ISSUE 05 LOLAMAG.DE
+ Shahak Shapira courts controversy with comedy Photoautomat and Berlin’s love of anachronisms Seoul’s Drag Queens introduce us to queer Korea FotoKlub Kollektiv Kolja Kugler Ida Tin Romano Kevin Braddock Project Mooncircle Wings of Desire Gay Sperm Andy Kassier The LOLA Guide Our recommendations for autumn/winter
TRICKY WEST COUNTRY BOY TURNED WAHLBERLINER
A/W 2017 FREE
TOM MISCH
LONDON GRAMMAR
!!! (CHKCHK)
NOGA EREZ
02.11. SchwuZ
26.11. Ufo im Velodrom
06.11. Festsaal Kreuzberg
28.11. Berghain Kantine
TOMMY GENESIS
TRICKY
07.11. Berghain
28.11. Festsaal Kreuzberg
ROMANO
HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR
KIMBRA
YUNG LEAN
Ă SGEIR
WASHED OUT
ZOLA JESUS
KING KRULE
BICEP (LIVE)
RONE
09.11. Columbiahalle
20.11. Prince Charles
20.11. Huxleys
22.11. SO36
30.11. Kesselhaus
02.12. Astra Kulturhaus
03.12. Festsaal Kreuzberg
04.12. Astra Kulturhaus
23.11. Kesselhaus
15.12. Prince Charles
DENZEL CURRY
KELELA
24.11. Festsaal Kreuzberg
BLAUE BLUME 25.11. Kantine am Berghain
meltbooking.com
facebook.com/wearemeltbooking
07.12. Berghain
6LACK
31.01. Astra Kulturhaus
Autumn/Winter 2017
Editorial
SEASONS CHANGE.
I
’ve just passed my three-year anniversary of living in Berlin. Well, I moved to Berlin from Belfast a few months over three years ago, but I spent the first two months living here alone and consider the official moving date as the date my dog, Lola, joined me. A lot has changed in that time. Berlin is a city that is in an almost perpetual state of flux and development. The more time passes, the more I notice the changes. There is endless construction work. Buildings are routinely torn down and new ones erected, scaffolding is everywhere and facades are given facelifts. This is nothing new and has been happening for decades, but when you start to see it on a daily basis it has a real effect on you. From Warschauer Brücke looking in the direction of the new Eastside Mall site I recently counted 16 cranes in that area alone. Then there is the turnover in businesses. New bars, restaurants and shops pop up with increasing regularity. In distributing magazines over the last 18 months or so, I’ve noticed numerous places opening, closing and changing hands throughout the city. This is to be expected in a major modern city
Publisher & Editor In Chief Jonny Tiernan Executive Editor Marc Yates Associate Editor Alison Rhoades
Photographers Valentina Culley-Foster Zoe Guilty Yvonne Hartmann Zack Helwa Soheil Moradianboroujeni Jinny Park Viktor Richardsson Robert Rieger
receiving a large influx of people, but the current rate is almost alarming. The level of change can make it hard to feel a sense of security. Perhaps this is why there is a strong spirit of resistance to it; a fight to protect the history and cultural foundations that the city was built on. Some of the small anachronisms can be sweet, such as the fact video rental stores still exist, while others can be a little vexing (“Sorry, we don’t accept card payments”), but there is also the drive to protect alternative ways of living that have been an integral part of Berlin for a long time, like the longstanding tradition of cooperative buildings and Wagenplatz areas. An experience of change is one that almost every Berlin resident shares, regardless of how long they have lived here. It can be challenging and testing, but in the end it’s worth it. Berlin can feel like a microcosm of the world – a glorious, imperfect melting pot. It’s a privilege to be a part of it, and while there are growing pains involved in living in a city that changes this much, it’s an exciting time to be here. The face of Berlin might be changing, but the spirit remains the same. Jonny
Writers Joel Dullroy Tom Evans Marlén Jacobshagen Maria Mouk Alex Rennie Andrea Servert Juno Sparkes Stephanie Taralson
Marketing Manager Lucía González Special Thanks Johannes Boßhammer Melanie Kasper Andreas Oberschelp Dieter Schienhammer Claudia Ulhaas Wild Waste Gallery Michael Yurgil
LOLA Magazine Blogfabrik Oranienstraße 185 10999 Berlin For business enquiries jonny@lolamag.de For editorial enquiries marc@lolamag.de
Sub Editors Maggie Devlin Linda Toocaram Published by The LOLA Agency Cover photo by Robert Rieger Printed in Lithuania by AB Spauda. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Studying German at die deutSCHule in Neukölln is such a great experience. The teachers are enthusiastic and supportive, and I’ve made a lot of friends here. Hyeonjin Park Student, South Korea
die deutSCHule
German learning to support you on your way to an academic career 2
www.die-deutschule.de Karl-Marx-Straße 107, 12043 Berlin, Tel: +49 (0)30 6808 5223 Issue Five
Photo by Robert Rieger
German rap sensation Romano looks out at Oberbaumbrücke. Get the full story of his genre-fluid career on page 30.
Contents 04. The LOLA Guide
The very best things to see and do in Berlin this season.
06. berlin through the lens
FotoKlub Kollektiv “Openness was the initial idea of the group and now we want to push for a more diverse group of artists, from complete beginners to professionals.” 10.
local hero
Photoautomat “They’re characters, these booths. Some are a bit sensitive. Some are really strong, you just have to listen to the machine and get a sense of what it is.”
14. Shahak Shapira
“I fucking hate coriander. It’s worse than Hitler.” 17. Kolja Kugler
“It was hard on the road without a workshop. I always sculpted wherever I was, in the ditch with a generator.”
20. cover story
36. dispatches
Tricky “On this new album, musically there’s a bit of change that happened to me, I can feel it.”
Seoul’s Drag Queens “When I first performed there I didn’t expect the protesters to be so vocal, but as the years go by I am energised by them more than anything.”
26. Ida Tin
“Reproductive health is an incredibly foundational and central part of our lives, but there’s a real lack of clarity for women, generally.” 30. Romano
40. Wings of Desire
“Its subtle play with the themes of borders, embodiment and sacrifice render themselves timeless.” 42. point of view
Take My Gay Sperm “Gay men are considered to be at higher risk of sexual diseases. But is this discrimination supported by fact?”
“Pippi Longstocking is my role model: life is wonderful, make it colourful!” 32. Kevin Braddock
“Depression transcends gender, race, status, everything. It’s a problem that anyone can have.” 35. Project Mooncircle
“We wanted to create a view from the moon to the earth. We wanted to give the listener some kind of soundtrack to reflect on what happens here.”
43. In Pictures
Illustrated news from the late summer.
44. the last word:
Andy Kassier “Life is always ups and downs. It’s like the stock market.”
Autumn/Winter 2017
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Guide
THE
GUIDE
Plan out your autumn and winter with our picks of the very finest things to see and do in Berlin this season. MUSIC FESTIVAL
SYNÄSTHESIE 2017 Synästhesie have whipped out probably their most impressive lineup to date for their 3rd festival, which will happen at Volksbühne on November 19th. We’re most excited about headliners The Horrors, who have evolved from their arch-hipster beginnings into one of the finest bands of recent years. Also on the lineup are bonafide legends Tangerine Dream, krautrock-influenced Berliners Camera and more.
For full details, check facebook.com/synaesthesie
MAGAZINE
NANSEN A fantastic first issue heralds the arrival of a new magazine about migrants in Berlin. Nansen seeks to connect and celebrate the city’s migrants with great storytelling, a topic that is very close to our hearts. In the first issue we meet Aydin Akin, who for 50 years has been fighting to improve the lives of migrants arriving here.
Pick up your copy at nansenmagazine.com
ART FESTIVAL
LOST 48 HOURS ART & MUSIC Pankow’s Willner Brauerei will open its doors for one last hurrah as 80 artists and musicians host the 48-hour Art Festival. For the first and last time, the 3000m2 brewery, storehouse and vaulted cellar will transform into an immersive art experience. The non-stop programme includes artist talks, opera, live performances, cinema, pianists, two club floors curated by Berliner labels, and exhibitions by DARK ROOMS, ENTER ART FOUNDATION and PRIEST AND PRAWNS.
The festival will take place for two days from December 15th to 17th. Learn more at lostberlin.de
PHOTOGRAPHY
DANNY LYON Danny Lyon’s Message to the Future is one of two fantastic new photography exhibitions at C/O Berlin. Lyon documents social reality, and has turned his lens on a variety of important cultural moments in America’s recent history, from the civil rights movement to the freedom of the American highway as seen through motorcycle clubs. This retrospective includes photography, audio recordings and film work.
Message to the Future is up until December 3rd. 4
Issue Five
Guide
SHOP
LOVECO Cruelty-free is the new black. LOVECO focuses on sustainable, eco-friendly and vegan fashion. Their curated selections of clothes, accessories and cosmetics are displayed in elegant shops furnished with second-hand pieces. You can’t help but leave with a haul bigger than intended, but at least it makes the world a better place.
Visit the new LOVECO shop at Manteuffelstraße 77.
GAME
BERGNEIN After a successful crowdfunding campaign was halted for some months due to legal fisticuffs with Sven Marquardt, Bergnein is finally out. It’s a card game that bases its fun on the loathed yet cherished Berlin experience of queueing for Berghain, with plenty of parody and in-jokes along the way.
Read more at lolamag.de/feature/bergnein and get your copy at bergnein.com
FILM
ÜBERLEBEN IN NEUKÖLLN BY ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM Rosa von Praunheim’s films about queer life were essential for the German gay rights movement in the ‘70s. His new movie Überleben in Neukölln portrays the life of Neuköllners, from 89-year-old Jo, who now finds herself surrounded by young hipsters, to artist Micha, who had 365 consecutive one night stands for his art project Save the Date. In meeting these people Praunheim asks: what to do about gentrification?
Überleben in Neukölln is set for general release on November 23rd.
ALBUM
WATERGATE XV: VARIOUS ARTISTS (WATERGATE RECORDS) The roll call of artists on this 15th anniversary album is mighty. Catz n Dogz, Adana Twins, La Fleur, and Ellen Allien to name a few run the gamut from blissed-out soundscapes to peak time bangers. Available as a double CD package or a deluxe 5x vinyl boxset, it’s the best way to bring the spirit of Watergate to your stereo.
Available November 6th in a limited edition of 1000.
SEE MORE AT LOLAMAG.DE/GUIDE Autumn/Winter 2017
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Berlin Through The Lens
FotoKlub Kollektiv
DEVELOPING TALENT WITH FOTOKLUB KOLLEKTIV words by Alison Rhoades
D
espite the art form’s ability to connect people on Instagram and other social platforms, serious photography is often viewed as a solitary activity. However, photographers Stephanie Ballantine and Zack Helwa realised long ago that their practices were contingent on community. Not just for resources, facilities, or even their subjects, but because to the extent that art is a solitary journey, it relies just as heavily on an audience and a supportive group of peers. FotoKlub Kollektiv sprung from this desire to support and be supported by photographers in Berlin. It hinges on the idea of the collective offering shared print facilities, a weekly critique group, and an artist residency. They also have a gallery where they feature monthly shows, running the
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gamut from stylised curated landscapes to experimental performances. We talked to Zack and Stephanie about the origins of the F.K. Kollektiv and the importance of community for artists in Berlin. How did you discover your shared love of photography? Zack: The first time Stephanie came to our former weekly photo club meetings we got very excited about helping each other with printing our portfolios and working on projects together. Stephanie: Zack also studied photography, so that was our first connection. Also, like me, he had branched out to experiment with different art forms during his degree, so we already had a different perspective on our photographic practices than some die-hard photographers.
How did the idea for F.K. Kollektiv come about? Zack: When I finished my studies at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, I remember feeling the lack of this collective critique of our work. During my first month here I moved into a WG that had a lot of space and a studio on the first floor, and I decided that I wanted to start having weekly crit sessions. I was far removed from working in photography at the time and had been mostly into sculpture, performance and video installations, but I knew that I could revive my passion for photography with just the basic necessities for art: facilities, a group for discussion, and some space to show it. It was all meant to be very small scale. I remember we were so excited to be able to afford a small flatbed scanner to develop our
FotoKlub Kollektiv
Berlin Through The Lens
« PHOTOGRAPHY IS A MODE OF PROJECTION AND REFLECTION FROM AND TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER. WE CAN LEARN ABOUT OURSELVES FROM WHAT WE PHOTOGRAPH. »
film after our first collective show. I would never have expected to take it this far. F.K. Kollektiv’s mission is really driven by supporting photographers to come together and share, reflect, and educate themselves and each other. Can you speak to the idea of community and its relevance for this project? Stephanie: Community is a key component to the project. So far it has grown naturally through connections between an extended network and those who have found us online. One of our goals is to connect with some of the NGOs or small community organisations we know in the Neukölln area so we can expand to different age groups and to people who may not just come across the collective. Zack: To me, it’s like trying to create a borderless educational system. So, instead of spending your savings paying for a school, or trying to please teachers, you can have direct contact with your community and can learn from each other. As a friend and schoolmate once said to me: “The friends from SVA are the most expensive friends I’ve made!” The collective includes artists from different cultures and backgrounds. Has the diversity of the group influenced your practices and how you think about photography? Stephanie: It’s very important to the collective! Openness was the initial idea of the group and now we want to push for a more diverse group of artists, from complete beginners to professionals. People bring themselves to what they photograph, and when you hear people talk about their inten-
tions for the work, they will always express something about their background. Most people who come to the group are from different countries, so the work is always (if not directly, then inadvertently) about inhabiting a space. Photography is a mode of projection and reflection from and to the photographer. We can learn about ourselves from what we photograph. Zack: For me, it was very important to bring non-photographers to the group, as well as people from different backgrounds and cultures. Photographers can be a bit too one-dimensional in the way they view visual art. I think it’s healthy to have an engineer or an architect bring something to the table rather than just a bunch of photographers talking about other ‘more famous’ photographers. I don’t want us to be making art only for other artists. Why was it important to have a critique group? Stephanie: When you work as an artist you often work alone, and critical reflection can become difficult. Maybe you will reach a point in your practice where you would pay for a portfolio review to find direction. By attending a critique group, you can develop your work by listening to the perspectives of others, who are interested, engaged, empathic, and who are different enough to give valuable insight. Zack: It’s very important to have an open dialogue with the public in your art, so having that conversation in a closed space while working out your own art is practice for the real part of an ‘art job’. It’s about transitioning from ‘look at how cool I am because I can make this beautiful image’, to ‘I hope this work opens a discussion with the public that doesn’t exist yet’.
project that culminated in an exhibition. The process was really great to see: from having no clear idea of how to approach the subject, she came out with something strong, and some beautiful prints. The next residency I’d like to open is a curatorial one. I’d love for someone to come and be open to working with the collective, choosing a curatorial direction and engaging in a dialogue with our artists. What are some of your favorite exhibitions so far? Stephanie: We’ve had three exhibitions and they have all been really great and pretty different. The Blind Curator is one we can point to, as it was not clear how it would turn out. For this project, we put out an open call for submissions and put every single photograph in the space, which were then hung by the curator, who was blindfolded. Visitors were then asked to connect photos with a red string if they could identify a link between them. We ended up having around 75 participants and the work became about intertwining stories, accents, and mirrors. The room was full with images and red string. Zack: It’s hard for me to separate the success of the work with the sense of
Tell us about the artist-in-residence programme. Stephanie: The residency programme is very much in development. We’ve had one artist so far. She came to work on a project she had started in 2011 documenting cannabis farms in the US over a few different seasons. She came with a stack of negatives to scan and contact sheets to edit. Through the crit sessions, she was able to find a path through the Autumn/Winter 2017
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Berlin Through The Lens
FokoKlub Kollektiv
« IT’S HARD FOR ME TO SEPARATE THE SUCCESS OF THE WORK WITH THE SENSE OF COMMUNITY. » community. Some shows were amazing because of how everyone falls into their roles naturally and fulfilled them. Others have just been great shows regardless of how hectic putting a show together can be. Our first collective show, Winterschlaf, will always have a special place in my heart, as it was the first time I could see that this kind of community-oriented
process works. It was quite emotional for me to see such good work come together with a collective effort. You’re also a couple. How has running a huge project like this impacted your relationship? Zack: Hard, but wonderful. But also stressful. But also satisfying. Let’s not talk about it. It’s very hard to work on the same
This page clockwise from top left: Photo by Albina Maksudova, Lula Rodriguez, Jon Cuadros, Sophie le Roux, Stephanie Ballantine, Merve Terzi.
