indieberlin Retrospective 2015

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Yearbook 2015

music art literature sex & fashion

cover

1

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Yearbook 2015

Berlin networking site dedicated to independent art, music, fashion and lifestyle in berlin: digital magazine, artist support and events

Team Contents Mia Morris Publisher, photographer, writer Noel Maurice Publisher, writer Norman Zielasko Music

music 04 Joris im Konzert

05

‘Mizzy’ von Bilderbuch

08

Budgie 10

Polly Trope indielit editor

Christoph Letkowski 12

Agon 13

Claudia Rapp German language indielit editor

Katja Lucker 14

Susann Kirkuss Radio Melissa Righi Fashion Anastasis Koutsogiannis Music Elinor Lewy Film and Music Simona Turini indielit reviewer Caterina Gili Photographer Mike Featherstone Writer, booking

Pharmakon Review 17 Berlin Music Video Awards

18

art 20 Berlin Art Week 21 Ferkel Johnson 24 Berlin Burlesque Festival

26

Homosexuality-ies Exhibition

28

Michael Spencer Jones

30

Scotty the Blue Bunny

32

indielit 35 The Faultless Painter 34 Jane Flett & Ambika Thompson

36

Reviews 40 Joanna Penn 44 indiesex 46 Sheila Wolf 47 Front cover foto Nico Stinghe Back cover foto Caterina Gili Magazine design Ray Noland

Santi’s Sex Advice 49 fashion 51 Mellissa Righi 52 Edeltrash Fashion Show

2

54

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Publisher Note Well here we are at the beginning of 2016, a date that seems somehow unrealistically futuristic, and we look back on 2015. While in the wide world there was as much bad as good, still here in Berlin the independent scene seems to be going from strength to strength. While a lot of Berliners grumble about the ongoing wave of new arrivals from the US and the UK especially, pushing up rents and speeding up the inevitable gentrification of the town, we see also the overwhelmingly positive side of it.

Although Berlin has always been exciting, and especially the 90s tend now to be seen as the golden years of a scene wild and crazy and even better for being unknown to anyone who wasn’t there, with the ease of squatting and getting by on nothing; still we at indieberlin find that exactly because of the new waves of international artists from all over coming in, the city has never been more vibrant; more energetic; and more full of possibilities.

Internationally acknowledged for the cool and downright indie town that we knew anyway it was, Berlin has come into its own in so many ways, internationally connected and attracting the best creative talent from all over the world - people who want to take advantage of the space to breathe and the acceptance of the unusual that is Berlin in the 21st Century.

I’ve seen it written that “the future is handmade”.

I’d say that the future is indie.

Technological advancements and the rise of Web 2.0 mean that the mainstream media, controlled by the same old vested interests, has lost its stranglehold on what art and what culture is available to society. Never before have artists, writers, musicians, designers and free thinkers been so able to find an audience for their particular brand of weirdness, their own individual take on reality. It’s the artists and the appreciators of art that get to define what popular taste looks like now, without any cultural middlemen holding sway over what gets the nod and what doesn’t.

Individual empowerment and the triumph of individual taste over mass marketed crap has been made possible - and that’s exactly what excites us at indieberlin: we celebrate the independent thinkers, the independent artists, we’re extremely happy, and as excited as ever, to be in a position to be able to point a finger at our favourite artists, musicians, writers, designers, filmmakers and the rest from the independent scene, the ones who have courage in their visions, the ones who are doing it for themselves.

The future is indie; and indieberlin is there to take part.

Noel Maurice and Mia Morris

3

music

4

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Joris kurz nach seinem Berliner Konzert im indieberlin Interview

“Ich weiß nicht, ob das ewig so weitergeht, aber im Moment sind wir natürlich auch total überrascht, dass so viele Leute kommen und da so eine tolle Stimmung ist. Das ist ja nichts Selbstverständliches für uns.”

dazu gefasst und meine Band gefunden. Es ist ganz klar ein Soloprojekt, aber die Jungs waren von Anfang an mit dabei. Wir haben uns also zusammengesetzt und versucht meine Musik umzusetzen. Dann habe ich meine Produzenten kennen gelernt und wir sind hier ins Studio gekommen. Ich war dann Tag und Nacht hier und habe daran arbeiten dürfen.

indieberlin: Mir ist auf dem Konzert deine Ansage aufgefallen, du hättest vier Jahre an deinem Album gearbeitet. Bist du so ein Perfektionist?

“Ich bin schon ein bisschen Nerd in manchen Sachen.”

Joris: Ich habe vier Jahre an dem Album geschrieben.

Fragmente nehme ich immer zwischendurch auf, dann sitze ich nachts an meinem Klavier oder an meiner Gitarre und dudle vor mich hin. Wenn ich die richtigen Geschichten dazu in meinem Kopf habe, nehme ich die Fragmente wieder und baue mir meine Songs daraus zusammen. Manchmal, wie bei Im Schneckenhaus, schreibe ich einen Song aber auch an einem Tag, weil etwas Krasses in meinem Leben passiert ist. Es ist also ganz unterschiedlich.

Ich bin sehr detailverliebt und verliere mich dann auch gerne in den letzten Details. Ich glaube Musiker sind oft so: eigentlich könntest du immer noch etwas machen, es gibt immer noch irgendwelche Ideen, die sofort wieder reinkommen. Aber so, wie Hoffnungslos Hoffnungsvoll jetzt geworden ist, bin ich total zufrieden. Das ist mein Album, meine Musik, so wie sie klingen muss für mich.

Und das ist ein total geiles Gefühl. indieberlin: Was sind deine musikalischen Einflüsse? Was hörst du so oder hast du immer schon gehört?

“Es ist ganz klar ein Soloprojekt, aber die Jungs waren von Anfang an mit dabei.”

Joris: Ich habe auf jeden Fall ganz viele Einflüsse. Wie gesagt, fast ausschließlich englische Musik. Ich glaube als Musiker ist es unglaublich wichtig, dass man ganz viel Musik hört. Ich habe angefangen zur Live-CD der Blues Brothers Schlagzeug zu spielen… es gibt so viel… The Head And The Heart, kennst du die? Aus Seattle, ein bisschen folkig, richtig gut produziert. Phoenix habe ich früher rauf und runter gehört. ››

Aber ja, ich habe vier Jahre für mein Debütalbum gearbeitet und war anderthalb Jahre im Studio. Und das ist natürlich auch schon Luxus, von dem ich immer geträumt habe. Genau so wollte ich das aber auch immer schon machen. In ist es ja eigentlich eher, eine Single oder EP zu machen – ich wollte immer ein Album machen. Vor zweieinhalb Jahren habe ich dann konkret den Entschluss

5

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Interview von Malte Grotendorst

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

“

Paolo Nutini, stimmlich eine total große Inspiration für mich.

“Ich durfte immer mein Ding machen.”

Ich habe viel die alten Coldplay-Sachen gehört. Paolo Nutini, stimmlich eine total große Inspiration für mich. Das erste Mumford and Sons-Album. Es war gerade Sommer, als ich das gehört habe, beim Grillen, am See… es gibt so viel. Angus and Julia Stone finde ich in letzter Zeit super.

Ich bin so wie ich bin und würde mich niemals verstellen.

Ich durfte immer mein Ding machen. Ich habe in jedem Bereich am Ende die Entscheidungen getroffen, auch was das Label angeht und so weiter. Das sind meine Entscheidungen. Und ich würde es genauso machen, wenn es jetzt gerade nicht so gut laufen würde.

indieberlin: Bist du denn auf der Bühne wirklich genauso, wie du auch sonst bist oder ist es schon so, dass die Bühne einen verändert?

Aber die ganze Tour war ausverkauft, das war ein Wahnsinn. Ich habe ursprünglich diese Tour spielen wollen, weil wir im Sommer einige große Festivals spielen.

