EXBERLINER Issue 127, May 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>127</strong> • €2.90 • <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
Denis Villeneuve: “I was very lucky. Jake Gyllenhaal could have<br />
been an asshole.” (p.32)<br />
Friedrich Liechtenstein: “I’m like an ornamental hermit.” (p.40)<br />
Sascha Weidner: “You were not in that bed. <strong>May</strong>be I was, you<br />
don’t even know.” (p.44)<br />
the<br />
Tempelhof<br />
vote:<br />
To build or<br />
not to build?<br />
Bowie’s back!<br />
Thirty-five years after his famous Berlin period, the<br />
Thin White Duke is back in town with a huge exhibition.<br />
We revisit the legendary 1970s, talk to his friends,<br />
lovers and fans... and ask: “Where are we now?”<br />
www.exberliner.com<br />
What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage<br />
100% made in Berlin.<br />
Printed on recycled<br />
paper.
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>127</strong>, may <strong>2014</strong><br />
Regulars<br />
02 Werner’s political notebook Why vote<br />
in the Euro elections?<br />
04 Best of Berlin Baola, Bikini Berlin,<br />
Expat Meat sex club, Hatch Sticker<br />
Museum<br />
06 Fashion What’s hot and what’s not<br />
07 Photo of the month Miron Zownir from<br />
Maidan Square<br />
08 Save Berlin special: Tempelhof On<br />
<strong>May</strong> 25, it’s time to vote for the field’s future<br />
26 Berlin bites Lebensmittel in Mitte, Chili<br />
& Paprika and five new döner innovations<br />
Special: Bowie in Berlin<br />
10 Quiz Test your Bowie-in-Berlin<br />
knowledge!<br />
12 Verbatim Romy Haag: singer, club<br />
owner and Bowie’s Berlin muse<br />
page 22<br />
15 Bowie on display The much-hyped<br />
exhibition comes to Berlin on <strong>May</strong> 20 –<br />
here’s what to expect<br />
16 Where were we then? David Bowie<br />
and the rise of West Berlin’s Subkultur<br />
michal andrysiak<br />
18 Always crashing in the same bar<br />
A meditation from our music editor<br />
19 The sound behind the vision Hansa<br />
engineer Eduard Meyer reminisces about<br />
recording Bowie and Iggy<br />
20 Bowie by the book We talk to the<br />
authors of four recent books about the<br />
Berlin years<br />
22 The fans who fell to earth A doppelgänger,<br />
a collector, a tour guide and<br />
a former teen obsessive: meet Berlin’s<br />
Bowie nuts<br />
25 Rant: David Bowie is the stewed<br />
cabbage of rock! Jacob Sweetman cuts<br />
through the hype<br />
What’s on<br />
28 Events calendar<br />
30 Film<br />
36 Stage<br />
39 Music and nightlife<br />
44 Art<br />
47 District guides<br />
54 Classifieds<br />
56 Amok Mama<br />
57 Letters to the editor<br />
05 /14<br />
KINGS<br />
By Nora Abdel-Maksoud<br />
english surtitles<br />
8. - 12. 5. <strong>2014</strong>, 20 UHR<br />
BE.BOP. <strong>2014</strong> - BLACK EUROPE<br />
BODY POLITICS<br />
Exhibition + Talks + Performances<br />
in english<br />
2. - 31. 5. <strong>2014</strong><br />
SIGHT<br />
By Grupo Oito<br />
dance piece<br />
15. - 18. 5. <strong>2014</strong>, 20 UHR<br />
TELEMACHOS - SHOULD I STAY<br />
OR SHOULD I GO?<br />
By Anestis Azas, Prodromos Tsinikoris &<br />
Ensemble<br />
english surtitles<br />
22. - 25. 5. <strong>2014</strong>, 20 UHR<br />
www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de<br />
1
www.exberliner.com<br />
U1 cover <strong>127</strong>.indd 2<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>127</strong> • €2.90 • <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
Denis VilleneuVe: “i was very lucky. Jake Gyllenhaal could have been<br />
an asshole.” (p.30)<br />
FrieDrich liechtenstein: “i’m like an ornamental hermit.” (p.40)<br />
sascha WeiDner: “You were not in that bed. <strong>May</strong>be i was, you don’t<br />
even know.” (p.44)<br />
4/22/14 7:08 PM<br />
Bowie’s Back!<br />
thirty-five years after his famous Berlin period, the<br />
thin White Duke is back in town with a huge exhibition.<br />
We revisit the legendary 1970s, talk to his friends,<br />
lovers and fans... and ask: “Where are we now?”<br />
the<br />
teMpelhof<br />
vote:<br />
to build or<br />
not to build?<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>127</strong><br />
Cover illustration<br />
by Agata Sasiuk<br />
publishers:<br />
Maurice<br />
Frank, Nadja<br />
Vancauwenberghe,<br />
Ioana Veleanu<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 montani<br />
ad sales Marissa medAl, ilektra simou<br />
marketing elena nicolussi<br />
design assistants aGATA SASiUK,<br />
Lena Valenzuela<br />
photographers michal andrysiak,<br />
veronica jonsson<br />
editorial assistants rosalie delaney,<br />
diana hubbell, michael hald, ALinA MAE,<br />
Aoife Mckeown, dominic mealy<br />
research assistant ANTON BÖLIAN<br />
film assistants camilla egan, rory o’connor<br />
art assistant camille moreno<br />
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■ Werner's political notebook By KONRAD WERNER<br />
Why vote in the<br />
Euro election?<br />
No one understands what the European Union is<br />
for. People didn’t understand what it was for in the<br />
first place, but now, post-euro-crisis, we really don’t<br />
know what it’s for. Banning old light bulbs? Making<br />
all the phone chargers the same? How does that<br />
make up for all the unemployed people in Spain and<br />
the catastrophe in Greece?<br />
Quite a lot of our problems now get fixed at a<br />
European level: consumer rights, digital rights,<br />
intellectual property. This makes sense. Last month,<br />
the German government’s data storage plans were<br />
turned over by the European Court of Justice. After<br />
that decision was made, we had a precedent for the<br />
EU. Seeing as most of our<br />
data is kept digitally by<br />
Wanting no<br />
government<br />
is dangerous,<br />
insane and<br />
ultimately futile.<br />
multinational corporations,<br />
we clearly need a court<br />
with the continent-wide<br />
jurisdiction to decide what<br />
data is being kept, and who<br />
by, and who for.<br />
Clever people have<br />
explained that the euro<br />
had “design flaws” to begin<br />
with, and that the EU is not particularly democratic<br />
– the European Commission has vast powers, and<br />
its only directly elected component, the European<br />
Parliament, can still only veto laws, not make them.<br />
As undemocratic as this is, it may not be a bad<br />
thing at the moment. If the analysts’ predictions<br />
are right, around 200 of the 766 MEPs elected at<br />
the end of this month (the largest bloc, according<br />
to some polls) will actually be in favour of the<br />
abolition of the parliament. A lot of politics has<br />
now turned from being a debate between left and<br />
right to being a debate between the “people” and<br />
the “elite”. This is what the Tea Party is all about<br />
in America, but even the Tea Party doesn’t actually<br />
want Congress to be abolished. Wanting less<br />
government is one thing, wanting no government<br />
is dangerous, insane and ultimately futile.<br />
Some of the eurosceptic parties are proper Nazi<br />
far-right (National<br />
Front in France, Lega<br />
Nord in Italy); some are<br />
just a bit far-right, but<br />
they think the EU is a<br />
threat to national democratic<br />
powers (UKIP<br />
in Britain, the Alternative<br />
für Deutschland<br />
in Germany) some are centre-right but being<br />
dragged further right by the above (the British<br />
Conservative Party); and some are hard-left (Syriza<br />
in Greece and Die Linke in Germany).<br />
These parties, who are expected to make a major<br />
surge in <strong>May</strong>, will definitely make the debate between<br />
the pro- and anti-euro sides in the European<br />
Parliament even more polarised than it is now.<br />
More than that, they’re going to<br />
try to undermine the work of the<br />
parliament itself – maybe even<br />
engineer a Tea Party-style “shutdown”<br />
when it comes to budget<br />
time. That will inevitably slow<br />
down the recovery from the euro<br />
crisis and keep Europe’s fractures<br />
– between north and south, creditor<br />
nations and debtor nations<br />
– deeper than ever. And it’s a sure<br />
bet that the eurosceptic parties will blame the EU<br />
institutions for the resulting mess.<br />
The EU does need reform. There is massive<br />
inefficiency in its bureaucracy (the European Parliament<br />
has to drive truckloads of files around every<br />
two months because it is split between Strasbourg<br />
and Brussels), we need to find a better solution for<br />
dealing with economic migrants than shooting them<br />
in the sea, and we need to find a better way out of<br />
the euro crisis than just destroying people’s pension<br />
plans and cutting benefits. But the EU is what we’ve<br />
got, it’s part of our lives, and we need Europe-wide<br />
solutions to deal with our problems and compete<br />
economically with the US and China. To achieve<br />
that we desperately need to end this pointless,<br />
intractable, mean-spirited, navel-gazing debate – it<br />
shouldn’t be about whether the EU should exist, but<br />
what it can do and how it should do it. ■<br />
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2 • February 2013<br />
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Japan<br />
<br />
<br />
Syndrome<br />
<br />
<br />
Art and Politics after Fukushima<br />
With Toshiki Okada, Akira Takayama, Takuya Murakawa,<br />
Tadasu Takamine, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani,<br />
Hikaru Fujii, Tori Kudo, Sangatsu and others<br />
20.–29.5.➝ www.hebbel-am-ufer.de
est of Berlin<br />
By the <strong>EXBERLINER</strong> editorial team.<br />
Best sticky situation<br />
In a city as saturated with eye-catching graffiti<br />
and stencils as Berlin, the smallest, least<br />
permanent form of street art – the sticker – is<br />
underrated, yet everywhere. Oliver Baudach’s<br />
been devoted to the decal since age 13. “I<br />
bought a wallet that had a really cool skull<br />
logo on it, and inside the wallet there was an<br />
exact replica of that skull as a sticker. I didn’t<br />
want to put it anywhere – I just wanted to<br />
keep it safe.” It’s now on show at HATCH<br />
STICKER MUSEUM, started by Baudach in 2008.<br />
In March, the collection moved to a new<br />
location in Friedrichshain, where, the 42-yearold<br />
skateboard business veteran boasts, “you<br />
can see 4500 artworks” crammed into 80<br />
square metres. The wall-to-wall stickers,<br />
divided into “street” and “commercial”<br />
categories, have been collected from or<br />
donated by artists and companies all over the<br />
world and include everything from Shephard<br />
Fairey’s Obey series to niche skateboarding<br />
logos. On top of that, Baudach is planning<br />
guest exhibitions; for example, one with only<br />
political stickers. He even includes a limited<br />
edition sticker in the €2.50 entrance fee<br />
(€1.50 kids), in the hope that visitors will get<br />
as stuck on the art form as he is. VJ Hatch<br />
Sticker Museum, Schreinerstr. 10, Friedrichshain,<br />
U-Bhf Samariterstr., Wed-Sat 12-18<br />
Veronica Jonsson<br />
Best mouthful of German(s)<br />
A little bit nervous when it<br />
comes to the legend of the<br />
giant German Schwanz? Having<br />
trouble saying “Ich finde dich<br />
geil” while gobbling down<br />
schnitzel? Fear not: there’s a<br />
new sex party for horny homos<br />
who want (or need) to speak<br />
English. Not subscribing to the<br />
adage that love is a universal<br />
language, EXPat MEAT at<br />
Prenzlauer Berg gay sex club<br />
Stahlrohr 2.0 aims to fill a hole<br />
for the Teutonically timid.<br />
The night is the brainchild of<br />
barkeep Dan Thompson, an<br />
American expat who’s been<br />
here less than two years but, interestingly<br />
enough, speaks very<br />
good German. “It’s relaxing to<br />
have a night where I can speak<br />
my mother tongue,” he admits.<br />
Despite his intentions, however,<br />
the vast majority of regulars,<br />
staff and locals looking to<br />
scratch an itch at the inaugural<br />
event were German, including<br />
one English-challenged fellow<br />
who mockingly asked for a<br />
shot of “hunter-master” and<br />
then thought he was incredibly<br />
funny. Though it’s possible<br />
more expats will start attending<br />
once the event picks up steam,<br />
for now you’re more likely to<br />
end up in a post-ficken discussion<br />
on Goethe with a German<br />
instructor than commiserating<br />
over adjective endings with an<br />
amorous Australian. But hey,<br />
for just €2.50 entrance, it’s<br />
cheaper than a course at the<br />
Volkshochschule. And a chat<br />
with the friendly Thompson will<br />
allow you to speak English long<br />
enough to feel comfortable<br />
before it doesn’t really matter<br />
anyway. WC Expat Meat, first<br />
Monday of every month, Stahlrohr<br />
2.0, Paul-Robeson-Str. 50, Prenzlauer<br />
Berg, U-Bhf Schönhauser Allee<br />
Michal Andrysiak<br />
4 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Michal Andrysiak<br />
Best Western mall-ternative<br />
When Bayerische Hausbau began construction in 2010 on the Bikinihaus,<br />
a former 1950s textile centre, it was heralded as the revival<br />
of City West. The firm promised to thoughtfully revamp the long,<br />
striking structure, nicknamed “bikini” for its two-tiered shape, into a<br />
shiny new “concept mall”, which would accompany a design hotel as<br />
well as the updated Zoo Palast and Bahnhof Zoo. On April 3, crowds<br />
poured into BIKINI BERLIN to see if it lived up to the hype. The verdict?<br />
This is one stylish space, more reminiscent of London than Berlin.<br />
Exposed lighting fixtures, bare wood and industrial touches give the<br />
interior a modern vibe, topped off by an undulating rooftop terrace.<br />
As promised, Bikini offers an eclectic collection of stores, as well as<br />
19 permanent wooden cage-like structures for pop-ups, a handful of<br />
cafés and several gallery-esque spaces. You’ll find unique if pricey local<br />
gems (see page 6) alongside a smattering of generic chains like Vans<br />
and Jim Block, an offshoot of steak franchise Block House whose “no<br />
competitors” clause is rumoured to be responsible for the ousting of<br />
food truck Burger de Ville – so long to Black Angus patties served out<br />
of a charming Airstream; hello to €8 for glorified McDonald’s fare. Still,<br />
you have to give them credit: a Berlin mall without an H&M?! And if<br />
you can survive the weekend queues, there’s no better post-shopping<br />
indulgence than the rooftop Monkey Bar at the 25Hours Hotel Bikini<br />
Berlin, where you can drink tikis with a truly spectacular view of the<br />
zoo’s primates... or simply relax in the fur-lined hammock hanging in<br />
the third-floor lobby. DH Bikini Berlin, Budapester Str. 38-50, Tiergarten,<br />
S+U-Bhf Zoologischer Garten, Mon-Sat 10-20<br />
Veronica Jonsson<br />
Best superfood on ice<br />
Move along, chia seeds; goodbye,<br />
goji. Germany’s answer to the<br />
‘superfood’ craze claims to have more<br />
vitamin C than oranges, more calcium<br />
than milk and more iron than<br />
red meat. The magical<br />
substance? Baobab! The<br />
bulbous African tree has<br />
been near and dear to<br />
Exberliner since we adopted<br />
one at the Botanical Gardens<br />
back in 2012. Now, Bavarian<br />
company BAOLA is marketing<br />
its fruit to health-minded<br />
foodies across Germany, both<br />
as pure powder (€18/250g, to be added to your morning<br />
smoothie) and in drinks, sweets and jams. But only<br />
Berliners have the opportunity to try the tree in ice cream<br />
form. In addition to selling Baola’s entire product line,<br />
Kreuzberg’s Das Hotel combines the powder with raw<br />
cane sugar, fruits and herbs to create sorbet-style Eis (no<br />
eggs, no milk, no cream; vegans, rejoice!) in flavours such<br />
as strawberry-sage, pear-lavender, “mango with a secret”<br />
or, our favourite, the tangy lemon-mint. Aside from some<br />
faint earthy notes, the taste of baobab itself is undetectable,<br />
so you’ve just got to trust that it’s in there, working<br />
its magic. But even if you’re a non-believer, the ice<br />
cream’s quality justifies the rather high price of €1.50 per<br />
scoop. SW Baola, available at Das Hotel Bistro, Mariannenstr.<br />
26a, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, 9-1<br />
Foto: Ai Weiwei, 2012, © Gao Yuan<br />
10am–7pm Wed to Mon, Tue closed,<br />
from 20 <strong>May</strong>: Daily 10am–8pm<br />
5
fashion By Jessica salz salTz saltz<br />
■ fashionistas<br />
A Wilde ride<br />
AM+<br />
Local designer Karlotta Wilde on<br />
her skyrocket to success.<br />
Andreas Murkudis<br />
Odeeh<br />
Gestalten Pavilion<br />
The bikini’s back in style!<br />
Bikini Berlin’s renaissance has finally brought<br />
some credibility back to the tourist trap that<br />
is Ku’damm’s shopping mile. This has a lot<br />
to do with Andreas Murkudis, brother of<br />
designer Kostas and paragon of all things style,<br />
whose decision to set up shop in this new<br />
design Mecca subsequently attracted the city’s<br />
fashion disciples to do the same. Although the<br />
term “concept store” has been so overused in<br />
Berlin that it is bereft of meaning, this new<br />
“concept mall” is in fact a wonderful space<br />
that has been carefully curated by people who<br />
really know what they are doing. Plus, there<br />
are real live monkeys to look at!<br />
Top tips for getting your style kicks:<br />
Gestalten Pavilion: Gestalten has blossomed<br />
out of its Sophienstraße Hinterhof<br />
with top billing in the Bikini Berlin gallery.<br />
Objets d’art, coffee table books, divine furniture<br />
and little trinkety things that you don’t<br />
know why you have to have but you do.<br />
Andreas Murkudis: Fans can indulge in no<br />
less than two stores by the style maker: Andreas<br />
Murkudis and AM+. The latter is a spacious<br />
wonderland of style, with hand-picked<br />
items from Acne, Maison Martin Margiela<br />
and Stella McCartney, as well as great beauty<br />
products and furniture.<br />
Odeeh: The underrated duo’s new Bikini store<br />
will finally cement their reputation as one of<br />
the best in town. Their vibrant prints and silky<br />
dresses make you want to throw away all your<br />
other clothes and start again.<br />
Mykita: Homegrown glasses label for the cool<br />
kids. Hard to miss (handy for those who really<br />
need glasses) on the ground floor.<br />
Bikini Berlin Showroom: A brilliant place<br />
to try on clothes by all the interesting young<br />
designers you’ve read about on this very page,<br />
such as Cammelo Maculato, Brachmann and<br />
Esther Perbandt.<br />
Watch out for:<br />
2theloos: It’s not a corridor to another high<br />
fashion store. It’s the toilets.<br />
Berlin Store: The presence of a tacky tourist<br />
shop here will seriously ruin your buzz.<br />
Bare bottoms: There are no bikinis in<br />
Bikini, but the place could sure do with some<br />
as the first thing to greet your eyeballs as you<br />
enter the main hall is a group of red-arsed baboons<br />
glaring at you through the zoo window.<br />
You have been warned!<br />
photos by michal andrysiak<br />
Karlotta Wilde’s Berlin story started in an<br />
all-too-familiar way: “I moved here without<br />
a job or any idea what to do.” Unlike many<br />
others, her destiny began to take shape “after<br />
only a few months” when she returned<br />
to her fashion design training and started<br />
“making dresses and basic pieces, for myself<br />
and friends. I found a tailor here in Berlin<br />
who helped me sew things.” From humble<br />
beginnings in 2010, success came quickly:<br />
“Someone from Instyle saw a leather jacket<br />
I had made, featured it in the magazine a<br />
month later, and then people started calling.”<br />
The then-26-year-old rapidly created<br />
her eponymous label to meet the demand<br />
for her clothes. She was awarded the<br />
Premium Young Designer Award in 2011,<br />
which not only gave her a leg up in terms of<br />
promotion, but also funded the production<br />
of her second season.<br />
Wilde’s Spring/Summer <strong>2014</strong> collection<br />
is a typically restrained palette of black,<br />
white, dove grey and a juicy pale green,<br />
but her talent for reinterpretation lies in<br />
the details, such as a bomber jacket with<br />
an asymmetrical front, a sheer panel down<br />
the front of a white blouse and a panelled<br />
Little Black Dress – an item which Wilde<br />
includes in every collection. The Hamburg-born<br />
designer studied fashion design<br />
in Munich and cut her teeth working as an<br />
intern for Ann-Sophie Back in London and<br />
then fashion house Sonia Rykiel in Paris.<br />
She believes Berlin to be a great place for<br />
young designers to start out: “You have<br />
affordable places, great photographers,<br />
great makeup artists, all the infrastructure<br />
you need as a designer. I am pretty sure<br />
I’m staying here.” And Berlin is lucky to<br />
have her.<br />
Available at Wald and Shizaru Berlin;<br />
www.karlottawilde.com<br />
6 • <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong>
Photo of the month<br />
n Kiev’s Maidan<br />
Nezalezhnosti, or<br />
Independence Square,<br />
as captured by Berlin<br />
photographer Miron<br />
Zownir in March<br />
<strong>2014</strong>, four months<br />
after the start of the<br />
massive protests in the<br />
Ukrainian capital.<br />
7
save berlin<br />
TEMPELHOF:<br />
Don’t fence me in!<br />
<strong>May</strong> 25 is Tempelhof’s D-day.<br />
Alongside the EU parliamentary<br />
elections, Berliners will vote<br />
on the 100% Tempelhofer Feld<br />
referendum. If it passes, the exairport<br />
stays a wild, untamed<br />
park. If not, it gets a wholesale<br />
makeover as a shrunken green<br />
space ringed by a mini-city<br />
of homes, offices and a new<br />
central library.<br />
Developing Tempelhof is a key part of the<br />
city government’s strategy to revitalise<br />
Berlin’s economy, but the supporters of<br />
the 100% Tempelhofer Feld initiative<br />
say the plans will erase history, damage the<br />
environment and ruin a unique urban playground.<br />
Flughafen Tempelhof is the only surviving<br />
relic of Hitler’s scheme to turn Berlin into World<br />
Capital Germania, but its role in the 1948-49<br />
Berlin airlift turned it from a symbol of Nazi<br />
megalomania into an icon of anti-Soviet defiance.<br />
Its grounds also include the remains of the Nazis’<br />
earliest concentration camps and a Cold War US<br />
army base.<br />
Berlin’s<br />
government<br />
shut down<br />
Tempelhof in<br />
October 2008<br />
in preparation<br />
for the<br />
planned 2010<br />
opening of the<br />
(still-unfinished)<br />
BER airport. On <strong>May</strong><br />
8, 2010, it was reborn<br />
as a public park, but<br />
no sooner had the<br />
Dan Borden<br />
on the future<br />
of Berlin’s<br />
largest Feld<br />
city christened the park Tempelhofer Freiheit –<br />
“freedom” – than they declared that too much<br />
freedom was a bad thing. They revealed plans to<br />
develop much of the open space, with a modern<br />
“city of tomorrow” on the east side including<br />
over 4000 affordable apartments, and an “innovation<br />
zone” – office buildings, schools and the<br />
library – on the south and west.<br />
Environmentalists led by the watchdog group<br />
BUND called foul. They claim that losing this<br />
urban “green lung” will raise Berlin’s air temperatures.<br />
And 80 percent of the grounds are now<br />
designated a protected wildlife refuge – where<br />
will those birds, bees and foxes go?<br />
After four years, Tempelhof is also home to<br />
another form of wildlife: thousands of Berliners<br />
who think its open, untamed spaces are the<br />
perfect place to run, walk, bike and fly kites.<br />
So why does the city want to mess with perfection?<br />
Because Berlin is running out of apartments.<br />
It will welcome 250,000 new residents in<br />
the next 15 years. At the same time, empty space<br />
is disappearing. To the city’s planners, the exairport<br />
is a blank canvas, an underutilised asset.<br />
Berlin does have a housing crisis, but, as Green<br />
Party politician Antje Kapek pointed out, those<br />
4000 flats are a drop in the bucket. And they’re<br />
a Band-Aid on a gaping, self-inflicted wound.<br />
For over a decade, Berlin’s SPD-run government<br />
hasn’t built a single affordable apartment.<br />
Instead, they let developers fill empty lots with<br />
the official stance:<br />
“Why leave such a large unused space in the middle of the city?”<br />
Manfred Kühne, head city<br />
planner in Berlin’s Department<br />
of Urban Planning, on why the<br />
government wants to build on<br />
Tempelhof.<br />
For many Berliners, Tempelhof is perfect<br />
as it is. Why change it? Yes, but many thought<br />
it was perfect as an airfield. They miss the planes.<br />
There are many perspectives. The total area of<br />
Tempelhof is over 300 hectares – why should we<br />
leave such a large unused space in the middle of<br />
the city? For the first time in 10 years, the city<br />
government has a budget for new affordable<br />
housing, but we don’t have the land to build it on.<br />
But most of the proposed buildings in<br />
Tempelhof aren’t housing. Affordable housing<br />
and rising rents are issues in Berlin today<br />
because we still have so many unemployed<br />
people and not enough jobs. The city of Berlin<br />
bought Tempelhof airport from the German<br />
Federal Government planning to make it an<br />
economic development zone. We need a mix<br />
of new housing and places for new businesses.<br />
If we can’t build on Tempelhof, we will have to<br />
build further out, and people will have to travel<br />
further to their jobs.<br />
Isn’t 80 percent of the area now a nature<br />
preserve? Yes, our plan is designed to<br />
interfere as little as possible with the protected<br />
habitats. The area between the runways, for example,<br />
is off limits during breeding season. And<br />
we have an agreement to create new wildlife<br />
preserves for any displaced animals and birds<br />
on agricultural land outside the city.<br />
If the 100% Tempelhofer Feld initiative<br />
passes, will there never be any development<br />
on Tempelhof ? In theory the law could<br />
be changed, but for a long time it will be very<br />
difficult for any politicians to go against a vote<br />
by a majority of Berliners. It is irritating for us<br />
when the supporters of the initiative say it will<br />
still allow some development in the park area.<br />
The current wording of the initiative states<br />
that even small projects would be impossible.<br />
8 • may <strong>2014</strong>
The case against the new library<br />
luxury flats, much of them bought by non-<br />
Berliners as second homes or investments.<br />
Building on Tempelhof is an easy out, a<br />
political gesture of atonement timed for the<br />
2016 election.<br />
If you’re curious what the Tempelhof housing<br />
would look like, check out the wall of<br />
generic apartment blocks rising on the west<br />
side of Gleisdreieck Park. Those are high-end<br />
luxury flats. Tempelhof’s housing will be<br />
city-built affordable units, the lowest of the<br />
low-end. Expect stucco-on-Styrofoam boxes<br />
that, after a few years of non-maintenance,<br />
will age into a major eyesore.<br />
Today, Tempelhof Freiheit is a gloriously<br />
vast space in a city quickly losing its spaciousness.<br />
Its soft borders buffer it from the<br />
city, creating the illusion of infinity. Bringing<br />
the city into that space with a ring of<br />
buildings will destroy that spaciousness and<br />
turn its untamed wilderness into a stranger’s<br />
backyard.<br />
A large part of the remaining green space<br />
is scheduled for a major facelift via Scottish<br />
landscape architects GROSS.MAX. Their<br />
scheme adds decorative plantings, rolling<br />
hills, a reflecting pond and a faux mountain<br />
peak. Tempelhof’s inner wild beast will<br />
not only be caged but tamed, neutered and<br />
sheared like a French poodle.<br />
The last time Berliners voted on Tempelhof<br />
in April 2008, 60 percent wanted to keep<br />
the then-functioning airport open. The city<br />
annulled the results because voter turnout<br />
was too low. This year, the vote coincides<br />
with the EU Parliament elections, so turnout<br />
shouldn’t be a problem. If the initiative passes,<br />
it will be read as a vote of protest against<br />
<strong>May</strong>or Klaus Wowereit and an over-reaching<br />
city government, but the real lesson may be<br />
this: don’t give Berliners a taste of freedom<br />
and then try to take it away. n<br />
veronica jonsson<br />
If the 100% Tempelhofer Feld<br />
initiative is approved, it will likely<br />
kill <strong>May</strong>or Klaus Wowereit’s pet<br />
project, a new central library on<br />
the former airfield.<br />
Berlin already has architect Hans Scharoun’s<br />
1970s Stabi building near Potsdamer Platz,<br />
part of the State Library. Then there are the<br />
Stadtbibliotheken – local libraries for checking<br />
out books, CDs and DVDs – in addition to<br />
innumerable university reading rooms.<br />
The proposed building would house the<br />
Landesbibliothek, the official archive of everything<br />
published in Berlin, from books and<br />
magazines to digital media. It’s been waiting<br />
100 years for a permanent home since World<br />
War I halted construction on a planned Mitte<br />
headquarters. Does the Landesbibliothek<br />
deserve a new building? Definitely.<br />
The new Zentral- und Landesbibliothek<br />
(Central and Regional Library), or ZLB, will<br />
also replace the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek<br />
near Hallesches Tor. This 1954 landmark, a gift<br />
from the American government, was built to<br />
serve 500 visitors a day. Today it handles around<br />
3500. Does it need a new home? <strong>May</strong>be.<br />
<strong>May</strong>or Wowereit has long dreamed of leaving<br />
behind an important public building. After<br />
his scheme for a Berlin Kunsthalle, a museum<br />
for contemporary art, fell through, he turned<br />
his sights on the library. When the airport<br />
closed, he found a location: the southwest<br />
corner near the Tempelhof S-Bahn station.<br />
Last fall an architectural competition for<br />
the ZLB drew 40 designs. The brief called for<br />
a building that’s more than just Germany’s<br />
largest public library. It demanded an icon on<br />
a par with Bilbao’s Guggenheim and Paris’<br />
Pompidou Center.<br />
In the end, the jury of librarians and architects<br />
was split. The librarians picked a sensible<br />
design by two designers in their early thirties,<br />
Zurich-based Miebach Oberholzer Architekten<br />
(photo). The nine-story block is wrapped<br />
in a plain glass curtain wall. Inside, a grid of<br />
10 concrete cylinders support the roof while<br />
housing elevators, stairs and toilets.<br />
The jury’s architects preferred a more dramatic<br />
scheme by designers Kohlmayer Oberst.<br />
The long, low concrete rectangle is supported<br />
in the middle while both ends cantilever out<br />
like a seesaw. Berlin’s Building Director Regula<br />
Lüscher compared it to a ship. The librarians<br />
thought it was more like a tomb: except for<br />
the lobby, its concrete facade has no windows.<br />
Do Berliners really need a new central<br />
library? Definitely not one of these two.<br />
Neither design has the flair of the Pompidou<br />
or Guggenheim. Instead, they share an icy<br />
minimalism those buildings were designed to<br />
counteract. Other reasons:<br />
It’s not new. The whole idea of a monumental<br />
edifice for accessing books is anachronistic.<br />
Everything in print, including archives,<br />
will soon be available online. The Amerika-<br />
Gedenkbibliothek’s popularity is largely due<br />
to its collections of CDs and DVDs, two<br />
formats on the brink of obsolescence. Why<br />
not skip the expensive building and embrace<br />
the digital age via a virtual library where<br />
cardholders anywhere in the city can stream<br />
material online?<br />
It’s not central. The ZLB’s advocates point<br />
to libraries in Amsterdam and Seattle as<br />
models. Yes, both are new and popular, but<br />
both were built where people already were, in<br />
the heart of busy downtowns. Will the<br />
expected 10,000 visitors a day trek to this<br />
windswept corner of Berlin to look at books?<br />
It’s not a library. The new ZLB isn’t about<br />
books, we’re told, it’s about bonding. Like<br />
those other new libraries, it will serve as a de<br />
facto community centre. Berliners of all ages<br />
and colours will sip coffee, check out art,<br />
watch plays and take classes in its lofty halls...<br />
because, of course, there’s nowhere else in our<br />
fair city to do those things. If we truly need<br />
this library, why all the bells and whistles?<br />
It’s too expensive. Officials have already<br />
marked up the ZLB’s price tag from €270<br />
million to €350 million. If it’s completed as<br />
planned in 2021, don’t be surprised if we end<br />
up paying twice the original estimate.<br />
It’s not for us. Affordable housing,<br />
cheaper transit and better schools top<br />
Berliners’ wish lists, not a Taj Mahal for<br />
librarians or an architectural icon. Wowereit<br />
wants his name on a monument, but his legacy<br />
will always be the billions he burned on the<br />
still-unfinished airport.<br />
9
Article bowie special tag<br />
back<br />
IN BERLIN<br />
In late 1976, looking to escape the whirlwind of drugs and paparazzi in LA,<br />
David Bowie moved to West Berlin, immersing himself in the city’s culture<br />
and creating three indelible albums. The three years the “Thin White Duke”<br />
spent here marked a turning point – not just for him, but for the city itself.<br />
Bowie’s presence galvanised the music and underground scene here while<br />
establishing Berlin as a creative crucible for international artists.<br />
Thirty-five years later – following his Berlin-nostalgic 2013 single “Where are<br />
we now?” – Bowie’s back in town, in the form of a massively hyped exhibition at<br />
the Martin-Gropius-Bau. The show guarantees his eternal spot in the pantheon of<br />
legendary Berliners alongside Brecht, Isherwood and Marlene... and the Bowie legend<br />
continues to inspire ever-new generations of young expats to this day.<br />
In the next 15 pages we meet Bowie’s Berlin friends, fans, colleagues and lovers,<br />
and attempt to separate the man from the myth.<br />
10 • may <strong>2014</strong>
QUIZ<br />
Test your brain on Bowie<br />
How much do you really know about the Berlin years?<br />
concept: Alina Mae and Rene Blixer illustration: lena valenzuela Photo: courtesy of martin-gropius-bau<br />
1. How old was David Bowie when he<br />
moved to Berlin?<br />
a) 27<br />
b) 29<br />
c) 30<br />
d) It’s a myth – Bowie never actually lived<br />
in Berlin<br />
2. Which of the following has NOT been<br />
cited as a reason for Bowie’s alleged move<br />
to West Berlin?<br />
a) He wanted to kick his coke habit and he<br />
thought of Berlin as a temple of sobriety<br />
b) For research purposes: he originally<br />
intended to develop Ziggy Stardust into a<br />
German character, Siegfried Stardüst<br />
c) He had fallen in love with beautiful,<br />
transgender entertainer Romy<br />
Haag during his spring Isolar tour<br />
d) He was fascinated with krautrock,<br />
Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Kirchner<br />
3. Which three albums make up the<br />
so-called Berlin trilogy?<br />
a) Low, “Heroes”, Lodger<br />
b) Station to Station, “Heroes”, Scary<br />
Monsters (and Super Creeps)<br />
c) Aladdin Sane, Scary Monsters (and<br />
Super Creeps), Let’s Dance<br />