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Issue Five
projects together, but we have skills that complement each other. We manage somehow. Stephanie: Sometimes the process of dividing tasks is very natural: I enjoy developing the website, whereas Zack is super skilled at being on top of the equipment. Other times we have to make sure we are not stepping on each other’s toes. We are still learning how to separate work and life! Do you think a project like this would be relevant outside Berlin, or is there something about the nature of the city that compelled you to set it up here? Stephanie: There are other collectives that are similar in other countries. I was part of one in Leeds in the UK and I think my
FokoKlub Kollektiv
experience contributes to how we develop the project in Berlin. Obviously it’s a city with a lot of movement, creativity and energy, so this helps to bring a variety of people to the group, and makes it very dynamic. I’m also super interested in connecting with other groups over the world. We already have partnerships in Bulgaria and in England, and we will work on exchanges and dialogues with them. How can we get involved with F.K. Kollektiv? Stephanie: Come to the meetings and check out our open submissions! Zack: Find us on Tinder! Or write us at info@fk-kollektiv.com, and check our website and Facebook page. We always have stuff going on. People who tend to put work into the space or collective also end up being crucial in shaping the direction of our group. Three years ago we were a few people meeting in a small room at a desk, I somehow see this space as a new beginning, with much to still be formed and created.
THE WEATHER STATION
17.11.17, Festsaal Kreuzberg
MOUNT EERIE
SLEEP PARTY PEOPLE
05.11. + 06.11.17, Silent Green
TINY VIPERS
This page, top to bottom: Photo by Chris Morgan, Anett Posalaki, Zack Helwa.
DESTROYER
29.10.17, Monarch
12.11.17, Monarch
GIRL RAY
21.11.17, Musik & Frieden
KLEZ.E
28.11.17, Lido
RICHARD DAWSON
13.11.17, Monarch
29.11.17, Kantine am Berhain
JULIEN BAKER
MARIAM THE BELIEVER
14.11.17, Heimathafen Neukölln
JANE WEAVER
17.11.17, Privatclub
04.12.17, Privatclub
AQUASERGE
08.12.17, Marie-Antoinette Autumn/Winter 2017
TICKETS & INFO: PUSCHEN.NET
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Local Hero
Photoautomat
LOCAL HERO
PHOTOAUTOMAT: THE STORY OF BERLIN’S ICONIC PHOTO BOOTHS Wedged between buildings, sitting outside a supermarket entrance, or idle in a beer garden; these seemingly mundane corners of the city are where you might encounter one of Berlin’s thirty-odd analogue photo booths, characterised by the bold red letters on their sides that spell out: Photoautomat.
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Issue Five
Photoautomat
words by
Tom Evans photos by
Yvonne Hartmann
Rosenthaler Platz This busy crossroads is the former site of Rosenthaler Tor, which formed part of the Berliner Zoll- und Akzisemauer (Berlin Customs Wall) that encircled the city between 1737 and 1860.
Below: Photoautomat founders Ole and Asger.
T
he exact number is always changing. Booths come and go, or migrate from season to season. Others spring up in new locations each year, moved as Berlin’s vacant lots gradually morph into construction sites. But many are evergreen – landmarks in their own right – like so many of the city’s best-loved anachronisms. With their red lettering and entirely mechanical workings, the Photoautomaten masquerade as hardy survivors from the days of the Wall. Their story in Berlin doesn’t begin, however, until early summer 2004, when two friends with a passion for photography placed a booth on an empty corner near Rosenthaler Platz. Asger Doenst and Ole Kretschmann were on a trip to Zürich when they first saw the analogue photo booths still in regular use. Asger, a photographer, and Ole, a writer and carpenter, were immediately convinced that it was something they should bring to Berlin. They got their hands on an old model – one that had already given a lifetime of service – and began the task of preparing it for the streets. “It was actually kind of falling apart,” Ole begins. “The booth was from the ‘50s; 1956 or something. It wasn’t in a state to put outside. So I came up with the look, the materials and how we’d renovate it while Asger looked for a location.” Asger elaborates: “At that time in Berlin you had many possibilities. It wasn’t difficult to find a good place and some okay places. But a really good place is always difficult.” Until they began working on Photoautomaten, public photo booths, ever a staple of train stations and shopping malls, had never been out on the streets of Berlin. In a city of tourists, squats, and DIY club culture, few people thought the project would make it through its first weeks. “We were prepared for a really slow start,” Ole admits. “Our main concern was that it would be destroyed. Everybody around us was like, ‘Oh, this will not last for a week in Berlin!’ So we didn’t expect much to happen. I remember our goal was to pay our rent, like 200 euros, so if this thing could make 400 euros that would be a dream come true.” As it turned out, the nonbelievers were wrong. “The opposite happened,” Ole continues. “People embraced it as something worthwhile, and they liked the idea.
Local Hero
They hung out there, and there was no aggression whatsoever. People saw that some freaks were doing something public and accessible; that’s how it was perceived. And the cool thing was, these people had these photos to go around and show their friends. It was a discovery for people.” The fascination that Ole and Asger had shared for the remarkable quality of these old passport photos wasn’t lost on tourists or resident Berliners. In a matter of weeks the booth had transformed a quiet corner of Weinbergsweg into a place to hang out, and it wasn’t long before Berlin-based culture magazine 030 and the TV show Polylux turned up to get the story. “People stopped and used it. That was the amazing part of it, you know? We didn’t expect much to happen. We didn’t know if anyone else would share the excitement,” Ole remembers. Now knowing that both concept and booth could survive on the streets of Berlin, Ole and Asger acquired and renovated a second Photoautomat. They took it to locations across the city, including the newly-opened Bar 25. Prenzlauer Berg hosted a third booth in 2006, and by then it was evident that the project had far more potential than either had ever anticipated. “I remember that Asger and I had a talk,” Ole says. “For me it was the first time with access to a possibility. What do we want? Let’s position ourselves. Do we want to grow this?” They agreed that they did, and set out on a mission to track down analogue photo booths all over Europe. They travelled to Zürich to meet Martin Balke, owner of Schnellphoto AG, the company that had kept some 150 booths in operation across Switzerland until 2005. Martin’s company, however, was going out of business. He and his brother Christoph were nearing retirement, and they had no one to take the reins. “Martin told us: ‘You can make something for yourself. Berlin is a good place to do something.’ He was so supportive. He was always with us.” Learning how to run a larger network of booths from Martin and Christoph, Ole and Asger began to expand, taking on their first Photoautomat employee in 2007 and buying up and refurbishing old units wherever they could find them. Today there are as many as 35 booths in operation at any one time in Berlin; they can even be spotted on the streets of Leipzig, Hamburg, Cologne, Zürich, and as far away as Florence. The Berlin Photoautomaten are available for use 24 hours a day, all year round. Five part-time staff help manage things, with someone always available to field a call from a disappointed or, as is more often the case, an impatient customer. Reminding callers what it feels like to wait a whole five minutes for processing is the task of most of the day-to-day calls, but when photos really do fail to appear – which happens just once in a thousand times, according to Asger – customers are always refunded. They’re determined to maintain a guarantee that the photos always look their vintage best. It’s a passion and commitment they share with their mentors from Zürich. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Local LocalHero Hero
Photoautomat
“We shouldn’t take all the credit [for the way the photos look],” Ole says, modestly. “But we could take the credit for trying to keep the standard up. We aim for a certain look, and that’s what we fell in love with, so it is our goal to have these photos come out all over the place. At any time. That’s our ambition.” Indeed, anyone who has used a Photoautomat knows the charm and quality of the photography itself. With striking contrast and sharp yet warm black and white, the four passport-sized photos look a comfortable level or two better than even the best filter on any app you can find. Add to that the joy of holding a physical print in your hands, and it’s no wonder these slender strips have become a recognisable feature on fridges and notice boards in Berlin homes. However, since every booth is unique, maintaining that look and quality comes down to dedication and expertise. “Some are really old and the parts are not the same,” Asger begins, touching on the technical challenges of the project. “It’s not industrial production, and we got them from different places all over the world.” “They’re characters, these booths,” Ole continues. “Some are a bit sensitive. Some are really strong, you just have to listen to the machine and get a sense of what it is. Some booths are from the 1950s, others are from the ‘70s or ‘80s. The parts are not interchangeable; they are individuals.” Ole and Asger believe it’s an expectation of quality, and the guarantee of a memento, that has kept the project going. Though certainly irresistible to visiting weekenders, they are convinced the majority of their customers are locals who return to the machines time and again. “We only exist because we have returning customers,” Ole says, sincerely. “That’s for sure. People come back. We believe that’s the core of the business; that people like to return. That’s why we want to keep the booths clean and the quality of the photos as good as possible.” Trusting in the quality, some Photoautomat aficionados will go as far as to call when a booth isn’t working as expected, contributing to a network of feedback from a population of eager participants. It’s a sign that, far from being the forgettable, here-today-gone-tomorrow street gimmicks that many predicted, these machines have become a cherished part of the city’s landscape: an accessible public good made all the more charming by the fact that they seem, somehow, to belong. Over the years, that charm has also proved alluring to advertisers who are ever-ready to seize an opportunity to capitalise on 12
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« SOME ARE A BIT SENSITIVE. SOME ARE REALLY STRONG, YOU JUST HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE MACHINE AND GET A SENSE OF WHAT IT IS. »
Berlin’s unkempt chic at no extra cost. This is something Ole and Asger claim never to encourage. They have even, in fact, locked horns with the likes of the Berlinale, BVG, and Converse for using the booths without permission. It wasn’t about getting paid a fair share, they assert, but about taking a stand. “It’s important to try and stop it from happening again. We don’t want to be [associated] with Converse, even if we get thousands,” says Asger. In keeping with this spirit, the Photoautomat entrepreneurs have kept their venture customer-friendly. For the 13 years that the booths have been in operation in the city, a strip of photos has maintained the ever-affordable price of two euros. That feels increasingly modest as Berlin reluctantly plays catch up with its wealthier and better exploited European neighbours.
From the beginning, the Photoautomaten have made use of the last of the city’s unused lots, industrial yards, and unofficial public spaces. Like the squats, bars and clubs of the past, they too have brought life to areas left untouched by the once invisible hand of the Berlin property market. But like many small business owners, Ole and Asger are confronted by development in the city. From their workshop on Bersarinplatz, they look to find new locations for the booths that have been displaced by new buildings and soaring rents. “You lose places and then you need to find new ones,” Asger says. “But there’s less choice because they’re building on every free spot. So it’s getting more difficult. It’s a big task to keep the locations we have now.” But the pair remains optimistic, buoyed by the knowledge that the Photoautomaten have become an established, if inconspicuous, part of life in the city. “People even stay in contact [with one another], because they wait in line together,” says Asger, referring to the way the booths can form new friendships as people bond over that five-minute eternity as they wait for their photos to emerge. The Berlin Photoautomaten offer a shared experience to return to time and again; an analogue anachronism in a digital era. In strips of newly-developed photos, they provide a way for the city to take a portrait of itself.
Find your nearest Photoautomat at photoautomat.de
Autumn/Winter 2017
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Comic Relief
Shahak Shapira
SHAHAK SHAPIRA: MAKING FUN OF OLD WHITE DUDES
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Shahak Shapira
“Wait, are you Shahak Shapira?” Someone stops and asks as we’re about to enter Neukölln’s Ankerklause with the Israeli–German artist, who has received much acclaim for his subversive and often satirical projects. Shahak has worked hard over the last three years to become the internet and media sensation he is today. As we talk, he speaks candidly about his long list of professional accomplishments, which include bestselling books, viral videos, art, political work, advertising, and music. The next step on his career ladder? Stand-up comedy. words by
Marlén Jacobshagen photos by
Viktor Richardsson
You came from Israel to Germany when you were a teenager and moved to Laucha an der Unstrut, where the right-wing extremist party NPD earned 13.55% in 2009. How would you describe Laucha at that time? It’s a shithole in the East and it’s full of Nazis. I guess that’s the way you’d sum it up for some, but it wouldn’t be entirely true. Not all of them were neo-Nazis. And some of them were but didn’t think they were. You know, it’s complicated nowadays, you can’t call anybody a Nazi anymore. Because then they’re like: “I’m not a Nazi. I’m just alt-right. I just hate foreigners. You’re a Nazi!” [Laughs] Let’s say it was interesting on many levels. You wrote a book about your experiences and, in response, some newspapers started calling you “the new Jewish voice in Germany.” What do you think of that? I fucking hated that. I’m not Jewish, I’m of Jewish heritage. Judaism is not only a religion, it’s also an ethnic thing. And I became a Jew in Germany, ironically. Because neo-Nazis and crazy Islamists hit me, insulted me or spat on me. They made me the Jew. And at that point I took it and said: “Fuck you, of course I’m Jewish!” Then I got to be a z-list celebrity and I noticed that you can’t even make jokes about it. Because as soon as you make one joke about being a Jew you’re “the Jew.” The Jew that talks about Jewish stuff all day and then all they ask you to do are documentaries about anti-semitism, or they make you read hateful tweets. I fucking hate that. I’ve been semi-successful at getting rid of it. When I did the Yolocaust project, people were denouncing me as a Jewish artist and then with my following projects that disappeared. I was actually recognised for my work, and not for being a Jewish artist. Whatever the fuck that means.