Natürlich nicht als Headliner, aber ich habe trotzdem gesagt, dass ich nochmal ein Live-Gefühl entwickeln wollte, nachdem ich aus dem Studio raus war, damit ich nicht hinterher auf einem Festival auf einer Riesenbühne stehe und nicht weiß, wie man sie füllt. Ich habe dann irgendwann darum gebettelt, dass ich eine kleine Clubtour spielen darf, aber alle haben gesagt, dass das schwierig wird, weil die Leute mich eben noch nicht kannten.

Aber weil ich so genervt habe, haben sie irgendwann gesagt „okay, machen wir.“ Und jetzt waren die Konzerte ausverkauft und wurden reihenweise in größere Locations verlegt, das war der Wahnsinn.

Joris: Ja klar, man muss sich anders verhalten auf der Bühne. Insofern, als dass man da vor Leuten steht und singt. Das mache ich ja bei mir zuhause nicht [grinst] und deswegen ist man natürlich schon ein bisschen anders.

Aber ich glaube ansonsten, wenn ich etwas erzähle zum Beispiel, dann bin ich genauso wie jetzt auch. indieberlin: Aber du hast schon irgendwie EntertainerQualitäten auf der Bühne, die hätte ich nicht erwartet, nachdem ich das Album gehört habe, das ja eher introvertiert ist.

“Die wissen, dass ich so bin, wie ich da stehe.”

Joris: Ich mag das auch. Ich genieße das alles gerade.

Und ja, deswegen bin ich vielleicht auf der Bühne manchmal ein bisschen glückstrunken oder will dann auch unbedingt bestimmte Sachen erzählen, aber irgendwie kaufen mir die Leute das auch immer ab. Die wissen, dass ich so bin, wie ich da stehe.

”Das war schon gigantisch, das ganze Gefühl.

Deswegen habe ich es auch zu hundert Prozent genossen.”

6

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Ich wusste nicht, wie das wird. Ich hatte sowas vorher noch nie gemacht. Die Leute konnten oft mitsingen, das war schon gigantisch, das ganze Gefühl. Deswegen habe ich es auch zu hundert Prozent genossen.

Das ist halt schön, man hat immer irgendwie etwas anderes, immer ein volles Haus. Man muss das einfach genießen. Ich glaube aber, dass ich mir zum Beispiel auf einem Festival vorher schon sagen muss, dass ich mich anders verhalte, weil mich die Leute eben nicht kennen.

Jeder Abend war anders: in Berlin waren es eher Mädels, in Hamburg eher Erwachsene. Es gab immer ein anderes Publikum, es wurde immer auf andere Songs reagiert.

Das hat es einfach enorm spannend gemacht. Es ist einfach eine tolle Sache, wenn du jeden Abend komplett andere Leute vor dir hast und merkst, dass jetzt nicht alle nur auf den Hit warten. Wir haben ja auch musikalisch kompliziertere Sachen im Set, vorher habe ich gedacht, dass wenn die Leute nur wegen „Herz über Kopf“ kommen, dann könnte das schwierig werden. In Berlin ist es ja generell immer noch ein bisschen anders…

“Es ist schon wichtig, dass man weiß, wer da jetzt steht und wer dir zuhört.”

Es ist schon wichtig, dass man weiß, wer da jetzt steht und wer dir zuhört. Ich kann nicht als erstes auf einem Festival eine lange Geschichte erzählen. Dann würden die Leute alle gehen oder fragen: „Was ist denn mit dem Typen los?“ Man muss ein Gespür dafür entwickeln. Das tue ich gerade und finde es total spannend. indieberlin: Deine Clubtour ist jetzt ja erstmal vorbei. Hast du jetzt vor der Festivalsaison noch ein bisschen Zeit zum Relaxen?

indieberlin: … inwiefern?

Joris: Berlin hat den großen Vorteil, dass es hier unglaublich viel gute Livemusik gibt. Die Leute sind am Anfang immer eher ein bisschen abwartend. Nun war das hier in Berlin auch meine sechste Show am Stück, ich war schon ein bisschen kaputt, aber es hat dann doch relativ schnell gut funktionert.

Joris: Heute habe ich noch ein paar Interviews, das finde ich auch immer spannend, wenn man mal über seine Musik quatschen darf und dann beginnen wir in anderthalb Wochen schon mit den ersten Festivals und haben noch ein paar Radiosachen dazwischen. Es ist immer etwas los, immer etwas anderes. Das macht es total spannend. Ich hatte erst die Studiophase, dann kam jetzt die Tourphase, jetzt kommen die Festivals und im Herbst geht es dann mit der Tournee weiter. In Berlin dann im Postbahnhof, glaube ich. ■

Leipzig, zum Beispiel, am Abend vorher, war doppelt so groß und die Leute waren von vorne bis hinten auf Party aus, voll dabei und es war nochmal ganz anders. Und es gibt Sachen wie Wiesbaden, wo es die ganze Zeit mucksmäuschenstill war, wo wir deshalb auch andere Songs gespielt haben, weil wir gemerkt haben, dass da gerade irgendwie mehr so Film Noir angesagt war.

7

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Bilderbuch Interview by Mia Morris

MIZZY

Foto by Nico Ostermann

8

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Ein indieberlin interview mit “MIZZY” Michael Krammer

Die österreichische Band Bilderbuch gibt es schon seit 2005 – aber im letzten Jahr ist sie so richtig in Deutschland durchgestartet. Die fünfköpfige JungsTruppe um Frontman Maurice touren quasi non stop und das nächste Konzert in Berlin (am 10. Dezember) ist gerade in die Columbiahalle verlegt worden.

Entstehung unserer Songs angeht und keine Situation gleicht der anderen. indieberlin: Auf Euren Konzerten geht es gut ab. Aber was passiert nach einem Konzert im Backstage?

Bilderbuch / Mizzy: Wirklich wichtig ist ist was auf der Bühne passiert.

Harter auf Erfolgskurs also und wir können es Bilderbuch!

Ich glaube Sprüche über eine Bilderbuch-Karriere, ein Bilderbuch-Konzerterlebnis etc. sind schon genug gemacht worden – deswegen sparen wir uns und euch das hier. ABER wir haben dafür ganz tolle Insights für Euch, denn wir haben Mizzy von Bilderbuch interviewt.

Und egal was und wie viel ich aus dem BackstageNähkästchen plaudere, ihr würdet es ohnehin nicht glauben. indieberlin: Wenn ihr euch entscheiden müsstet zwischen Falco und Kruder und Dorfmeister, dann…

Los geht’s – viel Spaß beim Lesen und viel Spaß beim Rocken auf dem Konzert. Hier verlosen wir übrigens Tickets zur Berliner Veranstaltung.

Bilderbuch / Mizzy: würden wir uns für Falco entscheiden.

POP könnte doch eventuell ein ganz zutreffender Überbegriff sein

indieberlin: Was war euer kuriostestes Tour-Erlebnis?

indieberlin: Eure Musik wird mit Einflüssen aus Progressive Rock, Art-Punk, Indie-Rock, Elektro und HipHop beschrieben. Gibt es eine musikalische Schublade, in die ihr euch selbst stecken würdet?

Die memorabelsten und abgedrehtesten Erlebnisse für uns sind eigentlich immer die Konzerte selbst. Es ist unfassbar jedes mal wieder aufs neue zu realisieren, wie viele Leute sich an einem Ort versammeln um uns spielen zu sehen. Das stellt alle anderen Verrücktheiten in den Schatten.

Bilderbuch / Mizzy: Ich denke POP könnte doch eventuell ein ganz zutreffender Überbegriff für das sein was wir in der letzten Zeit so gemacht haben. Aber eine Schublade ist definitiv kein Ort in dem wir uns gerne aufhalten, das ist uns einfach zu ungemütlich und zu eng.

indieberlin: Und noch eine gaaanz ernste Frage: Wie stehen aus Eurer Sicht Musik und Politik zueinander?

Bilderbuch / Mizzy: Naja, sobald jemand eine Bühne betritt könnte man das eigentlich auf gewisse Art und Weise als politisches Statement werten.

indieberlin: Wie läuft bei Euch das Songs-Schreiben ab?

