Goodbye, Peristal Singum!

PERISTAL SINGUM. Image taken from http://playingholidays.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/peristal-singum-labyrinth-berlin/

Berlin is changing, this change is unstoppable. The breathtaking Wilde Renate’s Labyrinth aka Peristal Singum will close forever on the 29th of March 2014. The homepage says: 

We welcome you to

collaborate! participate!

& transform!

Which means the guys are going to demolish it all and re-build it elsewhere and you can get involved.

About Peristal Singum

Within a 9 month period of continuous work, a small group of creative enthusiasts built  surrealistic and at the same time accessible installation spreading  on two floors.  This spontaneous creation was built from scrap metal, used timber piling, glass bottles, one car and different sorts of civilization waste.

Peristal Singum is a combination of Alice in Wonderland, a playground for grownups and a creepy cabinet with amusement factor.

By virtue of particular arts and materials, free organic interior design and extraordinary setting, people intuitively sharpen their senses and intensely  perceive entities around them, as well as the ones that reside inside of them.  The journey through this genuinely strange construction unveils secrets to ones who are willing to hark, question and take on challenges.  As a result, each person passes through one truthful, remarkable and authentic experience (http://karmanoia.org/peristal).

“It’s not for the faint of heart and it’s really hard to describe without giv­ing it away to some extent, but really, I urge you: go and check out what Peri­stal Singum is.

You will not regret it and you will never find some­thing like this again, ever, any­where, in and out­side of Ber­lin.”

http://www.findingberlin.com/peristal-singum/

This might be your last chance @ Wilde Ren­ate Salon, ALT-STRALAU 70 10245 Berlin

Wilde Renate Peristal Singum. Image taken from: http://samyroad.com/

Why you should come to Directors Lounge X

Pied Piper by Vivek Budakoti

Because it’s a freak house, the place where everything is possible. Where you forget who you are, dissolving in the filmic nonsense. And every stranger in the room is the dearest alien to you. The childhood, the adolescence and the old age come together and generate the best viewer.

6-16 February

No admission till 8 pm

Film, Music, Art

programme

Facebook Event

1. The first reason why I like Directors Lounge, is its team. They’re all true characters. Once you see them, you never forget, and even more you won’t confuse them with anyone else! Greet them when you meet them.

2. The second reason, of course, is the film selection. This is where I lose myself. I stop even blinking, breathing and thinking. It’s just not necessary. Directors Lounge always has a crazy selection, for every taste: funny, ugly, surreal, disturbing, queer, touching and everything else what cannot be categorized. See the programme. 11 days of a video quirk is a great way to overdoze. You will look at the world with the different eyes.

Gilivanka Kedzior and Barbara Friedman

3. And the third reason, is the place. It’s the boring Alexanderplatz area, but Naherholung Sternchen is a real underground explosive. They have entirely rebuilt it within the last year, expanded and made even more freaky (A Twin Peaks party took a place there in December 2013; and I met Bob). On a regular DL night the aliens smoke cigarettes, drink beer and dance. It’s all good. And yes, there are plenty couches to share with directors.

These all three reasons create a very bizarre atmosphere, where I never know if I am who I am.

Some acts I am looking forward to seeing:

– World Premier: Nonconformity by Igor Parfenov 13.02. 

Nonconformity is a multilayered epos based on the works by Leо Tolstoy. The action is shifted to our reality. The spotlight of the story is a withdrawn existence of mountain village inhabitants.

Nonconformity.

– LIVE: Steve Morell 16.02. 10:30 pm

is a  remixer, DJ, producer, musician, founder of the record label “Pale Music Int.” and the German underground festival Berlin Insane.

– The exhibition: Digital Storytelling | arts and informatics 9-16.2. daily 6-9pm

Digital storytelling presents an installation of books that trigger interaction through the flipping of pages next to selected works from the Directors Lounge open call and video installations from the FKI, the research center of arts and informatics. All at the gallery space next to the Naherholung Sternchen

– Film Performance: Reynold Reynolds 11.02. 9pm

The live construction of the image destroys the illusion of film, revealing the whole studio process as art.

This guy does brainshaking stuff.

Secret Life from Artstudio Reynolds on Vimeo.

– LIVE: DIETER RITA SCHOLL with Martina Colli, piano 12.02. 10:30pm

Dieter Rita Scholl

A very special guest performing live, accompanied by Italian import pianist Martina Colli, straying from the classical repertoire of her recent album into the world of the offbeat.

