a long-term<br />
struggle. At this point in time it is more dangerous<br />
for whistleblowers; maybe we will be in a<br />
better situation in three to five years, but only if<br />
other people join this struggle. Let’s prepare to<br />
lay the ground for a better situation for Edward<br />
Snowden today or tomorrow, and for other<br />
whistleblowers in the future. Are you ready for<br />
the struggle? Yes or no?<br />
Berlin ended up being a centre of<br />
Snowden support. Do you think that<br />
exiles like Laura Poitras, Sarah Harrison<br />
or Jacob Appelbaum are safer here?<br />
I hope that they are all safe, but there is no<br />
guarantee. The point is that if some prosecutor<br />
in the world decides to issue an international<br />
or European arrest warrant, how do German<br />
authorities deal with that? We can hope that<br />
public opinion here is strong enough and that<br />
the community would back them up, but the<br />
test hasn’t come yet. n<br />
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15
ARTICLE SNOWDEN TAGSPECIAL<br />
WHERE THE SPIES ARE<br />
By Dan Borden<br />
Last year, Edward Snowden’s NSA files revealed that America was<br />
listening in on German citizens’ phone calls, right up to Chancellor<br />
Angela Merkel. Then in June, two German intelligence workers were<br />
accused of spying for the US, in part to keep an eye on Russia. Berlin<br />
is once again a capital of international espionage and, in an uncanny<br />
mirroring of its Cold War heyday, a proxy battleground between<br />
Washington and Moscow. These revelations have turned a spotlight<br />
on the Hauptstadt’s cast of intelligence agents and imbued some<br />
otherwise mundane office buildings with an aura of intrigue…<br />
Bendlerblock<br />
Stauffenbergstr. 13-14, Mitte<br />
Today a group of conspirators planting bombs to overthrow the<br />
government would be labelled a terrorist cell, but when said group<br />
targeted Adolf Hitler, they were rightfully heralded as heroes. Colonel<br />
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg led the July 20, 1944 plot to<br />
assassinate the Nazi leader from this 1914 neo-classical edifice, then<br />
the Wehrmacht headquarters. Hours after their plot failed, he and<br />
fellow conspirators were executed in the building’s inner courtyard.<br />
Today, the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, or German Resistance<br />
Memorial Centre, commemorates Von Stauffenberg and other Germans<br />
who actively opposed the Nazi regime out of conscience. But<br />
this memorial to violent subversion shares Bendlerblock with one of<br />
modern Germany’s largest bureaucracies, the Federal Ministry<br />
of Defence and, specifically, the office of accused spy Leonid<br />
K. Investigators say the 37-year old bureaucrat passed<br />
secrets to American agents and, on July 9, raided<br />
Leonid’s Bendlerblock office and Potsdam home. Der<br />
Spiegel reports that, like Stauffenberg, Leonid K. is of<br />
aristocratic birth, but his motivation for betraying his<br />
country – conscience or money? – is still a mystery.<br />
The American Embassy<br />
Pariser Platz 2, Mitte<br />
When it opened in July 2008, the worst that German<br />
critics could say about the new embassy was<br />
that it was ugly. The building had a tortured birth.<br />
California-based architects Moore Ruble Yudell<br />
got design credit, but their unofficial partner was<br />
Osama bin Laden. The 1998 African embassy<br />
bombings and <strong>September</strong> 11, 2001 attacks forced<br />
ever-stronger security measures. Even the Holocaust<br />
Memorial across the street was squeezed<br />
to make room for a buffer zone. But the new embassy’s<br />
too-public location – a stone’s throw from<br />
the Reichstag, Kanzleramt and other embassies<br />
– made it perfect for high-tech eavesdropping.<br />
Last year, amid the uproar over news that the NSA<br />
tapped Angela Merkel’s phone, Der Spiegel magazine<br />
outed the building as a secret listening post.<br />
Its windowless penthouse, they contend, hides the<br />
super-sensitive antennae of the Special Collection<br />
Service (SCS), an elite agency run<br />
jointly by the NSA and CIA. These<br />
accusations have made the<br />
American Embassy more<br />
than just ugly – it’s<br />
turned into a symbol of<br />
paranoia and distrust.<br />
16 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
The Bundesnachrichtendienst<br />
Schwartzkopffstr., Mitte<br />
Construction began on the enormous new<br />
home for the Bundesnachrichtendienst<br />
(BND), Germany’s version of the CIA or<br />
MI6, way back in 2006. When it opens in<br />
2017 – three years behind schedule and<br />
€1.5 billion over budget – Berlin will become<br />
home to the highest concentration<br />
of German spies, 4000 agents and support<br />
staff. The city can also expect a boom in<br />
private companies and start-ups specialising<br />
in surveillance and high-tech gadgetry.<br />
The anticipated influx of well-paid bureaucrats<br />
is already transforming this quiet<br />
corner of Mitte. Across Chausseestraße<br />
from the BND, a plot of land once divided<br />
by the Berlin Wall is morphing into The<br />
The Russian Embassy<br />
Unter den Linden 63-65, Mitte<br />
Garden, a complex of 214 luxury condos.<br />
Sales prices: €3500-5000 per square metre,<br />
above the city average of €3000.<br />
Why relocate the BND’s spies from<br />
Pullach, in suburban Bavaria, to the<br />
Hauptstadt? Berlin needs the money – the<br />
agency’s <strong>2014</strong> budget was €550 billion.<br />
And it allows for more secure, non-digital<br />
communication between the BND<br />
and Angela Merkel’s<br />
office. Hand-delivered,<br />
typewritten<br />
messages? Or<br />
maybe tin cans<br />
with really long<br />
strings?<br />
Why is the US really spying on Germany? According to some<br />
experts, to keep up with the Russians. Washington suspects the<br />
German intelligence agencies are already riddled with Russian<br />
spies. Ironically, America’s BND mole Markus R. was discovered<br />
only because he got greedy and also offered his services to<br />
the Russian Embassy in Berlin. When it opened in 1951, the<br />
then-Soviet Embassy broke a lot of rules: it’s set back from Unter<br />
den Linden and taller than its neighbours. Stalin demanded a<br />
symbol of dominance over a conquered enemy and a model for<br />
future development in the capital (see Karl-Marx-Allee). Stalin<br />
fan and ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin has kept the Cold War-era<br />
Russian-German spy machine at full throttle. A Marburg couple<br />
convicted of espionage in July 2013 had been relaying EU and<br />
NATO secrets to Moscow nonstop since the Reagan era. The US<br />
complains that ex-GDR comrade Merkel has been too soft on<br />
Putin: Markus R. offered his secrets to both the US and Russia.<br />
Both accepted, but only the US was punished – the CIA’s Berlin<br />
station chief, posted at the US Embassy, was expelled in July.<br />
WHERE THE<br />
SPIES WERE<br />
n Glienicke Brücke (Wannsee/<br />
Potsdam) First termed the “Bridge of Unity”<br />
because it linked West Berlin with Potsdam<br />
in the East, it earned the sexier title “Bridge<br />
of Spies” after hosting a series of high profile<br />
East-West agent exchanges.<br />
n NSA listening post (Teufelsberg,<br />
Grunewald) The US National Security<br />
Agency picked this man-made hill, West<br />
Berlin’s highest point, to eavesdrop on<br />
Soviet military communications (see page<br />
18). Today it’s a picturesque ruin.<br />
n Cafe Adler (Friedrichstr. 206, Mitte)<br />
Where East met West. A hub of journalists,<br />
diplomats and spies loved for its ornate glass<br />
ceiling and view to Checkpoint Charlie across<br />
the street. It closed in 2008.<br />
n Former US Embassy to East<br />
Germany (Neustädtische Kirchstr. 4-5,<br />
Mitte) From 1974-1990, this 19th-century<br />
palace two blocks from Unter den Linden<br />
was officially an island of Yankee soil and, no<br />
doubt, a nest of Cold War spies.<br />
n Café Moskau (Karl-Marx-Allee 34,<br />
Mitte) Soviet bloc VIPs flocked to this icon<br />
of 1960s chic for the best Russian food in<br />
town. Across the street was East Berlin’s<br />
premier hotel, the Berolina, today a lowly<br />
Bürgeramt.<br />
n Stasi headquarters (Ruschestr. 103,<br />
Lichtenberg) East Germany’s dreaded secret<br />
police operated from this not-so-secret<br />
Lichtenberg compound. It’s now a museum<br />
run by Stasi survivors.<br />
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz<br />
Kasernengelände Am Treptower Park, Treptow<br />
The two Germans caught spying for the US were<br />
uncovered by Germany’s domestic intelligence<br />
agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or<br />
BfV. Its Berlin headquarters sits just west of the<br />
Treptower Park S-Bahn station, a high-tech office<br />
building nestled between 19th-century brick army<br />
barracks. Like the FBI in the US, the BfV keeps<br />
tabs on internal threats to the nation’s security.<br />
But critics say the agency’s title, literally ‘Protection<br />
of the Constitution’, smacks of Orwellian<br />
doublespeak as its agents are regularly caught<br />
breaking laws while exercising their duties. The<br />
BfV’s dodgy reputation dates back to its founding<br />
in 1950 when the Allies staffed the new agency<br />
with ex-members of the Gestapo, the Nazis’<br />
secret police, but cases of illegal wiretapping and<br />
secret closed trials continue to this day. Critics<br />
allege the agency is preoccupied with left-wing<br />
threats – half the members of Die Linke party in<br />
the Bundestag were found to be under surveillance<br />
– while turning a blind eye to right-wing<br />
extremists. A neo-Nazi group, the National<br />
Socialist Underground (NSU), carried out a terror<br />
campaign against immigrants from 2000 to 2006<br />
undetected because the BfV’s agents blamed the<br />
10 murders on organised crime. Whether this was<br />
due to incompetence or complicity, as its critics<br />
accuse, will never be known since a BfV manager<br />
shredded dozens of key documents. Last year,<br />
Cem Özdemir, Chairman of the Green Party, said<br />
the BfV’s institutionalised xenophobia makes<br />
it unable to combat right-wing extremism and<br />
called for the agency to be dismantled.<br />
17
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
America’s lapdog<br />
From the Cold War to reunified Germany, surveillance has a long history in Berlin, which might<br />
be why Berliners have been so touchy about the Snowden affair. But then again, the country’s<br />
relations with the NSA have always been intimate – and slightly unhealthy. By Ben Knight<br />
As tour guides go, Bernie is a bit eccentric. Unshaven<br />
and chain-smoking, the ageing Berliner<br />
leads people round the smashed, leaky ruin on<br />
Teufelsberg explaining things in a sarcastic tone<br />
that keeps you constantly unsure whether the<br />
things he says are true. He spent 16 years guarding<br />
the “Devil’s Mountain” when it was an Allied<br />
military field station, and his favourite parts of<br />
the tour are when he can hint mysteriously at<br />
the decadence and destruction that used to go<br />
on when the Cold War ended. He stops next to a<br />
pile of warped wheels and cracked metal inside a<br />
lift shaft. “See this? I helped cut the cables once,”<br />
he says, as if telling a that-was-some-party story.<br />
“We did it to block off the lower floors.” What<br />
used to happen on the lower floors? “No, not<br />
telling you that. That stays down there.” Then he<br />
cackles, puts a finger up to his toothless mouth<br />
and makes a very serious face.<br />
Teufelsberg is a godforsaken place where manmade<br />
plans usually come to nothing – Albert<br />
Speer’s military academy, whose foundation<br />
stone was laid here by Hitler, was stopped midconstruction<br />
by the Second World War. David<br />
Lynch’s “New Age University” nearby was never<br />
given planning permission. And all that’s left of<br />
the luxury apartments planned for the disused<br />
military listening station is some parquet flooring<br />
in the decrepit showroom. Even Bernie’s<br />
lift-destroying debauchery was ended by the<br />
authorities.<br />
So now there are only the tours, conducted<br />
by the fascinating, inscrutable people who used<br />
to work here. Out on the roof, with its vista of<br />
the whole of Berlin and what looks like half of<br />
Brandenburg, Bernie is being secretive again.<br />
This time he refuses to tell us what the middle<br />
surveillance dome – the one set higher up than<br />
the other two, on top of a tower – was used<br />
for. “You said that one was for picking up radio<br />
signals, and that one was for monitoring air traffic,<br />
so what else could the middle one be? Maybe<br />
satellites?” Bernie shrugs, narrows his eyes, and<br />
presses his lips together.<br />
“Why is it still a secret?” someone asks.<br />
“There are things about this place that are officially<br />
a secret until 2022,” he says.<br />
“Come on, it’s not like America still cares.<br />
There’s nothing here.”<br />
“You’re only half right there,” says Bernie.<br />
“The Americans still keep an eye on this place.”<br />
Some of the tourists can’t help but look around,<br />
while Bernie wanders off.<br />
Bernie guarded the Teufelsberg field station<br />
from 1976 to 1992, checking the IDs on the<br />
American and British soldiers as they came into<br />
work every day (via separate entrances). Germans<br />
weren’t allowed in. And if they needed a plumber<br />
or a repairman, Bernie says solemnly, they were<br />
blindfolded as they were led through the windowless<br />
corridors inside.<br />
The point of this field station was to eavesdrop<br />
on the communists. There were Russian<br />
specialists for Russian communications and<br />
German linguists to handle the East Germans.<br />
Another tour guide, Chris McLarren, spent two<br />
years – from 1973 to 1975 – as a signals traffic<br />
analyst at Teufelsberg, tracking the East German<br />
army as they marched around the Brandenburg<br />
countryside. “It was our job to know the other<br />
army almost as well as the people serving in it,” is<br />
how he remembers it. As far as he is concerned,<br />
intelligence work in the Cold War meant preserving<br />
world peace: “The important thing is that<br />
the Soviets also had a listening post. The biggest<br />
dangers were surprise, panic and military overreaction.<br />
But because we were both listening,<br />
there was no surprise, no panic and no overreaction.<br />
And we’re all still here. But the world is<br />
very different now.”<br />
Which is why, even though he’s an ex-intelligence<br />
agent, McLarren is on Edward Snowden’s<br />
The Stasi’s files on<br />
the NSA were<br />
handed over to the<br />
Americans, without<br />
any copies being<br />
kept: “The tracks<br />
were successfully<br />
covered.”<br />
side. “I admire whistleblowers greatly,” he says.<br />
“They are usually people trying to do the right<br />
thing, and they see other people trying to do the<br />
right thing, but not obeying the rules. And the<br />
rules are there for a purpose.” Then again, he<br />
admits he might not have felt so righteous back<br />
in the 1970s. Would he have been concerned if<br />
he’d found out that the NSA was spying on West<br />
German citizens? “I would have to be persuaded<br />
now. I don’t know if that would have been the<br />
case then, because young people tend to be very<br />
enthusiastic about their work.”<br />
As it is though, McLarren insists that his work<br />
at Teufelsberg was exclusively military. “So far as<br />
I know, mine was totally a military institution.<br />
This was the US Army’s intelligence agency, and<br />
we provided our information up the military<br />
chain.” But then he adds, “I don’t know if<br />
there were NSA workers there, and it may have<br />
changed after I left.”<br />
Defining the difference between military and<br />
civilian intelligence work is central to the NSA<br />
scandal – some surveillance targets are more ‘legitimate’<br />
than others. But drawing the line was tricky<br />
even when enemies were more visible, and since<br />
the end of the Cold War it has become a lot more<br />
difficult. William Binney, the former NSA technical<br />
director who resigned and turned whistleblower<br />
in 2001, believes the agency he worked for was<br />
effectively using the Teufelsberg listening station<br />
from the very beginning. After all, the NSA has a<br />
military component, called the Central Security<br />
Service (CSS), and that is usually headed by a US<br />
army general.<br />
The combination of the end of the Cold War<br />
and 9/11 dramatically ramped up the political<br />
power of the intelligence community in the US.<br />
A couple of months ago, Binney testified to the<br />
German parliament that the NSA had become<br />
a “totalitarian organisation.” It was a remark<br />
that was used in plenty of headlines because it<br />
confirmed the Germans’ biggest fear: the NSA<br />
equals the Stasi. Quite a few people have drawn<br />
that comparison, including, according to The<br />
New York Times, Angela Merkel during an angry<br />
phone call with Barack Obama (she denied<br />
it). It’s an obvious point to make, and it’s the<br />
apparent reason why Germans have been more<br />
outraged about the Snowden case than most. But<br />
according to Stasi expert Hubertus Knabe (see<br />
18 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
page 20), while it might<br />
be valid in terms of methodology,<br />
it’s also fraught<br />
with historical inaccuracy.<br />
Klaus Eichner might be<br />
one of the best people<br />
to judge. He had a<br />
33-year career at East<br />
Germany’s Ministry<br />
of State Security (MfS,<br />
aka Stasi) and became<br />
an officer specialised in<br />
combating the West’s<br />
secret services. Eichner<br />
recently published a<br />
withering book called<br />
Empire Without Mysteries:<br />
What the GDR’s Intelligence<br />
Services Already Knew<br />
About the NSA, which<br />
tells the dark stories of<br />
how the Stasi infiltrated<br />
Teufelsberg. He doesn’t<br />
think much of the comparison.<br />
“Secret services<br />
are always formed by the<br />
political system from<br />
which they originate and<br />
in which they function,”<br />
he says. “So there can be<br />
no equivalence between<br />
the secret services of the<br />
East and the West.”<br />
But, he added, that<br />
doesn’t mean you can<br />
simply define the East as<br />
dictatorial and the West<br />
as democratic. “One<br />
argument is as wrong as<br />
the other,” he says. In his<br />
book, Eichner even dares<br />
to turn the equivalence<br />
on its head: “I share the<br />
chancellor’s view that<br />
the comparison between<br />
the Stasi and the NSA<br />
is unacceptable, though<br />
for a different reason: we<br />
stuck to the laws.”<br />
Whatever you think of that claim, the discussion<br />
itself is a little academic, given that the<br />
Stasi doesn’t exist anymore. A bit more pertinent<br />
for us is the relationship between the NSA and<br />
reunified Germany’s intelligence agency, the<br />
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Another NSA<br />
whistleblower, Thomas Drake, gave the German<br />
press more headlines earlier this year when he<br />
told the German parliamentary committee that<br />
the BND was nothing more than an “appendix”<br />
to the NSA. Though he says that the German<br />
press misinterpreted that – he didn’t mean a useless,<br />
subordinate bodily organ, but appendix as<br />
in what you put at the end of a book. “Sort of an<br />
afterthought,” as he puts it.<br />
But whichever metaphor you use, the relationship,<br />
says Drake, is intimate and slightly unhealthy.<br />
“It’s fair to say it’s a subservient relationship...<br />
the NSA is very much the big brother.”<br />
The BND’s obedience to the NSA stems from<br />
West Germany’s former dependence on the<br />
USA. That had dramatic consequences in the<br />
aftermath of reunification, when the Stasi’s files<br />
on the NSA were inherited by the new German<br />
government. In Empire Without Mysteries, Eichner<br />
claims that the authority in charge of administering<br />
the Stasi files (headed by the future German<br />
President Joachim Gauck) and the Interior<br />
Ministry under Wolfgang Schäuble, broke German<br />
law to make sure that all the Stasi’s files on<br />
the NSA were handed over to the Americans,<br />
without any copies being kept. “The tracks were<br />
successfully covered,” Eichner writes. It was now<br />
“impossible to prove black on white how the<br />
Americans spied on the GDR and the Federal<br />
Republic of Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.”<br />
Eichner’s implication is that if the German<br />
government had followed its own rules, we would<br />
have known a lot more<br />
about the NSA before<br />
Binney, Drake, and<br />
Snowden came along. The<br />
whistleblowers merely<br />
made obvious what the<br />
Stasi already knew. “The<br />
surveillance of German<br />
telecommunications by<br />
the NSA is not the core<br />
of the problem. The problem<br />
is the imperial urge<br />
of the USA superpower<br />
to impose its global ambition<br />
for domination with<br />
the help of the NSA in<br />
the electronic war against<br />
both friend and foe.”<br />
A decade after<br />
reunification, the<br />
BND’s relationship to<br />
the NSA became even<br />
more obsequious when<br />
Germany’s intelligence<br />
agencies caught flak<br />
for failing to catch the<br />
Hamburg cell that took<br />
part in the <strong>September</strong> 11<br />
attacks in the US. “The<br />
attitude was, ‘wait a<br />
minute, there were actual<br />
9/11 terrorists living in<br />
Hamburg and you didn’t<br />
stop them?’” says Drake.<br />
After that, “the BND<br />
became eager to provide<br />
as much as it could. The<br />
2002 agreement that I<br />
saw was very broad in<br />
terms of information<br />
sharing and access. The<br />
NSA has always had this<br />
attitude to third parties<br />
[those outside the US,<br />
UK, Canada, Australia<br />
and New Zealand, the<br />
so-called ‘Five Eyes’]: you<br />
give us whatever we ask<br />
for, and then we’ll decide<br />
what we give you.”<br />
Then, as the age of Facebook and mass online<br />
data dawned and the NSA’s mass surveillance programmes<br />
began to fire up their engines, it became<br />
clear that Germany was in an ideal geographical<br />
position. It was a staging post for data flying in<br />
from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan,<br />
as well as across Europe. That agreement in<br />
2002 marked the sea change. According to Drake,<br />
before 2002, especially during the Cold War,<br />
mass data about citizens wasn’t collected and<br />
even targeted data wasn’t kept for longer than<br />
was necessary for analysis. Afterwards, he says, “it<br />
didn’t matter. The mindset was ‘we need all the<br />
data’... and the NSA had particular leverage over<br />
the BND.”<br />
All this has left Germany in what you’d call<br />
an awkward position: it is both the NSA’s most<br />
obedient lapdog and its bitterest, most outraged<br />
critic. n<br />
CW-DESIGN / PHOTOCASE.COM<br />
19
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
From Stasi to NSA… and back?<br />
Head of the Stasi prison memorial Hubertus Knabe knows a thing or two about state<br />
surveillance. He’s suing the NSA for spying on Germans. By Sara Wilde<br />
Born in the West in 1959 to GDR exiles,<br />
the historian and human rights<br />
activist Hubertus Knabe campaigned<br />
to release East German dissidents,<br />
attracting the attention of the East German<br />
secret police, the Stasi. In 1992, he was one<br />
of the first to access his personal file, where<br />
he learned that a close friend had reported<br />
him for smuggling “forbidden literature” into<br />
the GDR. As director of the memorial in the<br />
former Stasi Hohenschönhausen prison, he<br />
has fought tirelessly against trivialisation of<br />
the crimes of the former communist state.<br />
He’s also drawn ire for his staunch criticism<br />
of the German Left Party (Die Linke) and<br />
uncompromising rejection of Ostalgie in all its<br />
forms. After information about NSA activity<br />
in Germany came to light in the Snowden files<br />
last year, he filed a criminal complaint against<br />
the United States with the German Federal<br />
Prosecutor’s office for illegally collecting and<br />
analysing the data of German citizens.<br />
You filed a lawsuit against the NSA. Why?<br />
The media reported that large-scale telephone<br />
and email monitoring had taken place in<br />
Germany. This is forbidden by our constitution,<br />
hence illegal – therefore I believe it is<br />
the duty of the German Federal Prosecutor to<br />
investigate. Much to my regret, they decided to<br />
start investigating only in the case of Chancellor<br />
Merkel’s phone and not in the many likely<br />
cases of other affected people. I guess that my<br />
longtime concern with surveillance and the<br />
GDR has made me especially sensitive when it<br />
comes to misuse of governmental power. The<br />
GDR was a surveillance society par excellence<br />
and this should never be allowed to exist again.<br />
Can we compare the NSA with the Stasi?<br />
Did the Americans, thanks to the digital<br />
means at their disposal, achieve what the<br />
East Germans tried with analogue means:<br />
total surveillance of every citizen? I see<br />
one fundamental difference between the Stasi<br />
and the NSA. The Stasi tried to subjugate the<br />
population by creating fear and through the<br />
persecution of differently minded people and<br />
people who would have liked to lead a different<br />
life to the one the government had planned out<br />
for them. The NSA, at least according to its<br />
own claims, tries to protect the population.<br />
What about their methods? The means of<br />
communication have changed a lot, of course.<br />
There were no mobile phones and emails in the<br />
GDR. The Stasi worked mainly with human<br />
surveillance, a huge surveillance network run by<br />
informants. There were over 180,000 informal<br />
members of the Stasi – that is the highest population/informant<br />
ratio in history. But the Stasi’s<br />
technological surveillance was actually more<br />
sophisticated than what people think. They completely<br />
monitored the phone exchange between<br />
the GDR and the FRG, for example. But also<br />
within the FRG they were tapping the chancellor’s<br />
phone and the phones of all the members<br />
of parliament, the federal president and the<br />
president of the Bundesverfassungsschutz (domestic<br />
security agency). The<br />
idea to listen in on Angela<br />
Merkel’s cell phone<br />
isn’t that new! Of course<br />
it didn’t concern that<br />
many people back then<br />
because only very few<br />
could afford a mobile<br />
phone...<br />
Besides the chancellor’s<br />
phone – and<br />
more shocking<br />
somehow – was the<br />
impulse to ‘spy’ on<br />
normal citizens. Is<br />
“The idea to listen<br />
in on Angela<br />
Merkel’s cell phone<br />
isn’t that new! The<br />
Stasi was already<br />
tapping the West<br />
German chancellor’s<br />
phone…”<br />
that another similarity? Well, in a constitutional<br />
state, surveillance of a citizen can only<br />
take place when he has committed a criminal<br />
act or the strong suspicion of a crime exists. Random<br />
monitoring of people is not allowed. In the<br />
GDR the enormous network of informants was<br />
there to report on people’s activities but also on<br />
their thoughts and their plans, even before they<br />
had planned anything objectionable. The good<br />
informant would be able, so to speak, to see into<br />
people’s heads. So, yes, somehow, surveillance as<br />
it is used today resembles this kind of precautionary<br />
surveillance. Everyone is being checked<br />
on to filter out who is dangerous.<br />
Many similarities... The philosophy is very<br />
similar. However the aim is different and it is<br />
important to emphasise this. The Stasi worked<br />
most of all with fear and everyone knew that if<br />
he or she would say the wrong thing, they would<br />
quickly end up in prison. We’re not subjected<br />
to the same amount of fear anymore, thank<br />
God. In the GDR, everyone knew that the Stasi<br />
was everywhere. If there were more than three<br />
people together, then one of them would<br />
be a spy. Therefore, people would be careful<br />
what they would say in a pub, for example.<br />
We don’t have that anymore. We are also not<br />
afraid of the police anymore but feel safer<br />
when an officer is around – very different to<br />
the GDR.<br />
Still, isn’t it shocking to know you’re<br />
under surveillance even if it is not used<br />
as an instrument of rule by fear? Of<br />
course, the fact that such extensive surveillance<br />
took place in a democratic country<br />
like Germany came as a surprise. Until<br />
Snowden’s files, people<br />
would assume that, as<br />
the law says, no one<br />
could be monitored<br />
without a court order.<br />
It’s not easy to get a<br />
court order. Can they<br />
just spy on someone?<br />
Can they bully someone<br />
to testify? Can they tap<br />
someone’s phone or bug<br />
someone’s apartment<br />
when they entertain<br />
a suspicion? I learned<br />
that the possibilities are<br />
very restricted and that<br />
is a fundamental difference to the methods<br />
the Stasi used. It is a very secure system<br />
that keeps the police from randomly doing<br />
as they please. Unfortunately, next to these<br />
strict rules protecting civil liberties, there is<br />
a different kind of surveillance. The danger<br />
is now that the information that is not controlled<br />
in any way could be misused. Who<br />
controls the NSA and what they do with the<br />
information they gather?<br />
Do you believe the government when<br />
they say they were unaware of the NSA<br />
activities – here, in Germany, where<br />
American intelligence has their biggest<br />
presence outside the US? All we can say<br />
is that if the Verfassungsschutz, the BND<br />
and the Militärische Abschirmdienst (Military<br />
Counterintelligence Service) had done their<br />
job, then they would have known about it. If<br />
a foreign country is doing a huge amount of<br />
spying in Germany and the German national<br />
security services are not aware of it, it’s a<br />
confession of failure.<br />
20 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
Or naïveté? It reminds me a bit of the<br />
naïveté of the West Germans during the<br />
Cold War. The national security service<br />
somehow believed – and they told the<br />
public back then – that long-distance calls<br />
(from Hamburg to Munich, for example)<br />
were safe from tapping. After the Wall<br />
came down, it was disclosed that that was<br />
not the case at all and that the GDR had<br />
its monitoring station and recorded everything<br />
that went from southern Germany<br />
to northern Germany and back, as well as<br />
everything between West Germany and<br />
West Berlin. Therefore, there are only two<br />
possibilities: Either the German national<br />
security services are really lousy or they<br />
have tolerated the surveillance because<br />
they probably profited from it.<br />
During the Cold War, the US was West<br />
Germany’s trusted ally and protector.<br />
Twenty-five years later, although<br />
now a unified, sovereign country, it<br />
seems that somehow Germany has<br />
remained America’s lapdog. Certainly,<br />
the difference between now and then is that<br />
until 1994, Germany was de facto still under<br />
occupation, therefore the Allies had certain<br />
rights. Since 1994, Germany is sovereign.<br />
So, if there is surveillance in Germany it<br />
would have to be done by a German agency,<br />
not by a foreign power. That is the problem.<br />
Do you think Germans might have<br />
lost their trust in the US? Well, it is<br />
politically dangerous. Such impunity on the<br />
part of the US leads to a loss of credibility.<br />
In the long run it feeds a certain anti-<br />
Americanism that has always been present<br />
in Germany. Many feel confirmed in their<br />
belief that the US is not an example of<br />
freedom and democracy. It is very sad<br />
when the most important democracy in the<br />
world finds a projection that reads “United<br />
Stasi of America” on its embassy. That is<br />
how you can damage your own image.<br />
Do you think that Germans are more<br />
sensitive to surveillance issues due<br />
to their recent history? Presumably,<br />
but the outcry has been relatively modest.<br />
Even more so in East Germany. In the<br />
West, critics are louder because people<br />
can’t make the comparison. But the East<br />
Germans know it: as much as it might be<br />
working outside of the law, you don’t have<br />
to fear the NSA the way we used to fear<br />
the Stasi. n<br />
Hubertus Knabe will be at Lichtblick Kino on<br />
<strong>September</strong> 25 for a special edition of Exblicks,<br />
featuring a rare screening of internal Stasi videos<br />
and a discussion.<br />
21
<strong>2014</strong><br />
Big Brother in Berlin<br />
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
Facebook knows your friends and political affinities, your mobile service<br />
provider knows your whereabouts, Instagram knows what you had for<br />
dinner. But who are they telling? As Orwell’s dystopian world turns 30,<br />
are Berliners in danger of becoming transparent citizens?<br />
By Hanna Westerlund and Seán Kenehan<br />
On your U-Bahn to work, most likely<br />
under the eye of one of the 3165 cameras<br />
on BVG trains and platforms,<br />
you pull out your phone and start<br />
typing a comment on Facebook. Realising it may<br />
be too polemical (who could tell if your future<br />
boss is snooping around?), you erase it instead of<br />
posting. A common practice, seven out of 10 users<br />
do it. Facebook knows these figures, because<br />
they saved what you just erased. Last year, the<br />
company made a survey analysing data from the<br />
‘self-censored’ messages of nearly four million<br />
users. (Why? Less generated content equals less<br />
‘social value’, which may harm their service.)<br />
As you get off the train, 500 metres away<br />
from you a bag is being snatched. The incident<br />
