überlin

Author: James

  • Inside Berghain

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    James
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    We’re such teases. If you came here expecting a glimpse inside Berlin’s supergay superclub, forget it – pretty much the only rule the place has is “NO PHOTOS!” If you want more details about what Berghain actually looks like inside (and where exactly to get your freak on), let us suggest these epic articles on Slow Travel Berlin, BANGBANGBERLIN and Resident Advisor.

    Instead, we’re listing our favourite attempts to describe the iconic club, in ascending order of awesomeness:

    5) “The Best Club in the World” – every dance music publication, every other year

    Most recently, Resident Advisor in 2008 and DJ Mag in 2009.

    4) “You know that episode of The Simpsons, when Homer takes Bart to a steel mill that turns into a gay club? That.” – @johnontheweb

    (Apologies for the shit video quality, but it’s impossible to get decent Simpsons clips online. You get the idea.)

    3) “The techno Crystal Maze” – our mate Dan

    Orbital at Berghain last weekend:

    Orbital play Berghain


    2)”The vampire club from Blade” – fellow expat Berliner Heather

    In terms of the club’s energy and aesthetic, this is spot on. Also, Berghain is full of sucking and spraying fluids, but of an altogether different kind.

    (Sorry, that’s truly disgusting.)

    1) “…”

    Of course, none of the above descriptions do the place justice. I was in Berghain last Saturday and couldn’t muster the words to describe it (and not for the reasons you might think – I was stone-cold sober). You’ll just have to find out for yourself what make the club so special – if you can make it past the notoriously selective door staff. Good luck!


  • Transmediale 2011

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    James
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    Our experience of the Transmediale festival for art and digital culture was short but sweet. Restrictions on our press accreditation, work commitments and sheer lack of organisation meant we missed the Hyperdub night at Berghain and live sets from Monolake and Deadbeat. Fortunately, we had some pretty good backups. On Saturday, we caught a snippet of Deadbeat’s stunning collaboration with video artist Lillevan as part of a review of the week’s AV performances in the immersive CineChamber, then hopped on the U-Bahn to Club Maria, which shook to the sounds of Modeselektor and their global team of bass pioneers.

    We also made it down to the HacKaWay Zone, to see some artworks that “not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that shape the way in which we think about and experience the technologies which impact virtually all aspects of our daily lives.” Some was enjoyably incomprehensible, like the brilliantly titled Ambiguous Cut Into Space of Conjecture (Lucid Phantom Messenger #2) – strobing multicoloured eye candy. Other work was thoughtfully executed, like overall festival award winner Intelligent Bacteria, which highlighted the dangers of alcohol processing in Indonesia by incorporating the bacteria produced into a performative acoustic installation, a “bacteria orchestra”.

    But of most interest to this social media nerd were two projects that explored Facebook and its implications for our privacy, both on- and offline. Seppukoo provides a service for users who want to “commit Facebook suicide”, setting up a memorial page in their honour.  Or it did until it received a cease and desist letter from the web giant – now Seppukoo exists as a DIY guide to virtual self-destruction:

    Also drawing the attention of Zuckerberg’s goons is Lovely-Faces.com, which scraped 250,000 Facebook profiles and used the data to build a huge, fake dating site. Taking publicly accessible data and using technology like facial recognition to fill in the gaps, it constructs an alarmingly complete picture of its “members”  by providing their gender, nationality, interests and even character (“sly women”, anyone?). As Wired reports, the creators of Lovely-Faces are only just sidestepping Facebook’s terms of service by taking down users’ data on request, so go and have a play on it while you still can.

    Here are our impressions of a week of art, tech and music dorkery:

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  • Berlin’s final frontier

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    James
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    Not a month goes by without someone bemoaning the influx of a new itinerant, immigrant population into Berlin. But concerned citizens like this guy (not a current resident of the city, yet part of the first wave that opened up “bohemia” to “yuppies” like us) needn’t worry, because future Berliners will find the pressure valve they need… in space.