– Live Performance: Still und Dunkel (silent and dark)

An audiovisual performance by Christoph Brünggel and Benny Jaberg.

Our interest lies in the aura of disused factories, abandoned civil defense facilities and similar supposed utopian, non-places‘. The temporality of such locations and their potential to evoke the feeling of loneliness in the spectator inspires us. We examine abandoned places towards its capacity to store and capture time in itself with artistic means.

While Nick Cave said he’ll pop in to Berlinale on the 10th of February, I really think he should come for the afterparty at Directors Lounge.

Nick Cave & PJ Harvey

Avant-Hard in Berlin, in the year 2013

Typical Berlin. 1st of May. Drugs free zone – Goerli. All rights reserved by Katja Avant-Hard.

Here is my 2013 in retrospect. I do this yearly just to look back and see what new and exciting or maybe shocking and sad happened within the last 12 months.

Berlin is the most alive city I’ve ever lived in. Everyday something happens. I really should start making a diary like in old days, hand written, with scribbles and one day this can become a book.

Let’s see first, who’s been reading Avant-Hard:

Mindpirates present: ODYSSEY OF THE LOVERS

Presented by Mindpirates

Film footage, photographs, audio recordings, text and interviews with participants will engage a dialogue about utopias, gatherings, dreams and the profound ambiguity inherent in the relationship between humans and nature. The exhibition and the concurrent two-week program of concerts, musical jams, art performances, readings and talks will reflect on the experiment and its connected themes. Mindpirates humbly invite the participants to revisit the event a year on, and welcome those who weren’t present to get a picture of the odyssey.

History

The Lovers set out to create a transformational happening: on August 25th and 26th, 2012, 400 participants came together on an idyllic island of perfect nature outside of Berlin for an ambitious musical jam session, uniting 100 international musicians and running non-stop for twenty-four hours.

The artist collective Mindpirates conceptualized and brought to life The Lovers. They conceived it as “a search and experiment to evoke love and human gratitude among each other and towards the universe”.

The invitation to The Lovers promised an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. On site, the event morphed into a cathartic tempest, a caged whirlwind of both love and hate, epiphany and confusion. Many left before it was over, while others wanted for it to never end. A year on, some remember The Lovers with passionate fondness and still struggle to find words to describe it, while for others the dream had turned nightmarish and left a bitter feeling.

Don’t miss this rich flavoured 2 week-long event from Mindpirates, Opening August the 15th, 18:00:

Poetry of the Absurd — Odyssey of the Lovers opening night

Full Programme: http://mindpirates.org/thelovers/

Lydia Lunch will spread the retrovirus at The White Trash

Lydia Lunch. RETROVIRUS.

There are some women who are stronger than others and are called “iron ladies”, I think Lydia is not only one them but she is a real devil in a female body. Through swearing she’d use more intelectual words than half of the Americans together. Lydia always knew how to jump into a pile of shit and not to get dirty, and when she chose to get dirty she’d do it with a pleasure.

August the 21st she will perform at The White Trash, Berlin Mitte, with her new album called “Retrovirus”.

Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch, June 2, 1959, Rochester, New York) is an American singer, spoken word performer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene. “One of the 10 most influential performers of the 1990s.” (The Boston Phoenix).

She has performed with Sonic Youth, Swans, Rowland S. Howard, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta), Pussy Galore, Die Haut, Anubian Lights and others. That makes about 3,5 gigabites of music with her voice on my iTunes. And if there are bands which spread the neverending love, Lydia seems to spread the never ending hate. Oh no it’s not being suicidal or pessimistic, it’s just being realistic. She gets fucking personal on stage, you just really feel her.

“I’m completely optimistic – I know the end is coming” 

“Sure you’re powerless, sure you’re just one person, sure you can’t change anything… but you don’t have to be miserable about it as well.”

Berlin Atonal

Berlin Atonal

There are too many events in Berlin, but some of them are more special than others and should be your first choice of the night. Berlin Atonal – is one of them.

Originally held at SO36 in Kreuzberg, the early years of Atonal fostered revolutionary and innovative musical acts such as Psychic TV, Einstürzende Neubauten, Test Dept, 808 State among many others.  Throughout the 1980s Berlin Atonal was at the vanguard of the progressive electronic and experimental music and art scenes in Berlin. The festival closed in 1990 with the fall of the Berlin wall as Hegemann went on to open the legendary techno club Tresor.