has nothing to do with you, but afterwards the<br />
police may nevertheless find out who you are,<br />
who you called and when, just<br />
because your cell phone was<br />
in the area. They may request<br />
this data from all mobile<br />
network operators and filter<br />
it to find potential suspects.<br />
This practice, called Funkzellenabfrage,<br />
is only supposed<br />
to be used in investigations<br />
of severe crimes. However,<br />
since it was revealed that the<br />
Dresden police used it against<br />
anti-neo-Nazi demonstrators<br />
in 2011, it has been subject to<br />
public debate. Last year, the<br />
Berlin police gathered 50 million<br />
records of phone traffic metadata, more than<br />
ever before. That means, provided you hang out<br />
in areas with average crime rates, your data was<br />
collected 14 times.<br />
The post-Snowden landscape<br />
Known for some of the strictest data protection<br />
laws in the world, Germany has blocked the harmonising<br />
of laws in the European union, afraid<br />
they wouldn’t be able to keep their high standards.<br />
Germans have had Google blur their houses<br />
on map street views, and Facebook remove facial<br />
“It’s not a<br />
matter of<br />
having<br />
anything to<br />
hide or not,<br />
but a human<br />
rights issue.”<br />
recognition. Yet, never before has it been so difficult<br />
to maintain one’s anonymity, such that the<br />
average German is in risk of becoming a gläserner<br />
Bürger – a transparent or “glass citizen”.<br />
In the words of Edward Snowden himself, in<br />
a June 2013 interview with The Guardian: “Even<br />
if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being<br />
watched and recorded.” Since the revelations<br />
concerning mass surveillance through programmes<br />
like the NSA’s PRISM and XKeyscore,<br />
it appears our personal information is up for<br />
grabs. Should we assume everything we do online<br />
is being monitored? “In principle, yes,” says<br />
Alexander Dix, Berlin’s Data Protection and<br />
Freedom of Information Commissioner. “That<br />
is probably the reality, unless one takes certain<br />
steps to prevent that from happening. But if<br />
someone is not a nerd in that sense of the word,<br />
then everything he does online<br />
is under surveillance.”<br />
The brunt of this intrusion<br />
stems from the NSA, whose<br />
guiding philosophy has been<br />
referred to as the ‘haystack<br />
method’: compile as much information<br />
as possible, and sift<br />
through it to find that one useful<br />
‘needle’. According to Dix,<br />
Germany’s foreign intelligence<br />
agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst<br />
(BND) operates under<br />
stricter conditions as the only<br />
German government body<br />
that can secretly screen our<br />
calls: “Under German law, this [haystack method]<br />
is only legal in the very particular case of international<br />
telecommunications, where you can screen<br />
contents of conversations indiscriminately based<br />
on certain keywords.” This keyword scanning and<br />
recording method is applied to all international<br />
telephone calls and internet traffic with a link<br />
to Germany. Recorded calls are then crossreferenced<br />
with other databases to determine<br />
whether a communication appears suspicious.<br />
There are restrictions, though. Only one-fifth<br />
of the communication data traffic that has a ‘foreign<br />
element’ can be<br />
copied and reviewed by<br />
the BND. Also, they’re<br />
not supposed to be spying<br />
on German citizens.<br />
But in an online world,<br />
that is largely theoretical.<br />
Email addresses<br />
ending in .de could of<br />
course be erased, but<br />
what about Germans<br />
with Gmail accounts,<br />
Facebook and Skype?<br />
Or Al-Qaida members<br />
with .de accounts?<br />
Victim or<br />
accomplice?<br />
“It is hard to believe<br />
that they didn’t<br />
know,” says Dix, on<br />
the BND’s complicity<br />
with the<br />
US intelligence<br />
agency’s surveillance<br />
programmes. “At<br />
least that they didn’t<br />
know more than<br />
they admitted later<br />
on.” In the wake of<br />
the NSA’s tapping<br />
of Angela Merkel’s<br />
mobile phone, one<br />
might view the<br />
German government<br />
as a victim of<br />
espionage, rather<br />
than an accomplice.<br />
Yet around<br />
50 of Snowden’s<br />
documents detail<br />
Germany’s collusion<br />
with the<br />
NSA. According<br />
to Der Spiegel,<br />
the NSA and<br />
AGATA SASIUK<br />
22 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
BND cooperate at the Bad Aibling listening post<br />
near Munich to monitor possible terrorist activity<br />
in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s known<br />
that the BND has used XKeyscore intel<br />
– “for testing purposes”, they claim –<br />
and through documents leaked to<br />
netzpolitik.org it was revealed<br />
that the Bundes kriminal amt<br />
(Federal Criminal Police) has<br />
acquired FinFisher spyware<br />
which allows “remote intrusion”<br />
of digital devices.<br />
Though this spyware was<br />
recently deemed illegal,<br />
research is already<br />
underway to develop new<br />
software that remains<br />
within the restrictions of<br />
the German constitution.<br />
Says Dix, “Infiltration of computers by<br />
malware only seriously began after 9/11,” when<br />
German intelligence agencies were escalating in<br />
surveillance. With two new sets of laws, the Anti-<br />
Terror-Paket I and II, they were allowed to request<br />
customer data from airlines, postal services<br />
and banks. “The detection networks become<br />
more dense, the observation-free zones smaller,”<br />
Heribert Prantl, Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist<br />
and author of Glanz und Elend der Grund rechte<br />
(Splendour and Misery of Fundamental Rights),<br />
said in an interview with Telepolis. “For security<br />
reasons, people are now being tapped and observed,<br />
computers are being searched. People are<br />
being imprisoned, even tortured.”<br />
While law enforcement must procure a warrant<br />
to perform surveillance operations such as<br />
Funkzellenabfrage, the BND must justify itself to<br />
the G10 Commission (named after the article<br />
of the German constitution that safeguards<br />
communications privacy) and the Parliamentary<br />
Control Commission. This sounds like reassuring<br />
oversight, yet the process is entirely opaque,<br />
Dix says. “We do have laws regulating surveillance,<br />
but the key issue is to what extent can<br />
they really be enforced, and controlled.”<br />
Trouble in Neuland<br />
Although ridiculed for her comment, “The<br />
internet is Neuland for us all,” Chancellor Merkel<br />
was correct – in legislative terms, the internet is<br />
nigh-uncharted territory. Posteo.de, a Berlinbased<br />
email provider dedicated to its customers’<br />
privacy, had a rough encounter with this legal<br />
minefield. “Last year, the police came to our<br />
offices with a warrant to claim inventory data<br />
which we didn’t have, but they didn’t believe our<br />
lawyer,” says founder Patrik Löhr. German email<br />
providers that store Bestandsdaten (the names<br />
and phone numbers of clients who may be under<br />
suspicion of illegal activity) are legally obliged<br />
to submit it – but Posteo.de does not retain this<br />
information. “They tried to intimidate us and<br />
were very forceful. In the end, they had to leave<br />
empty-handed.”<br />
According to Dix, surveillance laws are so<br />
broad that they cannot cover every situation,<br />
leaving many loopholes: “For example, a new<br />
power is given to investigate a serious crime,<br />
but as society changes the definition of a ‘serious<br />
crime’ changes... Police legislation always<br />
uses broad language, they need to become more<br />
specific.” Malte Spitz, Green Party member and<br />
activist for media and internet policy, speaks of<br />
the system’s inadequacies: “How can parliamentarians<br />
oversee something if they don’t understand<br />
the concrete process of how intelligence<br />
agencies monitor people, or if they have no<br />
possibility to ask experts on specific cases? The<br />
oversight system in Germany isn’t working; the<br />
idea of oversight is there, but it’s not a powerful<br />
and controlling oversight.”<br />
Metadata is content<br />
If citizens are being subjected to surveillance,<br />
don’t they have a right to<br />
know the extent? After<br />
a lengthy battle with the<br />
mobile service provider<br />
Deutsche Telekom, Spitz<br />
finally won back data that<br />
had been recorded over<br />
six months of his life: the<br />
times and locations of his<br />
phone calls, from which<br />
extensive personal information<br />
could be extrapolated.<br />
“I was surprised by<br />
the amount,” says Spitz.<br />
“I didn’t expect there<br />
would be 35,000 lines...<br />
every few minutes you<br />
could see where I was,<br />
what I was doing.” German<br />
phone companies<br />
are obliged to save this<br />
metadata, but they’re not allowed to store the<br />
actual calls. From a surveillance perspective,<br />
Spitz says, metadata is easier to analyse anyway:<br />
“If you see that a person is texting someone at<br />
3am, you can assume this person doesn’t have a<br />
job for which he needs to wake up at 6am, and<br />
that he has friends who don’t either... That’s how<br />
metadata works.”<br />
Politicians have asserted harvesting times and<br />
locations of phone calls and emails is less invasive<br />
than collecting actual content, and that the<br />
two could be separated. Privacy activists argue<br />
that collecting metadata can in fact be more intrusive<br />
in people’s privacy than listening to content<br />
– as Spitz outlined with compelling graphics<br />
in a TED Talk in 2012. The type of information<br />
that can be piled up under the term ‘metadata’<br />
now consists of much more than the time and<br />
the person involved in the communication.<br />
You can read out the location, device number,<br />
language setting of the cell phone or computer,<br />
operating system... “The old distinction between<br />
metadata and content is outdated. You can<br />
create content out of metadata,” says Jan-Peter<br />
Kleinhans from the data protection initiative<br />
Privacy Project. “And still the law doesn’t treat<br />
metadata as content. This is just wrong!”<br />
Hacker’s paranoia or human rights issue?<br />
Does heightened awareness of your transparency<br />
make you care? In Berlin, groups like Digitale<br />
Gesellschaft, netzpolitik.org and Chaos Computer<br />
Club have been talking for years about data protection.<br />
“But they were the nerds and the hackers,<br />
who could easily be perceived as ‘IT people’ or<br />
conspiracy theorists,” says Kleinhans. Privacy<br />
Project wants to change the focus of the public<br />
debate from an ‘internet topic’ to a question of<br />
human rights: “It’s not a matter of having anything<br />
to hide or not, but a human rights issue. The right<br />
to privacy, to form your opinion.” He thinks the<br />
BND works according to double standards: “The<br />
EU Charter of Human Rights assumes everyone is<br />
equal. At the same time, our intelligence agencies<br />
operate on national terms, where foreigners have<br />
NO rights. Zero protection.”<br />
So how to proceed? Once or twice a week,<br />
hordes of Berlin hackers full of confidence about<br />
“taking back what<br />
is already written<br />
“If you see that a<br />
person is texting<br />
someone at 3am, you<br />
can assume he doesn’t<br />
have a job for which<br />
he needs to wake up<br />
at 6am, and that he<br />
has friends who don’t<br />
either... That’s how<br />
metadata works.”<br />
into our constitutions”<br />
gather<br />
to teach you all<br />
they know about<br />
anonymous surfing<br />
and encrypting<br />
your email.<br />
Michael Schmidt<br />
spends 10-15 hours<br />
a week organising<br />
these so-called<br />
cryptoparties.<br />
“How would you<br />
feel if you knew<br />
as we’re sitting<br />
here that someone<br />
is in your flat, in<br />
your bedroom?<br />
You’d want to go<br />
home and throw him out. Do you have anything<br />
to hide? Not really. You could just live there and<br />
ignore him, but you don’t. And that’s a healthy<br />
feeling.”<br />
Data Protection Commissioner Dix is in favour<br />
of encryption. He wants more state money<br />
to inform the public, and says it should “definitely<br />
be taught in schools.” He doesn’t encrypt<br />
emails himself, though: “It’s too complex.”<br />
Interestingly, Germany’s domestic intelligence<br />
agency, the Bundesverfassungsschutz (BfV), wrote<br />
in their annual report 2013 that “closed fora and<br />
encryption programs are mostly useful as communication<br />
tools for potentially violent extremists.”<br />
Does using encryption services then make<br />
you a target? Potentially. After Angela Merkel,<br />
the second German proven to be spied on by the<br />
NSA is Sebastian Hahn, a 27-year-old computer<br />
science student in Bavaria, for hosting a Tor<br />
server (see page 30).<br />
There is a point in doing it anyway, though.<br />
The more of a default procedure it is and the<br />
more people encrypt, the less suspicious it will<br />
be to spying eyes. The encryption software pioneer<br />
Philip Zimmerman compared it in 1991 with<br />
using envelopes for your correspondence, instead<br />
of writing everything on postcards.<br />
How can we be sure that we will hold on to<br />
our privacy and not become transparent citizens?<br />
In the optimistic words of cryptoparty organiser<br />
Schmidt: “We don’t earn money, we just know<br />
it’s the right thing. Passion is in the centre of the<br />
movement. Governments have no passion.” n<br />
23
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
Confessions of an MI5<br />
whistleblower<br />
Former UK spy Annie Machon knows first-hand what happens to people who tell the truth about<br />
intelligence agencies. She blew the whistle in 1997 with fellow agent and then-boy friend David<br />
Shayler, triggering a two-year manhunt that culminated in Shayler’s arrest. We met the part-time<br />
Berliner on Potsdamer Platz a few metres away from RT’s bureau, where she regularly appears as<br />
a consultant for the 24-hour Russian news channel. She told her story to Ruth Schneider.<br />
“<br />
I didn’t want to be a spy. In 1990, I was<br />
21, and I wanted to have a job that would<br />
make a difference. So I sat the Foreign Office<br />
exams. But then I received a mysterious<br />
letter from the Ministry of Defence saying<br />
that “there were other jobs I might find more<br />
interesting” and there’s a phone number. I actually<br />
ended up ringing up this number because my<br />
father – he’s an investigative journalist – wanted<br />
to see if it was indeed MI5. “Oh go on, just see...”<br />
They said that they wanted a ‘new generation’<br />
intelligence officer who would be working against<br />
terrorist targets, that they no longer did the old<br />
“let’s investigate political activists” stuff because<br />
the Cold War was over, etc.. But then I started<br />
there and my first post was in the political activism<br />
section, doing precisely what they said they<br />
no longer wanted to do. I could not understand<br />
how they saw these groups as a threat. It was<br />
a shock, and I seriously considered resigning<br />
towards the end of my time there.<br />
That’s when my relationship with David<br />
Shayler started. He had been recruited as part<br />
of the same generation as me, and he was also<br />
shocked at the scale of it. But then the two of us<br />
were moved to the Irish section, where it felt like<br />
we could do some good because at that point the<br />
IRA was putting bombs down at will. But even<br />
then we saw so many things going wrong. And<br />
then we went to the Middle Eastern section and<br />
saw even worse things, which is why we resigned<br />
after only six years.<br />
Shut up and follow orders<br />
Throughout the recruitment process you are<br />
grilled about these ethical issues. Things like<br />
internment without trial, torture, shoot to kill...<br />
I was quite outspoken about it then and they<br />
said, “Well you know, we agree with you, we don’t<br />
do this sort of thing.” So when we found out that<br />
they did, many of us were unhappy. But when we<br />
spoke out, we were told, “Shut up, don’t rock the<br />
boat, just follow orders.”<br />
There was an intergenerational problem.<br />
The management at that time had been under<br />
the Cold War era, gathering intelligence slowly<br />
and looking at “reds under the bed”, and suddenly<br />
they were managing groups who had<br />
been brought in to investigate terrorist targets,<br />
where you have to gather evidence that you can<br />
put people on trial for. It’s a very different skill<br />
set and the targets move much more quickly.<br />
So there was a cultural clash, and I think that’s<br />
where all this disaffectation came from.<br />
David was the head of the Libya section<br />
between 1994-96 and he was briefed on the case<br />
that made us quit, which was<br />
the Gaddafi assassination<br />
plot. We decided that we<br />
had to do something, but it<br />
took more than just one day.<br />
There were a lot of heartwringing<br />
episodes where we<br />
thought, “Why us?” because<br />
we knew we’d have to leave<br />
the UK, we knew we’d have<br />
to face prosecution and we<br />
knew we’d be unemployable<br />
afterwards… but it just felt<br />
like the right thing to do, I<br />
suppose.<br />
We took the decision to go public in early<br />
1996, and he resigned in autumn. He had already<br />
taken steps to approach the media – he decided<br />
on the Mail on Sunday because the owner of the<br />
Mail group at the time, Viscount Rothermere,<br />
was known to be very anti-intelligence agency.<br />
I wasn’t terribly involved in those early stages<br />
because David wanted to protect me. He acted<br />
as a buffer between me and them.<br />
Life in exile<br />
It took 10 months for the story to break. My<br />
understanding is that only three days beforehand<br />
they suddenly said, “This is what’s going to<br />
happen this weekend, what do you want to do?<br />
Get out of the country or what?” He said “yes”.<br />
They offered him a certain amount of money<br />
to live in exile for up to six months. Of course<br />
the establishment in the UK made great play of<br />
this and said, “Oh yes, he sold documents.” We<br />
actually offered to give it back if we could return<br />
“We couldn’t even<br />
warn our families.<br />
So the first they<br />
heard of it was on<br />
the front page of<br />
the newspaper<br />
with David’s<br />
picture on it…”<br />
to the UK without arrest and give evidence in<br />
parliament. MI5 refused.<br />
We flew out on the morning of August 23,<br />
1997, 12 hours ahead of the newspapers hitting<br />
the streets in the UK. There had already been<br />
certain indications that MI5 were beginning to<br />
get suspicious, so we were pretty strung out with<br />
tension. We felt like we couldn’t talk in our flats,<br />
we couldn’t even warn our families that we were<br />
going to do it. So the first they heard of it was on<br />
the front page of the newspaper<br />
with David’s picture on<br />
it. That was quite dramatic!<br />
First we went to Amsterdam,<br />
then Utrecht.<br />
We moved around all over<br />
the Netherlands for the<br />
first week and fled all the<br />
way down the southwest<br />
of France to Bayonne. We<br />
wanted to get as far away<br />
from where they knew we<br />
were. Then we just moved<br />
around from town to town<br />
in the south of France and<br />
Spain, staying in cheap hotels, fake names, cash<br />
payments, the whole thing.<br />
After a month, I went back to the UK for<br />
a week to pack up our flat. I was picked up at<br />
Gatwick airport and taken off to a counterterrorism<br />
suite in London and grilled for a day.<br />
But they never charged me with anything – I was<br />
just David’s girlfriend at that point, I hadn’t done<br />
anything, so how could they? When I made it to<br />
our flat, I saw it had been smashed up in a raid;<br />
they had ripped it apart for no reason.<br />
While I was in the UK, David found this little<br />
place to hide in the centre of France in Lachaux,<br />
which is in the middle of nowhere! We were sort<br />
of stuck there with no car, no TV, no nothing.<br />
It was surreal, actually, because on one hand we<br />
were supposed to be on the run but on the other<br />
hand we were living in this strange rural idyll.<br />
It was two kilometres outside the local village.<br />
We had a little van that came round once a week<br />
with food and things and the bread van every<br />
24 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK<br />
“The worst part<br />
of the whole<br />
thing was the<br />
media rape of<br />
our reputations<br />
– that’s what it<br />
felt like.”<br />
day, it was that primitive. So, from the centre of<br />
London to that was quite a culture shock!<br />
Back then there was no Facebook, there<br />
was no Google, there was nothing. Whereas of<br />
course now if someone did this and you were on<br />
the run, it would make it more difficult … but<br />
then there would be much more media exposure<br />
of what you were saying and what you were doing,<br />
so it’s horses for courses I suppose.<br />
David’s arrest<br />
At that time, the most serious allegations had<br />
not yet been reported by the UK media because<br />
they were too scared of the Gaddafi plot, they<br />
wanted to try and investigate it themselves. So<br />
the early disclosures were only files on government<br />
ministers and activists, which were bad<br />
enough. The British government took out an<br />
injunction against the whole of the UK media,<br />
and David Shayler personally, to ban any new<br />
revelations in the summer of 1997.<br />
Finally – after a year! – the BBC exposed the<br />
Gaddafi plot, in summer 1998. They had to<br />
submit the story for approval under the terms<br />
of the injunction. This happened on a Friday<br />
afternoon within two hours. We were in Paris at<br />
that point, working with the journalists on the<br />
story, so we were in a hotel. David went out, and<br />
he got arrested coming back in. The first I heard<br />
of it was the knock on the door from the DST<br />
saying, “We’ve got Mr. Shayler downstairs and<br />
you can’t see him.” I asked, “Are you arresting<br />
him?” and they said no, and I didn’t see him<br />
for two months. They said he was a traitor. But<br />
when the French got the paperwork from the<br />
British government, they realised he was actually<br />
a whistleblower, so then they eased up and let me<br />
see him in prison.<br />
After four months, Dave was actually released<br />
by the French and we had another two years in<br />
Paris, got the stories out, more campaigning,<br />
etc. But then he decided to go back in 2000 to<br />
go on trial. It took two years and he was only<br />
ever charged with a very early disclosure, not the<br />
Gaddafi plot. Of course he was inevitably found<br />
guilty, there was no defence under UK law. Even<br />
the judge said what he had done lay in the public<br />
interest and he hadn’t done it for financial reasons.<br />
But if you work for the intelligence agency<br />
and you blow the whistle, you are guilty, that’s it.<br />
There’s a clear bright line.<br />
He was sentenced to six months – but you can<br />
serve a third of your sentence if you are then<br />
electronically tagged, so he got it down to two<br />
months. It’s not that bad when you think he<br />
was facing six years with three charges. But, you<br />
know, to have your liberty taken away for exposing<br />
the crimes of others is difficult. The process<br />
was a very, very high price to pay even then.<br />
Now what whistleblowers are facing is 35 years<br />
in prison, at least in America. So the courage it<br />
takes for people to do that is huge.<br />
The war on whistleblowers<br />
The worst part of the whole thing was the<br />
media rape of reputations – that’s what it felt<br />
like. Where each media organisation has its<br />
agenda, doesn’t actually listen to the evidence<br />
of the whistleblower but wants to use it for<br />
whatever purposes and how it can be controlled<br />
and spun. The fact that David went to<br />
prison and took “his beating like a man” as the<br />
judge said was actually minor compared the<br />
reputation damage done to him forevermore.<br />
People who blow the whistle have no experience,<br />
they’re virgins when it comes to the<br />
media. So what I try to do is explain to potential<br />
whistleblowers the issues they might need<br />
to think about before they go ahead. I think<br />
that seeing what Snowden did has shown that<br />
people do learn from earlier cases and do try<br />
to do it more safely and more effectively because<br />
the key thing is to get the message out.<br />
It’s not about narcissism or personal glory.<br />
I have seen so many whistleblowers from<br />
different backgrounds... the whole idea is to<br />
crush them, destroy them. I think particularly<br />
coming out of intelligence you’re automatically<br />
criminalised. It’s even harder. There’s<br />
that polarisation of being a hero and being<br />
a traitor, which is very difficult to live with<br />
over the years, and it took its toll on David.<br />
The last time I saw him was in the summer<br />
of last year, and he seemed happy in his new<br />
life. He seemed at peace. But I don’t know<br />
what he’s up to. Considering the intensity of<br />
the years we had together it’s sad that we’ve<br />
lost touch. I just hope he stays safe and stays<br />
happy. n<br />
25
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
Germany’s should-be heroes<br />
While Snowden risked his life to enlighten the world about the NSA, the ‘little guys’ who<br />
disclose corruption and wrongdoing at their jobs face huge obstacles in Germany, where<br />
whistleblower protection is virtually non-existent.<br />
By Seymour Gris<br />
Working in a home for bed-ridden,<br />
sick elderly patients is a demanding<br />
job by any measure. But to<br />
work in a home which is chronically<br />
understaffed to the point that residents are<br />
lying in their own vomit and urine – that’s when<br />
it becomes unbearable. For Brigitte Heinisch<br />
(photo), a carer in a Berlin home belonging to<br />
the state-owned health care company Vivantes,<br />
workplace conditions became so bad she was<br />
compelled to act. She and her colleagues were<br />
so overworked they became sick; staff were expected<br />
to document care that hadn’t even been<br />
provided. Her numerous complaints to Vivantes<br />
management went unheeded.<br />
Finally, in 2005, she felt compelled to file a<br />
criminal complaint against Vivantes for failing to<br />
fulfil basic standards of care. “I would have made<br />
myself criminally responsible if I had continued<br />
to work in those conditions – also ethically and<br />
morally,” she explains. “There really wasn’t much<br />
of a choice. Basically, they wanted to make a<br />
profit, at the cost of dependent, highly vulnerable<br />
people.”<br />
Little did she know that her story would<br />
become one of the most important cases of<br />
whistleblowing in Germany to date. Vivantes<br />
reacted to the criminal charges by firing Heinisch<br />
without notice. She received no severance<br />
pay. Meanwhile, the public prosecutor’s office<br />
deemed the case unimportant and discontinued<br />
its investigations. For the next six years,<br />
Heinisch went from one German court to the<br />
next – but the judges always ruled that her act<br />
of lodging a criminal complaint against Vivantes<br />
was a “compelling reason” for them to fire her.<br />
Supported by friends and the Verdi trade union,<br />
Heinisch was finally able to get her case heard<br />
by the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg.<br />
In a groundbreaking decision in 2011, the court<br />
blamed Germany and ruled that publicly disclosing<br />
serious problems at one’s workplace fell<br />
under freedom of expression and could not be<br />
used as grounds for dismissal. In 2012, Heinisch<br />
took Vivantes back to court and won €90,000<br />
in severance pay. The ruling appears to have<br />
strengthened the position of other whistleblowers<br />
in Germany. “There are been numerous cases<br />
in the labour courts that have referred to my<br />
case,” says Heinisch.<br />
A truckful of spoiled meat<br />
But workplace whistleblowers still have trouble<br />
finding their way back into their career. Heinisch<br />
stopped working altogether because of the<br />
immense stress caused by the entire saga. She’s<br />
not the only one. Brandenburg trucker Miroslav<br />
Strecker suffered serious consequences after<br />
exposing criminal activity by<br />
one of his employer’s clients.<br />
In 2007, he discovered he<br />
was delivering a truckload<br />
of years-old slaughterhouse<br />
remains, the kind of ‘meat’<br />
that is only allowed to be<br />
used in pet food, to a sausage<br />
factory in Bavaria. He<br />
reported the factory to the<br />
authorities, who ended up<br />
uncovering the far-reaching<br />
Gammelfleisch (rotten meat)<br />
scandal – including the<br />
discovery of hundreds of<br />
tonnes of old meat and offal in Berlin döner<br />
kebabs. Strecker was later recognised for his<br />
“civil courage” with various awards. Yet he still<br />
faced problems with his employer: squealing on<br />
a customer is a no-no. After the revelations, he<br />
took time off from work due to a shoulder operation.<br />
Once back on the job, Strecker says his<br />
employer deliberately gave him the deliveries involving<br />
the most heavy lifting. He was eventually<br />
fired and had to fight for severance pay in court.<br />
He now works as a bus driver in Brandenburg.<br />
‘Nest dirtiers’<br />
In Germany’s pro-industry culture, where those<br />
who report criminal activity at their workplace<br />
are still called Nestbeschmutzer or ‘nest dirtiers’,<br />
whistleblower protection legislation remains<br />
virtually non-existent. The Beamtenstatusgesetz<br />
of 2009 protects civil servants who report gross<br />
misconduct and corruption to state prosecutors,<br />
but there is nothing similar for the private sector.<br />
“Lobbyists and<br />
politicians are<br />
scared their<br />
shadowy sources<br />
of side income will<br />
be exposed. It’s<br />
corruption, plain<br />
and simple.”<br />
As a signatory of the G20’s Anti-Corruption<br />
Action Plan, Germany promised to implement<br />
whistleblower protection by the end of 2012.<br />
This obligation and the Heinisch decision in<br />
Strasbourg prompted the SPD (then still in<br />
opposition), the Greens, and Die Linke to attempt<br />
to pass a law protecting Hinweisgeber (a<br />
neologism meaning ‘tip givers’) in the Bundestag<br />
in June 2013. This was thwarted by Angela<br />
Merkel’s government – ironically, just days after<br />
Snowden’s revelations on the NSA came to<br />
light – with the justification<br />
that current labour law sufficiently<br />
protects whistleblowers<br />
(and now that the<br />
SPD is in the governing<br />
coalition, they suddenly<br />
agree!).<br />
Heinisch is jaded about<br />
the judicial and political system<br />
in Germany: “It quickly<br />
became clear to me that<br />
state prosecutors were working<br />
for business interests –<br />
by simply dropping cases, or<br />
just not following up. I was<br />
invited for a talk with the Greens and everything<br />
was just wishy-washy. It wasn’t about actually<br />
helping the whistleblowers.” She is a member<br />
of the non-profit Whistleblower Network, but<br />
finds their tactics too timid: “I’m a little more<br />
radical when it comes to pursuing our demands.<br />
I said we should just get as many whistleblowers<br />
as possible together in a protest camp out in<br />
front of the Reichstag for a week. But a lot of<br />
people didn’t want to do that. There’s no other<br />
way. Politicians just represent the interests of<br />
business, that’s the way it is.”<br />
You can’t fight the system<br />
Guido Strack, founder of the Whistleblower<br />
Network, who himself lost his job and was subjected<br />
to a Kafkaesque legal nightmare after he<br />
exposed waste and corruption as an EU official,<br />
is equally pessimistic. The affair and associated<br />
stress destroyed his career, destroyed his marriage<br />
and weakened his faith in “the system”. In<br />
26 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
an interview with filmmaker Ian Hawkins,<br />
he summed up his sentiment: “If you do<br />
something that they don’t like, then you are<br />
considered to be someone going against the<br />
system. And then the system fights back<br />
with every means it has. I thought it was<br />
a just system and that you could achieve<br />
something if you do the right thing. I don’t<br />
think that any more.“<br />
Corruption in the courts<br />
To Andrea Fuchs, a former stockbroker<br />
who reported insider trading at DG Bank<br />
in Frankfurt 18 years ago, the situation for<br />
whistleblowers in Germany is “disastrous”.<br />
According to her, even countries without the<br />
reputation of being strong democracies, like<br />
Indonesia, have a functioning whistleblower<br />
protection law. Her actions destroyed her<br />
career in banking forever. In a immensely<br />
complicated legal ordeal in eight courts<br />
that continues till this day, Fuchs was officially<br />
fired 19 times from the same job, even<br />
though she says the grounds for her dismissal<br />
were dismissed in court each time. She hasn’t<br />
worked in 18 years. Germany’s highest court,<br />
the Constitutional Court, refused to hear her<br />
case without even giving a reason. For her,<br />
the German system is riddled with corruption:<br />
for example, she once received an anonymous<br />
letter stating that a labour court judge<br />
who had heard her case had also worked on<br />
the arbitration board of DG Bank.<br />
Like Heinisch, Fuchs is hoping the court<br />
in Strasbourg will serve justice after nearly<br />
two decades – lawyers are currently assessing<br />
the viability of her case. “Europe needs<br />
to give the Germans a slap on the hand!”<br />
Meanwhile Fuchs, also a member of the<br />
Whistleblower Network, is advising three<br />
people who have not yet gone public with<br />