Coriander Whereas some experience a refreshing, lemony flavour, others have a strong aversion to the taste and smell of coriander, describing it as soapy or rotten. Studies attribute this to variations in the OR6A2 gene, which is responsible for olfactory receptors that interact with odorant molecules in the nose to trigger smell perception.
In Yolocaust you edited tourist selfies taken at the Holocaust memorial to make them look like they were taken at concentration camps. It received a lot of feedback in the media; were you impressed by the attention it got? That was pretty cool, but it sets the bar really high. When you get a taste of international success, it makes everything else boring; it makes Germany boring. Every time you get a taste of success it’s a big thing. That’s why people make complete
Comic Relief
fools out of themselves on TV, just to get a little bit of that. They eat worms and show their tits and penises just to get attention. Besides all the media interest and a lot of positive comments, you’ve faced a lot of criticism and abuse. Which of the two counts more for you? Well, I should be glad about positive comments, but being the person that I am, I always pick the negative ones and focus on them. I don’t want to, I’m just like that. I get a tremendous amount of shit every day and lately I’ve been wondering why the fuck I am doing it. It’s not that I post stuff on Twitter and Facebook to make people feel bad. I just try to tell some jokes and that’s it. There’s always a balance to be struck: is it worth getting all the shit you get? Is it worth the people who keep sending you emails, who have your private address and phone number even though it’s not even on the internet? Or your mum’s address, and they’re threatening to hurt your family? It’s a very thin line, but that’s why I’m not showing my tits on TV. I have other options. I don’t have to do this. It’s for fun right now. I could always go back to advertising. Talk us through your use of humour. There are different ways to use it. I guess it’s more defensive than offensive. Nobody makes fun of me the way I do. I’m the best at making fun of myself. After I’ve told all the jokes about myself, nobody can come and insult me, because how can you insult someone who is already insulting himself? Humour helps sometimes, but it’s tough, you always need to have a distance from yourself. When people get into your head, it’s very hard to make fun of yourself because you’re hurting. I guess the secret to humour is in many ways a distance between you and the subject. Whether it’s you that’s the subject or, say, the Middle East conflict, you need to posses a certain nihilism to make fun of something. If you’re too emotionally involved, you’re not funny anymore – unless it’s ridiculous stuff. You can get totally emotional about stuff that is completely ridiculous, like coriander. I fucking hate coriander. It’s worse than Hitler. You’re going on a big comedy tour in 2018 with German Humor. Do you see yourself as part of the German comedy scene? I’m a comedian, but I hope I’m not a part of the comedy scene. [Laughs] It’s difficult right now, I’ve been having a hard time writing jokes. The issue is that I know maybe two comedians who I think are actually funny in Germany: Till Reiners and Moritz Neumeier. All my idols in comedy are from the States and they’re all really good. For comedy you need to be on stage for 10 or 15 years to be good. I actually think comedians in Germany are lazy. I don’t know any comedian here who has been on stage for that amount of time without doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe I just don’t know the right people, but all the people who fill arenas have been doing the same thing for years. They’re not bad comedians, Autumn/Winter 2017
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Shahak Shapira
everybody does it now. I’m more interested in making fun of majorities. I didn’t think that way before, it’s just a thought that came to me a few weeks ago. I see a lot of comedians who have this list of different groups they want to make fun of. They think: “I’m so good at insulting people,” but they’re not, because they’re not doing it with love. You need to take your time if you really want to insult someone. You can’t just go like: ‘Now that we’re done with the blacks we’re going to go to the Jews.’ It’s not funny anymore. And why should the majorities get away? Why is it always about minorities? They suffer enough. Let’s make fun of old white dudes.
they’re just lazy comedians. They don’t need to write a new programme every year, which prevents them from evolving. How do you think the German comedy scene differs from America’s? In many ways. Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle are two of my favorite comedians. What I like about Louis is that he’s of Mexican and Hungarian descent, and he doesn’t talk about it. He talks about things anyone could talk about. This style makes it very hard to be original but he always manages to find new angles. You hear it and you’re like, ‘Fuck, how did I not come up with that?’ In German comedy you have two types of comedians: the clowns like Otto or Mario Barth; they tell jokes. And then you have the complete opposite: the teachers. They teach you stuff like they’re your dad, but it’s patronising. The cabaret show Die Anstalt or the comedian Volker Pisbers are examples. What I like about American comedy is that it’s wrong. Dave Chapelle is wrong, he says things that are wrong. Deliberately! He knows that they’re wrong and the crowd knows they’re wrong as well. I think that is one of the biggest gifts of comedy, that it takes you to different places, places you wouldn’t go yourself. Why would you need me if I told you things that you could come up with yourself? It’s fucking hard to do that. It’s really hard to avoid Jew jokes too, but I don’t want to be a Jewish comedian. When making fun of different ethnicities or religions, there’s a thin line between being good at it and just being insulting. When do you cross that line? A friend of mine, Serdar Somuncu, said a few years ago that every minority has the right to be discriminated against. This type of comedy is not new. It’s a legit thing to do, but 16
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So is this your new routine? Making fun of old white dudes? I’m trying to find my thing. And I don’t want my thing to be too... thing-y. I don’t want to be the fat guy that tells sexist jokes all the time, although I’d prefer Bill Burr over Mario Barth any day. And I don’t want to be the Jewish guy either, there’s already one of those. I try to avoid a niche. I want to find out what my deal is, and if I need a ‘deal’ at all. Do you feel under pressure to find your own way in comedy? I’m trying my best. My problem is that it’s very hard to do all the things I do and not confuse people completely. I did this Twitter project, for example, but then I also do stand-up comedy. Who does that? It’s not very common in show business. They usually have one type of thing. I’m very funny on Facebook, I know that. And I’ve been writing comedy for years, because writing advertisements is not very different. I could do a TV show now and I could write sketches, that could work. But that would be easier for me than to be a really good standup comedian. I guess I still need to show people that I can do real comedy. Maybe I can’t, maybe I will be a shitty comedian. We doubt that. So what are your plans for the future? I want to be a comedian but that’s not the only thing I want to be. That’s the problem: I’m really jealous of people who know what they want to be. Even if it’s completely fucking impossible, especially for them, at least they know they have this one thing and they might fail but they still go for it. I hope I’ll get a TV show soon. But it takes a lot of time. I have a TED talk coming up. And I guess I’d like to make a bit more music. I want to be a rapper. Like Romano. [Laughs] I’m a big fan. He’s one of the few interesting people in German music at the moment. Maybe I will collaborate with him one day.
Read more about Romano on page 30. Follow Shahak and get more details about his German Humor show at facebook.com/shahakshapira
BY SHAHAK SHAPIRA: Das wird man ja wohl noch schreib-en dürfen!: Wie ich der deutscheste Jude der Welt wurde Shahak’s autobiography covers his youth in Israel and Germany, the murder of his paternal grandfather in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, and his maternal grandfather’s survival of the Holocaust. ‘90s Boiler Room Shahak replaced the audio from Boiler Room streams with 1990s pop hits in a series of videos that garnered international attention and millions of views. Yolocaust To criticise the trend of tourists taking cheerful selfies at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, Shahak took photos from social media and edited them to show the subjects posing against horrifying scenes at concentration camps. The project received worldwide attention, but was removed from the website after all of the subjects asked to be taken down. #HeyTwitter Motivated by Twitter’s lack of response when reporting homophobic, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tweets, Shahak made 30 stencils of offending tweets and sprayed them on the road outside Twitter’s Hamburg offices. As employees arrived at work, they were confronted by the violation of their own terms of service and hate speech policies. Die PARTEI Ahead of the 2017 German election, Shahak hijacked a number of farright Facebook groups, including several used by high-ranking members of the AfD. Admins were locked out, then the groups were made public and renamed ‘I <3 Antifa’ and ‘Hummus-Liebe’, among others. Holyge Bimbel This short book is a translation of The Holy Bible into ‘internet German’. Perfect for street-savvy millennials and digital disciples who want their scripture delivered in a language they can understand.
Sounds of the Scrapyard
MADCAP ARTIST KOLJA KUGLER’S HEAVY METAL ENSEMBLE Kolja Kugler is one of those characters that makes Berlin the place it is. Yet the city, and its history, have left an indelible mark on his trajectory, both as an artist and a person. We met Kolja and his robotic musicians, the One Love Machine Band, to get a closer look at the nuts and bolts of his automated art, and to revisit a post-Wall metropolis where the possibilities were endless. words by
Alex Rennie photos by
Soheil Moradianboroujeni
I
t’s a bright Saturday afternoon. Kreuzberg shimmers in the sunlight as it reflects off the Landwehrkanal. Just past Birgit & Bier, between a cement supplier, adidas’ swish RUNBASE and the now defunct Jonny Knüppel, you’ll find Kolja Kugler’s Wild Waste Gallery. His One Love Machine Band are set to perform to a small audience, some eagerly awaiting, others utterly perplexed. Two towering humanoid sculptures loom over a makeshift stage, one clutching a bass guitar in its gargantuan hands, the other hunched over a ramshackle drum kit. Without their instruments, they’d look at home in The Terminator. Kolja flits between his scrap creations, tinkering with wiring and pneumatic pistons, before returning to his control desk. To the left of the duo sits the band’s manager, Sir Elton Junk. The surreality of the scene
is intensified by the shipping containers that form an industrial henge around the space’s perimeter. Kolja’s ‘droids jerk to life, performing with a thundering mix of percussion, creaking metal, rushing air and pounding bass, overlain with a chorus of flute-playing robo-birds. It’s as eccentric as it sounds. The spectacle comes to a close with Kolja actually playing Sir Elton Junk, the flailing, spindly-looking machine spraying water over the transfixed crowd. Following the frenzy of the performance, Kolja agrees to talk to us. After what we’ve just seen, we don’t know what to expect. Kolja shows us around his Pankow workshop. It’s a cornucopia of junk, some of which has been repurposed into his distinctive sculptures. In many ways, the organised chaos of the One Love Machine Band spills out onto the shelves of Kolja’s space. He lives next door in a converted cabin, which is where we retire to hear about his life. He was born in Göttingen, but Kolja’s parents moved to the capital when he was three to settle in Charlottenburg’s lakeside Lietzensee Kiez. It was West Berlin, and growing up with the constant threat of nuclear apocalypse (and protesting with his parents) had a profound impact on young Kolja. “The arms race was very present. We’d have been the first ones to go as we were living on the front Autumn/Winter 2017
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Sounds of the Scrapyard
line of the Cold War,” he tells us. “It was a totally mad situation that we had gotten comfortably used to, but then it suddenly fell apart into common sense with the Wall falling. Nobody expected that to happen.” Kolja’s reality changed abruptly and Berlin morphed into a playground of possibilities. “It was a great atmosphere, you could do what you wanted,” he says. “Just witnessing it collapse totally shaped me. I decided to start changing the world around me.” Shortly afterwards, he moved away from home: “I found myself squatting in Potsdamer Platz, which was just a whole bit of nothing, just mud and wasteland.” This would prove to be momentous for Kolja. One early ‘90s winter, The Mutoid Waste Company, an art group fronted by British punk-junk artist Joe Rush, pitched up at Potsdamer Platz. The now fabled collective were busy making a name for themselves by dragging decommissioned Russian Army machinery into the city centre and rearranging it into art right in front of the Reichstag. Unbelievably, this included two MiG-21 jets. “They did Berlin the biggest favour,” says Kolja. “Demilitarising those fighter planes, painting them and putting them in the hands of the people, it was so punk.” “What got me straight away were the sculptures, especially Joe’s: he’s kind of my idol. So I learned to weld and made some myself.” For the following few years, Kolja and co. lived on a sculpture garden they’d set up in their slice of no man’s land. “Tourists were coming every day and we were pretty much the only thing to look at; there was only the odd piece of the Wall standing around,” he says. In 1993, London-born techno sound system Spiral Tribe arrived. Alongside the new arrivals, Kolja and the Mutoid Waste Company decided to hit the highway: “It kind of made sense, we’d got all this stuff, we lived in trucks, we were making art, why not do a road show?” “We joined together to take this MiG to Russia, to give it back to express our joy that the Cold War was over,” he says with a smile. Renamed the Lost Tribe of MiG, they set off for the former USSR with one of their showpiece fighter jets mounted onto a crane arm so as to simulate flight. Things didn’t quite go to plan though. “We left Berlin, but the crane wasn’t roadworthy anymore so we put it on a massive Russian low-loader we’d found. As we were leaving Berlin, the truck gave out. This dense white smoke came out of the exhaust and covered the road, you couldn’t see for half a kilometre,” Kolja recounts. Leaving the stricken lorry by the roadside, the convoy abandoned its precious cargo “in front of some guy’s house,” promising to collect it in a few weeks. They pressed on for Prague. Nobody returned. After finding a patch of land to squat outside the Czech capital, Kolja helped set up the 18
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Kolja Kugler
inaugural CzechTek freetekno festival in 1994. However, the Lost Tribe of MiG disbanded soon after. Kolja then travelled around Europe with Spiral Tribe and his own Alien Pulse Agency sound system, raving it up across the continent at Teknivals that “got really big, really mad and really tribal!” During Kolja’s Euro trip, his sculptures evolved too. “It was hard on the road without a workshop. I always sculpted wherever I was, in the ditch with a generator,” he says. Kolja adds that at first, he’d “look into a pile of scrap and see birds, maybe because it was the easiest shape to make.” Tackling dogs was the next challenge before eventually making a humanoid face. “I found these pliers, then with some other bits formed this really scary looking skull,” he says. “Since the pliers were the bottom jaw, you could open and close the mouth.” Not long after Kolja sussed out how to move the skull, Frank Barnes, a friend he’d been travelling with for years, introduced him to pneumatics. “He was the first guy to move his sculptures pneumatically. That was the moment I thought, ‘OK cool, there’s something happening’, and I carried on building.” This was the beginning of Sir Elton Junk. In 1999, just as he was working on his robot’s limbs, Kolja became a father. “They were born at the same time, Elton and my daughter,” he says. Kolja and his young family ventured off on a trip that took them to Australia, Southeast Asia, North, Central and South America. “I’d wanted to go around the world, and fortunately my partner was quite cool about travelling and said ‘Why don’t we go with the kid?’” They spent the next six years traversing the globe: “We were a bit like a circus in the mad colourful truck. It was intense. I took Elton too. He sat on the sofa in the truck. I gave countless Elton robot shows in different places; there were some amazing culture clashes.”