In 2013, Berlin Atonal will be relaunched by Hegemann at a new location – a massive abandoned powerplant in Berlin-Mitte – and will run from July 24 – July 31. 

Bandlist: Last.fm

Facebook: Berlin Atonal

Copenhagen Fashion Week: Open Call for Models

BIBI CHEMNITZ

Berlin, Copenhagen and the rest of Europe!

Become a model for Copenhagen Fashion Week

Are you next Copenhagen Fashion Week’s model? Yes, maybe you are! BIBI CHEMNITZ is looking for 8 girls and 8 boys to walk her scene Friday 9th of August. Model aspirants over 16 can apply from all over Europe to participate. Free flight and accommodation for the winners.

Location discovery: Fiesere Miese

Image taken from Fiesere Miese FB page

Köpenicker Straße 18-20 is a large industrial space. With a Buddha statue in the middle of the yard and Zolando HQ on the corner we bumped first into the people celebrating wedding, and then somebody’s birthday on the beach before we saw the sign “Fiesere Miese 100 metres that way ➝”.

Looking for a club, we were faced with an inscription PUFF. Old cars, a burning animal head, a red carpet, and the entrance through the bus – that’s Fiesere Miese. It is small in comparison to the famous Tresor and Berghain, but definitely one of the most interesting spaces I’ve seen in Berlin. Stuffed animals, a bathtub with a running water, a wooden barrel for washing hands, tons of old TVs and metal bars are just a few things you can find there.

Sadly it is not one of those places where you can come whenever for a drink. They are open for all kind of bookings, even clothing parties and feasts with white tables for X-mas; which means every weekend is different, and the place does not have a techno label on it. We saw a burlesque performance there which was followed by a minimal-techno DJ. Thank you VAGE and Puresque for having us last night!

Keep your eyes open for their future events here on Facebook.

Fiesere Miese upper bar

Fiesere Miese cars

Fiesere Miese stuffed birds

Fiesere Miese one of the rooms

Fiesere Miese, view from downstairs

The best Berlin puppets celebrate their birthday this Saturday

Solmsstr. Berlin

There are hidden streets in Berlin where masters do amazing work making this world a little bit more like a fairy tale. Last week I came across with one of those places -called  Alla Hopp. A small cute working space/shop with hundred of famous faces.

These are puppets who look like Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf and many others. They are being made by graceful Karl Schlarb, a designer and artist based in Berlin. His puppets are made of material, filled with small balls; and surprisingly there is no wire inside, but Karls has his own trick to make them sit and bend the hands. The heads are made from a special thick plastic in order to show all the features of the face.

This is a project which started 3 years ago as an idea to put love for puppets and literature together. So, the puppets got the faces of famous authors. Among them are also Bjork and David Bowie.

XPOSED International Queer Film Festival Berlin

Xposed poster

My homeland, Latvia, is just a little less aggressive towards everyone who is not white and straight than Russia. Gay, lesbian, transgender – this topic makes post soviet countries take a hostile reception. Everything forbidden and “wrong” in my country always evoked in me compassion and will to support the minority. Trying to prove something in Latvia is like trying to plant tomatoes in concrete. We are blind and are not willing to change.

That’s why leaving my country was a celebration, I could avoid things I could not change. I did not want to waste my energy on people who don’t want to be happy. In Berlin I celebrate the variety, freedom and peace. XPOSED International Queer Film Festival is one of those events which reminds me that i am in the land where being yourself is normal.

It’s about eXposure and eXposing. It’s about fun, it’s about Berlin and the rest of the Queer World!

The best way to shine a light on Queer life in another land is to mark it with a giant X and open peoples eyes to it, therefore, the festival grew into it’s new focus. Every year we would dedicate to a specific region around the world and bring queer stories from these lands to an International audience in Berlin. Not only have we XPOSED Queer Australian short films, but also short films from Canada, Korea, Turkey, Germany, Spain & The Middle East!  X marks the spot, and that spot this year is AUSTRIA (Xposed)

30 May – 1 June 2013

@ MOVIEMENTO

Kottbusser Damm 22 ubhf – Schönleinstr. U8

Full Program and other venues

Kurt Kren 10/65 Selbstverstümmelung

Albert Sackl Im Freien