Bilderbuch / Mizzy: Puh, das ist wirklich bei jedem Song komplett anders. Aber grundsätzlich jongliert jeder im besten Fall mit ein paar Ideen herum. Manche davon werden von den anderen für gut befunden und kommen eine runde weiter, manche bleiben einfach irgendwo im „Hades“der Bilderbuch Ideen liegen.

In fast jeder Kunstform liegt ein kleines bisschen Politik Manche unserer Songs haben definitiv einen sehr politischen Kern aber entstanden sind sie aus purem Aktionismus und dem Bedürfnis seinem Groll in Form von Musik Ausdruck zu verleihen und nicht aus der brottrockenen Idee einen Song einem gewissen Thema zu widmen nur um als Band politisch relevant zu sein.

Am Ende des Tages muss halt einfach auch ein geiler Track sein, das ist das wichtigste, sonst kannst du auch ein Buch schreiben, dann muss sich das keiner anhören.

Manchmal entsteht ein ganzer Song aus nur einem Wort Machmal aus einer simplen Akkordfolge. Da gehts dann entweder um eine starke, fesselnde Idee oder einen speziellen Sound die einen an einer Idee festhalten lassen.

Mittlerweile gibt es eine sehr weite Bandbreite was die

9

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Indieberlin Interview with Legendary Drummer And Bimm Instructor

Most musicians in Berlin now know about the BIMM. The British and Irish Modern Music Institute started life in 2001 in Brighton, UK as an all-encompassing modern music college, before opening new branches around the UK. BIMM Berlin opened its doors just a couple of months ago and looks like generally a good thing. One thing that you can’t help noticing is the standard of the tutors that they’re managing to attract – people who really have been there and done that and got the teeshirt. Great musicians with years of proper, hands-on experience making music and working within the music business.

One of these is Budgie.

Budgie: The general music scene in the early eighties was with a few exceptions already reverting to the old music industry model of ‘sign what sells’. With more diversity through DIY, that thinking is again outmoded and untenable. Berlin in 2015 has the feel of London and New York in the early eighties, a lot of small venues in which to try things out, no expectations, no pressure, no restrictions.

If Berlin is any indication of what’s happening, then there’s definitely a renewed sense of adventure indieberlin: Do you have a philosophy or attitude as a musician? What drives you to do it, what drives you to keep doing it?

Peter Budgie Clarke was the drummer in seminal 70s/80s post punk band Souxsie and the Banshees. In fact he and Souxsie were an item, and continued to work together creatively even after Banshees howled their last sometime in the 90s, with new band Creatures, that continued making music well into the zeroes.

Budgie: If I have a philosophy or attitude as a musician, it is to relax and give every gig my best. What drives me to do it? Music gives me everything, it feeds me spiritually and it’s fun. What drives me to keep doing it? I never know where it’s going to take me next and I just might get a little closer to achieving even a small part of my full potential.

BIMM has just named Budgie their Head of Drums, saying “Always ready to challenge himself, as a musician Budgie has pushed the limits of traditional drumming and has an enviable track record in both artistry and career success.” indieberlin are very happy to have been able to hook up with Budgie to put some questions to him about life, music, the DIY ethos and the difference between then and now.

indieberlin: When you teach people at the BIMM, is there something you want to impart to them beyond just the technical aspect of playing drums?

Budgie: Technique can be taught and improved but to paraphrase Miles Davis, anyone can play, it’s their attitude that counts. To survive in the world of music, attitude is everything.

indieberlin: You came up in the late seventies, early eighties punk and post punk scene. With the advent of so much self-empowering technology about, do you find there is less or more of a DIY ethos these days?

indieberlin: When it comes to music, to culture, to the role it plays in today’s society and the role it might play in tomorrow’s society, are you optimistic or pessimistic?

Budgie: Yes there is more of a DIY ethos these days.

As the recording and mastering processes that enable music to be taken from inception to completion without the need for any professional involvement become more affordable and simpler, every writer-performer can also become engineer and producer. This does not unfortunately guarantee great results.

Budgie: I remain optimistic about the role of all the arts in tomorrow’s society. Music is everywhere, from birdsong to the squeal of the S-Bahn, we just have to listen for it.

Most people can hear but listening requires concentration, even meditation. Music is a key to another dimension.

I’m a drummer, the act of drumming negates pessimism.

Yes there is more of a DIY ethos these days indieberlin: Beyond that, how would you describe the difference between the general music scene now and in the early eighties? Would you say that it’s less or more adventurous?

Thanks a lot for the interview and see you at the BIMM!

10

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Budgie Interview by Mia Morris

11

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Ihre Ursprünge hat die Band “Von Eden” in den Dreharbeit zum Film “Feuchtgebiete” im letzten Jahr.

Aber Anfang diesen Jahres geht Frontmann Christoph Letkowski mit erstklassiger Band inklusive neuem Gitarristen auf eine kleine feine Clubtour. Das Berliner Konzert findet am 03. Februar im Privatclub statt.

Und zur Einstimmung hier unser Interview mit Christoph Letkowski, der die Fragen ganz locker neben dem Kiten auf den Kapverden beantwortet hat – nice! indieberlin: Die obligatorische Neujahrsfrage – was wünschst Du Dir für 2015 – in einem Wort?

Christoph: Frieden. Unter – und miteinander, Innen, wie Außen, im Kleinen, wie im Grossen. indieberlin: Ihr startet das Jahr mit einer kleinen Clubtour “Zuviel des Guten” – habt ihr neue Songs im Gepäck?

Was erwartet uns?

Christoph: Mit unserem neuen Gitarristen Thomas Moked haben wir sowohl neue Songs als auch bekannte in neuer “Verpackung” dabei. Es gibt jetzt mehr Instrumente, mehr Melodien, neue Sounds und fünf Jungs, die sich freuen, ihre Liebe zur Musik zu teilen.

Musik war meine erste Liebe indieberlin: Schauspielern oder Singen – mal ehrlich – hast Du eine Präferenz?

Christoph: Es ist schön, sich auf diese beiden, unterschiedliche Arten ausdrücken zu dürfen, wenngleich sie für mich zusammen hängen. Aber Musik war meine erste Liebe und die lässt einen ja bekanntlich nicht so schnell wieder los.

Christoph Letkowski

indieberlin: Und schlüpfst Du auch in eine Rolle, wenn Du beim Konzert auf der Bühne stehst?

Christoph: Ich denke, das jeder Song eine andere Geschichte erzählt und dadurch eine andere Rolle verlangt.

Das Berliner Publikum ist nie langweilig

Interview by Mia Morris / Foto by Kristin Keller

indieberlin: Ist das Berliner Publikum aus Deiner Sicht ein besonders anspruchsvolles, schwieriges oder besonderes Publikum?

Über Seine Band Von Eden, Die Liebe Zur Musik Und Das Berliner Publikum

Christoph: Es ist nie langweilig. Durch die Buntheit und die verschiedenen Einflüsse, die das Berliner Publikum mit sich bringt, ist es immer besonders reizvoll, hier zu spielen. Aber “Von Eden” ist ja auch eine “bunte Truppe” und ich denke, das kann ganz gut passen. indieberlin: Auf welchen Konzerten trifft man Dich in Berlin?

Christoph: Zuletzt waren wir bei Kishi Bashi, Gaslight Anthem und Fink.

Vielen Dank Christoph Letkowski und Band Von Eden und bis zum 03. Februar im Privatclub!

12

Agon

Agon: For clarity.

Premiere Their First Video On Indieberlin – Out Today

indieberlin: Can you tell me a bit about what each of you do?

Elisabeth: Alice is an artist – she does portraits and collages. And she had the drum machine. Agon is a writer.

Agon: I do readings around Berlin, I finished a novel last year. Me and Alice are both from London, but...

Alice: Lisa was a DJ for years in Amsterdam – we did an exhibition of photography this summer.