Spiral Tribe The largest party the group organised was the Castlemorton Common Ground Festival on May 22nd-29th 1992. 13 members of Spiral Tribe were arrested and charged with public order offences. The subsequent trial became one of the longest-running in British history, and cost the UK £4 million.
Kolja Kugler
Sounds of the Scrapyard
« THIS DENSE WHITE SMOKE CAME OUT OF THE EXHAUST AND COVERED THE ROAD, YOU COULDN’T SEE FOR HALF A KILOMETRE. » doesn’t bother Kolja much either. “My stuff is mobile, we’re all on wheels. Now that my daughter has grown older and I’m more free, I get itchy feet to go on the road again. I’ve always wanted my thing to be a roadshow. I’d love to have a permanent space, but I’m not counting on it,” he says. In many ways, Kolja’s oeuvre has come to embody the spirit of the era in which he grew up. And it’s something he’s conscious of. “Berlin is so attractive because of this feeling in the air. It’s the artists who made this city and who used the open-mindedness of the ‘90s when the system was ripe for reconstruction. Berlin is like this because so many people had this feeling of all the possibilities to do what they wanted to do.” Whatever the next stage has in store for Kolja, it’s bound to dazzle. After globe-trotting, Kolja returned to Berlin. “It was an intense chapter in my life that opened like a book and closed like one too,” he says candidly. “My daughter had to go to school and my ex decided to move to Freiburg.” Having to start over at 35 while supporting his daughter on the other side of the country was a challenge. “It wasn’t a shock, I’m used to rearranging my life. The real shock was the breakup, it pulled my heart out,” he admits. Amongst this reshuffle, Kolja persevered. “At the time, me and Frank were thinking about what we can do with pneumatics, we thought, ‘Let’s build a band and make some music’.” And with that he got started on Afreakin Bassplayer, the first member of his robot band. “The focus for Frank was more on the engineering; for me, it was classic sculpture,” Kolja says. “My sculpture was going to play bass and it had to look good. I was learning to get the balance between the mechanics and the sculpture’s character. It took me four years and I freaked out multiple times!” But by the time Kolja came to build the onomatopoeically-named drummer Boom Tschak, he had the technique nailed. Right now, Kolja is in the process of building a keyboard player for the One Love Machine Band. He also reveals that he’s managed to get his hands on the second of
the Mutoid Waste Company’s MiGs: “The other one was stored 150km from Berlin, sitting in a bush. I brought it back along with a bulldozer. Instead of having it on the crane, I want to mount it on the ‘dozer and fly it about. I’ll cut it up so it can bend like a fish and chop the wings to make it flap like a bird.” If you’ve never met Kolja in person this might sound absurd, though you’re this far into his story so you probably wouldn’t bet against him. For now, he’s using the Spree-side Wild Waste Gallery to showcase his work: “I wanted to establish a place where people could come, just like the space at Potsdamer Platz with the Mutoid Waste Company. Now I find myself in that position again, also on the border. Berlin is a place where things come full-circle.” In another beautiful twist of fate, Spiral Tribe are also renting the space with Kolja. “It’s great we’re all in one boat,” he says. “We seized it to begin with, now it’s clear what we want to do and we’ve got a lifetime of experience to make it happen!” The lease on the Wild Waste Gallery is only short term, but that
See more of Kolja’s work at koljakugler.com, but to see The One Love Machine Band in full swing head to Wild Waste Gallery on Saturday afternoons.
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TRICKY
A pioneering graduate of the trip-hop era, Tricky has parlayed his artistic vision into a career spanning three decades. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just released his 13th album, uniniform, the first heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s produced since his move to Berlin three years ago. Here we talk with him about this new chapter, his lifelong journey in music, and the virtues of his new home city.
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Tricky
interview by
Stephanie Taralson words by
Jonny Tiernan photos by
Robert Rieger
Knowle West In the Domesday Book, Knowle was a rural area assessed at a taxable value of two geld units. Knowle West remained rural until the 1930s, when a council estate was developed to house people displaced by the clearance of Bristol’s slums.
T
ricky is a man whose reputation precedes him. It’s well known that he follows his instincts and trusts his feelings, and he isn’t the kind of person who gets bogged down by how he might be perceived. We experience this firsthand during our photoshoot with him. As we settle on a good spot to start taking shots, two women standing nearby ask us what we are doing, with a somewhat accusatory tone. Tricky decides that he doesn’t like their attitude and suggests we move somewhere else. He turns and walks away. We follow. As soon as we find a new location, Tricky relaxes into the shoot and the initial tension bleeds away. He is friendly and laidback, chatting with various characters that stop by to see what we are doing. After a few minutes, the woman who caused the upset at the start of the shoot comes over bearing a spliff as a peace offering. Tricky jokes that it is her way of apologising, and she laughs. Talking after the shoot, he’s passionate and engaged, riffing on celebrity culture and how he respects people who are famous yet remain grounded. He tells us about an encounter with Dave Grohl, who came up to him in a bar just to sing the Outkast lyrics, “Ain’t nobody dope as we are, just so fresh so clean” at him, and how Chris Martin is also a really good, normal bloke. We get the sense that Tricky’s working class background makes him more comfortable with people who don’t put up fronts; who are honest and true to themselves.
Tricky grew up in the Knowle West neighbourhood of Bristol in the 1970s and ‘80s. By his own admission it’s not a glamorous place, and difficult to explain without having grown up there. “If you’re not from Knowle West, you don’t go to Knowle West,” he explains. Nevertheless, it’s a place that is close his heart. His 2008 album Knowle West Boy is a tribute to his youth, and he speaks fondly of his former stomping ground. He has since lived all over the world – Paris, London and LA to name a few places – but for him, none of these cities have greatly impacted his music, whose inspiration runs deeper than his immediate surroundings. “I’d say it’s a product of my life, not my environment,” he says, speaking of his signature style. “It’s my family, people I grew up with, friends that shaped me musically forever. My little neighbourhood. Obviously I could be influenced if I lived in Spain and started working with Spanish singers and stuff, but I took shape way before I went to LA, Berlin or New York, you know? My life was shaped already.” Rising to prominence in the golden-era of triphop in the early ‘90s, Tricky famously collaborated with Massive Attack on their first two albums before stepping out as a solo artist. His debut record Maxinquaye was released over 20 years ago, and its universal acclaim instantly marked him as a unique talent. The album became the perfect accompaniment for indulging in the hazy hit of weed, and ushered in an era of heady beats and dense atmospherics.
Cover Story
He caught the trip-hop wave alongside artists like Portishead and DJ Shadow, and emerging record labels like Mo’ Wax and Ninja Tune. Tricky became a central reference point of trip-hop, personifying the introspective, experimental nature of the music. “I started in the days when being credible was being underground, and the pop artists were the pop artists,” he says. The music industry was entirely different then, and high record sales were not the reserve of huge pop stars. Contemporaries like Morcheeba came along, adding a pop element to the genre to ride it up the charts, but Tricky avoided mainstream add-ons. He eschewed the commercial, resolutely sticking to his own way of doing things, refusing to follow fads or fashions. It’s a trait he has carried throughout his career: played the part of the outsider, pushing himself in different directions, embracing change, constantly moving. In time, almost all of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, splitting up and crashing out, but Tricky never let up. He continues to work and produce independently, without any interest in the pop world or the trappings of the industry. “If I do an album and it only sells 30,000 records, that’s OK, because I don’t have the same pressure as other artists. I don’t care about mansions or big cars, and I’m not trying to be the richest person on the planet. Money has never interested me at all. For some people, making more and more money is an ambition. I don’t think that’s my ambition. If I’ve got money and I can travel, see my family and live without stress, then that’s enough.” It’s an ethos he sees mirrored in Berlin: the ‘poor but sexy’ image of the city rings true. And Tricky appreciates the degree to which the capital is pronouncedly unmotivated by money. “I feel here as well that people ain’t obsessed with money. You see people working two or three days a week, doing the job they love doing for less money rather than doing a job for a lot of money. People are very relaxed here.” It’s this attitude that spawned a diverse and long-running music career, which has brought him to the release of his 13th album, ununiform. The album title reflects his own idiosyncratic way of doing things, subverting convention and channelling change. Plus, it’s a serious achievement for any artist to release a 13th studio album; to have produced this many records in the ‘churn them up and spit them out’ modern music world is an increasingly rare feat. It’s his first album since moving to Berlin three years ago, and while the city may not have influenced him musically, the lifestyle here has clearly had an effect on him personally. “I don’t do things here I don’t want to do,” he begins. “In other cities I’ve lived in, I’d do stuff not because I wanted to, but just because they were there to do. Like, I don’t mind going to clubs, but it should be because I want to go, not because I am bored. Here, I feel more satisfied. In other major cities I don’t feel satisfied, so even though there’s lots of things to do, I still feel restless. In Berlin I Autumn/Winter 2017
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Tricky
« THE LAST SONG’S GOT TO FEEL LIKE THE
END OF THE ALBUM BUT ALSO THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING, BECAUSE THEN YOU HAVE THE NEXT ALBUM. IT’S GOTTA SAY GOODBYE AND HELLO AT THE SAME TIME. »
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Cover Story
don’t feel restless for some reason. You know, I go to bed at 11 o’clock at night; I’ll get up at 8 o’clock in the morning. I am not up all night just killing time. I’m more satisfied with my life.” Perhaps life in Berlin has mellowed Tricky out in a way that life in London or New York couldn’t. Directly before moving to Berlin he had spent six months in London, but says “it was much too fast for me, too speedy.” It’s a bit of a cliché to state that people ‘find themselves’ when they move here, but Berlin is a city that offers the opportunity for a slower pace of life compared to many other major capitals. Tricky appears chill, relaxed and healthy. It could be that he shares this common experience of those who feel a greater sense of freedom and the opportunity to be themselves in Berlin. On the other hand, ununiform certainly feels like Tricky has returned to his roots and rediscovered his form, and the album is peppered with nods to his past. He’s comfortable with where his music is now, and doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone. Part of this can be attributed to his self-releasing the record on his own False Idols label. Thus, he’s not indebted or answerable to anyone but himself. The result is a raw, personal, emotional record, and by his own admission his finest work in years. Because Tricky’s peripatetic lifestyle has seen him living in many different cities and surroundings over the years, you might expect the method by which Tricky produces music to have naturally evolved, but he tells us the opposite is true: “Nah, it’s exactly the same. Same equipment basically from when I started, no new technology. It’s all very simple.” It’s another example of how Tricky stays true to his roots, not in a traditionalist sense, but by being confident in knowing what works and what he likes. Perhaps this is why every track from his dense discography is imbued with a sound that is recognisably ‘Tricky’, irrespective of whether it’s a punk-tinged banger or something more introspective. In 2018, Tricky will turn 50. It’s a mammoth incongruity. He exudes youthfulness and has an aura of mischievousness, as though he’s always willing to have some fun or cause a ruckus. At this stage of life some people consider slowing down, but he shows no signs of hitting the brakes anytime soon. He gives the impression that he thinks a few steps ahead, his mind ticking over, working out his next move. When asked what keeps him making music, whether he has a particular goal or ambition, he’s philosophical. “Just ‘cause I love doing it,” he says. “My goal is the journey, not what I get from it. Different albums take you to different places. One may do well in a particular market, so you end up going there. Somewhere like Hong Kong. I’ve been to Venezuela – Caracas; I’ve been around Autumn/Winter Summer 2017
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Tricky
« I DON’T CARE ABOUT MANSIONS OR
BIG CARS, AND I’M NOT TRYING TO BE THE RICHEST PERSON ON THE PLANET. MONEY HAS NEVER INTERESTED ME AT ALL. » the world. In March I’ll go to China or Mexico. An album always takes you somewhere and you never know where it’s gonna go. It’s not the goals, it’s the journey.” “It’s not just the physical journey, but artistically too,” he continues. “You never know where an album is going to lead you. Albums are like constant mad things with different opportunities. Doing an album creates a great opportunity. Being on a soundtrack or in a movie changes your life. The shows as well, because when you’ve been doing a tour of your album for three or four months, the song structure starts to come out. One song ain’t going to sound the same after you’ve done In a Movie it 40 times. Something is going to
change about it, whether it’s a vocal or a musical part. So it’s a whole journey. The music keeps growing.” Tricky’s live shows are notorious, and they’ve received some mixed reviews over the years. It’s part of his nature to treat them as more free-form affairs than rigidly rehearsed and choreographed routines. The band rehearses the songs, but he rarely rehearses himself, preferring to take the gigs as they come and do his thing. He’s aware that this isn’t for everyone: “Our show can go anywhere, and some people don’t get or understand my shows. Most shows can be a bit about love and hate, because you are just going with the vibe, you know?”
Tricky has acted in a number of films, most notably in a significant supporting role in Luc Besson’s 1997 film The Fifth Element, and a cameo in Face/Off.