their accounts of corruption in the organisations<br />
they work for.<br />
What is Germany’s problem with<br />
whistleblowers? Fuchs believes the “experience<br />
of the Third Reich and the GDR<br />
left people with the [negative] idea of the<br />
‘informant’, hence the reluctance to protect<br />
people making claims against wrongdoing.<br />
But it’s all an excuse for the lobbyists and<br />
the politicians who are scared their shadowy<br />
sources of side income will be exposed.<br />
It’s corruption, plain and simple.”<br />
For the sakes of those who’ve sacrificed<br />
their careers and even marriages to expose<br />
uncomfortable truths, let’s hope the spirit<br />
of the Age of the Whistleblower ushered<br />
in by Edward Snowden will rub off on Germany<br />
for good. n<br />
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK<br />
27
SNOWDEN SPECIAL<br />
You are the product<br />
Behind today’s ‘free and open’ internet lie shadowy firms who have made your data<br />
their business – many of them based in Berlin. By Mary Biekert and Rachel Glassberg<br />
If you didn’t look for them, you wouldn’t even<br />
know they were there. But install a simple<br />
privacy tool like Ghostery and you’ll find them<br />
lurking on nearly every website you visit, like a<br />
swarm of cockroaches underneath spotless floorboards.<br />
Their names are nonsensical: Eyeota,<br />
Nugg.Ad, Quantcast, Zanox. You don’t know<br />
them. But they know you.<br />
These are the invisible engines that power the<br />
internet today: data mining companies that determine<br />
which ads you are shown by monitoring<br />
what you do online. As the €27.3 billion industry<br />
continues to expand, these companies are devising<br />
ever-cleverer ways to get at that information<br />
while staying within Europe’s strict, yet pliable,<br />
privacy laws. And many of them have their roots<br />
in Berlin’s own blossoming start-up scene.<br />
One of those companies is Nugg.ad, once<br />
a start-up, now an international corporation<br />
owned by Deutsche Post specialising in “Predictive<br />
Behavioural Targeting” with eight offices<br />
across Europe. Accepting us into their cheerfully<br />
yellow Friedrichshain headquarters, consulting<br />
director Sema Saglik was all smiles as she explained<br />
the company’s business model – and,<br />
of course, their amazing privacy record.<br />
Nugg.ad partners with the publishers<br />
of over 4000 sites (including<br />
those in the Axel Springer group,<br />
such as Bild.de) to log users’ pageviews<br />
via the invisible graphics<br />
known as “tracking pixels”. They<br />
correlate data about what kind<br />
of content you view – “sports”,<br />
“health and beauty”, etc. – with<br />
“anonymous survey responses”<br />
about age, gender and other interests<br />
to put together your likely<br />
profile. This profile (minus your IP<br />
address, which is cut off using third-party software)<br />
is relayed via browser cookie to the original<br />
website as well as advertising networks, who<br />
use this information to show you the ads and<br />
content they think you’re likely to click on via<br />
an automated process called “real-time bidding”.<br />
This all happens in a matter of milliseconds.<br />
Saglik estimates 85 percent of German users<br />
have a Nugg.ad cookie on their computer – so<br />
even if you’re not clicking on the ads they’ve<br />
helped to place, chances are someone is. “Just<br />
one percent is enough,” says Jonas*, a tech-savvy<br />
Berliner who used to work at digital marketing<br />
company Neue Digital<br />
(now Razorfish). “A lot of<br />
people won’t click on the<br />
ads, but the ones who do<br />
offer enough revenue.”<br />
The ‘good<br />
ol’ shopping<br />
experience<br />
Welcome to the new<br />
digital economy: an<br />
internet where we’re<br />
given access to seemingly<br />
unlimited amounts<br />
of information… which we’re paying for, largely<br />
unbeknownst to us, with information of our<br />
own. As author and documentarist Astra Taylor<br />
writes in The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power<br />
and Culture in the Digital Age, “Web 2.0 is not<br />
about users buying products. Rather, the users<br />
are the product.”<br />
Not that the organisations buying and selling<br />
this product will admit to it. Nugg.ad claims<br />
they’re benefiting not only advertisers but users,<br />
by showing them only the ads that<br />
are relevant to them. Says Saglik:<br />
“When you’re a 25-year-old male, you<br />
don’t want to see ads for diapers.”<br />
Another such company, TheAdex –<br />
with offices in Berlin, Düsseldorf,<br />
London and Switzerland – justifies<br />
their practices similarly on<br />
their website: “We dream of the<br />
‘good ol’ days’ when you went<br />
to the local butcher or baker<br />
and they knew exactly what you<br />
wanted and why. It seems like a<br />
serious breach of privacy viewed<br />
through a modern prism, but for<br />
some reason we don’t feel that way when it’s a<br />
small business owner. The intent is the same:<br />
to make a better shopping experience for the<br />
customer.”<br />
It sounds innocuous enough. But in the case<br />
of the butcher you know exactly what information<br />
you’re giving out and what he’s doing with<br />
it. To the average internet user, this isn’t quite as<br />
clear when it comes to “predictive behavioural<br />
targeting” and “next generation data management<br />
solutions”. And in the case of people<br />
who publish on platforms such as Blogger, the<br />
analogy is closer to the butcher’s landlord getting<br />
information about you<br />
behind the butcher’s<br />
back.<br />
Companies thus take<br />
advantage of consumers’<br />
ignorance to pull<br />
some seriously sneaky<br />
manoeuvres – conflicting<br />
the programmers<br />
who are working behind<br />
the scenes. “If you want<br />
to work in the start-up<br />
scene now, you’ve got to<br />
navigate tonnes of dodgy<br />
job offers,” says Nicolas*, a programmer from<br />
Finland. Niels*, also from Scandinavia, moved<br />
to Berlin to work in the hyped start-up scene.<br />
He found himself at the “ad attention measuring<br />
technology” company Meetrics, which runs<br />
scripts on over 2000 sites including Spiegel<br />
Online, Germany’s most influential news site.<br />
Their technology allows them to see and store<br />
data about how people’s mice move about a web<br />
page – “where they click, where they scroll. The<br />
information is sold both to the webpage owners<br />
and advertisers so that they can see which<br />
advertisements are most successful for whom.<br />
We could also pull up specific IP addresses and<br />
replay how a person navigated a specific web<br />
page.” According to him, there was also a plug-in<br />
that they developed that would be installed, usually<br />
without awareness of the consequences, by a<br />
user who clicked on a certain ad, survey or offer<br />
to ‘win a free Ipad’. “This plug-in had the full<br />
potential to take over that person’s web browser,<br />
to take their private information such as bank<br />
account numbers, passwords…”<br />
Hidden terms and conditions<br />
How much of this is legal? Surprisingly, nearly<br />
all of it – even in Germany, the country with<br />
some of the strictest data protection laws in the<br />
world. “Basically, in the US, you can do anything<br />
you want with data as long as you don’t infringe<br />
the rights of the person,” says Jana Moser, a<br />
lawyer specialising in digital privacy law. “In<br />
Germany, you can only use data to provide the<br />
service specified by the website – that which is<br />
really, strictly mandatory, nothing more.” But<br />
there is a catch.<br />
Under current law, there is a difference in<br />
the treatment of personally identifiable data<br />
ILLUSTRATIONS BY AGATA SASIUK<br />
28 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
(names, addresses, credit card<br />
numbers) and anonymous or<br />
pseudonymous data: numbers<br />
that are not personally<br />
identifiable, but might be in<br />
combination with each other.<br />
The difference between the<br />
two can be as simple as a string<br />
of three digits: in Germany, IP<br />
addresses are considered personally<br />
identifiable information,<br />
yet with cookies and tracking<br />
pixels, logging these numbers<br />
is inevitable. That’s why many<br />
companies, including Nugg.<br />
ad, use an outside program or<br />
“third-party anonymiser” to randomise<br />
or truncate users’ IPs.<br />
You only need the last three digits to be removed<br />
for the address to be rendered anonymous. Still,<br />
information about the router used or the city of<br />
origin might remain.<br />
While companies can only gather personally<br />
identifiable data with users’ explicit consent,<br />
usually obtained when they click “Agree” after<br />
skimming through some nigh-unreadable “Terms<br />
of Service”, the collection of pseudonymous data<br />
is done by default, legal so long as the user is<br />
given the option to opt out on the “Privacy<br />
Policy” or Datenschutz section of the website<br />
using the tracker. “The link to opt out is usually<br />
positioned in the last sentence in the terms and<br />
conditions, poorly written and often with white<br />
on white background, so it’s impossible to see or<br />
barely visible,” says Jonas. Not to mention that<br />
there is no simple way to manually opt out of<br />
every single company’s data collection policy at<br />
once – and once you’ve opted out of a tracker, its<br />
cookie will remain until you delete it.<br />
The more “anonymous data” companies collect,<br />
the easier it is to correlate their ‘profile’ of<br />
you. “It gets to the point that it’s not anonymous<br />
at all,” says Jonas. “Companies never technically<br />
break the law because they use exchange binaries<br />
and work together to collect data and pass it<br />
along. They can take your data from several<br />
different sources and correlate it all in a matter<br />
of seconds and come up with a profile linked to<br />
your name.” This is possible, he says, through<br />
application process interface (API) technology, a<br />
tool that allows web applications<br />
to share data<br />
from cookies. “It’s happening<br />
all the time. The<br />
law in Germany is that you<br />
are not allowed to collect something<br />
like this, but companies<br />
are doing it anyway – if you get<br />
caught, you have to pay a fine,<br />
but usually the company will<br />
just pay it because the chance<br />
of actually getting caught doing<br />
this is pretty small and the risk<br />
is usually worth it.”<br />
It’s a common tactic for<br />
companies to spread information<br />
around different servers<br />
in different countries, taking<br />
advantage of differing privacy<br />
laws. Or they can move around<br />
within Germany, says Moser:<br />
“All companies have to respect<br />
the same laws, but when<br />
it comes to interpretation of the law,<br />
different autho ri ties in different<br />
federal states have different<br />
opinions. The more they<br />
know about the technical<br />
infrastructure, the faster<br />
they react. So, you’ll<br />
hear about the authorities<br />
in Hamburg going<br />
against Facebook… but the<br />
autho rities in Saxony? Never.”<br />
Perpetually obsolete regulations<br />
A better, comprehensive data protection policy is<br />
clearly needed to keep up with the times – and in<br />
fact, since 2012 the EU has been putting together<br />
such a policy, a reform of the current laws (which<br />
were passed in 1995). Yet keeping digital privacy<br />
laws vague and open to interpretation might be<br />
the most effective tactic at regulating Big Data,<br />
says Moser. “The more detailed regulation we<br />
have, the more difficult it will be to catch up in<br />
the future. We can’t just say, ‘We have to regulate<br />
iBeacons’, for example, because in one year we<br />
might not have iBeacons anymore.”<br />
The data industry is therefore counted on<br />
to regulate itself, through a series of (optional)<br />
privacy programmes like the European Privacy<br />
Seal, a certification awarded to companies that<br />
pass inspection by third-party IT experts, and<br />
the Deutscher Datenschutzrat Online-Werbung<br />
(DDOW), the industry body that came up<br />
with a codex of guidelines for German digital<br />
advertising companies. In the wake of the<br />
Snowden revelations and increasing consumer<br />
uneasiness, Big Data players have also come to<br />
recognise the value of transparency – so long as<br />
they’re the ones doing the revealing. The Your<br />
Online Choices program, for instance, displays<br />
a tiny blue icon in the corner of ads; click on it<br />
and you’ll be brought to a website, created by<br />
the European Digital Advertising Alliance, that<br />
informs you why and how your data’s being used<br />
and includes a “Preference Management” section<br />
in which you can opt out of data collection<br />
by over 80 companies in one fell swoop (theoretically<br />
– it’s plagued with “connection problems”).<br />
Nugg.ad CEO Stephan Noller is even putting on<br />
a “Data Days” festival this October, complete<br />
with talks on “Data-driven Applications vs. Ethics<br />
and Policies.”<br />
“I think self-regulation can be good,” says<br />
Moser. “But what should never happen again is<br />
this Safe Harbour concept.” That’s the agreement,<br />
dating back to 1998, by which US-based<br />
companies like Google and Facebook are<br />
currently allowed to gather data on EU citizens.<br />
They only need to “self-certify” that they are in<br />
compliance with European data protection law,<br />
as enforced, by all accounts ineffectively, by the<br />
US Federal Trade Commission. In August, the<br />
US consumer rights advocacy group Center for<br />
Digital Democracy (CDD), accused 30 American<br />
data companies – including Adobe, AOL and<br />
data brokerage giant Acxiom – of “compiling,<br />
using and sharing EU consumers’ personal<br />
information without their awareness and<br />
meaningful consent”. The group called for the<br />
suspension of Safe Harbour, which would<br />
prohibit any US-based site from collecting<br />
data in Europe.<br />
Instead of counting on corporations<br />
to conform to bendable,<br />
perpetually obsolete<br />
regulations, the best option<br />
would be for users<br />
to take their data into<br />
their own hands. You<br />
can start small, by blocking<br />
cookies or deleting them after every browsing<br />
session and downloading a browser plug-in like<br />
Disconnect, Scriptpolicy or Ghostery to display<br />
and block all advertising and analytical requests.<br />
If every internet user was as informed as<br />
possible and chose to opt out of everything,<br />
“the entire industry would collapse,”<br />
says one Berlin insider.<br />
You can see the beginnings<br />
of this for yourself.<br />
Block every<br />
single cookie and<br />
tracker and your<br />
personal internet<br />
experience will<br />
fundamentally<br />
change – videos<br />
won’t load, for<br />
example. In<br />
the long run,<br />
though, it might<br />
be a small sacrifice to<br />
make yourself a totally free<br />
member of the new digital<br />
economy order. n<br />
*Names changed.<br />
If every internet user<br />
was as informed as<br />
possible and chose to<br />
opt out of everything,<br />
“the entire industry<br />
would collapse”.<br />
29
Whether you’re plotting a revolution or making brunch plans, here are some<br />
simple (and free!) tools to evade unwelcome eavesdroppers. As Edward<br />
Snowden says: “Encryption works – it’s one of the things you can rely on.”<br />
By Michael Hald<br />
EMAIL<br />
THUNDERBIRD<br />
with Enigmail and PGP<br />
(Windows, OS X, Linux)<br />
WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS WHAT IT IS<br />
An email client (Thunderbird)<br />
with an add-on (Enigmail)<br />
that encrypts your emails<br />
using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).<br />
To send an encrypted<br />
email, ask the recipient for<br />
their “public key” (a string of<br />
characters; each person has<br />
their own). Once the email is<br />
sent, the recipient then uses<br />
their “private key” to decrypt<br />
your message and vice versa.<br />
Anyone else will just see a<br />
garble of random characters.<br />
CHAT TEXT CALLS THE WEB FILES ALL-IN-ONE<br />
JITSI<br />
(Windows, OS X, Linux)<br />
A program that offers encrypted<br />
instant messaging<br />
over services like Facebook<br />
Chat, Google Talk and<br />
AIM as well as video and<br />
audio calls using the Jabber<br />
protocol. Just give it your<br />
login credentials (this can<br />
be kept secure via a master<br />
password) and chat away<br />
securely. It also offers OTR<br />
(Off-The-Record) messaging,<br />
an independent encrypted<br />
service, for the ultimate protected<br />
chat experience.<br />
TEXTSECURE<br />
(Android, iOS under<br />
development)<br />
An app that automatically<br />
encrypts your texts (and<br />
sexts; it works with pictures<br />
too) – as long as the recipient’s<br />
also using the app.<br />
REDPHONE/<br />
SIGNAL<br />
(Android, iOS)<br />
A VoIP (Voice over Internet<br />
Protocol) service that<br />
encrypts the data of your<br />
cell phone calls, preventing<br />
outsiders from listening in.<br />
It will automatically detect if<br />
the person you’re trying to<br />
reach also uses RedPhone<br />
or Signal and offer to encrypt<br />
the call.<br />
TOR BROWSER<br />
(Windows, OS X, Linux)<br />
A program that hides your<br />
internet traffic through<br />
multiple layers of encryption<br />
and sends it through<br />
multiple servers in multiple<br />
countries, allowing for<br />
anonymous internet browsing.<br />
It also gives you access<br />
to the hidden Tor network,<br />
aka the “Deep Web”.<br />
TRUECRYPT<br />
(Windows, OS X, Linux)<br />
A program that lets you<br />
create a so-called ‘encrypted<br />
volume’ to protect<br />
your files (with the power<br />
of math!) It’s concealed as<br />
a normal document, but<br />
works as a virtual hard drive<br />
which you can easily add or<br />
remove files from.<br />
TAILS<br />
(Portable operating system)<br />
Also called The Amnesic<br />
Incognito Live System, this<br />
OS comes on a handy USB<br />
stick and contains Pidgin<br />
with OTR for chatting,<br />
email through Claws (similar<br />
to Thunderbird), the Tor<br />
Browser and file encryption.<br />
Unless you set it to save files<br />
permanently, everything<br />
is deleted once you shut<br />
down and remove the stick,<br />
leaving no trace on the<br />
computer you used.<br />
USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE USER EXPERIENCE<br />
Once you’ve installed Thunderbird,<br />
Enigmail and the<br />
GnuPG program, it’s actually<br />
pretty hassle-free. Now you<br />
can use your regular email<br />
account to send and receive<br />
encoded messages to and<br />
from fellow encrypters,<br />
should you so choose.<br />
Collecting all of your chat<br />
services in one program is<br />
definitely convenient, but<br />
in order for it to actually<br />
encrypt, the person you’re<br />
chatting with also needs to<br />
use the program or another<br />
OTR-enabled chat.<br />
Ridiculously easy. There’s<br />
no need to remember any<br />
passwords, and it can easily<br />
replace your standard messaging<br />
app.<br />
Very intuitive – you can just<br />
call people like you normally<br />
would. Because it uses wi-fi<br />
or data to make the encrypted<br />
calls, it will not use<br />
up any of your minutes.<br />
The Tor Browser is preconfigured<br />
for safe use right<br />
out of the pack and works<br />
just like Chrome or Firefox.<br />
However, because of all the<br />
encryption, it will always<br />
be slower than normal<br />
browsing. There are only<br />
early, experimental mobile<br />
versions so far, like Orfox<br />
(with Orbot) for Android or<br />
Onion Browser for iOS.<br />
Making your encrypted<br />
volume can be a bit complicated;<br />
there are different<br />
types of volumes, methods<br />
and file systems to choose<br />
from, and it’s not always<br />
clear what’s best. But once<br />
you’ve done it, it works<br />
like any other USB stick or<br />
memory card, except all of it<br />
is digital.<br />
The installation can be a bit<br />
tricky, so it might be a good<br />
idea to have a tech person<br />
on standby. Once it’s<br />
installed, it works like any<br />
other OS (it’s most similar<br />
to Linux). The best part is<br />
that it can boot from almost<br />
any computer.<br />
LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY LEVEL OF SECURITY<br />
For 23 years now, PGP<br />
encryption has repeatedly<br />
proven itself to be one of the<br />
hardest types of encryption to<br />
crack. That said, if someone<br />
manages to steal your private<br />
key or you lose it you’re<br />
screwed, so keep it somewhere<br />
safe. The Thunderbird<br />
add-on TorBirdy can also add<br />
an extra layer of protection by<br />
sending your emails through<br />
the Tor network.<br />
While it does encrypt otherwise<br />
unprotected chat, the<br />
real privacy comes with OTR<br />
chat, which circumvents<br />
companies like Google or<br />
Facebook. Alternatively,<br />
you can also use Pidgin with<br />
OTR, Adium with logging<br />
disabled or ChatSecure (for<br />
your smartphone).<br />
To the extent of public<br />
knowledge no one – not<br />
even the NSA – has been<br />
able to break it yet. Bonus:<br />
it encrypts your texts locally,<br />
so your 3am booty requests<br />
will remain safely locked<br />
away even if you lose your<br />
phone.<br />
Both apps use the so-called<br />
ZRTP protocol to provide<br />
‘forward secret’ encryption<br />
of the phone calls. Recommended<br />
by Snowden (along<br />
with TextSecure). We hear<br />
it makes it hard for the NSA<br />
to listen!<br />
Stick to the Tor network<br />
for optimal safety, and use<br />
caution when inputting personal<br />
info and passwords,<br />
lest a cookie give away your<br />
identity. Outsiders can still<br />
see you’re using Tor – which<br />
could be seen as suspicious<br />
in itself. You might want to<br />
install it on a USB stick to<br />
ensure that it doesn’t save<br />
any data to your computer.<br />
The program offers a level<br />
of encryption similar to what<br />
the US uses for ‘Top Secret’-<br />
level files. The programming<br />
behind it is all free software,<br />
so anyone can review the<br />
code and find security<br />
holes. Just remember that<br />
the German intelligence service<br />
considers people who<br />
encrypt files as potential<br />
terrorists, even if they’re just<br />
locking up cake recipes.<br />
It doesn’t get more secure<br />
than this (without, say,<br />
building a grsec-enabled<br />
kernel for your corebootenabled<br />
X60…). Of course,<br />
if you bought the USB stick<br />
online there’s still the risk<br />
that a shady figure added<br />
a tattle-tale component<br />
somewhere in transit. If you<br />
fear that might be the case,<br />
you can install Tails on a<br />
read-only DVD instead.<br />
30 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
SNOWDEN ARTICLE TAGSPECIAL<br />
The disruptors<br />
Hugs”, which analyses whether users need a<br />
hug) under the motto “Your Data. Our Future.”<br />
This provoked Google to demand them to stop<br />
confusing their consumers and hand over their<br />
google-nest.org domain, offering $100 for the<br />
trouble. But the site had already gone viral,<br />
prompting many a media discussion on whether<br />
Google had overstepped its boundaries.<br />
CHART BY TATIANA BAZZICHELLI<br />
Don’t fight the system – disrupt it! Meet the subversive,<br />
satirical, risk-taking Berliners trying to effect change<br />
from within. By Tatiana Bazzichelli<br />
The Snowden revelations have generated<br />
an intense debate in Berlin. But trying<br />
to deal with the topic, it is easy either<br />
to become paralysed by its complexity,<br />
disillusioned by its grand scale, or deterred by<br />
fears of surveillance and repression.<br />
Can we imagine new tools and new answers<br />
that are not merely based on the idea of hiding<br />
if there really is No Place To Hide, as the title of<br />
Glenn Greenwald’s book on Snowden suggests?<br />
Perhaps we should start focusing on how to<br />
empower people to act consciously in society,<br />
culture and the media environment.<br />
Some Berlin-based artistic and activist groups<br />
have been trying to do just that. Their tactic?<br />
Disruption.<br />
Here, the idea of disruption means to generate<br />
criticism by “performing the machine” which we<br />
want to fight – oftentimes from within.<br />
This practice is nothing new in Germany.<br />
Take journalist Günter Wallraff, who in the<br />
1960s went undercover to get insight into power<br />
structures and abuses, assuming identities such<br />
as a homeless person, an alcoholic and a worker<br />
in a chemical factory as described in his popular<br />
13 unerwünschte Reportagen (13 Undesired Reports).<br />
His name has even become a verb in Swedish,<br />
meaning “to expose misconduct from the inside<br />
by assuming a role”. This approach has a double<br />
effect: from one side it reveals previously hidden<br />
information to the public, and from the other, it<br />
empowers them to adopt this methodology and<br />
keep the ball of exposure rolling.<br />
Today, in the context of increasingly invasive<br />
corporations and government agencies, Berlin<br />
collectives have had to get creative. While their<br />
methods vary wildly, the goal is the same: to<br />
rip away the veil of secrecy around institutions<br />
and media corporations, and to get unexpected<br />
feedback and reactions – whether positive or<br />
negative.<br />
With HEDONIST INTERNATIONAL, whose Fifth<br />
Congress took place last June near Berlin, the<br />
strategy of infiltration meets the practice of disruption.<br />
In their manifesto the members of the<br />
“communication guerrilla collective”, as activist<br />
Alexander Müller describes it, introduce “hedonism<br />
as the engine of a society as the chance to<br />
overcome present circumstances”. In their view,<br />
“where fun ends, hierarchy begins”. Instead of<br />
“playing the system”, their playful interventions<br />
liberate or “queer” power structures.<br />
The group’s activities go beyond dancing<br />
naked in neo-Nazi hotspots or holding hedonistic<br />
nude flat viewing rallies to oppose Berlin<br />
gentrification. In 2011, when German defence<br />
minister Karl-Theodor Guttenberg was accused<br />
of plagiarism of his doctoral dissertation and<br />
forced to resign, the Hedonists organised a fake<br />
demonstration of solidarity for the minister, attracting<br />
many of his conservative supporters and<br />
consequently making them very confused with<br />
ironic slogans like “Jetzt oder nie – Monarchie!”.<br />
The Hedonists also applied the strategy of<br />
disturbance by generating fake Twitter accounts.<br />
In the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe, they<br />
created an account on behalf of the Atom Forum,<br />
the German nuclear lobby, to question their<br />
arguments and point out the consequence of the<br />
meltdown – until the Atom Forum decided to<br />
take legal action against the Hedonists, demonstrating<br />
that the system can always force its truth<br />
on you, even if you play with the truth itself.<br />
Fake-tweeting for the company DigiTask,<br />
manufacturer of the “Staatstrojaner” government<br />
spyware exposed by the Chaos Computer Club<br />
in 2011, again earned the Hedonists a Cease and<br />
Desist letter. To justify its legal action, DigiTask<br />
claimed that the spyware was not used in the<br />
countries the activists were stating, rather in<br />
other countries, including Austria – generating<br />
another boomerang effect and causing a scandal<br />
among Austrian activists.<br />
Meanwhile, the tactic of the German PENG!<br />
COLLECTIVE is to intrude into corporate conferences.<br />
In December 2013 they hijacked the<br />
Science Slam in Berlin, organised by Shell to<br />
promote innovation by inviting young scientists<br />
to present new ideas. The collective showed up<br />
with an “amazing machine” that, when turned<br />
on, flipped open to reveal the message “Slam<br />
Shell” and began gushing oil on the presenters<br />
as they demanded cleaner business practices<br />
in Nigeria and the end of drilling in the Arctic.<br />
They used a similar tactic at the May <strong>2014</strong><br />
re:publica festival, where, inspired by Google’s<br />
acquisition of home-device manufacturer Nest,<br />
they posed as Google employees to deliver a<br />
presentation about their new, seemingly utopian<br />
“Google Nest” technology (for example, “Google<br />
Another Berlin-based group that has made<br />
disruption a source of artistic practice is the<br />
TELEKOMMUNISTEN collective, initiated by<br />
Canadian developer and “venture communist”<br />
Dmytri Kleiner (an early critique of the existing<br />
copyright norms but also the Creative Commons<br />
movement, to which he opposed a Copyfarleft<br />
licence system). Active in Berlin for around 10<br />
years, the Telekommunisten have been demonstrating<br />
how it is possible to work from within<br />
the logics of centralised online (and offline)<br />
systems, by imagining a series of “miscommunication<br />
technologies” which “don’t work<br />
as expected, or work in an unexpected way”.<br />
Their last work, the Numbers Station, responds<br />
directly to the recent debate on surveillance<br />
and the need for data encryption. Addressed<br />
ironically to all spies and whistleblowers, the<br />
system is based on decryption cards, which help<br />
participants decode phrases delivered by radio<br />
communications. By bringing together playfulness<br />
and encryption, and making crypto-tools<br />
accessible as an artwork, Numbers Station shows<br />
that to perform disruption you have to become<br />
aware of the possibilities of your Internet presence,<br />
and you need to explore its strength while<br />
testing its limits.<br />
In this post-Snowden, post-digital era, disruption<br />
tactics have never been more accessible.<br />
What Edward Snowden did, what Chelsea<br />
Manning did and what other whistleblowers<br />
did before them demonstrate that disruption is<br />
ready to be applied by everyone. Holes in the<br />
systems are everywhere, ready to be exploited.<br />
What are you waiting for? n<br />
Tatiana Bazzichelli is a curator<br />
and researcher, author of<br />
the books Networked<br />
Disruption and Disrupting<br />
Business (2013). She was<br />
programme curator at<br />
the transmediale festival<br />
and she is planning a new<br />
series of events under the<br />
name Disruption Network Lab<br />
(upcoming 2015), to bring into<br />
dialogue local and international hackers,<br />
activists, networkers, and critical thinkers<br />
within the framework of art, hacktivism and<br />
network economy.<br />
GISELLA SORRENO<br />
31
What’s on<br />
CALENDAR<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
CLASSICAL TUESDAY, SEP 2 The<br />
Berlin Philharmonie runs a<br />
marathon in cooperation with<br />
Berliner Festspiele, with 31 instrumental<br />
and vocal performances.<br />
The opening is a tribute<br />
to Johannes Brahms’ Piano<br />
Concertos. Through Sep 22.<br />
Starts 19:00. (see page 42)<br />
Musikfest<br />
15 Years Post Theater<br />
THEATRE SUNDAY, SEP 7 Paragon<br />
of both traditional and<br />
contemporary theatre and<br />
dance performances – Post<br />
Theater turns 15. It closes out<br />
with Jobs im Himmel but catch<br />
what you can starting Sep<br />
3. Theaterdiscounter. Starts<br />
20:00.<br />
15<br />
Erotic Crisis<br />
THEATRE MONDAY, SEP 15 The<br />
new piece from Yael Ronen<br />
gives Gorki a more erotic<br />
charge. Exploring sexuality<br />
among a myriad of social<br />
constellations, tonight is the<br />
first staging with English subs.<br />
Maxim Gorki. Starts 19:30.<br />
ULRICH “ULI”<br />
SCHREIBER founded<br />
Berlin’s International<br />
Literature Festival<br />
(Sep 10-20, see<br />
page 42) in 2001 and<br />
remains its illustrious<br />
head to this day.<br />
FRIDAY 20:00 A film at<br />
Delphi Filmpalast (Kantstr.<br />
12a, Charlottenburg).<br />
22:00 Drinks and<br />
maybe dinner at Paris<br />
Bar (Kantstr. 152,<br />
Charlottenburg).<br />
SATURDAY 8:00 Coffee<br />
and croissant at Literaturcafé<br />
(Else-Ury-Bogen<br />
599-601, Charlottenburg).<br />
Reading the last<br />
pages of Judith Hermann’s<br />
novel Aller Liebe<br />
Anfang. 10:00 Shopping<br />
at the weekly market<br />
(Karl-August Platz,<br />
Charlottenburg). 12:00<br />
Aglio e olio and cold<br />
white wine at Biscotti<br />
(Pestalozzistr. 88, Charlottenburg);<br />
talking with<br />
friends, watching people<br />
passing happily with<br />
beautiful flowers in their<br />
Moderat, Berlin Festival, Sep 5<br />
0<br />
10<br />
the city embraces 11 days of<br />
International Literature<br />
Festival<br />
LITERATURE WEDNESDAY, SEP 10<br />
Bookworms of Berlin rejoice as<br />
literary celebration. Over 180<br />
guests give lectures, workshops<br />
and readings from prose to poetry.<br />
Through Sep 21. Various<br />
venues. (see page 42)<br />
Erotic Crisis, Sep 15<br />
My perfect Berlin weekend<br />
0<br />
arms. 14:00 Sanssouci<br />
bread (my favourite)<br />
at Butter Lindner<br />
(Voßstr. 35, Charlottenburg).<br />
15:00 Listening<br />
to Tom Waits while cooking<br />
and preparing my<br />
flat for an evening party.<br />
16:00 Waiting for wine<br />
delivery from Klemke<br />
(Mommsenstr. 9, Charlottenburg).<br />
20:00 My<br />
first guests arrive. Soon<br />
I won’t be a noticeable<br />
host any more, just<br />
part of the crowd.<br />
SUNDAY 12:00 Sit<br />
on my balcony, reading<br />
Dave Eggers’ The<br />
Circle. 14:00 Maybe<br />
I will take a walk in<br />
Schlosspark Charlottenburg,<br />
maybe not.<br />
3<br />
Berlin Music Week<br />
MUSIC WEDNESDAY, SEP 3<br />
Music is an industry, too. Aside<br />
from the 100 artists drawn to<br />
the city, there’ll be a conference<br />
with 2000 industry suits<br />
from 30 countries hanging<br />
around to find the next<br />
big thing. Through Sep<br />
7. Various venues.<br />
11<br />
Pasolini Roma<br />
ART FILM THURSDAY, SEP 11<br />
Auteur or agitator? Explore<br />
the life and work of one of the<br />
most controversial yet important<br />
directors of all time – Pier<br />