d) Diamond Dogs, Station to Station,<br />
Young Americans<br />
4. Which 20th-century artistic<br />
movement provided inspiration for<br />
the Berlin trilogy?<br />
a) The German expressionist group<br />
Die Brücke<br />
b) The Berlin Dada movement,<br />
particularly Max Ernst<br />
c) The Dutch De Stijl movement<br />
d) The performance artists of the<br />
Fluxus movement, particularly<br />
Joseph Beuys<br />
5. Why do some people object to<br />
the title ‘Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy’?<br />
a) Technically the ‘Berlin Trilogy’<br />
consists of four albums<br />
b) Because the production, song writing, and<br />
music was mostly done by Iggy Pop<br />
c) They are widely regarded as his worst<br />
albums and Berliners find it embarrassing<br />
d) Only one of the albums was entirely<br />
recorded in Berlin; the others were made in<br />
France and Switzerland<br />
6. Which of the following was part of<br />
Bowie’s Berlin eating habits?<br />
a) Caviar and chocolate from KaDeWe<br />
b) Scrambled eggs and brains at Exil<br />
c) Romy Haag’s homemade club sandwiches<br />
d) All of the above<br />
7. Which Iggy Pop albums did Bowie<br />
produce while he was in Berlin?<br />
a) Lust For Life and Raw Power<br />
b) The Idiot and Lust For Life<br />
c) Raw Power and Kill City<br />
d) Soldier and New Values<br />
8. What inspired Bowie to write the riff of<br />
Iggy Pop’s song “Lust For Life” while he<br />
was in Berlin?<br />
a) The Morse code jingle on the American<br />
Forces Network News broadcast<br />
b) The sound of construction work happening<br />
outside<br />
c) Listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 in<br />
A Major while stoned<br />
d) The music in a 1977 Volkswagen ad<br />
9. From which Bowie song are the<br />
handwritten lyrics shown above?<br />
a) “Changing Hearts”<br />
b) “Boys Keep Swinging”<br />
c) “Blackout”<br />
d) “Yassassin”<br />
10. Which of these West Berlin<br />
clubs was NOT one of Bowie’s<br />
regular haunts?<br />
a) Transvestite bar Lützower Lampe in<br />
Charlottenburg<br />
b) Basement jazz club Quasimodo in<br />
Charlottenburg<br />
c) Hedonistic disco Dschungel in<br />
Schöneberg<br />
d) Punk hangout SO36 in Kreuzberg<br />
11. How would Bowie soothe his vocal<br />
chords before a recording session at<br />
Hansa studios?<br />
a) Swallow a teaspoon of baking powder<br />
b) Crack a raw egg into his mouth<br />
c) Guzzle olive oil from the bottle<br />
d) Eat a whole bulb of garlic<br />
12. Bowie would occasionally visit East<br />
Berlin – what did he do there?<br />
a) Smuggle drugs and fancy booze to his<br />
friends on the other side of the Wall<br />
b) Play secret gigs for GDR political higherups<br />
in return for huge sums of money<br />
c) Go into supermarkets and buy<br />
up all the Spreewälder Gurken to<br />
sate his pickle addiction<br />
d) Catch a Brecht play at the<br />
Berliner Ensemble before dining<br />
alongside members of the GDR<br />
elite at the nearby Ganymed<br />
restaurant<br />
13. When they lived together,<br />
what would Iggy do that annoyed<br />
Bowie?<br />
a) Throw impromptu house parties<br />
with his groupies<br />
b) Play The Rise And Fall Of<br />
Ziggy Stardust on repeat “for<br />
inspiration”<br />
c) Eat all of Bowie’s favourite food<br />
out of the fridge<br />
d) Roll around in broken glass in a<br />
drug-induced fit of hysteria…<br />
in Bowie’s bedroom<br />
14. The single “Heroes” was<br />
inspired by the sight of two lovers<br />
kissing beside the Berlin Wall.<br />
Who were they?<br />
a) Two gay West German punks<br />
b) Romy Haag and an unknown<br />
figure, who later turned out to be fashion<br />
designer Claudia Skoda<br />
c) An East German border controller and<br />
his girlfriend<br />
d) Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti<br />
and his mistress, backup singer<br />
Antonia Maaß<br />
15. Which Berlin landmark does Bowie<br />
NOT mention in his 2013 comeback single<br />
“Where Are We Now?”<br />
a) KaDeWe<br />
b) Potsdamer Platz<br />
c) The TV Tower<br />
d) Bösebrücke<br />
Answers: 1=B, 2=B, 3=A, 4=A, 5=D, 6=D, 7=B, 8=A, 9=C, 10=B, 11=B, 12=D, 13=C, 14=D, 15=C<br />
11
Article verbatimtag<br />
Queen of the underground<br />
By Alina Mae<br />
From a distance, the glamorous<br />
older lady sitting on the<br />
sun terrace of Grosz almost<br />
blends in with the rest of<br />
the lavish restaurant’s conservative<br />
upper-class clientele. Almost. Upon<br />
approaching her, we notice the<br />
flaming orange hair, the colourful<br />
and elaborate clothes, her fingers<br />
dripping in chunky, sparkling rings,<br />
including a spider-shaped knuckleduster<br />
on her middle finger. This<br />
is Romy Haag, the beautiful and<br />
flamboyant entertainer who was<br />
David Bowie’s paramour during his<br />
time in Berlin.<br />
In her 1970s heyday, Haag (born Edouard Frans<br />
Verbaarsschott in the Netherlands) was one of<br />
the biggest names in Berlin’s underground nightclub<br />
scene. Known for her wild performances,<br />
In 1970s West Berlin,<br />
singer, performer and club<br />
owner Romy Haag ruled<br />
the city’s burgeoning<br />
nightlife scene – and stole<br />
David Bowie’s heart.<br />
until 1983 she was also the owner of the legendary<br />
club Chez Romy Haag, drawing a who’s who of<br />
international superstars into her orbit.<br />
Now 63, she’s a regular of the spectacularly<br />
remodeled Ku’damm coffee house. “It’s my signature<br />
drink, the oldest champagne<br />
house in the world,” she drawls, taking<br />
a sip from a glass of Ruinart rosé.<br />
As she divulges stories of her Berlin<br />
past in her distinctive low, husky<br />
voice, she reveals a mischievous side,<br />
proving that this woman is more than<br />
just an eccentric dresser.<br />
Take us back to when you first<br />
arrived in Berlin in the 1970s... I<br />
came to Berlin at the end of 1973. Before<br />
that, I lived in New York. I came<br />
here because I was in love with a Berliner<br />
I’d met in Atlantic City. But for<br />
me it was no surprise that I ended up here; even<br />
when I lived in Paris as a teenager, everywhere I<br />
performed, people assumed I was German. They<br />
would introduce me as “the sensational Romy<br />
Haag, straight out of Berlin!”<br />
12 • <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong>
veronica jonsson<br />
“In Bowie’s eyes,<br />
Chez Romy Haag<br />
was like looking<br />
into a mirror.<br />
The club<br />
reflected his<br />
music.”<br />
Why would they say that? Because<br />
of my low voice. I guess the<br />
stereotype was that Berlin women<br />
all had deep voices, but you know, I<br />
spoke a little bit of German too. I’d<br />
been to Berlin before, on holiday.<br />
And what did you think of Berlin<br />
when you first moved here?<br />
Well, I loved the sense of community<br />
here. West Berlin was such a<br />
small city compared to New York<br />
and Paris. People were more accepting;<br />
it was very, very peaceful here.<br />
And the nightlife? Oh, that was<br />
very disappointing. That’s what was<br />
so curious: there was nothing! No<br />
discotheques, nothing of interest<br />
to me. It was traditional, old-fashioned<br />
1950s and 1960s-style cabaret,<br />
or music for stoned hippies. So<br />
I opened my own club!<br />
You were only 23 when Chez<br />
Romy Haag opened. Yeah, but<br />
for me, you know, I’d come from New York! You<br />
don’t think about things like that – you say, “let’s<br />
open a club now” and you do it.<br />
Of all places, you chose Schöneberg’s<br />
Fugger straße. Why there? Well, the building<br />
was cheap. That area was nothing like it is<br />
now. People would laugh when I told them I<br />
was opening a club on Fuggerstraße. They said,<br />
“You’re crazy! No one will ever go!”<br />
What were the patrons like?<br />
Well, Berlin people! Right at the<br />
beginning I would hang around<br />
outside KaDeWe and invite people<br />
to the club personally. You could<br />
tell who liked going out because<br />
they would always wear black and<br />
have their own gimmick, like a<br />
crazy hairstyle or accessory or<br />
something.<br />
A lot of celebrities went to<br />
your club too... Yes, the club became<br />
more and more famous, and<br />
then rock stars would have afterparties<br />
at my place. So there was<br />
uh… Bette Midler, Tina Turner,<br />
Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, all<br />
those big stars.<br />
So why do you think Chez<br />
Romy Haag became so legendary?<br />
Because it was so strange! It<br />
was really unique. In the entrance<br />
there would be somebody dressed<br />
up like the pope who would bless<br />
the people coming into the club with a toilet<br />
brush and a champagne cooler. So the atmosphere<br />
was like that, very underground, trashy,<br />
kitschy. You read the articles that all say Chez<br />
Romy Haag was 1920s-style cabaret and all<br />
that, but no, it wasn’t! It was more performance<br />
art. Like an Andy Warhol aesthetic,<br />
let’s say it like that.<br />
So, for example…? Well, my very first act in<br />
the club was when I came out of a dustbin, all<br />
red, and sung Brecht’s “Show Me The Way To<br />
The Next Whiskey Bar” [Alabama Song]! So it<br />
was very trashy, which became very ‘in’ and so<br />
that was the reason it became so famous.<br />
Do you think that atmosphere was what<br />
attracted David Bowie to Chez Romy<br />
Haag? He belonged there. The first time he<br />
With David Bowie at Alcazar, Paris, 1976<br />
Romy Haag in 7 dates<br />
1951 Born on Jan 1 as Edouard Frans Verbaarsschott<br />
in Scheveningen, Netherlands.<br />
1964 Joins Circus Strassburger as a clown<br />
and children’s entertainer.<br />
1967 Moves to Paris. Lives as a woman, and<br />
works as a dancer at the club Alcazar, under<br />
the stage name Romy Haag.<br />
1970 Travels to the US as a stowaway on a<br />
merchant ship to become a performer in New<br />
York and Atlantic City.<br />
1974 On November 29, opens Chez Romy<br />
Haag on Fuggerstraße in Schöneberg.<br />
1976 Meets David Bowie at his concert at<br />
Deutschlandhalle in Westend on April 10.<br />
Their relationship lasts two years.<br />
2010 Releases her ninth album, Moving On,<br />
and starts touring with her current show<br />
Everybody Knows.<br />
studio 54 archives<br />
What was Chez Romy Haag like in the<br />
beginning? It was a discotheque for young<br />
people, not a cabaret, like the papers always say.<br />
The interior was inspired by Biba, the old shopping<br />
centre in London. It was really fashionable:<br />
Art Deco, black lacquer counters, mirrors…<br />
I wanted my club to look like that, so I painted<br />
the floors, the ceiling, the bar all black, and the<br />
walls were lined with mirrors. Then at the back,<br />
there was a very small stage with a red curtain.<br />
And the music? Well, we didn’t have bigname<br />
DJs at the time. I just invited my friends<br />
from London and New York to play their records<br />
at my club. They would play disco music<br />
and this was very fresh. We would just dance,<br />
and then there would be a show, and then we’d<br />
carry on dancing.<br />
Celebrating David Bowie’s 30th birthday<br />
with Iggy Pop, L’Ange Bleu, 1977<br />
ANDREW KENT PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
13
went, he was like [jaw drops]. It was so outrageous,<br />
it was so Ziggy Stardust. I think, in his<br />
eyes, it was like looking into a mirror. The club<br />
reflected his music.<br />
Did he stand out of the crowd? No, not at<br />
all! I hadn’t even heard of David Bowie before I<br />
met him.<br />
So how did you meet him? He did a concert in<br />
Berlin in 1976 and his<br />
management called to<br />
use my Mercedes 600,<br />
and they said to me,<br />
“Come over, you have<br />
to see him! It’s a great<br />
show.” We were in the<br />
VIP lounge and when<br />
he came off the stage<br />
we saw each other,<br />
and that’s it! It was<br />
like love at first sight.<br />
We shared a moment<br />
together.<br />
What was the most<br />
attractive thing<br />
about him? I liked his<br />
whole style, he was so charismatic. And his eyes...<br />
at first I thought it was just part of his costume.<br />
I said to him, “Take that contact lens out!”<br />
What happened after the concert? There<br />
was an after-party at my place and we got<br />
to spend some time together alone. He was<br />
fascinated because I had a recording studio at<br />
home. I had like 4000 LPs in boxes, and he was<br />
searching and searching through them. I asked<br />
him, “What are you looking for?” He said, “I’m<br />
looking for my records,” and I said, “I don’t have<br />
any of your records!”<br />
How would you describe him at the time?<br />
Well looking back now, I realise he had to get<br />
rid of Ziggy Stardust, he had to get rid of drugs<br />
and all that. He was like a little poor boy whom<br />
I took like a mama in my arms, that’s how I felt<br />
about him. We’re both Capricorns, so we were<br />
alike, and I could sense he needed help.<br />
Right, your birthdays are just a week apart.<br />
Did you ever celebrate together? Well, one<br />
time – I think it must’ve been 1977 – we threw<br />
a birthday party for ourselves in Paris. We went<br />
to a club on the Champs-Élysées called L’Ange<br />
Bleu which was owned by a friend of mine. It<br />
was only open for about six months because it<br />
was so expensive – the decoration, the Art Deco<br />
furniture, the cocktails. But it was unbelievable.<br />
Very, very beautiful.<br />
What was a typical day with David like?<br />
Well… we’d get stoned together a lot! We’d get<br />
high and brainstorm ideas and talk about the<br />
world, life, politics, music… We wouldn’t go out<br />
together that much because of the paparazzi.<br />
But you know, we wouldn’t see each other every<br />
single day. Even though we lived together at one<br />
point, he had his touring and I had to work too.<br />
“We’d get high and<br />
brainstorm ideas<br />
and talk about the<br />
world, life, politics,<br />
music… We wouldn’t<br />
go out together that<br />
much because of the<br />
paparazzi.”<br />
What else would you do together? Well, he<br />
was always in my dressing room! [Laughs] He<br />
would touch the costumes and watch how I did<br />
my makeup, and things like that.<br />
So you were the inspiration behind a lot of<br />
his looks? Oh, sure! What’s that video called?<br />
“Boys Keep Swinging”? It’s just like Chez Romy<br />
Haag. The setting is a complete, one-to-one copy<br />
of the stage in my club. He’s performing one of<br />
my favourite numbers.<br />
There’s this one part<br />
of the video where he<br />
smears his makeup and<br />
he rips off his wig... my<br />
signature move!<br />
What was it like<br />
to see your moves,<br />
your costumes, and<br />
your stage in his<br />
music videos? My<br />
reaction was always,<br />
“Oh, that ass! What<br />
is he doing?” But he<br />
probably influenced<br />
me too, it was give and<br />
take. We were very inspirational<br />
together. After meeting him I became<br />
a punk. I had short red hair and I started making<br />
art rock – hardcore performance. I would whip<br />
people with a wet towel!<br />
Do you still do that? No. Now I do rock<br />
chanson, although the American press insists on<br />
calling it cabaret-rock… My music now is very<br />
political. We’ve got no freedom anymore, there’s<br />
NSA everywhere, there’s homo phobia – is this a<br />
Demokratie? Never! The 1970s was a freer time,<br />
much, much more free! Before we had one wall,<br />
now we have five or six. Every community has<br />
their own thing and their own clubs. Before, it<br />
was just West Berlin. You were walled in, but you<br />
were accepted by everybody. Everybody was in it<br />
together and everyone got along.<br />
On your 2010 album Moving On you included<br />
a song “Helden” which contains a<br />
lot of references to Bowie’s “Heroes”... It<br />
is its own arrangement, but making it I thought,<br />
since he took so much of me, I’m going to take<br />
something of him.<br />
So what does “Heroes” mean to you? If you<br />
want to be a hero, you have to act now. If we<br />
don’t kiss each other now, the world will stay the<br />
same. [In French] I interpreted it completely<br />
differently; when you know a different language<br />
it takes on a different meaning.<br />
On Bowie’s 2013 album The Next Day, the<br />
song “Where Are We Now?” has a lot of<br />
very explicit references to Berlin... Oh yes,<br />
I was very surprised! He said he was “lost in time<br />
near KaDeWe” – that’s where Chez Romy Haag<br />
was. I think he must be bored of his life now,<br />
and he wants some excitement, like back then. I<br />
think he’s realised that part of his life is over. He<br />
got old. Well, we all get old.<br />
What memories does that song bring up<br />
for you? Not very many. I love the style of<br />
the songs, and I like that he’s going back to<br />
his roots, but I’ve got my own music to write<br />
and my own things to do, so I don’t think very<br />
deeply about these things.<br />
When was the last time you saw each<br />
other? We lost each other at the end of the<br />
1970s. When Angie found out we were together,<br />
she called a lawyer and they were harassing me.<br />
And there was all this bad publicity, and David<br />
had a fight with his record company… there was<br />
so much pressure on us, so I had to let him go.<br />
Did you ever get back in touch? No, never. n<br />
Chez Romy Haag –<br />
then and now<br />
Romy Haag’s eponymous club opened its<br />
doors to the disco-starved inhabitants of<br />
West Berlin in November 1974. Inspired<br />
by the vibrant discothèques of Paris and<br />
New York, Haag rented a cheap building in<br />
Schöneberg to cater to Berlin’s alternative<br />
youth and gay community. The locale quickly<br />
became renowned for its wild late-night parties,<br />
attracting everyone from drag queens<br />
to rock stars and paving the way for innumerable<br />
alternative clubs and bars in its wake, including<br />
the legendary Dschungel, SO36 and<br />
Anderes Ufer. In 1983, following the success<br />
of her first solo album, Haag decided to sell<br />
the club to focus on her music. The former<br />
Chez Romy Haag on the corner of Welserstraße<br />
and Fuggerstraße is now home to the<br />
alternative sex shop and gay club Connection.<br />
Hosting events such as “Naked Night”<br />
and “Dominate Party”, the new club strives<br />
to be as outrageous as its predecessor, but<br />
the glamorous days of celebrity after-parties<br />
are long over.<br />
brian ward photography<br />
14 • <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong>
Article interview tag<br />
Bowie on display<br />
“Davi d<br />
Bowie Is”<br />
opens on<br />
<strong>May</strong> 20<br />
On <strong>May</strong> 20, the huge David Bowie exhibition opens at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. We spoke<br />
to the mastermind behind the show, curator Victoria Broackes. By Michael Hald<br />
After its huge success at the Victoria and Albert<br />
Museum in London with around 315,000 visitors,<br />
the raved-about exhibition makes its way to<br />
Berlin after a stop in São Paulo before moving on<br />
to Chicago, Paris and Groeningen in the Netherlands.<br />
Through August 10, visitors will be able<br />
to see Bowie’s grit and grandeur in an immersive<br />
display of sound and vision with more than 300<br />
objects and a newly expanded Berlin section with<br />
an additional 50.<br />
What’s the concept behind the exhibition?<br />
Bowie is a pioneer not only in music, but also in<br />
rock theatre, video, digital downloading – he’s<br />
always personally involved in everything that he<br />
creates and he’s so often cited as an influence<br />
by musicians and designers. So the concept for<br />
the exhibition was to really look at the process<br />
whereby he works and also to analyse in some<br />
depth what it is that makes him so influential.<br />
How did you translate that to the actual<br />
set-up? It was critical that it wasn’t going to be<br />
like any other museum exhibition we’d ever seen<br />
before – certainly more immersive. The objects<br />
mostly came from the David Bowie Archive,<br />
which is huge; it’s got 75,000 objects. We then<br />
put Bowie’s material into context, so there’s a lot<br />
of other material relating to wider culture or art<br />
and design or things that influenced Bowie. It<br />
was incredibly nerve-wracking before we opened,<br />
because I felt we’d done something quite daring<br />
and different, and people who came naturally<br />
had big expectations. For all the glitz and sparkle<br />
of the cutting-edge technology we used in the<br />
exhibition, it was the merging of that technology<br />
with original objects that people found really<br />
exciting: reading lyrics and hearing the music at<br />
the same time and being able to turn around and<br />
see an original costume.<br />
What sort of reactions did you get when it<br />
opened in London? We immediately got a very<br />
powerful and positive reaction from the public;<br />
we did have people bursting into tears. We had a<br />
comments book at the end of the exhibition, and<br />
we literally received tens of thousands of comments.<br />
It was interesting, because obviously the<br />
exhibition is about David Bowie and the broader<br />
culture around Bowie. But in the end it made<br />
people very reflective about their own lives; it<br />
got to them personally. I know many of his fans<br />
always felt that Bowie changed their lives. He’s<br />
not just a man, he’s a way of life. Funnily, I was<br />
initially… not sceptical about that, I just didn’t<br />
feel part of it. Now I sort of do feel part of it!<br />
Did any reactions in particular stand out?<br />
There’s a kind of performance section, which<br />
is just about the last thing that you see. People<br />
would go into that area and they would stay there<br />
for hours! They were dancing, and there was an<br />
incredible sense of camaraderie. That was probably<br />
the ‘wow’-moment where the emotion was<br />
very strong. We also had a lot of funny letters<br />
coming in. About the geometric Ziggy costume<br />
in the exhibition, Bowie used to say that he got<br />
the fabric from Liberty’s and then he would<br />
laughingly say, “Actually, it was probably the<br />
markets.” I mentioned that in an interview once.<br />
Then I got a letter from a woman saying,<br />
“Actually it was from Liberty’s,<br />
I got the fabric as well. Here’s a<br />
picture of me wearing the dress I<br />
made from it.” The public has a<br />
wealth of knowledge; we got a lot<br />
of information and a lot of offers<br />
of material – a lot of joining in.<br />
What do you think<br />
are the most special<br />
pieces in the exhibition?<br />
Certainly some<br />
of the Yamamoto<br />
costumes are amazing.<br />
And the lyrics!<br />
But for me the<br />
most exciting<br />
thing was the<br />
sketches that<br />
we found.<br />
photo : courtesy of martin-gropius-bau<br />
Bowie was going to make a film, and then he<br />
storyboarded this film. I’d read that he’d done<br />
that, but it turned out that the material was<br />
in the archive. It also includes material going<br />
back to when he was 16-17: sketches of him with<br />
various bands, costume designs and theatre sets<br />
for them. At that age he was already bringing<br />
together the idea of a strong visual identity. It’s<br />
quite astonishing to have that.<br />
Why put on the exhibition at that particular<br />
moment in time? I was introduced to David<br />
Bowie’s manager and discovered that he had this<br />
fantastic archive, so I was immediately excited<br />
about the possibility of doing an exhibition. It<br />
was just a once-in-a-career opportunity. As you<br />
know these things take years, so between that<br />
meeting and the opening was about two and a<br />
half years – and that was working at a hugely fast<br />
pace. We were as surprised as anyone when the<br />
new single came out [“Where Are We Now?”].<br />
His first new material in 10 years, just two<br />
months before your opening! I think Bowie<br />
was becoming more and more famous for<br />
being silent, and bringing out a new album<br />
and single actually could have gotten in<br />
the way of that. It was just one of those<br />
things where it all came together with<br />
very fabulous timing. Which of course<br />
is a Bowie trademark!<br />
DAVID BOWIE IS opens <strong>May</strong> 20<br />
through Aug 10, Martin-Gropius-Bau,<br />
Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf<br />
Potsdamer Platz, Mon-Sun 10-20.<br />
What’s new in Berlin<br />
The original London exhibition had a section<br />
on Berlin (including Bowie’s 1976 S-Bahn<br />
map), which local curator Christine Heidemann<br />
expanded with an additional 50 objects,<br />
many of which reflect Bowie’s passion for German<br />
culture, notably German expressionism.<br />
He was a frequent visitor to the Brücke Museum<br />
in Dahlem, from which he drew visual<br />
inspiration: among the Berlin-exclusive gems<br />
are two works by Erich Heckel, “Roquairol”<br />
and “Männerbildnis”, which inspired the covers<br />
of Iggy Pop’s Bowie-produced The Idiot<br />
and Bowie’s own “Heroes”.<br />
15
zeitgeist<br />
veronica jonsson<br />
anja freyja<br />
Gudrun Gut, 1978<br />
Wolfgang Müller, <strong>2014</strong><br />
“There was this open, liberal atmosphere...<br />
People really didn’t care. A friend of mine<br />
once laid down on Oranienstraße, on the<br />
street, and cars just slowly drove around her.”<br />
– Wolfgang Müller<br />
Where were we then?<br />
Bowie arrived in walled-in West Berlin in November 1976. By the time he left in 1979, a punk<br />
rock renaissance had begun to take root. Did he have a hand in the transformation?<br />
By Aoife McKeown and Fridey Mickel.<br />
“You have to realise that there was<br />
nothing in West Berlin,” says Wolfgang<br />
Müller emphatically. “Nothing.<br />
Nobody cared about Berlin.”<br />
When Müller moved here from Wolfsburg in<br />
the late 1970s, the underground musical subculture<br />
that would later prove fruitful enough for<br />
him to chronicle in his 2013 book Subkultur West<br />
Berlin 1979-1989 was just beginning to coalesce.<br />
The landscape of West Berlin was desolate and<br />
bleak, strewn with post-war ruins and hastily<br />
thrown-together 1950s and 1960s buildings. It<br />
was insular and austere, an island state trapped<br />
behind the Wall, which acted as a pivot between<br />
East and West Cold War tensions.<br />
Gudrun Gut, founder of Malaria!, original<br />
member of Einstürzende Neubauten and head<br />
of the Monika Enterprises record label, remembers<br />
how Berlin felt to her when she first arrived<br />
in 1975 to attend the Hochschule der Künste.<br />
“There was no industry. The houses were in poor<br />
shape, there was coal heating; we took showers in<br />
this big bath. It was pretty run down.”<br />
The idea that an international superstar like<br />
David Bowie would come to live in this wasteland<br />
was, at the time, ludicrous – even more so the idea<br />
of him coming to a notorious heroin capital to detox<br />
from drugs. “The most famous person here was<br />
Christiane F.,” notes Müller. The former teen drug<br />
addict’s 1979 memoir came to symbolise the atmosphere<br />
of desolation and neglect that permeated the<br />
city at the time. “She was a junkie when she was 14,<br />
and she was the biggest star from West Berlin. It’s<br />
not very glamorous, if you think about it.”<br />
Yet something was attracting people, particularly<br />
young people, to live there. One reason was<br />
obvious: West Berlin was a special zone occupied<br />
by the US, the British and the French, which<br />
meant young West German men who lived in the<br />
city were exempt from doing their obligatory<br />
military service.<br />
The artist, musician and queer nightlife regular<br />
Salomé came to Berlin in 1973 as a draftsman for<br />
the US Army, working at Tempelhof Airport. “I<br />
got the job through an agency. I was glad because<br />
I wouldn’t be drafted for the West German army.”<br />
Still, that wasn’t the only reason he made the<br />
move. Working for an architecture company in his<br />
hometown of Karlsruhe, he recalls: “A secretary<br />
there said to me – because I was already a little bit<br />
dragged with coloured hair and high heels – ‘You<br />
have to go there, this is awful for you. You have to<br />
go to Berlin, it’s the place for you to be.’”<br />
The exemption from conscription was a factor<br />
for Müller as well, but not the deciding one. “I<br />
was kicked out of art school in West Germany,<br />
and West Berlin was a good place to come to,” he<br />
says. “Because I lived on the border to East Germany,<br />
I hitchhiked from Wolfsburg all the time to<br />
West Berlin… it was the next big city. It was quite<br />
an open place and it was very cheap.”<br />
Gut felt that West Berlin invoked something<br />
different from the rest of West Germany. “You<br />
know, in those days, it was really kind of organised<br />
and boring, in a way. Everything was perfect.<br />
Berlin was completely different. I remember<br />
clearly how you could smell something.”<br />
The springing up of counterculture and the<br />
feeling of unrest from the 1968 protests was still<br />
resonant throughout the city. Living in the squats<br />
of Kreuzberg as a hippy was an easy way to<br />
express revolt. Yet the idealism of the ’68 era had<br />
long begun to stagnate.<br />
As had Berlin’s music scene. Removed from<br />
the nexus of Cologne and Düsseldorf, Berlin<br />
nonetheless had krautrock and Kosmische groups,<br />
tending towards the ambient electronics of Klaus<br />
Schulze and Tangerine Dream, whose founder<br />
Edgar Froese would befriend Bowie early in his<br />
Berlin stay. But the detached intellectualism of<br />
16 • may <strong>2014</strong>
“David Bowie was just another freak in<br />
town, who cares? I had him a few times as a<br />
customer. He was polite and nice, he got what<br />
he wanted, then you’d leave him alone. People<br />
left him alone and that’s probably why he<br />
enjoyed it so much.“ – Salomé<br />
Die Tödliche Doris – Wolfgang Müller’s private archives<br />
Salomé at Matala on Bayerische Straße, 1977<br />
the genre was far from the attitude which artists<br />
such as Müller, Salomé and Gut would have felt.<br />
“We were trying to invent our own kind of new<br />
music,” Gut says. “German music didn’t have any<br />
kind of impact at all.”<br />
What did have an impact was the American and<br />
British glam and proto-punk scenes, of which David<br />
Bowie and Iggy Pop were un disputed figureheads.<br />
In late 1976, their choice to move to West<br />
Berlin conferred on the city the kind of cool it<br />
had never had before. “He was really the first<br />
international star who moved to this very unfresh<br />
city at this time. It was still wasted by the War,”<br />
says Müller. “David Bowie and Iggy Pop – they<br />
were Anglo-American and they brought something<br />
fresh into this city. It’s a fact.”<br />
Not that any self-respecting Berlin resident<br />
would admit to being impressed by him. Says<br />
Salomé, “David Bowie was just another freak<br />
in town, who cares? I had him a few times as a<br />
customer at Anderes Ufer because I was working<br />
behind the bar. He was polite and nice, he got<br />
what he wanted, then you’d leave him alone. Let<br />
him do what he was doing. People left him alone<br />
and that’s probably why he enjoyed it so much.”<br />
Nonetheless, Berliners paid attention to where<br />
Bowie was going and what he was doing – and<br />
whom he was doing it with. Just before his move<br />
to Berlin, the star had declared his bisexuality in an<br />
interview with Playboy; in the city, his frequenting<br />
of transgressive clubs like Chez Romy Haag and<br />
Lützower Lampe helped usher in the blending of<br />
straight and queer subcultures that was key to the<br />
formation of the German punk scene.<br />
Anderes Ufer opened in 1977, two doors down<br />
from Bowie’s 155 Hauptstraße address in Schöneberg.<br />
“I don’t think it was any accident that David<br />
Bowie lived just a few doors down,” notes Müller.<br />
“He had an influence on these things.”<br />
The bar was seen as being the first publicly gay<br />
locale in Berlin, with its wide-open glass front –<br />
which Bowie famously paid to replace after it was<br />
smashed by angry drunks. Salomé worked there<br />
as a waiter. “In the late 1970s things started to be<br />
different because Anderes Ufer opened. It was<br />
the first gay bar with open windows where everybody<br />
could look in and young people met...“<br />
As the decade began to draw to a close, more<br />
and more venues opened that attracted both<br />
hedonistic hometown revellers and, increasingly,<br />
bands from the US and the UK punk scene,<br />
which was in full swing at the time. 1977 was the<br />
year in which John Lydon’s sneer of “no future”<br />
became a mantra, and it was also the year that<br />
Kantkino in Charlottenburg hosted a show by<br />
UK band The Vibrators, which inspired PVC,<br />
one of West Berlin’s first punk bands; later that<br />
same year, they were opening for Iggy Pop.<br />
One year later, in 1978, the club Dschungel<br />
opened on Nürnberger Straße, quickly gaining a<br />
reputation as “Berlin’s Studio 54”, an anythinggoes<br />
hangout for freaks of all stripes. And the<br />
Kreuzberg punk club SO36 was taken over<br />
by German artist Martin Kippenberger, who<br />
invested his own money in it to save it from<br />
bankruptcy. Kippenberger reinvented the club,<br />
bringing over names from both sides of the<br />
Atlantic: from Bowie himself to post-punk and<br />
industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and Wire.<br />
Müller remembers it as though “a UFO had<br />
landed among the hippies”.<br />
“There was this open, liberal atmosphere,” says<br />
Müller. “People really didn’t care. A friend of mine<br />
once lay down on Oranienstraße, on the street,<br />
and cars just slowly passed around her.” Salomé felt<br />
that SO36 was a point where queer scenes and the<br />
music scenes merged. “Those were places where<br />
the crowd mixed. Openly mixed. You could meet<br />
anybody and everybody. That was the change.”<br />
Inspired by the bands they saw, the people they<br />
met and their own West Berlin experiences,<br />
musicians like Gut and Müller began to write<br />
their own songs… in their own language.<br />
Previously, this had been fraught with political<br />
implications. “Singing in German was a taboo –<br />
the Nazi era destroyed the tradition of German<br />
lyrics,” says Müller. “But the punk movement was<br />
all about erasing taboos. We started to think<br />
about singing in German again.”<br />
Bowie’s contribution to this? “He did that<br />
version of ‘Heroes’ in German in 1977 – so we<br />
thought, if David Bowie could sing in German,<br />
then the Germans could, too!” laughs Müller.<br />
By the time Nick Cave, the next international<br />
musician to take up residence in Berlin, arrived in<br />
1983, West Berlin’s cultural landscape was a different<br />
place. Punk, post-punk and industrial bands<br />
like Salomé’s Geile Tiere, Müller’s Die Tödliche<br />
Doris, Gut’s all-female group Malaria! and her<br />
friend Blixa Bargeld’s Einstürzende Neubauten<br />
had created a new musical language that the city<br />
could call its own.<br />
Bowie might have resonated through the city<br />
– “Berlin was nowhere, and Bowie gave it a glam<br />
factor,” as Gut pointed out. But the people who<br />
took up their inspiration through the punk scene<br />
and went on to continue through the 1980s were<br />
able to move on, experiment with genres and<br />