It’s the mark of a true artist when they’re willing to take risks and try new things, even if it means some people will be upset or not get it. Our conversation turns to his feelings on the dearth of artists these days. He dismays that no one is making fully realised albums anymore. “Two good singles and the rest is garbage,” he succinctly puts it, and it’s hard to argue with. A shift towards single tracks and a focus on being included on the right Spotify playlists has taken over as the industry standard pathway to ‘success’. Naturally, some artists are still making great albums, and good singles have been used to shift questionable albums probably since the format existed, but the pendulum has definitely been swinging away from long players. This isn’t how Tricky approaches music. He sees albums as complete pieces of work, finished only “when it’s a piece of music from the beginning to the end,” and also part of a longer continuum. He explains: “The last song’s got to feel like the end of the album but also the beginning of something, because then you have the next album. It’s gotta say goodbye and hello at the same time.” Whether it’s living in a new city, living a healthier lifestyle, or just life in general, ununiform marks a new period for him. “I see albums like chapters. On this new album, musically there’s a bit of change that happened to me, I can feel it. It still sounds like my music but there’s a big change coming. I’m going to say my last album was just an OK album, but this album is a lot stronger. I’ve been recording again and the music is even stronger. This is a new chapter.” After more than 20 years of making music, Tricky is still writing his own story and carving out his own path. You’d think with a career this long, and with so many milestones, that it might have built some expectations into Tricky’s mindset, but he remains humble. “You know, actually I don’t expect anything. Anything that happens is a bonus. It’s like, the radio has been playing one of my songs, and I never expected it, but it’s happened. It’s a bonus. If you don’t expect it, it’s all good.”
ununiform is out now on !K7/False Idols. See Tricky live at Festsaal Kreuzberg on November 28th. 24
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Tricky
Cover Story
Autumn/Winter 2017
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Femtech Pioneer
Ida Tin
IDA TIN: CLUE FOUNDER ON HER REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD-TRACKING APP Sometimes it takes little more than personal experience, passion and a great cause to spark an idea that might change the world. Just look at Ida Tin, the co-founder of Clue who, struggling to find a way to manage her fertility that was right for her, had an idea to develop an app that would help women keep track of their periods and learn more about their bodies. It’s an idea that has made her one of the names in ‘femtech’, a term she incidentally coined herself.
I
n Ida’s own words, “Clue is a female health-tracking app designed for rapid data entry and user friendliness. Users can track their period, fertile window, PMS, moods, pains, symptoms, exercise, medication, birth control usage and notes about their cycle in order to gain a better understanding of their own patterns and personal trends.” Over 50% of the world’s population of childbearing age have a period each month, but Clue is more than a tracking app; it’s about education. Not only can you track your cycle, you can also get helpful insights into your sleep patterns, sex life and ovulation if you’re trying to get pregnant. This bold approach to tracking female reproductive health not only helps women and their partners stay informed and educated, it reduces the stigma around talking about menstruation, fertility and everything that goes with it. What your menstrual cycle is telling you can also have serious implications for your health and general wellbeing. That’s why Clue was developed in cooperation with
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words by
Alison Rhoades photos by
Zack Helwa
top scientists and reproductive specialists, and the data they gather advances knowledge about women’s health through a collaboration with the Kinsey Institute. We meet Ida for more insights into the story behind Clue, and she fills us in on her experiences as a female entrepreneur and her vision for reproductive care in the digital age. Can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up in Berlin? I was born in Copenhagen but spent my younger years travelling around the world, as my parents ran motorcycle tours. When I did settle down to study, I attended Denmark’s creative business school, the KaosPilots. I moved to Berlin to start Clue with my partner, who was born and raised in Kreuzberg. How did the idea for Clue come about? Personal experience was really the reason I founded Clue. Reproductive health is an incredibly foundational and central part of our lives, but there’s a real lack
Ida Tin
of clarity for women, generally. That starts the moment a woman has her first period and begins to manage that part of her life, and continues as she chooses whether or not she wants to use birth control and, if she does, which method to use. When I was about 30, the pill wasn’t working well for me and I realised there had been little innovation in this space for the past 50 years. I have always been curious about women’s health and was a ‘quantified self’ person – that is, someone who incorporates technology and data analysis into their daily life – long before I knew the term. These were the drivers to launch Clue – an app that could clue people in with personalised health data to give them an awareness of the unique patterns in their bodies and their cycles.
The Pill Research into ovulation inhibition was underway by the 1930s, but oral contraceptives didn’t reach markets until 1961. Many women experience negative side effects, but according to the UN the pill accounts for at least 10% of contraceptive practice in over 70% of the countries with sufficient data to enable estimates. No other method is so widely employed in so many countries.
What were your main objectives when starting the company? When I dreamed up the idea of Clue, I was wondering how it could be that we managed to walk on the moon but that most women still don’t know which days they can or can’t get pregnant. I personally needed such a tool to manage that very important part of my life, and I was convinced that many other women would find an app like Clue not only very useful but also very empowering. When you are able to identify patterns that are unique to you, you feel more in control of your own body, and better able to manage the changes that are taking place within it. How did you decide what data to request from your users to give them an accurate forecast of their fertility and menstrual cycle? Each and every tracking category in Clue has medical research to back a correlation between that aspect of health and the menstrual cycle – whether it affects your cycle and vice-versa. Why did you decide to base the company in Berlin? We’re based in Berlin for several reasons. Berlin is an extremely exciting place for new technology, and it’s much more affordable than Silicon Valley from the perspective of a lean startup. Also Hans, my partner and co-founder of Clue, is from Kreuzberg, so that also influenced our decision to set up here. In many countries, women’s reproductive health care is under attack. How do you think Clue can help women to take ownership of their own family planning? Actually, the biggest challenge since Clue’s launch directly relates to the lack of resources women have when it comes to their health – whether due to a
Femtech Pioneer
lack of scientific research or societal taboos. This is still a very new space with a ton of potential because every woman in the world faces the realities that come with menstruation, fertility and overall health. While Clue cannot replace proper reproductive health care, it can help anyone without access to it to better understand their cycles and overall health, and it allows those wanting to start a family to assess when their fertile window may be, helping their chances to conceive. A significant aspect of your company is education on women’s bodies, not just through using the app but through publishing articles about sexual and reproductive health. Why was it important to you to take this approach? When I founded Clue, menstrual health was one of the most underrepresented categories out there. Given that half of the world’s population will experience a period, I thought it important to develop an app that not only allows women to track their menstrual cycle but that also educates and informs, hence the amount of medical information that is available via Clue. Some people are still unsure about giving their data to a company. What would you say to them? I would say to check the company’s data-sharing policies before submitting any information that you would prefer to keep private. There is a misconception about data sharing; it’s not always a bad thing, as long as the user is aware that their data may be shared with a third party and has agreed to this beforehand. Clue, for example, would never share users’ private data for profit or commercial gain. Any data we share is always taken from polls or studies that Clue users have opted to be a part of, and we would only ever share this useful, anonymous data with trusted medical organisations to help advance medical and scientific research. The history of medical science is based on data. For example, vaccines were invented as data established a need for them. We have an obligation to use data for good. If we don’t use data, we pay a huge price. You coined the term ‘femtech’. How would you define it? ‘Femtech’ is a term that addresses the growing sector of technology that is designed specifically for women. Femtech does not refer to ‘women in technology’, but rather the expanding category of technology that serves to help women take better control of their overall health. You’ve spoken before about the reluctance of men to invest in products catered to women, and the lack of female investors in technology. Can you explain why you think that having women in tech – in both business and development – is so vital? Women are seriously underrepresented in tech. They only hold 10–20% of tech-related jobs at tech companies, yet digital female health is one of the fastest growing sectors, with period and fertility trackers encompassing the second largest category within health apps, second only to running apps. Investing in female-led tech isn’t just a step towards gender equality; it makes business sense. I firmly believe that it is essential for women to empower each other to take up space in the industry, and to continue breaking gender stereotypes in order to pave Autumn/Winter 2017
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Femtech Pioneer
« I FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR WOMEN TO EMPOWER EACH OTHER TO TAKE UP SPACE IN THE INDUSTRY. » the way for others, and this is what we are seeing now. One area where we most need to see increased gender diversity is on the investment side. We need more women entrepreneurs, who are considering and solving these issues, to focus on giving attention to women’s reproductive health around the world. What are some of your takeaways from being a female entrepreneur, particularly here in Germany? Berlin is such a creative hub, and the city’s liberal attitude and gender neutrality makes it a great place for a female entrepreneur to grow and succeed. Personally, I have never found that being a female entrepreneur, or a woman in tech, has ever held me back or presented greater obstacles. Although I’m fully aware that statistically, it can definitely prove more difficult for women to make a name for themselves in tech. Being a female entrepreneur in an underrepresented field, I believe I have the opportunity to make a much needed change. At a company level, I feel the immense potential of what Clue can do when I think about the difference it will make in the world when people have a good understanding of how their body works and are able to take good care of themselves. Access to technology will change the world. It already is. We hear it every day through emails that people send us from all over the world. I am humbled and grateful that I get to do this work together with my team. You’ve had an accomplished and diverse career, from leading motorcycle tours to being a best-selling author to being named ‘Female Web Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the 2015 Slush conference. What are some lessons you’ve learned throughout your professional life? Professionally, I have learned a great deal. In my role as a leader, I am exposed to a lot of things that I feel I can personally take care of. I used to make the mistake of trying to do too much myself instead of learning how to assess my own limitations and delegate tasks, enabling others to share the workload with me. Letting go and trusting others to take over key tasks is not as easy as it sounds when you are so invested in something, but I think it is something that people in all positions should think about in order to make themselves more productive. It becomes easier to let go as the team grows, and there are many talented people around me who are honestly better skilled to take care of certain things. In 2016, Wired Magazine named Clue one of the top European startups destined for success. But being successful doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. How do you define success? Success is whatever you want it to be. There is a tendency these days to equate success with money or fame, but neither of these things are nec28
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essarily indicators of success. Success is simply the sense of achieving something, be it completing a small everyday goal or fulfilling a huge ambition. One mistake we’ve all been guilty of at some point or another is comparing our accomplishments to those of others. Only you can define what success means to you. How will Clue revolutionise women’s fertility and reproductive care in the future? The evolution of the app has been incredible. In less than a year we have seen the amount of active users increase from 1 million to 5 million worldwide, as well as establishing partnerships with Stanford University and the University of Oxford, enabling us to carry out more in-depth research into menstrual-cycle health. Our mission is to help people all around the world benefit from insights into female health, and with more than 5 million users entering data every month, we are one step closer to achieving this. It would be safe to predict that tracking apps and gadgets will become increasingly intuitive in the future, and will eventually monitor everything from heart rate and blood pressure to stress levels to the amount and quality of movement, ultimately capturing data that will allow us to better understand both our emotional and physical wellbeing. This amount of data can only be a good thing, as it will offer doctors instant access to a far more detailed and accurate medical history. Our ultimate goal is to completely move female health away from its niche status and get to a stage where society can openly discuss menstrual health without hesitation. You wouldn’t think twice of mentioning that you have a headache or sore throat, for example, and when people feel as comfortable talking about cramps or other period-related symptoms, only then have we managed to fully break down the stigma surrounding them.
If you want to learn more about Clue, visit their website and online store at helloclue.com or simply download it for free and get tracking!
WWW.BRLO.DE
King of Köpenick
Romano
COPY, PASTE, DELETE, REPEAT: ROMANO’S GENRE-FLUID JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC He’s the king of Köpenick, the west-coast-loving rapper in a Pippi Longstocking disguise. Musically versatile and never too serious about labels, genres or even himself, Romano charmed his way into German hearts and is ready to conquer a few more with his new album, Copyshop. Here we talk to him about his music, Berlin and what it was like to see the GDR fall apart. words by Marlén Jacobshagen photos by Robert Rieger
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Romano
King of Köpenick
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s Romano walks along the eighthRomano’s new album Copyshop is a satirifloor corridor of the Universal Music cal and acerbic portrait of German society building, his pigtails bounce up and with poppy, electronic party sounds that down against his shiny, green Jets jacket. often belie its serious nature. The second It’s easy to be drawn into a conversation track ‘König der Hunde’ (‘King of the Dogs’) with him. Romano talks and jokes like is a reflection on the tumultuous time after a true Berliner, and spreads a positive, socialism collapsed. “It felt like a freefall,” charming vibe that is highly contagious. As says Romano, who was about 12 years old he offers us some coffee, the only drug he when his hometown stopped being part of still allows himself, he recognises Moderat the socialist GDR and joined the Bundesreon the cover of LOLA issue four. “Szary publik Deutschland. “The fascinating thing and Gernot,” he smiles. “They are friends is: maths keeps being maths, fractions keep of mine! Both of them come from Woltersbeing fractions. Today and back then, in dorf, quite close to Köpenick.” every country around the world, science Köpenick is what Romano is best known stays the same. But that’s not the case with for, or maybe it’s the other way around. As history and politics. Things we learned a real Berliner – born in Köpenick in 1977 as about in the GDR were all of a sudden told Roman Geike – he titled his second album from a completely different angle. History Jenseits von Köpenick (Beyond Köpenick), was turned upside down and we had to a hilarious masterpiece that exists somechange our thinking from year one on.” In where between hip hop, electronica, pop ‘König der Hunde’, Romano captures the and metal. Romano never liked to be tied exciting and confusing spirit of the time: down to one genre. At 15 he started to write “Kein Bock auf Schule, hab den Durchblick rap lyrics, but after school he played in a verlor’n; Alte Lehrer, neue Bücher, überall metal band. He later turned to drum’n’bass, Diktator’n.” (“I don’t fancy school anybecame part of the Hightek Crew, and conmore, I lost perspective; old teachers, new tributed vocals for highly praised electronic books, dictators everywhere.”) acts like Siriusmo and Oliver Koletzki. His Within a few years the face of Berlin first record as Romano, Blumen für dich changed drastically. Romano talks about (Flowers for You), was a Schlager album. reconnecting with a good friend after three “What I love about this project years apart, who then got The Bunker is that all the small facets of him interested in DJing and Now housing the Boros Colwhat I did before always reapelectronic music: “He showed lection of contemporary art, pear in my current songs. I’m me around techno clubs, and this former air raid shelter going to try to explain this in a everything was just wild at has walls up to two metres thick. It held parties from picture: on the ocean there are that time. In autumn 1992 I 1992-96 before police raids ships, every ship is a different went to The Bunker wearing forced its closure, and the genre of music and a different a thick thermal jacket and inpromoters went on to open Berghain some years later. size depending on how much side it felt like 1000 degrees. time I invested in it. You have They had washing machines one for my metal band, a big drum’n’bass with heaters inside and there were people ship, a colourful Schlager ship, one that is with gas masks and latex suits everywhere. electronic, and so on. All these ships go into Downstairs they played acid house, one one harbour. And this harbour is Romano.” story up there was gabba, on the next one there was a gang-bang party. And in the As a teenager when the Wall came down, middle of it all this little boy in the big city, Romano was clearly influenced by the artisthinking: ‘What’s going on here?’” tic atmosphere of the capital after reunification. The ‘90s created a dense atmosphere The city attracted more and more people of excitement and chaos; illegal clubs were and soon clubs died again, districts became established, new subcultures emerged, flats unaffordable, rents rose to double the price were occupied – Berlin was going through (or more), even though the apartments a radical change. “Creatively aggressive,” themselves often stayed the same. The title Romano calls it. “It was like a steam cooker track of Copyshop plays with this idea of under high pressure, and at some point the artificial change in value and price. In the lid shoots off and everything comes out: the accompanying promotion, which is more good, the bad, the creative. Everything.” He of a short film than a music video, Romano continues: “There were punks, hip hoppers, tells the story of a job he had in a copyshop metallers, but you also had Nazis who for several years. “What I found fascinatbegan to do horrible things in Rostock and ing,” he remembers, “is that the art scene Hoyerswerda. That happens when you try has an insatiable demand for new prodto keep everything under control. At some ucts from dead artists. And then they feed point it breaks.” themselves with fake art, which is a perfect
replica and they pay millions for it. But once they find out, it’s just worth a fraction of what they were willing to pay before. People define the value of things themselves and the value constantly changes. All of it is an illusion.” For the song, he worked together with the Übermut Project, an initiative that aims to give German arts a place on the global stage. He collaborated with Cantonese rapper MastaMic and shot the music video entirely in Hong Kong. Here you can see Romano prowling markets laden with knock-off goods, including several Romano figurines designed by his friend Siriusmo who also creates the beats for his tracks. Being in Asia for the first time was overwhelming, he confesses. “Before that, I had only ever been in a Chinese restaurant,” he says, laughing. “You think there is a lot going on in Berlin, but every corner there is as busy as Ku’damm.” Romano never lost his charming, downto-earth manner and often finds himself at the sharp end of his own wry lyrics. Despite this, he emphasises that everything he did, he did with sincerity and passion: from the metal band to the Schlager album. He’s fascinated by everything different and beautiful. He explains: “Pippi Longstocking is my role model: life is wonderful, make it colourful! Tie yourself some braids, glue something to your face, celebrate it. Be yourself, whatever that may be!”