Paolo Pasolini. Through Jan<br />
5. Martin-Gropius-Bau. Starts<br />
10:00. (see page 38)<br />
Berlin Art Week<br />
ART TUESDAY, SEP 16 Although<br />
alt-fave Preview has dissolved,<br />
Berlin’s abuzz with art through<br />
16<br />
three fairs: ABC, Preview successor<br />
Positions and unofficial<br />
affiliate Liste. The city-wide<br />
hobnobbing goes on through<br />
Sep 21. (see page 50)<br />
22<br />
Miss Kenichi<br />
MUSIC MONDAY, SEP 22 Back<br />
with new album The Trail, Miss<br />
Kenichi has appeared in these<br />
pages a few times over the<br />
years, both as highlight and as<br />
writer. She hits the stage with<br />
Lonski and Classen as support.<br />
Lido. Starts 20:00.<br />
Azealia Banks<br />
MUSIC FRIDAY, SEP 26 The<br />
shade-throwing hip hop Amazon<br />
brings her trademark<br />
26<br />
breakneck flow and pottymouth<br />
and, hopefully, a taste<br />
of her upcoming album Broke<br />
with Expensive Taste. Huxley’s<br />
Neue Welt. Starts 20:00. (see<br />
page 46)<br />
Also Sep 3-4:<br />
Transduction<br />
concert<br />
installation at<br />
Berghain<br />
4<br />
Jewish Culture Days<br />
FESTIVAL THURSDAY, SEP 4<br />
Shalom! For 10 days Berlin<br />
will celebrate everything Jewish<br />
through concerts, children’s<br />
workshops, synagogue<br />
tours, exhibitions and<br />
Pasolini Roma, Sep 11<br />
street festivals. Through<br />
Sep 14. Various locations.<br />
Starts 8:00.<br />
0<br />
17<br />
Blonde Redhead<br />
MUSIC WEDNESDAY, SEP 17<br />
Blonde Redhead return just<br />
in time for the release of their<br />
new album Barragán: something<br />
for both new and old<br />
fans of the early-2000s indie<br />
rock dreamers. Frannz Club.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
23<br />
Funk style costumes and emit<br />
Goat<br />
MUSIC TUESDAY, SEP 23 The<br />
psychedelic-experimental-fusion<br />
band from Sweden don P-<br />
eccentric live voodoo vibes<br />
that would make even the likes<br />
of James Brown proud. Postbahnhof.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
Mary Ocher, Sep 27<br />
0<br />
STEPHAN WHITE ANGELO NOVI, FONDAZIONE<br />
CINETECA DI BOLOGNA<br />
32 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
Jewish Culture Days, Sep 4<br />
0<br />
12<br />
Colourbox<br />
ART FRIDAY, SEP 12 Wolfgang<br />
Tillman’s project space hosts<br />
a retrospective on 4AD electronic<br />
band Colourbox. Aheadof-their-time<br />
in album art, they<br />
beat Einstürzende Neubauten<br />
to the horse penis punch by<br />
six years. Between Bridges.<br />
Starts 19:00.<br />
Der Anständige<br />
FILM THURSDAY, SEP 18 Catch<br />
Vanessa Lapa’s documentary<br />
on one of history’s greatest vil-<br />
18<br />
lains, Heinrich Himmler. Using<br />
private letters only made public<br />
in February, this is a personal<br />
glimpse into the Nazi’s<br />
mind. Volksbühne. Starts<br />
20:00.<br />
24<br />
GusGus<br />
MUSIC WEDNESDAY, SEP 24<br />
Twenty years into a varied career,<br />
Icelandic electronic outfit<br />
GusGus released the techhouse-tinged<br />
Mexico this year.<br />
The show will be Obnoxiously<br />
Sexual. Also Sep 23. Berghain.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
27<br />
Mary Ocher<br />
MUSIC SATURDAY, SEP 27 Berlin’s<br />
multi-talented songstress<br />
is leaving the Government behind<br />
(just for one show) to entertain<br />
us solo, spiced up with<br />
piano. Lucrecia Dalt supports.<br />
Roter Salon. Starts 21:00.<br />
Also Sep 12-13:<br />
Beer & Beef and<br />
the last Bite Club<br />
Mitte...<br />
5<br />
MUSIC FRIDAY, SEP 5 The fest<br />
moved camp last minute this<br />
year from Tempelhof to Arena<br />
Park for a 48-hour lineup including<br />
Mount Kimbie, Hudson<br />
Mohawke, Moderat, Jessie<br />
Ware and Digitalism (see page<br />
44). Through Sep 7.<br />
Berlin Festival<br />
13<br />
lead guided tours of museums<br />
Day of Open Memorials<br />
TOURS SATURDAY, SEP 13 Over<br />
two days archaeologists, restorers<br />
and conservationists<br />
and concert halls, letting audiences<br />
in on the secret side<br />
of Berlin’s listed buildings.<br />
Through Sep 14. Various<br />
locations.<br />
0<br />
Dubl Trubl, Sep 19<br />
25<br />
EXBlicks: Stasi night<br />
FILM THURSDAY, SEP 25<br />
A unique programme from the<br />
Stasi vaults including spy training<br />
and GDR propaganda films,<br />
plus a doc on Cold War espionage<br />
and a discussion with Hubertus<br />
Knabe, head of the Stasi<br />
Museum. Lichtblick Kino. Starts<br />
20:30. (see page 39)<br />
28<br />
of handbikers, power walkers<br />
Berlin Marathon<br />
SPORTS SUNDAY, SEP 28 Clear<br />
the streets! Berlin gets taken<br />
over for a city-wide marathon<br />
and runners. If you wanna strap<br />
on the rollerblades or bring the<br />
kiddies, there’s a special race<br />
for them the day before.<br />
Also Sep 13-14:<br />
Folsom Street<br />
Europe<br />
6<br />
Experimentdays<br />
POLITICS & ACTIVISM SATURDAY,<br />
SEP 6 The annual urban development<br />
fest runs from Sep<br />
5-13. Today, catch an exhibition<br />
and discussion with South African<br />
artist Terry Kurgan, whose<br />
work concerns the public versus<br />
private realm. Bootshaus.<br />
Starts 11:00.<br />
25 Jahre Mauerfall<br />
– We Are The Play<br />
STAGE SUNDAY, SEP 14 Part of<br />
English Theatre Berlin’s month-<br />
14<br />
long exploration, this site-specific<br />
interactive performance<br />
piece focuses on Germans and<br />
Ausländer during the fall of the<br />
Wall. From Sep 11. Berlin Wall<br />
Memorial. Starts 19:00.<br />
19<br />
brought here to mix and match<br />
DUBL TRUBL>>Ich bin<br />
in Berlin<br />
ART FRIDAY, SEP 19 More than<br />
80 international artists are<br />
skills and disciplines in surprising<br />
ways: from art to film<br />
to music. Opening party on<br />
Sep 18. Through Oct 26. Starts<br />
12:00. (see page 49)<br />
Berlin Marathon, Sep 28<br />
0<br />
29<br />
The Space Lady<br />
MUSIC MONDAY, SEP 29<br />
Spaced-out covers and originals<br />
from a San Francisco<br />
street musician turned rediscovered<br />
cult heroine with a<br />
fascinating life story (see page<br />
46). Marie Antoinette. Starts<br />
20:00.<br />
1.10.–31.12.<br />
Meg Stuart /<br />
Damaged Goods<br />
Phil Collins<br />
Sarah Vanhee<br />
Dries Verhoeven<br />
Ivo Dimchev<br />
Farid Fairuz<br />
Forced<br />
Entertainment<br />
Philippe Quesne<br />
Gob Squad<br />
andcompany&Co.<br />
Kat Válastur<br />
Hans-Werner<br />
Kroesinger<br />
Damian Rebgetz<br />
Rimini Protokoll<br />
Laurent<br />
Chétouane<br />
Isabelle Schad<br />
Mouse On Mars<br />
Jefta van Dinther<br />
Adam Linder<br />
Nicoleta<br />
Esinencu<br />
u.v.m.<br />
<br />
33<br />
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de
What’s on<br />
FILM<br />
STARTS AUG 28<br />
Wolfskinder<br />
D: Rick Ostermann<br />
(Germany 2013) with<br />
Levin Liam, Helena Phil,<br />
Vivien Ciskowski ◆◆◆◆<br />
Ostermann’s debut film<br />
and winner of the <strong>2014</strong><br />
“Friedenspreis des<br />
deutschen Films”, this<br />
portrait of the odyssey<br />
undertaken by Hans<br />
(Liam) as he struggles<br />
through post-WWII occupational and partisan brutalities<br />
on his way to Lithuania searching for his younger brother<br />
should be seen twice: once to appreciate the artistic<br />
mastery of a largely ‘voiceless’ screenplay and soberly<br />
stunning cinematography. And again: as a filter for the<br />
millions of children’s voices currently undergoing something<br />
similar – in reality. EL<br />
DANIEL MCFADDEN<br />
FILM<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
STARTS SEP 4<br />
Hercules<br />
D: Brett Ratner (USA<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Dwayne Johnson,<br />
Ian McShane<br />
◆◆ It’s “Lions and<br />
hydras and boars, oh<br />
my!” as the usually<br />
likeable Johnson and the<br />
much maligned Ratner<br />
join a selection of fine<br />
British thesps for this<br />
moderately diverting<br />
retelling of the demi-god’s slightly latter years. Taking<br />
place after his widely eulogised trials, we find Hercules<br />
as a myth turned mercenary; trekking the wilderness<br />
with his grumbling comrades until that one last lucrative<br />
job offers an early way out. Credit for choosing to<br />
debunk the hero’s mythology: aside from that, we all<br />
know the drill. ROC<br />
STARTS SEP 4<br />
Deliver Us From Evil<br />
D: Scott Derrickson (USA<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Eric Bana, Édgar<br />
Ramírez, Olivia Munn<br />
◆◆ When New York<br />
police officer Ralph Sarchie<br />
(Bana) investigates a<br />
series of inexplicable but<br />
somehow interconnected<br />
crimes, he crosses the<br />
path of an unorthodox<br />
priest. Together they combat<br />
the evil spreading amongst Iraq vets, revealing his<br />
own hidden guilt in the process. Adopting many elements<br />
from the real-life Sarchie’s actual cases, this film is a<br />
post-Iraq-war take on exorcism where horror genre meets<br />
action and crime drama – with few surprises. YC<br />
STARTS SEP 11<br />
Song From The Forest<br />
D: Michael Obert (Germany<br />
2013) documentary<br />
with Louis Sarno<br />
◆◆◆◆ Following Sarno,<br />
a musician who lived with<br />
and recorded the music of<br />
pygmy Bayaka tribe in a<br />
Central African rainforest<br />
for over 25 years, on his<br />
journey back to his native<br />
New York with his young<br />
son Samedi, Obert’s film (see interview, page 36) is an intelligent<br />
portrait of a hunter-gatherer people losing its way<br />
of life, a man finding his way again and a boy embracing a<br />
globalised future. Reverberating with polyphonies from the<br />
Renaissance and the heart of Africa, this baroque sense<br />
fest captivates heart and soul. MW<br />
34 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong><br />
The flesh hell of Hollywood<br />
By EVE LUCAS<br />
A scene in David Cronenberg’s MAPS TO THE<br />
STARS (photo) shows ‘ageing’ movie actress Hannah<br />
Segrand (Moore) rushing onto her pool patio<br />
for a little elated gig with chore-whore Agatha<br />
(Wasikowska). A rival’s little boy has drowned in<br />
another pool somewhere in Hollywood. Things<br />
are looking up.<br />
States of extreme confusion are Cronenberg’s<br />
stock in trade and a Hollywood populated by<br />
emotionally distant and deceptively close stars<br />
and gods is a natural choice of habitat. Not<br />
surprisingly, Bruce Wagner’s screenplay is selfconsciously<br />
heavy on the invocation of grand<br />
themes from Greek mythology: brother-sister incest,<br />
emotional infanticide and a bevy of visitors<br />
from the netherworld. All quite apart from the<br />
regular cast of treachery, greed and ambition that<br />
humdingers its way through Segrand’s coterie:<br />
her feel-good spin-guru Stafford Weiss (Cusack),<br />
his tormented wife (Williams), recently detoxed<br />
child-star son Benjie (Bird) and the bad daughter<br />
who’s back in town. Watching it all through his<br />
rear-view mirror is the hired limo driver Jerome<br />
(Pattinson in a neat inversion of his role in Cosmopolis).<br />
He’s working on his own screenplay, so<br />
yeah, “everything is research”.<br />
Jerome’s role is loosely based on Wagner’s own<br />
experiences starting out in Hollywood. His view<br />
of indolent, detached curiosity has been done<br />
before (Altman’s The Player to name just one).<br />
What Cronenberg/Wagner bring to this game is<br />
the detachment of meta-textual commentary on<br />
stardom, presenting Hollywood as a firmament<br />
of humans “acting” as celestial bodies. It’s a consistently<br />
unpleasant and deliberately unnatural<br />
angle, contextualised by DP Peter Suschitsky,<br />
whose background in still photography imparts<br />
a predatory stasis to Rodeo Drive and Hollywood<br />
Boulevard. Characters move through these<br />
abeyant spaces as people but also as merchandise.<br />
They are human subjects (evidenced by a<br />
constipated Moore straining on the loo), but<br />
see themselves as god-like objects of adulation<br />
and emulation. These are freshly and viciously<br />
observed dualities, albeit slightly overdrawn<br />
and slackly edited. But as the curtain closes on<br />
a last shot of tragedy there’s little question that<br />
Cronenberg has again framed some pretty bad<br />
lands. This Hollywood is Medea and she’s a titled<br />
logo beaming in the distance: an impervious<br />
signifier of status, watching the slaughter of her<br />
children from her perch in the hills.<br />
The ‘Map to the Stars’ (as in map of stars’ addresses)<br />
also plays a small role in Mike Myers’<br />
SUPERMENSCH: THE LEGEND OF SHEP GORDON as<br />
Gordon recalls how he posted the notice “Alice<br />
doesn’t live here anymore” on Alice Cooper’s<br />
Hollywood home during the star’s stint in rehab.<br />
Originally intent on becoming a probation officer,<br />
Gordon literally stumbled into Hollywood<br />
via the legendary Landmark Motel, where he<br />
tried to separate what he thought was a couple<br />
fighting. It turned out to be Janis Joplin and Jimi<br />
Hendrix. Hendrix suggested Gordon try his hand<br />
at talent management: specifically, Alice Cooper.<br />
Gordon rose to become an impresario extraordinaire:<br />
other clients include Anne Murray and<br />
Luther Vandross. As a producer (Prince of Darkness)<br />
he pioneered US independent film. He’s also<br />
friendly with the Dalai Lama. With the exception<br />
of a few quirky graphics, Myers’ documentary on<br />
his friend Gordon is straightforward. It’s also an<br />
engagingly frank reflection on an anomaly: a generous<br />
man whose “compassionate business” ethic<br />
has kept him afloat and decent in that very same<br />
environment evoked so darkly by Cronenberg. ■<br />
STARTS SEP 11<br />
Maps to the Stars ◆◆◆<br />
Directed by David Cronenberg (Canada, USA, France, Germany<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
Supermensch: the Legend of Shep Gordon ◆◆◆<br />
Directed by Mike Myers (USA 2013) documentary with Shep<br />
Gordon<br />
ALL MOVIES ARE IN OV WITH GERMAN SUBTITLES UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
STARTS AUG 28<br />
Begin Again<br />
(Can A Song Save Your Life?) D: John<br />
Carney (USA 2013) with Mark Ruffalo, Keira<br />
Knightley, Hailee Steinfeld, Adam Levine,<br />
Catherine Keener ◆◆◆ If, as freshly<br />
unemployed music producer/exec<br />
indie label founder Dan (Ruffalo)<br />
says, music has the ability to<br />
“invest banality with meaning”, you<br />
won’t find a better example of that<br />
maxim than right here, in Carney’s<br />
follow-up to the endearing Once.<br />
That’s better – as in “between<br />
good and best”. Because let’s just<br />
say that this story of singer-songwriter<br />
Gretta (Knightley doing her<br />
own vocals) who’s about to leave<br />
NY after her rising rock-star<br />
boyfriend (Levine) dumps her, is<br />
discovered by Dan and agrees to<br />
joint venture an album of her<br />
songs street-recorded live in New<br />
York – well, it doesn’t re-invent the<br />
plot wheel. It does take the<br />
age-worn tropes of disillusioned<br />
passion and artistic integrity,<br />
fine-tune them via solid performances<br />
from main and subsidiary<br />
stars (with Keener/Steinfeld<br />
notably good as Dan’s wife and<br />
daughter) and whoop the whole<br />
thing up with a couple of wellplaced<br />
set-piece performances<br />
(albeit studio synced) against<br />
some classic NY backdrops. Add<br />
CeeLo Green as verse-rapping<br />
sponsor Troublegum, a bit of<br />
trans-Atlantic chemistry and a light<br />
hand behind the camera and the<br />
mic and you got yourself some<br />
nicely observed female empowerment.<br />
Summer ain’t over yet. See<br />
it out with this. EL<br />
AHA.<br />
DEUTSCH!<br />
STARTS AUG 28<br />
Guardians of the Galaxy<br />
D: James Gunn (USA <strong>2014</strong>) with Chris<br />
Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin<br />
Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Benicio Del Toro<br />
◆◆◆◆ There was a time when<br />
the little red Marvel logo on a<br />
film poster inspired feelings of<br />
childlike wonder and excitement<br />
in even the average filmgoer. Unfortunately,<br />
as of late, the oncereliable<br />
publishing company has<br />
churned out a spate of sub-par,<br />
kitsch, forgettable blockbusters<br />
that have paled in comparison<br />
with their predecessors. Guardians<br />
of the Galaxy, however, has<br />
completely (and thankfully) put a<br />
stop to this trend. It’s an origins<br />
tale of the adventures of Peter<br />
Quill, a human kidnapped from<br />
his home planet Earth and thrust<br />
into a new life of interstellar<br />
thievery. Upon obtaining a mysterious<br />
and coveted orb as part<br />
of a lucrative deal with an alien<br />
jeweller, he is attacked by an<br />
unlikely group of bounty hunters:<br />
a mutant raccoon, a tree-man<br />
and an oddly attractive bright<br />
green spacewoman... and thus,<br />
the Guardians of the Galaxy are<br />
born. It’s the breath of fresh air<br />
Marvel needed to recover from its<br />
recent stagnancy and the surprising<br />
amount of belly laughs are<br />
enough to win over even the most<br />
superhero-weary of viewers. MF<br />
goethe.de/berlin<br />
Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.<br />
35
What’s on<br />
FILM<br />
STARTS SEP 4<br />
Another Me<br />
(Another Me – Mein<br />
zweites Ich) D: Isabel<br />
Coixet (UK, Spain 2013)<br />
with Sophie Turner,<br />
Jonathan Rhys Meyers,<br />
Gregg Sulkin ◆<br />
Sophie Turner (Game of<br />
Thrones) stars as Fay,<br />
a teen whose grasp on<br />
reality disintegrates after<br />
she gets the lead in her<br />
school’s rendition of Macbeth. Add a bit of doppelgänger<br />
psychodrama and you have Isabel Coixet’s loose adaptation<br />
of Catherine MacPhail’s eponymous teen novel. It<br />
might sound promising on paper but not even the acting<br />
of Turner or Rhys Meyers can save the script’s forced<br />
esotericism and, well, plain bad writing. MH<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
Concerning Violence<br />
D: Göran Olsson, (Sweden<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Lauryn Hill<br />
◆◆◆◆ With Lauryn Hill<br />
reading excerpts from<br />
Frantz Fanon’s incendiary<br />
work on decolonisation<br />
The Wretched Of<br />
The Earth over Swedish<br />
television archive footage<br />
documenting the struggle<br />
for independence for<br />
colonised nations in Africa, Concerning Violence is an<br />
intelligent and even-handed interrogation of the use<br />
of violence both by the colonial powers on oppressed<br />
natives and by freedom fighters wresting the power back.<br />
Its Nine Scenes From The Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defence<br />
are by turns beautiful, funny and disturbing, allowing the<br />
images and people to speak for themselves. MW<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
A World Not Ours<br />
D: Mahdi Fleifel (UK, Lebanon,<br />
Denmark, UAE 2012)<br />
documentary ◆◆◆◆<br />
Before the Syrian troubles,<br />
the Palestinian refugee<br />
camp Ain El-Helweh in<br />
Southern Lebanon housed<br />
70,000. Even in 2012,<br />
when Fleifel made this<br />
film, it was crowded.<br />
Watch this film and<br />
imagine double that number trying to give their kids the<br />
kind of cheerful Woody Allen misery invoked by Fleifel to<br />
describe the soccer and semi-automatics that dominated<br />
his childhood – before descending into the desperation<br />
now suffered by his contemporaries. EL<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
Gemma Bovery<br />
D: Anne Fontaine, (France<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Gemma<br />
Arterton, Fabrice Luchini,<br />
Jason Flemyng ◆◆◆<br />
Fontaine returns to<br />
France for her adaptation<br />
of Posy Simmonds’ novel<br />
of French-speaking Brits<br />
abroad. At its core, it’s<br />
a humdrum comedy<br />
about men’s fascination<br />
with beautiful women, but blessed with a deliciously<br />
asinine performance from Luchini as the curtain-twitching<br />
neighbour who insists on turning Gemma (Arterton) and<br />
her extramarital relations into Gustave Flaubert’s fictional<br />
philanderer Emma Bovary – and turns a small town baker<br />
with an over-baked literary imagination into a hero. Once<br />
again, it seems, “Gemma Bovery, c’est moi.” MW<br />
36 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong><br />
“He’s my rainforest”By MARK WILSHIN<br />
In his debut documentary Song from the Forest<br />
(see review, page 34), Obert, a Berlin-based<br />
journalist turned filmmaker, follows Sarno and<br />
his son Samedi as they journey from their home<br />
among the Bayaka tribe to the US.<br />
Adventurer, journalist, writer, filmmaker<br />
– how would you describe yourself ?<br />
Storyteller. Or traveller and storyteller maybe. I<br />
think travelling brought me to writing, and<br />
writing brought me to filmmaking basically. But<br />
it’s mainly my interest in stories of human beings.<br />
I like these stories that ask existential questions<br />
basically, and that make me think about my own<br />
life, my own path, my own story, my own<br />
decisions. And that’s the way I write my stories.<br />
Song From The Forest is your first film. You<br />
must have faced a lot of challenges… No<br />
electricity, obviously. No running water. Dense<br />
vegetation. It’s always dark, incredibly humid.<br />
But the biggest challenge was shooting in the<br />
US, because of Louis’ deep culture shock. Very<br />
often I had to leave the camera and just turn<br />
from filmmaker to human being, to friend. To<br />
support him. I think that was a lot harder than<br />
anything we experienced in the jungle.<br />
How does that work? How do you know<br />
when to put the camera down? I don’t really<br />
consciously reflect on this. If I feel if this is a<br />
moment to help and act in a human way, then I<br />
just act. I think my filmmaking and my journalistic<br />
work is always happening on a very human<br />
level. At eye-level. So the people I’m dealing<br />
with, they usually trust me. I don’t want to<br />
disappoint them when they need my help.<br />
It’s a nostalgic film about lost people –<br />
both Louis Sarno and the Bayaka. Do you<br />
SONG FROM<br />
THE FOREST<br />
Sep 11<br />
A song on the radio led American Louis Sarno to the Central African<br />
rainforest. Twenty-five years later, MICHAEL OBERT found him there.<br />
think a documentary film can do more<br />
than just document? Personally, I don’t care<br />
about genre definitions. I like to treat the<br />
subject almost as if it was a feature film. I hate<br />
talking head films. I hate the whole biopic thing<br />
as well. For information, you can just go online.<br />
It’s definitely not a film about answers. I hate<br />
answers in movies. It’s a poetic work, and poetry<br />
is all about space I think. So the movie opens<br />
spaces and you can wander around the spaces as<br />
an audience, and then you come out with your<br />
questions. That’s the type of storytelling I’m<br />
interested in.<br />
It’s very observational and spontaneous<br />
– do you have a favourite moment? What<br />
really touches me still is whenever the 16thcentury<br />
music comes up. The whole idea to use<br />
William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices as the<br />
backbone of the whole movie, it’s an experiment,<br />
but I think it worked out really well.<br />
What’s the story behind that music ? That<br />
first night after our encounter, he took me to his<br />
hut and we were talking randomly for hours. At<br />
one point, I was so exhausted I just lay down on<br />
the earth floor, and maybe a couple of hours later<br />
I woke up and I heard this music, the first piece<br />
that we use to open the movie – the Kyrie of the<br />
Mass, sung by the Oxford Camerata. I had the<br />
feeling I was between a dream and reality. And<br />
then I opened my eyes and saw Louis at his<br />
worm-eaten table in the Rembrandt light of his<br />
lantern listening to this music, and I got<br />
goosebumps. I think the music Louis had heard<br />
on the radio lured him into the rainforest, but<br />
this music lured me into his life. It will be five<br />
years ago this autumn, and I’m still there. He’s a<br />
major part of my life, I’m a major part of his life.<br />
He’s my rainforest, basically. ■<br />
ALL MOVIES ARE IN OV WITH GERMAN SUBTITLES UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
DIGITAL<br />
OFFSET PRINT<br />
STARTS SEP 4<br />
Still Life<br />
(Mr. May und das Flüstern der Ewigkeit) D:<br />
Uberto Pasolini (UK, Italy 2013) with Eddie<br />
Marsan, Joanne Froggatt ◆◆◆◆ The art<br />
of framing a still life demands deference<br />
to detail and atmosphere.<br />
And although he’s actually related<br />
to Visconti, Vermeer feels more<br />
genetically relevant to this second<br />
film from Uberto Pasolini (producer<br />
of The Full Monty) as he steps<br />
delicately, frame-by-frame, through<br />
the life of Mr. May (Marsan), a<br />
London council worker tasked with<br />
tracing the relatives of people who<br />
have died alone and, failing that,<br />
to arrange their solitary funerals.<br />
Pasolini’s first film Machan<br />
followed a group of Sri Lankans<br />
who successfully applied for exit<br />
visas to Germany by pretending<br />
to be the national handball team.<br />
His eye for the humanely absurd<br />
is clothed here in the poetry of<br />
intimacy. As May, Marsan personifies<br />
a dedication to honouring the<br />
fast-disappearing lives of his case<br />
files, picking over their modest possessions<br />
to get a feeling for their<br />
unsung interests and translating<br />
these pathetic accretions into moving<br />
obituaries. As the potential love<br />
interest Downton Abbey’s Froggatt<br />
adds a note of potential salvation.<br />
But it’s the directorial effort<br />
that’s truly redemptive. Echoing<br />
May’s own role as a re-creator of<br />
existence, Pasolini burnishes a life<br />
of unpromising bits and pieces –<br />
turning unravelled existence into a<br />
lustrous epigraph to loneliness. EL<br />
New!<br />
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format<br />
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instant service<br />
STARTS SEP 11<br />
A Most Wanted Man<br />
D: Anton Corbijn (UK, Germany 2012)<br />
with Philip Seymour Hoffmann ◆◆◆◆<br />
Following his 2007 debut Control,<br />
Dutch-born photographer turned<br />
director Corbijn returns to form<br />
with a version of Le Carré’s<br />
eponymous novel, filmed in Hamburg<br />
and Berlin in just 40 days.<br />
The constraints imposed by this<br />
schedule are evident, but logically<br />
so, in the movie’s delineation of<br />
post 9/11 counter-terrorist urgency<br />
as a sequence of grey zones that<br />
start with a thin, dishevelled man<br />
climbing out of Hamburg’s port<br />
waters and running to take shelter.<br />
A semi-official anti-terror unit operating<br />
under one Günther Bachmann<br />
(Hoffmann) with the grudging<br />
complicity of Germany’s secret<br />
services soon identifies this most<br />
wanted man as a Muslim Chechen<br />
who has evidently come to Hamburg<br />
following the money deposited<br />
there by his deceased father, a<br />
Russian officer. As Bachmann and<br />
his team (staffed by Nina Hoss and<br />
Daniel Brühl) negotiate playing-time<br />
and the support of an idealistic<br />
human-rights lawyer (Rachel Adams),<br />
the greater powers (including<br />
Robin Wright as a CIA operative)<br />
engage in their own cat-and-mouse<br />
games. Undermining morality with<br />
zealous conviction, the ensemble<br />
cast pursues agendas marked by<br />
delusion and righteousness. And<br />
PSH locks it all together: scruffily<br />
benevolent, sharp yet slovenly,<br />
his performance will make you<br />
weep for what is – and what might<br />
have been. EL<br />
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37<br />
anything
What’s on<br />
FILM<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
The Decent One<br />
(Der Anständige) D:<br />
Vanessa Lapa (Israel, Germany<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) documentary<br />
◆◆◆ Working with<br />
virgin material taken from<br />
the diaries and letters of<br />
Himmler and his family,<br />
Lapa tells the story of<br />
the SS-Reichsführer and<br />
Holocaust architect “in<br />
his own words”. Merging<br />
original photos and texts with contemporary found footage,<br />
Lapa deliberately (and sometimes confusingly) blurs<br />
the essentially factual with fictional structures, creating<br />
a portrait of a fond family man utterly unaware of his<br />
vicious inhumanity – whose daughter describes a 1941<br />
(pre-Final Solution) outing to Dachau as a “wonderful<br />
trip to a large enterprise”. EL<br />
STARTS SEP 18<br />
Shirley: Visions of Reality<br />
D: Gustav Deutsch (Austria<br />
2013) with Stephanie<br />
Cumming, Christoph Bach<br />
◆◆◆ Found footage<br />
filmmaker Deutsch uses<br />
13 of Edward Hopper’s<br />
paintings as tableaux vivants<br />
and starting points<br />
for an exploration of the<br />
troubled realities behind<br />
the artist’s serene solipsism.<br />
Re-presenting what<br />
appear to be private reflections as historic moments on<br />
August 28/29 in 1937, 1939, 1940, etc., Deutsch’s<br />
trajectory ends with the Civil Rights March in 1963. It<br />
helps to know both of Hopper’s reactionary misogyny<br />
and the director’s idealist counterpoint (a liberal feminist<br />
agenda). Then, it works. EL<br />
STARTS SEP 25<br />
Walking on Sunshine<br />
D: Max Giwa, Dania<br />
Pasquini (UK <strong>2014</strong>)<br />
with Annabel Scholey,<br />
Giulio Berruti, Greg Wise<br />
◆◆ There are a couple<br />
of reasons to watch<br />
this film about two sisters<br />
and their holiday romance<br />
gone serious with the<br />
same man: the 1980s<br />
feel-good vibe of Katrina<br />
et al, and the ice-cutting jaw line of Latin lover Giulio<br />
Berruti. And maybe one or two flash mob dance scenes.<br />
Oh, and maybe Greg Wise’s roguish smirk? You’ll stay in<br />
your seat for the duration but comparisons afterwards to<br />
Mamma Mia might make you wish you hadn’t. EL<br />
STARTS SEP 25<br />
I Origins<br />
D: Mike Cahill (USA,<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Michael<br />
Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid<br />
Bergès-Frisbey ◆◆<br />
The molecular biologist<br />
Dr. Ian Gray, in the grip<br />
of an obsession with<br />
human eyes, falls in love<br />
with Sofi’s eyes at first<br />
sight. As their romance<br />
advances and starts to<br />
intermingle with Ian’s research, these eyes eventually lead<br />
Ian to cut all ties with his previous scientific and spiritual<br />
beliefs. This is an ambitious project in terms of its mixture<br />
of genres, international production and alternative<br />
ideology; yet the overall eye-pleasing aesthetics cannot<br />
conceal a flawed script and general imbalance. YC<br />
38 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong><br />
Flicks our picks<br />
Special screenings, festivals and retrospectives you shouldn’t miss this month<br />
DOWN UNDER<br />
BERLIN<br />
Sep 11-14<br />
AUG 27-SEP 7<br />
Fancy fantasy<br />
Opening with The Rover, David Michôd’s study of a<br />
lawless Australia post-economic collapse whose<br />
bleak consistency of vision impressed critics at<br />
Cannes, this year’s collated mind-games, aka the<br />
hugely popular FANTASY FILMFEST, also presents<br />
(finally) a chance to catch Jonathan Glazer’s Under<br />
the Skin, featuring Scarlett Johansson’s best<br />
innocuous predatory zombie, before the movie gets<br />
its October DVD release. Best zombie title must go<br />
to the wickedly entertaining All Cheerleaders Must<br />
Die (Mckee/Sivertson, <strong>2014</strong>). Aliens are well<br />
represented in insider-acclaimed Coherence,<br />
Texan-noir gets an outing in We Gotta Get out of this<br />
Place (Hawkins Bros, 2013) and mockumentary<br />
suburban Gothic from New Zealand should find an<br />
instant fan base in What we do in the Shadows<br />
(Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, <strong>2014</strong>). With a<br />
special premiere screening of The November Man<br />
(Roger Donaldson, <strong>2014</strong>), plenty of fresh blood in<br />
the Fresh Blood Section and a special performance<br />
of Epstein’s 1928 classic The Fall of the House of<br />
Usher vamped up with a DJ set, genres are again<br />
up for grabs. If you don’t see things that others do,<br />
you’ll have only yourself to blame. Details at www.<br />
fantasyfilmfest.com. EL FANTASY FILMFEST | Cinemaxx<br />
Potsdamer Platz, Kino 7, Potsdamer Str. 5; Cinestar im Sony<br />
Center, Kino 5, Potsdamer Str. 4, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz<br />
SEP 2-OCT 17<br />
Pasolini’s passions<br />
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI’s diverse oeuvre, showing in<br />
a retrospective at Arsenal, is united by his ability<br />
and determination to re-scape tropes of radical<br />
sexuality, heretical religiosity and social ferment<br />
with innovative combinations of sound and image.<br />
Beginning at the relatively old age of 40 after his<br />
move to Rome, Pasolini’s debut film Accattone<br />
(1961) takes the lives of petty thieves and pimps<br />
and threads them into themes of biblical sacrifice<br />
echoed by a soundtrack from Bach’s St. Matthew’s<br />
Passion – a subject that he tackled directly in his<br />
re-telling of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Il vangelo<br />
secondo Matteo, 1964). In or out of mythology<br />
(Edipo re in 1967 and Medea, 1969), Pasolini’s<br />
fascination with sexuality is always present. Whether<br />
fictively explored in Teorema (1968) or bannered<br />
by explicit questions put to members of the public<br />
in the documentary Comizi d’Amor (1964), the<br />
fusion of relationships and their socio-political<br />
setting merges tenderly with proto-Marxist<br />
heresies. Arsenal complements its choice of films<br />
NIGHT CRIES – A RURAL TRAGEDY<br />
with two filmic diaries made by Pasolini during trips<br />
to India and Palestine, as well as documentaries<br />
made on the director: Pasolini l’enragé (Jean-André<br />
Fieschi, 1966) and A future memoria: Pier Paolo<br />
Pasolini (Micheli, 1985) to name but two. In<br />
association with this retrospective, an exhibition<br />
organised by Berliner Festspiele and dedicated to<br />
Pasolini’s very public affair with Rome will run from<br />