Agon: In a gallery where a girl was recently murdered.

Alice: He’s obsessed with that story.

Agon: Because I knew the killer, and I’m amazed that he’s still a fugitive, because he seemed so inept. indieberlin: What’s the meaning of ‘Talentless But Charming’?

Elisabeth: It means… that? It means we are talented but charmless. indieberlin: Listening to your EP, there seems to be quite a strong narrative arc – can you tell me more about that?

Agon: Performing an identity – the different phases…

Alice [horrified]: A narrative arc? indieberlin: What inspired that video for ‘Everyone Is Disappointing’?

Agon is an ambitious new Berlin band, set to release their debut EP ‘Talentless But Charming’ later this month. Their first music video, for the cynically catchy ‘Everyone Is Disappointing,’ is out TODAY, premiering on indieberlin.de.

Agon: It’s like my backstory. Of that time I was sleeping with myself. You know, trying my best to fit in. Sophie wanted it to look like if a minimalist furniture magazine filmed somebody having a sexual breakdown. indieberlin: You seem to have quite a strong visual identity already – how do you come up with your photos?

You don’t seem to have many clothes.

Elisabeth: Being naked is the cheapest way of looking high fashion.

Sounding as though 80s Bowie fell down a quarry and met Iceage and Andy Stott at the bottom, its five songs range from predatory to danceable to vulnerable.

The trio – all in their early twenties – moved here two years ago, from Amsterdam and London, and are part of the Valspak collective.

Alice: But not erotic. We wanted desexualized intimacy – against how genders are usually presented together…

When we had the ideas we asked our friend Fritz Richter to help us shoot them, here, on my roof – where it all began. It has the best lighting.

I met up with them – Alice Jones, Elisabeth Schaduw, and Agon Lyon – on the last day of summer, on a rooftop overlooking Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, as a very red sun set drunkenly between the apartment blocks beside us.

All three band members were gathered around a disposable barbeque, unsuccessfully trying to grill a massive fish they insisted had been given to them for free by their ‘sponsor’, Lidl.

Agon: And best audience. indieberlin: What is Valspak?

indieberlin: How did you all meet?

Alice: A loose group of artists all interested in artifice as a subject.

Elisabeth Schaduw: Alice and me met here [on her roof] two years ago trying to watch the meteor shower.

Agon: Valspak being Dutch for like ‘fake collective.’

Alice Jones: It was cloudy though.

Elisabeth: And me being Dutch…

Elisabeth: You mean it was love at first sight!

indieberlin: Can you give me an example of other Valspak work?

Alice: Exactly.

Alice: Well for example, only one of us actually answered all the questions in the interview.

Agon Lyon: Lisa threw a lit firework into my toilet cubicle because she thought I was trying to steal her boyfriend.

Agon: And we’re not on a roof…

Elisabeth: And you were.

indieberlin: What’s next for Agon?

Agon [innocently]: Borrowing, maybe...

Elisabeth [sweetly]: I think we’re going to have lunch.

Alice: And I think he [Agon Lyon] just crawled into my lap when I sitting on the fire-escape.

13

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin: Agon, why did change your first name to Agon when the band is also named Agon?

Exciting New Berlin Band

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

“

Das Berghain ist kein Vergnügungspark – und es wird auch keiner werden

music Interview by Mia Morris

Katja Lucker

Über Die Pop-Kultur Ein Neues Festival Für Fans Und Industrie In Berlin 14

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Christian Morin

music

Die Pop-Kultur ist ein neues Musik-Festival in Berlin, das anstelle der Berlin Music Week stattfindet. Es läuft vom 26. bis 28. August im Berghain und wird organisiert vom 2012 gegründeten Musicboard, das sich um die Belange der Berliner Musikszene kümmert.

Martin Hossbach

Wir haben uns bemüht, viele Dinge ins Programm zu nehmen, die es so noch nicht zu sehen hab: Bianca Casady von CocoRosie stellt beispielsweise ihr neues Solo-Projekt vor, Matthew Herbert spielt sein erstes Deutschlandkonzert mit seiner neuen Platte bei uns, Pantha du Prince wird seine neue Band The Triad präsentieren und der Maler Norbert Bisky wird gemeinsam mit dem Neurowissenschaftler Dr. Tom Fritz über die Wirkung des Techno auf das menschliche Gehirn reden.

Katja Lucker ist Chefin des Musicboards und hat die PopKultur zusammen mit Martin Hossbach und Christian Morin kuratiert. Wir haben Katja Lucker einige Fragen zum erstmalig stattfinden PopKultur Festival gestellt.

Wir möchten mit Pop-Kultur alle Menschen ansprechen, die sich für Musik interessieren – genauso wie all jene, die professionell in diesem Bereich arbeiten: Labels, Promoterinnen und Promoter, Agenturen, andere Festivals und so weiter.

indieberlin: Die Berlin Music Week ist tot – es lebe die Pop-Kultur. Warum findet die Berlin Music Week in neuem Gewand und mit einem neuen Namen statt?

indieberlin: Wer kann an dem Pop-Kultur Festival teilnehmen?

Katja Lucker: Dass Pop-Kultur die Nachfolge der Berlin Music Week antritt war ein Parlamentsbeschluss. Also haben wir uns mit unterschiedlichen Menschen zusammen gesetzt und überlegt: was gibt es momentan zu sagen über das Phänomen Popkultur? Was gibt es aktuell zu tun in der Szene im Jahr 2015? Herausgekommen ist eine sehr bunte Mischung.

Katja Lucker: Wie bei normalen Konzerten im Berghain auch, ermöglicht einzig allein der Erwerb eines Tickets den Einlass zu »Pop-Kultur«. Es gilt dennoch die übliche Hausordnung. Wir bitten dich, diesen Ort, aber auch alle anderen Festivalgäste und auftretenden Künstlerinnen und Künstler mit Respekt zu behandeln. ››

15

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Katja Lucker (cont.)

indieberlin: Was sind Deine Erwartungen an Berlin’s Musik Messe heute und in fünf Jahren?

Katja Lucker: »Pop-Kultur« ist keine »Berlin Music Week 2.0« und keine Messe, sondern ein eigenständiges Festival mit neuartigem Konzept, das an die Stelle der Berlin Music Week tritt. Es ist ein Projekt der Musicboard Berlin GmbH. Das Festival wird von Martin Hossbach und Christian Morin unter meiner Leitung kuratiert. indieberlin: Die Trailer “Pop-Kultur – it began in Berlin” sind lustig und typisch Berlin – wie kommt das außerhalb von Berlin an? Habt ihr schon Reaktionen erhalten?

Katja Lucker: Wir haben sehr viele positive Reaktionen erhalten. Die Trailer, konzipiert von Scott King, sind künstlerische Ausläufer unseres Programms, sie sind keine reinen Werbeclips. Ich habe den Eindruck, Gudrun kommt besonders gut an: indieberlin: Was macht für dich die Berliner Musikszene aus – kannst Du uns drei typische Schlagwörter nennen?

Vielfalt. Erfindergeist. International. indieberlin: Wir haben manchmal das Gefühl, dass in Berlin Industrie und Musiker in zwei verschiedenen Sphären unterwegs sind – seht ihr euch mit dem Festival auch als Brückenbauer?

Katja Lucker: Ja klar bauen wir auch Brücken, gerade im Nachwuchs Programm oder auch im Talk von unserem Bundesjustizminister mit u.a. dem Musiker Alec Empire.

Wie muss ein zeitgemäßes Urheberrecht anno 2015 aussehen? Drei sehr unterschiedliche Experten werden das bei »Pop-Kultur« diskutieren.

Alec Empire überführte in den 90ern mit Atari Teenage Riot Punk in den Digital Hardcore. Auf ihren jüngsten Alben legte die Band in Anlehnung an WikiLeaks und Anonymous musikgewordene Manifeste für ein libertäres, post-digitales Zeitalter vor. Auch die jetzige Urheberrechtsgesetzgebung ist ihnen dabei ein Dorn im Auge.