Copyshop is out now, so have a listen and then catch Romano live at Columbiahalle on November 9th. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Mental Health Matters
Kevin Braddock
TORCHLIGHT’S KEVIN BRADDOCK ON BREAKDOWN AND RECOVERY Torchlight, a moving new publication about mental illness, recovery, and the importance of asking for help, is proof that great storytelling can really help people. words by
Marc Yates photos by
Valentina Culley-Foster
The Observer Kevin’s article, ‘Man Down’ was the cover story of The Observer Magazine on August 13th 2017.
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ince its release earlier in 2017, the magazine and practice cards – a deck of actions and ideas to help users build positive habits – have now sold out. With Torchlight and the practice cards, creator Kevin Braddock offers an honest and non-prescriptive approach to recovering from periods of mental illness, presenting it through the prism of his personal experiences. While working as a fashion editor in Berlin in 2014, Kevin suffered a severe depressive episode. Asking for help was the first step in his recovery, a central part of which became writing down how he was feeling. That writing became Torchlight, which he released in the hopes that it would enable others to speak more openly about their mental health. To hear more, we grabbed a coffee with Kevin on one of his frequent visits back to Berlin.
As readers of Torchlight, the first question we want to ask is: How are you? In general I’m fine. I’m going through a phase where life is happening quite fast at the moment. The project itself is going great. We announced that we’re going to try to get Torchlight back into print through crowdfunding. People seem to really like it; the response has been extraordinary.
We’ve noticed! Have many readers reached out to you with their personal stories? Yeah, that’s sort of the point really. I just think that saying it first enables other people to open up. It’s better to talk about these things, I mean, that’s how therapy works – you go and see a therapist, you talk to them about your feelings and you feel slightly better. [Laughs] What’s been interesting is that I wrote the story in The Observer and it went kind of mental after that. It got shared 10,000 times or something. In 20 years of being a journalist, nothing like that’s ever happened before. [Laughs] I think it’s a bit like being in a secret society, you know, everyone has had something like this, or is experiencing it, or they know of someone who is. Which makes it all the more baffling that mental health isn’t more openly discussed. Yeah. I think it’s slightly different in Germany. When I was living here, I felt that Germans were very emotionally articulate in a way that perhaps Brits aren’t. Do you know what I mean? If you ask a German how they’re feeling it’s like– [Checks watch, grins] So what made you first decide to share your story in this format? A couple of days after I had this breakdown, which was August 10th 2014, a guy I know had seen my alarming messages on Facebook and said, “Look Kev, from now on you need to be really open and more honest about all this stuff, and since you’re a writer, why don’t you write it all down?” He was really adamant about it. I was a bit mystified, so I said, “Thank you, can I ask why you feel that way?” And he said, “Because my sister killed herself.” I thought, ‘OK, he’s right.’ That was the germ of the idea. I’d made an independent publication before called Manzine. Myself and my friend Enver who works for Mario Lombardo – he was the guy who took me to the hospital – started designing Torchlight in February or March 2016. Instead of writing the whole thing and then handing it to Enver, we designed different bits and developed it, partly because I was still– am still recovering. It wasn’t complete, and then I realised that it’s never complete. But in terms of a story you just have to pick a day and say, “OK, that’s the end, for now.” So was working on Torchlight part of your recovery as you developed the project? Yeah, it was very therapeutic to write it all down, chew it over and figure out what I thought about everything. It was a kind of sense-making process, and then I thought, what I want to do is just give it to people. There are lots of other recovery memoirs, really good ones. They’re all the same story, really: something terrible happens to someone, they have a breakdown, they begin recovering, and then they get better and want to help people. [Laughs] Have you read James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces? Brilliant book. Anxy Magazine is another good one. Torchlight is just me, talking. It’s a strange object because it’s not really a book or a magazine. I wanted to
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Mental Health Matters
« I THINK IT’S A BIT LIKE BEING IN A SECRET SOCIETY, YOU KNOW, I GUESS EVERYONE HAS HAD SOMETHING LIKE THIS, OR IS EXPERIENCING IT, OR THEY KNOW OF SOMEONE WHO IS. » Autumn/Winter 2017
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son-to-person thing is really important. I’ve been running these storytelling meetings in London. I’d like to do a lot more of those. There’s probably a digital technology angle in there somewhere, but I’m not sure where yet. We’ve got ambitions, but we have to do it in a way that we live our values. And not undermine your mental health by putting too much pressure on it. Exactly. So we have to have a mindful approach to doing these things, you know? [Laughs]
do something different. I know how to make magazines, but it’s not a magazine that has a series of contributors like Anxy and it’s not a typical book where it’s just pages of text. Tell us about the practice cards. When I went back to the UK I was getting up every morning in sort of a military way, trying to bootcamp my way to being whatever ‘better’ is. It was completely overwhelming and I was trying to do too much, so I thought I’d write all the things down on cards and try and do one or two every day; maybe a breathing exercise or a long walk, some voluntary work, or read some philosophy – Marcus Aurelius, or something from the AA book. There’s tonnes upon tonnes of that stuff around and it’s all really useful. Then I thought it could be an extra little thing with this project. The plan is to do another pack next year. I think the practice cards have got quite a lot of mileage in them. Will there also be a second volume of Torchlight? Yes. There’s a lot of stuff we’re looking at doing; at least another two packs of practice cards – we have ideas for the second and a third – and I’d like to do another issue, but it might take another year or two to make that happen. It’s not a typical magazine where we publish something every three months. I think the important thing is to generate a network, a community. This per34
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The challenge with digital media is that it’s the way to reach people nowadays, but it has an impersonality to it that’s perhaps counterproductive to what you’re trying to achieve. Yes, I agree, and I think in the technology world there are a lot of people talking about empathy – how to bottle and commodify it – and I think that’s a massive mistake. I don’t think you can and I don’t think you should. Empathy is something that happens between people. There’s Big White Wall, which is the NHS’ [digital platform]. You can write your story and publish it online. I don’t know if it works, and I don’t know if writing something and posting it on the internet is really helpful to anyone. Well, maybe the question is what happens after that. No one needs a new platform to publish their thoughts anonymously online. I think if you’re unwell it’s really important to be heard. To speak to someone and have the feeling that they’re listening to you, and that they care about what you’re saying. But the internet isn’t like that. Nobody gives a fuck what you’re saying. Do you think mental health is a topic that’s especially important for men to talk about? I think that it’s clearly an acute problem with men. I saw some statistic that said the reason the suicide rate among men is higher is because men are more likely to act on it. It’s not like they have more suicidal ideations; they’re just more willful about it. But I think depression transcends gender, race, status, everything. It’s a problem that anyone can have. Torchlight is not a magazine for men about depression. I wasn’t thinking in a demographic way about it. I think with men it’s just about how you get to them. I mean generally there’s obvi-
ously a big problem with how we socialise men. I was talking to someone the other day about soldiers. I did this story years ago for GQ about soldiers who were injured in battle and had PTSD, and apparently they will only ask for help after ten years of suffering, because the army trains emotions out of soldiers. There’s this organisation called Combat Stress, and they do really good work for veterans with PTSD. I don’t know how we educate young people, but from what I hear there’s much more education about emotional fluency these days, which is obviously good. At the moment, social media seems to be flooded with nihilism and memes about suicide and depression – ‘sad reacts only’, etcetera. Do you think that kind of thing is part of a new emotional fluency, or do you feel it’s counterproductive? I suppose one change I would like to see is that people don’t think it’s cool to kill yourself, and don’t think that it’s glamorous or sexy. With Torchlight the message is ‘ask for help’. That’s the point. It’s what I did and everything changed. It would be great to think that people think it’s OK to do that, rather than bottling it up and taking it away and acting upon suicidal ideations. There is help around, and I think most people, if they’re asked to help, probably would. Even if it’s a complete stranger. You mentioned Marcus Aurelius earlier. Meditations was the first thing we read after Torchlight. Ah, you got it? Seneca’s very good as well. What are you reading at the moment? Going Sane by Adam Phillips. Phillips is a Freudian analyst, and he writes very intelligently. His argument is that there’s no such thing as sanity, and that basically we’re all mad and what the medical establishment has done for a long time is imprison people in a diagnosis. He talks about how society thinks about mental illness compared to a model of sanity which in many ways is insane. It’s like, why do we think it’s sane to accumulate tonnes upon tonnes of possessions? Or have more money than we need? It’s very interesting. We’ll check it out. Thanks so much for your time, Kevin. No problem, it’s good to talk.
Back the Torchlight crowdfunding campaign and get your copy at igg.me/ at/torchlightsystem, and keep up with the latest at torchlightsystem.com
Project Mooncircle
LABEL OF LOVE
PROJECT MOONCIRCLE A few notable exceptions aside, record companies often run on the time and energy of tireless people. Even for big industry players, it’s a tough business. However, in Berlin there’s a fantastic example of an independent label that is withstanding the test of the times. Project Mooncircle is celebrating its 15th year in 2017, so we meet with its founder Gordon Gieseking to hear what it takes to succeed in a challenging industry. words by
Andrea Servert photos by
Soheil Moradianboroujeni
“
W
e wanted to create a view from the moon to the Earth. We wanted to give the listener some kind of soundtrack to reflect on what happens here, and in my opinion, it can be dark sometimes. How we treat the planet, how we treat each other…” Gordon starts delving into the project he started building a decade and a half ago as we enter his Marzahn emporium. What began as an extension of Miami label Beta Bodega has become a well-established imprint that constantly pushes the boundaries of electronic music. For the uninitiated listener: it’s fruitless to apply a single word or genre to Project Mooncircle, and Gordon isn’t interested in that kind of classification. “Some people think we have a sound, but I don’t think it’s true,” he says. “We release so many different kinds of music, from folk to techno, or beat-oriented stuff. If anything, I think we are melancholic. Most of the time it’s music for your home or going for a walk.” There are some things that help us understand the DNA of the label. First, Gordon’s love of ‘90s UK hip hop. That sound, where instrumentals play a huge role, guided Project Mooncircle’s early years. Mr Cooper and MF Doom are two notable names, but later artists would drive the label to new territories. Then Robot Koch came on board in 2010, bringing new dubstep sounds and beats that felt more experimental. With the new decade came names like Long Arm, Flako, and more recently, Submerse, with a dreamy, modern take on downtempo. It feels like every artist on the roster is acknowledged as a pioneer in their own right, and that proves Project Mooncircle has a knack for scouting real talent.
Label of Love
“We’ve had luck,” Gordon continues. “We chose the right people when they were creating something new and we went in the right direction.” He lets artists lead the way when it comes to the sound. “Maybe in the beginning the label was closer to my personality, but not so much anymore,” he says. “I wouldn’t call myself a tastemaker. I’ve learned to be open-minded and trust the artists, because most of the time they are right. The influence, the face, and the creative input is the artist; I am in the background taking care of the structure.” He has a lot of confidence in the artists; he will let them do the work and release the music as it is – as long as the outcome is good. Project Mooncircle signs artists for four or five years, then it’s time to re-evaluate the situation. This is how they ensure the label and the artists evolve, and it’s also the reason Gordon ascribes to Project Mooncircle’s longevity. But if there’s something that has always made this label distinctive, it’s the artwork. The visual element is as important as the music, and this is where Gordon’s pride in his work shines through. “Almost every layout is mine,” he tells us. “When I decide that we are going to release something, I stop listening. I wait until the mastering is done, and then I listen to the final product. It’s amazing to enjoy it like a listener. That’s when I work on the layout or do my own illustrations.” His style is instantly recognisable, with intricate illustrations of abstract scenarios that are full of detail. His artwork also connects with the very origins of the project, when he met the founder of experimental label Beta Bodega, La Mano Fría. He became Gordon’s mentor: “He taught me loads of stuff, not only illustrations and graphics, but also how to run a label. He taught me how to handle human relationships, and this is the main thing in label work. You have to be on point!” Project Mooncircle turns 15 this year. It feels like an achievement, but it is now that Gordon faces the biggest challenge. The dawn of the digital age and the ever-shortening attention span of the listener demands a greater effort from labels. “Nowadays it’s just fast-food listening. As a label, we try to change this in some way; we have to bring the music back to the listeners. It’s still important to have a label as a platform that selects music for people, especially in such an overloaded market,” Gordon insists. But the challenge for Project Mooncircle is not limited to the state of the music industry, it is also about how its founder and CEO feels about himself. “I’m 35 and I just got married,” he says. “I’m thinking about my age and my future, and I’m doing a lot besides music. I need to consider whether this is enough to exist for the next 20 years. I’ve been doing this since I was 16, and of course I’m still a listener, but the business side has changed a lot.” Although one can never feel reassured about the future, Project Mooncircle’s philosophy is to take things one step at a time. “I really don’t know what’s right or wrong,” Gordon says, wrapping up our conversation. “We just continue to release music, and if people think we get stuck someday – maybe 200 people won’t agree, and will still enjoy it.” Here’s to those 200. Autumn/Winter 2017
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서울의 드랙퀸들
Dispatches
Seoul’s Drag Queens
DISPATCHES: THE QUEENS OF QUEER KOREA
What is it like to walk the streets of Seoul? With a heaving population of over 10 million and a self-professed ‘bbali bbali’ (quickly, quickly) culture, the city feels hectic, frenzied. South Korea is a country of obvious segregation; North and South Korea notwithstanding, the country is profoundly socially divided.