mid-<strong>September</strong> to January 2015 at Martin-Gropius-<br />
Bau, highlighting the director’s role as a Friulian<br />
poet, novelist, political essayist, draftsman and<br />
painter – and a dazzling post-war European<br />
intellectual. The exhibition delineates phases of<br />
Pasolini’s engagement with the city both as a<br />
panoply of social and sexual inspiration and a<br />
palimpsest of his own engagement with the city’s<br />
morality and politics: a love-hate relationship which<br />
ended only with the director’s violent death near<br />
Ostia in November 1975. EL/YC RETROSPEKTIVE<br />
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI | Arsenal, Potsdamer Str. 2, Mitte,<br />
S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz Pasolini’s Roma | Martin-Gropius Bau,<br />
Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz<br />
SEP 10-OCT 12<br />
Secondhand cinema<br />
Last year, DOKU.ARTS reintroduced us to Harry<br />
Dean Stanton, Mark Cousins’ Story of Children and<br />
Film and Room 237 in the Overlook Hotel. The<br />
meaty festival returns throughout this month to the<br />
Deutsches Historisches Museum’s handsome<br />
Zeughaus Kino (still, somehow, one of the city’s<br />
hidden gems) armed with a new batch of documentaries,<br />
each casting a curious eye over the arts.<br />
The festival’s big-hitter is undoubtedly Martin<br />
Scorsese’s documentary on The New York Review of<br />
Books, A 50 Year Argument, but there are plenty<br />
more treasures to unearth this month on the<br />
Kupfergraben quay. Enjoy a lifetime of quips and<br />
defiance with Gore Vidal: The United States of<br />
Amnesia; find fury and subversion in Belarus’ free<br />
theatre movement in the HBO-funded Dangerous<br />
Act and bulk it all up with studies on the ever-fascinating<br />
Susan Sontag, the post-war Hollywood<br />
maverick Sam Fuller, the surprisingly bright<br />
recesses of Michael Haneke and the unsurprisingly<br />
dark recesses of Ingmar Bergman: Regarding Susan<br />
Sontag, A Fuller Life, Michael H. Profession: Director<br />
and Trespassing Bergman respectively. There’s<br />
plenty of meat on them bones; be sure to dig in.<br />
For dates and times, check www.doku-arts.de. ROC<br />
DOKU.ARTS| Zeughaus Kino, Deutsches Historisches Museum,<br />
Unter den Linden 2, S-Bhf Hackescher Markt<br />
ALL MOVIES ARE IN OV WITH GERMAN SUBTITLES UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
EXBLICKS<br />
Sep 25<br />
SURVEILLANCE SPECIAL<br />
SEP 11-14<br />
Berlin goes Down Under<br />
Returning to Moviemento for its fourth year, DOWN<br />
UNDER BERLIN AUSTRALIAN FILM FESTIVAL offers four<br />
days of the best that Australian cinema has to offer.<br />
United under the theme “Make it home”, the<br />
programme is a varied, cross-genre selection of films<br />
with a special focus on indigenous cinema, exploring<br />
both the history and current issues of the world’s<br />
oldest living civilisation; Berlinale regular Warwick<br />
Thornton’s Rosalie’s Journey tells the story of<br />
Aboriginal activist Rosalie (Ngarla) Kunoth-Monks<br />
whose life took a sharp turn when she was cast to<br />
star in Australia’s first color film, Charles Chauvel’s<br />
Jedda. Fittingly, artist Tracy Moffatt’s Night Cries – A<br />
Rural Tragedy deals with themes similar to Jedda albeit<br />
set in a completely artificial milieu in which subject<br />
matter is subverted to the point of tragedy. The<br />
festival also features upcoming directorial talent, but<br />
most interesting perhaps is the work from Australians<br />
abroad such as Berlin-based Diane Busuttil’s Fresh<br />
Fruit, a dialogue-less, experimental exploration of one<br />
woman’s imagination, or US-based Sarah Doyle’s You<br />
Me & Her, a short about a woman who meets with<br />
selves from 30 parallel universes and discovers that<br />
she is her own worst version. Finally, a new and<br />
welcome innovation this year is the presence of<br />
Xposed International Queer Film Festival, on board to<br />
curate an offering of queer Australian shorts from the<br />
past. MH AUSTRALIAN FILM FESTIVAL | Moviemento Kino,<br />
Kottbusser Damm 22, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.<br />
SEP 25, 20:30<br />
Surveying the Stasi<br />
Keeping up with our focus on the pernicious vagaries<br />
of big-brotherdom, this month’s special-edition<br />
EXBLICKS at Lichtblick Kino features a unique<br />
programme of films from the Stasi vaults. In addition<br />
to internal surveillance footage, we’ll also be showing<br />
training films, commemorative music clips produced<br />
by the Stasi’s own film unit as well as short documentaries<br />
about Cold War espionage in Berlin. Presented<br />
by Exberliner in co-operation with Interfilm and the<br />
Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State<br />
Security Service of the Former German Democratic<br />
Republic (BStU), the screenings will be followed by the<br />
customary complimentary wine and a discussion with<br />
Hubertus Knabe (see interview, page 20): Stasi<br />
researcher, human rights activist and director of the<br />
memorial site at the former Stasi prison in Berlin-<br />
Hohenschönhausen. EL/MY EXBLICKS: SURVEILLANCE<br />
SPECIAL | Lichtblick Kino, Kastanienallee 77, Prenzlauer Berg,<br />
U-Bhf Senefelderplatz<br />
Undubbed at CineStar Original<br />
HERCULES 3D<br />
From <strong>September</strong> 4<br />
Both man and myth, Hercules (Dwayne Johnson)<br />
leads a band of mercenaries to help end a bloody civil<br />
war and return the rightful king to his throne.<br />
A tormented soul from birth, Hercules has the<br />
strength of a God but feels the suffering of a human.<br />
More info and tickets at cinestar.de<br />
39
What’s on<br />
STAGE<br />
SEP 2-3, 5-6, 20:00, SEP 7, 15:00<br />
Letzte Tage. Ein Vorabend.<br />
One hundred years after<br />
WWI began, how to make<br />
a theatre project on the<br />
nationalism and racism<br />
that cast a shadow<br />
over the last century?<br />
Christoph Marthaler<br />
chose the most subtle<br />
way, letting the victims’<br />
music be played and the<br />
persecutors’ words be<br />
quoted. First conceived for the historical Austro-Hungarian<br />
Parliament of Wien, the project aims to link past and<br />
present: music composed by Jewish persecuted musicians<br />
is performed and terrible texts are read. An attempt<br />
to echo contemporary forms of racism and discrimination.<br />
NF Staatsoper im Schillertheater, Bismarckstr. 110,<br />
Charlottenburg, U-Bhf Ernst-Reuter-Platz<br />
SEP 3, 5-7, 20:00<br />
Jobs in Himmel<br />
In this whimsical and<br />
existential piece, multimedia<br />
performance company<br />
“post theater” unpacks<br />
some of the changes<br />
that come along with<br />
technological innovation,<br />
reflecting on two major<br />
visionaries: Apple cofounder<br />
Steve Jobs and<br />
German engineer Robert<br />
Bosch. Featuring a projected set and some audience<br />
participation via smartphones and tablets, this innovative<br />
Berlin premiere is sure to provide new and entertaining<br />
ways of incorporating technology into art. LI Theaterdiscounter,<br />
Klosterstr. 44, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Jannowitzbrücke<br />
SEP 11-14, 18-21, 25–28, 19:00<br />
We Are the Play<br />
“We are the people”<br />
was the chant of the<br />
protestors on the streets<br />
of East Germany, but what<br />
happened when the two<br />
states became one? We<br />
Are the Play by Sisyphos<br />
der Flugelefant uses the<br />
site of the Berlin Wall Memorial<br />
as an interactive<br />
performance playground,<br />
where the audience can examine personal stories of<br />
immigrants and Germans of various descent during the<br />
fall of the Wall. Part of the ETB/IPAC project “25 Jahre<br />
Mauerfall or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love<br />
the Ossis/Wessis”. SC Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer,<br />
Bernauer Str. 119, Mitte, U-Bhf Bernauer Str.<br />
GERMAN THEATRE<br />
Premieres:<br />
■ ON MY WAY HOME, a piece on collateral damages<br />
experienced by “suitcase children” – the immigrants’<br />
second generation, Sep 2, 20:00, Ballhaus Naunynstr.<br />
■ NEVER FOREVER, the first collaboration between<br />
Falk Richter and Nir de Wolff’s dance company TOTAL<br />
BRUTAL, Sep 9, 20:00, Schaubühne<br />
■ HOUSE FOR SALE, Volksbühne’s season opens with a<br />
René Pollesch variation on love, Sep 10, 19:30, Volksbühne<br />
With English surtitles:<br />
■ TALES FROM THE VIENNA WOODS, Sep 14,<br />
19:00, Deutsches Theater<br />
■ LITTLE FOXES, Thomas Ostermeier’s remarkable take<br />
on Lillian Hellman’s text, with Nina Hoss in the main role,<br />
Sep 18, 20:00, Schaubühne<br />
FRANK KLEINBACH<br />
MICHAEL TIBES<br />
“How can you<br />
get under your<br />
own skin?” By NATHALIE FRANK<br />
Director SEBASTIAN NÜBLING and choreographer<br />
IVES THUWIS come together to create Fallen, the<br />
summer’s last open-air show, dealing with the<br />
intrinsic violence of men’s bodies.<br />
It is not the first time that Nübling, who’s been<br />
collecting invitations to prestigious festivals<br />
since he was named young director of the year by<br />
the magazine Theater heute in 2002, and Thuwis,<br />
whose 2009 piece Noch 5 Minuten was rewarded<br />
with the Faust theatre prize for directing, have<br />
worked together. Last time, they made a stage<br />
out of tonnes of sand and let 14 young people<br />
struggle with it (Sand, Schauspielhaus Zürich,<br />
2011). With their new project, showing with<br />
English surtitles in front of the Gorki Theater,<br />
sand is back, this time hosting 10 actors dealing<br />
with violence.<br />
Did you base this work on real cases of<br />
violence?<br />
SEBASTIAN NÜBLING: We are not quoting one<br />
case in particular, but got intrigued by a few<br />
hard-to-explain phenomena of extreme brutality<br />
that happened in Germany in the past few<br />
years – like that man violently beaten up in the<br />
subway in Munich in 2008 because he asked<br />
two young men to stop smoking. How can you<br />
describe that, or can you explain that? Especially<br />
if you don’t interpret it as a single case but as a<br />
social phenomenon.<br />
So you see this phenomenon as<br />
something new?<br />
IVES THUWIS: It is not necessarily about an<br />
increasing number of violent cases, but what we<br />
can observe is indeed a new type of violence,<br />
without grounds: it is not about robbing or<br />
avenging; it is violence for itself.<br />
SN: This is what makes those cases so special: the<br />
motive is not immediately understandable, there<br />
is neither material motivation nor a personal relationship<br />
between the victim and the offender,<br />
just an emotive explosion of aggression. In our<br />
work we don’t mean to reproduce those cases<br />
but we reflect the phenomenon of men’s violence<br />
with the abstract method of non-verbal dance<br />
and theatre.<br />
Why do you focus on men?<br />
SN: Well, only men participate in this particular<br />
form of violence. I don’t know of any case that<br />
would imply a woman. That being said, we focus<br />
on the body’s energy and image. This constant<br />
need to upgrade your body is also something<br />
new, it was different when I was young. Now<br />
it seems important to have a muscular, defined<br />
body. It is not just<br />
an ideal of beauty,<br />
it is also about<br />
strength – and<br />
what do you want<br />
to do with this<br />
strength?<br />
STAGE<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
How<br />
do you<br />
work<br />
together with<br />
the actors?<br />
SN: First we talked<br />
a lot about violence – what kind of violence did<br />
we experience, how did we react, what did that<br />
arouse or provoke? Now we work a lot with<br />
tasks: we invent some tasks and try to give the<br />
actors enough space to create a situation out of<br />
them with the help of their own ideas, thoughts<br />
and experiences.<br />
What kind of tasks?<br />
SN: We worked for example on the idea of pumping<br />
up the body – and from there we developed<br />
a sequence of movements. It started with a<br />
thought about this whole fitness studio culture<br />
and muscle constructions. We tried out repetitive<br />
processes as solos and observed what happens<br />
when you keep a repetitive movement going,<br />
and when the body starts to be tired. What<br />
kind of energy is contained in the body when it<br />
is alone or interacting with another person or<br />
with a group of 10.<br />
IT: We try out different constellations – how<br />
the men interact together when you place one<br />
person against one group, one group against<br />
one person, two persons against each other, two<br />
against one... or, what is much more abstract:<br />
how can you get under your own skin?<br />
Has anything in particular come out of it?<br />
SN: Of course, all the time. For example, at the<br />
moment, we observe almost self-aggressive<br />
movement patterns. The predisposition to<br />
endure a movement that hurts or is exhausting,<br />
because you have to maintain it for a long<br />
time. It´s like working out: it also creates those<br />
situations where people are alone and literally<br />
torturing themselves. Obviously people want it<br />
somehow, or they wouldn’t do it.<br />
40 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
ESRA ROTTHOFF<br />
IT: And we are interested at how people look<br />
at that.<br />
SN: Yes, we create this ‘looking’ situation as well.<br />
The stage is covered with sand and people are<br />
sitting all around, it is kind of an arena situation,<br />
so it is a lot about watching and being watched<br />
– everyone sees everything, you see what is happening<br />
in the arena and you see what the others<br />
are looking at.<br />
What made the two of you come back to<br />
sand as a material?<br />
IT: We really felt like working with sand again – it<br />
creates a frictional area that you have to fight<br />
against, it is not easy but that is what makes it interesting.<br />
It opens many possibilities that are not<br />
there with the normal ground. You cannot bury<br />
yourself or just fall or plunk on a normal ground.<br />
SN: It is interesting as a counterproductive material,<br />
it pulls the movement out instead of raising<br />
and helping it as a traditional dance floor would<br />
do. And it is perfect to<br />
deal with violence: it is<br />
a material that resists<br />
by itself and provokes<br />
aggressiveness as well.<br />
Anyone who’s played<br />
beach volleyball knows<br />
what I’m talking<br />
about! ■<br />
FALLEN Sep 11-13,<br />
16-17, 19-21, 24-25,<br />
28-29, 20:30 |<br />
open-air stage by the<br />
Maxim Gorki Theater,<br />
Am Festungsgraben<br />
2, Mitte, S+U-Bhf<br />
Friedrichstr.<br />
The truth about Turkish men<br />
Under what seems to be a thousand lights, they<br />
stand in suits and watch us in silence. Rapidly<br />
they start to talk, one after another. The youngest<br />
joined the army and left it. The oldest hasn’t seen<br />
his children for years and regrets it. One of them<br />
spent his best years working in Budapest before he<br />
came back to Kreuzberg for the sake of his family.<br />
There is a Kurd who can’t speak Kurdish. The last<br />
one’s story is heartbreaking: slowly, like a captivating<br />
thriller, he recounts how his father used to beat<br />
him up and how Elvis Presley saved him until his<br />
own experience with crime. The men’s memories<br />
create a mosaic of hopes, tries, small successes<br />
and big disappointments, religious issues and<br />
family life;<br />
regularly interrupted<br />
by<br />
the cute attempt<br />
– and<br />
failure – to<br />
sing together<br />
Goethe’s<br />
“Der<br />
Erlkönig”.<br />
Behind these<br />
SUPERMÄN-<br />
NER there<br />
is a woman:<br />
celebrated<br />
actress Idil<br />
Üner. Her<br />
wish was to<br />
find out, with<br />
the help of theatre, who the Turkish men really are<br />
beyond the stereotypes of violent fathers and lazy<br />
machos. Obviously, she rapidly realised that there<br />
is no ‘Turkish man’. And so she decided to bring a<br />
few of her research subjects onstage, not to talk<br />
about identity issues, but to answer the apparently<br />
simple question: “What has been the most<br />
beautiful and the worst part of your life?” Their<br />
answers, full of honesty, humor and self-distance,<br />
make a powerful, sober performance, spiced up<br />
with a glamorous touch – a French pianist and red<br />
roses. And when the younger man talks about how<br />
his grandfather taught him the way to prepare a<br />
dead fish and shows it at the same time, a smell<br />
is added to<br />
this delicate<br />
harmony. A<br />
charming<br />
documentary<br />
cabaret. NF<br />
UTE LANGKAFEL<br />
SUPERMÄNNER Sep<br />
13, 20:00, 14, 19:00,<br />
15-16, 20:00 (with<br />
English surtitles) |<br />
Ballhaus Naunynstr.,<br />
Naunynstr. 27,<br />
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf<br />
Kottbusser Tor<br />
schaubühne<br />
+++With English surtitles+++<br />
Hamlet<br />
by William Shakespeare<br />
Direction: Thomas Ostermeier<br />
14.9. > 7:30 p.m.<br />
The Little Foxes<br />
by Lillian Hellman<br />
Direction: Thomas Ostermeier<br />
18.9. > 8:00 p.m.<br />
41<br />
Tickets: 030.890023 | www.schaubuehne.de
What’s on<br />
STAGE<br />
SEP 11-13, 20:00<br />
bodieSLANGuage<br />
What is the body’s<br />
jargon? Performers coming<br />
from eight different<br />
countries, including<br />
the choreographer duo<br />
matanicola (Nicola<br />
Mascia and Matan Zamir)<br />
and the performer and<br />
sign language interpreter<br />
Gal Naor (the progressive<br />
wave) try out different<br />
body language forms between sign language, contemporary<br />
dance and pop culture gestures. An experiment that<br />
gives the main roles to 16 hands – they are strangers, get<br />
in touch, become friends and drift again from one another<br />
– in a hurly-burly of communicative movement. NF<br />
Ballhaus Ost, Pappelallee 15, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf<br />
Eberswalder Str.<br />
SEP 14-30, TUES-FRI 20:00, SAT-SUN 18:00<br />
CROSSROADS<br />
For its 10th anniversary,<br />
theatre company<br />
Chamäleon teams up with<br />
Circa for a mash-up of<br />
circus, song and dance<br />
in an attempt to dissolve<br />
the boundaries between<br />
body and instrument,<br />
between movement and<br />
music. Singer Iza Mortag<br />
Freund and an acrobatic<br />
ensemble create an original live soundtrack of wooing<br />
punk cabaret, flickering electro sounds and sizzling death<br />
waltzes that summon life itself. It promises to be a night<br />
of grace, delusion and fun. SC Chamäleon Theater, in<br />
den Hackeschen Höfen, Rosenthaler Str. 40/41, Mitte,<br />
U-Bhf Weinmeisterstr.<br />
SEP 24-28<br />
Männer in Garagen<br />
The Sophiensaele takes<br />
over a row of abandoned<br />
garages nestled in the<br />
outskirts of Pankow<br />
for a multi-disciplinary<br />
performance festival. A<br />
group of over a dozen<br />
artists (including – among<br />
others – Cora Frost, copy<br />
& waste and Markus<br />
& Markus) will present<br />
a series of conceptual pieces, bizarre installations<br />
and rigorous discussions intended to examine these<br />
oft-ignored heterosexual, male spaces for work, play and<br />
storage – and provoke new ways of thinking about our<br />
own “Garagenzeilen”. LI Gründergaragen, Breite Str.<br />
42a, Pankow, SU-Bhf Pankow<br />
COMEDY IN ENGLISH<br />
■ MAGGIE LOUNGE, a brand-new open mic with a<br />
twist – after the usual open spots, the headliner has to<br />
perform while getting heckled by another comedian. Sep<br />
10, 20:30, Maggie Lounge<br />
■ OFF THE CUFF, tear-inducingly funny format where<br />
comedians improvise from topics they have never seen.<br />
Sep 12, 20:30, T Berlin<br />
■ BAUM HAUS COMEDY OPEN AIR, Berlin’s biggest<br />
outdoor comedy showcase in a beautifully dystopian setting.<br />
Sep 25, 20:30, Grießmuehle<br />
■ NIGHT SHOW BERLIN, Madcap ‘late show’ style<br />
entertainment with guests and games hosted by Daniel<br />
Stern, Sep 26, 20:30, T Berlin<br />
For more listings, visit comedyinenglish.de<br />
IZRA<br />
KATJA RENNER<br />
All booked up<br />
This year’s INTERNATIONAL<br />
LITERATURE FESTIVAL includes<br />
15 events in English – here’s<br />
what to watch out for.<br />
“Haven’t you ever felt like there has to be more?<br />
Like there’s more out there somewhere, just<br />
beyond your grasp, if you could only get to it?”<br />
writes two-time Carnegie Medal winner Patrick<br />
Ness in his newest acclaimed young-adult novel<br />
More Than This. His opening speech at 9:30am on<br />
Sep 10 paves the way for the 6pm official opening<br />
of the fest, at which contentious Anglo-Indian<br />
writer Pankaj Mishra, winner of the <strong>2014</strong> Leipzig<br />
Book Prize, will address criticism of his awardwinning<br />
novel From the Ruins of Empire. Concluding<br />
day one of the festival, Pulitzer Prize winner<br />
Jhumpa Lahiri presents her most recent novel The<br />
Lowland which pits the fate of an Indian couple in<br />
the US against the reverberations of early violence<br />
on the subcontinent. In a rich programme of readings,<br />
poetry nights and political panels, one<br />
particular focus is literature from writers with<br />
African backgrounds. On Sep 13, British-Nigerian<br />
novelist-prodigy Helen Oyeyemi presents Boy,<br />
Snow, Bird, her modern adaptation of Snow White<br />
in which an American family’s racial background<br />
does some impressive mirror cracking. Sep 15<br />
brings a reading from Caine Prize winner Yvonne<br />
Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust, examining post-colonial<br />
Kenyan corruption with stunning linguistic acuity.<br />
On Sep 16, Owuor, Ishmael Beah (Sierra Leone/<br />
USA) and Tope Folarin (Nigeria/USA) will discuss<br />
fundamentalism in the sub-Sahara and on Sep 19,<br />
Kenyan-raised Cornell professor Mukoma Wa<br />
Ngugi presents his novel Nairobi Heat. Other<br />
Three questions for…<br />
Wolfgang Rihm<br />
The 10th edition of MUSIKFEST, the Berliner<br />
Festspiele’s annual orchestra extravaganza, has a<br />
special focus on horn – a perfect opportunity for<br />
the German premiere of star composer Wolfgang<br />
Rihm’s new Concerto for Horn and Orchestra,<br />
performed on Sun, Sep 14 in advance of Schumann’s<br />
Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra. Other<br />
works by Rihm can be heard on Sep 6, 7, 12 and 17.<br />
What was the starting point for the new<br />
piece? The line, the melody. I have a penchant<br />
for melody, in particular in concert works. I<br />
simply don’t like the digital jabbering that by its<br />
length and breadth is considered ‘virtuoso’.<br />
Concerts for me are about the horizon of spun,<br />
melodic lines. About tensions and relaxations of<br />
a vocal tone.<br />
What is your relationship with the horn as<br />
an instrument? It took me a long time to find<br />
my way to horn. Its psychology is very complex.<br />
You need time to understand horn. What is its<br />
highlights include Nadeem<br />
Aslam on Sep 11, laying bare<br />
terrorist affiliations in The Blind<br />
Man’s Garden, a microcosmic study<br />
of love and family in the Pakistan/Afghanistan<br />
border zone; Oscar Wao Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz<br />
appears twice, talking about ‘‘Trust, Mistrust,<br />
Faithfulness, and Unfaithfulness’’ on Sep 13 and<br />
telling “Stories of Lyrical, Brutal Love” on Sep 14;<br />
on Sep 17, young expat US novelist Brittani<br />
Sonnenberg discusses What is Home about<br />
so-called “Third Culture Kids”; also on Sep 17,<br />
larger-than-life environmental activist and novelist<br />
John Burnside examines a cruel variant on<br />
language acquisition in The Dumb House. On Sep<br />
18, the peerless Amy Tan presents her latest novel;<br />
also that day, Chinese transparency advocate and<br />
novelist-filmmaker Xiaolu Guo narrates climate<br />
change with Mirko Bonné from Germany and<br />
Tony Birch from Australia; and on Sep 19,<br />
American up-and-comer Tao Lin (US) presents<br />
the “Kafka of Generation Facebook”.<br />
As a special series, “Culture of Trust” invites 15<br />
authors to write essays about “trust” in their<br />
culture and present them in religious places, from<br />
a mosque to a church and a Buddhist parish<br />
house. And don’t miss the Graphic Novel Day on<br />
Sep 14, dealing with the reflection of reality in<br />
comics, be it social and political issues, biographies<br />
or autobiographies, ending with a live<br />
drawing performance by artists Stefano Ricci<br />
(Italy) and Ileana Surducan (Romania).<br />
To get a two-day jumpstart on the fest, head to<br />
the Berliner Festspiele on <strong>September</strong> 8 for a<br />
reading of Edward Snowden interview excerpts,<br />
part of a worldwide initiative. Full programme at<br />
www.literaturfestival.com. NF/EL<br />
place in the orchestra?<br />
Wood? Brass?<br />
Breakout? Line?<br />
Signal? And then: the<br />
position. It can<br />
disappear faraway<br />
– an expression of its<br />
huge presence. And it<br />
can shake our bowel<br />
– before it penetrates<br />
our heart.<br />
In a few concerts<br />
your works are<br />
presented together<br />
with Brahms – do<br />
you think your<br />
music goes well<br />
together? Yes. Very<br />
LITERATURE<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
SEP 10-20<br />
MUSIKFEST Sep 2-22|<br />
Berliner Philharmoniker,<br />
Herbert-von-Karajan-<br />
Str. 1, Mitte, S+U-Bhf<br />
Potsdamer Platz<br />
well. The better the neighbourhood – the better<br />
the man himself. This applies of course only for<br />
concert programmes. Mozart would also be<br />
right... and all the others...<br />
Want more from Rihm? Go to www.exberliner.com for Nathalie<br />
Frank’s full interview.<br />
KAI BIENERT<br />
42 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
tICKEtS: (030) 30 10 6 80 88<br />
www.trinitymusic.de<br />
What’s on<br />
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE<br />
16.09.14 . max-schmeling-halle 13.10.14 . Postbahnhof<br />
MUSIC<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
23.10.14 . tempodrom<br />
the axis<br />
of awesome<br />
04.09.14 . C-Club<br />
watsky<br />
+ the lafontaines<br />
20.09.14 . Bi nuu<br />
Jennie<br />
aBrahamson<br />
21.09.14 . Privatclub<br />
rhodes<br />
21.09.14 . Grüner salon<br />
25.10.14 . Columbiahalle<br />
antemasque<br />
+ le ButCherettes<br />
06.10.14 . Bi nuu<br />
Joanne shaw<br />
taylor<br />
13.10.14 . C-Club<br />
allah-las<br />
15.10.14 . C-Club<br />
fka twiGs<br />
21.10.14 . kesselhaus<br />
Don’t call it a comeback By D. STRAUSS<br />
When I’m not vacillating between cheap white<br />
and slightly-less-cheap brown mushrooms at<br />
Lidl, I’m pocketing jumbo shrimp at corporate<br />
trade fairs; in aspic they can last into the next<br />
season. They’re not the only shrimp with an<br />
extended shelf life. A couple of months ago, I<br />
crashed an Adidas Fashion Week party after staring<br />
at skewers of asparagus through frosted glass;<br />
the diminutive PHARRELL WILLIAMS (photo) was<br />
the guest-of-honour and, though older than 40,<br />
was as well maintained as any frozen seafood I<br />
have encountered. The same can be said for his<br />
career, which is sort of like what Elvis’ would<br />
have been like if his comeback had been bigger<br />
than his initial onslaught of fame. And if Elvis<br />
had possessed the capability of writing a song.<br />
Both appear fond of showgirls, however.<br />
Pharrell got his start with Teddy Riley (whose<br />
verse he penned for “Rump Shaker” – the best<br />
one!). You know who else worked with Riley? Fellow<br />
New Jack Swingsters K-CI & JO-JO, with the<br />
slime of Nickelodeon 1990s nostalgia generated<br />
by their current tour feeling like a Buzzfeed .gif<br />
listicle. Some artists are meant to represent their<br />
era, while others are meant to signify it. Interpretive<br />
artists, such as Snoop Dogg or TONY<br />
BENNETT (and, yes, they have collaborated) have<br />
it easier. If one can manage through a period of<br />
unfashionability, followed by a period as an out<br />
joke, followed by a period as an in-joke, followed<br />
by a period as a kitsch figure, followed by a<br />
period as a self-knowing kitsch figure – one can<br />
claw one’s back toward iconic respectability.<br />
Though most acts languish in the Hasselhoffian<br />
shadows of the second-to-last state.<br />
Comebacks are an amorphous thing: partly<br />
the positioning of public relations, partly the<br />
judgement of history and partly the fickleness of<br />
the crowd. Though they can cement one’s status<br />
as a legend (U2, Snoop Dogg), and transform an<br />
entertainer into an auteur (Tom Jones, Snoop<br />
Dogg), once the initial comeback fades, it can<br />
seem sadder than the initial dip in fame. The brief<br />
late-period success of some artists, such as Prince<br />
and Duran Duran, actually appeared to tarnish<br />
the polish of their busts as it receded along with<br />
the millennium (those comebacks have since<br />
been forgotten and status has been restored). The<br />
Rolling Stones, certain of their stature, have come<br />
back so often without it sticking that it has become<br />
a tongue-in-cheek part of their legend, with<br />
consequent tour revenues as unaffected as “Doom<br />
& Gloom” was unhummable.<br />
But then, one shouldn’t necessarily view a paucity<br />
of resonance as a negative. In rock, macho is<br />
as effective a communicator as melody, no more<br />
so than in metal. HELMET, “the thinking person’s<br />
heavy metal band”, is touring the 20th anniversary<br />
of their Betty album, recorded during the<br />
dying days of when “angular” was still a compliment.<br />
A bridge between Nirvana and Korn, I<br />
always found them neither a bridge too far nor a<br />
bridge far enough, but their sound does sum up<br />
a type of dying of the grunge dream. Drummer<br />
John Stanier is now the centrepiece of Battles,<br />
math rock’s last great hope.<br />
I’m from the math rock generation, but I’ve<br />
never been very good with numbers. So, during<br />
my youth, I turned to other genres such as industrial<br />
music, which at the time was generally concerned<br />
with totalitarian methods, mind control,<br />
fundamentalism and, um, a little too often, white<br />
power. Now we have Facebook for all of that, so<br />
it’s no wonder that Genesis P-Orridge of PSYCHIC<br />
TV has gone retro, embracing cock rock – the last<br />
time I saw them, they played no less than three<br />
Hawkwind covers. Needless to say, if nostalgia is<br />
evidence of a sense of paradise lost, P-Orridge’s<br />
life exemplifies it. And, sadly, paradise maintains<br />
too much dignity to make a comeback. n<br />
Music Editor D.Strauss may be contacted at strauss@exberliner.com<br />
HELMET Mon, Sep 15, 20:00 | SO36, Oranienstr. 190, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor PHARRELL WILLIAMS W/FOXES &<br />
CRIS CAB Tue, Sep 16, 20:00 | Max-Schmeling-Halle, Am Falkplatz, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str. TONY BENNETT<br />
Thu, Sep 18, 20:00 | Admiralspalast, Friedrichstr. 101, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr. PSYCHIC TV Sat, Sep 20, 19:00 |<br />
Gretchen, Obentrautstr. 19-21, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Hallesches Tor K-CI & JO-JO Sun, Sep 28, 21:00 | C-Club, Columbiadamm<br />
9-11, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Platz der Luftbrücke<br />
the fat white family<br />
+ Charlie Boyer & the voyeurs<br />
26.09.14 . Privatclub<br />
azealia Banks<br />
26.09.14 . huxleys<br />
the liBertines<br />
04.10.14 . arena Berlin<br />
the Growlers<br />
07.11.14 . Bi nuu<br />
linkin Park<br />
+ of miCe & men<br />
19.11.14 . o2-world<br />
Bryan ferry<br />
26.11.14 . tempodrom<br />
ELIOT SUMNER<br />
Di. 16.09. Einlass 20:00 Grüner Salon<br />
StarFM & Zitty präsentieren:<br />
LIAM FINN<br />
Do. 18.09. Einlass 19:00 Machinenhaus<br />
FluxFM präsentiert:<br />
JACK GARRATT<br />
Fr. 19.09. Einlass 20:00 Machinenhaus<br />
MELANIE DI BIASIO<br />
Sa. 20.09. Einlass 20:00<br />
F101 Club im Admiralspalast<br />
TINY RUINS<br />
Mo. 29.09. Einlass 20:00 Grüner Salon<br />
Spex, putpat tv, Radio Eins & Mit Vergnügen präsentieren:<br />
LYKKE LI<br />
Mi. 05.11. Einlass 19:00 Admiralspalast<br />
intro, faze, Radio Eins & KulturNews präsentieren:<br />
LITTLE DRAGON<br />
Mo. 08.12. Einlass 19:00 Admiralspalast<br />
BRAVO, vevo & Radio Fritz präsentieren:<br />
KATY PERRY<br />
Prismatic World Tour<br />
Fr. 13.03.2015 Einlass 18:00 O2World<br />
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com<br />
Online Tickets unter www.tickets.de Ticket Hotline: 030 - 43 6110 1313
What’s on<br />
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE<br />
CLUB PICKS<br />
FRI, SEP 5 - SUN, SEP 9, 23:59<br />
Klangkost Spektakel (Tech-Tech-Techno)<br />
By fall, the winter is finally<br />
far enough behind us that<br />
the line between open air<br />
and lost weekend is all<br />
but eradicated, even if the<br />
rain starts collecting on<br />
your translucent visor. The<br />
society of this Spektakel<br />
includes Mobilee’s<br />
TAPESH, Defected’s<br />
DAYNE S, Moodmusic’s<br />
BENNY GRAUER, Klassik Kater BRITTA ARNOLD, Watergate<br />
reg ROBIN DRIMALSKI, Klangkost’s TOM NOWA (photo)<br />
and WONKERS, Stil Vor Talent’s HRRSN, and a dozen other<br />
locals playing multiple gigs to pay off the rent on their<br />
tech-houses. Kosmonaut, Wiesenweg 1-4, Friedrichshain,<br />
S+U-Bhf Frankfurter Allee<br />
SAT, SEP 6, 23:59<br />
Morgan Geist (Tech-Tech-House)<br />
Showing a flair for melody<br />
since his late-1990s<br />
collaboration with Darshan<br />
Jesrani in the aptly named<br />
Metro Area (they were<br />
all over NYC at the time),<br />
MORGAN GEIST unexpectedly<br />
broke through last<br />
year when “Look Right<br />
Through,” recorded under<br />
his Storm Queen guise,<br />
sauntered to a UK #1, giving a boost to all the aging DJs of<br />
EDM after Danny Tenaglia’s public freak-out. He’ll be joined<br />
by Freerange’s JIMPSTER, Rinse.FM’s DEAN DRISCOLL,<br />
H-Productions CARI LEKEBUSCH and the Stattbad regulars.<br />
Stattbad, Gerichtstr. 65, Wedding, S+U-Bhf Wedding<br />
SAT, SEP 13 - SUN, SEP 14, 23:59<br />
5 Years Get Deep (Hou-Tech-House)<br />
Get Deep gets the drill out<br />
on its wood anniversary<br />
with youthful, era-hopping<br />
Stuttgart-ite Danillo<br />
Plessow aka MOTOR<br />
CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE<br />