bring in a new era of music to Berlin. n<br />
17
owie in berlin<br />
Always crashing<br />
in the same bar<br />
Exberliner’s music editor meditates on<br />
Bowie, rebirth and Berlin. By D. Strauss<br />
Can I begin an essay on David Bowie<br />
with an anecdote about Scritti Politti’s<br />
Green Gartside? At a Tito Puente concert<br />
in 1981, the post-punk semiotics<br />
autodidact turned lite-funketeer propositioned<br />
Kraftwerk about recording “The Sweetest Girl”<br />
with lovers rock icon Gregory Isaacs. But, of<br />
course, Kraftwerk didn’t like reggae; they may<br />
have been the only Germans who didn’t.<br />
The sense I get is<br />
that David Bowie<br />
suffered a similar set of<br />
false assumptions<br />
about the Continent<br />
he’d leave for. He loved<br />
kraut rock – both he<br />
and collaborator Brian<br />
Eno were convinced it<br />
was the future of pop –<br />
but listening to the<br />
music of his not-reallyaccurately-named<br />
Berlin<br />
Trilogy, he never got at<br />
its essence. Which<br />
might have been German reggae!<br />
Not that it wasn’t easy for this<br />
man, falling away from Earth, to<br />
live in a world of geopolitical<br />
delusion. Didn’t he briefly flirt<br />
with the National Front before<br />
moving to Germany?<br />
When Bowie moved with<br />
Iggy Pop to Berlin in late 1976,<br />
he was just off his commercial<br />
peak, a period during which he made sure that<br />
every rock star bigger than him was absorbed<br />
into his orbit, from Lennon to Elton to Mick<br />
the Lips, with whom he had probably had a longstanding<br />
affair (and from whom he had learned<br />
considerable financial acumen). Jagger had also<br />
pioneered the concept of rock star as aristocrat,<br />
a model Bowie’s alienation prevented him from<br />
entirely aping, though he would make a go of<br />
it. He had been a vaguely pathetic wannabe for<br />
so long – from the mid-1960s of “The Laughing<br />
Gnome” to the Kubrick-esque Moon-faddish<br />
“Space Oddity” to the comedown Nietzscheisms<br />
of The Man Who Sold the World, that when<br />
he found himself ahead of the ball on protopunk<br />
and glam, with a shit-hot guitarist in Mick<br />
Ronson, a sound visionary in Tony Visconti, and<br />
a hungry, hungry handler<br />
in Tony Defries, he was<br />
as downbeat as he was<br />
ambitious. After all, with<br />
Ziggy Stardust, he had to<br />
pretend he was famous<br />
before he became so and<br />
when he finally broke<br />
through it was with an<br />
ambitious<br />
rip-off of “Over the Rainbow”<br />
that meditated on its own ambition.<br />
That song was “Starman”<br />
and, anticipating Berlin, after all<br />
those years of chasing rainbows,<br />
he never seemed entirely comfortable<br />
with being one. So he inhaled<br />
a lot of stardust. The phantasies<br />
that led to glam rock presented<br />
themselves as insecurities: the<br />
young dude was<br />
obsessed, even at his<br />
height, with dystopia.<br />
So was Judy Garland,<br />
for that matter, paeans<br />
to optimism aside – and<br />
her daughter Liza did<br />
both Berlin and glam<br />
first in Cabaret.<br />
Bowie claims to have<br />
forgotten years during<br />
his addiction, but<br />
he is incredibly lucid in<br />
interviews during that<br />
period. In a dark funk, he<br />
fired his Spiders, ditching glam for… dark funk.<br />
It expanded his audience. He has no memory of<br />
recording 1976’s Station to Station, a prog-flecked<br />
record coming together at the birth of punk that<br />
only made him bigger. When he finally attempted<br />
to leave it all behind and<br />
record an album that truly<br />
reflected Bowie Music, it had<br />
Iggy Pop’s name on it. 1977’s<br />
Bowie-produced The Idiot is<br />
his greatest record – an anticipatory<br />
summing up that gives<br />
a slap to the 1960s and a finger<br />
to the incipient 1980s. He<br />
waited until Low was already<br />
out to release it, lest he be<br />
thought derivative of himself. When he wanted<br />
to go commercial, Iggy would be the front man<br />
as well: Lust for Life, released later that year, is a<br />
pop album, but then Elvis had to go and die and<br />
his record company let the record do the same.<br />
The Idiot was<br />
mostly recorded<br />
in France and<br />
Munich. Low<br />
was more a Swiss<br />
album (Bowie’s initial<br />
choice for exile<br />
was considerably<br />
tonier than walledin<br />
Schöneberg).<br />
“Heroes”, whose<br />
cover, like The<br />
Idiot’s, was based<br />
on Erich Heckel’s<br />
“Roquairol”, is<br />
the only truly “Berlin” of his<br />
Berlin albums. Recorded at<br />
Kreuzberg’s Hansa Studios,<br />
the Kraut influences are more<br />
Berlin Kosmische, and probably<br />
the result of Eno’s palling around<br />
with Cluster, though both Neu!<br />
and Kraftwerk are name-checked<br />
in song titles. Like the earlier<br />
“TVC15”, which Bowie performed in the film<br />
Christiane F. (with NYC standing in for BLN),<br />
“Heroes,” the song, minus Robert Fripp’s guitar<br />
and Bowie’s dramatic delivery, is essentially boogie<br />
music, a look back in resignation to Bowie’s<br />
youthful aesthetic interests. The lyrics, which<br />
were inspired by Visconti cheating on his wife,<br />
came to represent political liberation. Which<br />
reflects the confluence of rock and Berlin’s paradoxes<br />
quite nicely.<br />
So is there anything David Bowie has to teach<br />
the Exberliner reader? He came here to dry out,<br />
while most expats arrive here to fuck themselves<br />
up. Of course, when you’re the biggest rock star<br />
in the world, drying out is a relative measure<br />
(“And I/I’ll drink all the time.”). Bowie did not<br />
arrive in Berlin to learn from its decadence,<br />
and decadence was not merely an ideology to<br />
be absorbed by not working, as with the petty<br />
dissolution that Australian youth wrote of in his<br />
notorious New York Times article in 2012. At his<br />
Low-est, Bowie was prolific, and not in spite of it.<br />
Despite the influence of his machinations here,<br />
Bowie made a choice to sit out punk. Post-Berlin,<br />
on 1980’s Scary Monsters, Bowie’s punkest album<br />
and tentative poke back at the mainstream, the<br />
scariness felt like another role (and like “Heroes”,<br />
it’s a nostalgic release, with its “Ashes to Ashes”<br />
pierrot and Bruce Springsteen’s pianist). Berlin<br />
would take to punk, but it<br />
would take a decade and Berlin’s<br />
early punk was pretty<br />
arty. Then again, so was<br />
CBGB’s. Perhaps Bowie had<br />
his hand in there, as well.<br />
Life is a cabaret, even if the<br />
stage is your mirror and<br />
the next act has yet to be<br />
written. In peroxide. And<br />
on MTV. n<br />
18 • may <strong>2014</strong>
1.<br />
3.<br />
1. Hansa Studios, 1977.<br />
2. Bowie, producer<br />
Tony Visconti and Meyer<br />
during the Low recording<br />
sessions, 1976.<br />
3. Bowie and Meyer during<br />
a special one-day recording<br />
session, 1987.<br />
4. The view from the studios’<br />
control room, with the Wall<br />
in the background, 1976.<br />
2.<br />
4.<br />
PHOTOS: EDUARD MEYER’S PRIVATE COLLECTION<br />
The sound behind the vision<br />
Former Hansa Studios recording<br />
engineer Eduard Meyer recalls<br />
his time with Bowie and Iggy.<br />
“<br />
When a journalist came to<br />
interview me at the time of<br />
Bowie’s 60th birthday, his first<br />
question was “So, did David<br />
Bowie sleep with Romy Haag?”<br />
“Ask him yourself,” was my<br />
answer. “I was not in the room.”<br />
That was not at all the kind of relationship that<br />
I had with David Bowie. I began my career at<br />
Hansa Studios on February 15, 1976. David made<br />
his first appearance at the studio that very winter<br />
and let me be clear, when he arrived I had no<br />
idea who he was. My background lies in classical<br />
music. I had some knowledge of krautrock, but<br />
in general I had no interest in pop music. He was<br />
not coming from the stars, we did not roll out a<br />
red carpet for him… he was simply a client of our<br />
studio. Nevertheless, we became friendly. I had a<br />
good deal of experience with musicians and producers<br />
who simply had no idea about how music<br />
should sound and how it should be recorded. This<br />
was completely different with David Bowie and<br />
Tony Visconti. It was clear from day one that they<br />
knew exactly how to make the music they wanted.<br />
They had it in their veins.<br />
I began work on Low as a translator, simply<br />
because I was the best English-speaking engineer<br />
at the studio. I worked as an intermediary,<br />
translating for David during the sessions and for<br />
Tony Visconti during the mixing. Naturally, we<br />
spent some time together. Hansa looked out onto<br />
the Wall; the border guard could see right into<br />
the studio and even hear the music. Once, I made<br />
a little joke – I took one of the studio lamps and<br />
shone it directly at the guard tower. David and<br />
Tony jumped under the table [laughs] but they<br />
would never have shot at us.<br />
It was on one of those evenings that that<br />
photo was taken with the three of us sitting in<br />
the control room, David on the left, Tony in the<br />
middle and me on the right. We were just sharing<br />
a joke at the end of the day when Coco [Schwab,<br />
Bowie’s assistant] snapped that photo. I was also<br />
invited to a Christmas meal at David and Iggy’s<br />
apartment on Hauptstraße – Coco roasted a bird,<br />
it was very nice. Of course I heard that David and<br />
Iggy and the others went for some big nights out<br />
around Berlin, but in general I didn’t meet them<br />
outside of the studio. I had my own private life at<br />
home with my family.<br />
When David started “Heroes”, I was less involved<br />
because the crew were more or less able to<br />
deal with it themselves. But I would still come by<br />
the studio once a day and see what was going on.<br />
The next time I worked with David was on Iggy<br />
Pop’s Lust for Life album, which David produced,<br />
then on the Bertolt Brecht EP Baal [1982]. It<br />
was a great atmosphere. David and Iggy were<br />
always very well behaved, I never saw any drugs<br />
or anything like that, but they would always have<br />
a case of beer to quench their thirst. They had<br />
fun though. One time at Feierabend, three very<br />
beautiful young women came to the control room.<br />
David greeted them and told them to wait before<br />
saying to Iggy, “Pick the one you want. I’ll take<br />
the other two.” [Laughs]<br />
David returned to Berlin to play a concert in<br />
front of the Reichstag in 1987, but during that<br />
week he also booked a day-long session at Hansa.<br />
We had security at all the doors; we took it very<br />
seriously and worked our asses off to get everything<br />
ready. Suddenly the band started playing<br />
“Time Will Crawl”. We couldn’t understand what<br />
was going on – the song had already been released!<br />
I went to David and told him that we had to<br />
prepare a microphone for him, but he just laughed<br />
saying, “No, not for this session.” It was right at<br />
that moment that that photograph was taken,<br />
with David smiling with his cigarette and me in<br />
a state of confusion. It turned out that David’s<br />
crew had a trade union contract that required that<br />
they must be employed at least once a week. He<br />
had just booked the studio to keep them busy. It<br />
ended up being a lot of fun and I still have the<br />
24-track to this day.<br />
Since David Bowie, many famous international<br />
bands and musicians have used Hansa and many<br />
people have asked me about the times I spent<br />
with David. But back in 1977 I had absolutely<br />
no idea. It was simply part of my job. Perhaps I<br />
should have kept a diary!<br />
As told to Dominic Mealy.<br />
Eduard Meyer<br />
Born ‘Edu’ in 1943, Meyer studied recording<br />
engineering and music at the Robert<br />
Schumann Konservatorium in Düsseldorf.<br />
After a stint recording “mainly Schlager” at<br />
Cornet Studios in Cologne, he worked at<br />
Berlin’s iconic Hansa Studios from 1976-2003,<br />
working with such musical luminaries as Can,<br />
Tangerine Dream and, of course, David<br />
Bowie. Also an accomplished cellist, Meyer<br />
played on the Low track “Art Decade”. He’s<br />
currently enjoying his retirement in rural<br />
North Rhine-Westphalia.<br />
19
the experts’ corner<br />
Bowie by the book<br />
Even 35 years after he left Berlin to reboard the spaceship to global stardom,<br />
David Bowie continues to inspire volumes of new writing. We talked to four<br />
authors whose books come to grips with the glam rocker’s “golden years”.<br />
Rory MacLean<br />
Berlin: Imagine a City<br />
(Weidenfeld and Nicholson, <strong>2014</strong>, 421p)<br />
A book aiming to grasp the unique aura of<br />
Berlin through portraits of the memorable<br />
people who inhabited it couldn’t do without<br />
a very special chapter about Bowie –<br />
especially when its author personally spent<br />
time with the star while working on the set<br />
of Just a Gigolo.<br />
What is your personal relationship with<br />
David Bowie? In 1977-78 I was the assistant director on Just a Gigolo, the<br />
derivative and disappointing feature film starring Bowie and Marlene Dietrich.<br />
Bowie, his assistant, the director David Hemmings and I were the<br />
only native English speakers on the picture, hence we naturally gravitated<br />
toward each other. We all spent many evenings together in his Hauptstraße<br />
apartment. Bowie played records for us, explaining how musicians<br />
come together then break up in the pursuit of creative goals, likening the<br />
process to Die Brücke artists earlier in the century:<br />
Roxy Music and Brian Eno, Der Blaue Reiter and<br />
Kandinsky. I’d heard the gossip about him before we<br />
met of course, the stories of a paranoid, egotistical<br />
Thin White Duke who flirted with fascism and the<br />
occult. But over the months that we worked together<br />
I saw only a gentle, articulate, warm and affable man,<br />
filled with self-effacing good humour, on the cusp<br />
of finding his own true self. Over the three-month<br />
shooting schedule he danced with Maria Schell, woke<br />
up in bed with Kim Novak and – on day 51 – was shot<br />
by a nutty Nazi. With blanks. Early one morning, after<br />
the director and I had spent the night reworking<br />
dialogue, I knocked on his trailer door and delivered<br />
a wad of new lines for him to memorise. Bowie<br />
scanned the list, smiled weakly and said: “Now, melody I can handle…”<br />
Your favourite of Bowie’s Berlin albums? “Heroes”. Because it’s fired<br />
with deep emotion. Because it captures a sense of the isolation and aching<br />
loneliness of the then-divided city. Because it tells us, all the fat-skinny<br />
people, all the nobody people who then dreamt of a new world of equals,<br />
that there was hope, and that we could be ourselves.<br />
Your favourite anecdote about Bowie and Berlin? The memory that<br />
endures most from those days was Christmas together: Bowie and my<br />
boss, with partners, children and add-ons like me at a secluded restaurant<br />
in the Grunewald, Forsthaus Paulsborn. We drank too much and Bowie<br />
gave me a copy of Fritz Lang’s biography. At the end of the happy evening<br />
I followed him downstairs to the huge, ceramic lavatory where – as we<br />
stood before the urinals – we sang Buddy Holly songs together (or, at least,<br />
a line-and-a-half from Little Richard’s “Good Golly, Miss Molly”).<br />
Tobias Rüther<br />
Helden: David Bowie<br />
in Berlin<br />
(Rogner & Bernhard, 2013, 222p)<br />
“I followed him downstairs<br />
to the huge,<br />
ceramic lavatory<br />
where – as we stood<br />
before the urinals –<br />
we sang Buddy Holly<br />
songs together...”<br />
From Iggy Pop to Romy Haag, from Die<br />
Brücke to krautrock and from Low to<br />
Lodger, German journalist Rüther follows<br />
Bowie on the Berlin trail. Originally<br />
conceived in 2006 as an article in honour<br />
of the 30th anniversary of Bowie’s move<br />
to Berlin, it will be available in English<br />
translation this autumn from Reaktion Books.<br />
What is your personal relationship with David Bowie? I’m not a<br />
fan. I do like a lot of Bowie’s work, but not all of it. I always admired that<br />
he wanted pop music to be more than melodies. This intellectual ambition<br />
he had. And I like that he never trusted authenticity in pop. He’s never<br />
been a sweaty rock ‘n’ roller. For him it was always about the possibility<br />
of becoming someone else for the duration of a song. What a wonderful<br />
thing that there’s another life waiting for you<br />
in a song! Over and over and over again.<br />
Your favourite of Bowie’s Berlin work?<br />
My personal favourite would be “Moss<br />
Garden”, an ambient instrumental from the<br />
second side of “Heroes”. It’s so quiet and beautiful<br />
and simple. For some reason it sounds<br />
like spring to me.<br />
Your favourite anecdote about Bowie<br />
and Berlin? I love that he liked to use public<br />
transportation. People told me he was quite<br />
a fan of the BVG, which is somewhat hard to<br />
believe if you live in Berlin nowadays. But it<br />
seems to be true – there was an old S-Bahn map in his exhibition at the<br />
V&A. He obviously archived it!<br />
A unique discovery you made while writing/researching your<br />
book? I found the parallels between Bowie and West Berlin striking.<br />
Both the divided city and the artist were at a loss what to do next in the<br />
mid-seventies. West Berlin started to redefine itself as a cultural metropolis<br />
around 1976, 1977. Having no political relevance due to its Cold War<br />
status as a neutralised city, it turned to the arts – to history and historical<br />
discourse – to start anew. At the same time Bowie, exhausted and confused,<br />
found new energy in dealing with the ghosts of his own past. He’d<br />
loved expressionist art and film since he was a kid. He adored Kirchner<br />
and Brecht. He explored the cultural and historical undercurrents of the<br />
past (Weimar, Die Brücke, Marlene Dietrich) to write the most innovative<br />
pop music of his time. So it was a perfect match: Berlin found a future for<br />
itself by looking back, Bowie looked back and wrote music of the future.<br />
20 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Peter Dogett<br />
The Man Who Sold<br />
The World: David<br />
Bowie and the 1970s<br />
(Vintage, 2012, 432p)<br />
An insightful and personal recounting of<br />
every song in the Bowie oeuvre between<br />
Space Oddity and Scary Monsters by a<br />
writer who eschews Bowie’s colourful personal<br />
life to focus on his work, which, he<br />
says “is arguably the most compelling and<br />
accurate account of the 1970s assembled<br />
by any artist, in any medium.”<br />
What is your personal relationship with<br />
David Bowie? I don’t have a personal relationship<br />
with Bowie in a face-to-face way. But as<br />
a fan I followed his music almost with a sense<br />
of disbelief, because of how quickly he was<br />
changing, how many different identities he was<br />
moving through, and how diverse his music was.<br />
But he wasn’t just changing for change’s sake: he<br />
was responding with incredible<br />
flexibility to what was happening<br />
both within his own psyche, and<br />
in the wider society around him.<br />
One of the great joys for me of<br />
writing this book was being able<br />
to spend several months soaking<br />
myself in Bowie’s 1970s music<br />
– not just hearing what was on<br />
the records, but trying to think<br />
myself into what was happening<br />
inside Bowie’s life, and his head,<br />
when each one was made. I was able to track<br />
down much of what he was reading, watching<br />
and listening to during the 1970s, which helped<br />
to give me a unique insight into the music he<br />
made and where it came from.<br />
Your favourite of Bowie’s Berlin albums?<br />
I don’t think there’s anything in Bowie’s Berlin<br />
period that is more emotionally charged, and musically<br />
exciting, than the first side of the “Heroes”<br />
album. “Joe The Lion” and “Blackout” are about<br />
as personally and musically extreme as it is possible<br />
to be without losing control of<br />
oneself artistically, and Bowie almost<br />
never loses control in the 1970s.<br />
A unique discovery you made<br />
while writing/researching your<br />
book? I love the fact that Bowie<br />
threw himself so wholeheartedly into<br />
the street life of Berlin, rather than<br />
trying to live a closeted rock star life.<br />
But for me the key moment was how<br />
entranced he became by the work of<br />
the expressionist art group Die Brücke. I think<br />
those pictures had a huge effect on Bowie visually,<br />
emotionally and spiritually. I was astonished<br />
to find some film clips of Bowie in New York in<br />
1980, when he was performing the lead role in<br />
The Elephant Man on stage – because he was like a<br />
living embodiment of one of the twisted figures<br />
in Egon Schiele’s self-portraits. There was talk<br />
that Bowie might play the lead role in a movie<br />
of Schiele’s life. It’s a real shame that the film<br />
was never made, because it might have been the<br />
crowning glory of his years in Berlin.<br />
Thomas Jerome Seabrook<br />
Bowie in Berlin: A New<br />
Career in a New Town<br />
(Jawbone Press, 2008, 272p)<br />
“I was named after his character in The<br />
Man Who Fell to Earth. So you could<br />
say I was destined to write this book.”<br />
Seabrook’s definitive book on Bowie’s<br />
three-year expat stint delves into why<br />
the musician fled from fame in LA to<br />
comparative anonymity in Berlin. It<br />
offers insight into Bowie’s recording<br />
process and, as Seabrook says, goes<br />
beyond Bowie’s image “as a cardboard<br />
glam rock character with red hair and slightly throwaway songs.<br />
His Berlin records are the complete antithesis of that.”<br />
What is your personal relationship with David Bowie? We never<br />
met, but Bowie and his music have always been part of my life. I was<br />
named after his character [Thomas Jerome Newton] in The Man Who Fell<br />
to Earth. So you could say I was destined to write this book, if you believe<br />
in that sort of thing. I first got into him as a teenager, at a time when<br />
his music was probably as unfashionable as it’s ever been. I was mostly<br />
listening to hairy American bands at the time, but something made me<br />
want to borrow a cassette best-of from my local library, and then I realised<br />
I knew most of the songs on it already.<br />
Your favourite of Bowie’s Berlin albums? “Heroes”. Much as I love<br />
Low, “Heroes” pushes the ideas on it quite a bit further. Bowie, Eno, and<br />
co are very much in the groove; the sound is broader and more confident,<br />
and it’s got some of Bowie’s best songs on it – also things like “Beauty<br />
and the Beast” and “Blackout”. It’s also much more of a Berlin album,<br />
both in a literal sense (it’s the only one of the supposed trilogy that was<br />
entirely made there) and in the way it feels.<br />
Your favourite anecdote about Bowie and Berlin? The one that<br />
starts the book: Bowie and Iggy driving around Berlin, probably out of<br />
their minds on god knows what, spotting a car owned by some drug dealer<br />
they knew, and deciding it would be a good idea to ram their Mercedes<br />
into it, over and over again. This episode ended up inspiring one of his<br />
greatest songs of the period – “Always Crashing in the Same Car”. And<br />
it kind of sums up the brilliant irony of Bowie’s madcap scheme to go to<br />
Berlin – the drug capital of Western Europe – to get cleaned up.<br />
DEUTSCH IN ENGLISH!<br />
MAXIM GORKI THEATRE<br />
NOW WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES<br />
www.gorki.de<br />
21
Article portraits tag<br />
The fans who<br />
fell to Earth<br />
Diehards, collectors, lookalikes and<br />
former stalkers: meet Berlin’s Bowie nuts.<br />
We talked to them about their obsession.<br />
By Dominic Mealy. Photos by Michał Andrysiak.<br />
The teen Bowistin<br />
Nelly P. was born in 1972 in Wilmersdorf, West Berlin.<br />
Following her amateur dramatics as a teenage Bowie<br />
devotee, she pursued a career in theatre, studying acting<br />
in Berlin before moving to London to complete an<br />
MA. Now a part-time actress, businesswoman and loving<br />
mother, she lives in Berlin with her eight-year-old son.<br />
The first time I saw him was in the film Labyrinth and I fell totally in<br />
love with him! I saw it at the cinema with my friend and the next day<br />
at school we couldn’t stop talking about him, about his tight stockings,<br />
about how you could see everything… for us, it was so erotic.<br />
Through the film I became introduced to his music and as soon as<br />
I heard it I was completely hooked. I needed to find out more, so I<br />
bought every book I could find on him. The best was the David Bowie<br />
Black Book, but it was in English. Until then I had been very bad at<br />
English in school, but I sat down with that book, translating every<br />
single word from English to German. I quickly became top of the class.<br />
Then I heard the news: he was coming to play in Berlin! It was<br />
1987, I was 14 years old and it was my first concert. When I received<br />
the ticket it was like holding something holy. He played at the<br />
Reichstag with Genesis and Eurythmics, but I didn’t care about them<br />
at all, all I wanted to see was Bowie. The concert was HUGE, there<br />
were people everywhere, including people from the East who had<br />
gathered on the other side of the wall and he greeted them! He<br />
said: “…und dann Gruß noch der Leute hinter den Mauer” in his<br />
really sweet German, and then he sang “Heroes”. It was like magic.<br />
My father had insisted on chaperoning me and he made us leave before<br />
the concert finished because he wanted to “avoid the crowds”<br />
– I was really, really angry with him for a long time after that. I saw<br />
Bowie again when he played at the Deutschlandhalle – the place no<br />
longer exists but it’s the venue you see in Christiane F, so it felt very<br />
authentic – and then at Neue Welt. I waited for him at the exit. He<br />
walked straight to his car without looking up, but I wasn’t disappointed<br />
– I ran through the street following his car. It felt amazing.<br />
My younger sister also caught the Bowie bug. We didn’t call<br />
ourselves “Bowie fans”, it sounded lame, so we called ourselves<br />
“Bowisten”. We were delighted to realise that Bowie had once<br />
lived in Berlin – that seems obvious now, but back then, without the<br />
internet, it was like insider’s knowledge. We desperately wanted<br />
to know where exactly Bowie had lived, but my books didn’t give<br />
the address, only hints, mentioning that he lived around 20 minutes<br />
away from Hansa Studios above some kind of tool shop. We set off<br />
with our bikes from Wilmersdorf where we lived at that time, riding<br />
to Hansa where West Berlin met the Wall, and we criss-crossed<br />
the streets looking for somewhere that fit the vague description in<br />
my book. When we found a block of spacious apartments over a<br />
hardware store, we knew it must be the right place. We spoke excitedly<br />
about what it must have been like when Bowie and Iggy Pop<br />
lived there, we were so proud of our discovery – it was our secret! In<br />
reality we were on Yorckstraße, not Hauptstraße, so we weren’t far<br />
away, but it wasn’t the right building. Somehow that didn’t matter –<br />
to us, it was Bowie’s house.<br />
When I turned 16 and was finally allowed to travel alone, I boarded<br />
a train for Montreux. I had read in a music magazine that David Bowie<br />
was living in the Swiss city, so with little more than a small rucksack,<br />
a toothbrush and one set of clothes, I set off to find him. I ran around<br />
the city, asking everyone where David Bowie lived in my bad French,<br />
especially in Asian restaurants – I knew Bowie loved Asian food...<br />
Of course I was hoping I would meet him, in my fantasy he would<br />
already know who I was and we would go out, but the main thing for<br />
me was just to find him. I knew I was too shy to ring his doorbell, but<br />
I thought perhaps I would leave him a letter. I went to Mountain Studios<br />
and eventually got to speak to a producer. He said he couldn’t<br />
tell me where the house was and that Bowie had finished recording<br />
and left. Most heartbreaking of all, he told me that if I had been there<br />
a month before I probably would have met him in the studio.<br />
David Bowie totally influenced my life. His songs were so complex<br />
that unravelling them was a journey in itself, an almost spiritual<br />
thing. Through Bowie’s music I became enamoured with English<br />
culture and the<br />
English language,<br />
even moving<br />
to London...<br />
Today, I look at<br />
that time as a<br />
growing-up experience.<br />
David<br />
Bowie is a part<br />
of my past.I actually<br />
gave away<br />
all my David<br />
Bowie albums<br />
a few weeks<br />
ago. I have all<br />
these songs<br />
and all these<br />
memories in my<br />
head, I don’t<br />
really need to<br />
listen to them<br />
anymore.<br />
22 • may <strong>2014</strong>
The doppelgänger<br />
A natural-born Bowie lookalike with the<br />
nom de plume to match, multimedia<br />
artist and art director Alexandra Moon-<br />
Age was born in Sydney in 1987. She<br />
studied theatre and art before moving<br />
to London. With a creative career spanning<br />
performance, music, painting and<br />
fashion, Moon-Age has recently moved<br />
to Berlin – the natural choice, where her<br />
Ziggy-inspired getups fit right in.<br />
It was love at first sight. I was about nine when I<br />
first saw Labyrinth and I just couldn’t believe<br />
how he was dressed. The first album I heard was<br />
Ziggy Stardust and I became obsessed. David<br />
Bowie is the first member of the opposite sex I<br />
felt really attracted to. Since then, everything<br />
I’ve done has been influenced by him.<br />
What’s so amazing about Bowie is the way he<br />
tried so many different things. He participated in<br />
Beckenham Arts Lab, he performed mime, he<br />
painted, he acted, all that beside the costumes<br />
and the music. I have tried to mimic all of that in<br />
my own life, from theatre school to painting and<br />
drawing, and later in London when I did fashion<br />
styling and made music. Now that I am in Berlin I<br />
am working to fuse all of these things together,<br />
mixing stage performance, music videos,<br />
choreographed dance, audio-visuals, strange<br />
instruments and interactive transformative<br />
costumes... all inspired by Bowie.<br />
My fashion style is totally influenced by Bowie,<br />
particularly the Ziggy Stardust era. I got into<br />
anything colourful, garish and louder than life. I<br />
love big platform shoes, jumpsuits, giant hats,<br />
feather boas. There is something super sexy<br />
about pretending to be Bowie. It’s the androgyny:<br />
pretending to be a guy, pretending to be a<br />
girl. I dressed as Bowie for parties or just for<br />
myself. I was once at a party in the wee hours,<br />
my friend took me into her room and gave me<br />
an immaculate Jareth makeover. she put on<br />
“Magic Dance” and I came out of the bedroom<br />
and launched into this impersonation, everyone<br />
went crazy... Then friends in Australia were<br />
organising a Bowie-themed night and I couldn’t<br />
attend in person, so I decided to make a video<br />
and play Bowie through the ages. The film was<br />
screened at the party and we put it online. Not<br />
long afterward, I got a call from the manager of<br />
Bowie’s website: he asked me if he could include<br />
the video. Yes, David Bowie has seen it!<br />
I attended the exhibition four times in London,<br />
once dressed as Bowie, and I’m so stoked<br />
that I’ll get to see it again at the Martin-Gropius-<br />
Bau... yes, most probably dressed up as Bowie!<br />
23
Article portraits tag<br />
The collector<br />
DJ, musician, producer and record<br />
collector Ragnar was born in West<br />
Germany in 1973. He now performs<br />
in the industrial band Gerechtigkeits<br />
Liga. The owner of Berlin’s<br />
largest David Bowie record collection,<br />
with 130 discs, he also organises<br />
and DJs at Bowie-themed club<br />
nights – the next one is on July 19<br />
at Berghain Kantine.<br />
I grew up in southwest Berlin and Bowie<br />
was always there in the background, on<br />
the radio and TV. The first record I bought<br />
was “China Girl” as a seven-inch in 1984.<br />
I bought it because it’s a great song, but I<br />
first became aware of it because of the video.<br />
It made quite an impact because it had<br />
a half-naked girl in it; that obviously gets<br />
your attention as a teenage boy! My collection<br />
of Bowie records has slowly grown<br />
ever since. I’m a record collector so I collect<br />
records in general, but I have more records<br />
by David Bowie than any other single artist,<br />
around 130 on vinyl and some more on CD.<br />
Many of these are different pressings from<br />
different countries with different covers.<br />
It’s a good field because there is simply so<br />
much stuff out there. A lot of the records<br />
were bought during my time in London in<br />
the late 1990s and early 2000s.<br />
When I was around 13 years old, I<br />
watched Christiane F. and it made a big<br />
impression on me, I still like it a lot. I was<br />
here during the late 1970s and early 1980s<br />
– I was too young to experience it properly,<br />
but I had a sense of it. This film really<br />
captured the atmosphere of the time, a<br />
Berlin that was free and experimental but<br />
also dark and drug-riddled. The use of<br />
Bowie’s music in the film really captures<br />
this. When I listen to Low I can see the S-<br />
Bahn trains go by, the dirt in Schöneberg,<br />
the filthy public toilets.<br />
The Berlin trilogy is without doubt my<br />
three favourite records. They show influences<br />
from krautrock and the mark of Brian<br />
Eno’s production. As a musician and sound<br />
engineer for 22 years, I really appreciate<br />
the sense of experimentation on these<br />
records, the synthesisers, the effects and<br />
the unconventional use of instruments. I<br />
really love “Look Back in Anger” because<br />
it’s just so strange. “Sense of Doubt” is<br />
also amazing – it’s really evocative of Berlin,<br />
of the trains, it’s really an industrial track.<br />
I have been DJing and putting on parties<br />
since 1994, particularly at goth clubs, and<br />
I have often played David Bowie and it has<br />
always gone down very well. This led naturally<br />
to starting a Bowie night with DJane<br />
Ina of Panic in Berlin – we’re both massive<br />
Bowie fans, and we were surprised that<br />
there weren’t already any Bowie-themed<br />
nights. The first was in February at Berghain<br />
Kantine and it went really well, so we will<br />
put on another on July 19 and a smaller<br />
Bowie party at 8mm on April 29. Bowie<br />
has had a lot more influence on all of us<br />
than we realise. He took what was new and<br />
innovative in culture, gave it a twist and got<br />
it on TV. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I<br />
really dressed up, I wore make-up and I had<br />
big hair. I wasn’t even very aware of Bowie<br />
at that time, but I honestly don’t know if<br />
that would have been possible without him.<br />
That’s what is so remarkable about him – he<br />
put little revolutions into pop songs.<br />
The Ossi guide<br />
A child of the GDR, music tour guide and<br />
Bowie aficionado Thilo Schmied was born<br />