C
ynical youth has branded the nation ‘Hell Joseon’ due to the poor social and economic opportunities they face in comparison to their parents’ generation. Gleaming towers look down on consciously concealed slums, and in them the work-hard, play-hard ethic is absolute. Office workers completing some of the longest hours in the OECD party into the night with their coworkers before heading back to work the following morning, hangover cure in hand. Rapid economic progress is recognised internationally and celebrated domestically, but traditional Confucian values carry on, often to the chagrin of the younger generation. The South Korean LGBTQ community sits uncomfortably between the threshold of progress and a desperate clinging to the past. Repeated attempts to introduce anti-discrimination law have been abandoned because of the seemingly impassable religious opposition to LGBTQ protections. Hong Seok-cheon, Korea’s biggest openly gay celebrity, saw the near end of his media career after coming out in 2000, while gay actor Kim Ji-hoo faced a series of personal and professional knock-backs after coming out that led to his suicide in 2008. As recently as May 2017, a soldier was charged in a military court for having a same-sex relationship, part of a witch-hunt of gay soldiers that drew international attention and condemnation from Amnesty International. A recent poll related to the Korea Queer Culture Festival on the government-run platform M Vote had to be shut down after socially conservative and Christian netizens left a torrent of homophobic comments and voted in the thousands to oppose the festival, which sees droves of protesters armed with homophobic signs each year. Groups in traditional Korean dress give performances and wave South Korean flags to drive home the
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Issue Five
notion that queerness is un-Korean. Pride festival itself has to be fenced off: after walking through groups of demonstrators, visitors enter the festival grounds by passing through lines of police. Despite the volume of opposition, Korea has come on leaps and bounds in its attitude towards homosexuality. Recent years have seen a new groundswell of courageous, creative activism. It is against this backdrop that Korea’s drag queens take the stage. On a rainy Saturday in Seoul, we find ourselves in a backstreet, second-floor comic book library and bar at a semi-secret workshop dedicated to drag. The atmosphere is intimate and friendly; here is a group of people who loosely know each other and share a common interest. At the back of the room are leading Seoul queens Kuciia
words by
Juno Sparkes photos by
Jinny Park
Below: Nix (front) and Vita Mikju (behind).
Seoul’s Drag Queens
Hell Joseon Coined in the early 2010s, this satirical term is used by young Koreans to criticise the current socio-economic landscape. It is specifically used when discussing unemployment and poor working conditions, including the harsh treatment of workers due to Confucianism and greed.
Above: Nix above the lights of Seoul. Below: Mikju strikes a pose in a giant eyeball headpiece.
Dispatches
Diamant and Vita Mikju, both of whom have performed with Kim Chi and Violet Chachki of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame, and have starred in the video for Korean–American rapper Dumbfoundead’s debut single, ‘Hyung’. They relax and chat with friends as they wait to share their knowledge with the gathered drag enthusiasts. Vita Mikju, a queen who started in ‘boylesque’ and is also a skilled pole dancer, will run a dance workshop. After this, Kuciia will give a make up demonstration. These are skills the practiced queen honed on his own: “I learned a lot through watching international drag queens, but since the Asian facial structure is different, in the end it was a lot of trial and error and finding my own style that works for me.” The event kicks off with a presentation discussing different aspects of drag, sex and gender, introducing and explaining terms such as ‘transgender’, ‘drag king’ and ‘bio queen’. The workshop has been put together by Geum Hye-ji, the creator of the Facebook page ‘서울드랙’ (‘Seoul Drag’) and passionate fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Though Drag Race played a large part in Hye-ji’s passion, the young organiser, media blogger and PR manager was initially inspired by a cisgendered woman dressed in drag at Seoul’s Queer Culture Festival. When asked about her attraction to the craft, she says that she is hugely influenced by drag queens and the whole concept of being able to transform yourself. “As a Korean woman, I was really uptight about how I look, and I have a lot of complexes about my appearance,” she admits. With drag, she adds, she saw an alternative to this attitude: “You just do whatever you want to with make up or padding. I thought, maybe that can work for me. I can act like a drag queen and, even though I’m not that beautiful, I can be pretty and sexy. That idea was really attractive. A person can turn themselves into someone else.”
Autumn/Winter 2017
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Dispatches
Seoul’s Drag Queens
« I WANT TO SHOW KOREA THAT THERE IS MORE THAN FEMININE QUEENS, MORE THAN LIP-SYNCING. » Drag offers freedom of expression in a conservative society. Speaking about the attendees of the workshop, Hye-ji tells us, “Drag is therapy for many of us. My friend, whose drag name is Unnie the Chainsmoker, identifies herself as genderqueer and she lives in homophobic Korea. Drag is therapy for her to become who she wants to be.” Unnie the Chainsmoker almost exclusively performs drag at home and broadcasts on Twitter. The workshop is the second time she has worn drag in public. She notices one of the first-timers struggling with make up and steps in to help with eyeshadow. As members of the workshop begin to experiment with the many types of make up provided by the professionals, participants work together to aid the less experienced. Comprised largely of people who met online, the event fosters the sense of community that Hye-ji aims for. After being helped to achieve his Rocky Horror Picture Show-inspired look, one of the male attendees beams: “This is really, really fun!” However, the drag experience in Seoul is not without its own roadblocks. We later speak to Nix, a Brazilian queen who feels the drag community is somewhat hampered by Korea’s infamously high and narrow beauty standards. “I’m not white. I’m not the beauty standard here,” he says. “I’m not from an English-speaking country, so my English isn’t that good. My Korean isn’t that good. I’m never the first choice. I’m not what they prefer. When I started, I wanted to create something visually strong because that’s my voice, that’s how I express myself. How I can empower myself?” Nix has learned to use the limitations in his favour, sculpting bold and unusual looks that play outside the norm. He cites Mikju as an inspiration, eschewing as he does the more typical aspiration for a passable feminine appearance, and has incorporated elements such as fake blood and a giant eyeball headpiece into his performances. Mikju explains: “I see drag as more than being a woman. I see it as breaking the gender binary stereotypes of what gender should look like. I want the drag community to get bigger and I want the Korean drag scene to have more variety. It’s very show-based now, and it favours the more feminine queens. I want to show Korea that there is more than feminine queens, more than lip-syncing.” 38
Issue Five
Although, like Mikju, he is critical of it, Nix expresses genuine hope and passion for the small scene. “It’s difficult but it’s not that bad. They do have those standards, but they welcome you,” he asserts. “They don’t push you away even if you are different. When they expect you to fill those standards, it’s because they’re trying to help you. So being different is not bad. They’re just not used to it.” His connection with and gratitude for more established queens like Kuciia speaks to how tight-knit this scene is. “They were important to me. They gave me opportunities.” Nix notes that Kuciia is a driving force within the Korean drag scene: “Kuciia’s really important here because she opens a lot of doors for new and foreign queens. She’s really professional. And I think that’s important because it sets some standards. You don’t have to meet them but you can see that it is possible.” It was another Seoul-based queen, Jungle, who first introduced Nix to The Meet Market, one of Seoul’s longest-running queer parties. Held in Hongik University’s notorious party area and hosted in a small venue, it packs out with eager drag fans and is a comfortable place for first-timers. Kuciia hosts the event and describes it as “a place where you can see your favourite queens performing, meet them, engage with them in a friendly, house-party atmosphere full of tolerant people who share your interests. I like to reach out to lesser-known drag queens and give them a chance to perform and get their name out at The Meet Market.” What motivates Kuciia and the other queens to continue despite the pronounced homophobia in Korea? As well as aiming to develop and grow the
Unnie Literally meaning ‘older sister’, ‘unnie’ is a term of respect used by women addressing a woman who is a little older than themselves. Above: Kuciia performing at the Busan Queer Culture Festival.
Seoul’s Drag Queens
Korean drag scene, Kuciia and Mikju want to see Korean society become more accepting of the LGBTQ community. They both performed at this year’s Korea Queer Culture Festival and were heartened to see how dramatically the festival has grown in recent years. “When I first performed there I didn’t expect the protesters to be so vocal,” Kuciia remembers. “But as the years go by I am energised by them more than anything.” He recalls a stark and encouraging example of change from Pride: “Something that has stuck with me is a married couple with a child who spoke to me after watching my performance saying that they are supportive of the LGBTQ community and are raising their child without any prejudice and hate.” The move toward openness has been evidenced by the fact that Busan, a comparatively more conservative city on Korea’s Southern coastline, celebrated its first Queer Culture Festival in September. Kuciia and Mikju both note their parents’ acceptance of their sexual orientations. However, Unnie the Chainsmoker and workshop organiser Hye-ji are not so fortunate. Both cite their parents’ Christian beliefs as a factor in their respective decisions not to come out. Unnie explains: “My parents don’t know about my sexuality. I’d be kicked out. My father especially; he’s a Christian. He thinks that homosexuality is wrong.” Hye-ji tells a similar story: “I’m bisexual but my parents are really homophobic, so I decided not to come out to them. Everyone in Korea in my parents’ generation goes to church. We have a strange Christian culture here. It’s really homophobic. I think my parents’ generation just doesn’t understand the possibility that their son or daughter could be gay.” Despite the public negativity towards the LGBTQ community and 61% of votes opposing the Korea Queer Culture Festival on the M Vote poll, Kuciia is hopeful for the future. “I often say that Korea is a fast-adjusting country,” he says. “So, while we might currently be at 61% against us, I believe that by engaging with the media and helping more people understand who we are and what we wish for, the mentality of South Koreans will be able to change quickly as well.” Mikju is similarly dedicated to helping sexual minorities in Korea: “I’m out, so I can fight for the ones who are afraid of being themselves. I have great parents who understand me, while many are not so fortunate. So I take that as my chance to be a great model for all the queers in Korea. I want to be a leader and fight for the ones who could never imagine coming out to their parents. I want to be a voice to shout for them.” The workshop nears its end. Kuciia Diamant finishes his demonstration and everyone gathers together to take a group photograph. Then, as the evening winds to a close, face wipes are passed around, make up removal tips offered, and the night’s dedicatedly applied foundation and glitter is erased. The expert queens pack away their make up and rhinestones, while Unnie the Chainsmoker goes to change out of his dress. Everyone returns to their original appearances, ready to step back out into the world.
Follow @hellonix, @kuciia and @vitamikju on Instagram to see more from these queens as Seoul’s burgeoning drag scene blossoms. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Classic Film
Wings of Desire
WINGS OF DESIRE: WIM WENDERS’ SOARING VISION 30 YEARS ON words by Stephanie Taralson
It’s a favourite of cinephiles and Freiluftkino lovers, even 30 years after its splashy Euro-arthouse debut. Tucked among a list of festival darlings and this season’s roster of big-screen hits, it sticks out as the single film that is over three years old, lacking an A-list marquee star and mostly recorded in washedout black and white. Yet there it is, Wim Wenders’ cinematic ode to humanity, Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire).
M
any fans of Wenders’ 1987 film are that specific brand of cinema geek who have earned the title of ‘fanatic’. They call Wings of Desire a symphony, a parable, magic. The film follows two guardian angels, Damiel and Cassiel, immortal and invisible to the humans they observe. One such human, Marion, is a trapeze performer at the circus; Damiel finds himself falling in love with her and wishes to swap his immortality for an earthly life with her. Desperate to expand his understanding of the human experience in all its messy sensuality and unapologetic mortality, Damiel encounters Peter Falk (as himself, in a largely improvised performance), a fallen angel who also felt compelled to get in on the earthly action. As Berlin musical luminary Nick Cave plays a live show in a bar, Damiel’s yearning for humanhood finally reaches its apex. A complete bibliography of texts on Wings of Desire would fill pages upon pages with film studies-ready article titles, heavily sprinkled with terms such as ‘existentialist cinema’, ‘technology’ and ‘perception’, ‘the verbal and the visual’, ‘experience and memory’, ‘transcending postmodernism’. Their analyses explore every rapturous detail of Wings of Desire, with many steadfast in their conviction that this is a film that asks its viewers to fundamentally consider how they see themselves and the world. Its subtle play with the themes of borders, embodiment and sacrifice render it timeless, helping to answer the question of why and how a 30-year-old movie about a dissatisfied angel who falls for a graceful trapeze artist could have something to say to us about love, happiness, and the nature of humanity in the 21st century. 40
Issue Five
Wim Wenders was born in the Ruhrgebiet area of West Germany in the summer of 1945. He made aborted attempts to study medicine and philosophy after finishing his secondary schooling, but a move to Paris sparked his love for cinema. By the early ‘70s, he was releasing his first films – already to critical acclaim. Wenders belonged to a group of upstart West German filmmakers who were looking to shake up the Marshall Plan-era status quo. It was a time that found Germans on either side of the Wall groping to reformulate their ideas of nationhood and identity, to redeem their sense of cultural autonomy. Despite hostile post-war politics of shame, division, and secrecy, this new generation of filmmakers refused to be subdued. Toying with new methodologies, avant-garde aesthetic approaches, and radical politicisation gave them scope to redefine what constituted German cinema. More broadly, this New German Cinema was swept along in the Second Wave European
Peter Falk Falk is best known as the star of long-running TV series Columbo. The first episode of Columbo was directed in 1971 by a 24-year-old Steven Spielberg.