(photo), who claims hip<br />
hop as his bread and<br />
butter though he tends to<br />
explore every electronic<br />
genre except rap. He’s on<br />
Saturday, joined by the even greater eclecticism of Mule<br />
Musiq label leader TOSHIYA KAWASAKI, whose Endless<br />
Flight comps transform yesterday’s influences into today’s.<br />
Also on the bill: FRANCIS INFERNO ORCHESTRA and<br />
Tartelet’s MAX GRAEF, while Sunday brings MCDE and<br />
NANON NANSEN & CHARLIE SMOOTH. About Blank,<br />
Markgrafendamm 24c, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostkreuz<br />
FRI, SEP 26, 23:30<br />
Keep It Unreal!: Mr. Scruff (Scruff Ups)<br />
Exemplifying the edge<br />
between international<br />
downtempo and arty<br />
hip hop that Mo’ Wax<br />
and Ninja Tune defined<br />
in the late 1990s, the<br />
latter’s longtime keystone<br />
MR. SCRUFF made the<br />
big time on a Moondog<br />
sample and a knack for<br />
the coldcut, though the<br />
creator of “Jazz Potato” probably prefers Del Monte to<br />
Oscar Mayer. For the second time in our highlights, MAX<br />
GRAEF makes up the bottom of the bill, along with the<br />
Gretchen/Oye regulars: the hip-hop happy DELFONIC and<br />
BOX AUS HOLZ SOUNDSYSTEM. Gretchen, Obentrautstr.19-21,<br />
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Hallesches Tor<br />
Who do you love?<br />
By BETTI HUNTER<br />
Now that they’re electro-grandpas celebrating a 10th<br />
anniversary, it’s easy to forget that Hamburg’s Digitalism<br />
– the duo of Ismail “Isi” Tüfekçi and JENS “JENCE”<br />
MOELLE (photo, left), were once the odd duck of dance<br />
music, merging Francophilic electropogo Justice with<br />
German indie melancholy.<br />
Makes sense, then, that they’ve ended up on the<br />
fashion-y French Kitsune label for their latest<br />
endeavour, the Lift EP. Spending the last couple<br />
of years generating new material has led to<br />
recent collaborations with The M Machine and<br />
Steve Duda and Youngblood Hawke, with whom<br />
they’ve taken a marked detour from their signature<br />
grit-heavy electro through the anthemic,<br />
synth-tinged track “Wolves”. That’s not to say<br />
they’ve abandoned their homeland and homesound<br />
entirely. Jence and Isi have pencilled in a<br />
one-off DJ-set at Berlin Music Week’s cornerstone,<br />
the Berlin Festival (<strong>September</strong> 5-7), now at<br />
Arena Park and surrounding sprawl.<br />
You’re famous for recording in an abandoned<br />
WWII bunker. Why? Err, money.<br />
They’re only good for rehearsals or storage, so<br />
it’s very cheap and we didn’t have any money. But<br />
then it turned out that it was perfect for what<br />
we want to do – we can go in there and be loud<br />
until six in the morning on a weekday, it doesn’t<br />
matter. No one cares: the walls are six feet thick.<br />
We had the first bunker in Hamburg, and then<br />
we moved to a different one after a couple of<br />
years. Of course, we needed to treat it a little<br />
bit, because it’s concrete, so if you leave it raw it<br />
sounds terrible. It’s also, I think, a big influence<br />
on our music, because it’s very isolated. There’s<br />
no sense of time or space, there are no windows,<br />
so you have to come up with something; otherwise<br />
it’s empty!<br />
You can spend days at a time down there<br />
without feeling the pressure of sunlight.<br />
That’s how it was when we started but now it’s<br />
a little bit more 9-5, or sometimes 5-9. We go<br />
in and get a lot of looping material that we can<br />
work with, which we then roll out and see which<br />
pieces we can post together and want to listen to<br />
for four minutes. The music always comes first<br />
for us because we’re not classic songwriters, and<br />
then we sometimes try to write on top, which is<br />
a very long process. If you do both things at the<br />
same time it’s usually faster but that’s just how<br />
we work. On the last album, we started working<br />
with Oblique Strategies, that setup with a deck<br />
of cards that Brian Eno came up with [with Peter<br />
Schmidt]. You draw one and have<br />
to stick to certain rules with whatever<br />
you choose. If it doesn’t fit, just<br />
discard it.<br />
DIGITALISM DJ SET<br />
Berlin Festival, Fri,<br />
Sep 5 - Sun, Sep<br />
7 | Arena Park,<br />
Eichenstr. 4, Treptow,<br />
S-Bhf Treptower Park<br />
Stuck in the bunker, you must be<br />
completely isolated from what’s<br />
happening around you in Hamburg.<br />
We’ve got a lot of great people<br />
coming from Hamburg. One of them<br />
is my neighbor; he’s part of the Adana<br />
Twins. They’re playing around the world<br />
now. Tensnake, from Hamburg, he’s on<br />
Radio 1 all the time. Solomon has gone<br />
massive – I mean, I used to sell him<br />
records at the shop! It used to be big<br />
for house music at the end of the 1990s,<br />
but then house music was dead, no one<br />
knew what to play; there was a bit of a<br />
void and that’s how we took over. I’m<br />
not sure how much we influenced the<br />
development but maybe we ignited a<br />
spark in people to think, “Oh, it is possible,<br />
let’s go and do it.” However I don’t<br />
know exactly how that translates to the<br />
club scene because I’m usually not in<br />
Hamburg! I’m always on tour.<br />
Hamburg is known for hip-hop and grad<br />
school indie, not really for its EDM. When<br />
you’re from Hamburg, you like being independent.<br />
That’s one of the mottos of the city, actually.<br />
Because we are from Hamburg we are not and we<br />
were never part of any scene or clique. We were<br />
quite isolated and we liked that. It’s always annoyed<br />
me when people start putting you into certain<br />
categories and tags. It’s always a bit draining<br />
but you get used to it. And it’s OK in some cases.<br />
I mean, if they put you in the same category as<br />
Daft Punk or The Chemical Brothers, then it’s a<br />
compliment. But the tags have changed over the<br />
years and it’s always funny because our music has<br />
more-or-less stayed the same.<br />
How do a couple of independent Hamburgers<br />
stick together for a decade? I think<br />
we’ve stayed on the same wavelength. Maybe<br />
in-between there were times when both of us<br />
went into whatever direction we were going<br />
towards and it went a bit more extreme. Isi is<br />
more positive but I’m the darker guy. If I watch<br />
a movie, I prefer the baddies, so it went more<br />
in that direction. But it’s never really too far off<br />
anything we’ve done for the last 10 years, really.<br />
We’re with each other almost every day, so there<br />
hasn’t been any time to part and come back with<br />
different things to bring to the table.<br />
Also, I don’t think our tastes completely<br />
changed over the years. It’s<br />
sometimes hard for us to keep up to<br />
date with the latest developments in<br />
music, but we always get around and<br />
incorporate everything into the core<br />
that forms our sound.<br />
44 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
PHOTO CREDIT<br />
Which changed with “Wolves.” It’s gotten<br />
an amazing reception thus far. Yeah, it’s<br />
crazy because we came up with this instrumental<br />
track and people started asking about it. I think<br />
that the core of the Digitalism musical universe<br />
would be kind of romantic, melancholic music,<br />
usually riff-heavy, but because we don’t really<br />
play guitars we have to program it – soundtrack-y<br />
music that makes you move. But “Wolves” is a<br />
bit of a departure for us. It’s a bit gloomy, a bit<br />
nighttime but it’s also quite energetic and it just<br />
clicked into place. I came to the conclusion that<br />
if you take our last album, which was very songbased,<br />
a bit further and add some more electronics,<br />
you kind of end up at “Wolves.” It just totally<br />
makes sense.<br />
To Berliners, as well? Well, it will be great to<br />
be back in Berlin. We’ve had a bit of time off, so<br />
that’s given us time to come up with new stuff,<br />
and people know already that there’s always<br />
a good chance of us drop-testing new tunes.<br />
I’m also curious to see how it goes because the<br />
Festival has moved [from Flughafen Tempelhof],<br />
right? So, I don’t know if that’s great, yet. I think<br />
the line up is pretty good. Though I’m just a bit<br />
gutted because I really like Jimmy Edgar and I<br />
think he’s playing the same time. We’re basically<br />
starting up all the engines again to do this and<br />
then go on a US tour.<br />
At long last, the US is finally profitable for<br />
electronic music. Some people have mixed<br />
views about the American electronic scene because<br />
maybe it’s a bit more mainstream. But the<br />
fact is that the big acts like David Guetta have<br />
opened the doors over there for acts like us. It’s<br />
interesting, because we used to have a fan base in<br />
the US and now there are all these new people,<br />
and they’ve never heard of us, so it’s kind of like<br />
starting from the beginning again. Because we’ve<br />
been around for awhile, but people there are asking<br />
us, “What, you’ve got albums out? When did<br />
you start making EDM?” It’s a tricky one, but it’s<br />
getting there now. ■<br />
Digitalism in<br />
five dates<br />
2000: Jens “Jence”<br />
Moelle and Ismail “Isi”<br />
Tüfekçi meet whilst<br />
working at the<br />
Underground Solution<br />
record store in<br />
Hamburg. They begin<br />
DJing together.<br />
2003-4: Start working in an old WWII bunker.<br />
Remix songs by The Futureheads, Klaxons<br />
and The White Stripes for their DJ sets.<br />
Release their first original track “Idealistic”,<br />
which leads to them signing with Kitsune.<br />
2007: Digitalism release their debut album,<br />
Idealism (Virgin) in May.<br />
2011: Release I Love You Dude (PIAS/<br />
Cooperative), the follow-up to their debut.<br />
Collaborate on original material for the first<br />
time with The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.<br />
<strong>2014</strong>: The duo returns to Kitsune to produce<br />
the Lift EP.<br />
45
What’s on<br />
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE<br />
CONCERT PICKS<br />
TUE, SEP 9, 20:00<br />
Doc Chad (Konstruktivist Kountry Klowning)<br />
Countrified avant-garde<br />
diddler Eugene Chadbourne<br />
has displayed his<br />
paranoiac’s virtuosity in a<br />
variety of contexts – from<br />
pure improv to twisted<br />
rockabilly to political<br />
comedy – for almost four<br />
decades. His latest persona<br />
is that of DOC CHAD,<br />
in tandem with the drummer<br />
Schroeder: rumors are there’s a lot of banjo as well as<br />
a double electric rake demonstration. Opener Joerg Hiller<br />
aka KONRAD SPENGLER is more of a conceptual-art type,<br />
heavy on the electronic processing. But the same can<br />
be said of Elvis’ vocals on his Sun sessions. Ausland,<br />
Lychner Str. 60, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str.<br />
MON, SEP 15, 20:00<br />
Roger McGuinn (Byrd Balladeer)<br />
The Byrds were one of the<br />
odder configurations of<br />
the 1960s, long-lasting<br />
yet only briefly hitmakers,<br />
with an ever-shifting<br />
line-up centred around<br />
the chiming ROGER<br />
MCGUINN, who, despite<br />
leading an ensemble that<br />
innovated in a few different<br />
genres, wrote sparingly.<br />
Perhaps it’s McGuinn’s folk roots that allowed him<br />
to lead by absorbing the cultural fabric that surrounded<br />
him and it’s in the guise of folk singer that he shows up at<br />
Passionskirche. Where have all the flowers gone? They’re<br />
here. Passionskirche, Marheinekeplatz 1-3, Kreuzberg,<br />
U-Bhf Gneisenaustr.<br />
FRI, SEP 26, 20:00<br />
Azealia Banks (Diva Rap)<br />
It’s been almost two<br />
years since Rihanna went<br />
seapunk and AZEALIA<br />
BANKS transformed into<br />
what Spin Magazine<br />
called “a dolphin-lover’s<br />
wet dream”. Yes, the<br />
bisexual art-school girls<br />
have taken over the<br />
former Thug Life McMansion<br />
and although Banks<br />
was cynically marketed as an underground sensation, the<br />
groundswell for her acid-stabby “212” was real enough.<br />
That said, it’s been a couple of years – an eternity this<br />
millennium – since her breakthrough and one wonders if<br />
she’s already soured on the game a la Angel Haze. If so,<br />
there’s always vaporwave. Huxleys Neue Welt, Hasenheide<br />
107-113, Neukölln, U-Bhf Hermannplatz<br />
SUN, SEP 28, 21:00<br />
Oval/Frank Bretschneider (Glitch ’n’ Pitch)<br />
The original ghost in<br />
the machine, Markus<br />
Popp, aka OVAL (photo),<br />
managed a brief period<br />
of indie headiness in the<br />
post-rock 1990s, despite<br />
the insularity of his music,<br />
usually generated from his<br />
own software and sometimes<br />
from the scratches<br />
of CDs. After years of low<br />
profile, we’ve been privileged with a surprisingly melodic<br />
hard drive dump, as of late. Raster-Norton/Mille Plateaux<br />
mainstay FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER is well paired with Popp.<br />
Bring your soldering iron and join in on the fun. Roter<br />
Salon, Linienstr. 227, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz<br />
A few questions for…<br />
The Space Lady By D. STRAUSS<br />
Those who encountered THE SPACE LADY on the streets of San<br />
Francisco in the 1980s and 1990s rarely forgot her. With her<br />
accordion and Casio, Moondog-esque winged helmet and lo-fi light-up<br />
suit, she’d sing echo-heavy covers of “Major Tom” and futurist-themed<br />
originals written by her first husband, Joel “The Cosmic Man” Dunsany.<br />
Years after relocating to Colorado, TSL<br />
(real name: Susan Dietrich Schneider)<br />
was rediscovered as an antecedent to<br />
Ariel Pink and Julia Holter. The Space<br />
Lady’s Greatest Hits (Night School) has<br />
led to her first ever European tour;<br />
she’ll be all shook up at Marie-Antoinette<br />
on Mon, Sep 29.<br />
To what extent was The Space<br />
Lady pure theatre and to what extent was<br />
she ideology? Gosh, that’s a tough question. I<br />
believe that everything I did was The Space Lady,<br />
pretty much. Joel and I had a close encounter, not<br />
with alien beings in the physical form, but we<br />
certainly felt a strong connection after we were<br />
scanned by that UFO on Mount Shasta, and<br />
probably before that as well, just from our<br />
psychedelic experiences. So, I really felt like all<br />
the things we came up with as The Space Lady<br />
were somehow channelled or inspired from some<br />
cosmic guardian that was protecting us.<br />
Did you feel like the San Francisco street<br />
scene was a creative community? Joel and I<br />
pretty much isolated ourselves. We were still<br />
afraid that that there would be some repercussions<br />
for him, having resisted the draft back in<br />
the day. And not having children registered –<br />
they didn’t have birth certificates or go to school.<br />
Maybe that lifestyle lent itself to my being what<br />
people called so original [laughs].<br />
You were less extroverted than your Space<br />
Lady identity. I was pathologically shy! [laughs]<br />
Joel and I were paralysed by fear. Back in Boston,<br />
we put together a band and called ourselves Blind<br />
Juggler, which pretty much describes what we<br />
were doing – feeling our way in the dark. And the<br />
THE SPACE<br />
LADY W/SLOW<br />
STEVE Mon, Sep<br />
29, 21:00 |<br />
Marie-Antoinette,<br />
Holzmarktstr. 15-<br />
18, Mitte, S+U-Bhf<br />
Jannowitzbrücke<br />
one time we really performed, Joel<br />
played with his back to the audience.<br />
He was afraid of being seen.<br />
Didn’t Jimmy Carter give amnesty<br />
to the draft-dodgers in the late<br />
1970s? Um, that’s the nature of<br />
paranoia. No matter what had<br />
happened in that political world, it<br />
wouldn’t have assuaged Joel’s fear. You<br />
know, the CIA: “They don’t care, they’ll bust me<br />
anyway, they don’t like what I’m doing as an<br />
artist.” But I wasn’t afraid of being seen in public<br />
as much as he was, so I was able to go out and<br />
scrounge for a livelihood, selling artworks,<br />
pan-handling, finally playing music… I really<br />
loved being The Space Lady. Yet, it was wrenching<br />
me apart from my family. Once, I was walking<br />
down the subway stairs with all my gear, and a<br />
businessman looked at me and said, “How long<br />
have you been doing this anyway?” I took it that<br />
he meant, “You’ve been whipping this dead horse<br />
for way too long, girl.” And, in fact, I became<br />
discouraged and thought, “Boy, I wasted a lot of<br />
time, to be such a crackpot.” I couldn’t find a<br />
balance, so I finally hung it up and left.<br />
With other musicians, like Sun Ra, space is<br />
a metaphor for alienation. You said a<br />
mouthful. I never felt like I fit in anywhere, but I<br />
created my own niche and that was very<br />
comfortable. People could approach me and talk<br />
one-on-one. What really scared me was, “Oh my<br />
gosh, I have to talk between songs.” You know, I<br />
could play songs for six hours straight, but even<br />
on the street, I didn’t really say anything. I guess<br />
I was probably afraid that people would see that<br />
I was really just a human being, and a very<br />
ordinary American girl-next-door. ■<br />
TERRI LOEWENTHAL<br />
46 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
www.exberliner.com<br />
U1 cover 121.indd 2<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> 121 • €2.90 • November 2013<br />
François ozon: “It was so boring to film sex, real sex.” (p.30)<br />
Felix kubin: “I really like to be dominated; by guys like you,<br />
for example.” (p.40)<br />
shermin langhoFF: “You hear such a variety of languages in the<br />
audience. They go even though they don’t understand.” (p.34)<br />
From Grozny to<br />
Berlin – why do so<br />
many make the<br />
hopeless journey?<br />
what can the<br />
lampedusa refugees<br />
expect now?<br />
An inside look<br />
into an emergency<br />
refugee shelter<br />
monika<br />
herrmann:<br />
legal cannabis in<br />
kreuzberg?<br />
10/23/13 7:08 PM<br />
Ich will nicht nach Berlin<br />
ACUD reloaded By MIKE FLECK<br />
Upon entering the courtyard of ACUD, with<br />
its bright blue façade and multicoloured<br />
picnic tables, it’s almost impossible to imagine<br />
that this was once a near-derelict (if<br />
populous) ramshackle, a place of decadence,<br />
substance inhalation and all-night parties.<br />
The current state of Veteranenstraße,<br />
where the multi-purpose building still<br />
resides, doesn’t help. It’s the picture-perfect<br />
cliché of gentrified Berlin; well-groomed<br />
parents push newborns around in expensive<br />
strollers whilst tourists lounge in the sun<br />
outside fancy bars sipping on the ubiquitous<br />
Aperol Spritz.<br />
It wasn’t always like this. For a few years,<br />
Veteranenstraße was at the heart of the<br />
Prenzlauer Berg party scene (and yes, there<br />
was one). Around the turn of the millennium,<br />
bars such as Bergstub’l and the<br />
still-operative FC Magnet hosted sidewalk<br />
crowds that would spill down the hill to<br />
Brunnenstraße. Much to the profit of the<br />
dealers that worked ACUD’s basement club,<br />
which often hosted a weirdly synchronous<br />
mix of Africans and goths.<br />
Poet/performer/booker Corbett Santana<br />
was part of the regular lineup in the<br />
early days of the club. “It was a complete<br />
shithole. It was trashed and the toilet was so<br />
disgusting that I had to flush it with my foot<br />
because I didn’t want to touch it. But we<br />
didn’t care – the air was laced with hashish.<br />
It was groovy and fun!”<br />
Back then, ACUD was run mostly by<br />
a post-Wall art collective, and its rocky<br />
relationship with the drug world helped<br />
contribute to the building’s original foreclosure<br />
warning. “That connection was mostly<br />
made by the guy who was running the club,”<br />
explains new co-owner Julie Gayard. “The<br />
people of ACUD rented the two floors to<br />
this guy who was running these drum ’n’<br />
bass/reggae parties. And he actually ran off<br />
with lots of debts and it was those parties<br />
that kind of pissed off the neighbours.”<br />
In 2001, the collective managed to<br />
purchased the complex, but following a<br />
series of extensive renovations they filed<br />
for bankruptcy nine years later. “They<br />
were just about to be put on forced auction.<br />
That’s when we heard about it and<br />
thought something should be done,” says<br />
Gayard. Since early this year the complex<br />
has been co-managed by two groups: the<br />
original art collective, which now runs the<br />
cinema, theatre space and café, and what<br />
the French/German Gayard and her business<br />
partner Johannes Braun call “ACUD<br />
Macht Neu” (literally, ACUD Makes New)<br />
consisting of the gallery, club/bar and studio<br />
spaces. Aren’t they worried about stepping<br />
on the toes of the old collective? Not at all,<br />
according to Gayard. “Eventually we want<br />
to have a common website with the old<br />
ACUD people and merge.”<br />
The maze-like geography of ACUD’s<br />
architecture lets the duo run multiple<br />
events at the same time. They’ve organised<br />
events ranging from highbrow conferences<br />
discussing the works of Walter Benjamin<br />
and Deleuze & Guattari to the electronic<br />
jazz outfit Spleen, as well as hosting the<br />
Torstraßen Festival’s closing party. “The<br />
interesting thing about this house is that<br />
you don’t have to conform to the old<br />
stereotypes anymore,” adds Braun. ‘‘You<br />
feel free in this house. It’s not 100 percent<br />
renovated. We don’t want to keep it perfect;<br />
we want it to be a transformative space.”<br />
Celebrate ACUD's official re-opening on Saturday,<br />
<strong>September</strong> 27.<br />
CULTURE. INTERVIEWS. REPORTAGE.<br />
chechens<br />
interview<br />
Looking for<br />
Asylum in Berlin<br />
Germany is Europe’s top destination for political refugees.<br />
Meet the people behind the numbers.<br />
o-PlAtz<br />
heim<br />
100% made in Berlin.<br />
Printed on recycled<br />
paper.<br />
What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage<br />
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47
What’s on<br />
ART<br />
Ai Weiwei – Framed<br />
He may be on lockdown<br />
but that hasn’t stopped<br />
dissident artist Ai Weiwei<br />
from popping up all over<br />
Berlin in the past several<br />
months. In addition to<br />
the massive exhibition<br />
Evidence at Martin-<br />
Gropius Bau and a piece<br />
in this summer’s Berlin<br />
Biennale, the Chinese<br />
sculptor and activist is also appearing at Neugerriemschneider,<br />
a high-end art showroom notorious for<br />
exhibiting exclusive, well-known artists. Since Weiwei<br />
is as creative as he is unpredictable, there’s no telling<br />
what surprises are in store. CM Sep 17-Nov 1,<br />
Neugerriemschneider, Linienstr. 155, Mitte, U-Bhf<br />
Rosenthaler Platz, Tue-Sat 11-18<br />
Bruce Nauman – Unlimited<br />
American artist and neon<br />
video genius Bruce Nauman’s<br />
work has a touch<br />
of madness and a clean<br />
polish. For fifty years the<br />
multimedia experimentalist<br />
has been reinventing<br />
himself and his voyeuristic<br />
works that illicit both<br />
confusion and agitation.<br />
A longtime friend of Art<br />
Basel, the Indiana-born artist became a household<br />
name in the 1970s and won multiple international<br />
art prizes. His video work will be exhibited at Haubrok<br />
for a mere two weeks, so get in and get out while<br />
there’s still time. CM Sep 12-27, Haubrok projects,<br />
Herzbergstr. 40-43, Lichtenberg, U-Bhf Magdalenenstr,<br />
open by appointment<br />
Giuseppe Gonella – Evidence of Time<br />
We’re pleased to announce<br />
Gonella’s official<br />
debut on the Berlin art<br />
scene! His large-scale<br />
paintings of oil and<br />
acrylic on canvas make<br />
use of different transparent<br />
layers. Gonella<br />
paints fast and furiously,<br />
starting with poeticto-the-cliff-of-troubling<br />
dream sequence subject matter and overlapping it<br />
with an entirely new scenario. Always moving forward<br />
and sometimes literally peeling back layers of paint to<br />
reveal what’s underneath, Gonella peeks over the edge<br />
into chaos, making the images swim before your eyes<br />
like your own reflection in water. FM Sep 6-Oct 18,<br />
Egbert Baqué Contemporary Art, Fasanenstr. 37, Wilmersdorf,<br />
U-Bhf Spichernstr., Tue-Fri 14-19, Sat 12-18<br />
Jennifer Oellerich – Liquid Landscapes<br />
Kwadrat Gallery wraps up<br />
its end of summer break<br />
with a brand new space<br />
and a colourful show by<br />
40-year-old Berlin-based<br />
German artist and<br />
UDK graduate Jennifer<br />
Oellerich. Part painter<br />
and illustrator, part<br />
anthropologist, she uses<br />
a variety of media to portray<br />
a remembrance to natural forms and landscapes.<br />
Not afraid to incorporate photography and printing,<br />
Oellerich’s painterly touch is never lost, as well as a<br />
repeated reference to water, its movement, and the<br />
correlation to human beings. CM Sep 13-Oct 11,<br />
Kwadrat, Manteuffelstr. 92, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Görlitzer<br />
Bhf, Wed-Sat 13-19<br />
“Show some<br />
respect to<br />
the people<br />
who brought<br />
you up” By FRIDEY MICKEL<br />
A gallerist with an eye for raw<br />
talent, ALEX DUVE hosts one of<br />
Berlin Art Week’s most<br />
anticipated exhibitions.<br />
If the week is to be seen as a reflection of the<br />
state of art in Berlin or even globally, one must<br />
not overlook Chris Succo’s painting expo at<br />
DUVE Berlin. Duve first appeared on the Berlin<br />
art landscape in 2007, and his gallery quickly<br />
gained a reputation as the number-one spot to<br />
see emerging artists just a split second before<br />
their meteoric rise to the top.<br />
You started your gallery in 2007 as Duvekleeman<br />
with Birte Kleeman. Then after five<br />
months, she left the project to move to New<br />
York City (where she now heads Michael<br />
Werner Gallery). Was it clear that you would<br />
continue? At that time Birte left, I was like, what<br />
am I going to do? Go on myself? I realised then<br />
that I could decide about aesthetics and concept<br />
all by myself, do what I wanted to do. But then I<br />
realised I had no contacts, none. Nobody had a<br />
fucking clue who I was! When you think about it<br />
economically, I should have stopped. Birte knew<br />
everybody when we did the gallery together, and<br />
when she left, I was really standing there, saying:<br />
should I do it? But everything had just started. We<br />
had put so much effort into the project.<br />
Has your programme become more commercial?<br />
Yeah, I am more commercial now,<br />
doing painting shows more than performance<br />
things, but I have to survive. When we started,<br />
we had lots of conceptual, risky shows, Like Jen<br />
Denike doing nude, dancing performances in<br />
the gallery. Over time, I realised “Fuck, I need to<br />
make money.” I didn’t want to close the gallery.<br />
If I could, I would also do other shows. Cool<br />
shows, amazing shows, every second show like a<br />
freak-out crazy mega non-commercial show… but<br />
I can’t sell them. There are galleries like Chert<br />
that are so hardcore conceptual, but you wonder:<br />
how do they pay their bills?<br />
What’s your collecting aesthetic? My<br />
parents collected abstract art for like 40 years.<br />
I like abstract painting. I know that it’s commercially<br />
good to sell at the moment, but I also<br />
like it. More than other things. So I am selling<br />
what I like and I can only sell what I like. My<br />
programme was always very Americanised, I was<br />
always looking for interesting American artists.<br />
I just continued with what I always did, and that<br />
suddenly got really in. I showed Sebastian Black,<br />
Paul Cowen, Ed Fornieles, and Markus Amm<br />
(okay, he’s German, but he also has an American<br />
market) – all these guys who are now exploding.<br />
And what’s it like to work with artists and<br />
build a gallery programme these days?<br />
Working with an artist is like being in a relationship<br />
– you marry somebody because you want<br />
to be with a person for the rest of your life, but<br />
these days it mostly doesn’t work out. It’s the<br />
same with the new art market. Galleries used to<br />
start working with an artist at a young age and<br />
would continue with them for all their lives. Now,<br />
artists emerge and jump around from one gallery<br />
to another, which I don’t necessarily understand.<br />
Exactly the artists who you put so much effort<br />
into and build up – the ones who really could<br />
pay your bills – suddenly leave the gallery. It’s<br />
disappointing. Show some dignity and respect to<br />
the people who brought you up. All the effort the<br />
young gallery puts into the artist’s work, being<br />
loyal to its artists, in a way making their career<br />
possible. Pushing the Bruce High Quality Foundation<br />
was lots of work, I showed them at Artissima<br />
– people were laughing at me, “what kind of<br />
bullshit is this?”. Then, just when they blew up,<br />
they left the gallery to work with Vito Schnabel.<br />
How did you start working with the Bruce<br />
High Quality Foundation? I discovered them<br />
with Birte Kleemann. We saw them in early<br />
2007, in their studio in Brooklyn, and we thought<br />
“Perfect. These guys rock.” A big reason they<br />
left the gallery was because it’s five guys, selling<br />
artworks that were not really expensive. Just<br />
imagine, selling an artwork for €10,000 is €5000<br />
for the gallerist and €5000 for them, divided by<br />
five, so everybody gets €1000… how do you want<br />
to live from that? Now the funny thing is that<br />
they are big. They no longer show with young,<br />
48 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
cool galleries. They show with Bruno<br />
Bischofberger, at Ammann Gallery – the<br />
massive, very big Swiss galleries, with<br />
really cool things at Art Basel. The collectors<br />
come back to me and say, “Ugh,<br />
why didn’t I listen to you?”, but then I<br />
say, there are still some new chances, you<br />
can buy Chris Succo...<br />
ART<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
CHRIS SUCCO Sep<br />
12-Oct 31 | DUVE<br />
Berlin, Gitschiner Str.<br />
94, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf<br />
Hallesches Tor, Tue-Fri 11-<br />
18, Sat 12-16<br />
Succo is becoming quite big right<br />
now. Where’d you find him? I found<br />
him at his MFA Diploma Show at Kunstakademie<br />
Düsseldorf. I was like “Hey<br />
man, you wanna have a solo show?”<br />
“YES!” I just liked his work, and then<br />
I showed him at every art fair – that<br />
I did – I really worked my ass off for<br />
him. When he was at the Royal College<br />
in London, we would meet up and go<br />
together to Frieze. People started to<br />
know us together, which was also good.<br />
There are galleries coming who are<br />
really interested in Chris, like now it’s<br />
the question: will Chris be so clever and<br />
start working with them, but also stay<br />
with his young gallery?<br />
What would you do if he left? If<br />
Chris left, then I would really have to<br />
second-guess... I don’t think I would<br />
close the gallery, but I would have to<br />
build up somebody again, and again and<br />
again... With all the stress, you get a<br />
heart attack. But it’s a passion, and I like<br />
it too much. ■<br />
Street art on an (Urban) Spree<br />
For the past 30 years, the art world has had a playful fascination with<br />
street art: Basquiat, Banksy, Fab 5 Freddy. Shepard Fairey’s command for<br />
us all to “OBEY“ has left us in a trance. These days, the milieu has<br />
reached such a hype that it ensures a sort of ‘backdoor pass’ to many<br />
self-educated artists who got their cred painting public walls, both urban<br />
and rural. While huge galleries worldwide vie for exhibitions aiming to<br />
somehow recreate the magic one finds in the street, the social and<br />
political commentary and dialogues that underlie the work in its true<br />
element are lost. While this genre has thrived on our cultural radar for<br />
three decades now, it’s largely gone without any art historical analysis.<br />
This and the lack of context leaves many art lovers high on the hype<br />
without any true understanding of what is going on, preferring to call the<br />
artwork in the gallery ‘art’ and on the street<br />
‘vandalism’. This month Urban Spree presents<br />
an exposé on the state of urban art through the<br />
eyes of the international street crew DUBL<br />
TRUBL, who have invited more than 80 of their<br />
friends to Berlin to create and collaborate on<br />
works to be presented in Urban Spree’s rough<br />
Revaler Straße space. The artists are paired off<br />
in twos, the collaborations<br />
both displaying the presence<br />
of the social aspect in street<br />
art, while examining each<br />
artist’s personal style in<br />
tandem. Miss Van and Ciro,<br />
Ghost Patrol and Merde,<br />
Lush and Dscreet, Tizer and<br />
Ebot will all be there. Come<br />
check it out. FM<br />
DUBL TRUBL<br />
Sep 18-Oct 26 |<br />
Urban Spree, Revaler<br />
Str. 99, Friedrichshain,<br />
S+U-Bhf Warschauer<br />
Str., Tue-Sat 12-19<br />
Wed-Mon 10am-7pm, closed Tue<br />
49<br />
Pabst © Walker Blue Evans Ribbon Archive, The Sign, Metropolitan Chicago, Museum Illinois, of Art 1946, Gestaltung: Collection Ta-Trung, of Clark Berlin and Joan Worswick
What’s on<br />
ART<br />
Katharina Grosse<br />
German abstract painter,<br />
art professor and newly<br />
published author Katharina<br />
Grosse has been developing<br />
her monumental<br />
space-scapes in Berlin for<br />
over a decade. Meanwhile,<br />
Grosse has gained global<br />
recognition and a slew of<br />
international exhibitions<br />
with swooping object<br />
and painting installations that tower over visitors like giant<br />
kaleidoscopes. Her paintings use colour relationships to<br />
maximize the perceived size of a space, making it feel bigger<br />
than it is. Rich and forceful brush strokes convey movement,<br />
characterising her specialised installation style. CM<br />
Sep 20-Nov 7, N.B.K. Showroom, Chausseestr. 128/129,<br />
Mitte, U-Bhf Oranienburger Tor, Tue-Fri 12-18, Thu 12-20<br />
Markus Keibel – Brute Force<br />
Brute force is a hacker’s<br />
term for a method of<br />