in 1973 in former East Berlin. A pop-rocker<br />
and professional musician in the early 1990s,<br />
Schmied subsequently worked as an audio<br />
engineer, promoter, booker and talent scout<br />
before beginning Berlin Music Tours in 2005.<br />
His most popular one: the Bowie in Berlin tour.<br />
I grew up in East Berlin near the Wall at Fischerinsel,<br />
a stone’s throw from Checkpoint Charlie and Hansa<br />
Studios. We couldn’t travel to concerts, but we<br />
listened to the West German radio and that’s how my<br />
passion for music started. When I first heard “Ashes<br />
to Ashes”, I must have been 10 or 11 years old. I<br />
couldn’t understand the words, but that didn’t<br />
matter, that was the first real contact I had with music<br />
and from then on, everything changed.<br />
You couldn’t buy these kinds of records in the<br />
GDR and the black market was incredibly expensive,<br />
but there were other ways. Our grandparents could<br />
travel to the West to visit relatives, so they would<br />
smuggle us back records and music magazines. We<br />
also had a strong culture of taping music off the<br />
radio and sharing the tapes, but all the same it was<br />
illegal and not without danger. As a teenager in the<br />
late 1980s I became a musician, though not a very<br />
successful one [laughs]. I was a singer in a pop-rock<br />
band, and the music was definitely influenced by<br />
Bowie (and Depeche Mode!).<br />
Bowie lived in West Berlin, but he and his music<br />
played a very particular role in the GDR as well. In<br />
1987, it was the 750th anniversary of the establishment<br />
of Berlin and celebrations were held on both<br />
sides of the divided city. In the GDR the regime held<br />
demonstrations with Erich Honecker greeting the<br />
people, but in the West they had these big pop and<br />
rock concerts at the Reichstag. It was right by the<br />
Wall, and they kindly turned the PA so we on the<br />
Eastern side could listen. I was there with thousands<br />
of others, a 14-year-old kid, when David Bowie<br />
played. He greeted us and sang “Heroes”, the<br />
Berlin anthem, and the kids were joking with the<br />
border guards – “Let us go over there for just a<br />
minute, we’ll come back, we promise” – but they<br />
started beating and arresting people. Everyone was<br />
shouting, “The Wall must go! The Wall must go!” It<br />
was the first time something like that had happened<br />
in the 1980s. Bowie obviously didn’t bring down the<br />
Wall, but it was a moment that made people aware<br />
that if they want to change things, they had to come<br />
out and demonstrate.<br />
I never planned on becoming a music tour guide, it<br />
just happened this way. But I’m now able to talk all<br />
day to people from all over the world about the<br />
music that I am passionate about and the music that<br />
has inspired me, and for that I am totally thankful.<br />
24 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Rant<br />
David Bowie is the stewed cabbage of rock!<br />
The Thin White Duke hung out in Berlin in the 1970s. He recorded “Heroes” here. So what?<br />
Will the hype ever cease? Amid the sycophantic din surrounding the new Bowie exhibition<br />
(and the Bowie-centrism of this issue), we gave space to a lone dissenting voice.<br />
By Jacob Sweetman<br />
The U-Bahn hushed as people’s eyes<br />
flashed with the news. They<br />
murmured to each other, looking<br />
around the carriage to see if there<br />
was a fellow appreciative traveller<br />
there, someone, probably, with acne<br />
poorly concealed by a lightning bolt<br />
inaccurately drawn on their pasty<br />
face. The news was in, right there up<br />
on the screen. Bowie was back and,<br />
heavens be praised, he had mentioned<br />
Berlin. This bore repeating.<br />
He had mentioned Berlin! This was<br />
like finding an original Da Vinci<br />
model helicopter with a strangely<br />
smiling woman tucked inside the<br />
backseat, or seeing a 65-year-old Pelé<br />
coming on as a sub to win the World<br />
Cup with a bicycle kick.<br />
Bowie was back and half of Berlin<br />
went mental. So it is worth representing<br />
some of the lyrics of this<br />
astonishing comeback:<br />
Twenty thousand people<br />
Cross Bösebrücke<br />
Fingers are crossed<br />
Just in case<br />
Well, thank God for that; the world<br />
had really been waiting for one of its<br />
momentous moments of modern history<br />
to be boiled down to a para-rhyme as delivered by a bored geography<br />
teacher. Otherwise rational people started talking about going to have<br />
a final look at the outside of the Hansa studios, or smoking a fag by the<br />
plaque outside the old Dschungel as a kind of pilgrimage. For a city with<br />
an artistic heritage so steeped and thick stretching back from Voltaire to<br />
Mark Twain, it was irritating to see everyone getting so worked up about<br />
a man who made a couple of good songs here spread across three albums<br />
that have got far too much Robert Fripp on them to ever be able to be<br />
considered passable.<br />
Now, I accept that David Bowie was very important for a swathe of<br />
young men unsure of, or brutalised for, their sexuality, who were genuinely<br />
liberated by seeing him play on Top of the Pops for the first time. I am<br />
certain, too, that he also made it a lot easier for a whole other swathe of<br />
said young men to pick up girls by wearing thick, badly drawn eyeliner for<br />
the first time. I am also a big fan of the fact that he refused to accept a<br />
knighthood, which shows that he has integrity: something that counts for<br />
a lot in an age when music has been turned into a mere marketing tool.<br />
But who is responsible for that then, eh?<br />
David Bowie is the stewed cabbage of rock. He reduces everything he<br />
touches to the sum of its parts. He took the sex, the grind and the slink<br />
out of funk and R‘n’B, he boiled the<br />
power and the vigour of psychedelic<br />
rock and left it bereft at the side of<br />
the plate, a soulless mush where the<br />
sharpness of one’s cheekbones is more<br />
important than the ability to create<br />
emotion or vigour. And he reduced<br />
Berlin to a poorly rendered cartoon of<br />
itself: a city of vapid and selfish catatonic<br />
shop dummies. Where George<br />
Grosz could sum up the city with<br />
a swish of his pencil, Bowie would<br />
render it a greying dirge.<br />
When Bowie played in front of the<br />
Reichs tag in 1987, the speakers were<br />
turned to face the East. The poor<br />
bastards, as if they didn’t have enough<br />
to deal with. The only saving grace<br />
was that his pompous self-regard and<br />
joylessly plodding stadium schtick<br />
was slightly better than Barclay James<br />
Harvest, who played for free in Treptow<br />
Park that same summer. As if life<br />
behind the Wall wasn’t grey enough.<br />
Berlin is a beautifully ugly city<br />
where dirt and glamour clash together<br />
in a riot of people and ideas, and it<br />
stinks to see it being represented by a<br />
man who made accountants’ music for<br />
accountants. Music is about more than<br />
the colours on our backs. It is about<br />
the throbbing in our loins and the<br />
pain in our hearts. So you can feel free to ignore the copyists and the collectors<br />
and the lazy references and the half-arsed throwaway lines of David<br />
Bowie. He certainly doesn’t represent the city I live in, and only half<br />
of that hallowed trilogy of albums that everyone was searching through<br />
their collections for to<br />
prove how much they had<br />
always loved him (though<br />
it turns out that they had<br />
never really bought them)<br />
was even recorded here in<br />
the first place.<br />
In fact, David Bowie<br />
was perfectly represented<br />
on the screens of the U-<br />
Bahn as they announced<br />
the news of his new<br />
album last year. They were<br />
using his name to sell a<br />
few more papers. It was<br />
remarkably fitting. n<br />
lena valenzuela<br />
When Bowie played<br />
in front of the<br />
Reichstag, the<br />
speakers were<br />
turned to face the<br />
East. The poor<br />
bastards, as if they<br />
didn’t have enough<br />
to deal with.<br />
25
erlin bites By Françoise Poilane<br />
Lebensmittel in Mitte: Dinner with the white queen<br />
It started last month, and<br />
will only last till June: it’s<br />
Spargelzeit! Eat asparagus now,<br />
commands Françoise Poilâne…<br />
but not just anywhere.<br />
There are three good reasons why you should<br />
take advantage of Germany’s collective lust for<br />
the white spears: they’re healthy, they’re local,<br />
they’re delicious. While the two former statements<br />
are pretty indisputable (they’re diuretic,<br />
they cleanse the body: eliminate!; Berliners, like<br />
the rest of the Teutons, swear by them: integrate!).<br />
The latter is more problematic: good,<br />
well-prepared asparagus is hard to come by.<br />
Dubbed Zartes Elfenbein (soft ivory) by the Teutonic<br />
gourmet, they are delicate things; like ladies<br />
in the old days, they shy away from sunlight to<br />
retain their pristine whiteness. The beautiful ones<br />
are the most expensive, and unlike their green sisters<br />
from the south, they’re not easy maintenance:<br />
it’s hard to cook them right. We can’t count our<br />
disappointing experiences at local restaurants:<br />
stringy or soggy, bitter or sugared, or topped with<br />
dodgy hollandaise, a sauce so heavy and overpowering<br />
that it’d spoil the subtle flavour of the fresh<br />
shoots, even if they were cooked right anyway.<br />
Our favourite place for Spargel cooked just<br />
right: Lebensmittel in Mitte. The small restaurant<br />
off Münzstraße is known to local lunchers<br />
for its small chalkboard menu filled with South<br />
German classics such as Leberwurst (served<br />
with delicious potato salad and a side of sweet<br />
or hot mustard, €7.50), or superior Käsespätzle<br />
(made with their signature mountain cheese and<br />
served with a side salad, €8.50), but also daily<br />
fish and roasts (Bavarian pork with dumplings<br />
and Sauerkraut, €9.50) and impeccable German<br />
wines to boot, all<br />
served in a pleasant,<br />
rustic grocery<br />
shop atmosphere.<br />
The name literally<br />
translates as<br />
“groceries in<br />
Mitte” – a nod to<br />
the place’s former<br />
fresh veggie stall.<br />
They’ve removed<br />
it from<br />
the dining<br />
Lebensmittel<br />
room, but you in Mitte Rochstraße<br />
2, Mitte,<br />
can still buy<br />
homemade Tel 030 27596130,<br />
jams, wines U-Bhf Weinmeisterstr.,<br />
Mon-Fri<br />
and schnapps<br />
by the bottle, 11-24, Sat 10-24<br />
hearty sausages<br />
from the<br />
Bavarian town of<br />
Wolframs-Eschenbach, and Swabian sourdough<br />
breads from a Friedrichshain baker. There’s also<br />
a fun selection of southern drinks like Austrian<br />
Almdudler or Chabeso, a century old Bavarian<br />
orange-tinged lemonade from Augsburg also<br />
available as Radler (shandy). Best of all, enjoy on<br />
the spot a meal that hardly ever disappoints.<br />
Every year we come here for the perfect<br />
Spargel, cooked al dente yet so tender to the bite<br />
you can eat them from stem to tip. Topped with<br />
clear butter and breadcrumbs – and a side of<br />
those delicious small, thin-skinned and oh-sosweet<br />
new potatoes so much in season right now –<br />
they’re just to die for (€12, lunch; €15.50, dinner).<br />
They also come with a delicious ham from Lower<br />
Franconia (€15/17) or schnitzel, of course (€17/21),<br />
as crispy and thin and veal-y as it should be.<br />
The snow-white spears arrive fresh daily<br />
straight from Beelitz (50km southwest of Berlin)<br />
– a small Brandenburg town so engrossed with its<br />
Spargel fame that it boasts an Asparagus-Apotheke<br />
and elects an annual asparagus queen.<br />
The Beelitz girls are thrown in a pot with cold<br />
water, a pinch of sugar, a squeeze of lemon and<br />
a dash of white wine. Then they’re slow-cooked<br />
until perfectly tender, yet not mushy. How do<br />
they master the timing? The answer lies in all<br />
those years of practice, answer the Lebensmittel<br />
folk. One’s not born a natural asparagus cook.<br />
Eat them with one of Lebensmittel’s many<br />
Rieslings (€4.50-8; try one of their beautiful<br />
Ayler Kupp bottles from the Saar region) – and<br />
savour one of Berlin’s most perfect Spargel<br />
experiences. n<br />
Veronica jonsson<br />
Veronica jonsson<br />
Chili & Paprika:<br />
Red, green<br />
and hot<br />
Chilli cravers, rejoice: there’s a new<br />
spice dealer in town. Mathias Jung,<br />
the East Berlin-born owner of Chili &<br />
Paprika, has loosely organised<br />
his shop around Hungary and<br />
Voigtstr. 39 Mexico, catering both to fellow<br />
Ossis nostalgic for Eastern<br />
Friedrichshain,<br />
Mon- Bloc summer vacations and<br />
Fri 11-19:30, younger North American expats<br />
hoping to recapture the<br />
Sat 11-18:30<br />
burn of back home. The Hungarian<br />
side includes multiple paprika<br />
varieties (Eros Pista, €2.29) alongside<br />
sausages (€5.59/350g), fiery pickles<br />
and liquor; the Mexican shelves display<br />
hot sauces (€1.89-14.99), canned and<br />
dried chillis (including chipotles, €1.89/<br />
can) and even corn tortillas (€4/30). All<br />
that plus a mini Asia section and novelties<br />
like spicy gummies, chilli beer and<br />
a habanero sauce that reaches 800,000<br />
Scoville heat units (just to give you<br />
an idea, Tabasco weighs in at a mere<br />
5000). The selection may not rival that<br />
of spice giant Pfefferhaus, but with its<br />
mom ‘n’ pop vibe, helpful owner and<br />
occasional free sample, it should win<br />
over even the pickiest capsaicin freaks<br />
in town.VJ/JS<br />
26 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Spit takes<br />
Just when you thought<br />
that Berlin had OD’ed on<br />
everyone’s favourite meat<br />
-on- a-stick, here comes the<br />
next wave of alternative<br />
döners. We braved the<br />
caloric onslaught and<br />
sampled some of the city’s<br />
strangest.<br />
Choco Kebab<br />
No, this doesn’t involve cocoa powder<br />
all over your veal. In lieu of the<br />
usual spinning wheel of mystery meat,<br />
owner Quynh Trang Le carves shavings<br />
from a giant, conical mass of milk and<br />
white Ferrero chocolate. The sugary<br />
curls are sprinkled onto a warm crêpe,<br />
drizzled with up to six sauces and, if<br />
you so choose, garnished with fruit.<br />
The “choco kebabs” (€2.99) have been<br />
selling briskly since February, thanks to<br />
some clever early marketing buzz. Of<br />
course, that may be just because the customers<br />
are too entranced by the whirling block<br />
of candy to notice that the whipped cream is<br />
canned, the crêpes come from a mix and the<br />
whole thing doesn’t bear much resemblance<br />
to its namesake. But if you can enjoy a good<br />
gimmick, happen to be in the area (on your<br />
way to, say, the Amerika-Gedenk bibliothek)<br />
and can afford to put some fresh mango on top<br />
(€3.49!), it is tasty. DH Taste Away, Mehringplatz<br />
36, Kreuzberg, U -Bhf Hallesches Tor, Mon -Fri 8- 20, Sat<br />
11 -20, Sun 11 -19:30<br />
Kung Fu Kebap<br />
This “Asian-influenced” döner (€3) is precisely<br />
what you might imagine – think wok -fried bell<br />
peppers, cabbage and mushrooms slapped on a<br />
bulging, overstuffed bun, with or without chicken.<br />
It’s a German take on Chinese food mixed up<br />
with a German take on Turkish food. While this<br />
Taste Away<br />
Nur gemüsekebap<br />
borderline -meta bun may be culturally confused,<br />
it tastes a whole lot better than its premise<br />
implies. It helps that the chicken and mounds<br />
of veggies are impeccably fresh, and that the<br />
scharf sauce packs an actual punch. It’s not an<br />
improvement on the stand’s original kebap, but<br />
on a late -night, tipsy wander through Neukölln,<br />
it might just hit the spot. Load it up with plenty<br />
of sumac and curry and avocado sauces – there’s<br />
no such thing as overkill with this one. DH<br />
NUR Gemüsekebap, Hermannstr. 205, Neukölln, U -Bhf<br />
Hermannstr., Mon -Sun 10- 2; closed Fri-Sat 13-14<br />
Daeji Döner<br />
When Linh Vu and a few friends packed leftover<br />
Korean barbecue on a picnic, one of them<br />
decided to put it on Turkish bread. “We thought<br />
it was an awesome idea,” Vu says. “I grew up in<br />
Germany, eating burgers and whatnot, but at<br />
home my family always served Asian food.” In<br />
photos by: Veronica jonsson<br />
March, she and her<br />
partner Mark Roh, who<br />
is half -Korean, started<br />
dishing up these fusion<br />
döners (€5.30) at their<br />
multikulti Imbiss in Neukölln.<br />
All the Korean<br />
fusion might be a few<br />
Ban ban kitchen<br />
years behind the global<br />
trend, but the presentation<br />
is cute and clever.<br />
Available either with<br />
grilled bulgogi- style<br />
pork or a vegan soy<br />
meat substitute, these<br />
buns are packed with<br />
fresh herbs, crunchy<br />
salad and sesame sauce.<br />
They’re on the mild<br />
side, so ask for scharf if<br />
you’re looking for more<br />
of an authentic flavour.<br />
Still hungry? Try a side<br />
smox<br />
of kimchi fries (€4.90).<br />
DH Ban Ban Kitchen,<br />
Hermannstr. 205, Neukölln, U -Bhf Boddinstr., Sun -Thu<br />
17 -2:20, Fri -Sat 17 -3:30<br />
Smox<br />
With its kiosk swimming in foodie catchphrases<br />
– “slow” and “organic” top the list – Smox, the<br />
latest addition to Alexanderplatz’s U-Bahn passageway,<br />
is a rather transparent attempt to cash in<br />
on current trends, serving barbecued, hand-pulled<br />
organic beef with vegetables and homemade sauce<br />
on döner-ish bread in vaguely cultural variations<br />
(from €2.90). The result is less spectacular than it<br />
sounds. While the meat and toppings are mostly<br />
fine (especially the guac on the “Smoky Italian”,<br />
even if there are no “slices” as advertised and<br />
avocados have nothing to do with Italy anyway),<br />
the “homemade” sauces lack in either quantity or<br />
quality (stay away from the Caesar!) and the vegan<br />
version comes with cold, poorly lubricated falafel.<br />
Still, a passable between-trains snack provided you<br />
go for white bread over whole wheat (extremely<br />
dry), wait till they’ve pulled a new piece of beef<br />
out of the cooker so you don’t get stuck with the<br />
gristly end, and reach for the salt shaker... JS<br />
Smox, U-Bhf Alexanderplatz, Mitte, Mon-Sun 9-21<br />
7x in Berlin<br />
Charlottenburg: Kaiserdamm 12<br />
Treptow: Bouchéstr. 12<br />
Prenzlberg: Kollwitzstr. 17<br />
Kreuzberg: Mehringdamm 20<br />
Kreuzberg: Reichenberger Str. 37<br />
Friedenau: Hauptstr. 78<br />
Now also in Steglitz:<br />
Albrechtstr. 33<br />
NEW<br />
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Check our new website for special<br />
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27
What’s on<br />
calendar<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
Festival<br />
MyFest <strong>2014</strong><br />
Thu 1.5<br />
More than an addendum to Berlin’s<br />
traditionally raucous <strong>May</strong> Day<br />
marches, MyFest serves up a full<br />
day of everything from reggaeton<br />
to punk, plus packed crowds and<br />
plenty of Polizei. Oranienstraße.<br />
Starts 11:30.<br />
FOOD<br />
‘Horsemeat Optional’<br />
Sat 17.5<br />
Berlin restaurants (the likes of Nalu<br />
Diner and Maria Bonita) compete<br />
for Berlin’s top chili stew award.<br />
With music, live tats and lots of<br />
beans! Exberliner will publish the<br />
winning recipe. Lagari. Starts 18:30.<br />
Film<br />
Freiluftkino<br />
Kreuzberg opening<br />
Fri 2.5<br />
With the evenings getting warmer,<br />
it’s open (air) season. Beginning<br />
with Inside Llewyn Davis and running<br />
through Aug 26, Freiluftkino<br />
offers a rich array of international<br />
films. Starts 21:00 (see page 34).<br />
FILM<br />
Too Drunk To Watch<br />
Sat 10.5<br />
The third punk rock film festival<br />
runs at Kreuzberg’s local cinema<br />
gem. Catch highlight The Punk<br />
Singer about riot grrrl Kathleen<br />
Hanna today. From <strong>May</strong> 8 through<br />
<strong>May</strong> 11. Moviemento. Starts<br />
20:00. (see page 34)<br />
MUSIC<br />
The Julie Ruin<br />
Sun 18.5<br />
Quintessential riot grrrl and Bikini<br />
Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna<br />
returns after the dissipation of Le<br />
Tigre with the more rock-centric<br />
Julie Ruin (the “the” is extra). Bi<br />
Nuu. Starts 20:00.<br />
My perfect Bowie weekend<br />
David Bowie superfan<br />
and tour guide Thilo<br />
Schmied (see page 24)<br />
has been running Berlin<br />
Music Tours since 2005.<br />
Friday 20:00 Start the<br />
weekend with a rock concert<br />
at SO36 (Oranienstr.<br />
190, Kreuzberg), Bowie<br />
and Iggy also loved to<br />
check in there for some<br />
live music or performance art. 23:00<br />
A drink at Franken Bar (Oranienstr.<br />
19a, Kreuzberg) just on the other side<br />
of the street.<br />
Saturday 11:00 Shopping at<br />
KaDeWe (Tauentzienstr. 21-24,<br />
Schöneberg). 13:00 Lunch at Paris<br />
Bar (Kantstr. 152, Charlottenburg) with<br />
some friends. 15:00 Visit the Brücke<br />
Museum (Bussardsteig 9, Dahlem) to<br />
see the art of Bowie’s favourite painters’<br />
group. 17:30 Coffee<br />
and a chat with owner<br />
Frank at Café Neues<br />
Ufer (Hauptstr. 157,<br />
Schöneberg), just metres<br />
away from Bowie’s old<br />
apartment. 18:30 Dinner<br />
at Horváth Restaurant<br />
(Paul-Lincke-Ufer 44a,<br />
Kreuzberg), formerly Exil.<br />
20:00 Brecht and Weill’s<br />
Threepenny Opera at Berliner<br />
Ensemble (Bertolt-<br />
Brecht-Platz 1, Mitte). 23:55 Last<br />
order at old-style restaurant Ganymed<br />
(Schiffbauerdamm 5, Mitte), right next<br />
to Berliner Ensemble.<br />
michal andrysiak<br />
Sunday 12:00 Do a Bowie Berlin Tour<br />
including a visit to the legendary Hansa<br />
Studios for Bowie and Iggy fans. 16:00<br />
Buy some rare vinyl at the original<br />
Berlin flea market (Straße des 17. Juni,<br />
Tiergarten) 19:00 Watch the movie Just<br />
a Gigolo – although Bowie still hates it.<br />
Theatre<br />
Haus//Nummer/Null<br />
Sun 11.5<br />
Part of this year’s Theatertreffen,<br />
Mona el Gammal’s installation<br />
explores a dystopian parallel world.<br />
Taking place in a secret space,<br />
tickets must be booked for allotted<br />
times. Starts 13:00. (see page 36)<br />
MUSIC<br />
La Sera<br />
Mon 19.5<br />
Ex-Vivian Girl Katy Goodman<br />
bursts through the LA haze with<br />
energetic, “Leslie Gore fronting<br />
Black Flag” third album Hour of the<br />
Dawn. Monarch. Starts 20:00.<br />
OPERA<br />
Billy Budd<br />
Thu 22.5<br />
Benjamin Britten’s take on<br />
Melville’s tale of life on board a<br />
warship and mutiny with a queer<br />
love story woven throughout is<br />
as pertinent today as it was 100<br />
years ago. In English. Deutsche<br />
Oper. Starts 19:30.<br />
Henrietta Butler piffl medien<br />
Music<br />
Mozart-Fantasie!<br />
Sat 3.5<br />
The second serving of Komische<br />
Oper’s annual Mozart Mai presents<br />
a late night performance of<br />
Mozart’s celebrated Fantasia<br />
complemented by pieces from<br />
Brett Dean and Jean Françaix.<br />
Starts 23:00.<br />
FILM<br />
EXBlicks: Exberliner<br />
Film Award Winners<br />
Mon 12.5<br />
a special screening of the winners<br />
of our first Exberliner Film Award<br />
from Achtung Berlin: A Promised<br />
Rose Garden and “The Silence Between<br />
Two Songs”. Lichtblick Kino.<br />
Starts 20:30. (see page 35)<br />
MUSIC<br />
Black Lips<br />
Fri 23.5<br />
Their <strong>May</strong> 22 gig sold out, so the<br />
former “Bad Kids” turned global<br />
garage rock ambassadors are<br />
sticking around for an extra night.<br />
With such a small venue, it’s sure<br />
to be a sweaty good time. Privatclub.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
ART<br />
Berlin Biennale<br />
Thu 29.5<br />
Bringing together local and<br />
international contemporary artists,<br />
the eighth edition has three focal<br />
points: the built environment,<br />
citizenship and labour. Through Aug<br />
3. Check website for programme.<br />
28 • may <strong>2014</strong>
➞ Programme in English language<br />
ART<br />
Berlin Gallery Weekend<br />
Sun 4.5<br />
The last day of the 10th anniversary<br />
celebration. The 50 participating<br />
galleries will act as hosts to<br />
everything from film screenings to<br />
discussions with the artists and<br />
more. From <strong>May</strong> 2. (see page 46)<br />
Music<br />
Dieter Meier<br />
Wed 7.5<br />
Oh, yeah. Panorama Bar plays<br />
host to a solo performance from<br />
pioneering Yello frontman and<br />
conceptual artist Dieter Meier,<br />
marking the release of his most<br />
recent album Out of Chaos. Starts<br />
20:00.<br />
6.+7.5., 9.–11.5. / HAU3 DANCE<br />
Kat<br />
Válastur<br />
Premiere: GLAND<br />
Language no problem<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
David Bowie Is<br />
Tue 20.5<br />
Taking a cue from Bowie’s “Sound<br />
and Vision”, the London success<br />
moves to Berlin for an immersive<br />
experience with a newly expanded<br />
Berlin section. Through Aug 10.<br />
Martin-Gropius-Bau. (see page 15)<br />
Music<br />
Tangerine Dream<br />
Fri 30.5<br />
Ignore those ‘Edgar Froese is retiring’<br />
rumours – the current line-up<br />
will be in force for some cosmoelectronic<br />
vibes from the krautrock<br />
informers. Admiralspalast. Starts<br />
20:00. (see page 39)<br />
martin-gropius-bau<br />
Classical<br />
David Garrett<br />
Tue 13.5<br />
Widely hailed as the finest young<br />
violinist of his generation, the<br />
virtuoso David Garrett comes to<br />
Berlin for a one-off guest performance.<br />
Berliner Philharmoniker.<br />
Starts 20:00.<br />
theatre<br />
Japan Syndrome<br />
Mon 21.5<br />
Three years after Fukushima, the<br />
cultural (not to mention nuclear)<br />
fallout shows no sign of abating.<br />
Over 10 days a range of Japanese<br />
creatives explore the seismic rifts<br />
in Japan’s social fabric. From <strong>May</strong><br />
20. HAU 1-3. (see page 36)<br />
MUSIC<br />
Owen Pallett<br />
Sun 25.5<br />
The former Final Fantasist and<br />
nominee for Her stops off in Berlin<br />
with his positive-yet-melancholic,<br />
insanity-pondering, beautiful fourth<br />
album, In Conflict. Volksbühne.<br />
Starts 20:00. (see page 40)<br />
FILM<br />
XPOSED Queer<br />
Film Festival<br />
Sat 31.5<br />
The third day of XPOSED starts off<br />
with a discussion of bodily representation<br />
in the media and public,<br />
followed by film. <strong>May</strong> 29-Jun<br />
1. Various locations. Check website<br />
for programme. (see page 35)<br />
Theatre<br />
Ohne Titel Nr. 1<br />
Wed 14.5<br />
Experimental dramaturg Herbert<br />
Fritsch presents his latest work<br />
as part of Theatertreffen. Ripe<br />
with contradictions, it is an opera<br />
without speech. Also <strong>May</strong> 15.<br />
Volksbühne. Starts 19:30.<br />
(see page 37)<br />
Design<br />
DMY International<br />
Design Festival<br />
Wed 28.5<br />
Opening today, aesthetes and<br />
designophiles congregate for one<br />
of the largest design fairs in the<br />
world. Through June 1. Tempelhof.<br />
Starts 19:00.<br />
FILM<br />
Bowie Film Festival<br />
Sun 1.6<br />
Exberliner and realeyz.tv put on<br />
a one-day Bowie extravaganza,<br />
showing our own Berlin trilogy with<br />
classic Christiane F., documentary<br />
Bowie in Berlin and a music video<br />
medley. Lichtblick Kino.<br />
(see page 35)<br />
6.5. / HAU2 DIALOG<br />
Phantasma<br />
und<br />
Politik #7<br />
With Florian Malzacher,<br />
Jonas Staal, Helmut<br />
Draxler and others<br />
English and German<br />
15.+16.5. / HAU2 THEATRE PERFORMANCE<br />
Gintersdorfer<br />
/<br />
Klaßen<br />
Das neue schwarze<br />
Denken – Chefferie<br />
English, French and German<br />
20.–29.5. / HAU1, HAU2, HAU3<br />
Festival:<br />
Japan<br />
Syndrome<br />
Art and Politics after<br />
Fukushima<br />
Performances, lectures, films,<br />
installations and more with Toshiki<br />
Okada, Akira Takayama, Takuya<br />
Murakawa, Tadasu Takamine, Nina<br />
Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Hikaru<br />
Fujii, Sachiko Hara, Kyoichi Tsuzuki,<br />
Tori Kudo & Maher Shalal Hash Baz,<br />
Sangatsu and others<br />
English, Japanese and German<br />
29<br />
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de
What’s on<br />
film<br />
STARTS MAY 1<br />
Casse-tête chinois<br />
D: Cédric Klapisch (France,<br />
USA 2013) with Romain<br />
Duris, Audrey Tautou, Kelly<br />
Reilly ◆◆ A writer<br />
(Duris) leaves Paris in the<br />
pursuit of his two kids,<br />
who’ve been uprooted to<br />
New York by his ex-wife<br />
(Reilly). Just as he’s<br />
chided by the editor of his<br />
novel-in-progress over how<br />
his work lacks real drama, this hip, middle-class fairytale is<br />
more modern-living complications than actual story. Still,<br />
peer past the immediate rom-com façade and there’s a<br />
hint of something deeper, as Duris finds himself a bit lost<br />
in translation with the trappings of his new life. AM<br />
STARTS MAY 1<br />
Vergiss Mein Ich<br />
D: Jan Scholmburg (Germany<br />
2013) with Maria<br />
Schrader, Johannes Krisch<br />
◆◆◆ In this compelling<br />
film, Lena Ferben<br />
(Schrader) suddenly loses<br />
her memory as a result of<br />
retrograde amnesia. Confused<br />
and terrified by the<br />
world, Lena embarks on a<br />
mission to reconcile her<br />
forgotten past with her new perception of the world, while<br />
her husband (Krisch) attempts to resurrect her former<br />
self. Visually intriguing and perfectly paced, this film deals<br />
with constructing identities and relationships while Lena’s<br />
childlike naïveté creates moments of humour throughout,<br />
with the end product being a genuinely moving story. AM<br />
STARTS MAY 1<br />
Muppets Most Wanted<br />
D: James Bobin (USA<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Kermit the<br />
Frog, Miss Piggy ◆◆◆<br />
Kermit and co. return<br />
to take in some familiar<br />
European capitals for<br />
another bout of selfreferential<br />
gags, ludicrous<br />
cameos and Bret Mc-<br />
Kenzie sing-a-long tunes.<br />
An early number informs<br />
us that sequels are never quite as good and indeed this<br />
follow-up is nowhere near as tight as Jason Segel’s original<br />
but it’s still way more fun than most things out there.<br />
A Lady Gaga cameo occurs within seconds of an Ingmar<br />
Bergman gag. Where else would you get it? ROC<br />
STARTS MAY 8<br />
Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case<br />
D: Andreas Johnsen<br />
(Denmark, China, UK<br />
2013), documentary<br />
◆◆◆ This doc opens<br />
with a shot of young Lao<br />
Ai’s back as he’s taking<br />
an outdoor pee on the<br />
walled premises of his<br />
father Ai Weiwei’s studio<br />
compound at 258 Fake<br />
in Caochangdi, Beijing,<br />
where the renowned artist is under house arrest. The tone<br />
is set: this is a behind-the scenes affair. Johnsen’s veritéstyle<br />
camera follows Weiwei as he struggles with legal<br />
issues, undercover police, journalists, models, fellow artists,<br />
fans, art dealers and family while preparing for a new<br />
show based on his 81 days spent in solitary confinement.<br />
A moving portrait of a giant with feet of clay... MY<br />
30 • may <strong>2014</strong><br />
Truth and reconciliation<br />
By eve lucas<br />
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was<br />
set up in 1955 by Mandela’s Government of National<br />
Unity to collectively witness and, in some<br />
cases, grant amnesty to perpetrators of human<br />
rights violations committed by a system.<br />
Its work raised legitimate questions on officially<br />
prescribed reconciliation. Forgiveness<br />
is also an individual act, even within a political<br />
context. It’s this confluence that lies at the<br />
heart of Zulu (from Jérôme Salle) as it follows<br />
black South African police captain Neuman<br />
(Forest Whitaker) from childhood trauma at<br />
the hands of ANC rival Inkhata through the<br />
carnage of post-Apartheid politics. Now in his<br />
forties, Neuman works in Cape Town’s violent<br />
crime department, hurrying between scenes<br />
of bloodied depravation with only his mother,<br />
two colleagues and a prostitute to inspire weary<br />
affection. Linking a string of vicious killings to<br />
a new street drug, Neuman and his colleague<br />
Epkeen (Bloom) uncover evidence that points to<br />
a shockingly cynical vision of white supremacy.<br />
Amidst scenes of veracious brutality and private<br />
collateral tragedy, Neuman is forced to test the<br />
limits of his reconciliation mantra.<br />
Both Whitaker and Bloom inhabit their roles<br />
with conviction: a considerate black South African<br />
partnered with a white man whose rock-hard<br />
abs and spiked coffee also cover Apartheid scars.<br />
Shooting his way from the slums to a desert<br />
showdown strongly reminiscent of John Ford,<br />
Salle would have done well to follow Ford’s more<br />
readable plots – and measured camera. Layering<br />
economics atop politics with a central character<br />
sinned against by black, not white, South<br />
Africans and bigotry espoused across the board<br />
by individuals and institutions, it’s hard to track<br />
Salle’s steps – and not only because there’s so<br />
much blood on the floor. If he’s making the point<br />
that reconciliation comes unstuck when things<br />
get personal, it feels a lot more like default than<br />
intent, leaving viewers to seek the truth for<br />
themselves. It’s there, but well congealed.<br />
Which is why Labor Day from Jason Reitman<br />
(Young Adult, Up in the Air) starts out so much<br />
more promisingly by keeping reconciliation<br />
apolitical. An opening long-take of rustling beauty<br />
meanders through late 1980s small-town New<br />
England, drawing us into the lives of Adele (Winslet)<br />
and adolescent son Henry (Griffith), broken<br />
by the absence of husband/father who now lives<br />
nearby with his second wife and family. Even before<br />
escaped con Frank (Brolin) intrudes on their<br />
shuttered existence by forcing himself on them<br />
during a supermarket run, Adele’s insecurities<br />
testify to her inability to forgive herself for a failed<br />
marriage. Frank too has plenty that he needs to<br />
reconcile: a tragic accident involving his errant<br />
wife and the perceived injustice of prison time.<br />
With remarkable alacrity (and a bloodstained<br />
t-shirt), Frank is soon hiding out with Adele and<br />
Henry over Labor Day weekend, baking peach<br />
pies and basking under their appreciative gaze.<br />
But where, o where, is the due diligence of<br />
process? Not all the yearning of warm, filtered<br />
sunlight in quiet interiors can account for<br />
such intimacy. Investing these developments<br />
with more dialogue and pace would have given<br />
them greater credibility. As it is, Reitman’s<br />
screenplay is too forgiving of its own inconsistencies<br />
to bear the weight of reconciliation<br />
that it pre-supposes for its characters. ■<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 8<br />
Zulu ◆◆<br />
Directed by Jérôme Salle (France, South Africa 2013) with Forest<br />
Whitaker, Orlando Bloom<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 8<br />
Labor Day ◆◆<br />
Directed by Jason Reitman (USA 2013) with Kate Winslet, Josh<br />
Brolin<br />
film<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
All movies are in OV with german subtitles unless otherwise stated
STARTS MAY 8<br />
Fruitvale Station<br />
D: Ryan Coogler (USA 2013) with Michael<br />
B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz ◆◆◆◆ In Oakland,<br />