Dieter Gorny gründete einst die Musikmesse »Popkomm« und war jahrelang Geschäftsführer des Musik-TV-Senders VIVA. Im März diesen Jahres wurde der Vorstandsvorsitzende des Bundesverbandes Musikindustrie e.V. zum Beauftragten für Kreative und Digitale Ökonomie beim Bundeswirtschaftsministerium ernannt.

Anne Haffmans ist seit nunmehr fünf Jahren die deutsche Labelmanagerin für zwei der größten und wichtigsten Indie-Labels im Geschäft: Domino und Mute. Für Letzteres arbeitet Sie in wechselnden Konstellationen bereits seit den Neunzigern. Depeche Mode, Nick Cave oder Daft Punk konnten sich schon auf ihre Expertise und ihr Engagement verlassen. Der Politiker und Bundesminister der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, Heiko Maas, wird während des Talks ebenfalls anwesend sein. ■

Krasse Mischung, oder?

16

Pharmakon

by Anastasis Koutsogiannis

Wow!

That was intense! There are some times when you can hardly write down your reflections on someone’s performance. It doesn’t matter how many times you have done it in the past.

It doesn’t matter if you had faced similar situations in the past. When it comes to a point that you have to communicate such a performance with others it’s like writing your first text ever.

It took me more than a day to find the proper words for Pharmakon’s concert on Wednesday. In the end I decided not to use any single one of them. I started over and over again, but still, even now I am somewhere lost in the process. What process? The process of trying to decode and analyze what I experienced with all my 11 senses in less than 40 minutes.

Forty minutes of pure soul-searching done by a woman that has been through many difficulties recently in her personal life. And you see that on stage, you feel it but you cannot describe it to someone who’s not present.

It’s a mystagogy, a liturgy created through extreme vocals and hardore noise. I was looking at peoples‘ faces during the show. I haven’t seen a crowd more obsessed with an act than this one last Wednesday. It was such a diverse mixture of people, but every single one of them was living in the parallel universe that Pharmakon manage to create for that short amount of time.

“

I was happy in a really bizarre way Even by the time that she got off the stage and started walking around us screaming on the microphone, people stayed away from her, no one wanted to interrupt her or maybe us. Pharmakon made us feel part of her show, and this is in the end a great feeling. I was happy in a really bizarre way. I could see in her face PJ Harvey and Nico combined into a single person. I guess that’s how Francis Bacon’s paintings might sound like.

Forty minutes of pure soul-searching...

Pharmakon performed music from all of her records so far.

Bestial Burden is her last album, which in my view should be placed next to Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats as a milestone in so-called experimental music. And it really is!

Pharmakon’s performance overshadowed everything Both support acts Gainstage and Shaddah Tuum did a great job opening for Pharmakon, but I really would like to see them again, because Pharmakon’s performance overshadowed everything. There are few things that I remember before her mind-blowing show.

17

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Review

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

by Malte Grotendorst

Berlin Music Video Awards 2015 A Homage to and A Parody of the Academy Awards

K17 club in Friedrichshain hosted the opening of the annual BMVAs, held for the third time this year. The awards’ slogan – big title, cozy platform – did not turn out to be entirely true. While the title is undoubtedly big, no one seemed too sure about how cozy the rest should be: The venue was very convincingly turned into an award setting, featuring a large stage and screen.

The three hosts awkwardly read their jokes from cue cards This seemed to make everyone a little uncomfortable though: The three hosts awkwardly read their jokes from cue cards and could not stop themselves from laughing when they had to read out texts about the awards’ proud sponsors that had obviously been written by the sponsors themselves.

The whole show oscillated between a homage to and a parody of the Academy Awards Similarly, the winners giving their acceptance speeches always seemed to be torn between honest and ironic fake speeches. The whole show oscillated between a homage to and a parody of the Academy Awards. But this was not the most important thing after all: It was obvious that for most people it was more of an artistic family reunion.

And like on any other family reunion no one really cared about the speeches anyway.

The nominees featured a number of lesser known independent artists, but also the likes of Bob Dylan or Stromae The actual video screenings, of course, were most important: The ten nominees per category had been chosen by both online voting and a jury and were to be ultimately judged by a jury at the festival.

The nominees featured a number of lesser known independent artists, but also the likes of Bob Dylan or Stromae.

18

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Video still from The Synchronizers ft. The Evil Twin of Paul Cless ‘Fuck That Shit’

The awards’ first category was ‘Best Editing’: while every video was artistically impressive and showed its director’s undoubtedly great skills, this category also showed the downside of the modern music video genre: The BMVAs’ founders are certainly right when they claim that the music video resurrected and flourished in recent times.

At least five were definitely heavily influenced by the aesthetics of South African avant-garde trash rappers Die Antwoord But with virtually every possible inspiration being just the few seconds away it takes you to get to Youtube there is the imminent danger of uniformity. From the ten nominated videos in the ‘Best Editing’ category, for example, at least five were definitely heavily influenced by the aesthetics of South African avant-garde trash rappers Die Antwoord.

Video still from Kraftklub’s ‘Wie Ich’

The winning video (The Synchronizers ft. The Evil Twin of Paul Cless ‘Fuck That Shit’) was more or less a ripoff of Die Antwoord’s ‘I Fink U Freeky’ – an artistically ambitious rip-off, but still.

Moreover, the jury decisions were hard to understand sometimes: In the ‘best narrative’ category that focused on a video’s storytelling they went with Kraftklub’s ‘Wie Ich’, that featured a rather simplistic story of a hunter and a bear becoming friends while disregarding more sophisticated storytelling like in Odesza’s ‘Say My Name’ or Total Giovanni’s ‘Can’t Control My Love.’

Video still from Total Giovanni’s ‘Can’t Control My Love’

A very interesting platform to gain insights about what is going on in the genre of music videos right now This being said, the BMVAs are still a very interesting platform to gain insights about what is going on in the genre of music videos right now, how they work and influence each other. And after all it is simply a lot of fun just to sit there and watch music videos for hours.

19

art

20

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Article by Julian McKinnon, a New Zealand journalist and artist living in Berlin.

Berlin Art Week 2015 Press Tour Diary

I’m riding the U-Bahn. The train whirls snake-like beneath the streets of Neukölln. I blend in amidst the everyday commuters, though I feel like a fraud. I’m in this city but not of it – a recent arrival with inflated dreams and inadequate language skills. My shiny shoes and business jacket project a false image to the beggar who turns away with an expression of distaste when I hold out my empty hands. It’s my one good outfit, mate, and my change ain’t spare. It’s my train ride home. Really. Welcome to the glamorous world of freelance art writing.

four of the participating institutions – Berlinische Galerie, Deutsch Bank Kunsthalle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Stadt/Bild addresses the processes of museums, urban development, social cultural and aesthetic dimensions of the city as a thematic.

I’m sitting in the crowded conference room of KW. It’s burgeoning with an assembled throng of serious-looking people. I try to blend in, projecting dispassionate attentiveness

The fourth iteration of Berlin Art Week is here

Though a lurking sense of not belonging, that rests somewhere in the depths of my psyche or in the marrow of my bones, could only ever be exacerbated by a room full of purposeful people. Why is there? That question belongs with others like ‘why are there mountains?’ or ‘why are there stars?’ The only answer I have is that now isn’t the time for an internal self-help monologue. I shuffle in my seat. A stylish woman introduces the assembled panel of officials with designer glasses and meaningful, pensive expressions. Right now, for one pulsing minute, this is probably the global epicenter of that nebulous entity referred to as ‘The Artworld’. ››

The fourth iteration of Berlin Art Week is here. It brings together a host of exhibitions, fairs, projects, events, etc.

This series of happenings is shoehorned into an affiliated package, which receives funding from public and private purses eager to market Berlin’s bohemian image. It makes for a compelling spectacle. The Press Tour kicked off at KW Institute for Contemporary Art on Monday 14th.

