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LOLA Issue Four

Issue Three of LOLA Magazine. Featuring the people and stories that make Berlin special: Moderat, Microdosing LSD, Yony Leyser, Julia Bosski, Notes of Berlin, Sara Neidorf and more.

Issue Three of LOLA Magazine. Featuring the people and stories that make Berlin special: Moderat, Microdosing LSD, Yony Leyser, Julia Bosski, Notes of Berlin, Sara Neidorf and more.

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Vital Debate<br />

Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor<br />

«<br />

IN THE UK AND US WE<br />

TALK ABOUT RACE ALL THE<br />

TIME, BUT HERE PEOPLE<br />

AREN’T USED TO TALKING<br />

ABOUT RACE AT ALL.<br />

»<br />

Black in Berlin tackles topics that require subtlety,<br />

patience and a variety of viewpoints. The events usually<br />

last for two hours, although Jessica admits that this is<br />

often not long enough. A recent salon looked at the idea<br />

of a ‘new diaspora’ with intersectional perspectives on<br />

privilege, class, race and mobility. This style of nuanced<br />

and open public discussion is not only radical but also<br />

accessible, and often therapeutic for its audience. Here,<br />

the participants find themselves in a rare and welcoming<br />

space where they can begin to reckon with the trauma<br />

inflicted by the politics of race.<br />

Diversifying the group of literature- and arts-focused<br />

20–40 year olds is a difficult task. Jessica tries<br />

to convince her Turkish and Afro-Deutsche neighbours<br />

to attend, but language can be a limitation. To tackle this<br />

problem, she encourages people to speak in their own<br />

language and finds translators to help out. Black in Berlin<br />

is always hosted in a different space. “I try not to have it in<br />

academic and art institutions too often, because I want it<br />

to have more of a kitchen-table feel,” Jessica explains. This<br />

seems to be the very heart of the project: the creation of a<br />

safe space in which those who have few places to turn to can<br />

be heard. “We work in majority-white spaces, we socialise<br />

in majority-white spaces and a lot of us are in relationships<br />

with a white person. A lot of people have told me that the<br />

salons are a bit like church and a lot of the time, these<br />

spaces can feel like coming home,” she continues. There’s<br />

a simple beauty in creating a homespace here – despite<br />

Berlin’s notorious transience – for people who feel that their<br />

very social existence is also transient.<br />

“Whiteness is so pervasive, it’s in all of us,” Jessica says<br />

when discussing the theatre scene in Berlin and finding her<br />

place in it. “Berlin has a long, rich history of alternative,<br />

progressive, radical theatre. The theatre I was seeing here in<br />

institutions, like the state theatre, was the most radical theatre<br />

I had ever seen in my life, and it still is,” she says. And yet<br />

the actors on stage were all white. Back in the United States<br />

where Jessica grew up, the stage was more diverse. She now<br />

cherrypicks the shows she will attend. “I also go in with the<br />

knowledge that I will be one of the only black bodies in the<br />

space. I just made a decision to stop going to majority-white<br />

spaces. I realise that I felt deeply uncomfortable, but more<br />

importantly exhausted by these spaces. Going to openings<br />

and being the only black person in the room, I always felt<br />

like a peacock. People were always looking at me, commenting,<br />

or touching me, my hair or my outfit.”<br />

Jessica’s experience of her own blackness, particularly<br />

as a child, has clearly informed her work in Berlin. “As I<br />

was growing up I was never black enough. I was always<br />

told that I talked like a white girl by the other black girls<br />

in my community. I went to predominantly-white schools<br />

and all of my extra curricular activities were also majority-white.<br />

All of my social community programmes were<br />

majority-black, and those were the spaces I didn’t feel<br />

welcome in,” she tells us. This early narrative is replete<br />

with experiences that impact not only Jessica’s work in<br />

the salon but also her ability to understand others. “That<br />

was particularly tough growing up because I also grew<br />

28 <strong>Issue</strong> <strong>Four</strong>

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