California, in the early hours<br />
of 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Grant<br />
was on his way home from celebrating<br />
the turn of the New Year<br />
when he was shot dead in a BART<br />
station by a local policeman. For<br />
his film Fruitvale Station, director<br />
Ryan Coogler took a look at the 24<br />
hours preceding the crime: the final<br />
day of Oscar Grant’s life.<br />
He shows a young man trying to<br />
make the best of it, depicting Grant<br />
as a great father, a not-so-great<br />
boyfriend and a decent son who<br />
struggles with bosses, ponders<br />
marriage and comforts a dying dog<br />
during his last day on Earth.<br />
There’s a lingering sense that<br />
Coogler is portraying Grant as almost<br />
too much of a ‘good guy’, but<br />
the scriptwriters can be forgiven<br />
for delving into sentimentality. The<br />
director is attempting to ram home<br />
the tremendous, unnecessary loss<br />
inherent in this tragic event as a<br />
father, a son and a lover are gone<br />
in an instant due to one man’s<br />
moment of madness. The Wire star<br />
Michael B. Jordan focuses all the<br />
film’s weight and empathy, rising<br />
from the performance a genuine<br />
star. ROC<br />
STARTS MAY 22<br />
One Chance<br />
D: David Frankel (USA, UK 2013) with<br />
James Corden, Julie Walters, Colm Meaney<br />
◆◆◆◆ From the man who gave us<br />
The Devil Wears Prada comes this<br />
conventionally predictable real-life<br />
story of Paul Potts, winner of<br />
Britain’s Got Talent and numerous<br />
other dubious accolades including<br />
the rare honour of performing at<br />
The Albert Hall.<br />
It’s not as if Potts’ (Corden) rise<br />
from car-phone salesman in Port<br />
Talbot to operatic maverick hasn’t<br />
been well documented elsewhere.<br />
Decent performances by Corden,<br />
with Walters and Meaney as his<br />
parents, bring Potts’ story to life,<br />
but basically it’s your average rough<br />
childhood, a good mate, a great girl<br />
and lots of Nessun Dorma and better<br />
teeth at the end of the rainbow.<br />
The whole point of productions<br />
like Britain’s Got Talent is to provide<br />
a rigorously staged forum for underdog<br />
talent – and the moist-eyed<br />
appreciation of die-hard cynics.<br />
Why throw good money (and talent)<br />
after bad and rehash it all for the<br />
big screen? No service done here<br />
to anybody but Messrs Weinstein<br />
and a shamelessly self-promoting<br />
Cowell, wolfishly announcing<br />
“You’re through.” You will be after<br />
this. EL<br />
Undubbed at CineStar Original<br />
EDGE OF TOMORROW 3D<br />
From <strong>May</strong> 29<br />
Mega thrilling and epic: See Tom Cruise as Lt. Col.<br />
Bill Cage, who is dropped into a suicide mission<br />
against aliens. Killed within minutes, Cage finds<br />
himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop –<br />
forcing him to live out the same brutal combat<br />
over and over, fighting and dying again... and again.<br />
Find more info and tickets at cinestar.de<br />
31
What’s on<br />
film<br />
STARTS MAY 8<br />
Über-Ich und Du<br />
D: Benjamin Heisenberg<br />
(Germany, Austria,<br />
Switzerland <strong>2014</strong>) with<br />
Georg Friedrich, André<br />
Wilms ◆◆◆ Cashflow<br />
problems force drifter<br />
Nick (Friedrich) to lie low<br />
and he passes himself<br />
off as carer to an elderly<br />
star-psychoanalyst in the<br />
process of writing one last<br />
vindicatory paper to account for that Nazi stain on his CV.<br />
The cat is called Lacan, a sketch of a familiar shepherd<br />
dog hangs on the wall… but like father figures and<br />
transfer therapy, it could all be flummery. Fresh but never<br />
flippant, Heisenberg puts us through our Freudian paces,<br />
reinventing significant slapstick as he goes. EL<br />
STARTS MAY 8<br />
3 Days to Kill<br />
D: McG (France, USA<br />
<strong>2014</strong>) with Kevin Costner,<br />
Amber Heard, Hailee<br />
Steinfeld ◆ Runner<br />
(Costner) is a mature CIA<br />
agent on a limited time<br />
budget (brain tumour)<br />
who chucks it all in and<br />
joins his estranged wife<br />
and daughter in Paris,<br />
hoping to reconnect before<br />
the curtain comes down. He finds himself contending<br />
with African squatters in his flat, some attitude from the<br />
offspring and a vamp CIA agent (Heard), promising him<br />
revolutionary treatment in exchange for one last job. Costner<br />
still has it. But the rest is woefully inadequate. EL<br />
STARTS MAY 8<br />
Good Vibrations<br />
D: Lisa Barros D’Sa, Glenn<br />
Leyburn (UK, Ireland<br />
2012) with Richard<br />
Dormer, Jodie Whittaker<br />
◆◆◆ Beardy charmer<br />
Terri Hooley sets out to<br />
set up a record shop in<br />
Troubles-torn Belfast,<br />
and ends up shambolic<br />
godfather (or at least<br />
coolish uncle) of the<br />
Northern Irish punk scene. Wry yet sweet, the film is part<br />
testament to how punk’s sweaty teenage dynamism won<br />
over men of a previous generation. Despite occasional<br />
trouble maintaining its own sense of pogoing propulsion,<br />
the whole lovingly crafted edifice walks a suitably<br />
defiant and rousing line between darkness and light. CE<br />
STARTS MAY 8<br />
Devil’s Due<br />
D: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin,<br />
Tyler Gillett (USA <strong>2014</strong>)<br />
with Allison Miller, Zach<br />
Gilford A V O I D The<br />
unplanned pregnancy<br />
of a young couple takes<br />
a turn for the twisted<br />
as increasingly strange<br />
occurrences bring about<br />
an unhealthy dose of<br />
paranoia and fear. This<br />
might sound oddly familiar (Rosemary’s Baby), but the<br />
hand-held jumpiness is a far cry from the suspense, not<br />
to mention the quality, that made the former a success.<br />
Often involuntarily funny and never actually scary, the<br />
film is utterly unbelievable from beginning to end. Even<br />
more unbelievable? How bad it actually is. MH<br />
Villeneuve’s work often deals with the point at<br />
which emotionally experienced violence seeks<br />
and finds a physical outlet. In Enemy (see review,<br />
next page), he goes out even further on a hairy,<br />
tentacled limb, exploring the doppelgänger motif<br />
as a visualisation of our need to control essentially<br />
destructive tendencies.<br />
How was it to adapt Saramago’s The Double<br />
for the screen? There are a lot of differences. I<br />
never met Saramago – and I never will. He’s dead<br />
now. But I think that the best way to respect an<br />
author is to be very honest about the way you<br />
adapt his work: to totally destroy the original<br />
and make it your own. So in a way, the movie has<br />
nothing to do with the book – and from another<br />
point of view, it’s very close to it.<br />
You’ve got Jake Gyllenhaal playing one<br />
character and two roles. I’ve used special<br />
effects in some movies. But not that much. I’d<br />
never ask an actor to play against a tennis ball.<br />
The thing about all this complex technology, this<br />
complex way of acting and dealing with space, is<br />
that if the actor is not good, you don’t believe it.<br />
You believe it because Jake is fantastic.<br />
Did you know him before you worked with<br />
him on this? I didn’t know Jake before. I knew<br />
the actor. I had a lot of admiration for what he<br />
did. Some of his movies are landmark movies<br />
– Brokeback Mountain is a movie that deeply<br />
touched me. I was aware of his talent. But I<br />
didn’t know that we’d get that close. It was my<br />
dream to find that relationship. I was very lucky.<br />
He could have been an asshole. But if it had been<br />
Enemy<br />
<strong>May</strong> 22<br />
“The best way to respect<br />
an author is to totally<br />
destroy the original”By Eve Lucas<br />
French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve goes double or nothing in<br />
Enemy, his adaptation of the José Saramago novel The Double.<br />
different, I would have shot the film differently.<br />
It’s just that I found someone who had a strong<br />
intelligence, a lot of creativity and a beautiful<br />
vision of the character. It’s always good for a<br />
director to follow the actor instead of telling him<br />
where to go. I love that.<br />
So your working environment was more<br />
collaborative than in your previous films?<br />
I love chaos. It makes me comfortable when it’s<br />
chaotic. In my previous movies, I was more like<br />
a dictator. But I’ve realised that the more movies<br />
I do, the more I like to share creativity, to take<br />
strength from the other crew members. I choose<br />
my director of photography (DP) carefully<br />
because I’ll give him a lot of freedom and power<br />
on the set. I need a brother. I need someone who<br />
has no ego and will be there just for the project.<br />
I always have a strong relationship with my DP<br />
on set and I was looking for the same thing with<br />
the actor: someone with whom to share creativity<br />
and give space. It was a risk.<br />
How did you come up with the use of<br />
spiders as a metaphor? I was looking for a<br />
perfect image that would say something specific<br />
about sexuality and the subconscious of a man.<br />
For me, it was the perfect image. Now, I won’t<br />
explain it. It’s more fun to not explain it, by far.<br />
Before, when I used images like this and was<br />
questioned about it, I felt pressured to give<br />
answers. Not anymore. I think it’s perfect to<br />
leave this open to interpretation. I could answer<br />
but it’s more interesting to see the impact of this<br />
image on your imagination through the story. I<br />
think it’s more powerful to let it go. ■<br />
32 • may <strong>2014</strong><br />
All movies are in OV with german subtitles unless otherwise stated
BERLiNS ONLy OPEN AiR-CiNEMA ShOwiNG<br />
MOViES EXCLuSiVELy iN ORiGiNAL VERSiONS<br />
PROGRAM MAy <strong>2014</strong><br />
STARTS MAY 22<br />
Zeit der Kannibalen<br />
D: Johannes Naber (Germany 2013) with<br />
Sebastian Blomberg, Devid Striesow, Katharina<br />
Schüttler ◆◆◆◆ Who knew the<br />
Germans could do dark comedy?<br />
And Zeit der Kannibalen is as<br />
wickedly dark as it comes. Öllers<br />
and Niederländer are two travelling<br />
business consultants working for<br />
the mysterious “Company”. But<br />
they wouldn’t know or care about<br />
the people their work affects,<br />
as they never leave their hotels,<br />
content to sit back, pick the blood<br />
from their claws and await the holy<br />
grail of becoming partner. When<br />
Bianca, a young new consultant,<br />
appears and informs them that<br />
another colleague was promoted<br />
instead, the shock is brief – before<br />
we learn that the new (and never<br />
STARTS MAY 22<br />
Enemy<br />
D: Denis Villeneuve (Canada, Spain 2013)<br />
with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent<br />
◆◆◆◆ Torontonian professor Adam<br />
(Gyllenhaal) expounds in civil but<br />
dry eloquence on Hegel’s repetition<br />
of history during the day. In the evening,<br />
he and his girlfriend (Laurent)<br />
barely talk but have sex that verges<br />
on rough. Watching a rental one<br />
evening in the reflected glare of<br />
his laptop screen, Adam sees his<br />
doppelgänger, actor Anthony (also<br />
played by Gyllenhaal) in a three-bit<br />
role. Fascinated and horrified, Adam<br />
insists on meeting his flashier counterpart<br />
and is drawn into a scenario<br />
of fears and needs. But whose?<br />
Using a novel by José Saramago<br />
more as inspiration than literal<br />
seen) partner has mysteriously<br />
jumped to his death. The carnage<br />
plays out on an expertly designed<br />
series of sets: only furniture and<br />
staff vary to indicate a change of<br />
land and the exact same set of<br />
grey blocks represents the cities<br />
that the cannibals have come<br />
to destroy. At times dispensing<br />
with political correctness to get a<br />
greater point across, Naber directs<br />
a strong cast with enough hints of<br />
humanity to make sure the chasm<br />
between us and them doesn’t<br />
yawn too deeply, with a primal<br />
score setting a frenetic pace that<br />
never loses steam as all three<br />
characters careen towards an<br />
extremely satisfying and appropriate<br />
end. WC<br />
template, Villeneuve’s exploration<br />
of emotional mechanisms is<br />
profoundly rattling. In earlier films<br />
such as Incendie and Prisoners<br />
Villeneuve (see interview, previous<br />
page) embedded violence and love<br />
in plot. They are twinned here with<br />
an instinctual pursuit of basic,<br />
basest instinct. Set in a Toronto<br />
of mucous, polluted yellow with<br />
flashes of red bouncing off Anthony’s<br />
Spiderman-style motorcycle<br />
helmet, Villeneuve’s use of the<br />
ancient doppelgänger motif juggles<br />
imagined demons and psychological<br />
realities, finding a language<br />
for the subconsciously inarticulate<br />
that’s perhaps too longwinded<br />
– but uniquely compelling. EL<br />
Fri<br />
2nd 9 00 pm Opening: inside LLewyn davis Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sat 3rd 9 00 pm The wOLf Of waLL sTreeT Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sun 4th 9 15 pm The LunchbOx Engl.Hindi./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Mon 5th 9 15 pm Le passé The pasT French, Persian/Ger. sbtls.<br />
Tue 6th 9 15 pm finsTerwOrLd Ger./Engl. sbtls.<br />
Wed 7th 9 15 pm The daLLas buyers cLub Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Thu 8th 9 15 pm american husTLe Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Fri 9th 9 15 pm The grand budapesT hOTeL Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sat 10th 8 30 pm eurOvisiOn sOng cOnTesT<br />
Our anual celebration of Europes finest and trashy music.<br />
Presented by Inge Borg and Gisela Sommer / Admission free!<br />
Sun 11th 9 30 pm La grande beLLezza<br />
The great beauty Ital./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Mon 12th 9 30 pm aLL is LOsT Engl. OV<br />
Tue 13th 9 30 pm frances ha Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Wed 14th 9 30 pm weTLands feuchtgebiete Ger./Engl. sbtls.<br />
Thu 15th 9 30 pm Oh bOy Ger./Engl.sbtls.<br />
Fri<br />
16th 9 30 pm fack ju göhte f*ck yOu, gOeThe German<br />
Sat 17th 9 30 pm her Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sun 18th 9 30 pm wadjda das mädchen wadjda Arab/Ger. sbtls.<br />
Mon 19th 9 30 pm a TOuch Of sin Chin./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Tue 20th 9 30 pm deuTschbOden Ger./Engl.sbtls.<br />
Wed 21st 9 30 pm snOwpiercer Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Thu 22nd 9 30 pm bLue jasmine Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Fri 23rd 9 30 pm The LOsT chiLd Of<br />
phiLOmena Lee Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sat 24th 9 30 pm graviTy Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sun 25th 9 30 pm baaL (Germany 1970) German<br />
Mon 26th 9 30 pm nebraska Engl./Ger.sbtls.<br />
Tue 27th 9 30 pm nymphOmaniac: vOLume i Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Wed 28th 9 30 pm nymphOmaniac: vOLume ii Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Thu 29th 9 30 pm das finstere Tal The dark vaLLey Ger./Engl. sbtls.<br />
Fri<br />
30th 9 30 pm OnLy LOvers LefT aLive Engl./Ger. sbtls.<br />
Sat 31st 9 30 pm 12 years a sLave Engl./Ger. sbtls<br />
ADDRESS:<br />
ENTRANCE FEE:<br />
ADVANCE SALE:<br />
BOX OFFiCE OPENS:<br />
MuLTi ShOw TiCkET:<br />
CONTACT/GROuP DiSCOuNTS<br />
FOR SChOOL CLASSES: kreuzberg@pifflmedien.de<br />
OPERATOR:<br />
Piffl Medien GmbH<br />
www.freiluftkino-berlin.de<br />
Located near “Kottbusser Tor” metro station (U7,U8) in the<br />
courtyard of “Kunstquartier Bethanien” at Mariannenplatz<br />
7,00 e (also online ticket)<br />
7,40 e incl. booking fee at all concert ticket outlets<br />
30 min. before showtime<br />
Multi-show tickets at the cinema box office<br />
5 Shows 27,50 e | 10 Shows 50,00 e<br />
Please note: this is not a group ticket!<br />
ONLiNE TiCkET<br />
AND PROGRAM<br />
iNFORMATiON:<br />
33
What’s on<br />
film<br />
STARTS MAY 15<br />
W imie...<br />
(Im Names des…) D:<br />
Malgorzata Szumowska<br />
(Poland, 2013) with<br />
Andrzej Chyra, Mateusz<br />
Mosciukiewicz, Lukasz<br />
Simlat ◆◆ Winner of<br />
the 2013 Berlinale Best<br />
Feature Teddy, Szumowska<br />
presents a priest “transferred”<br />
to small-village<br />
Poland to oversee a boys’<br />
home for delinquents. The charismatic priest begins life<br />
anew, impressing the boys and charming the local ladies,<br />
but when a young man who looks uncannily like a teenage<br />
Jesus enters the picture, old “demons” return. Well<br />
scripted, beautifully shot and palpably felt provincial insularity<br />
make the film enjoyable to watch, but an ambiguous<br />
ending muddles any message. WC<br />
STARTS MAY 15<br />
Stereo<br />
D: Maximilian Erlenwein<br />
(Germany <strong>2014</strong>) with<br />
Jürgen Vogel, Moritz<br />
Bleibtreu ◆◆ Flaky<br />
characters and esoteric<br />
mystery hound motorbike<br />
mechanic Erik (Vogel)<br />
who’s trying to settle down<br />
with his girlfriend when the<br />
shadowy Henry (Bleibtreu)<br />
appears, trailing general<br />
mayhem. Brimming with action, Stereo keeps you guessing<br />
for a while, but the uneven character development detracts<br />
from the overall impression. The descent into human<br />
depravity is enjoyable enough however, and sprinkled with a<br />
few laughs along the way. MH<br />
STARTS MAY 22<br />
Words and Pictures<br />
D: Fred Schepisi (USA<br />
2013) with Clive Owen,<br />
Juliette Binoche ◆<br />
Clive Owen plays a drunk,<br />
washed-up author who<br />
teaches English. He falls<br />
for a crippled, cranky Juliette<br />
Binoche who teaches<br />
art. They start a ‘war’ to define<br />
whose trade is more<br />
powerful and thus begin<br />
to intellectually duke it out. A decent premise perhaps,<br />
but Fred Schepisi’s film is, regretfully, a misconceived and<br />
incredibly banal call-to-arms; think Dead Poets Society but<br />
without all that suicide, emotion and class. Owen compares<br />
a tweet to a haiku. There’s really little else to say. ROC<br />
STARTS MAY 22<br />
Love Eternal<br />
D: Brendan Muldowney<br />
(Ireland 2013) with Robert<br />
de Hoog, Polly McIntosh<br />
◆◆◆ Based on the<br />
novel by Japanese author<br />
Kei Oishi, this stunningly<br />
realised Irish production<br />
draws you down into the<br />
disturbed mind of Ian (de<br />
Hoog) whose consuming<br />
obsession with death and<br />
the dead is mesmerising. His undertakings as a suicide<br />
assistant and lapses of necrophillia are done with a tenderness<br />
that defers judgement, providing complexity to the<br />
most morbid themes of the film. Its bleakness, while requiring<br />
of stamina, is captivating and poignant. Not a first-date<br />
movie. Best followed by a double whisky. RD<br />
34 • may <strong>2014</strong><br />
Flicks our picks<br />
Special screenings, festivals and retrospectives you shouldn’t miss this month<br />
A Promised Rose Garden<br />
MAY 1-7<br />
Bresson’s boldness<br />
Strongly and unusually marked both by strict Catholicism<br />
and his experiences as a POW, Robert<br />
Bresson’s work finally returns to Arsenal for a<br />
long-overdue retrospective. Of the films showing in<br />
<strong>May</strong>, most explore the connection between suffering<br />
and redemption in narratives that range from the<br />
biblically allusive (Au hazard Balthazar, 1966) to the<br />
mythological (Lancelot du Lac, 1974) and literary<br />
(L’argent, 1983 or 1962’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc).<br />
His uncompromising anti-theatrical formality, developed<br />
to express a sense of pre-ordained destiny, is<br />
characterised by intense, monotonous declamation<br />
that allows philosophically weighted texts and rigorously<br />
composed sets and scores to co-exist in inimitably<br />
stark contrast: essential viewing for anybody<br />
interested in a seminal period in cinema history<br />
that influenced not only fellow nouvelle vaguers but<br />
filmmakers including the Dardennes, Tarkovsky and<br />
Haneke. For details, go to www.arsenal-berlin.de. EL<br />
Robert Bresson Retrospective | Arsenal, Potsdamer Str.<br />
2, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz<br />
STARTS MAY 2<br />
A little Berliner Freiluft<br />
Berlin’s open-air cinemas are about to light up their<br />
silver screens for a new season. As usual, your best<br />
bet is Freiluftkino Kreuzberg, boasting the<br />
most gigantic screen to be seen on lawn, deckchairs<br />
and an impeccable programme of great indie<br />
flicks in OV and German gems with English subs.<br />
Opening this year’s season on <strong>May</strong> 2 is the Coen<br />
brothers’ folk music dramedy Inside Llewyn Davis<br />
(21:00); among other early highlights are David O.<br />
Russell’s heavily accoladed American Hustle (<strong>May</strong> 8,<br />
21:15) and Joon-Ho Bong’s dystopian vision Snowpiercer<br />
(<strong>May</strong> 21, 21:30). You also shouldn’t miss<br />
the chance to catch some of the past year’s best<br />
German films: Frauke Finsterwalder’s absurd drama<br />
Finsterworld (<strong>May</strong> 6, 21:15) and André Schäfer’s<br />
documentary Deutschboden (<strong>May</strong> 20, 21:30). For<br />
a literal exploration of Berlin’s heavens head to<br />
Freilichtbühne WeiSSensee, new on the expat<br />
Freiluft map – this year they’ll be kicking off the<br />
season with a range of classics in English (such as<br />
Blow Up and Bonnie and Clyde) or with English subs,<br />
including Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin<br />
(Wings of Desire). Two screens, a biergarten and<br />
direct proximity to the lake make it worth the trip.<br />
Exberliner<br />
Film AWARD<br />
winners<br />
<strong>May</strong> 12<br />
For future summer open-air highlights, watch this<br />
space. MH Freiluftkino Kreuzberg | Mariannenplatz 2,<br />
U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor Freilichtbühne WeiSSensee | Große<br />
Seestr. 9, S-Bhf Greiswalder Str.<br />
MAY 5-31<br />
Siodmak in America<br />
Zeughauskino continues its retrospective of the<br />
Dresden-born Jewish-American director Robert<br />
Siodmak, focusing on the filmmaker’s exile in the<br />
US when he became known as a master of noir for<br />
movies such as Christmas Holiday and The Strange<br />
Affair of Uncle Harry, which explored the thin ice of<br />
seemingly secure relationships in deeply refractive<br />
black and white. Taking this cinematographic<br />
approach to its zenith, Siodmak followed up with<br />
the now-legendary The Spiral Staircase (1945) and<br />
The Killers (marking Burt Lancaster’s screen debut<br />
in 1946). Cry of the City (1948) takes Siodmak’s<br />
themes into the streets of New York’s Little Italy for<br />
an enthrallingly unfussy version of an ancient trope<br />
as two friends struggle with conflicting loyalties –<br />
a reminder that Siodmak’s work set the tone for<br />
much that was yet to come. For dates and times,<br />
go to www.dhm.de/zeughauskino. EL Retrospective<br />
Robert Siodmak | Zeughauskino im Deutschen Historischen<br />
Museum, Unter den Linden 2, Mitte, U-Bhf Hausvogteiplatz<br />
MAY 8-11<br />
Never bind the bollocks<br />
While punk is hardly new on the Kreuzberg block, a<br />
swathe of films relating to the topic now descends<br />
on Moviemento, where one of Berlin’s original<br />
punks, Blixa Bargeld, worked as projectionist<br />
on The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the 1970s.<br />
Showing 20 films on music’s most rebellious subculture,<br />
this year’s punk film festival offers everything<br />
from the legends to the locals to the little<br />
ones. Documentary on riot grrrl founder Kathleen<br />
Hanna, The Punk Singer, explores the cult figure’s<br />
past and sometimes overlooked influence she had<br />
on 1990s and early 2000s cultures. Cute comingof-age<br />
Norwegian film Sons of Norway features a<br />
cameo by original punk Johnny “Rotten” Lydon. For<br />
a fix of hometown focus, Terrorgruppe and Die Ex<br />
bin ich should give us something to pogo about.<br />
This year also features a selection of kids’ punk<br />
films, involving an ‘acceptable’ questioning of parental<br />
authority: Sweden’s Pippi Longstocking and<br />
West Germany’s Momo. As per usual, a splattering<br />
All movies are in OV with german subtitles unless otherwise stated
exblicks<br />
<strong>May</strong> 20<br />
Art War<br />
helden film<br />
of concerts and other activities accompany the<br />
fest. Up the punx! See www.toodrunktowatch.<br />
de for full programme. WC Too Drunk To WATCH<br />
– 3. Punkfilmfest Berlin | Moviemento, Kottbusser<br />
Damm 22, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.<br />
MAY 12, 20:30<br />
Rose ceremony<br />
Join us for a very special EXBlicks this month<br />
as we screen the first-ever Exberliner Film<br />
aWard Winners, presented at last month’s<br />
Achtung Berlin film festival: both grand prize<br />
winner A Promised Rose Garden (Lisa Violetta<br />
Gaß) and the special mention, short “The<br />
Silence Between Two Songs” (Mónica Lima).<br />
With its portrayal of the frequently overlooked<br />
aspects of international Berlin, A Promised<br />
Rose Garden stood out for us as a very unusual<br />
fairytale of “expat” life. Following two different<br />
couples of North and Central Vietnamese backgrounds<br />
whose lives are intertwined, the superb<br />
actors (all first-timers) and script illustrate Berlin<br />
as a Weltstadt in all its beauty and ugliness.<br />
“The Silence Between Two Songs” impressed<br />
us thoroughly by not trying to impress us at all.<br />
Understated and beautifully shot, two young<br />
siblings must arrive on a decision about their<br />
relationship in Berlin and its ability to enchant<br />
and repel us simultaneously. Join us for a gettogether<br />
with directors present for a Q&A and<br />
complimentary wine. WC EXBLICKS: AWARD Winners|<br />
Lichtblick Kino, Kastanienallee 77, Prenzlauer Berg<br />
MAY 20, 20:00<br />
Art after Arab Spring<br />
Berliner filmmaker Marco Wilms’ documentary<br />
Art War follows the lives of Egyptian artists<br />
in the wake of Arab Spring. In a society whose<br />
collective needs include paying honour to fallen<br />
martyrs and fellow activists, an explosion of<br />
creativity emerged; for instance, the radical anti-<br />
Islamic feminist blogger Aalia, whose naked selfportraits,<br />
posted online, became a motif of the<br />
cultural dissent boiling over in Egypt’s emerging<br />
and radicalised youth culture. Wilms shows how<br />
the artists not only utilised but instrumentalised<br />
art as a transcendental and effective weapon<br />
in the fight for their unfinished revolution. We<br />
will be providing customary refreshments and<br />
welcoming Wilms for a post-screening Q&A, as<br />
well as other special guests for a discussion<br />
on Egypt since the revolution. RD EXBLICKS: ART<br />
WAR| Lichtblick Kino, Kastanienallee 77, Prenzlauer Berg<br />
MAY 29-JUN 1<br />
Frigid tenderness<br />
The ninth XPOSED International Queer Film<br />
Festival shifts attention towards Scandinavia<br />
with an homage to Swedish feminist filmmaker<br />
Gunvor Nelson. Opening the ball is a screening<br />
of Nordic shorts followed by Charles Atlas’ Turning,<br />
an intimate look into the touring life of Antony<br />
and the Johnsons. Later, head to the opening<br />
party at Südblock for Nelson’s Fog Pumas<br />
and steamy cinematic surprises in The Naughty<br />
Room. Come Friday it’s time for the German<br />
shorts, followed by Susanna Helke’s American<br />
Vagabond, a snapshot of America’s medieval<br />
attitude towards homosexuality. Saturday’s<br />
a queer sandwich of Nordic and international<br />
shorts with a filling of Lisa Aschan’s Apflickorna,<br />
and Sunday wraps it up with a retrospective<br />
of Nelson’s transgressive oeuvre, awards and a<br />
closing feature: Yann Gonzalez’ Les Rencontres<br />
d’apres minuit, which centres on a young couple<br />
as they prepare for an orgy. For prices, venues<br />
and times, go to www.xposedfilmfestival.com.<br />
MH XPOSED QUEER FILM FESTIVAL | Moviemento,<br />
Kottbusser Damm 22, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.<br />
JUN 1<br />
A Bowie trilogy<br />
Appetite whetted from our Bowie special?<br />
Exberliner’s teaming up with realeyz.tv for a<br />
one-day David Bowie film festival. Christian<br />
Davies’ 2012 documentary Bowie in Berlin<br />
examines the Berlin trilogy, offering an in-depth<br />
analysis of the songs, while the 1981 classic<br />
Christiane F – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo uses<br />
a Bowie-centric soundtrack – and a performance<br />
from the man himself, filmed separately<br />
in New York – to underscore its tragic tale of<br />
teenage drug abuse in bleak Cold War-era West<br />
Berlin. Last up is 90 minutes of music videos<br />
spanning Bowie’s entire career, from 1972’s<br />
“Space Oddity” to last year’s “Where Are We<br />
Now?” by Floria Sigismondi. Screenings will<br />
be followed by surprise guests. MH EXBlicks:<br />
Bowie film festival | Jun 1, Lichtblick Kino, Kastanienallee<br />
77, Prenzlauer Berg<br />
UND<br />
35
What’s on<br />
stage<br />
<strong>May</strong> 6-8, 19:00<br />
Die Jahreszeiten<br />
Gisela Höhne just received<br />
the Carolin Neuber Prize<br />
for her outstanding<br />
engaged work: for the<br />
past 24 years, she’s been<br />
running the RambaZamba<br />
theatre with actors with<br />
so-called ‘disabilities’,<br />
creating a successful<br />
working environment as<br />
well as remarkable artistic<br />
works using each actor’s particular expressive potential.<br />
Her company’s brilliant non-verbal piece – a dance theatre<br />
work dealing with metamorphosis of life based on musical<br />
pieces such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or Vivaldi’s Four<br />
Seasons – is also an opportunity to discover this warm theatre<br />
located in the Kulturbrauerei. Theater RambaZamba,<br />
Knaackstr. 97, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 15-17, 20:30<br />
La Merda/The Shit<br />
“You leave the theatre<br />
feeling as if you’ve had all<br />
your skin scraped off,” reported<br />
The Guardian after<br />
seeing La Merda at the<br />
Edinburgh Fringe Festival,<br />
where it won major awards<br />
including the Scotsman<br />
Fringe First Award.<br />
Silvia Gallerano literally<br />
performs naked in Cristian<br />
Ceresoli’s angry, disturbing play. With an astonishing voice,<br />
she reveals her bulimic, revolting and public secrets with<br />
no boundaries between childhood, sex, the body, food, shit,<br />
fame and politics. In English. Maxim Gorki Theater, Am<br />
Festungsgraben 2, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 20-29<br />
Japan Syndrome<br />
How did the nuclear<br />
meltdown at Fukushima<br />
contribute to disclose rifts<br />
within Japanese society?<br />
This interdisciplinary festival<br />
explores that question<br />
with a rich program of performances,<br />
installations,<br />
talks, films and concerts,<br />
mostly with English<br />
surtitles. Starting with<br />
Toshiki Okada’s conversation play Current Location (photo),<br />
one of the first artistic reaction to the catastrophe, it ends<br />
with his current project Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla<br />
Rich, set in a 24-hour convenience store: a metaphor for<br />
an increasingly darkening world with part-time employees,<br />
bosses and customers giving free reign to their irritability.<br />
HAU 1, 2 and 3, Stresemannstr. 29, Hallesches Ufer 32,<br />
Tempelhofer Ufer 10, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Möckernbrücke<br />
COMEDY IN ENGLISH<br />
■ Off The Cuff, comedians improvise from topics they<br />
have never seen, <strong>May</strong> 9, 20:30, T Berlin<br />
■ ETB International Comedy Showcase,<br />
hosted by Paul Salamone; this month’s headliner: Will<br />
Franken (Comedy Central), <strong>May</strong> 12, 20:00, English<br />
Theatre Berlin<br />
■ Baum Haus Comedy Open Air A uniquely Berlin<br />
show in a spectacular setting: treehouses, BBQ, markets…<br />
and, of course, comedy! <strong>May</strong> 24, 18:00, Griessmuehle<br />
■ The Neukölln Confessional, one of Berlin’s<br />
longest running and cosiest comedy showcases, <strong>May</strong> 30,<br />
20:30, Myxa Cafe<br />
For more listings, visit comedyinenglish.de<br />
Tsukasa Aoki Guido Harari Rob de Vrij<br />
Redefining<br />
theatre: three<br />
young authors<br />
to watch By Nathalie Frank<br />
As part of the Berliner Festspiele’s<br />
annual Theatertreffen festival,<br />
the Stückemarkt invites three<br />
unconventional theatre makers to<br />
examine broader forms of authorship<br />
and creative processes.<br />
While Theatertreffen’s main programme focuses<br />
on theatre from the German-speaking world, the<br />
Stückemarkt showcases new theatre authors from<br />
across Europe. This year’s selections go beyond<br />
playwright to work outside clearly defined theatre<br />
categories, Mona el Gammal, Chris Thorpe and<br />
Miet Warlop were chosen by acclaimed theatremakers<br />
Katie Mitchell, Signa Köstler and Simon<br />
Stephens to present their work.<br />
Creating unique “narrative spaces”, El Gammal<br />
(Germany) won the Cologne Theatre Prize for<br />
Haus//Nummer/Null. She works with renowned<br />
performance groups such as La Fura dels Baus<br />
and Signa. Author and performer Thorpe (UK)<br />
has collaborated with Unlimited Theatre, Third<br />
Angel and the BBC; now, together with director<br />
Sam Pritchard, he presents There Has Possibly<br />
Been An Incident, which premiered at the Latitude<br />
Festival in July of last year. Warlop (Belgium)<br />
received the Young Theatre Award for her graduation<br />
work at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in<br />
Gent; since then she has developed works for the<br />
Campo festival and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts.<br />
She comes to Theatertreffen with her 2012 piece<br />
Mystery Magnet.<br />
Working beyond disciplines<br />
When it comes to financing a new project,<br />
strict categories still prevail. However, they no<br />
longer apply to mixed artistic forms. Coming<br />
from the visual arts, Warlop started doing<br />
theatre as she felt the need to bring her tableaux<br />
vivants to life: “At some point I decided that my<br />
things need action because they have to<br />
transform,” she explains. Thorpe writes and<br />
performs at the same time. And El Gammal’s<br />
work, somewhere between scenography, theatre<br />
and visual arts, doesn’t really fit any existing<br />
notion: in fact, her Professor Penelope Wehrli<br />
invented the term “narrative space” as an<br />
assignment. “I was immediately extremely<br />
enthusiastic,” El Gammal recalls. Her spaces<br />
literally tell a story, with the help of numerous<br />
visual details, texts and sounds: “It’s a bit like<br />
being in a book, but in a room, and it’s not<br />
linear: the spectator has many different options<br />
to explore the story by exploring the space.” She<br />
THEATER<br />
TREFFEN<br />
<strong>May</strong> 2-18<br />
has never met<br />
anyone else<br />
doing<br />
explicitly<br />
narrative<br />
mystery magnet<br />
spaces, but<br />
says, “The<br />
world is big,<br />
there might be other people doing that. I’d be<br />
glad to visit one.”<br />
Individuals vs. collectives<br />
Although developed collectively, the selected<br />
projects did begin individually. The starting<br />
point for Haus//Nummer/Null was El Gammal’s<br />
wish to create a futuristic dystopia – a world<br />
that she imagined first with her co-author Juri<br />
Padel, then with various sound, light, video,<br />
graphic and internet designers. “In that sense it’s<br />
really a collective process. But I have the artistic<br />