Bringing together representatives of major institutions, curators, artists, and of course media representatives – print, television, and radio journalists, bloggers, freelancers, etcetera. The initial conference also marked the launch of Stadt/Bild, a cooperative venture between

21

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Previous page: Berlinische Galerie ©Berlin Art Week 2015 Photo: Oana Popa This page: Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Xenopolis ©Berlin Art Week 2015 Photo: Oana Popa Opposite: Schinkel Pavillon, Paul McCarthy ©Berlin Art Week 2015 Photo: Alexander Rentsch

Cindy Sherman – Works from the Olbricht Collection is on display at Me Collector’s Room Berlin. There are 65 pictures all told, and they cover the span of the American photographer’s career. Sherman has worked ceaselessly since the 1970s – the imagery on show displays an extensive range of content and technique.

Sherman herself was centrally involved in the curation of this collection of works – bringing her own focus and emphasis to her artistic trajectory. This is an extensive collection of posed photographs and self-portraiture with a visceral feel. The Collector’s Room is also right next door to KW, which makes checking out the two an easy and rewarding proposition.

“The subconscious, potentially dangerous counterpart of the controlled urban environment.”

Welcome to the Jungle is KW’s offering, and the first port of call for the press tour after the conference. According to a press release the jungle referenced in the title symbolises: “the subconscious, potentially dangerous counterpart of the controlled urban environment.” That inevitable shadow of the human psyche that bleeds around the edges of the best intentions of urban planners is perhaps the central factor in the impossibility of utopia.

People, with all their chaos and unpredictability, are the city. It’s a collective dream, a heterogeneous jumble of intersecting experiences, myths, habits, and desires.

This show could be similarly described. It’s a jungle.

It’s impossible not to think of Axl Rose crowing, “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby. You’re gonna die!” In the frenetic stimulus of Art Week, Klaus Weber’s Sand Fountain will remain one of a few stand out mental images.

I ask if I can contact him in relation to an article and I’m quietly stoked when he passes me a card.

It reads “The man without a job” Mostly when people wear sunglasses inside they look stupid. Yet when Simon Njami does it somehow he just exudes cool. We’re at Deutschbank Kunsthalle and Njami is offering a perspective on the exhibition Xenopolis, which he curated. He talks about the inherently subjective experience of the city, how each individual encounters it uniquely, how a city is a labyrinth or a type of myth.

It fits intriguingly with my own relationship to Berlin. This exhibition speaks to me more than the others. Perhaps it’s just the fact that Njami talks in English and I can actually understand. He cracks a couple of lines and asks for questions. I ask if I can contact him in relation to an article and I’m quietly stoked when he passes me a card.

It reads “The man without a job”. Tomorrow I’ll interview Simon. He’ll give me 30 minutes of condensed thought, built on a lifetime of reading, writing, thinking. But that’s another story.

I’m afloat in a sea of incomprehension The trouble with a language you barely understand is that individual words stand out like a baboon’s ass. Instead of just flowing through the dialogue your mind latches onto bulbous flashes of recognition, isolating them from context. The curator of me Collection Room’s selection of Cindy Sherman photographs is carefully describing biography, cultural context, philosophies of collection and so on. I’m afloat in a sea of incomprehension. Day to day I get through with phrases like: “Ich spreche Deutsch nicht so gut, aber ich verstehe ein bisschen.”

My language comprehension is fine for the supermarket, the hairdresser, the café. Though Right now my bisschen of verstehen ain’t worth the neurons it’s stored in.

Nonetheless, this is fun.

Njami explores the notion of a capital city as a free zone, an evolving, self-replicating myth, belonging to nobody but being lived by many

Sherman has worked ceaselessly since the 1970s – the imagery on show displays an extensive range of content and technique

Xenopolis at Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle explores ideas of the city as a multicplicity, an evolving discourse, an organism. Curator Simon Njami brought together the work of a range of artists exploring the notions of belonging, home, and foreignness with regards to the

22

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

The Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Presents Fluids. A Happening by Allan Kaprow 1967/2015. This project sees Four Berlin artists engage in Contemporary interpretations of Allan Kaprow’s Fluidsfrom 1967. This series of engagements with public space are both participatory and performative, creating new iterations of the American artist’s seminal work. The 1967 event brought teams of volunteers together across Los Angeles to build rectangular ice walls that were left to melt as a form of participatory public engagement.

Fluids was also reinvented in Zurich in 2005 and LA in 2008, though Kaprow himself said: “While there was an initial version of Fluids, there isn’t an original or permanent work. Rather, there is an idea to do something and a physical trace of that idea. Fluids continues and its reinventions further multiply its meanings.” ■

In the courtyard in front of the Hamburger Bahnhof, it’s happening. What is it? Well if I were to put my finger on it I’d have to say it was a press conference. Though, evidently I’m mistaken. It’s a ‘Happening’. I quench my thirst with a bottle of what appears to be water, though ‘One Ordinary Happening’ is printed plainly on its label.

A server brings a carton of such bottles to a nearby table.

That’s a lot of ordinary happenings. Someone else is passing out colourful frozen lolly-water, another aspect of this ‘happening’. I grab one of those too, and have to tear it open with my teeth. Most undignified. This is an enjoyable enough happening, though in truth it seems kind of staged and self-conscious. I guess that’s inevitable to a point, though I wonder what Allan Kaprow would make of this. Perhaps he’d laugh. Perhaps he’d shrug.

Personally I’m amazed at contemporary art’s never ending ability to mine and repackage the past and compress it into a self-referential, elitist in-game.

“

contemporary urban metropolis. “The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it.” This text fragment by Roland Barthes was a point of engagement for Njami in his development of the curatorial framework for this exhibition. Njami explores the notion of a capital city as a free zone, an evolving, self-replicating myth, belonging to nobody but being lived by many. In a time of increased global migration as a consequence of conflict and climate change this discourse is more relevant than ever.

I’m amazed at contemporary art’s never ending ability to mine and repackage the past and compress it into a self-referential, elitist in-game.

The 1967 event brought teams of volunteers together across Los Angeles to build rectangular ice walls that were left to melt as a form of participatory public engagement

23

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Ferkel Johnson clown & boylesque star

in interview before his Gin Palace Cabaret performance

24

I feel honoured to be able to say that I’m a clown indieberlin: Have you ever been confronted with prejudice regarding being a clown or a boylesque performer?

Ferkel Johnson: Well, once in a club I started chatting with a woman and when she asked me what I did for a living I answered “I’m a clown”. She frowned, looked at me and said: “Then you must lead an interesting life” and turned around and left. In the english or more american language there’s the expression “ to be or to act like a clown” which is used as a derogative term. But here in Europe the clown has a 1000 year old tradition and historically was an important and influential figure like the court jester. So I feel actually quite honoured to be able to say that I’m a clown. But I also have received critique from fellow circus artists that I have downgraded to a nakeddancer. I guess when you cross genres some people might feel threatened or betrayed.

Interview by Mia Morris / Fotos by Kalena Leo

Ferkel Johnson is a passionate clown, burlesque artist and maitre de ceremonie and it feels he just naturally belongs onto the stages of the cabarets, theaters and circusses where he enchants his audience. At the moment he features in the Gin Palace Cabaret and is putting on his own show A night with Ferkel Johnson in Berlin but is soon off to Switzerland to do shows with his newly founded Das Karfunkel Kabinett. But just before all that he was nice enough to do a lil indieberlin interview. Enjoy.

To me the source is the same, especially when you look back at vaudeville, music hall or the European “Volkstheater” in the 18th and 19th century. They already had acrobats, clowns and travesty artists in their shows. indieberlin: What do you feel when you get into a costume and when you enter the stage?

An indieberlin interview with Ferkel Johnson

Ferkel Johnson: I feel the adrenalin rushing in and get all energetic. At the same time my mind goes blank and I forget all my lines and have no idea what I’m supposed to do on stage. But as soon as I enter the stage and I greet the audience and receive the first reactions it’s all back and from then on we play and flirt and feast!

indieberlin: You live in Berlin for more than 10 years and often leave Berlin to perform for small town audiences.