    As documented by the Star Trek series, New Berlin will be founded on Earth’s moon in about 2069. That’s less than 50 years until Berliners can enjoy a nice shiny new city, hopefully free of English expats, but with all the cultural benefits of their current home. At the Mazurka festival, revelers can get down to Polish folk music in their lederhosen, as fondly recalled by two Starfleet commanders in the video below (jump 2:10 in) – “sausage and beer all around!”

    And the clubs on New Berlin are every bit as hedonistic as their Terran counterparts – if this photo snatched at Borghain* is anything to go by:

    Borghain

    However, as this Federation Colony grows so large that, by 2373, it can be seen from Earth in the daytime, it’s only a matter of time before Ryanair Galatic arrives to ruin it all. Not to worry – when we inevitably outgrow our new lunar home, we can move onto the star system New Berlin on Freelancer of the same name as depicted in the MMO Freelancer. As you can see on this map, New Berlin includes the picturesque planet of Potsdam, and bases called Bonn Station and Brandenburg Border Station. Fittingly, Kreuzberg Depot is inhabited by “junkers”, “an itinerant population unaffiliated with any colony”, whose commodities include light arms and pharmaceuticals.

    Of course, it will take us a while to get there – and it’s not going to be easy. As Moon director Duncan Jones is going to show in his follow-up to Blade Runner, dark days are ahead for the city so loved by his father, David Bowie. But the concept art for Mute indicates that the residents of near-future Berlin will still be able to get their rocks off, at the strip club Fremde Traum:

    Mute on Slash Film

    Time will tell whether future Berlins will have room for “lifestyle tourists” like us, but the city’s current inhabitants can be reassured that their reputation for sleazy thrills will follow them through time and space.

    *yeah, so I made this up. But everything else in this post is definitely going to happen.

  • Buddha Republic

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    James
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    We like Indian food, and we like it hot. We hail from the home of Curry Hell, allegedly the world’s hottest curry and free to anyone who can keep it down. (If you’ve ever seen the Newcastle episode of the cable TV show Booze Britain you might remember Grant describing it as “the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever tasted in me life”, just before bringing it all back up.)

    To say that our tastes aren’t catered for in Berlin would be a mahoosive understatement. The city is famously bad for Indian food, but you wouldn’t believe how bad until you’ve sampled it for itself. Wherever you go, everything tastes the same: bland, indistinct and barely identifiable. “What’s this supposed to be again? Do they pipe this sauce in from the currywurst place next door? And then water it down?”

    Which is why we’ve been to Buddha Republic twice in less than a month. Coming from Bangalore (via Birmingham), owner Aomand has brought with him authentic recipes and the art of cooking using a traditional tandoori oven. He also has interior design chops, having successfully achieved the Buddha Bar aesthetic he enthused about over complimentary mango shots. We’ll leave the gushing descriptions to EXBERLINER, who sensibly sampled the Maharaja mixed tandoori for two, and just say that the food stands up against anything we’ve tasted on Brick Lane or in Bradford. Well worth the trip out to Charlottenburg. Again and again and again…

    buddha

  • Urban Sketching

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    James
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    I went back to Soma at Hamburger Bahnhof this weekend. I know… I was less than impressed with it on my first visit, but this time was different – I went along with Rolf and Oona of the Urban Sketchers network. While the name of this loose affiliation of artists is fairly self-explanatory, you can read more about it – and Rolf’s involvement – over on Slow Travel Berlin. Although my companions were underwhelmed by the installation itself, they turned out some impressive work – you can see Rolf’s sketches from the day here, and Oona’s here. Personally, I enjoyed the experience – in the relative quiet of a random Saturday morning (after the Christmas crush), the reindeer seemed peaceful, the canaries unobtrusive (it took me about half an hour to remember their chirping wasn’t just a recording), and the piss-smell not quite as rank. I found myself really looking, noticing small things like the ear buds worn by the deer’s keeper, for whom this was just another day at work. My passion for sketching reignited, I picked up pen and pad again when I visited Chipps for the umpteenth time later that day. Anyway, here are some drawings what I made.

    Urban sketching 1

    Urban sketching 2