responsibility on the whole thing.” Warlop didn’t<br />
develop her piece with her performers but imagined<br />
everything herself, from set to costumes<br />
to character interactions, long before rehearsal<br />
began. “My piece is like one big moment that<br />
I completely shape and sculpt and take care of.<br />
It’s my language and my visual ideas that my<br />
colleagues perform.” The collective part of the<br />
work takes place onstage: “I’m always performing<br />
in my pieces. I think it’s very important that<br />
I know my work from the inside, and I believe<br />
in the energy of the group.”<br />
The idea of authorship<br />
coming from a collaborative background, Thorpe<br />
wrote “essentially an instruction manual for<br />
a performance, which is then worked, rehearsed<br />
and designed. I’m very open and flexible to<br />
refine my text in the rehearsal room.”<br />
Thorpe re-centres the very idea of authorship,<br />
based on his playwright experience: “Authorship<br />
for me is responsibility for a part of the process<br />
of having a conversation in a room. However,” he<br />
adds, “it’s hard to separate the concept of authorship<br />
with ego, with the wish to be recognised. It<br />
would certainly be interesting if all plays, just for<br />
a year, were anonymous.” ■<br />
36 • may <strong>2014</strong>
23 rd – 25 th <strong>May</strong><br />
■ Mona el Gammal:<br />
Haus//Nummer/Null<br />
The audience enters one by one into a gloomy,<br />
dystopian, futuristic world. El Gammal and her<br />
team based their creation on extensive scientific<br />
and sociological readings, and on the statement<br />
that we don’t need to do much more to<br />
completely destroy our planet and social life. “We<br />
picked some actual tendencies and exaggerated<br />
them. The future that we show is not really far<br />
away from what we have now. Some of it is actually<br />
even real.” The story develops the mysterious<br />
case of Frau N, who helped shape this world and<br />
needs to face the disaster. The venue is kept<br />
secret until you buy your ticket. The texts and<br />
sounds are in German – however, you should enjoy<br />
the performance’s atmosphere even without<br />
understanding the words. <strong>May</strong> 11-18 (except <strong>May</strong><br />
15), 13:00-1:00, unknown venue Talk with Mona el Gammal<br />
and Signa Köstler on Narrative Spaces, <strong>May</strong> 17, 17:00, Haus der<br />
Berliner Festspiele<br />
■ Chris Thorpe: There Has<br />
Possibly Been An Incident<br />
In Thorpe’s text, protagonists find themselves<br />
“making the mistake that they originally thought to<br />
eradicate. The idea of dealing with heroism came<br />
from the idea that most people think that they are<br />
right most of the time. I find that an astonishing<br />
thing about human beings, because it leads us<br />
to the worst of ourselves.” The author, who wrote<br />
the text “for performance rather than a play”<br />
constantly seeks a very specific relationship with<br />
the audience. “All performers including me are<br />
reading the text. Hopefully, it destroys the weird<br />
impressive trick of knowing all those words.” And<br />
helps the spectator to actually listen to them.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 13, 21:30, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Side Stage<br />
Talk with Chris Thorpe and Simon Stephens on Theatre As a<br />
Dissecting Table, <strong>May</strong> 13, 17:00<br />
Theatertreffen: our picks<br />
The main part of Theatertreffen’s<br />
programme consists of the 10 most<br />
“remarkable” pieces produced last year in<br />
a German-speaking country. Half of them<br />
are accessible across language barriers or<br />
shown with English surtitles. The opening<br />
piece, Zement by Heiner Müller, gives you<br />
an insight in great Dimiter Gottscheff’s last<br />
work before his death last fall. Chekhov’s<br />
UNCLE Vanya from Schauspiel Stuttgart<br />
and Castorf’s take on Céline’s Journey to<br />
the end of the night can also be followed<br />
in English. A powerful performance for five<br />
dancers and one actress, Alain Platel’s tauberbach<br />
is nearly unspoken and so is the<br />
eccentric Herbert Fritsch’s opera Untitled<br />
Nr.1. Visit www.berlinerfestspiele.de for<br />
the full schedule. For live English-language<br />
updates from Exberliner, check out the Theatertreffen<br />
blog at www.theatertreffenblog.<br />
de. Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstraße 24,<br />
Wilmersdorf, U-Bhf Spichernstr.<br />
■ Miet Warlop: Mystery Magnet<br />
“I wanted to make a very generous work, with<br />
a lot of ideas and problems and also beauty,”<br />
says Warlop. In the middle of the stage is a fat<br />
man, “the character who consumes the whole<br />
world”. All the other things are happening for<br />
him – in his head. Expect horses, tables, tall<br />
pairs of trousers, cardboard boxes... “And I<br />
also want to show the magic behind the wall.”<br />
It is about seducing, desire, aggression. It is<br />
about making the invisible visible. <strong>May</strong> 11-12,<br />
20:00, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Side Stage Talk<br />
with Miet Warlop and Katie Mitchell on Visual Art Stage,<br />
<strong>May</strong> 11, 21:30<br />
reinout hiel<br />
Berlin<br />
Opera<br />
Prize 14<br />
Go! Aeneas, Go!<br />
3 composers create the<br />
odyssey of Aeneas through<br />
Europe convinced about<br />
the indispensability of the<br />
Union.<br />
(Spin of Collective,<br />
Barcelona )<br />
Luftschloss/ Erdreich<br />
An anti capitalistic critic<br />
made with the elements of<br />
dance and music.<br />
(Verena Marisa, Munich)<br />
neukoellneroper.de<br />
Karl-Marx-Str. 131–133<br />
D-12043 Berlin<br />
Tel.: 030 / 68 89 07 77<br />
tickets@neukoellneroper.de<br />
37
What’s on<br />
stage<br />
On stage in<br />
motor city<br />
An hour’s train ride away from Berlin (about<br />
€80 round-trip), the home of Volkswagen is quite<br />
a sight in itself. The disused original VW factory<br />
towers over the Autostadt, a retro-futuristic theme<br />
park combining 1930s industrial modernism and<br />
state-of-the-art landscape architecture, complete with<br />
restaurants and attractions for kids (day pass, €15).<br />
Performances (€9-48) take place inside the old<br />
power plant – think Berghain on a massive scale, with<br />
open metal structures and leftover turbines bathed in<br />
neon lighting – and range from dance, jazz and pop to<br />
classical music, all related to this year’s theme: happiness.<br />
Stay for the night in the affordable Tryp Hotel<br />
or Holiday Inn, or come back to Berlin with the last<br />
train departing Wolfsburg at 11:17pm. www.autostadt.<br />
de; full programme at www.movimentos.de<br />
Our tips:<br />
n Wild Grass, Beijing Dance Theater No wonder<br />
that Wang Yuanyan, Beijing Dance Theater’s founder,<br />
felt inspired by the struggle for survival described in Lu<br />
Xun poems. The former choreographer of the National<br />
Ballet of China faced great difficulties as she moved<br />
on to form her own company, looking for the greater<br />
artistic freedoms of contemporary dance, especially<br />
when she created The Great Lotus, banned in China for<br />
its explicit portrayals of sex and corruption. Based on<br />
Lu Xun poetry, this new production is made of three<br />
pieces, ending with people “submerged in life’s dizzying,<br />
excruciating happiness”. <strong>May</strong> 8-11, 20:00, Kraftwerk,<br />
The Autostadt, Stadtbrücke, Wolfsburg<br />
n Scharoun Ensemble and Mojca Erdmann From<br />
Scharoun’s building to Scharoun’s building. Made of<br />
eight string and brass musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic,<br />
the Ensemble, formed in 1983, was named<br />
after Hans Scharoun, the architect of the impressive<br />
Berlin Philharmonic building. An excursion to Wolfsburg<br />
allows them to play in another of his buildings: the<br />
Theater Wolfsburg, where they will perform works by<br />
Jörg Widmann and Mozart, accompanied by soprano<br />
Mojca Erdmann. Two days later they will play the same<br />
in Berlin, just next to the Philharmonic. <strong>May</strong> 18, 20:00,<br />
Theater Wolfsburg, Klieverhagen 50, Wolfsburg <strong>May</strong> 20, 20:00, St.<br />
Matthäus-Kirche, Matthäikirchplatz 1, Mitte, S-Bhf Potsdamer Platz<br />
n mOVe on up This one-evening pop festival features,<br />
on different stages in the same venue, Jochen<br />
Distelmeyer, now solo after having been part of the<br />
influential Hamburger Blumfeld band; Brazilian singer<br />
Cibelle; German<br />
electropop band<br />
Sizarr, hailing<br />
from Landau<br />
in Germany’s<br />
winegrowing<br />
region; and the<br />
brand-new Swedish<br />
pop band The<br />
Majority Says.<br />
<strong>May</strong> 24, 20:00,<br />
Hallenbad – Kultur<br />
am Schachtweg,<br />
Schachtweg 31,<br />
Wolfsburg<br />
MOVIMENTOS<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
WEEKS<br />
Apr 22 - Jun 1<br />
When dance imitates science<br />
By Annika Burges<br />
Dance innovator WAYne McGregor comes to Movimentos with<br />
his sci-fi creature feature Atomos, viewed in 3D.<br />
The multi-award-winning British choreographer<br />
has staged works for the Paris Opera<br />
Ballet, La Scala and the Nederlands Dans<br />
Theater as well as a dance number for the<br />
Olympic Games in London and choreography<br />
for Harry Potter’s magical creatures. With his<br />
London-based company Wayne McGregor/<br />
Random Dance, founded in 1992, he experimented<br />
with science and technology to create<br />
movement. His scientific questionings reveal<br />
what happens when atomised movement, film,<br />
sound and light collide.<br />
How have scientific developments allowed<br />
you to further explore your ideas<br />
for dance? What’s been interesting over the<br />
last 10 years or so has been the advancements<br />
in cognitive science and the technology by<br />
which things can become visible from the<br />
inside of the body which were once invisible.<br />
Our understanding of brain science has developed<br />
– how we start to look at what’s going on<br />
in the brain and the instruments to be able to<br />
serve this. This is why with this piece I got so<br />
interested in biometric data. How do you take<br />
intimate signals from inside your body and use<br />
them as a resource for dance making?<br />
In Atomos you ask the question, “What is<br />
the body?” How did the use of technology<br />
contribute to that questioning? It came<br />
out of the fact that I wanted to take a kind of<br />
iconic film from the 1980s, a film I knew very<br />
well and loved (Blade Runner), and cannibalise<br />
it. One thing we did is that we took the film<br />
and we atomised it. a<br />
software programme<br />
divided it into 1200<br />
parts – the little atoms of<br />
the film. The computer<br />
Atomos <strong>May</strong><br />
15-18, 20:00 |<br />
The Autostadt,<br />
Stadtbrücke,<br />
Wolfsburg<br />
analyses the motion in that clip and throws<br />
it out on the screen as a 3D creature. So on<br />
screen, wearing 3D glasses, you see this kind of<br />
autonomous agent that takes the maths from<br />
the movement in the image and it creates<br />
these physical kinds of tendon, bone and, kind<br />
of, strangeness. We use that for improvisation.<br />
So your dancers wear 3D glasses and<br />
work with the creature’s movements?<br />
Yeah, they work with this creature. The<br />
creature has parts of the film motion that it<br />
captured, in a form you don’t recognise. It’s<br />
not like a stick figure trying to do the moves,<br />
it’s a very hypnotic, very beguiling creature in<br />
its own right. The dancers wear 3D glasses and<br />
improvise with it to provide novel or unfamiliar<br />
solutions for the body.<br />
How did you experiment with biometric<br />
data? Studio XO, who we did the costumes<br />
with, they took my biometric data – my sense<br />
of arousal, excitement and adrenalin – and<br />
converted it into maths and made objects out<br />
of it. These Styrofoam-type objects we then<br />
improvised with to give us a kind of relationship<br />
to the object. We then took the object<br />
away and we had choreography.<br />
Tell me a bit about the music. What’s<br />
interesting about Blade Runner is the music by<br />
Vangelis, which was one of the first electronic<br />
scores for a movie. I asked [post-classical duo]<br />
A Winged Victory for the Sullen to kind of<br />
atomise, pixelise the Vangelis and then work<br />
with it to guide those granules of sound.<br />
You’re well-known for your collaborations<br />
with influential artists from all<br />
fields, like Thom Yorke. I think dance has<br />
to be plugged into the real world. So often art<br />
forms can be stifled off into side communities<br />
and I’ve never been interested in that.<br />
With someone like Thom, I’m interested in<br />
people’s physical signatures. Thom has an<br />
amazing way of dancing anyway, so it was<br />
really all him and me helping him sculpt and<br />
shape that in a choreographic form. That’s<br />
why I loved working with him. ■<br />
38 • may <strong>2014</strong>
What’s on<br />
music and nightlife<br />
music<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
Going for the Two By D. STRAUSS<br />
Retrograde and static as I am, have I never graced<br />
this column on the topic of progressive rock? I<br />
suppose life in Berlin retards one’s perception of<br />
progression in most areas. But that also means<br />
that this city continues to embrace your timesignature-futzing<br />
favs from the 1970s preserved<br />
in amber, their walrus moustaches awaiting their<br />
summer tour schedules. It’s not just Berlin: in a<br />
continental Europe for whom Wagner is James<br />
Brown, prog, like Eurodisco, is soul music.<br />
But you know what? From Radiohead to Björk<br />
to Timbaland’s productions to Lady Gaga to Imagine<br />
Dragons – prog won. Generally, if music isn’t<br />
pointedly idiotic along the lines of Kesha, then<br />
it must be serious to be taken seriously. What is<br />
trance music if not prog saturated with a spiritual<br />
ideology slightly less coherent than that of YES’<br />
Tales from Topographic Oceans? Some lesser iteration<br />
of that much reshuffled band will be playing three<br />
of their 1970s albums in full under reduced circumstances,<br />
though you’d think the imagery in Game<br />
of Thrones would have jumpstarted their careers by<br />
now. Then again, Game of Thrones offers the viewer<br />
naked women, while the only hipster icon willing<br />
to expose himself while in Yes’ corner is Vincent<br />
Gallo, and it turns out that, as with Yes’ replacement<br />
members, he was using a prosthetic.<br />
Regardless of genre, almost any band that lasts<br />
nearly half a century ends up left with a single<br />
mastermind bending the rest of the ensemble to<br />
his Randian will. So credit Berlin’s own ambient<br />
electronic pioneers TANGERINE DREAM, whose<br />
origins predate even the Zodiak Free Arts Lab,<br />
for realising that their ARPs have issued their<br />
terminal burps. If only this realisation hadn’t<br />
come about three decades too late. TD, in its<br />
final iteration, is the sort of girl-violinist-in-gypsyhat-with-strobe-lights<br />
act that would be cast in a<br />
1988 sci-fi film starring Jean-Claude van Damme<br />
to represent the music of future, with a warehouse<br />
in Toronto standing in for a space station<br />
on Pluto which has since, like Tangerine Dream,<br />
been downgraded in status.<br />
Tangerine Dream, which was Berlin’s bestselling<br />
band during the period David Bowie was<br />
living here, had long changed its musical purview<br />
out of its fear of a lack of commerciality which,<br />
like Crimea, no amount of compromise (or aggression)<br />
could ever recapture. Fellow ambient<br />
visionary and Brian Eno collaborator LARAAJI ,<br />
unconcerned with sales figures or, for that matter,<br />
the material world, just waited out the intervening<br />
decades with his vaporiser, until the current<br />
generation once again embraced a lysergic<br />
spirituality and New Age came back into style.<br />
He’ll be zither-jamming with stoner white-dub<br />
master SUN ARAW, putting the “me generation” in<br />
“meander” for future hip-replacement hipsters.<br />
But you can’t ditch it all if you’ve never made it<br />
in the first place. Former flower-headed Genesis<br />
frontman PETER GABRIEL finally hit it big in the<br />
1980s with a chilly prog-electro hybrid, shaking a<br />
tree red-raining down with shockable monkeys,<br />
with whom he later abandoned his chart run to flee<br />
to the jungles and make music. When he finally<br />
semi-reentered the public eye a few years ago, he’d<br />
transformed into a bald, goateed guru type, eager<br />
to mentor the more ambivalent of the artsy indie<br />
stars of today. Previously displaying an urge toward<br />
relevancy, he’s on a big-money tour of So, his most<br />
successful album, with its original 1987 band.<br />
Which is to say, the tour evinces a nostalgia for a<br />
previous generation’s new wave. For those who’d<br />
rather hear Gabriel’s music of an even earlier era,<br />
guitarist STEVE HACKETT, his former Genesis bandmate,<br />
will be playing his old band’s non-hits, which<br />
beats having to get a job as his old lead singer’s<br />
roadie. Prog may have won, but something as progressive<br />
as guaranteed labour? Not so much. n<br />
Music Editor D.Strauss may be contacted at strauss@exberliner.com<br />
Buy your concert tickets at www.exberliner.com/tickets<br />
Steve Hackett Mon, <strong>May</strong> 19, 20:00 | Tempodrom, Möckernstr. 10, Kreuzberg, S-Bhf Anhalter Bahnhof Peter Gabriel<br />
Sun, <strong>May</strong> 25, 19:00 | Waldbuhne, am Glockenturm, Spandau, U-Bhf Olympiastadion Sun Araw and Laraaji w/DJ Deep<br />
Magic Mon, <strong>May</strong> 26, 20:00 | Urban Spree, Revaler Str. 99, Friedrichshain, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str. Yes Tue, <strong>May</strong> 27, 20:00<br />
| Admiralspalast, Friedrichstr. 101, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr. Tangerine Dream Fri, <strong>May</strong> 30, 20:00 | Admiralspalast,<br />
Friedrichstr. 101, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr.<br />
39
What’s on<br />
music and nightlife<br />
club picks<br />
Fri, <strong>May</strong> 2, 23:00<br />
Dead Fader Album Release (Industry Tech)<br />
Berlin’s techno, industrial<br />
and avant strains all converge<br />
— sometimes in the<br />
same project — for Small<br />
by Hard’s celebration of<br />
the industrial tech-house<br />
hijinx of DEAD FADER,<br />
new record in hand. They’ll<br />
be joined by label head<br />
DJ SCOTCH EGG, DJ DIE<br />
SOON, ANBU and BOCA AL<br />
LUPO with Shitmat in his new Planet Mu trap duo project<br />
MISTY CONDITIONS DJing along with the dubby DJ TAPES.<br />
In the small room: TIME$UP & BIRD¥, GONER, SHINS-K,<br />
TOM BATTERY and WAKE. Urban Spree, Revaler Str. 99,<br />
Friedrichshain, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str.<br />
Fri <strong>May</strong> 9 - Sat, <strong>May</strong> 10, 23:00<br />
Humboldthain Club’s 1st Anniversary<br />
(Berlin Traditional)<br />
One year in Wedding is like<br />
10 in Neukölln, so let’s<br />
give unpretentious Humboldthain<br />
its props before<br />
it starts buying up all the<br />
real estate and becomes<br />
a dynasty. Friday features<br />
mostly techno locals<br />
like CINTHIE, JIM NASTIC<br />
and DAVID PASTERNACK,<br />
though the headliner is<br />
brainy Chicago housemeister TEVO HOWARD (photo), who’s<br />
finally starting to accrue props. Saturday stars Monsieur<br />
Schaffel himself, Shitkatapulter T.RAUMSCHMIERE, along<br />
with more HC regulars: GREENVILLE MASSIVE, AROMA/<br />
PITCH, BOBBY SOULO and ALEX FICTION. Humboldthain<br />
Club, Hochstr. 46, Wedding, U-Bhf Reinickendorfer Str.<br />
Wed, <strong>May</strong> 28, 23:00<br />
Phuture (Aceeeeed)<br />
Through a mixture of<br />
darkness, smoke and<br />
Daft Punk helmets, DJ<br />
culture has allowed its<br />
innovators to age more<br />
gracefully than their rock<br />
brethren, letting house<br />
and techno pioneers<br />
continue partying like it’s<br />
1989, particularly so when<br />
Chicago acid founders DJ<br />
PIERRE (photo) and PHUTURE show. Then again, Pierre may<br />
not be out of his forties. You really can’t underestimate his<br />
influence: when you think of acid house’s template, you’ve<br />
internalised his musical language. Minimal maestros GERD<br />
JANSON and DIXON make up the bill. Panorama Bar,<br />
Rüdersdorfer Str. 70, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof<br />
Sat, <strong>May</strong> 31, 23:30<br />
DJ Sliink (Boooooty)<br />
It sometimes feels as if<br />
this post-dubstep/babystep<br />
EDM period has been<br />
secretly masterminded by<br />
Luther Campbell, his voice<br />
disguised by Autotune, but<br />
that might be because<br />
the booty derivatives<br />
that hang low from<br />
dancehall trees have never<br />
entirely dropped. Newark’s<br />
DJ SLIINK waxes Diplo-esque through various ass cultures,<br />
high and low, thick and thin, though there’s almost always a<br />
touch of the travelling scholar to him – the booty never gets<br />
his hands too dirty. Gretchen regulars DELFONIC and SOUL-<br />
MIND will provide hand towels. Gretchen, Obentrautstr.<br />
19-21, Kreuzberg, U-Bf Hallesches Tor<br />
Supermensch in<br />
the supermarket<br />
By seymour gris<br />
From East German puppeteer to global<br />
Youtube star, bearded 58-year-old wanderer<br />
FRIEDRICH LIECHTENSTEIN possesses a<br />
career trajectory that is anything but linear.<br />
Lichtenstein’s slightly sleazy reworking of<br />
his music video “Supergeil” for grocery chain<br />
EDEKA went viral, with 9,656,719 views as of<br />
publication, and counting. A crooner and flaneur<br />
of the old school comparable to Louie Austen,<br />
Lichtenstein aka “Dolphin Man” has a new<br />
album, Bad Gastein (Heavylistening) forthcoming<br />
along with the campy, atmospheric video<br />
and single “Belgique, Belgique”. You might<br />
call it dumb, but so does he: he’ll be performing<br />
Silly Love Songs at Haus der Kulturen der<br />
Welt on Saturday, <strong>May</strong> 10 as part of its Doofe<br />
Musik (Stupid Music) series, along with Adriano<br />
Celentano Gebäckorchester, Justus Köhncke<br />
and Lifafa.<br />
In “Belgique, Belgique” you say you’re 72<br />
years old. Surely not! No, I’m not. But the<br />
biography that I create for myself there is that<br />
of an older man. I feel older with the beard; if I<br />
shaved, no one would recognise me. But my age<br />
is irrelevant. Sometimes I feel younger, say 20,<br />
but sometimes I feel very old.<br />
And for a Youtube star, you are. The viral<br />
thing on the net has nothing to do with me.<br />
When people click on it, I don’t notice anything;<br />
it’s not a physical action. I just danced through<br />
some supermarket shelves and it went online<br />
and people click on it, and it doesn’t have any<br />
consequences for me. But then I was at the Echo<br />
Music Awards and there were so many people<br />
who wanted snapshots of me – which is a physical<br />
action – and then I noticed right away how<br />
much people love it. I have to see how I deal<br />
with it. It was really too much.<br />
In “Belgique Belgique,” you have several<br />
nicknames: “Dolphin man”, “Kinky<br />
King”… The Dolphin Man is a guy who<br />
communicates in an unconventional manner.<br />
Dolphins can really see right through you, they<br />
scan you, they perceive the whole of you. I try<br />
to approach people the same way:<br />
I stand opposite a person and<br />
take three seconds to scan the<br />
whole person. Also, dolphins look<br />
a bit phallic and I think, “OK,<br />
I’m kind of a phallic guy.” Dolphin<br />
Man is the continuation of<br />
Superman or Spiderman. When<br />
I performed on the MS Europa<br />
cruise liner, some Englishmen<br />
liked me and dubbed me the<br />
Kinky King.<br />
Doofe Musik: Silly<br />
Love Songs w/<br />
Adriano Celentano<br />
Gebäckorchester, Justus<br />
Köhncke, Friedrich<br />
Liechtenstein, Lifafa<br />
Sat, <strong>May</strong> 10, 20:00 | Haus<br />
der Kulturen der Welt,<br />
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10,<br />
Tiergarten, S-Bhf Bundestag<br />
You’ve done<br />
more in your<br />
life than just<br />
videos.<br />
Yes: I’m a<br />
flaneur. I walk<br />
around the<br />
city a lot.<br />
Right now I<br />
have less time.<br />
In artistic<br />
terms, I’m<br />
also a flaneur,<br />
which I’m<br />
very proud<br />
of. I show up<br />
everywhere, from the opera to Kit Kat Club, on<br />
the radio, with Deichkind, on TV, across Europe<br />
– and it makes me happy that so many different<br />
places think I fit in well.<br />
Including Bad Gastein, in the Austrian<br />
Alps. I once ended up there by chance. Some<br />
hoteliers invited me. When I arrived, it was love<br />
at first sight. It was like the fairytale Frau Holle.<br />
I saw so many unresolved themes there, this<br />
emptiness, a kind of strange morbidity. But the<br />
whole thing is still worth seeing, like East Berlin<br />
after the fall of the Wall: here’s the empty Palast<br />
der Republik, large empty hotels, Tacheles, flats.<br />
That’s what it feels like in Bad Gastein – room<br />
for imagination. And healing springs, too!<br />
What’s your fascination with Belgium?<br />
Bad Gastein is a concept album, comprised of<br />
related stories, and “Belgique, Belgique” is the<br />
story of the journey to the place Bad Gastein,<br />
in which I tell where I come from and where I<br />
want to go, I want to go to the mountains and<br />
heal. Of course, it’s a metaphorical story which is<br />
interwoven with my reality. Stories are also reality.<br />
In a way, art is also real because it is anchored<br />
in reality. It has its poetic logic. A lot of people<br />
ask me, “Who is that guy?”<br />
A former puppeteer, for one<br />
thing. I attended the Ernst Busch<br />
Theatre School and they offered a<br />
specialisation in puppetry. I come<br />
from the East. East Germany<br />
specialised in certain fields that<br />
didn’t work so well in the free<br />
market, such as puppet theatre<br />
or certain types of sport. It was<br />
perfect for me, because it was<br />
40 • may <strong>2014</strong>
tICKEtS: (030) 30 10 6 80 88<br />
www.trinitymusic.de<br />
15.05.14 . zitadelle 15.05.14 . huxleys<br />
really on the fringe of society. One didn’t feel<br />
under surveillance. In this small, poetic niche,<br />
one could act relatively freely. My kids were still<br />
small – I did puppet shows for them. I didn’t do<br />
puppet theatre for long, though. I began to do<br />
one-man shows.<br />
Do you possess any Ostalgie? Not really, to<br />
be honest. I’m happy that things move on. I<br />
still have an unfulfilled yearning for glamour. It<br />
really was very, very grey in the East. The clothes<br />
looked bad. Nothing was done right – nothing<br />
was really rocking. I’m interested in the Western<br />
world, and all the refinement and glamour,<br />
especially of earlier times, which is why I am so<br />
fascinated by Bad Gastein.<br />
And now your album is sponsored by<br />
trendy sunglasses brand ic!Berlin. I’ve been<br />
working with them for a very long time. I am<br />
like their ornamental hermit, a hermit who lives<br />
in an English park because the English lords like<br />
it. As an ornamental hermit one plays loneliness,<br />
at the edge of society. The funny thing is<br />
that, with this, I landed in the middle of society,<br />
amidst branding and marketing.<br />
You’re performing at the Doofe Musik<br />
[Stupid Music] Festival, a kind of an intellectual<br />
look at escapism in music. How<br />
do you understand the concept of stupid<br />
music? It’s an ambivalent situation. I find escapism<br />
fundamentally good. There is actually really<br />
stupid music, meaning really dumb. But I take<br />
it as when you love someone and you tell them,<br />
“You’re being silly” – it’s more of an embrace. For<br />
me, that’s a compliment. Of course, if everyone<br />
is escapist, the world will fall apart. But we need<br />
people at the edges of society who build side<br />
streets into the unknown. And when they return<br />
and walk back-and-forth, it becomes a main<br />
street on which other people can walk back-andforth<br />
– and this is how reality expands. Escapism<br />
is very important. Artist are escapists. Lovers<br />
and alcoholics are escapists. There are many<br />
attempts to escape this world, and thereby one<br />
expands the world.<br />
Is this what you mean when your website<br />
declaims, “We’re not in this world to love<br />
the wrong women. Do you understand<br />
me?” Actually, it’s a literal declaration of love.<br />
It’s a hugely flirty thing to say to a women you’re<br />
trying to seduce. “We’re not in this world to love<br />
the wrong women” implies that this is, perhaps,<br />
the right one. ■<br />
Friedrich<br />
Liechtenstein<br />
in five dates<br />
1956 Born in Stalinstadt<br />
(now Eisenhüttenstadt)<br />
as Hans-Holger<br />
Friedrich.<br />
1995 Moves to Berlin.<br />
2003 Launches<br />
electropop career as<br />
Friedrich Liechtenstein.<br />
2013 Produces “Supergeil” with Der Tourist.<br />
The viral EDEKA commercial based<br />
on the track follows shortly thereafter.<br />
<strong>2014</strong> Release of the single “Belgique,<br />
Belgique” in April, to be followed by the album<br />
Bad Gastein in June.<br />
Esra Rotthoff<br />
Ralph Anderl<br />
04.06.14 . zitadelle<br />
Liz green<br />
17.05.14 . Privatclub<br />
emiLy barker<br />
+ Chris t-t + John aLLen<br />
18.05.14 . grüner salon<br />
rodrigo amarante<br />
sänger von „Los hermanos“ & „LittLe Joy“<br />
18.05.14 . Privatclub<br />
badbadnotgood<br />
19.05.14 . grüner salon<br />
bear‘s den<br />
+ matthew & the atLas<br />
20.05.14 . Lido<br />
Cherub<br />
21.05.14 . Prince Charles<br />
the Pretty things<br />
22.05.14 . Frannz<br />
KulturNews & ZITTY präsentieren:<br />
NEIL FINN<br />
spec. guest: Tiny Ruins<br />
Do. 08.05. Einlass 20:00 Postbahnhof<br />
THE TROUBLE<br />
WITH TEMPLETON<br />
Do. 15.05. Einlass 19:00 Maschinenhaus<br />
KulturNews & ZITTY präsentieren:<br />
THE QUEEN<br />
EXTRAVAGANZA<br />
The Official Queen Tribute Band<br />
Di. 20.05. Einlass 20:00 Postbahnhof<br />
INTRO, ByteFM, PIRANHA & RADIO FRITZ präsentieren:<br />
LORDE<br />
Do. 29.05. Einlass 19:00 Columbiahalle<br />
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com<br />
Online Tickets unter www.tickets.de Ticket Hotline: 030 - 6110 1313<br />
ISAAC’S<br />
EYE<br />
SCienCe & TheaTre<br />
Written by LuCAS HNATH<br />
Directed by GüNTHER GRoSSER<br />
etb<br />
plus concerts by Saudia Young<br />
and Sofia Talvik, Comedy<br />
Sportz, PS122 Global, the<br />
International Comedy Showcase<br />
and much more!<br />
<strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong><br />
10.06.14 . astra kulturhaus<br />
young knives<br />
27.05.14 . magnet<br />
miCah P. hinson<br />
28.05.14 . Privatclub<br />
robert FranCis<br />
& the night tide<br />
31.05.14 . Frannz<br />
merChandise<br />
02.06.14 . kantine berghain<br />
awoLnation<br />
04.06.14 . C-Club<br />
wye oak<br />
+ baCheLorette<br />
04.06.14 . Lido<br />
Luke sitaL-singh<br />
04.06.14 . kantine berghain<br />
International Performing Arts Center<br />
41<br />
ETBERLIN.dE
What’s on<br />
music and nightlife<br />
concert picks<br />
Fri, <strong>May</strong> 2 - Sat, <strong>May</strong> 3, 20:00<br />
Occulto Fest (Wild ’n’ Wacky)<br />
Although the now-annual<br />
Occulto Fest is less Crowley-esque<br />
than an average<br />
night at the Kit Kat Club, it<br />
does bring some likeably<br />
outré souls to Berlin. Night<br />
one hosts the Godspeed-y<br />
ENSEMBLE ECONOMIC,<br />
the chip scratch fever of<br />
MARTA ZAPPAROLI and<br />
locals RVNES, whose<br />
name is so au courant that I can’t be bothered to figure out<br />
what they sound like. Saturday stars Thurston-benighted<br />
JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER (photo), Boring Machines’<br />
UMCB – VON TESLA and SARA BONAVENTURE in drone-y<br />
and industrial collaboration, and post-punky RUINS OF<br />
KRÜGER. Plus videos. And DJs! West Germany, Skalitzer<br />
Str. 133, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor<br />
Fri, <strong>May</strong> 23, 19:30<br />
Thomas Dutronc (Chanson Aristocrat)<br />
This child of yé-yé heroes<br />
and occasional movie<br />
stars François Hardy<br />
and Jacques Dutronc<br />
shows that the beignet<br />
does not fry far from<br />
the boulangerie, with an<br />
approach a bit jauntier –<br />
or Djangoier – than the<br />
similarly pedigreed<br />
Benjamin Biolay. Starting<br />
out as a jazz guitarist, those Django comparisons are<br />
inevitable, and though THOMAS DUTRONC has been a<br />
French pop fixture since his mid-thirties, Gypsy-besotted<br />
Berlin should take to him like the aforementioned beignet<br />
takes to a colon. Imperial Club, Friedrichstr. 101, Mitte,<br />
S+U-Bhf Friedrichstr.<br />
Sun, <strong>May</strong> 25, 21:00<br />
Billy Hart Quartet (Jazz Legend)<br />
Having driven the electric<br />
music of Miles Davis and<br />
Herbie Hancock at their<br />
most avant, Pharaoh<br />
Sanders at his most cosmic<br />
and Stan Getz at his<br />
most plaintive, drummer<br />
BILLY HART has released<br />
excellent records under his<br />
own name in the past, but<br />
many have been surprised<br />
by his recent ECM-based renaissance, leading a band<br />
featuring Ethan Iverson on piano and Mark Turner on reeds.<br />
Finagling an experimental edge within the tradition, it’s one<br />
of jazz’s finest working bands. A-Trane, Bleibtreustr. 1,<br />
Charlottenburg, S-Bhf Savignyplatz<br />
Sat, <strong>May</strong> 31, 20:00<br />
Lee “Scratch” Perry & the White Belly Rats<br />
(Dub Legend)<br />
When Exberliner interviewed<br />
Black Ark dub legend<br />
LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY<br />
almost a decade ago, he<br />
informed us that if any<br />
human were to be like an<br />
animal, then “that human<br />
being would be fucking<br />
lucky.” So it makes sense<br />
that his longtime backing<br />
band is named THE WHITE<br />
BELLY RATS. At 78, Perry has been taking a decadeslong<br />
victory lap; though he records pretty frequently, he’s<br />
more of a producer’s collectible. Not unlike many of the<br />
rare records he’s put out. Yaam, An der Schillingbrücke,<br />
Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof<br />
John Rogers<br />
Veronica Jonsson<br />
A chat with... Owen Pallett<br />
By Aoife McKeown<br />
Longtime Arcade Fire fiddle player and Canadian loop-pedal enthusiast<br />
OWEN PALLETT’s fourth solo album, In Conflict (Domino), is aptly titled<br />
in its aggression, so don’t confuse him with his former Final Fantasy<br />
moniker. Just off an Oscar nomination for the score to Spike Jonze’s<br />
Her, he’ll be personalising our algorithms along with fellow avant-queer<br />
band Xiu Xiu at Volksbühne on Sunday, <strong>May</strong> 25.<br />
You went to the Oscars. Well, I don’t think<br />
that the Oscar nomination necessarily gauged<br />
for the quality of the movie. Spike won, which<br />
was great. I really don’t know what to say about<br />
the awards ceremony. It seems much more<br />
glamorous maybe than it actually is. I had a<br />
conversation with Ethan Hawke for a while,<br />
but I didn’t actually know it was him. I was<br />
just in my own world and not paying attention<br />
or something, or it could also be that he just<br />
looks really different in real life. He was like,<br />
“Something something something,” and I was<br />
like, “Oh yeah, did you have a movie in the<br />
race?” and he said, “Oh, yeah, like, Before Midnight.”<br />
And I said, “Oh yeah, I love that movie!”<br />