Do you feel there is a difference in small-town- / big town audiences?

Ferkel Johnson: The atmosphere for every show is different. It depends on the size of the venue, the number of performances and the audience.., however, sometimes it feels that in a small town the people are at first a bit more reserved and distant but if you win them over they seem to be more welcoming and open to showcases whereas in a big town like Berlin you might get a feeling from the audience that they’ve seen it all and are not so easily impressed. Both audiences have their challenges and I like them equally.

indieberlin: Any regrets concerning working in show biz?

Ferkel Johnson: Yeah, no retirement plan! But seriously, no. I knew it wouldn’t be easy and I still struggle at times.

But someone said to me only 24 hours before starvation you’re allowed to start worrying and whining. At this moment things are looking quite promising so no second guesses and no regrets!

This Gin Palace Cabaret is also my sort of farewell show

Are there some particularities in the Berlin audience?

indieberlin: We will see you this friday in the Gin Palace Cabaret. What can we expect? Where in Berlin can we also see you perform?

Ferkel Johnson: Well, in Berlin there is such a variety of shows and each of them has their own flair to it. You find at Pinky’s Peepshow for instance a more rock’n’roll club kind of audience, at Sunday Soiree it’s more about sitting down and enjoying a cocktail in an intimate atmosphere or the Gin Palace Cabaret where there is all the grandezza, exquisiteness and decadence you can expect.

Ferkel Johnson: This Gin Palace Cabaret will be special because it is also my sort of farewell show. I will be leaving for Switzerland where my girlfriend and I have founded “Das Karfunkel Kabinett”, a mini circus with a tiny tent and our vintage fire truck. We will be touring the country and do shows and don’t know if we’re ever coming back! Although there are rumours that I will be back in town for the Berlin Burlesque Festival in September. So this Friday is going to be extra special with a wonderful cast, beautiful shows and some surprises.

indieberlin: You work in circuses as a clown, you’re a maitre de ceremonie and you do burlesque shows. Do you have a favourite for one of those kinds?

25

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

“

No second guesses and no regrets!

Ferkel Johnson: Not really, it just varies from time to time.

After I got back from the last circus it was good to have a break and do burlesque. At the moment I’m more into hosting shows. But in general I love it all the same and I’m currently setting up my one-man-show “A night with Ferkel Johnson” where I combine everything that I do.

indieberlin Yearbook 2015 Review by Noel Maurice, interview & fotos by Mia Morris

Joe Black and the Berlin Burlesque Festival 2015: Elegant And Elegantly Scurrilous

Thursday night was the first night at the Berlin Burlesque Festival, and we managed to get a couple of tickets to check it out. The night was amazing – the burlesque performances I’ve seen around the city are always wonderful for their gumption and joie de vivre but the professionalism can get a bit patchy. Not so here. Possibly burlesque in Berlin has grown up and found itself (moved out, got a job, started buying its own shandies).

Thursday night was in the Heimathafen Neukollen and this particular moveable feast moved to the Winergarten for the following two nights. What can I say? It was a glorious night in all ways – glamorous, seedy, professional, ebullient, triumphant, with the hint of a swagger: Suffice to say that I had an enormously enjoyable night.

Joe Black: Self-proclaimed gin-drinking cabaret darling, musical comedy misfit, drag clown and acid tongued ringmaster

Organisers Marlene von Steenvag and Else Edelstahl are now not only consummate performers but also well practised event organisers. Not a hiccup in sight.

As I say the MCs for the night were Ferkel Johnson and Eva Champagne; for the next two nights the job would fall to the masterful Joe Black: self-proclaimed gin-drinking cabaret darling, musical comedy misfit, drag clown and acid tongued ringmaster, Joe is a cabaret and burlesque legend, having toured extensively across the UK, Europe, Australia and America, with Johnathon Ross calling him “Amazing”, Amanda Palmer saying “Stunning” and Devolution Magazine probably summing the Joe Black experience up best by declaring, “”He is as at ease rubbing alabaster shoulders with Dita Von Teese as he is singing about anal sex. ditty scribbler, consummate poser, vaudevillian Disney filth – he is Joe Black.”

With a hint of charm and the odd smutty joke.

The MCs for the night – Ferkel Johnson and Eva Champagne – did a brilliant job. Elegantly scurrilous, I suppose. With a hint of charm and the odd smutty joke.

Of course the MC finally disrobing herself as if on a whim (I think they were waiting for an act behind the curtain to be ready) – without for a moment dropping the blather – before casually handing the mantle on to the next performer, was a great moment.

It was a glorious night in all ways – glamorous, seedy, professional, ebullient, triumphant, with the hint of a swagger

We ran into Joe Black in the lobby and aimed a few questions at him:

26

Joe Black: Oh thankyou… indieberlin: And – do you rather perform or rather MC? Joe Black: Both – when I MC I perform as well, and my acts are a bit spread out through the night, so I mix the two – it’s nice becuase it fits in-between everybody. indieberlin: And do you do burlesque, or freak show, or…

Joe Black: Oh, I sing mainly. indieberlin: But in a very particular style.

Joe Black: In a very caba … You’’ll see way.

I like people who are prepared to do something just really fucking weird indieberlin: I look forward to it! And…Burlesque heroes?

Joe Black: I really love Fancy Chance…um…now I’ve been asked my mind’s gone blank (laughs) – I like people who are prepared to do something just really fucking weird…Fancy Chance I love. I really like Vicky Butterfly – she’s not weird to be honest but she’s just so beautiful… and Modesty Blaise – but that’s kind hyper glamour.

So I kind of like really out there, or really hyper glamour, ridiculous production. indieberlin: Joe Black, thank you for taking the time.

Opposite page: Affinity Starr Top: Itty Bitty Tease Cabaret Middle: Uma Shadow Bottom: Champagne Madmoiselle

Interview with Joe Black indieberlin: Joe Black, hallo. So tell me: what’s the difference between London and Berlin?

Joe Black: Well to be honest I don’t really like London.

Berlin’s very diverse, very unpretentious. I live in England but I love coming here. indieberlin: You’re also diverse in your peformance styles – is there a particular Joe Black character that comes naturally, or is it something you put on, or…?

I get the make-up on, I get the microphone, and suddenly something takes over …

Joe Black: No, it just sort of happens…I get the make-up on, I get the microphone, and suddenly something takes over …

Sort of mildly aggressive, but, you know, kind of warming at the same time indieberlin: And how do you find the characters that you do?

Joe Black: I do a couple of impersonations, and that’s different, but as Joe Black, it’s sort of mildly aggressive, but, you know, kind of warming at the same time…

27

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin: Well you look gorgeous anyway.

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Article by Hannah Harte

Homosexuality-ies Exhibition indieberlin Yearbook 2015

The History of Homosexuality in Ten Chapters Homosexuality-ies is an exhibition divided across the Schwules museum and the Deutsches Historisches Museum which chronicles the historical past and cultural present of everything lgbt and homosexuality related. After visiting the historical component in the Historisches museum, I can honestly say it was one of the most moving, comprehensive and broad exhibitions I have ever seen.

28

The lively A-Z of lgbt+ history

Spawning two floors, there are a myriad of sub sections dealing with the specificities of lgbt+ culture. On entering, we are faced with video accounts of people who describe certain objects (on display) that have personal significance in relation to their coming out story, which most of them describe as a process rather than a singular event.

This leads us to the lively A-Z of lgbt+ history, showcasing a diverse selection of objects, music, ridiculously fabulous outfits, toys for budding gay children, cruising packs, publications, protests and various forms of activism during the time surrounding the stonewall riots.