Art Cinema movement that moodily turned its nose up at old-world Hollywood in the 1960s and ‘70s. New German Cinema looked unflinchingly at the state of contemporary West Germany, how it was haunted by ghosts of the Nazi and Weimar eras and bloated by capitalist prosperity during the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s. With their Oberhausen Manifesto in hand, provocateur directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders were ambitious, artistic, and determined to disrupt the commercial traditionalism that they saw ruling German-made cinema. (Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz is a 940-minute-long modernist epic that definitely wasn’t made with marketability in mind.) Wings of Desire arrived at the tail-end of the New German Cinema years, which were already winding down in the early ‘80s. The director had been living in New York City for much of the decade, watching as Soho began its evolution from artist haunt to gentrification ground zero. His films of this period in the early and mid-‘80s were Americana film noir, tinged with nostalgia and sentimentalism. But a lack of commercial success left auteur directors like Wenders with little choice but to rely on subsidies for the financing of their projects, or to look further afield for low-budget options. The latter was the circumstance that led to the making of Wings of Desire. Not having released a film since Paris, Texas in 1984, Wenders’ production company, Road Movies, was stagnating and needed to generate a new flow of capital in order to push forward with other projects. Necessity breeds invention; Wenders started to consider alternatives. The Wim Wenders Foundation calls Wings of Desire the director’s “Heimkehr” – his homecoming, a reference to the fact that he had been in the US for eight years. In a 1993 interview, Wenders admitted that
Wings of Desire
Signpost
the choice to film a movie in Berlin was spontaneous – a B-movie project on a limited budget without a fixed narrative structure or a finished script. But of all the places for a prodigal son to stage an unplanned homecoming, Berlin lent itself particularly well. The twilight years of the Cold War were casting their unflattering light on the city, a place emotionally and geographically abandoned, with grit to spare. As a backdrop to the existential longing of Damiel, the guardian angel who yearns to become a man, Berlin is an “after-the-apocalypse city,” according to film critic Pauline Kael. She reviewed the film in 1988, writing that the environment’s “ugliness is almost abstract,” and chafing at the pace of the movie, which seems to force viewers into “experiencing the psychic craving of the Berliners as they drift through their days, searching to be whole again.” With the fall of the Wall awaiting in November 1989, we can now savour the irony of this search for completeness. Spontaneous shooting location or not, the city’s disaffection became another thematic red thread, providing a perfectly existentialist mise en scene for Damiel’s quest. Upon release, the movie was an immediate commercial and artistic success. Wenders was feted at the Cannes Film Festival that year, and awarded Best Director, which kicked off a string of nominations and wins on the awards circuit in Europe and, to a lesser extent, farther afield. He also returned to Berlin to shoot a post-reunification sequel to Wings of Desire in 1993 called Faraway, So Close! Wings of Desire is sometimes categorised as romantic fantasy, a modern fairy tale. The fascination with this elemental film lives on among German Studies scholars and cinephiles; Wenders was awarded an Honorary Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlinale for his impressive body of work, of which Wings of Desire remains a seminal achievement. For Berliners today, though, one of the film’s greatest attractions is its commentary on and visual archiving of Berlin immediately before the end of the Cold War. Berlin is the sum of its parts, and Wings of Desire is one of those parts. Potsdamer Platz’s reflective, glossy commercialism is nowhere to be found here; instead we see the forgotten wasteland that it was during the years of the Berlin Wall. Damiel’s journey to personhood was widely considered a political allegory advocating for the reunification of East and West. As he yearns in the film for connection and belonging, so too did desperate Berliners yearn in reality for their city’s wounds to be healed. We now know how that reading simplified the feelings of Berliners; Wenders himself says openly that he thinks the city suffered badly during the first years of reunification. Still, perhaps the film owes some of its success to good timing – what could be more appealing to the intellectual art world elite of the ‘80s than a late-New Wave sentimental fantasy set in the very city whose political dramatics had captured the attention of the world? But that can’t be the whole story. Wings of Desire also haunts simply because it is a beautiful film. Today, the film’s greyscale cinematography and lingering high-angle shots are a meditative escape from the overstimulation of popular entertainment. Whether watching its tender exploration of an imaginary Berlin at a Freiluftkino or elsewhere, it’s appealing to study the long, achromatic views of the city and hunt for traces of the Berlin we know today. The film’s guardian angels did the same, watching the city’s residents for clues to what it felt like to be a Berliner, to be human, complete with all our pleasures and miseries. 30 years later, the search continues. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Point of View
Gay Sperm
SOUNDING OFF A ban on gay sperm donors is an unscientific discriminatory convenience, writes Radio Spätkauf’s Joel Dullroy.
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GBTQ people in Germany have finally been given the right to marry, but real equality is still a way off. For example, homosexuals need not apply at the Berlin Sperm Bank, which refuses to take donations from men who have sex with men (MSM, a medical catch-all for gay and bisexual men, and those who score higher than a 0 on the Kinsey scale). I learned this while reading around the topic online, after I came across a news story about how a Berlin court gave a sperm bank baby the right to access personal information about their biological father. Pity the poor bloke who had made an anonymous donation years previously, only to find an angsty adolescent on his doorstep searching for genetic answers. How much had he earned for his strain? Just under 200 euros a month, that’s how much. The Berlin Sperm Bank pays 80 euros a pop, and expects donors to deposit every two weeks and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Not bad pocket money, especially when combined with the savings incurred by abandoning booze and smokes. But the Berlin Sperm Bank website also carries a list of people who are excluded from donating: “drug addicts, men with frequently changing sexual partners, homosexuals.” As you may note, those first two categories are behaviour-based, self-assessed and subjective (Who is an addict? What is frequent?), while the latter is an inherent identity. Straight men are accepted if they promise they’ve been good boys, and their word is accepted as truth. Gay men, on the other hand, are turned away no matter how healthy, cautious, monogamous, or even celibate they might be. To be fair to the sperm bank, this ban isn’t theirs. It’s a regulation based on recommendations from the German Medical Association. The justification is ostensibly scientific: gay men are considered to be at higher risk of sexual diseases. But is this discrimination supported by fact? It’s
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Issue Five
true that gay men have higher rates of HIV infection than straight men. But our hetero brethren don’t deserve a free pass. Across Europe in 2015, 32% of new HIV infections resulted from heterosexual sex, only a few per cent lower than the 42% resulting from sex between MSM (the rest were from drug use and other causes). In some countries in northern and eastern Europe, heterosexuals account for the majority of new HIV infections. I know plenty of straight men who still think condoms are for sailors and have never taken a HIV test, despite years of bedding tourists from Club Der Visionaere (a reliable spot at 4am, I’m told). If the German Medical Association are being consistent with those they exclude from donating sperm, shouldn’t all Tinder users automatically be on the blacklist? In fact, there is little ground for concern about contamination. The sperm bank says it tests each and every donor and their sample for a variety of diseases. With all this testing, why preemptively ban anyone at all? If any segment of the male population has sperm to spare, it’s us gays. The real losers are the couples seeking to get pregnant, who are missing out on a high-quality gene pool. I mean, the most handsome men are always gay, at least that’s what most women on television always say. The sperm bank’s current straight donors are likely to be motivated by purely financial reasons. But gay men have an additional interest since it might be their only shot at biological fatherhood. Surely such evolutionarily motivated individuals are the ideal type for procreation. There are ways to reduce risk and stop gay shaming at the same time. Risk is dependent on the individual. Rather than banning a whole group based on their identity, donors should be approved or declined based on their verifiable medical status, combined with objective questions about behaviour that apply to straight and gay alike, such as the number of sexual partners and condom use. Sperm banks could follow the lead of the blood donation industry, which for years had a similar gay ban. The German Medical Association recently changed its blood donation guidelines to accept homosexuals who have abstained
Viktor Richardsson
TAKE MY GAY SPERM
from sex for 12 months. The same policy exists in the US. That’s a start, but it’s still punitive and unscientific. Reliable HIV test results are possible less than three months after exposure, and the UK will reduce the abstinence period to three months in early 2018 to reflect this reality. If they can accept our blood, why not our sperm? A spokesman for the German Medical Association said it has been considering a new sperm donor policy since 2016, but they have no timeline for finishing it. The Berlin Sperm Bank director Dr David Peet said he would be happy to accept homosexuals if the regulations were changed. I’ll admit that I’m taking a purely provocative position. I never actually considered donating sperm until I realised I couldn’t. I’m simply irked to discover a ‘no homosexuals allowed’ sign still hanging on any door, particularly one in liberal, enlightened Germany. I can also admit that this is all a bit of a storm in a sample cup. It’s nothing compared to the discrimination endured by generations of gay men before me, nor the hatred, misery and mortal fear suffered by gay men in 76 countries today where homosexuality is still a crime. While for me this is just a conceptual argument, there may be some gay men who genuinely wish to help couples conceive, or who could use the money to cover the rising cost of living in this city. For those men, and for the principle of sweeping out every cobweb of inequality, it’s time to end the ban on gay sperm donors. We could, of course, just walk into the sperm bank and sign up with a lie about our sexual preference. But not all of us like to go through the back door.
In Pictures
Illustrated News
IN PICTURES
Jonny Tiernan
Take an at-a-glance look at some of the summer’s biggest stories with the LOLA illustrated news.
Gianmarco Bresadola
André Puchta
In early October Berlin was lashed by storm Xavier, an intense low-pressure system that brought hurricane-force winds of up to 120km to the city. An estimated 20,000 trees fell across Berlin, five people were killed, and 18 flamingos died at Berlin Zoo. Car accidents and the closure of the S-Bahn network caused travel chaos.
Lawyer and women’s rights campaigner Seyran Ateş opened a liberal mosque in Moabit in June, inviting female and LGBTQ imams to preach to mixed-gender crowds. Housed in a former church, the Ibn-RushdGoethe-Moschee teaches a contemporary interpretation of the Qur’an. Ateş receives regular death threats and travels with security guards.
The Berlin cultural scene was divided by changes at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Long-time director Frank Castorf was replaced by Belgian Chris Dercon, the former director of London’s Tate Modern. Some saw it as the end of a unique Berlin tradition of avant-garde repertoire theatre. Castorf left begrudgingly, and his supporters removed the theatre’s iconic ‘OST’ sign and ‘walking wheel’ sculpture. Others were willing to give Dercon a chance; thousands attended his debut public dance event at the former Tempelhof Airport in September. Castorf fans seized the chance to squat the Volksbühne to demand a “collective directorship.” They rejected a compromise and were cleared out by police after a week.
Cafés, shops and coworking spaces are the latest sites of conflict between investors and Berliners. Unlike residents, commercial tenants can be evicted at short notice. Community meeting space Friedel54 in Neukölln was cleared out by police amid protests in June. Café Filou in Kreuzberg faced a similar fate, until its British landlord relented following a vicious campaign of smashed windows. Agora Collective also left its Neukölln base after a 90% rent increase.
Andrew Cannizarro
Mark Hunt
Transport Pixels
Berlin’s wettest summer in recorded history affected more than just grills and lake trips. Heavy rain sent thousands of invasive American red crayfish scurrying across Tiergarten, with city officials investigating their edibility. Mosquitos replaced wasps as the summer’s most annoying insect.
Air Berlin goes, Tegel to stay... maybe. After 39 years of service, the airline that carried Berlin’s name around Europe and across the Atlantic announced its insolvency in July. Air Berlin had been losing money, passengers and luggage for years. On September 24th, 56.1% of Berliners voted ‘yes’ in a referendum on whether Tegel Airport should remain in service, although the outcome is non-binding. The reason for both events was the same: the long-delayed Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport, BER. It was supposed to be Air Berlin’s growth hub and Tegel’s replacement, but it remains unfinished with no fixed opening date. Autumn/Winter 2017
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Picture of Success
Andy Kassier
When was the last time you doubted yourself? Life is always ups and downs. It’s like the stock market. When was the last time you were scared? I am always scared when it gets cold, because I really can’t live somewhere where it’s less than 20°. When was the last time you danced? I don’t dance, I always sit in the middle and people dance around me. Who was the last person to truly surprise you? Myself. What was the last good joke you heard? I am more into memes than jokes. What was the last compliment you received? People liked my work, and I gave a talk about my work, and they liked the talk about my work, which they liked.
THE LAST WORD: ANDY KASSIER
words by Marc Yates
A
rtist Andy Kassier’s tongue-incheek, affluent alter ego is so precisely crafted that it’s often difficult to tell where one persona ends and the other begins. Through his work, he calls into question our own virtual alter egos: who exactly are we when we turn our camera on ourselves, add a filter, and write a profound image caption? In one photo he is at the beach sitting shirtless astride a white horse. In another, he’s in a hotel dressing gown, holding a bottle of champagne. In the next he sits naked on the peak of a snow-capped mountain, a fur coat around his shoulders. Tennis whites, supercars, a winning smile – to scroll through his social media channels is to scroll through a perfectly-manufactured image of success.
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When was the last time you laughed at yourself? Who is this pretty guy in the mirror?
If you could choose your last words, what would they be? Success was just a smile away.
See more of Andy at andykassier.com, and follow his travels at instagram.com/ andykassier
When was the last time you did something for the first time? Every day, recently. Today I drove a Fiat Panda. When was the last time you used public transport? Is flying on an airplane public transport? If so, like two days ago. Where did you go on your last trip? My whole life is a trip, I am in Italy right now, then New York and LA, after that maybe China, and South Africa at the beginning of 2018.
Who was the last famous person you met? Rafael Horzon.
When was the last time you laughed at the wrong moment? Every day I laugh about my own jokes, even when they’re not funny.
What was the last thing someone said about your work that made you laugh? That’s never happened.
What was the last piece of great advice you gave to someone? I always give great advice to others!
When was the last time someone took you too seriously? Every day on Instagram.
What was the last thing you repaired? Some random people with my advice.
What was the last thing you Googled? How to give an interview.
What was the last great book you read? Rafael Horzon - Das Weisse Buch.
Issue Five
What was the last compliment you gave to someone else? I think everyone should get compliments all the time.
LAST ORDERS Whiskey Sour Fill a shaker with ice and add two shots of your favourite bourbon, one shot of fresh lemon juice and a teaspoon of sugar. Add an egg white if you’re feeling adventurous and shake well (if you added the egg white, shake really well). Pour into a chilled cocktail glass and enjoy. Garnish with a wedge of orange, a cherry, both, or neither.
THIS ISSUE WAS POWERED BY… Puppies, Neil deGrasse Tyson, wind power, over excitement, rain, podcasts, concerts, going freelance, Belfast, getting up even earlier on a Saturday, being on tour, rediscovering techno.
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Our /Espresso Martini RECIPE 40ml Coconut infused Vokda (Infuse bottle of Our/Berlin Vodka with 30g of desiccated coconut chips) 25ml Coffee Liqueur 30ml Fresh Espresso 1 Pinch of Salt Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with Ice. Shake vigorously for 15 seconds and f ine strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with desiccated coconut chips.