But afterwards I thought that must have been<br />
so weird for him to hear. And I met Benedict<br />
Cumberbatch. He was nice.<br />
Plus the hors d’oeurves. You’re being ironic,<br />
but I’m serious. It’s like taking a flight – it<br />
sounds really exciting because you fly out into<br />
the sky, but you think, “I’m kind of uncomfortable.<br />
Where do I get out? Where are my bags?”<br />
Your new record is entitled In Conflict,<br />
but from what I understand, that could<br />
have applied to Her’s recording sessions.<br />
I came to that project late. I was<br />
collaborating with Arcade Fire<br />
on it – so in a way, I had two<br />
bosses. The band had already<br />
been working on the score for a<br />
long time. They felt that there<br />
were some things that needed to<br />
be done that I was quite good at,<br />
like scoring. In the last six weeks,<br />
OWEN PALLETT w/<br />
Xiu Xiu and DJ Mr.<br />
Freeze Sun, <strong>May</strong> 25,<br />
20:00 | Volksbühne,<br />
Linienstr. 227,<br />
Mitte, U-Bhf Rosa-<br />
Luxemburg Platz<br />
I’d say that we got at least half of the score<br />
done. Spike would be just so gentle in expressing<br />
himself and I’d be, like, “Yeah, here we go,<br />
do another take” and I would just seem like<br />
such an asshole. He’s a sweetheart.<br />
Were the changes related to Scarlett Johansson<br />
replacing Samantha Morton as the<br />
voice of the OS? One hundred percent. When<br />
the band first started working on it, it began as a<br />
science fiction movie examining the technological<br />
and philosophical questions. But along the<br />
way – Spike didn’t have any producers to answer<br />
to, so this was entirely his decision – he wanted to<br />
turn it more into a romance. So the score had to<br />
be entirely redone. Initially, it was a much more<br />
futuristic, Blade Runner-y kind of style – still very<br />
beautiful and organic, but instrumentally, sonically,<br />
more sci-fi. So then they had to redo it in<br />
this more romantic kind of way, with strings and<br />
electric guitars – more explosions in the sky.<br />
What did In Conflict explode from? Essentially,<br />
the songs were born out of a period<br />
in my life when I was feeling confused about<br />
the relationship between my conscious self and<br />
my unconscious self. I was confused that when<br />
my body was free from caffeine and alcohol,<br />
or if I was doing exercise, my body had<br />
an entirely different way of processing<br />
information than when I was intoxicated.<br />
And other darker states of being relating<br />
to sanity and gender dysphoria. Like,<br />
transgenderism? Some people can feel<br />
completely non-male or non-female depending<br />
on their birth gender. That would<br />
take me all afternoon to talk about. ■<br />
42 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Ich will nicht nach Berlin<br />
Ghosts and heroes of Hansa By Lady Gaby<br />
We know Hansa Studios, in farwest<br />
Kreuzberg just off Potsdamer<br />
Platz, as the birthplace of David<br />
Bowie’s “Heroes” and U2’s Achtung<br />
Baby. But what’s it like to record<br />
there today? German musician<br />
Andrea Schroeder and her band<br />
had the chance to find out while<br />
laying down a pair of tracks for<br />
their sophomore album, Where<br />
the Wild Oceans End.<br />
“I believe the studio is very<br />
important for the mood in the<br />
song. Houses have their memories;<br />
mixing desks do too. And while<br />
recording in such a place you are<br />
able to record things besides what’s<br />
obviously heard. You catch spirits.”<br />
Appropriate, then, that one of the<br />
tracks her band recorded in Hansa<br />
is titled “Ghosts of Berlin”.<br />
“‘Ghosts of Berlin’ got born as one for all<br />
the forgotten people, for the hidden in the<br />
dark, and also for remembering the ghosts<br />
of the past,” says Schroeder. The first time<br />
the band played the song live at the release<br />
concert for debut album Blackbird, Lutz<br />
Mastmeyer from Glitterhouse Records<br />
imagined Andrea singing the German version<br />
of “Heroes” but with original lyrics. “My<br />
first thought was that it would be a kind of<br />
suicide, but I started to discover the German<br />
‘Helden’ (‘heroes’) lyrics for myself and found<br />
a very personal meaning. The first times we<br />
played it, I always heard David Bowie’s voice<br />
in my head. But he slowly disappeared and<br />
left space for my own interpretation.”<br />
While the majority of the album was<br />
recorded at Ocean Sound Recording Studios<br />
in Giske, Norway, it made sense for them to<br />
record these two songs in Hansa Studios. “I<br />
could even feel the Wall while singing the lyrics,”<br />
says Schroeder. “It was the only possible<br />
place to record these very Berlin connected<br />
songs.” They also recorded a third track,<br />
“Kisses For My President”, for the upcoming<br />
Jeffrey Lee Pierce Session Project, out in <strong>May</strong>.<br />
The only German in the band, Schroeder<br />
is accompanied by Jesper Lehmkuhl (guitar)<br />
from Copenhagen and Dave Allen (bass) and<br />
Chris Hughes (drums) from Australia.<br />
Most of the songs are created by<br />
Schroeder in close collaboration with<br />
Lehmkuhl, and once the song starts,<br />
everyone else adds their personal<br />
interpretation and creativity. “Sometimes<br />
we play a song 20 times just to<br />
get the feel of it. We have a shared<br />
vision and because we come from a<br />
similar musical background, things<br />
fall easily into place,” says Hughes.<br />
He, too, was excited to record in<br />
the same house as the band’s musical<br />
heroes. “It had the atmosphere of the<br />
old divided city and is very much in<br />
the zeitgeist from Berlin, and if you<br />
looked out of the window 25 years<br />
ago, you would have seen the Wall.”<br />
There were drawbacks to recording<br />
there. “The air conditioning in<br />
the studio was so cold that for the vocal<br />
recordings we had to put up a boilingwater-filled<br />
bucket to moisten the air,” says<br />
Schroeder. And, says Lehmkuhl, “I missed a<br />
smokers’ lounge. Smoking was possible out<br />
of the kitchen window only.”<br />
Despite that, says Schroeder, “It is an<br />
excellently equipped studio in the centre of<br />
Berlin, and the songs on their new album are<br />
very inspired by the town itself. I’m sure our<br />
fans appreciate our music being recorded<br />
there. The only appropriate place to record a<br />
cover of ‘Heroes’ is the place where the song<br />
was born. So it was amazing that we could go<br />
there to make it happen.” ■<br />
Dixie Schmiedle<br />
Billy Budd – Benjamin Britten<br />
Conductor: donald Runnicles<br />
director: david Alden<br />
Opening Night on 22 <strong>May</strong> <strong>2014</strong>; 28, 31 <strong>May</strong>; 3, 6 June <strong>2014</strong><br />
Stan Hema; Fotografie © Heji Shin<br />
Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bismarckstraße 35, 10627 Berlin<br />
Tickets and Information: +49 [30]-343 84 343<br />
www.deutscheoperberlin.de<br />
43
What’s on<br />
art<br />
Hans Richter – Encounters –<br />
“From Dada till today”<br />
This exhibition showcases<br />
the highly influential<br />
Modernist’s work ranging<br />
from the early years as<br />
one of the founders of<br />
the Dada movement and<br />
onwards till his death in<br />
1976. As Richter was an<br />
early proponent of film as<br />
an artistic outlet, a large<br />
portion of the exhibition<br />
centres on moving<br />
pictures and features collaborations with contemporaries<br />
such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Kazimir Malevich.<br />
It’s a thorough retrospective showing the multi-medial<br />
artist’s lasting influence on both the art world and the<br />
politically radical one. MH Through Jun 30, Martin-<br />
Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Kreuzberg, S+U-Bhf<br />
Potsdamer Platz, Wed-Mon 10-19<br />
Irene Hofmann – Bewohnter Planet<br />
The desperate obliqueness<br />
of desolate city<br />
outskirts is something<br />
Berlin-based painter Irene<br />
Hofmann uses to her<br />
advantage, somehow extracting<br />
beauty from barren<br />
concrete graveyards.<br />
Her current show, whose<br />
title means “Inhabited<br />
Planet”, confronts the<br />
leftover spaces that go overlooked and ignored, yet are<br />
integral to the overflow of any urban area. Formally her<br />
work explores geometric patterns and soft colour palettes,<br />
varying by season with the light from work to work. CM<br />
Through <strong>May</strong> 18, Brotfabrik, Caligariplatz 1, Prenzlauer<br />
Berg, S-Bhf Prenzlauer Allee, Mon-Sat 9-18<br />
Kei Takemura + Isa Schmidlehner –<br />
Take Good Care<br />
The two ladies join<br />
force to bring a strong<br />
throwdown of expressionism<br />
and daily insight. The<br />
exhibition shows that loud<br />
can also come softly, as<br />
the works approach in<br />
an almost quiet way, yet<br />
get louder just moments<br />
after you make contact<br />
with their presence.<br />
Schmidlehner’s bright watercolour-esque paintings<br />
serve as backdrop to Takemura’s light-infused daily life<br />
performance. This is one of those shows that just sneaks<br />
up on you and... BOOM! FM <strong>May</strong> 27-Jul 5, Patrick<br />
Ebensperger Galerie, Plantagenstr 30, Wedding, S-Bhf<br />
Wedding, Tue-Fri 12-18-30, Sat 12-16<br />
Lawrence Power – Paintings<br />
Buried within the wildly<br />
abstract, heavily textured<br />
works in Lawrence Power’s<br />
first solo exhibition are<br />
suggestions of landscapes<br />
or human faces. Eyes<br />
seem to wink in and out<br />
of broad fields of colour<br />
punctuated by violent<br />
streaks. Power, a New<br />
Zealander who migrated<br />
to Berlin, started working with oils on cardboard before<br />
switching to canvas. His creations still have a slightly sculptural<br />
feel, thanks to the thick layers of colour he applies,<br />
molds, slices, slashes and scrapes. The overall effect borders<br />
on collage, hovering somewhere between classical and<br />
contemporary. DH Through <strong>May</strong> 24, Galerie Emmanuel<br />
Post, Grolmanstr. 46, Charlottenburg, Tue-Sat 12-19<br />
“It’s kind of like the puzzle<br />
of a psycho” By Fridey Mickel<br />
Berlin-based, world-travelling, award-winning photographer Sascha<br />
Weidner reveals his illogical side at his new show Aokihagara.<br />
This month he receives the first-ever Entrepreneur<br />
4.0 prize, worth €15,000, for his groundbreaking<br />
photography. Yet what makes us fall<br />
in love with his work is his illogical, poetic side,<br />
which Berlin art lovers can witness for themselves<br />
at his show at Pavlov’s Dog, opening <strong>May</strong> 1.<br />
Your series about the suicide forest in<br />
Japan is quite striking. I was there, like eight<br />
times, in that forest where people kill themselves.<br />
It’s the second-biggest location for suicide.<br />
In the one I won the prize for, the cherry<br />
blossom at night, there’s also some weird thing<br />
inside, for the aesthetics or whatever to add up.<br />
Where do your photos come from? That’s<br />
a good question! I like what the jury said, they<br />
gave me the prize because i knew myself and<br />
that my works are like different aspects of approach<br />
to photography, questioning photography,<br />
and also questioning myself in the field of<br />
photography. There’s a big biographical aspect<br />
in my work, but also a huge fragility. There are<br />
some German moments inside of a romantic,<br />
clinched... restlessness, like since my first cry as a<br />
baby. Always in a hurry, trying to find images.<br />
But how is what you do different?<br />
In one of the exhibitions I<br />
did in the museum of photography,<br />
there was one room with 1001<br />
photographs. They were arranged<br />
by colour, which is totally strange,<br />
and totally stupid for photography<br />
in a way. So actually, I invited every<br />
person who visited the exhibition<br />
Sascha Weidner —<br />
Aokihagara<br />
Starts <strong>May</strong> 1 |<br />
Pavlov’s Dog, Bergstr.<br />
19, Prenzlauer Berg,<br />
S-Bhf Nordbahnhof,<br />
Thu-Sat 16-20<br />
to take one photograph with them as a present.<br />
Every photograph was signed, there was a stamp,<br />
there was a number. So here you can also see<br />
how the exhibition space changed. Of course, it<br />
was intellectual manipulation. If you say, “You<br />
get one for free”, the person looks at the exhibition<br />
differently. There were people coming and<br />
spending 40 minutes in this room...<br />
“You don’t have to photograph it to own it.”<br />
What do you think about that? Sure. <strong>May</strong>be<br />
I am the one who took the picture, but that<br />
doesn’t mean the image belongs to me, I was<br />
just the one able to see it. I don’t need to pick<br />
the flowers, because also maybe the photograph<br />
leaves them there. That’s almost too sentimental<br />
and starts to get kitschy, but for example, a lot of<br />
images that I photograph are like codes.<br />
Do you have an example in mind? I have that<br />
one photograph of a bed linen. You were not<br />
in that bed. <strong>May</strong>be I was, you don’t even know.<br />
The photograph stands in one context for love;<br />
in another, it looks almost like an aerial view<br />
of mountains. If I put this in this installation<br />
where I did it already, where you can see the<br />
death portrait of my mother or my dad, you have<br />
sheets inferring lovers and sex moving<br />
over to the last sheet, which you pull<br />
over a dead body. So, it’s about the<br />
codes. If I photograph flowers, the<br />
image might remind them of another<br />
location in their lives, and even more<br />
about smell, feeling a stage of their<br />
lives. This is also a very interesting<br />
thing, it’s full of interpretation. It’s<br />
44 • may <strong>2014</strong>
art<br />
editor’s<br />
pick<br />
always in a flow; it’s kind of like the puzzle<br />
of a psycho.<br />
Your exhibitions are never quite just<br />
about the photos... It’s not about putting<br />
pictures on the wall. I use the room to<br />
tell my story, to create a theme, a storyline,<br />
underlined by a romantic melancholy. It’s<br />
totally authentic, like I am. A lot of times,<br />
it’s also too much, like I am. Feeling too<br />
much and speaking too much. ■<br />
The Biennale bounces back<br />
uwe walter<br />
Since 1998 the Berlin Biennale, the near cultlevel<br />
fair initiated by KW founder Klaus Biesenbach,<br />
has surfaced biannually with new curators,<br />
themes, and locations, on the heels of Documenta<br />
as one of Germany's most important art events.<br />
With the 2012 edition poorly received by critics<br />
like Frieze Magazine's Jörg Heiser and Monopol's<br />
Sarah Lehnert, this year's Biennale, the eighth, has<br />
nowhere to go but up. Locations have expanded to<br />
include new participants in the west of Berlin, including<br />
the picturesque waterfront Haus am Waldsee as<br />
well as the Ethnological Museum Dahlem.<br />
Looking backwards, curator Juan A. Gaitán has<br />
harnessed the works of 50-plus international artists<br />
in a Berlin-centric, yet universal exhibition. This year<br />
is themed around historical narratives and their<br />
timeless relevance to our lives. As broad a concept<br />
as it is, research and preparation focused on 18thand<br />
19th-century perceptions and comparisons to<br />
Berlin today, especially relationships to building and<br />
architecture, residents and labour movements<br />
(or, sometimes, lack thereof).<br />
Already open for visitors since late<br />
January, KW's exhibition Crash Pad, by<br />
participating artist Andreas Angelidakis,<br />
was this Biennale's first commissioned<br />
work. The cosy sitting space and library resembles<br />
a 19th-century salon and is filled<br />
with antique carpets intended to portray an<br />
iconographic transition from an Ottoman<br />
to a more European style of domesticity.<br />
The title has equal relevance to Greece's<br />
initial economic crisis from 1893, after<br />
which European intervention was needed<br />
to restore economic security. Relevant ties<br />
to the past are anything but a stretch.<br />
Australian text-based artist Agatha<br />
Gothe-Snape has already released an<br />
ongoing work titled Untitled, the meat<br />
of which comes from multiple sources,<br />
currently including a regular dialogue with<br />
Gaitán about Biennale production, execution<br />
and conception. Along with conversations<br />
with Gaitan, she uses text from all facets of<br />
modern life as inspiration, including various forms<br />
of social media, news, entertainment, literature,<br />
advertisements and other dialogues from<br />
relationships – personal, business or otherwise. A<br />
current version of this digital work is available for<br />
viewing on the Biennale website.<br />
Specific pieces from participants remain elusive,<br />
but more are announced with every passing week.<br />
Included in the lineup is Berliner Mariana Castillo<br />
Deball, whose Richard Serra-esque swooping sculptures<br />
combine soft abstraction<br />
with complex pattern<br />
and detail work. Her largescale<br />
work "Uncomfortable<br />
Objects" wowed at 2012's<br />
Documenta, showing promise<br />
for the upcoming show.<br />
Camille Moreno<br />
Berlin Biennale<br />
<strong>May</strong> 29 - Aug 8 | KW,<br />
Haus am Waldsee,<br />
Museen Dahlem, full<br />
programme at www.<br />
berlinbiennale.de<br />
UNTIL 02.06.<strong>2014</strong><br />
DOROTHY IANNONE<br />
THIS SWEETNESS OUTSIDE OF TIME<br />
GEMÄLDE, OBJEKTE, BÜCHER 1959–<strong>2014</strong><br />
Berlinische Galerie, Alte Jakobstraße 124–128, 10969 Berlin, Wed–Mon 10am–6pm<br />
www.berlinischegalerie.de, www.facebook.com/berlinischegalerie<br />
45<br />
Dorothy Iannone, aus: Dialogues (unnumbered), 1968,<br />
Sammlung Andersch, Neuss, Foto: Kai-Annett Becker
What’s on<br />
art<br />
Neue Baukunst<br />
This rare glimpse of<br />
German architecture in<br />
the early 20th century<br />
showcases black and<br />
white photographs and<br />
sketches from Walter<br />
Müller-Wulckow’s Die<br />
Blauen Bücher series.<br />
The exhibit offers other<br />
glimpses into the development<br />
of the four books,<br />
including critical reviews, letters and even instructions<br />
to “burn the sky” or “remove that pile of trash” from<br />
specific images. The work on display seeks out beauty<br />
in otherwise understated, everyday architecture. DH<br />
Through Jun 10, Bauhaus-Archiv Museum, Klingelhöferstr.<br />
14, Charlottenburg, Wed-Mon 10-17<br />
Raïssa Venables – Clearing Space<br />
Visitors should expect<br />
to be lured into another<br />
dimension when viewing<br />
Venables’ work. She takes<br />
a very important element<br />
of successful painting<br />
and re-appropriates it<br />
for use in packaging her<br />
photography. Her works<br />
glimmer, not due to<br />
high-resolution, light or<br />
sharpness, but to the fact that each ‘photo’ consists of<br />
many tiny photos acting sort of like pixels that compose<br />
the total image. What at first looks seamless concedes<br />
to layers and layers of work, giving the contents of the<br />
exhibition backbone and material weight in this world. FM<br />
<strong>May</strong> 9 - Jun 21, Wagner + Partner, Strausberger Platz 8,<br />
Friedrichshain, U-Bhf Schillingstr., Tue - Sat 13-18<br />
Rembrandt Bugatti<br />
The brother of the famous<br />
carmaker takes over Alte<br />
Nationalgalerie with a<br />
large selection of sculptures<br />
and sketches. Ranging<br />
from the ordinary with<br />
cows and fawns to the<br />
exotic with anteaters and<br />
elephants, the sculptures<br />
often take on an organic<br />
character with visible<br />
tool marks accentuating the materials, blurring the divide<br />
between material and subject matter. He only rarely<br />
depicted human characters, but when he did they give<br />
off a sense of projected savageness, silently speaking<br />
volumes about human nature. MH Through Jul 27, Alte<br />
Nationalgalerie, Bodestr. 1-3, Mitte, S-Bhf Hackescher<br />
Markt, Tue-Sun 10-18<br />
The Children Pox Collective – The tree of<br />
the bird with a shadow<br />
Marking their first exhibition<br />
as ‘The Children Pox<br />
Collective’, artists Juan<br />
Zamora & Alejandra<br />
Freymann work under<br />
alter egos Josephine and<br />
Victor Glass, to produce<br />
a postal cadavre exquis.<br />
Exchanging drawings<br />
per snail mail between<br />
Madrid and Johannesburg<br />
over the last six months, they created a complete<br />
storyline through their works. This form of change due to<br />
circumstance presents themes of artistic identity from a<br />
new angle. The visitor actively takes part in the development<br />
and resolution, deepening the game of cognition<br />
and mystery. FM Through <strong>May</strong> 18, Vesselroom Project,<br />
Adalbertstr. 4, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Wed-Fri<br />
2-18, Sat 15-18<br />
Chinese art: the next generation<br />
In 1993, the<br />
show Mythos<br />
China at the<br />
Haus der Kulturen<br />
der Welt<br />
became the stuff<br />
of Berlin legend.<br />
A young German<br />
artist named<br />
Andreas Schmid<br />
had just arrived<br />
from China<br />
and wanted to<br />
present some<br />
of the fabulous<br />
new friends he<br />
made there. He<br />
went to nonprofit<br />
spaces like Künstlerhaus Bethanien, but kept<br />
getting turned down due to the political undertones<br />
of showing Chinese contemporary art. He landed<br />
at HKW, and they gave him the open ear. The show<br />
ended up being the first ever Chinese contemporary<br />
art exhibition outside of the country, yet came<br />
together without help from the Chinese government.<br />
Twenty years later, Andreas Schmid returns with<br />
new show Die 8 der Wege, currently on view at the<br />
Uferhallen in Wedding.<br />
It acts like a second chapter to its massive<br />
predecessor, and is equally massive in its own<br />
right. Schmid and co-curator Thomas Eller use 23<br />
different artistic positions to pick up where the last<br />
show left off, to present their attempt to answer the<br />
question, “What is ‘Modern Chinese’?” The show’s<br />
starting point was a Chinese biennale in 2008, a<br />
watershed moment in China that acted as a driving<br />
force pushing the art to ‘go West’. Both Schmid<br />
and Eller have spent extensive time in China over<br />
the last years – Schmid in particular has travelled<br />
between Germany and China since the early 1980s,<br />
arriving just in time to witness firsthand the development<br />
of chinese contemporary art right at the point<br />
of the aftermath of the cultural revolution in the late<br />
Three-day free-for-all<br />
1970s.<br />
Along with<br />
Shanghai-based<br />
curator Guo<br />
Xiaoyan, the two<br />
worked together in<br />
the quest to define<br />
a cultural context,<br />
working out differences<br />
between<br />
western and Asian<br />
art, and dissecting<br />
ancient Chinese<br />
social philosophy,<br />
such as ideas on<br />
what ‘revolution’<br />
means in Chinese<br />
culture, and how<br />
chinese definitions<br />
of concepts<br />
such as ‘freedom’<br />
contrast to that of<br />
the western world.<br />
What is interesting<br />
about the show is<br />
the blatant onesidedness<br />
of only<br />
showing Chinese art in this dialogue between East<br />
and West. Yet the objectivity prevails through the<br />
balancing of the curators.<br />
Will this show be remembered in Berlin, a place<br />
currently in such need of non-Western art influence?<br />
The thing which seems to carry it is the<br />
reputation of the curators, yet the artwork – from<br />
dazzling light work by Li Hui to a subversive “North<br />
Korean Film Festival” by Utopia Group – really<br />
does hold its own. The chance to experience this<br />
fascinating dimension within the contemporary<br />
art world is well worth the trip to Wedding. Also<br />
in support of the show is an amazing multimedia<br />
website (die8derwege.info) offering background<br />
and lots of interviews – make sure to check it out<br />
before you go. FM<br />
Gallery Weekend<br />
<strong>May</strong> 2-4 | various<br />
locations, full<br />
programme at www.<br />
gallery-weekendberlin.de<br />
DIE 8 DER WEGE<br />
Through Jul 13 |<br />
Uferhallen, Uferstr.<br />
8, Wedding, U-Bhf<br />
Pankstr., Mon-Sat<br />
13-20, Sun 11-18<br />
Gallery Weekend celebrates its first decade of<br />
existence with this year's 72-hour, city-wide orgy of<br />
consecutive art parties and exhibition vernissages. For<br />
every one of the 50 officially participating galleries,<br />
bargain for another three unofficial freeloader galleries<br />
to host events nearby, resulting in an inharnessable<br />
smorgasbord of hundreds of events that attract more<br />
and more visitors each year. Sure, some of the participating<br />
exhibitions are on view anyway during the weeks<br />
prior or post. However, the weekend festival features<br />
special talks and parties, like a brunch at Berlinische<br />
Galerie on Saturday morning and a discussion later<br />
that day at Me Collectors Room with salient Italian art<br />
collector Patrizia Sandretto. Our personal favourite for<br />
the weekend is the Blackmarket<br />
show happening <strong>May</strong> 2-3 at<br />
L17 (Lehrter Str. 17, Moabit),<br />
featuring over 64 artists including<br />
Römer + Römer (photo). If<br />
ever there was a time to binge<br />
on arty-farty schmooze cake,<br />
it's now. Did we mention the<br />
entire weekend is free? CM<br />
46 • may <strong>2014</strong>
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kastanienallee 82 . p-berg<br />
www.gls-berlin.de<br />
Language School<br />
TestDaF-Zentrum<br />
Where it’s fun to learn German.<br />
Great German teachers<br />
Join anytime<br />
Exams and certificates<br />
• In the middle of Berlin-Neukölln<br />
4 weeks<br />
Deutsch<br />
188€<br />
die<br />
deutSCHule<br />
Karl-Marx-Straße 107<br />
12043 Berlin-Neukölln<br />
Voice +49 30 6808 5223<br />
www.die-deutschule.de<br />
SPRACHwerk<br />
die Sprachschule im Fachwerkhof<br />
Improve your German!<br />
Competent German teachers<br />
+ small groups + friendly<br />
atmosphere<br />
Now located near<br />
Potsdamer Platz<br />
Potsdamer Str. 98a,<br />
10785 Berlin<br />
030 2300 5570<br />
www.ifs-deutsch.de<br />
“Learn German through<br />
English”<br />
• Bilingual Teaching Method<br />
• Comparative Approach<br />
• Individual Lessons<br />
• Intensive Group Course<br />
• Accent Reduction<br />
Solmsstraße 30 10961<br />
Tel: (030) 44 73 1949<br />
www.sprachwerk-berlin.de<br />
Want to sublet your flat?<br />
We’ll help you!<br />
• professional service<br />
• entirely free of charge<br />
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Furnished or unfurnished, all districts,<br />
all sizes, by the month or longer.<br />
Please register your flat online:<br />
www.exberlinerflatrentals.com<br />
Tel: 0049 30 47372964,<br />
Max-Beer-Str. 48, 10119 Berlin<br />
Office hours: 10.00 to 14.00<br />
47
Where to go in Mitte<br />
8<br />
1. HASHI KITCHEN offers authentic Japanese<br />
tapas inspired by traditional Japanese<br />
family-style sharing with an open kitchen for<br />
you to enjoy the chef’s performance. Hashi<br />
also offers a wide selection of Japanese<br />
spirits, including schochu. Rosenthaler Str.<br />
63, Tel 030 6796 1459, Mon-Sat 12-24, Sun<br />
18-24, www.hashi-kitchen.de<br />
10<br />
7<br />
2<br />
5<br />
3<br />
6<br />
1<br />
4<br />
12<br />
9<br />
11<br />
2. KONK The largest selection of Berlin-based<br />
designer fashion including labels Anntian, Boessert<br />
Schorn, Hanna Pordzik, Isabell de Hillerin, Hui<br />
Hui, Kiesel, Mikenke, Naoko Ogawa, Nico Sutor,<br />
Penelope‘s Sphere & Thone Negrón. Support your<br />
local designers & look fab! Kleine Hamburger<br />
Str. 15, Tel 030 2809 7839, Mon-Fri 12-19,<br />
Sat 12-18, www.konk-berlin.de<br />
3. Fräulein burger’s handcrafted<br />
burgers are lovingly made with 100% organic ingredients<br />
which are sourced locally. The organic<br />
meat is freshly minced several times a day and<br />
gives the burgers an incomparably juicy taste.<br />
They also offer delicious vegan and vegetarian<br />
options! Koppenplatz 1, Tel 030 4672 0908,<br />
Tue-Sun 12-22, www.fraeuleinburger.de<br />
4. Kaffee Burger This charming<br />
old-school pub-club has been hosting poetry<br />
readings, songwriters & indie talent for years.<br />
After 11, the main room morphs into an<br />
all-night dancefloor. Home of the legendary<br />
Russendisko. Torstr. 58-60, Tel 030 2804<br />
6495, Mon-Sat from 22, Sun from 19,<br />
www.kaffeeburger.de<br />
5. Fire Bar After reunification, Berlin<br />
exploded with underground bars. In Fire Bar<br />
you can still feel the spirit of the Berlin underground.<br />
Cheap drinks, sofas, funky lights: the<br />
fire is always burnin’ in this cosy cellar bar.<br />
Krausnickstr. 5, Tel 030 2838 5119,<br />
Mon-Sun from 20, www.fire-club.de<br />
6. BAGEL COMPANY The best bagels in<br />
town! Their motto is fresh, natural and delicious<br />
- or bagelicious! Fresh ingredients, creatively<br />
prepared, offering a nice alternative to fast food.<br />
Satisfy that bagel craving at any of their 5 locations<br />
in Mitte. Rosenthaler Str. 69, Tel 030<br />
4069 0001, Mon-Sun 8-19:30, Sat 7:30-20,<br />
Sun 7:30-19, www.bagel-company.com<br />
7. ROLAND WEISS, Laywer Employment<br />
law problems spoiling your appetite? Roland<br />
Weiss (German attorney at law) has advised<br />
German & international clients on employment<br />
law for more than ten years. He speaks German,<br />
English, Swedish & French. Tucholskystr.<br />
18-20, Tel 030 3406 0390, roland.weiss@<br />
weisslegal.de, www.weisslegal.de<br />
8. Sauerkraut Donald Duck meets Hansel<br />
and Gretel – in a cosy, wood-panelled restaurant.<br />
German and American food cultures clash<br />
head-on with a menu of meaty delights. Seven<br />
kinds of homemade Wurst, creative burgers &<br />
original tapas. Daily lunch specials for €7.50.<br />
Weinbergsweg 25, Tel 030 6640 8355, Mon-Fri<br />
8-1, Sat-Sun 9-1, www.restaurant-sauerkraut.de<br />
9. The Chelsea Bar On Torstraße, the<br />
new heartbeat of the city, The Chelsea Bar is a<br />
comfy Manhattan style bar that not only serves a<br />
wide variety of wines, beers, long drinks & cocktails,<br />
but also features DJs spinning everything<br />
from indie, electro & any alternative music on a<br />
near nightly basis. Torstr. 59, Mon-Sun from<br />
21, www.facebook.com/thechelseabarberlin<br />
10. Lei e Lui Certified all-organic food at the<br />
lovingly decorated Lei e Lui. A variety of tasty,<br />
creative Mediterranean-Oriental specialities<br />
to choose from. Regular specialties, fresh vegan<br />
vegetable cream soups, curry & couscous,<br />
pasta, risotti & home-made cakes & desserts.<br />
Wilsnacker Str. 61, Tel 030 3020 8890, Wed-<br />
Sat 17-24, Sun 16-23, www.lei-e-lui.de<br />
11. KILKENNY IRISH PUB Lively pub in<br />
Berlin’s Mitte where natives & tourists drink<br />
& party. Live music 2 to 3 nights a week &<br />
international sports on big screens. Great<br />
food, large selections of beers and spirits.<br />
Easy 24h access to public transport. Enjoy<br />
the sun terrace. S-Bhf Hackescher Markt,<br />
Tel 030 2832 084, Mon-Sun from 12, www.<br />
kilkenny-pub.de<br />
12. Dolores What more can we say?<br />
Dolores has unquestionably the best burritos &<br />
quesadillas in Berlin. Recommended by Time<br />
Out, New York Times, Lonely Planet. Voted #1<br />
value for your money by Exberliner readers, you<br />
know it’s the place to eat. Rosa-Luxemburg-<br />
Str.7, Tel 030 2809 9597, Mon-Sat 11:30-22,<br />
Sun 13-22, www.dolores-berlin.de<br />
48 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Where to go in Prenzlauer Berg<br />
8<br />
6<br />
4<br />
1. Memory It’s easy to see why Kylie Minogue<br />
shops here: a haven for vintage lovers,<br />
the small boutique offers an extensive range of<br />
1950s to 1970s treasures from handbags and<br />
suitcases to jewellery and evening dresses… at<br />
affordable prices! Schwedter Str. 2, Tel 0160<br />
6501 4348, Mon-Sat 14-19<br />
3<br />
1<br />
5<br />
7<br />
2<br />
2. GODSHOT simply plays in another league:<br />
the coffee is excellent, the staff is friendly, and<br />
above all they know their stuff. Take your time,<br />
enjoy the casual, laid-back atmosphere of a<br />
great neighbourhood and one of their delicious<br />
cakes. Immanuelkirchstr. 32, Tel 0179 5112<br />
643, Mon-Fri 8-18, Sat 9-18, Sun 13-18,<br />
www.godshot.de<br />
5. LPG BIOMARKT supplies you with<br />
organic meats, cheeses & even cosmetics. Fill<br />
your basket with fresh bread and treat yourself<br />
to a selection of sweet and savoury goods.<br />
Kollwitzstr. 17, Tel 030 322 971 400, Mon-<br />
Sat 9-21, bakery from 7, www.lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
3. ENGELBERG has exactly the thing to<br />
satisfy Southern German comfort food cravings.<br />
Besides the rotating weekly menu, there’s<br />
Alpine cheese, sausage from a small southern<br />
butcher, delicatessen breakfast, cake, bread,<br />
wine and Likör galore. Oderberger Str. 21, Tel<br />
030 4403 0637, Tue-Sat 10-22, Sun 10-20,<br />
www.engelberg-berlin.de<br />
4. NALU DINER From the Homeland of the<br />
Freefill, USA breakfast & comfort food & a great<br />
cheeseburger & tasty lunch & dinner specials.<br />
For dessert there’s homemade pie, malted milkshakes<br />
& rootbeer floats. All served by friendly<br />
servers in their friendly dining room! Dunckerstr.<br />
80a, Tel 030 8975 8632, Mon 9-16, Tue-Sun<br />
9-22, www.nalu-diner.com<br />
6. VEGANZ Prenzlauer Berg’s vegan supermarket<br />
offers a range of exclusively vegan<br />
products, from fruit, vegetables and sweets<br />
to toiletries and cosmetics, as well as vegan<br />
alternatives to meat and dairy. Love being<br />
vegan with Veganz! Schivelbeiner Str. 34,<br />
Mon-Sat 8-21, www.veganz.de, www.facebook.<br />
com/veganz<br />
7. LEIBHAFTIG Crafted beer & Bavarian<br />
tapas! Experience the real German taste of<br />
homemade beer and South German food<br />
in a familiar atmosphere: small, honest &<br />
delicious – just leibhaftig! Metzer Str. 30,<br />
Tel 030 5481 5039, Mon-Sat 18-24, www.<br />
leibhaftig.com<br />
8. LABYRINTH KINDERMUSEUM The<br />
city makers are here! In "Platz da! Kinder<br />
machen Stadt", the new exhibition at the<br />
Labyrinth Kindermuseum, children take on<br />
the job of urban planners, architects and road<br />
builders. Whether it is about the conversion<br />
and colouring of the city scenery, planning<br />
office, construction site or backyard: kids<br />
can develop new creative ideas for their city<br />
everywhere! Exhibition in English & German.<br />
Osloer Str. 12, Tel 030 800 931 150, www.<br />
labyrinth-kindermuseum.de<br />
SUBLET YOUR BERLIN FLAT! Exberliner Flat Rentals has helped Berliners find suitable,<br />
reliable subletters for their flats for more than ten years. Exberliner’s inhouse agency specialises in<br />
furnished flats in central Berlin for stays between 1 and 12 months or longer. Spare yourself the<br />
hassle and list your flat on our website free-of-charge. Tel 030 4737 2964, Mon-Fri 10-14,<br />
www.exberlinerflatrentals.com<br />
To advertise on this page email ads@exberliner.com<br />
49
Where to go in Friedrichshain<br />
i M azing<br />
C O M P U T E R S Y S T E M S<br />
1. iMazing Looking for Apple products? This<br />
shop is iMazing. Friendly and well-trained staff<br />
are ready to assist you with all your Apple equipment<br />
needs and IT services. Whether you’d like<br />
to buy or have a warranty repair, they are ready<br />
to help quickly and efficiently. Gürtelstr. 42, Tel<br />
030 2005 3660, Mon-Fri 10-13 & 14-19, Sat<br />