illegal, fast access<br />
to secured computer<br />
systems to overcome<br />
virtual walls. Markus<br />
Keibel reappropriates<br />
this meaning, drawing a<br />
storyline between his new<br />
cycle of works, in order to<br />
examine and implement<br />
both unthought and individual thoughts into society.<br />
The show’s leitmotif works quite interestingly, as it truly<br />
brings the already-living circular drawing to life. Working<br />
with undertones dealing with the element of fire and the<br />
diversity of creative destruction, the show moves from<br />
two-dimensionality into a full-on space installation. FM<br />
Through Oct 4, AJL Gallery, Potsdamer Str. 98A, 2. Courtyard,<br />
Schöneberg, U-Bhf Kurfürstenstr., Tue-Sat 14-18<br />
Rui Calçada Bastos – Passagem de Nível<br />
Lisbon-based curator<br />
Joao Silvério leads<br />
Bastos’ epic photography<br />
on a journey of chance<br />
encounters. The images<br />
bear a slightly blurred<br />
indiscipline of gaze, which<br />
betray a personal feeling<br />
in each captured motive,<br />
making them more than<br />
just documentation. His<br />
multiplicity of approaches questions the images as proof<br />
of different occurrences in a yet-to-be-named reality. Interceding<br />
through the space are minimalised sculptures and<br />
“marks” that play three-dimensionally with poetic memory<br />
and the reality that continues beyond the photographic<br />
edge. FM Sep 4-Oct 18, Invaliden1 Galerie, Schönleinstr.<br />
25, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Schönleinstr., Tue-Sat 11-18<br />
Petrus Wandrey: Digitalism Art<br />
This exhibition takes the<br />
visitor to the birth of new<br />
frontiers of contemporary<br />
art through the works of<br />
digital art pioneer Petrus<br />
Wandrey. Wandrey, who<br />
died in 2005, worked with<br />
a fascination of science<br />
and technology to create<br />
the Digitalist Movement,<br />
which started in 1978 in<br />
New York City. He played a lot with pixels at a time where<br />
most people had no idea that they existed, exploring<br />
media from two-dimensional imagery on monitors all the<br />
way to large-scale sculptures made from computer junk or<br />
individually manufactured hardware. FM Through Sep<br />
28, Zitadelle Spandau, Am Juliusturm 64, Spandau, U-Bhf<br />
Zitadelle, Mon-Sun-10-17<br />
Has the<br />
autumn of art<br />
lost its heart?<br />
It happened quickly and quietly<br />
in summer, arousing minimal<br />
attention. Shortly before initiating<br />
a new auction-style format,<br />
Berlin’s self-proclaimed<br />
“emerging” art fair Preview<br />
Berlin was submerged – permanently<br />
– behind the backs<br />
of two of its three organisers in<br />
only a handful of weeks. It’s the third<br />
founder, Kristian Jarmuschek, whose<br />
facile shuffling of ideas into new<br />
hands has birthed a brand new art<br />
BERLIN ART<br />
WEEK<br />
SEP 16-21<br />
fair, POSITIONS. The new fair promises, as Preview<br />
used to, a new kind of art fair that sheds the predictable<br />
white cubes, adapting itself to Kaufhaus<br />
Jandorf, a decrepit Berlin-style department store<br />
building – or, as the awkwardly translated English<br />
on the slapped-together homepage boasts, a<br />
“renovated former house of fashion”. It seems the<br />
only difference now between Berlin Art Week and<br />
Berlin Fashion Week is the absence of some deep<br />
pockets called Mercedes & Benz. Airport, factory,<br />
or department store, the story is all too familiar,<br />
and not the first or even second time Berlin’s<br />
fairs have played musical chairs during the city’s<br />
touristy art season.<br />
The art fair biz started in Cologne, of all places,<br />
with the beginnings of Art Cologne in 1967. The<br />
world’s first fair of its kind, it prompted a global<br />
audience to descend on Cologne to buy art. After<br />
the German city started attracting buyers formerly<br />
flocking to Paris or New York, artists like Joseph<br />
Beuys and Wolf Vostell channelled the idea of a<br />
contemporary marketplace towards Berlin in the<br />
1990s – thus the four-week Kunstherbst (autumn<br />
of art) was born. Themes like “Art for Everyone”<br />
(2007), “In Union with Art” (2005) and “Art and<br />
the Market” (2004) employed by FU Professor<br />
Klaus Siebenhaar, incorporated the artists’ direct<br />
involvement. Since 1996 there was one fair at the<br />
forefront around which the others were scheduled,<br />
Art on the cheap<br />
If you’re just as repulsed as we are by the printed<br />
canvases sold in Ikea’s “art” section, you’ll be<br />
thrilled to hear that a Berlin startup project is<br />
launching SCHAU<br />
FENSTER an affordable<br />
art shop<br />
with unique silkscreen<br />
prints, editions,<br />
catalogues<br />
and other objects.<br />
Many pieces are<br />
priced at €100<br />
or under,<br />
and are<br />
produced<br />
by the local<br />
art crowd,<br />
including<br />
44<br />
Flavours,<br />
SCHAU FENSTER<br />
RAUM FÜR KUNST<br />
Lobeckstr. 30-35,<br />
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf<br />
Moritzplatz<br />
JOHANNA SCHMITZ<br />
and up until 2011 its name was Art Forum, reigning<br />
on Berlin for 15 years.<br />
That is, until organisational efforts with rival ART<br />
BERLIN CONTEMPORARY, a four-year-old independent<br />
fair with roots in spring’s Gallery Weekend, fell<br />
through and Art Forum was scuttled. Just one year<br />
later, Berlin Art Week was born, drowning with it the<br />
memory of Art Forum and its sister fair Kunstsalon,<br />
organised by Edmund Piper, which succumbed<br />
to substantial budget cuts in 2012. The entire<br />
concept of a Kunstherbst was gone, and with it its<br />
intentions. Berlin Art Week uttered little mention of<br />
its founding fathers, and ABC ascended into head<br />
position, where it resides today. But now the closest<br />
resemblance to an actual marketplace is BERLINER<br />
LISTE. It has the highest concentration of self-represented<br />
artists and art universities, and is produced<br />
separately from ABC and Positions. The problem<br />
is, as soon as the artists themselves ceased to be<br />
part of the production process, Kunstherbst lost its<br />
edge. CAMILLE MORENO<br />
POSITIONS BERLIN Sep 18-21 | Kaufhaus Jandorf,<br />
Brunnenstr. 19-21, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz<br />
ART BERLIN CONTEMPORARY Sep 18-21 | Station Berlin,<br />
Luckenwalder Str. 4-6, Mitte, U-Bhf Gleisdreieck<br />
BERLINER LISTE Sep 18-21 | Postbahnhof, Straße der<br />
Pariser Kommune 8, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof<br />
Emess, Klub7, Stohead and Various&Gould. The<br />
creators of the shop have been organising the<br />
city’s Party Arty since 2003, which has always<br />
incorporated art with music, urban culture and<br />
performance. As part of the opening, 44Flavours,<br />
Klub7 and Stohead<br />
will each offer an<br />
exclusive print only<br />
available from the<br />
shop. In a time<br />
when Berlin flounders<br />
to support the<br />
arts, the accessibility<br />
factor of cheap<br />
art for sale is undeniable.<br />
Celebrate<br />
the launch at the<br />
second edition of<br />
the urban art fair<br />
Conturbanaries,<br />
happening <strong>September</strong><br />
18-21. CM<br />
50 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
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47
BERLIN BITES By FRANÇOISE POILANE<br />
ERICA LÖFMAN<br />
Masel Topf: Un-kosher delights<br />
Since Masel Topf is conveniently located across<br />
the street from the Rykestraße synagogue, passersby<br />
and tourists are expected to get the pun.<br />
It might not amuse believers exiting the temple,<br />
though. Not that they’ll eat here anyway – the<br />
only kosher thing on the menu is the excellent<br />
Tishbi 2011 Merlot from Israel. And there’s even<br />
pork shashlik, titled “The allure of the forbidden”.<br />
Playful touches include a taxi door imprinted<br />
with a faux stamp of kosher certification<br />
hanging over the bar, created by an artist friend<br />
of the restaurateurs.<br />
In other words, don’t expect textbook Jewishness<br />
at Masel Topf. Obviously there is no single<br />
Jewish cuisine, and the owners decided to serve<br />
dishes inspired by three places Jews live: Israel,<br />
New York and Eastern Europe. In short: falafel,<br />
burger, borscht. The latter has the strongest<br />
presence – unsurprising, as the owners have<br />
chalked up one success after another with a number<br />
of Russian restaurants across town – with<br />
many dishes “inspired by” Russian grandmas’<br />
recipes. One of the owner’s sisters oversees the<br />
all-Russian kitchen staff, throwing her own contemporary,<br />
at times ‘fusiony’, touch in the mix.<br />
All the usual suspects of Russian cuisine make an<br />
appearance: soljanka soup (the poultry version),<br />
borscht (white bean vegetarian), blinis (veg or<br />
not), vareniki dumplings (filled with potato,<br />
cheese or mushrooms and pan fried), etc... but<br />
don’t be surprised if some lime yoghurt or mango<br />
sauce shows up with your food.<br />
The “Tel Aviv” vegetarian starter plate (€9)<br />
feels like something you’d get in a Californian<br />
café, arranged on a white platter: falafel filled<br />
with feta, hummus, fried eggplant, slices of<br />
oven-roasted Hokkaido pumpkin, avocado, and<br />
a veggie aubergine dip. The Berlin appetiser<br />
combo (€17) will feed two hungry souls (or 4-6 if<br />
ordered as a starter) with most of the above cold<br />
‘tapas’ and many more, including herring tartar<br />
on baked apple (Vorschmack); trout mousse with<br />
delicious Borondinsky bread (the famous Sovietstyle<br />
sweet dark rye with a distinctive coriander<br />
flavour), cured salmon on potato pancakes, a<br />
convincing Russian take on ratatouille, breaded<br />
goat-cheese balls... all-in-all, 14 homemade<br />
delicacies served in charming little glass jars arranged<br />
along a boat-shaped platter. There’s even<br />
a sample generous of the home-cured pastrami<br />
with (also homemade) pink berry mustard; the<br />
flavourful, very lean meat can also be ordered in<br />
typical NYC sandwich style on rye bread with<br />
mustard and coleslaw. They also make their own<br />
challah bread, damn good soft white slices.<br />
Though we were already pleasantly stuffed<br />
ourselves, the meal continued with two examples<br />
of Jewish stuffing: the Pulke (€14) and the<br />
gefilte fish (€17). The former – with the exception<br />
of the apple-mango sauce – seems a lot like<br />
a dusted-off granny classic from Ukraine, where<br />
the restaurant’s manager hails from: take a<br />
chicken leg, carefully remove the skin, strip the<br />
meat from the bone, chop it and blend it with<br />
chicken liver, then stuff the skin with the mix,<br />
creating a funny boneless drumstick. Served<br />
with three small latke potato pancakes. Delicious,<br />
though perhaps lacking a veggie side.<br />
As for the fish, it is ‘gefilte’ only in name. It’s<br />
more of a vertical roulade, a hefty zander filet<br />
rolled around a mix of cured salmon, spinach<br />
and walnuts. The intended result is a ‘volcano’ on<br />
your plate, although our horseradish sauce wasn’t<br />
bubbling the way it was supposed to (apparently,<br />
on some days, it does!). The plate is prettified<br />
with a dollop of apple chutney, a colourful<br />
carpaccio of red and yellow beetroot and some<br />
caramelised sweet shallots.<br />
A well-executed wintery dish is braised lamb<br />
shank, so perfectly cooked for hours that the meat<br />
slides off the bone sumptuously – served with<br />
mashed potatoes, spicy prunes and Zimmes (slowcooked<br />
carrots with cinnamon). All mains come in<br />
portions that will satisfy the biggest of eaters.<br />
This is a place for long, autumnal nights, when<br />
you’re craving elaborate meals, slow-stewed<br />
meats, hearty roasts, braised vegetables and<br />
mashed potatoes. We were served by a friendly<br />
English-speaking waitress who laid the silver<br />
cutlery on the table with a cotton glove. The interior<br />
reassuringly evokes elegant Czarist times:<br />
starched serviettes, Biedermeier-style furniture<br />
and Art Deco touches<br />
as well as the retro wallpaper<br />
and baroque chis-<br />
MASEL TOPF<br />
Rykestr. 2, Prenzlauer<br />
Berg, U-Bhf<br />
eled glass chandeliers.<br />
For those in the know:<br />
Senefelderplatz,<br />
more Pasternak than Mon-Sun 18-1<br />
Gorki. ■<br />
52 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
Oui, Madame:<br />
French for<br />
Germans<br />
Although dance music producer Jean-Baptiste<br />
Martin was brought up in a part of France<br />
where kids were given plum brandy to sleep<br />
well (Exberliner disclaims responsibility for this<br />
advice), neither he nor his co-founder, Chileborn<br />
former store manager Christian Fonseca<br />
have wine backgrounds. Consequently, their<br />
wine bar Oui, Madame, open since mid-June,<br />
has nothing esoteric to it. Hidden on a cosy<br />
corner behind Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, it<br />
might feel a little remote. Yet there are already<br />
regulars, many of them French, and the owners<br />
seem to befriend most guests – which is potentially<br />
what makes the service a little slow. Apart<br />
from word-of-mouth, they attract customers<br />
through events like Tuesday boules and pastis<br />
by the Volksbühne (€5, including 2 pastis) and<br />
monthly improv theatre evenings.<br />
The wine blackboard is limited (four whites,<br />
five reds, two rosés and a handful of sparklings,<br />
€4.80-7/glass) but changes at least once a month.<br />
Work your way through them with a generous<br />
cheese plate (€9), normally containing three<br />
cow cheeses, one goat and one sheep, decorated<br />
with strawberries, sliced peaches, dried figs and<br />
a pile of rocket salad and bread. Fruity, unoaked<br />
Cabernet-Grenache blend Le Petit St. Jacques<br />
ERICA LÖFMAN<br />
from Languedoc (€4.80/glass, €18/bottle) is<br />
easy to enjoy with the nutty, savoury and mature<br />
hard cow cheese Salers (from Auvergne) or the<br />
musty, gamey sheep milk Tomme d’Estaing from<br />
the Pyrénée mountains. Both owners favour<br />
Abondance, an aromatic, semi-hard mountain<br />
cheese similar to Comté, which pairs surprisingly<br />
well with crispy Tourain Sauvignon blanc Clos du<br />
Porteau Le Courlis (€5.50/glass; €24/bottle).<br />
As for the buttery, salty blue cheese Bleu<br />
d’Auvergne (think Roquefort, only creamier),<br />
aim for something sweet rather than the dry<br />
reds you’re recommended. Our tip: ask for the<br />
honey-coloured Ratafia de Bourgogne, a special<br />
kind of aperitif with complex flavours of dried<br />
fruits and elderflower that will knock you off<br />
your feet. The only disappointment is the bread,<br />
some generic whole-grain<br />
slices that can’t match a<br />
nice cripsy baguette. But<br />
they also offer a great<br />
salami plate, and the<br />
French don’t need bread<br />
to eat saucisson! HW<br />
OUI, MADAME<br />
Almstadtstr. 43,<br />
Mitte, U-Bhf Rosa-<br />
Luxemburg-Platz,<br />
Mon-Sat 17-24<br />
Vego chocolate:<br />
Nut just for vegans<br />
While most dark chocolate is dairy-free by default, the hunt for creamier versions<br />
is a minefield for strict vegans. Thank Prenzlauer Berg company Vego Good Food<br />
for their new (and massive!) Vegobar, a gianduja-like treat made from Italian chocolate<br />
and hazelnut cream with whole hazelnuts embedded throughout. Though politically correct<br />
(vegan, organic, gluten-free, fair trade), we’d buy it for the rich, nutty taste: think Nutella, turned into a<br />
hard, slightly crumbly bar. Buy your 150g XL chocolate bar at your local organic store for around €3.50. HW<br />
LPG BioMarkt GmbH · Mehringdamm 20–30 · 10961 Berlin<br />
7x in Berlin<br />
Charlottenburg: Kaiserdamm 12<br />
Friedenau: Hauptstr. 78<br />
Kreuzberg: Mehringdamm 20<br />
Kreuzberg: Reichenberger Str. 37<br />
Prenzlberg: Kollwitzstr. 17<br />
Treptow: Bouchéstr. 12<br />
Now also in Steglitz:<br />
Albrechtstr. 33<br />
NEW<br />
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Wine 0,75l from 2,49 € *<br />
Kiwis 1 piece from 0,19 € *<br />
Bread 1kg from 2,25 € *<br />
Musli 1kg from 2,79 € *<br />
Potatoes 1kg from 1,79 € *<br />
*Permanently reduced prices for members<br />
Check our new website for special<br />
offers and a lot more information:<br />
www.lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
53
FASHION By JESSICA SALTZ<br />
■ FASHIONISTAS<br />
“She’s done it again!”<br />
BAG IN<br />
BUSINESS<br />
Part of Berlin’s growing constellation of young<br />
menswear designers, SISSI GOETZE is well on her<br />
way to a stellar career.<br />
Goetze founded her eponymous label in Berlin in 2011<br />
after completing her master’s degree at London’s<br />
renowned Central St. Martin’s College, and has not<br />
looked back. She won Berlin’s Start Your Fashion<br />
Business award in 2012 as the “menswear label<br />
to watch”, and many in the local fashion<br />
business and beyond are indeed taking notice;<br />
she is a firm fashion editor favourite and has<br />
been picked up by stores as local as Berlin’s Voo<br />
Store and as far away as Japan. “It was<br />
really strange to be in Tokyo and see a<br />
client walk in off the street in my<br />
clothes,” Goetze says modestly.<br />
She acknowledges the “focus on<br />
menswear” developing in<br />
fashion at the moment, but<br />
explains that her interest in<br />
men’s clothing came from the<br />
challenge of working within<br />
strict parameters: “With<br />
women’s clothing everything<br />
has to be new each season,” she<br />
explains. “You have to think about<br />
new silhouettes and fabrics. Men’s<br />
wear is always consistent; part of the<br />
challenge is doing something new<br />
with the same standard pieces.”<br />
Despite the limitations, Goetze is<br />
breathing a new life into wardrobe<br />
■ SHOP OF<br />
THE MONTH<br />
Prag Pop-up<br />
The Prag PR agency<br />
represents some of our<br />
favourite Berlin labels<br />
like Lala Berlin, Lika Mimika<br />
and Michael Sontag.<br />
Their stylish but<br />
diminutive Mitte store<br />
is like a fantasy walk-in<br />
wardrobe. Friedrichstr.<br />
40, Mitte, U-Bhf Kochstr.,<br />
Tue-Fri 11-19, Sat 12-17<br />
staples – her most<br />
recent packed-out<br />
presentation during<br />
July’s Mercedes<br />
Benz Berlin<br />
Fashion Week saw<br />
the designer’s<br />
ability to mix<br />
fabric, cuts<br />
and – for the first time – a print, whilst staying<br />
within the remit of her purist outlook. As one top<br />
fashion editor sighed at the show: “She’s done it<br />
again.” Her inspirations may come out of left field<br />
(that show for example was, according to<br />
Goetze, “a mix of American B-boy and<br />
Mediterranean style”), but the clothes<br />
themselves make perfect sense: fitted<br />
blouson jackets, high waists and the stripe<br />
down the side of pants “that makes me<br />
think of the Italian Carabinieri,”<br />
Goetze laughs. She has been much<br />
credited for her signature shoulder cut<br />
– a rounded raglan form “that is is<br />
rounded but accented,” the designer<br />
explains. This trademark is consistent in<br />
her collections and makes for a relaxed,<br />
contemporary look that lends itself to shirts<br />
and jackets. A tiered bib front on the front of<br />
a white shirt, or a tactile mélange cotton<br />
fabric – her knack for mix-and-match details is<br />
what makes her one of this city’s most<br />
promising young talents. www.sissigoetze.com<br />
ANDREAS MÜHE PRINT<br />
SANDRA RATKOVIC<br />
Whether you are heading<br />
back to the office, school,<br />
or just back to bed this<br />
<strong>September</strong>, you should<br />
at least look like you<br />
mean business. Suits are<br />
generally regarded with<br />
suspicion in Berlin, but a<br />
job-appropriate accessory<br />
is always a good thing<br />
whether employment is<br />
something you’re into or<br />
not. A leather work bag,<br />
such as this one by Deepmello,<br />
will lend its carrier,<br />
male or female, an immediate<br />
sense of gravitas.<br />
Briefcase-y in form, it just<br />
looks like it is full of important<br />
documents, even<br />
if it actually just contains<br />
a half-eaten kebab and a<br />
dog toy. I’ve ranted about<br />
canvas bags in this column<br />
before, but flimsy cotton<br />
never did a business<br />
leader make, let’s face it.<br />
The satchel’s time in the<br />
fashion spotlight – and all<br />
the awkward schoolgirl<br />
connotations it brought<br />
with it – is thankfully behind<br />
us and rucksacks are<br />
the preserve of DJs and<br />
backpackers. So for God’s<br />
sake get yourself a leather<br />
holdall for autumn and<br />
let your bag do the work<br />
for you.<br />
54 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
SPOTLIGHT<br />
ARTICLE TAG<br />
Tepees on the Spree By Dominic Mealy. Photo by Veronica Jonsson.<br />
Sandwiched between the overgrown shoreline of<br />
the Spree River and the graffitied husk of the old<br />
ice factory by Jannowitzbrücke is the shambolic<br />
strip of improvised huts and tarpaulin tents<br />
known as Teepee Land. First conceived in 2012<br />
as a proto-native Indian utopia by the Odinworshipping<br />
neo-pagan Flieger Fischer (photo),<br />
the camp has since turned into a more prosaic<br />
squatter settlement – a “public land development”,<br />
as longterm resident Olly calls it. Says<br />
the ponytailed Englishman, “We’re looking to<br />
improve the land, not just use it.”<br />
Approaching from the Schillingbrücke, you<br />
hear a mix of German, English and southern and<br />
eastern European languages coming from an array<br />
of figures: some sweeping, one rolling a shopping<br />
trolley of Pfand bottles, others relaxing with<br />
a beer. There are 13 permanent residents and a<br />
constantly changing cast of up to 30 guests, from<br />
young idealists to grizzled veteran squatters,<br />
from the destitute to the homeless-by-choice.<br />
“I wanted to experience communal living,” says<br />
Sara, a New Zealand anthropology graduate. “It’s<br />
a great experiment.” Meals are communal and a<br />
by-donation café covers tobacco, toothpaste and<br />
a fund for medicines. Decisions are made in a<br />
weekly group meeting that can take hours. Everyone<br />
pitches in, even though it’s not mandatory.<br />
Besides a programme of free film screenings,<br />
skill sharing workshops and the obligatory Balkan/reggae/punk<br />
concerts, the group has joined<br />
forces with local residents and businesses to<br />
rejuvenate Spreeuferweg, the currently dilapidated<br />
riverside strip, and protest against city<br />
government plans for the area to be developed<br />
into a wide concrete “promenade”. Teepee<br />
Landers clear the path through the camp on a<br />
daily basis and are building vegetable patches to<br />
complement the nearby ID22 urban gardening<br />
project. An alliance has also been fostered<br />
with the site’s neighbours, the five-year-old<br />
120-strong cooperative housing project Spreefeld.<br />
“Some members of the cooperative might<br />
prefer if they weren’t there,” says Spreefeld<br />
resident Manfred, a retired academic. “But that’s<br />
a minority opinion. We get along well, the Teepee<br />
people are friendly people.” The thing he’s most<br />
excited about? “They’re talking about raising<br />
chickens! I’d love to buy eggs on my doorstep.”<br />
It’s not all buttercups and daisies for our erstwhile<br />
Indians. “Sanitation remains a really big<br />
issue,” says Sara bluntly. Yet spirits remain high.<br />
“We just have to keep working at it,” says Polish<br />
resident Alex enthusiastically. “Look at Christiania,<br />
it has lasted because of the work people<br />
have put in. We could achieve something like<br />
that… without the drug dealing, of course!” n<br />
55
ADVERTORIAL<br />
The Berlin guide<br />
The new directory to help you find your way around Berlin.<br />
To advertise, contact ads@exberliner.com<br />
mitte<br />
Prêt-à-Vélo Carefully handcrafted<br />
bicycles from England, Italy<br />
and Belgium meet high-quality bags,<br />
smart accessories for a day of biking<br />
in the city, chic functional clothing<br />
and office-ready bike shoes. As premium<br />
partners of the brands Brooks<br />
England and Fahrer Berlin, they focus<br />
on sustainably designed products<br />
that are produced in Europe<br />
and that can often only be found in<br />
their store. Fehrbelliner Str. 17, U-<br />
Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Mon-Fri 12-19,<br />
Sat 10-16, www.pret-a-velo.de<br />
Konk This charming boutique<br />
has a huge selection of Berlinbased<br />
designer fashion including labels<br />
Anntian, Boessert Schorn, Hanna<br />
Pordzik, Isabell de Hillerin, Hui Hui,<br />
Kiesel, Mikenke, Naoko Ogawa, Nico<br />
Sutor, Penelope‘s Sphere and Thone<br />
Negrón. Support your local designers<br />
and look fab! Kleine Hamburger Str.<br />
15, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Mon-Fri<br />
12-19, Sat 12-18, www.konk-berlin.de<br />
Roland Weiss, Lawyer<br />
Are employment law problems getting<br />
you down? Roland Weiss (German<br />
attorney at law) has advised<br />
German and international clients on<br />
labour law for more than ten years.<br />
He speaks German, English, Swedish<br />
and French. Tucholskystr. 18-20, S-<br />
Bhf Oranienburger Str., Tel 030 3406<br />
0390, www.weisslegal.de<br />
Fire Bar After reunification, Berlin<br />
exploded with underground bars.<br />
In Fire Bar you can still feel the spirit<br />
of the Berlin underground. Che-<br />
Icons<br />
Food<br />
Drinks<br />
Coffee<br />
Shop<br />
Gallery/Art<br />
Entertainment<br />
Music<br />
Languages<br />
Wellness/Fitness<br />
Beauty<br />
Services<br />
ap drinks, sofas, funky lights. The<br />
fire is always burnin’ in this cosy cellar<br />
bar. Krausnickstr. 5, S-Bhf Oranienburger<br />
Str., Mon-Sun from 20,<br />
www.fire-club.de<br />
Kilkenny Irish Pub<br />
Natives and visitors alike converge<br />
to drink and party at this pub under<br />
the beautiful Hackescher Markt station.<br />
Enjoy homemade Irish and international<br />
pub grub plus a huge vast<br />
selection of beers and spirits. Catch<br />
all the international sports on big<br />
screens. Live concerts two to three<br />
nights a week. Plus a sun terrace and<br />
easy 24h access to public transport.<br />
Am Zwirngraben 17-20, S-Bhf Hackescher<br />
Markt, Mon-Sun from 10,<br />
www.kilkenny-pub.de<br />
Hinterm Horizont Enjoy<br />
an authentic Berlin story about<br />
Germany’s reunification at Potsdamer<br />
Platz, the site where the wall once<br />
stood, and experience a moving love<br />
story between East and West featuring<br />
the greatest hits of Udo Lindenberg.<br />
Relive the most significant<br />
moment of German-German history<br />
up close. An absolute must for every<br />
visit to Berlin! Stage Theater at<br />
Potsdamer Platz, Marlene-Dietrich-<br />
Platz 1, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz,<br />
Tel 03871 2115 530, www.hintermhorizont.com<br />
Blue Man Group New look,<br />
new scenes, new songs and all the<br />
popular classics combine to create<br />
Blue Man Group’s best show ever.<br />
Over the past decade, it has developed<br />
into the most successful show<br />
in the German capital. An absolute<br />
must for every Berliner and tourists<br />
from all over the world. Stage<br />
BLUEMAX Theater, Marlene-Dietrich-<br />
Platz 4, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz,<br />
Tel 03871 2115 530, www.bluemangroup.de/international<br />
Dolores Founded 10 years ago<br />
as a street food pioneer in the German<br />
capital, Dolores serves excellent<br />
California-style burritos and quesadillas<br />
– inspired by San Francisco’s Mission<br />
district. Recommended by Time<br />
Out, New York Times, Lonely Planet.<br />
Voted #1 value for your money by Exberliner<br />
readers. Rosa-Luxemburg-<br />
Str. 7, S+U-Bhf Alexanderplatz, Tel<br />
030 2809 9597, Mon-Sat 11:30-22,<br />
Sun 13-22, www.dolores-berlin.de<br />
Sauerkraut In a cosy, woodpanelled<br />
room, German and American<br />
cultures (Donald Duck meets<br />
Hansel and Gretel!) clash head-on<br />
with a menu of meaty delights. Seven<br />
kinds of homemade Wurst, interesting<br />
burgers and original tapas.<br />
Daily lunch specials for €7.50.<br />
Weinbergsweg 25, U-Bhf Rosenthaler<br />
Platz, Tel 030 6640 8355, Mon-<br />
Fri 8-1, Sat-Sun 9-1, www.restaurantsauerkraut.de<br />
Tommi’s Burger Joint At<br />
this London import, you‘ll find classic<br />
no-nonsense black Angus beef burgers,<br />
medium grilled, just like Tommi<br />
likes it. Kick-ass veggie burgers for the<br />
non-Fleisch eaters and milkshakes that<br />
taste better than yours. Invalidenstr.<br />
160, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Mon-<br />
Sun 11:30-22, www.burgerjoint.de<br />
prenzlauer berg<br />
Godshot belongs to the top of<br />
the league, with excellent coffee and<br />
super-friendly staff. Above all, they<br />
know their stuff. Take your time, enjoy<br />
the casual, laid-back atmosphere<br />
of a great neighbourhood and one<br />
of their delicious cakes. Immanuelkirchstr.<br />
32, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,<br />
Mon-Fri 8-18, Sat 9-18, Sun 13-18,<br />
www.godshot.de<br />
LPG Biomarkt Your all-organic<br />
neighbourhood supermarket<br />
supplies fruit and vegetables,<br />
meats, cheeses and even cosmetics.<br />
Fill your basket with freshly baked<br />
bread and treat yourself to a selection<br />
of sweet and savoury goodies.<br />
Kollwitzstr. 17, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,<br />
Mon-Sat 9-21, bakery from 7,<br />
www.lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
Engelberg has exactly the thing<br />
to satisfy your South German comfort<br />
food cravings. Besides the rotating<br />
weekly menu, there’s Alpine<br />
cheese, sausage from a small southern<br />
butcher, delicatessen breakfast,<br />
cake, bread, wine and Likör galore.<br />
Oderberger Str. 21, U-Bhf Eberswalder<br />
Str., Tel 030 4403 0637, Tue-Sat<br />
10-22, Sun 10-20, www.engelbergberlin.de<br />
The Green Room is a centre<br />
for holistic, green medicine. Here<br />
you‘ll find an international team of<br />
complementary health practitioners<br />
who offer consultations in English<br />
and German. Holistic therapies at the<br />
Green Room include homoeopathy,<br />
psychotherapy, coaching, hypnosis<br />
and EMDR, Neurological Integration<br />
System and PSYCH-K, Ayurvedic and<br />
Tibetan massage, classical and pregnancy<br />
massage, past-life regression<br />
and yoga. Hufelandstr. 34, Tel 030<br />
4208 4030, www.thegreenroom.de<br />
No Wódka showcases the<br />
best of today’s lively Polish art and<br />
design scene. The concept store features<br />
a range of contemporary Polish<br />
fashion, homeware and furniture and<br />
also hosts exhibitions of work by Polish<br />
artists. Pappelallee 10, U-Bhf<br />
Eberswalder Str., Mon 12-19, Tue-Sat<br />
11-19, www.nowodka.com<br />
Nalu They call themselves the<br />
Homeland of the Freefill, but Nalu<br />
is much more: here you’ll score USstyle<br />
breakfasts, comfort food and a<br />
great cheeseburger plus tasty lunch<br />
and dinner specials. Finish your meal<br />
with a malted milkshake or root beer<br />
float! Dunckerstr. 80a, S-Bhf Prenzlauer<br />
Allee, Mon 9-16, Tue-Sun 9-22,<br />
www.nalu-diner.com<br />
Memory It’s easy to see why<br />
Kylie Minogue shops here: a haven<br />
for vintage lovers, the small boutique<br />
offers an extensive range of 1950s<br />
to 1970s treasures from handbags<br />
and suitcases to jewellery and evening<br />
dresses… at affordable prices!<br />
Schwedter Str. 2, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,<br />
Mon-Sat 14-19<br />
friedrichshain<br />
Hirsch At first glance you<br />
might be excused for overlooking<br />
this pub, but upon entering you’ll be<br />
glad you didn’t. This bar combines<br />
intimacy reminiscent of an English<br />
pub with traditional southern German<br />
food, like Spätzle and Maultaschen,<br />
and a huge selection of beer.<br />
Kopernikusstr. 3, S+U-Bhf Warschauer<br />
Str., Mon-Sun from 16, www.<br />
hirsch-friedrichshain.de<br />
iMazing Looking for Apple<br />
products? At iMazing, friendly and<br />
well-trained staff are ready to assist<br />
you with all your equipment needs<br />
and IT services. Whether you’re interested<br />
in buying or have a warranty<br />
repair, you’ll find quick, efficient<br />
help here. Gürtelstr. 42, U+S-Bhf<br />
Frankfurter Allee, Tel 030 2005 3660,<br />
Mon-Fri 10-13/14-19, Sat 12-16,<br />
www.imazing.de<br />
Monster Ronson’s Ichiban<br />
Karaoke is the world’s craziest<br />
karaoke club. Make out on<br />
their super-dark dance floor, get<br />
naked in the private karaoke boxes<br />
and sing your favourite songs all<br />
night. Warschauer Str. 34, S+U-Bhf<br />
Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun from 19,<br />
www.karaokemonster.de<br />
No Hablo Espanol Delicious,<br />
freshly made San Franciscostyle<br />
quesadillas and burritos served<br />
by a collection of fun-loving international<br />
folks. Every Wednesday, challenge<br />
the NHE team in a game of<br />
rock paper scissors and win a half-price<br />
meal. Kopernikusstr. 22, S+U-Bhf<br />
Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun from 12,<br />
www.nohabloespanol.de<br />
Hops & Barley Serving<br />
home-brewed pilsner and dark beer,<br />
this is the place to go to get that proper<br />
brew-pub vibe in Friedrichshain.<br />
56 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
fresh, seasonal German and continental<br />
dishes at reasonable prices. Breakfast<br />
on weekends and holidays. Live<br />
music and parties start after dessert.<br />
Mariannenplatz 2 (Bethanien), U-Bhf<br />
Kottbusser Tor, Tel 030 600 318 600,<br />
Mon-Sun from 11, www.3schwesternberlin.de<br />
LPG Biomarkt Your all-organic<br />
neighbourhood supermarket<br />
supplies fruit and vegetables,<br />
meats, cheeses and even cosmetics.<br />
Fill your basket with freshly baked<br />
bread and treat yourself to a selection<br />
of sweet and savoury goodies.<br />
Reichenberger Str. 37, U-Bhf Kottbusser<br />
Tor, Mon-Sat 8-21, bakery<br />
from 7, www.lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
Café Morgenland On weekends<br />
and holidays you’ll find a great<br />
buffet here, complete with gourmet<br />
cheese, fresh fruit and veg, crêpes<br />