12-16, www.imazing.de<br />
formbund®<br />
8<br />
1<br />
6<br />
3<br />
5<br />
7<br />
2. Monster Ronson’s Ichiban<br />
Karaoke is the world’s craziest karaoke<br />
club. Make out on their super dark dance floor,<br />
get naked in the private karaoke boxes & sing<br />
your favourite songs. Warschauer Str. 34,<br />
Tel 030 8975 1327, Mon-Sun from 19, www.<br />
karaokemonster.de<br />
2<br />
4<br />
5. Hops & Barley Serving home-brewed<br />
Pilsner and dark beer, this is the place to go<br />
for a real pub feeling in Friedrichshain. There<br />
are also cider and wheat beers on tap. Part<br />
brewery, part bar, the interior is beautifully<br />
lined with antique tiles. A great crowd and<br />
friendly staff. Wühlischstr. 22-23, Mon-Sun<br />
17-2, www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de<br />
3. NO HABLO ESPANOL Delicious, freshly<br />
made San Francisco style quesadillas and<br />
burritos served by a collection of fun loving international<br />
people. Every Wednesday challenge<br />
the NHE team in a game of rock paper scissors<br />
and win a half-price meal. Kopernikusstr. 22,<br />
Mon-Sun from 12, www.nohabloespanol.de<br />
4. CHORASCO STEAKHOUSE Friedrichshain’s<br />
sizzling new steakhouse offers the finest<br />
juicy, grilled steaks from Argentina. Come here<br />
for the business lunch and don’t miss their<br />
monthly special offers! Modersohnstr. 58,<br />
Tel 030 2757 4530, Mon-Sun 12-23, www.<br />
chorasco-steakhaus.de<br />
6. VEGANZ Check out their newest and biggest<br />
location just off Warschauer Brücke! The<br />
720sqm vegan paradise over 2 floors includes<br />
a supermarket with a range of exclusively vegan<br />
products, a café, bistro, bakery, restaurant<br />
and vegan shoe shop. Love being vegan with<br />
Veganz! Warschauer Str. 33, Mon-Sat 8-23,<br />
www.veganz.de, www.facebook.com/veganz<br />
7. SCHILLERBURGER The legacy<br />
continues from Neukölln to Kreuzberg & now<br />
finally Friedrichshain. Voted one of the Top 10<br />
burgers in Berlin with veggie, vegan, classic<br />
& cheese burgers with all the trimmings. “The<br />
wise man makes provision for the future.”<br />
- Friedrich Schiller Wühlischstr. 41/42,<br />
Tel 030 2977 909, Mon-Sun 11:30-1, www.<br />
schillerburger.com<br />
8. PEGASUS SPRACHSCHULE Learn<br />
German or Turkish in small groups. Pegasus<br />
Sprachschule provide a number of different<br />
options – from a traditional classroom<br />
environment to a cooking course with native<br />
speakers and fellow language school students.<br />
At Pegasus Hostel they provide rooms<br />
and insider information on Berlin in a great<br />
location at a great price. Straße der Pariser<br />
Kommune 35, Tel 030 2977 3650,<br />
www.pegasus-sprachschule-berlin.de<br />
SUBLET YOUR BERLIN FLAT! Exberliner Flat Rentals has helped Berliners find suitable,<br />
reliable subletters for their flats for more than ten years. Exberliner’s inhouse agency specialises in<br />
furnished flats in central Berlin for stays between 1 and 12 months or longer. Spare yourself the<br />
hassle and list your flat on our website free-of-charge. Tel 030 4737 2964, Mon-Fri 10-14,<br />
www.exberlinerflatrentals.com<br />
50 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Where to go in Neukölln<br />
1 6<br />
12<br />
4<br />
10<br />
1. HEIDELBEERZEITEN’s international<br />
team of Thomas Ewert & other young, professional<br />
hairdressers offers exceptional high<br />
quality service – 1 hour per session guaranteed.<br />
Make sure to book your appointment a week in<br />
advance & leave with the perfect hairstyle.<br />
Hobrechtstr. 19, Tel 030 6290 0188, Tue-Fri<br />
10-21, Sat 10-18, www.heidelbeerzeiten.de<br />
7<br />
9<br />
11<br />
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5<br />
8<br />
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13<br />
2. PAZZI X PIZZA Offers an amazing selection<br />
of pizzas & creative topping combinations<br />
including seasonal varieties with pumpkin<br />
or porcini. Innovative antipasti presentation,<br />
salads, tasty frappés & a charming atmosphere.<br />
Slices from only €2! Herrfurthstr. 8, Tel 030<br />
5587 4306, Mon-Sun 11:30-24<br />
3. UNTERTITEL Don’t miss Lasagna Tuesdays<br />
and all-you-can-eat Fridays in this casual Italian<br />
bar/restaurant offering high quality food & wine.<br />
Monthly exhibitions by Berlin based artists, silent<br />
film with live music, flea markets & so much<br />
more! Kienitzer Str. 22, Tel 0174 905 8591<br />
Mon-Thu/Sat 16-24, Fri 16-24, www.untertitelnk.<br />
com, www.facebook.com/untertitel.nk<br />
4. Rollberg kino With 5 screens,<br />
Babylon Kreuzberg’s bigger but lesser known<br />
sister boasts one of the largest original language<br />
movie selections in Berlin. Located on the U8<br />
near Hermannplatz (Boddinstraße) in the Kindl<br />
Boulevard shopping centre. Rollbergstr. 70,<br />
Tel 030 6270 4645, www.yorck.de<br />
5. SCHILLERBAR serves fantastic breakfast<br />
into the afternoon and great cocktails at night.<br />
Enjoy the authentic red paint on the outside<br />
wall meant to threaten the bar upon opening,<br />
left there, and affectionately responded to with<br />
hearts stating “Schiller loves you anyway” (in<br />
German of course). Herrfurthstr. 7, Tel 0172<br />
9824 427, Mon-Sun 9-2, www.schillerbar.com<br />
6. Blattgold Your local, friendly florist.<br />
Creating individualised, hand-picked flower &<br />
plant bouquets for every occasion with love,<br />
passion & special care. Valuing organic, seasonal<br />
& fair trade, specialising in events, home/ business<br />
arrangements & consulting. Weserstr. 5,<br />
Tel 030 9562 5893, Tue-Fri 10-18, Sat 10-16,<br />
www.blattgold-blumen.de<br />
7. AVIATRIX Who said that Berlin’s free spirit<br />
is dead? Right by Tempelhofer Feld, this cosy<br />
art space & café keeps the untamed creativity<br />
of Berlin alive. Delicious coffee & vegan-friendly<br />
delicacies, art & design pieces, homemade children’s<br />
clothes, exhibitions & live music Fridays<br />
at 18. Herrfurthstr. 13, Wed-Thu 12-19, Fri<br />
12-22, Sat-Sun 11-20, www.aviatrixatelier.de<br />
8. mama Kalo Enjoy the best of both German<br />
& French cuisine at this cosy gem in the<br />
Schillerkiez. Everything is homemade, from the<br />
Flammkuchen and Spätzle to the quiche, soups,<br />
salads and desserts. Freshly baked Kuchen,<br />
anyone? Herrfurthstr. 5, Tel 030 6796 2701,<br />
Mon-Tue/Thu 12-22, Fri 12-23, Sat 15-23,<br />
Sun 15-22<br />
9. Gelateria Mos Eisley Delicious<br />
gelato, fruity sorbets, freshly brewed coffee and a<br />
wide variety of cakes & cookies.Vegan ice cream<br />
flavours & cakes. The perfect stop on your way to<br />
Tempelhofer Feld, open all year. Life is short, eat<br />
dessert first! Herrfurthplatz 6, Tel 030 6449<br />
8900, Mon-Sun from 13, www.facebook.com/<br />
GelateriaMosEisley<br />
10. CAFÉ PÊLE-MÊLE Enjoy homemade<br />
cakes, coffee specialties, salads, soups & much<br />
more. Breakfast available all day long, brunch<br />
buffet every Sunday. Tasty smoothies & fresh<br />
shakes, beer & wine. 100% vegan. Free wi-fi.<br />
Bring this in & get 2 for 1 drinks (excluding alcohol).<br />
Innstr. 26, Tel 030 3646 7523, Mon-Fri<br />
10-19, Sat-Sun 10-20, www.pele-mele-berlin.de<br />
11. LA PECORA NERA Experience the<br />
original Venetian aperitif tradition in this cosy<br />
neighbourhood osteria. Enjoy an Aperol Spritz<br />
during daily happy hour 16-18 & try the appetiser<br />
platter with North Italian cheeses & cold<br />
cuts. For dinner, polenta & fresh pasta await<br />
you! Herrfurthplatz 6, Tel 030 2501 3346,<br />
Tue-Sun from 18, www.pecoraberlin.de<br />
12. Barettino Eat spaghetti with your<br />
hands... oi, oi, oi! Wake up on a church bench...<br />
Hallelujah! Italian coffee! Or enjoy the first<br />
sunrays with Italian delicacies… Panino with<br />
Coppa... Subito! Reuterstr. 59, Mon-Fri 8-19,<br />
Sat-Sun 10-19, www.barettino.com<br />
13. ROSE OF NO MAN’S LAND Berlin’s<br />
finest traditional tattooing. 4 resident tattoo<br />
artists: Fabian Nitz, Swen Losinsky, Mauro Quaresima,<br />
& Steffi Böcker with guest artists from<br />
all over the world. Comfortable wooden interior<br />
with a classic feel & regular walk-ins. Prints,<br />
t-shirts, tote bags and one of kind antique<br />
hand-painted irons. Berlin, Traditional, Tattoo,<br />
Neukölln. Silbersteinstr. 10, Tel 030 7024<br />
0908, Mon-Fri 13-19, Sat 11-17,<br />
www.roseofnomansland.de<br />
To advertise on this page email ads@exberliner.com<br />
51
Where to go in Kreuzberg<br />
5<br />
9 1<br />
4<br />
1. JIVAMUKTI YOGA The official outpost of<br />
NYC’s best-known yoga centre offers the opposite<br />
of “fast-food Western yoga”. Sounds too hippy?<br />
Don’t worry: Yoga here is a pleasure. Trendy<br />
setting, classy equipment, English speaking staff<br />
& 2 loft studios add to the relaxing, luxurious<br />
atmosphere. 4 English classes. Oranienstr. 25,<br />
www.jivamuktiberlin.de<br />
6<br />
6<br />
6<br />
10<br />
2<br />
1<br />
3<br />
7<br />
6<br />
8<br />
2. CafÉ Morgenland’s weekend and<br />
holiday brunch serves a great buffet complete<br />
with gourmet cheese, fresh fruit & veg, crêpes &<br />
other vegetarian dishes, cold cuts, shrimp cocktails<br />
& more. Menu from €5, happy hour €3.50<br />
after 20:00. Reservations suggested. Skalitzer<br />
Str. 35, Tel 030 6113 291, Mon-Fri 9-1, Sat-<br />
Sun from 10, www.morgenland-berlin.de<br />
8<br />
3. Tiki Heart Café & Shop Looking for<br />
a weird, wonderful Hawaiian-Kreuzberger atmosphere?<br />
Then this is the best place to be. Open<br />
for diner-style breakfast, lunch and cocktails.<br />
Kick back amongst punk rock Schnickschnack,<br />
crazy clothing and footwear. Aloha & rock ‘n’<br />
roll! Wiener Str. 20, Tel 030 6107 4701,<br />
Mon-Sun from 10, www.tikiheart.de<br />
4. ROSA CALETA Without a doubt Berlin’s<br />
finest Jamaican food. Located conveniently on<br />
the U1 at Görlitzer Bahnhof. Live music, art exhibitions,<br />
catering and intimate dining atmosphere<br />
with creative dishes with a European touch. Great<br />
homemade cake selection. Muskauer Str. 9,<br />
Tel 030 6953 7859, Tue-Sat 18-23:30, Sun 14-<br />
1, kitchen until 23:30, www.rosacaleta.com<br />
5. 3 SCHWESTERN Located in a former<br />
hospital turned art centre, this restaurant café<br />
with big windows overlooking a lovely garden<br />
serves fresh, seasonal food at reasonable<br />
prices. Breakfast on weekends/holidays. Live<br />
music and parties start after dessert. Mariannenplatz<br />
2 (Bethanien), Tel 030 600 318 600,<br />
Mon-Sun from 11, www.3schwestern-berlin.de<br />
6. Hebbel am Ufer Berlin’s most diverse<br />
theatre, showing a broad-based programme of<br />
dance, performance, theatre, music, visual art &<br />
theoretical debates. Regular productions by national<br />
& international artists in its venues: HAU1,<br />
2 & 3. HAU1, Stresemannstr. 29, HAU2 &<br />
WAU, Hallesches Ufer 32, HAU3, Tempelhofer Ufer<br />
10, Tel 030 2590 0427, www.hebbel-am-ufer.de<br />
7. BASTARD From Bastard with love: whether<br />
it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, this restaurant is<br />
not just for those who were born out of wedlock.<br />
Choose from the changing seasonal menu<br />
created with love for fresh ingredients and fine<br />
food. Our tip: try the homemade stone-oven<br />
bread! Reichenberger Str. 122, Tel 030 5482<br />
1866, Mon-Sun 9-17, www.bastard-berlin.de<br />
8. CAFÉ MATILDA serves breakfast and<br />
sandwiches all day long in the cosiest atmosphere<br />
around, making you feel like you’re in your own<br />
living room. Sit back and relax on comfy couches<br />
on Kino Mondays and don’t miss Bingo on Thursdays!<br />
Graefestr. 12, Tel 030 8179 7288,<br />
Mon-Sun 9-2<br />
9. Santa Maria serves authentic Mexican<br />
street food on Oranienstraße, with a bar<br />
offering a full range of mezcales, tequilas and<br />
cocktails. Enjoy favourites like chilaquiles,<br />
tacos de carnitas plus the biggest, tastiest<br />
burritos in town. Oranienstr. 170, Mon-Sun<br />
from 12, www.santaberlin.com<br />
10. LPG BIOMARKT supplies you with<br />
organic meats, cheeses & even cosmetics. Fill<br />
your basket with fresh bread and treat yourself to<br />
a selection of sweet and savoury goods.<br />
Reichenberger Str. 37, Tel 030 3253<br />
7309, Mon-Sat 8-21, bakery from 7, www.<br />
lpg-biomarkt.de<br />
52 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Where to go in City West<br />
5<br />
9<br />
13<br />
1<br />
7<br />
4<br />
11<br />
6<br />
10<br />
1. FUTOMANIA Supporting sleepers with<br />
traditional tatami & futon-style beds since 1986.<br />
Natural & organic bedding made to order in their<br />
in-house workshop with solid birch, cherry &<br />
oak wood bases. New beds, cribs & more. Plus<br />
meditation & shiatsu equipment. Richard-<br />
Wagner-Str. 51, Tel 030 6184 649, Mon-Fri<br />
11-19, Sat 11-16, www.futomania.de<br />
14<br />
12<br />
2<br />
8<br />
3<br />
2. Fahrradklinik Schöneberg<br />
Whether your two-wheeled steed was kidnapped<br />
by nasty robbers and you need a new one or your<br />
trusty old bike is sick, in the Fahrradklinik you’ll<br />
receive expert care from Berlin’s best bicycle<br />
doctors! Grunewaldstr. 86, Tel 030 7809 7842,<br />
www.fahrradklinik-schoeneberg.de<br />
3. IYENGAR YOGA ZENTRUM BERLIN<br />
Harmonise your body & mind in our bright, beautiful<br />
yoga center. Iyengar certified, native speaking<br />
English and German teachers offer rewarding,<br />
intelligent classes to stretch and elevate the whole<br />
self. All levels welcome! Free first class with this ad!<br />
Hochkirchstr. 9/2, Tel 030 6162 6676, www.<br />
iyengar-yoga-zentrum-berlin.de<br />
4. IRISH HARP PUB An Irish haven just<br />
1min off Kurfürstendamm. Great food, Irish<br />
and German beers. Live music Fridays and<br />
Saturdays, darts, smokers’ lounge, international<br />
sports on big screens. Don’t miss the<br />
pub quiz on Thursdays. Cosy sun terrace.<br />
Giesebrechtstr. 15, Tel 030 2232 8735,<br />
Mon-Sun from 10, www.harp-pub.de<br />
5. Habitare With over 30 years on<br />
Savignyplatz, Habitare has become a real institution.<br />
If you’re searching for timeless modern<br />
pieces and high-quality home furniture, this is<br />
the best among the many design and furniture<br />
shops in the area. Great service too!<br />
Savignyplatz 7-8, Tel 030 3186 4711, Mon-<br />
Fri 10-20, Sat 10-18, www.habitare.de<br />
6. Dolores Goes West The place<br />
that revolutionised Berlin fast food with<br />
awesome California-style burritos 7 years ago<br />
has a second store on Wittenbergplatz, across<br />
from KaDeWe. This location serves their best<br />
classics and several great new spicy combos.<br />
Bayreuther Str. 36, Mon-Sun 11-22, www.<br />
dolores-berlin.de<br />
7. Café im Literaturhaus Enjoy a<br />
coffee in one of Berlin’s nicest cafés, the elegant<br />
and much-loved Literaturhaus. The staff are<br />
extraordinarily courteous and the atmosphere<br />
pleasant. A perfect stop on a stroll along<br />
Ku’damm. Drop by and enjoy the unique setting.<br />
Fasanenstr. 23, Tel 030 8825 414, Mon-Sun<br />
9:30-1, www.literaturhaus-berlin.de<br />
8. Computer Service Julien<br />
Kwan Julien Kwan’s elegant store for Apple<br />
computers and other high-tech goodies is the<br />
place to go for those who want more than<br />
just shop-and-go. Personalised service makes<br />
browsing the latest technology a pleasure.<br />
Vorbergstr. 2, Tel 030 6170 0510, Mon-Fri<br />
10-19, Sat 12-16, www.deinmac.de<br />
9. MAMMA MONTI Italian cuisine offering<br />
delicious seasonal, vegetarian and vegan<br />
dishes. All meals are made with the freshest<br />
ingredients and are carefully selected. Daily<br />
rotating menu, two-course lunch for €8.50 and<br />
homemade cake. Buon Appetito! Carmerstr.<br />
11, Tel 030 8733 5522, Mon-Sat 11-22,<br />
www.mamma-monti.com<br />
10. KUMPELNEST 3000 The legendary<br />
bar that made the Berlin night scene what it is<br />
today. This brothel-turned-bar 25 years ago was<br />
Bono’s hangout during his visits to West Berlin.<br />
Hasn’t lost its authenticity and wild side over<br />
the years, hipsters beware! Lützowstr. 23, Tel<br />
030 2616 918, Mon-Fri 19–5, Sat-Sun from 19,<br />
www.kumpelnest3000.com<br />
11. HAMBURGER MARY’S Serving<br />
up the best American-style burgers this side<br />
of the Atlantic. Full menu of half-pounders,<br />
sandwiches & tasty cocktails. “Dining with the<br />
Divas” drag show Fridays & Saturdays at 20!<br />
Lietzenburger Str. 15, Tel 030 2100 2895,<br />
Mon-Fri 7-11, from 18, Sat-Sun 7:30-12, from<br />
18, www.hamburgermarys.com/berlin<br />
12. BELMÉR Mediterranean food culture<br />
meets creative cuisine – high quality, carefully<br />
selected and beautifully presented. Don’t miss<br />
the brunch buffet every Sunday from 10-15:00<br />
with Mediterranean delights and live piano!<br />
Belziger Str. 34, Tel 030 8999 6735,<br />
Mon-Sat from 11:30, Sun from 10, www.<br />
belmer-restaurant.de<br />
13. SCHWARZES CAFÉ Since the 1970s,<br />
Schwarzes Café on Savignyplatz has been<br />
a cult favourite among artists, anarchists,<br />
foreigners and Charlottenburgers. It’s open<br />
24/7 and they have English menus and serve<br />
organic meat. Kantstr. 148, Tel 030 3138<br />
038, Mon-Sun all day, www.schwarzescafeberlin.de<br />
14. Winterfeld Select Italian food: pizza,<br />
delicious pasta and fresh salads are their<br />
specialty. The salumeria offers a wide variety of<br />
home-made antipasti as well as a broad selection<br />
of fine wines. We highly recommend their<br />
breakfast Monday to Saturday! Winterfeldtstr.<br />
58, Tel 030 2607 5547, Mon-Fri 10-24, Sat<br />
9-24, Sun 9:30-23, www.winterfeld-berlin.de<br />
To advertise on this page email ads@exberliner.com<br />
53
www.exberliner.com<br />
U1 cover 126.indd 2<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> 126 • €2.90 • April <strong>2014</strong><br />
JOON-HO BONG: “This train, this engine, this system gradually goes<br />
extinct. The eternal thing is nature.” (p.30)<br />
F.I.N.D. FESTIVAL: “In a sense, Santa Teresa is the dark Jerusalem of our<br />
modern world.” (p.34)<br />
SCOTT STAPP: “I had to make Jesus my rock star.” (p.38)<br />
3/24/14 7:44 PM<br />
classifieds<br />
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Jobs Offered<br />
Builder Tradesmen<br />
Established Berlin building firm<br />
looking for all trades & labourers.<br />
No cowboys! Must be selfemployed<br />
legal subcontractors<br />
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Deutschland GmbH, Nadine Paul,<br />
Salzufer 6, 10587 Berlin, Tel.:<br />
0049 3088 89028, BerlinJobs@<br />
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ComedySportz Auditions!<br />
<strong>May</strong> 25; 14:00- 16:00. Location<br />
tba. Short-form comedy improvisation,<br />
played like a sport, in<br />
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GLASSBLOWING<br />
• classes • workshops •<br />
• public demonstrations •<br />
• visiting artists •<br />
CV: info@comedysportz.de. Check<br />
us out: www.comedysportz.de<br />
Sales Intern<br />
Are you great at communicating<br />
and your language skills (English,<br />
Portuguese or German) get away<br />
as native? Help us establish a<br />
strong foothold in the respective<br />
market and win new partners<br />
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bonusbox. We offer a fun<br />
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Host for Boat Party<br />
Due to popular demand we are<br />
re-launching Language Nights on<br />
Eastern Comfort and are currently<br />
looking for someone who can<br />
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Extras Casting Call<br />
We are seeking 500 AFRICANS,<br />
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Thomasiusstr. 2, 10557<br />
Berlin-Tiergarten<br />
Norwegian Native Speakers<br />
Telephone-Studio in Berlin-<br />
Schöneberg is looking for Norwegian<br />
and Dutch Native Speakers<br />
(freelance work) Function: Conducting<br />
reliable telephone interviews<br />
(no sales or promotional<br />
work, only opinion research interviews)<br />
Your profile: communicative<br />
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We’re offering you a varied job in<br />
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Projects conducted for one of the<br />
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an international team: extensive<br />
trainings, attractive payment, and<br />
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Interested? Please apply from<br />
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send us an email to info@trendtest.de<br />
You´ll find further information<br />
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Experienced Editor, Writer<br />
Looking for professional to proofread,<br />
rewrite a manuscript (200<br />
pages) to be published with OUP.<br />
A blend of journalistic and academic<br />
writing in social sciences/<br />
cultural studies to be completed<br />
this Fall. Send CV, editing sample<br />
to m.herschler@gmx.de<br />
Health & Fitness<br />
Yoga in English, Kreuzberg<br />
Yoga in English, in a beautiful,<br />
spacious studio in Kreuzberg.<br />
Mondays 6:15pm for all levels,<br />
€8. 3 classes €21. Tuesdays<br />
8:15pm: Dynamic Flow,€10. At<br />
Osho Studio, Schlesisches Str.<br />
38, 10997. Everything provided,<br />
everyone welcome!<br />
www.facebook.com/pages/Yogain-English-Mondays-in-Kreuzberg/139778686051746<br />
Therapy-in-Berlin<br />
Psychotherapist, originally from<br />
NYC, offers psychotherapy,<br />
counselling and coaching for<br />
individuals, couples and families<br />
in English and German.<br />
Subscribe<br />
to Berlin!<br />
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delivered to your doorstep<br />
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Berlin restaurant. Sign up at<br />
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(11 issues)<br />
for €29*<br />
only!<br />
faMily secRets<br />
Rainer Höß, Rudi-Marek Dutschke and<br />
Jakob Grotewohl on growing up with<br />
the burden of history<br />
NucleaRfRee<br />
from thriving single<br />
mothers to queer<br />
threesomes, meet<br />
a new breed<br />
of parents<br />
it’s a faMily<br />
BusiNess<br />
Noodle slinging, funeral<br />
planning and tightrope<br />
walking with mum and dad<br />
rant<br />
Get those kids<br />
out of my<br />
Schillerkiez!<br />
My auscHwitz faMily<br />
the grandson of death camp<br />
commandant Rudolf Höß breaks<br />
his family’s silence<br />
100% made in Berlin.<br />
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What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage<br />
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54 • may <strong>2014</strong>
Tel: 0175 165 7450, email:<br />
contact@therapy-in-berlin.com,<br />
www.therapy-in-berlin.com<br />
Jungian Psychoanalysis<br />
Native English speaker, analystin-training,<br />
now accepting new<br />
clients for psychoanalysis and<br />
counselling. Please contact me<br />
for a free initial consultation.<br />
David M. Schmid: 0152 3183<br />
8978 / davidmarcusschmid@<br />
yahoo.ca / www.jungian-psychoanalysis.com<br />
Your Personal Trainer<br />
The magic happens outside your<br />
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TIMELESS TOUCH Massage<br />
Deep relaxation & authentic<br />
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Music<br />
Spiritual enterprises<br />
Unknown Phone Happening Orchestra<br />
invites musicians and<br />
other artists – especially English-speaking<br />
writers – to create<br />
a neverending musical for<br />
planet Earth. 0160 107 9203<br />
Groups & Courses<br />
Move your Asana - Yoga<br />
Release-based yoga class with<br />
Diane Busuttil. Every Tuesday - 10<br />
till 11:30am, beginning 11 March<br />
<strong>2014</strong>. 8/12 euros per class. At<br />
Osho Studio - all levels welcome.<br />
Details: www.dianebusuttil.com.<br />
Please contact me with questions<br />
or concerns. Diane<br />
Women’s Healing Circle<br />
I am looking to ground an English-speaking<br />
women’s healing<br />
circle! Welcoming women with<br />
various healing gifts, e.g. Reiki,<br />
healing touch, chant, prayer or<br />
just a healing intention to come<br />
together in a loving and safe way.<br />
sarahershkowitz@gmail.com<br />
Art Classes in English<br />
Want to learn to paint and draw<br />
from a professional artist? These<br />
courses are for both beginners and<br />
higher-level students. Classes are<br />
taught in English and all materials<br />
are provided. Full-day courses<br />
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www.berlinartclass.com<br />
Languages<br />
Experienced German tutor<br />
Private tuition in German for adults<br />
by retired Goethe Institut teacher<br />
with more than 30 years’ experience<br />
in teaching German as a foreign<br />
language. Address: Near Prager<br />
Platz, U9 Güntzelstraße. Contact:<br />
dorothee.knight@gmail.com<br />
Intensiv-German Workshop<br />
17.5.+ 14.6 Intensiv-German with<br />
Theater Games 11-14:00 - k77<br />
studio Ihr könnt schon ein bisschen<br />
Deutsch (A2) und kommt<br />
einfach zu wenig zum Sprechen,<br />
weil alle immer Englisch sprechen?<br />
Dann ist das der richtige<br />
Workshop für euch. n.selchow@<br />
web.de<br />
Jobs Wanted<br />
Wedding Photographer<br />
Australian Portrait and Wedding<br />
photographer based in Berlin.<br />
Affordable packages for artistic Portraits<br />
and Weddings. Portrait packages<br />
from €300 Wedding packages<br />
from €1800 www.libbyedwards.<br />
com.au Discount offered for those<br />
who mention this ad<br />
Internships<br />
Internship<br />
...in Localization Engineering at<br />
Milengo to learn about many different<br />
aspects of localizing large-scale<br />
projects for international clients. Attractive<br />
compensation package for<br />
a trainee position. More details +<br />
applications: www.goo.gl/xYkgQ3<br />
Services<br />
Sunshine Cleaning<br />
Hate cleaning? Don’t worry, we<br />
love it! Sunshine Cleaning provides<br />
professional, trustworthy &<br />
reliable cleaning services throughout<br />
Berlin. Mention code XB for<br />
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AHA.<br />
DEUTSCH<br />
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goethe.de/berlin<br />
Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.<br />
55
Want to<br />
sublet<br />
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maria vaorin<br />
We'll help you!<br />
• professional<br />
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Office hours: 10.00 to 14.00<br />
amok mama<br />
by JACINTA NANDI<br />
Working mum guilt<br />
Attitudes towards working<br />
parents, particularly<br />
mothers, vary quite a lot<br />
between East and West<br />
Germany. East Germans<br />
have this fairly relaxed but<br />
also kinda stern attitude<br />
to mums working – just<br />
do it, basically. My East<br />
German mum friends<br />
don’t give me any commiserations<br />
for missing<br />
out on Sports Day or<br />
having to send Ryan into<br />
Hort on Christmas Eve.<br />
“Tschja, Jacinta,” they say<br />
nonchalantly, “that’s how it is sometimes.”<br />
But they also don’t disapprove of the fact<br />
that he started kindergarten when he was just<br />
18 months old. “Good!” my friend Jana said<br />
when I told her I’d found him a Kita spot.<br />
“Best place for him!”<br />
Westies, though, go in for that whole<br />
mother and baby bonding stuff – they can get<br />
a bit sniffy if you tell them your kid started<br />
Kita before his second birthday.<br />
“You should’ve waited until he turned two,<br />
Jacinta!” said my friend Silke, for example.<br />
“Yeah, but I wanted to get back to work,”<br />
I protested half-heartedly. It was a bit of an<br />
excuse, to be honest – in actual fact I sent<br />
Ryan to nursery first and found a job later.<br />
“Oh, come off it,” she snapped angrily. “It’s<br />
not like you were on the board at Siemens or<br />
anything.”<br />
Then there’s the Berlin attitude. Now,<br />
while I don’t wanna join in with all the<br />
Prenzlauer Berg latte machiatto mama-bashing<br />
– it’s boring at best and misogynistic at<br />
worst – the truth is, I suspect that Berlin is<br />
the only place in the world where self-expression<br />
and relaxation are so firmly established<br />
as desirable and necessary and good that even<br />
the mothers of very young children actually<br />
complain about not having enough “Zeit<br />
für sich”. It’s totally socially acceptable for a<br />
Berlin mum to drop a kid off at Kita and then<br />
go to the sauna or even a fucking art gallery<br />
or something. I really love this, but I could<br />
never enjoy myself when it was me doing it.<br />
A couple of weeks after Ryan had started<br />
nursery, two German friends persuaded me to<br />
go to a Thermenbad with them. I sat there in<br />
the Jacuzzi and felt miserable.<br />
“I can’t relax,” I said.<br />
They looked at me blankly. “What’s<br />
wrong?”<br />
“I’m on Hartz-IV and I’m in a swimming<br />
pool during the day and my son’s in nursery. I<br />
feel like a terrible person!”<br />
by amok mama<br />
My German friends<br />
looked at me, confused and<br />
concerned.<br />
“Happy kids have happy<br />
parents,” one said, “and<br />
happy parents have happy<br />
kids.”<br />
I nodded meekly. It was<br />
my most miserable experience<br />
in a Jacuzzi ever. I just<br />
felt like such a loser, and it<br />
was such a relief when, a<br />
couple of weeks later, I got<br />
a job teaching English to<br />
kindergarten kids.<br />
So, those are the main<br />
German attitudes I’ve encountered. The British<br />
attitude, however, seems to me a magnificent<br />
balancing act of hate: they despise mothers<br />
who work and mothers who don’t. Mothers<br />
who work are evil, skinny bitches whose children<br />
are all delinquents who steal milk and sniff<br />
glue. Mums on the dole, however, are lazy, fat,<br />
slovenly slappers whose kids are all delinquents<br />
who steal milk and sniff glue. You might think<br />
the British would have a tiny bit of respect for<br />
those women who stay at home and look after<br />
their kids but don’t get state benefits, whose<br />
husbands earn enough to keep them on one<br />
wage? You’d be wrong. They think they’re total<br />
losers. Sometimes, when listening to my relatives<br />
speak, I think they’d literally prefer it if no<br />
more babies were ever born in England. Or at<br />
least not to mothers.<br />
“If we had affordable nursery schools in<br />
England,” I said to my niece last time I was in<br />
the UK, when she was complaining about single<br />
mums getting flats off of the government,<br />
“then single mums could afford to work. Then<br />
they wouldn’t need to get housing benefits or<br />
welfare. That’s how they do it in Berlin. The<br />
nursery schools are affordable, working-class<br />
people can afford them.”<br />
She looked at me and her eyes glittered as I<br />
watched my words being digested. She opened<br />
her mouth to say something. Then she shut it<br />
again. Then she opened it again.<br />
“You know something,” she said. “That’s a<br />
really good idea.” ■<br />
marta dominguez<br />
“I’m on Hartz-IV and<br />
I’m in a swimming<br />
pool during the<br />
day and my son’s in<br />
nursery. I feel like a<br />
terrible person!”<br />
56 • july/august 201356
from our readers<br />
Our April family issue (#126) features a<br />
rundown of alternative schools, including<br />
Waldorf.<br />
Fun and games?!<br />
In your last issue, you wrote<br />
about Waldorf schools as<br />
“fun and games”. You could<br />
have added that the inventor,<br />
Rudolf Steiner, wasn’t exactly<br />
a “philosopher”, but rather an<br />
esotericist. His philosophy of<br />
education is based on the idea<br />
that people develop in sevenyear<br />
periods that correspond<br />
to seven planets. Scientific,<br />
right? Steiner postulated that<br />
all people are divided into<br />
“four temperaments” (fire,<br />
earth, air and water), and while<br />
it is a subject of debate just<br />
how racist he was, he argued<br />
that darker-skinned people<br />
were generally of inferior<br />
temperaments. It’s no wonder that the schools<br />
based on his ideas are almost exclusively white.<br />
His ideas are kept alive by a rather mysterious<br />
cult, the Anthroposophists, and the schools benefit<br />
from an exception in German law: While all<br />
other private schools are required to have teachers<br />
with a scientific education, Waldorf teachers<br />
haven’t necessarily gone to college. What they<br />
specialise in is things like “Eurythmy”, the dancing<br />
of letters which was so well parodied on The<br />
Simpsons. So while some people think Waldorf<br />
schools are good at teaching kids artistic creativity,<br />
parents should read up before trusting their<br />
kids to esotericists. – John Riceburg<br />
Two months after our contentious<br />
“Screw the BVG!” rant (issue #125,<br />
TO THE EDITOR<br />
March 2013), readers<br />
are still riled up.<br />
Think the BVG is<br />
bad? Try London!<br />
Twenty-four hours ago I<br />
was enjoying a nice last<br />
lunch on Weinbergsweg at<br />
the end of my most recent<br />
visit to Berlin – a great six<br />
days of culture and food<br />
going to new and old parts<br />
of the city I have known<br />
since I started visiting in<br />
1994. During that time, I<br />
have seen Berlin’s transport<br />
system go through<br />
a massive reconstruction<br />
and transformation, which I can see is<br />
still going on… not to the pleasure of some<br />
of your readers, judging by the letters page in<br />
your current edition. As a Londoner who was<br />
partly driven to leave that city because of the<br />
dirty, unreliable and expensive public transport<br />
system, six days using the BVG was close to<br />
heaven by comparison – frequent and late-running<br />
services, clean stations and trains, and no<br />
constant ticket barriers to get in and out. As I<br />
took the very slow and packed train home from<br />
Gatwick Airport last night, I was also reminded<br />
how good DB is in comparison to our fractured<br />
and mostly privatised railway network. So, dear<br />
Exberliner readers, while I am sure the BVG is<br />
far from perfect and can always be improved<br />
(can’t everything?), I am already looking for-<br />
ward to my next opportunity to ride those S- and<br />
U-Bahn lines again… – Clive Gross<br />
Exberliner to publish in German?! Even<br />
after we revealed our April 1 “Exberliner<br />
goes deutsch” blog post as an April Fools’<br />
joke, some still bought in.<br />
Don’t go German!<br />
What a disappointment! That’s a step behind<br />
into isolation and exclusion. That a huge part of<br />
the young Berlin population doesn’t speak German<br />
is, maybe unfortunately, a fact. If you made<br />
this decision for economical reasons that would<br />
be maybe understandable, even though disappointing.<br />
If you did it because you seriously think<br />
that the German community has been feeling<br />
“excluded”, well, you’re contributing to cut off the<br />
rest of the expat community of this city. – Stefan<br />
WRITE TO US AND WIN<br />
Tickets to edge of<br />
tomorrow!<br />
Did we strike a nerve? Tell us what you<br />
think, hate or love about this issue and get<br />
the chance to win one of 3 pairs of tickets<br />
to EDGE OF TOMORROW, playing at Cinestar<br />
Original at Potsdamer Platz on <strong>May</strong><br />
29. Send your letter to editor@exberliner.<br />
com by noon on Monday, <strong>May</strong> 19.<br />
For terms and conditions, see www.exberliner.com/terms.<br />
56 • february <strong>2014</strong><br />
Foto: Hans Richter, Vormittagsspuk © Hans Richter Estate<br />
10am–7pm Wed to Mon, Tue closed,<br />
from 20 <strong>May</strong>: Daily 10am–8pm