and other vegetarian dishes, cold<br />
cuts, shrimp cocktails and more. Set<br />
menus from €5. During Happy Hour<br />
drinks are just €3.50 after 20:00. Reservations<br />
suggested. Skalitzer Str.<br />
35, U-Bhf Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030<br />
6113 291, Mon-Fri 9-1, Sat-Sun from<br />
10, www.morgenland-berlin.de<br />
AGATA SASIUK<br />
Rosa Caleta You’ll find what<br />
is surely Berlin’s finest Jamaican food<br />
in a side street a stone’s throw from<br />
Görlitzer Bahnhof on the U1 line. Live<br />
music, art exhibitions, catering and<br />
an intimate dining atmosphere offering<br />
creative dishes with a European<br />
touch. Great homemade cake selection.<br />
Muskauer Str. 9, U-Bhf Görlitzer<br />
Bahnhof, Tel 030 6953 7859, Tue-<br />
Sat 18-23:30, Sun 14-1, kitchen until<br />
23:30, www.rosacaleta.com<br />
Cider and wheat beers are also on<br />
tap. Part brewery, part bar, the interior<br />
is beautifully decorated with antique<br />
tiles. Wühlischstr. 22-23, S+U-<br />
Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun 17-2,<br />
www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de<br />
Mexican Street Kitchen<br />
Savour Mexican deliciousness in<br />
Friedrichshain – as colourful as the<br />
Kiez. Salads as green as the Yucatan<br />
jungles and salsas as fiery as Mariachi<br />
music. Don‘t be afraid of the Luchador<br />
masks! “El Bosque” is ready to<br />
protect, tortilla in hand. Simon-<br />
Dach-Str. 7, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str.,<br />
www.facebook.com/MSKBerlin<br />
Milja & Schäfa serves homemade<br />
pasta made fresh daily, crisp<br />
salads and daily specials in pleasant<br />
surroundings, blending urban style<br />
with woody rustic charm. Every day<br />
their open kitchen gives birth to a<br />
new lunch menu and breakfast variations.<br />
Pamper your sweet tooth with<br />
homemade desserts, cakes and cookies.<br />
The coffee is organic and the<br />
fine wines come from a hand-selected<br />
young German vintner. Sonntagstr.<br />
1, S-Bhf Ostkreuz, Tel 0176<br />
6266 8459, Sun-Thu 8-24, Fri-Sat 8-2<br />
kreuzberg<br />
Blue Living The colour concept<br />
store Blue Living stocks famous<br />
and beautiful English paint and wallpaper<br />
from Farrow & Ball, as well as<br />
furniture and fabrics from established<br />
manufacturers such as Moooi and<br />
Kvadrat and a range of vintage classics.<br />
Discover new design objects and<br />
wonderful collectibles each time you<br />
visit. Südstern 6, U-Bhf Südstern,<br />
www.blueliving-farben.de<br />
Bastard From Bastard with<br />
love: whether it’s breakfast, lunch or<br />
dinner, this restaurant is not just for<br />
those who were born out of wedlock.<br />
Choose from the changing seasonal<br />
menu created with love for fresh ingredients<br />
and fine food. Our tip: try<br />
the homemade stone-oven bread!<br />
Reichenberger Str. 122, U-Bhf Görlitzer<br />
Bahnhof, Tel 030 5482 1866,<br />
Mon-Sun 9-17, www.bastard-berlin.de<br />
Jivamukti Yoga The official<br />
outpost of NYC’s best-known yoga<br />
centre offers the opposite of “fastfood<br />
Western yoga”. Sounds too hippy?<br />
Don’t worry: yoga is a pleasure<br />
here. Stylish surroundings, classy<br />
equipment, English-speaking staff and<br />
two loft studios add to the relaxing,<br />
luxurious atmosphere. Four English<br />
classes. Oranienstr. 25, U-Bhf Kottbusser<br />
Tor, www.jivamuktiberlin.de<br />
Santa Maria Eat authentic<br />
Mexican street food right on Oranienstraße,<br />
with a bar offering a full range<br />
of mezcal, tequila and cocktails. Enjoy<br />
favourites like chilaquiles and tacos<br />
de carnitas plus the biggest, tastiest<br />
burritos in town. Oranienstr.<br />
170, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Sun<br />
from 12, www.santaberlin.com<br />
3 Schwestern Housed in a former<br />
hospital turned art centre, this<br />
spacious restaurant with big windows<br />
overlooking a lovely garden serves<br />
Tiki Heart Café &<br />
Shop Looking for a weird, wonderful<br />
Hawaiian-Kreuzberg atmosphere?<br />
Then this is the best place<br />
to be. Open for diner-style breakfast,<br />
lunch and cocktails. Kick back<br />
amongst punk rock Schnickschnack,<br />
crazy clothing and footwear. Aloha &<br />
rock ‘n’ roll! Wiener Str. 20, U-Bhf<br />
Gör litzer Bahnhof, Mon-Sun from 10,<br />
www.tikiheart.de<br />
Piri’s Inspired by the flavours<br />
of Portugal, and Piri-Piri sauce in<br />
particular, Piri’s brings the flavours<br />
of Portuguese chicken in burger<br />
form, with their very own special<br />
recipe salsa, combined with delicious<br />
homemade aioli and soft, seeded<br />
buns. Wiener Str. 31, U-Bhf<br />
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Mon-Sun 12-22,<br />
www.piris-chicken.com<br />
Le Bon serves up some mean<br />
eggs Benedict, yogi tea, French<br />
toast, house-smoked salmon, croque<br />
madame, pulled pork burgers and<br />
shashuka. All-in-all, a mean breakfast<br />
and some great coffee, just like its<br />
sister café Kaffeebar around the corner<br />
on Graefestraße. Boppstr. 1, U-<br />
Bhf Schönleinstr., Mon 8-15, Wed-Fri<br />
8-15, 18-23, Sat-Sun 9:30-16, 18-23,<br />
www.lebon-berlin.com<br />
57
ADVERTORIAL<br />
Dr. Dot gives the best massage,<br />
erm, on Earth. Based in Kreuzberg<br />
61, across from Viktoriapark, Dot has<br />
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she or one of her 850+ strong<br />
team of massage therapists (Dotbots)<br />
can massage you pretty much any<br />
time, anywhere. Deep Tissue is their<br />
specialty. www.drdot.com<br />
Modern Graphics Berlins<br />
best comic shop! Here you can<br />
find the biggest possible selection<br />
of German and English comic books,<br />
graphic novels, illustration/art/street<br />
art/tatoo/design books and magazines<br />
and cool toys. A weekly shipment<br />
with the newest US comics arrives<br />
each Thursday! They have a second<br />
store in Europa Center. Oranienstr.<br />
22, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, www.<br />
modern-graphics.de<br />
wedding<br />
Berlin Glas e.V. Their mission<br />
is to share the skill of making glass<br />
art with the public and provide a resource<br />
to international artists working<br />
with all media. Their underlying message:<br />
working in collaboration with<br />
artists of various cultures doesn’t just<br />
broaden someone’s artistic capacity,<br />
it actually creates a culture of peace.<br />
Provinzstr. 42a, S-Bhf Schönholz,<br />
www.berlinglas.org<br />
neukölln<br />
Barettino Eat spaghetti with<br />
your hands... oi, oi, oi! Wake up on<br />
a church bench... Hallelujah! Italian<br />
coffee! Or savour the first rays<br />
of the morning sun with Italian delicacies...<br />
Panino with Coppa... Subito!<br />
Reuter str. 59, U-Bhf Hermannplatz,<br />
Mon-Fri 8-19, Sat-Sun 10-19,<br />
www.barettino.com<br />
Mama Kalo Dig in to the<br />
best of both German and French<br />
cuisine at this cosy gem in Schillerkiez.<br />
Everything is homemade, from<br />
the Flammkuchen and Spätzle to<br />
the quiche, soups, salads and desserts.<br />
Freshly baked Kuchen, anyone?<br />
Herrfurthstr. 5, U-Bhf Boddinstr., Tel<br />
030 6796 2701, Mon-Tue,Thu 12-22,<br />
Fri 12-23, Sat 15-23, Sun 15-22<br />
Schillerbar serves fantastic<br />
breakfast well into the afternoon<br />
and great cocktails at night. Behold<br />
the authentic red paint on the outside<br />
wall intended to threaten the<br />
bar upon opening, left there, and affectionately<br />
responded to with hearts<br />
stating “Schiller loves you anyway” (in<br />
German of course). Herrfurthstr. 7,<br />
U-Bhf Boddinstr., Tel 0172 9824 427,<br />
Mon-Sun 9-2, www.schillerbar.com<br />
Pazzi X Pizza offers an amazing<br />
selection of pizzas and creative<br />
topping combinations including<br />
seasonal varieties with pumpkin or<br />
porcini. Innovative antipasti plates,<br />
salads, tasty frappés and a charming<br />
atmosphere. Slices from only €2!<br />
Herrfurthstr. 8, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,<br />
Mon-Sun 11:30-24<br />
Sala Da Mangiare Authentic,<br />
traditional Italian cuisine. Queens<br />
of the house: cappelletti, ravioli, tagliatelle,<br />
strozzapreti and gnocchi,<br />
handmade fresh every day. Ingredients<br />
are sourced from Emilia Romagna,<br />
organic farms and slow food<br />
suppliers. You’ll feel right at home<br />
in the intimate, friendly atmosphere.<br />
Mainzer Str. 23, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,<br />
Tel 0157 7068 3348, Tue-Sat 19-23,<br />
www.saladamangiare.de<br />
Rollberg Kino With five<br />
screens, Babylon Kreuzberg’s bigger<br />
but lesser-known sister boasts one of<br />
the largest original language movie<br />
selections in Berlin. Located on the<br />
U8 near Hermannstraße in the Kindl<br />
Boulevard shopping centre. Rollbergstr.<br />
70, U-Bhf Boddinstr., Tel 030<br />
6270 4645, www.yorck.de<br />
Hepcat’s Corner Swing,<br />
swing, swing! This comfy, warm Art<br />
Nouveau café and bistro offers a<br />
daily rotating menu, breakfast and<br />
homemade cake and coffee with<br />
swing music on the speakers. Live<br />
concerts once a month and swing<br />
lessons every Saturday from 19:00.<br />
Schinkestr. 14, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.,<br />
Tue-Sat 10-24, Sun 10-21, www.<br />
hepcatscorner.de<br />
Rixbox Espresso & Food<br />
offers top-quality signature espresso<br />
blends, mild and strong, fresh juice,<br />
homemade lemonade, shakes, sorbets,<br />
soups, stews and sandwiches.<br />
Their fresh ingredients come from local<br />
and regional suppliers and their<br />
meals are visually creative, always<br />
homemade, served quickly and of<br />
great value. Richardstr. 2, U-Bhf Karl-<br />
Marx-Str., Mon-Sat 8-21, Sun 10-18,<br />
www.rixbox.de<br />
Prachtwerk One of a<br />
kind in Neukölln, Prachtwerk is a spacious<br />
café, music venue and gallery.<br />
With a wide variety of local and<br />
organic items, Prachtwerk serves<br />
up Five Elephant Coffee, beer from<br />
Neukölln’s Rollberg Brauerei, housemade<br />
baked goods, tasty cocktails,<br />
and more. The best part? All profits<br />
benefit social projects. Ganghoferstr.<br />
2, U-Bhf Karl-Marx-Str.,<br />
www.prachtwerkberlin.com<br />
La Pecora Nera Experience<br />
the original Venetian aperitif tradition<br />
in this cosy neighbourhood osteria.<br />
Enjoy an Aperol Spritz during daily<br />
happy hour (18-20) and try the appetiser<br />
platter with North Italian cheeses<br />
and cold cuts. For dinner, polenta<br />
and fresh pasta await you! On Tuesdays<br />
they offer special, delicious vegetarian<br />
dishes and on Fridays the<br />
daily menu contains market-fresh fish.<br />
Herrfurthplatz 6, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,<br />
Tel 030 2501 3346, Tue-Sun from 18,<br />
www.pecoraberlin.de<br />
schöneberg<br />
55 Limited Founded in May<br />
2012, 55 limited is an Intaglio printmaking<br />
workshop and gallery specialising<br />
in small, limited editions (no<br />
more than 55 prints), photo-mechanical<br />
processes (in particular, photogravure)<br />
and limited-edition artist’s<br />
books. Feurigstr. 62, S-Bhf Julius-Leber-Brücke,<br />
Wed-Sat 14-19,<br />
www.55ltd.net<br />
Belmér Mediterranean food<br />
culture meets creative, beautifully<br />
presented cuisine make with quality<br />
ingredients. Don’t miss the brunch<br />
buffet every Sunday from 10-15 with<br />
Mediterranean delights and live piano!<br />
Belziger Str. 34, S-Bhf Julius-Leber-Brücke,<br />
Tel 030 8999 6735, Mon-<br />
Fri 16-24, Sat from 12, Sun from 10,<br />
www.belmer-restaurant.de<br />
Dolores Goes West The place<br />
that revolutionised Berlin fast food<br />
with awesome California-style burritos<br />
ten years ago has a second store<br />
on Wittenbergplatz, across from Ka-<br />
DeWe. This location serves their best<br />
classics and several great new spicy<br />
combos. Bayreuther Str. 36, U-<br />
Bhf Wittenbergplatz, Mon-Sun 11-22,<br />
www.dolores-berlin.de<br />
Kumpelnest 3000 The<br />
legendary bar that made the Berlin<br />
nightlife scene what it is today. This<br />
brothel-turned-bar 25 years ago was<br />
Bono’s hangout during his visits to<br />
West Berlin. Kumpelnest hasn’t lost<br />
any of its authenticity or wild side<br />
over the years. Hipsters beware!<br />
Lützowstr. 23, U-Bhf Kurfürstenstr.,<br />
Mon-Fri 19-5, Sat-Sun from 19,<br />
www.kumpelnest3000.com<br />
Computer Service Julien<br />
Kwan Julien Kwan’s elegant store<br />
for Apple computers and other hightech<br />
goodies is the place for those<br />
who want more than just a shop-andgo<br />
experience. Personalised service<br />
makes browsing the latest technology<br />
a true pleasure. Vorbergstr. 2, U-Bhf<br />
Kleistpark, Tel 030 6170 0510, Mon-<br />
Fri 10-19, Sat 12-16, www.deinmac.de<br />
charlottenburg<br />
Futomania has been supporting<br />
sleepers with traditional tatami<br />
and futon-style beds since 1986.<br />
Natural and organic bedding made to<br />
order in their in-house workshop with<br />
solid birch, cherry and oak wood bases.<br />
New beds, cribs and more. Also<br />
a source for meditation and shiatsu<br />
equipment. Richard-Wagner-Str. 51,<br />
U-Bhf Richard-Wagner-Platz, Mon-Fri<br />
11-19, Sat 11-16, www.futomania.de<br />
Café im Literaturhaus<br />
Enjoy a coffee in one of Berlin’s finest<br />
cafés, known for its courteous<br />
staff and pleasant atmosphere in the<br />
elegant and much-loved Literaturhaus<br />
villa. The perfect stop during a<br />
shopping trip on nearby Ku’damm.<br />
Fasanenstr. 23, U-Bhf Uhlandstr.,<br />
Tel 030 8825 414, Mon-Sun 9:30-24,<br />
www.literaturhaus-berlin.de<br />
Lalaine Find everything from<br />
tender Italian merino wool and mohair<br />
in differing thickness and colour<br />
to precious cashmere and smooth silk<br />
lingerie. Sure to please even the most<br />
demanding of customers. In short, a<br />
lovely boutique for all your knitting<br />
needs at Savignyplatz. Kantstr. 145,<br />
S-Bhf Savignyplatz, Mon-Fri 10-19, S<br />
Habitare With over 30 years<br />
experience on Savignyplatz, Habitare<br />
has become a real design institution.<br />
If you’re searching for timeless<br />
modern pieces and high-quality furniture<br />
for your home, this is your best<br />
bet among the many design and furniture<br />
shops in the area. Great service<br />
too! Savignyplatz 7-8, S-Bhf<br />
Savignyplatz, Mon-Fri 10-20, Sat 10-<br />
18, www.habitare.de<br />
The Harp is an Irish haven<br />
just a one minute stroll off of<br />
Ku’damm. Taste the homemade German<br />
and international food and the<br />
great Irish and German beers. Listen<br />
to live music every Friday and Saturday,<br />
play darts or join in the famous<br />
pub quiz on Thursdays. A smoker’s<br />
lounge and a pleasant sun terrace<br />
await you. Giesebrechtstr. 15,<br />
U-Bhf Adenauerplatz, Mon-Sun from<br />
10, www.harp-pub.de<br />
FIND FULL<br />
GUIDES AT<br />
www.exberliner.com/<br />
directory<br />
58 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
AMOK MAMA<br />
By JACINTA NANDI<br />
Don’t call me Jacinta!<br />
“What do you think<br />
about people calling<br />
their parents by their<br />
first names?” I ask my<br />
British Berlin mummyfriend<br />
Sally. “Like, you<br />
know, Jana’s kids do.<br />
Have you noticed? Jana’s<br />
kids call her and her<br />
husband Jana and Scott.<br />
At first I thought Scott<br />
was a stepfather or<br />
something, but he isn’t,<br />
he’s their dad. Bit weird,<br />
huh? Nice. But weird.”<br />
“It’s totally screwed<br />
up!” is Sally’s immediate<br />
reaction.<br />
“It is a bit weird,” I say. “But I think it<br />
sounds a little bit nice, too. Sometimes when<br />
I’m 'round at Jana’s, I think the kids sound so<br />
grown-up and sensible, I kind of wish Ryan<br />
would call me Jacinta, too.”<br />
“Do you?” Sally asks, genuinely shocked.<br />
“I would throw mine out of the house if<br />
they started pulling that Sally shit. I find it<br />
bad enough when they say Mama instead of<br />
Mummy.”<br />
I can still remember the first time my son<br />
called me Mummy and not Mama. We were<br />
arguing about whether he was allowed to have<br />
yoghurt BEFORE a sandwich. I wanted him<br />
to eat his sandwich and THEN the yoghurt,<br />
and I was really determined to win this one.<br />
And then he said, suddenly, out of nowhere:<br />
“Please, Mummy.” And I literally felt my heart<br />
melt like softened butter in a frying pan. You<br />
know when it gets all gooey and golden.<br />
Fast-forward five years. My son and I are<br />
arguing over whether Mount Everest is the<br />
highest mountain in the world or not. He is<br />
probably right, but I don’t care. I don’t agree<br />
with his “If you count mountains which start<br />
off in the sea” policy. I think he’s being really<br />
pedantic, like when people say Muslims have<br />
small brains and you call them racist and they<br />
say, really proudly: “But Islam isn’t a race!”<br />
“But you don’t count mountains that start<br />
off in the sea, do you,” I say, gently.<br />
“Look, this is what I’m trying to tell you,<br />
Jacinta,” he answers.<br />
I stare at him,<br />
aghast. I might have<br />
described myself staring<br />
at Ryan aghast in<br />
previous columns but<br />
until today I never<br />
stared at him THIS<br />
aghast. I stare at him,<br />
flabbergasted and<br />
agape and dumbfounded<br />
and boggled and all those<br />
sorts of things.<br />
“What did you just say?”<br />
He says: “The tallest<br />
mountain in the world is<br />
not Mount Everest. I saw<br />
it on YouTube–”<br />
“No,” I say. “Ryan, what<br />
did you just call me?”<br />
“Jacinta!” he says.<br />
“But why did you call<br />
me that?”<br />
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”<br />
“You do not call me<br />
Jacinta!” I say sternly.<br />
“Why not?” he asks.<br />
“You call me Mama or Mummy,” I say.<br />
“And why?” he says.<br />
“Because,” I say. “Because, because.”<br />
“Do you call me Sonny?” he says.<br />
I blink. “Do you want me to call you<br />
Sonny?” I say.<br />
“You told me once, Mama, about how<br />
people in the 19th century made their kids call<br />
them Sie and they called their kids Du. Well,<br />
it’s the same with Mummy and Sonny. Why<br />
are you allowed to call me Ryan but I have to<br />
call you Mummy? It’s a Doppelmoral.”<br />
I stare at him and my whole body is filled<br />
with horror and shock and dismay and stuff. I<br />
feel the horror and shock and dismay and stuff<br />
slowly seeping into my soul, like heavy, thick,<br />
black oil. It has actually happened. He is actually<br />
cleverer than me now. This is like when<br />
the robots take over the world and human<br />
beings just get farmed for their body parts<br />
in giant concentration camp-style human<br />
resource factories. He has come up with an<br />
argument I never thought of before. And the<br />
argument he has come up with is a TOTALLY<br />
GOOD ONE. Shit.<br />
“If you call me Mummy and not Jacinta, I<br />
will buy you a €25 App Store card next time<br />
we go to Media Markt,” I say.<br />
He puts his hand in mine. “Okay, Mum,” he<br />
says. “I love you.”<br />
I might be the worst mother in the whole of<br />
Christendom, but at least my son doesn’t call<br />
me Jacinta. ■<br />
I STARE AT HIM AND MY WHOLE<br />
BODY IS FILLED WITH HORROR AND<br />
SHOCK AND DISMAY AND STUFF.<br />
IT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. HE IS<br />
ACTUALLY CLEVERER THAN ME NOW.<br />
MARTA DOMINGUEZ<br />
SELL<br />
YOUR<br />
SOUL!<br />
And everything else... on Exberliner classifieds<br />
www.exberliner.com/classifieds<br />
59
charmingly dilapidated building just<br />
north of Torstraße. A photographer<br />
and musician by trade, he is a<br />
veteran of the underground Mitte<br />
scene (Tacheles, IM Eimer,<br />
Synlabor) and believes that the<br />
struggles he has lived through in the<br />
centre are only a precursor to<br />
city-wide problems: “When capital<br />
is the main interest there is very<br />
little room for culture and art. You<br />
can clearly see what has gone wrong<br />
[in Mitte] but it can also happen in<br />
Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Wedding,<br />
Friedrichshain.”<br />
The demise of any subculture or<br />
scene is often predicted almost from<br />
the outset. And Mitte after the Wall<br />
came down has been no different.<br />
Nevertheless, the recent spate of<br />
forced closures and relocations paints<br />
quite a grim picture for the area’s<br />
nightlife. Anchored by the garish<br />
erving frothy pils to the thirsty workers moved to Mitte in the early 1990s, living in a<br />
opulence of members’ club Soho<br />
of Mitte since 1893, Bierstube Alt Berlin squat on Auguststraße and learning to cook<br />
House at the eastern end of<br />
pulled down its shutters for the last time there in one of the soup kitchens. Explaining<br />
Torstraße, expect more exclusive bars<br />
at the end of April. Old Berlin in name the move, he says: “I’m fighting for a space<br />
to emerge in the Scheunenviertel –<br />
and nature, it sounded like a death rattle for the where I don’t get shut down by the neighbours…<br />
I started not feeling so comfortable. I<br />
of local, loud, late-night charm.<br />
steamrolling all but a few tenements<br />
authentic Mitte nightlife of yesteryear. Said to<br />
have been frequented by Bertolt Brecht and just don’t think Mitte has a scene anymore.”<br />
The German media often refer to<br />
Alfred Döblin, the pub was a legend in its own Aside from the changing atmosphere of the<br />
it as Clubsterben (club death) but<br />
lifetime – a no-frills Raucherlokal where one area, the rocketing rent was ultimately one of<br />
another, less frequently used term,<br />
could well imagine Franz Biberkopf in the the deciding factors. Two years ago when White<br />
Clubkarussel, might be more<br />
corner, quietly serenading his three beers and Trash’s contract was up, the owner wanted to<br />
accurate. Many of the old clubs and<br />
Kümmel schnaps.<br />
increase his earnings overnight by 40 percent.<br />
bars – like Baiz and White Trash<br />
As the last traditional place on Münzstraße Potts refused and continued to pay the old<br />
– continue to flourish in their new<br />
– awash in a sea of posh boutiques and flagships amount, around €7000 per month, until he was<br />
locations. For further proof of this<br />
– the small 70sqm thorn in the side of Mitte’s finally taken to court and ordered to pay it in<br />
chopping and changing, just keep<br />
gentrification remained, until the very end, as full – a situation he had to stomach until a new<br />
an eye on Kiki Blofeld, a Mitte club<br />
popular as ever. The sadly familiar story being venue was found. Recently his old property was<br />
legend on par with Bar25 until its<br />
that the whole building was sold to an investor put on the market again, this time marked up to four weeks, most of it given as an interest-free<br />
recently the Chelsea Bar. However, it’s a corner where the long drinks start at €10.<br />
untimely, Mediaspree-induced closure in 2011.<br />
from afar, Harm Müller-Spreer in Hamburg, who €16,660 per month.<br />
loan. Referring to the changes in Mitte,<br />
just south of Rosenthaler Platz that is most One of the only Mitte success stories in recent This May, it re-opened in Oberschöneweide:<br />
promptly demanded 10 times<br />
Being unable (or unwilling) born-and-bred Berliner Bogisch says: “What I<br />
indicative of the current changes...<br />
years is that of Schokoladen. The writing was on “just a 30-minute tram ride from Friedrichshain,”<br />
as its owner, Gerke Freyschmidt,<br />
the rent as soon as the<br />
to keep pace with the rent is see is that a lot of what makes up Berlin’s special<br />
Delicious Doughnuts, a late night (and often the wall for the squat-turned-living project and<br />
contract was up. Which<br />
one thing, but being kicked identity, whether it’s certain clubs or bars or<br />
all day too) stalwart of the Mitte scene opened in all-round cultural centre until the philanthropic pleaded in Tage s spiegel. With none other than<br />
would have meant a rent of<br />
out on principle is something alternative culture, is now being pushed out.”<br />
1993, launched the careers of bigshot Berlin DJs Edith Maryon Foundation stepped in at the Bryan Adams set to open an artists’ complex in<br />
around €800 per month<br />
else. Baiz – everybody’s<br />
And it seems to be happening faster these<br />
like Ben Klock and was a trusty reliable for death in 2012 with a loan to buy the entire the desolate neighbourhood, will the far East<br />
jumping up to around €8000<br />
favourite leftie bar on<br />
days. April also saw the end of King Kong Klub<br />
nearly two decades – an unlikely place where you building. Schokoladen hopes that other alternative<br />
and traditional locations will return to Mitte According to Potts from White Trash, “There<br />
pick up where Mitte left off?<br />
– an unfathomable amount<br />
Torstraße – suffered this fate and Naherholung Sternchen. The former an old<br />
might end up should your birthday fall on a<br />
for any small Kneipe.<br />
earlier this year. Although they hand of the Mitte club scene, the other more of<br />
Tuesday with nowhere else open come 6am. (fingers crossed for Bierstube Alt Berlin), is no conspiracy theory. Berlin is becoming what<br />
Although the Alt Berliners<br />
could still afford the rent, a newcomer; nevertheless, both stood out thanks<br />
Inhabited by a colourful assortment of ravers and although even its members when pushed believe it is. The nightlife will find its space and people<br />
are searching for a new<br />
which had doubled in 10 years, to a lovable DIY approach and an eclectic<br />
reprobates, plus a few straggling tourists and the neighbourhood is something of a lost cause. will always be moving to the next free zone.” The<br />
location to call home and refit<br />
in the end the new owners programme of readings, concerts, comedy and<br />
birthday kids, it too had to permanently close in “Realistically speaking, it’s going to get worse battle for alternative spaces in Mitte has been<br />
with all the original fixtures,<br />
decided that the Baiz motto parties. Naherholung Sternchen even suffered<br />
2012. Reopening in its place last year was Dean in the direction of London or Paris or somewhere,”<br />
says Chris Keller, who moved to Berlin another homogeneous metropolis, the fight for<br />
largely lost, but if Berlin isn’t to become just<br />
bar manager Dana Tucker is<br />
of “Kein Bex, kein Latte, kein the indignity of having to cancel their weekendlong<br />
‘last hurrah’ event because of pressure from<br />
– and another golden-hued, swanky, dancey bar in 1990 and has a Hinterhof studio in the<br />
the rest of city must rage on. n<br />
– part of the proliferating Amano hotel group<br />
still grieving several weeks<br />
Bullshit” simply wasn’t for<br />
after the closure. “It used to<br />
Berlin-Mitte in <strong>2014</strong>.<br />
the nearby Amt. Cookies, a Mitte nightlife<br />
be a city full of so many<br />
According to the formal head epicentre in the 1990s, will throw its closing<br />
possibilities and such freedom... Now it’s getting of the Baiz collective Matthias Bogisch: “They party on July 19. This year would have been its<br />
more and more restricted.”<br />
told us that the place didn’t match [the character 20th birthday.<br />
This is the case even for a nocturnal institution<br />
and tourist magnet like White Trash Fast After protesting in vain, they resolved to move over in Mitte. It has just mutated into something<br />
of the building], so there was no new contract.” That is not to say that the party is completely<br />
Food. After 13 years on and around Torstraße, the and found new digs up in Prenzlauer Berg, a altogether more grownup, more monied and, one<br />
February 23: BAIZ April 19: KING KONG the East Side Gallery; April 25: Closing April 28: Münzstraße Mitte location in 2011,<br />
moves from Torstraße KLUB, one of Mitte’s it moves downriver, party for NAHERHOL- pub ALT-BERLIN pours reopens in the wilds of<br />
burger-and-music joint has upped sticks for a stone’s throw away from the bourgeois Kollwitzplatz.<br />
“They’re not just idiots around here,” quips suits armed with clipboards and velvet ropes<br />
might say, more generic. Late cocktail bars where<br />
to Schönhauser Allee; last live music institutions,<br />
forced to shut MAGDALENA. scrappy young club on brates with a surprise July 19: COOKIES<br />
replacing the club UNG STERNCHEN, a its final beer; cele<br />
Oberschöneweide.<br />
larger and cheaper location down by the Arena<br />
the collective’s supporters<br />
form a human down.<br />
April 24: WHITE the Mitte/Friedrichs<br />
set by Bonaparte. (Friedrichstraße/Unter<br />
complex in Treptow. Owner Wally Potts puts it Bogisch. Baiz belongs to the property-owning marshal the door; nightlife spots that wouldn’t<br />
simply: “There’s no future in having a club in class too now, having bought their new 150sqm look out of place in London or New York. The<br />
chain to carry its belongings,<br />
one by one, plans squeeze YAAM last night in its Tor<br />
after pressure from BLOFELD, priced close its doors.<br />
April 21: Mediaspree TRASH FAST FOOD’s hain border, cancelled May 25: KIKI<br />
den Linden) set to<br />
Mitte-Prenzlauer Berg.” And after all, he should corner spot. Asking around their circle of friends last couple years have thrown up the dress-toimpress<br />
likes of Trust, The Liberate and more<br />
to the new building. out of its location by straße location. the Ordnungsamt. out of its Spreeside<br />
have a good feel for the district, having first and supporters, they raised the funds in a mere<br />
8 • JULY/AUGUST <strong>2014</strong> 9<br />
FROM OUR READERS<br />
In response to Seymour Gris’ “Sioux Indian<br />
found guilty of Nazi salute” (www.exberliner.com),<br />
members of Native American<br />
sculptor Robert Packard’s former artist’s<br />
association sent us their side of the story…<br />
The case of the Sioux “Sieg Heil”<br />
Robert A. Packard has been a member of our association<br />
since 1999. Over the years, he has paid<br />
his membership fee only sporadically. The club<br />
accepted that for social reasons, and because he<br />
was a very good sculptor. Working with him was<br />
never easy, since he was an excessive alcoholic<br />
and drug consumer for years, which may be the<br />
reason for his current change in personality…<br />
Last year, he would not speak with us for some<br />
months, didn’t say hello, and ignored the management<br />
... Even though he claims differently,<br />
Packard applied a circle sign made of polishing<br />
dust on a sand strip next to our parking space.<br />
Management was not asked for permission. We<br />
are definitely not hindering any member from<br />
practicing his or her religion, but we are of the<br />
opinion that our parking lot is an improper place<br />
to do so. That Packard had rediscovered his Native<br />
American roots was not known by us.<br />
On April 30, a heated argument took place<br />
because the so-called “piece of art” was hit by<br />
water we used to water the lot. On May 2, he<br />
called us Nazis for this reason and screamed<br />
“Nazis raus!“ out of an open window.<br />
On May 22, chairwoman Hella Zarski entered<br />
the studio. Packard went on a rampage in the<br />
kitchen. As the chairwoman left the building, he<br />
screamed, “Nazischwein, hau ab!” The chairwoman<br />
called the police, who declined to come because<br />
nobody was hurt. When he saw board members<br />
on the street on May 24, he did the Hitler salute<br />
several times …. Unwilling to accept Packard’s<br />
behaviour any<br />
longer, we decided<br />
to exclude him. –<br />
Hella Zarski, Karin<br />
Omoregbee, Ursula<br />
Keil, Arbeitskreis<br />
Spandauer Künstler<br />
Berlin e.V.<br />
just don’t think<br />
Mitte has a<br />
Our article on<br />
scene anymore.”<br />
Mitte “Club<br />
death and<br />
transfiguration”<br />
(issue #129, July/<br />
August <strong>2014</strong>) drew gentrification defenders<br />
out of the woodwork…<br />
What’s wrong with Soho?<br />
How on earth is Soho House “garish and<br />
opulent”? It is so discreet there is no advertisement<br />
of its existence at street level. Few<br />
non-members even know it is there… I loved<br />
Berlin when I first came here in 1990. I love it<br />
now. Some things are much, much worse. Some<br />
things are much, much better. But, guess what:<br />
it’s a city – it evolves. Friction between generations<br />
is probably a good thing too. However,<br />
you can really like one thing without being<br />
snide and condescending about something else<br />
you don’t like. No one has a god-given right to<br />
dictate how Berlin should be and what sort of<br />
people should be moving to the city. Indeed, in<br />
Berlin of all places, it really shouldn’t be neces-<br />
TO THE EDITOR<br />
NIGHTLIFE<br />
Club death and<br />
transfiguration<br />
The spring saw a swathe of late-night institutions in Mitte<br />
closing or moving away from the centre. Is the party over<br />
for the formerly happening district and what does it spell<br />
for the rest of Berlin? By Luke Atcheson<br />
S<br />
“I’m fighting for<br />
a space where<br />
I don’t get shut<br />
down by the<br />
neighbours… I<br />
sary to point that<br />
out. Your moaning<br />
about change may<br />
be a preoccupation,<br />
a personally rewarding<br />
one even,<br />
but I assure you<br />
that “change” is not<br />
“a cause”. I can’t<br />
help feeling sorry<br />
A timeline: Clubsterben or Clubkarussel?<br />
for all those people<br />
who pick up your<br />
magazine on their<br />
first visit to Berlin<br />
only to read how absolutely terrible the place is,<br />
how much better it used to be and how they’re<br />
to blame. – Barney Smith<br />
MARC BRINKMEIER<br />
WRITE TO US AND WIN<br />
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60 • FEBRUARY <strong>2014</strong>
DIE KUNSTSTADT<br />
BERLIN IM ÜBERBLICK<br />
Museen, Galerien, Termine<br />
Ab dem 12. <strong>September</strong><br />
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Foto: Christian Mentzel<br />
Berlin<br />
2 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>
aka: stILL LIFE<br />
PREMIO ORIZZONTI<br />
BESTE REGIE<br />
EIN FILM VON<br />
ubErtO PasOLINI<br />
NINA Hoss<br />
RoNAld ZeHrfeld<br />
NINA KunZendorf<br />
ab 25. <strong>September</strong> im Kino<br />
Der neue Film von Christian Petzold<br />
2 • SEPTEMBER <strong>2014</strong>