When we get to the second floor…the sinister histories and present realities of queerness take the forefront

A series of portraits of gender non-conforming women in their regal masculinities by female artists

When we get to the second floor, the exhibition takes a darker turn. Whilst marriage equality politics have tended to erase the harsh realities of homophobia and compulsory heteromnormativity, the sinister histories and present realities of queerness take the forefront as we are embraced by towering blood red walls and devilish text reading “Homophobia”. This word looms over one as you can sit in a depressed wall and listen to accounts from figures who claim such things as “I would rather have a murder child than a gay child”.

This intimate exhibit leads the way to tall beams displaying prominent lesbian figures in history, such as Virginia Woolf and Grace Jones, complete with hard hitting and socially conscious quotes about queer conditionalities. There is a particular focus on the “second sex” as Beauvoir put it; a series of portraits of gender non-conforming women in their regal masculinities by female artists. This section proudly averts the male gaze – man as bearer of the look is replaced by lesbian sensibilities. A prominent theme throughout the exhibition is the challenging of the socially imposed gender binary through an assertion that gender is the product of social rather than biological fact, thus resisting the notion of categorisation as either male or female.

Visual maps of the world are colour coded to show the juridicial structures that keep lgbt+ people oppressed – from adoption laws to anti-gay propaganda legislation and the death penalty, there are very few countries on these maps that are oppression free.

Bearded ladies and tutu wearing people with penises assert their conscientious objection to the stifling status quo

Most of Europe still has anti-gay propaganda laws What is interesting is that in contrast to the death penalty laws in Africa, there are many countries in this continent that have no specific legislation surrounding lgbt people.

Most of Europe still has anti-gay propaganda laws.

A sub section entitled Pink Triangles shows the struggles of lgbt+ people during Nazi hegemony over Europe and leading us towards the end of the exhibit is a section which borrows the dictum of second wave 1970s feminism – the personal is political.

We can see this through investigations of the History of Cross Dressing and Gender Questions from 18901970 in which bearded ladies and tutu wearing people with penises assert their conscientious objection to the stifling status quo. A Social History of Homosexuals from 1880-1970 shows covert same sex love and affection in the closeted era. American Male Nude Photography from 1880-1970 shows that male elegance and femininity is more a defiant strength than a weakness, and a decoding of art from as early as the mid 1800’s shows implicit homoeroticism throughout art history.

29

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Coming out…a process rather than a singular event

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin Interview Regarding His Supersonic Exhibition In Berlin

Michael Spencer Jones is a photographic legend, creating the visual images that defined Britpop, with his covers of all the biggest Oasis albums as well as Suede and the Verve, as well as being constantly by the side of Oasis as they cut their swathe through the nineties music scene.

indieberlin: When have you last enjoyed a concert without taking pictures?

Michael Spencer Jones indieberlin exclusive interview:

There is no set way to creating an iconic cover

Michael Spencer Jones: I saw Paul McCartney at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of years age, that was pretty enjoyable.

indieberlin: How is the concept of an album cover that will probably become the icon of a music era born? Were you usually inspired by the lyrics and the tale of the album or more from an artistic urge to describe the rebellious and ‘fuck you’ attitude of the bands?

indieberlin: Spontaneous photos or set-up photos – what works better for you?

Michael Spencer Jones: I like both, the ‘found ‘ image is good but I also like to create images and then capture the moment within that set-up that I have created.

Michael Spencer Jones: There is no set way to creating an iconic cover. One thing that is important is that the process has to be organic and has to develop naturally.

The way I work is that I need a starting point or a germ of an idea which can be developed. This can be inspired by a suggestion from a band member or by a certain lyric or by some larger concept or by an image or painting, or something I have read in the newspaper that day. For example; you may start off with an idea of a photograph of someone stood on a platform at a train station waiting for a train ( is he or she a commuter? who are they going to see? why are they catching a train? etc. etc. a pretty boring narrative) but then you can think wouldn’t it be better if the station was disused and derelict and the person is waiting for a train that will never arrive; firstly you have a more interesting scene visually i.e. the distressed look of a disused station but also you are introducing a more interesting narrative, who is this person? why are they there? are they mentally ill? is this a statement about the passage of time? etc etc. but that said and to answer the second part of your question, you need to be true to the band and represent them or their music in a genuine way.

there are situations when it is not socially acceptable to bring a camera out indieberlin: Is there such a thing as a sacred moment when you do not take the photo even though you know it would be successful?

Michael Spencer Jones: Good question; I think if something is worth photographing then it is worth photographing no matter what and there is no situation that should prevent that, HOWEVER, there are situations when it is not socially acceptable to bring a camera out and start taking pictures. I do have some regrets though of not taking a photo when I know it would have made a great image. One example is when Oasis were recording ‘Morning Glory’ in a studio in Wales in 1995. There had been some arguing and fighting during the evening and to cut a very long story short the room Liam Gallagher was staying in (which was next to mine) got completely destroyed. The bed was broken in half, the TV was thrown out of the window and was half in and half out of the room; everything that was in the room that could be broken had been broken, it was a scene of utter carnage.

I can remember thinking I’ve got to get a picture of this room but in a way the picture could have been quite incriminating and if someone had seen me take a photo, I may well have been fired so I didn’t bother but now I do regret not taking a picture because it would have been a wonderful document. I still have a vivid picture of the room in my head but of course I can’t show anyone.

Photography is not easy, you have to work at it to get results indieberlin: Did you ever have a photo session with someone where the human side didn’t work out? And if so how did you go about it?

Michael Spencer Jones: Not quite sure what you mean, but sometimes shoots can be awkward and they don’t work out but you have to persevere with them and apply yourself and work your way through the problem maybe try a different approach. Photography is not easy, you have to work at it to get results.

What’s the dark side of music photography?

Michael Spencer Jones: When you are photographing a band playing live and the stage lighting is not bright enough.

Thank you very much and see you at Posh Teckel!

30

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Interview by Mia Morris

Michael Spencer Jones Michael Spencer Jones self-portrait, Oasis Cover Photo ‘Definitely Maybe’ by Michael Spencer Jones

31

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Interview by Mia Morris / Fotos by Elsa Quarsell

Scotty the Blue Bunny An indieberlin Interview

32

Berlin has a new Burlesque Event coming up: The BIG Tickle, produced by the showgirls Champagne Sparkles and Lilly Tiger, it promises a lot of fun, glitter, parodie and well a BIG host: Scotty the Blue Bunny. We asked the “gay man in a sparkly blue spandex rabbit costume and transparent stilettos” (The list) a couple of questions to warm you up for the show on 16th of October.

indieberlin: Do you have a recommendation / tip for rookies in show business?

You’re not nervous, you’re excited.

By the way you can win a pair of tix in this lil article of ours.

indieberlin: Where can we see you after the BIG Tickle?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: In bed darling. All day.

indieberlin: You are performing all over the world and are now based in Berlin. How did you enter the stages of Berlin?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: When they play my music, I go on!

For me, it’s all performance indieberlin: You are involved in a lot of Burlesque shows – what is the art of Burlesque to you?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: I look at Burlesque the same way I look at any other performing genre. It’s theater. Funny, sad, tragic, or sexy, there has to be drama. Some people focus on the stripping, but I focus on the drama. For me, it’s all performance. indieberlin: As “a seven-foot tall tower of shimmery spandex and attitude!” (DNA Magazine) being a blue bunny you’re quite a striking presence. What was one of the funniest remarks someone made about you?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: Well, the most popular question is “why” am I dressed like that. I tell people it’s so no one can tell I’m losing my hair!

bunny ears became my trademark for almost 20 years indieberlin: How did you become the character of “Scotty the Blue Bunny”?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: HA! I’ll spare you the autobiography and simply say it was a result of moving to New York City in the late 1980’s. Before contemporary burlesque, there was a great atmosphere of experimental circus mixed in with all the club kids of New York. The international glamour party scene also included artists from the Coney Island Sideshow by the Seashore. I was playing with drag at the time, but would later join the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. All the nightclub freaks, sword swallowers, fire eaters and drag queens naturally supported my idea to try out any costumed curiosity, but one fluke turn in bunny ears became my trademark for almost 20 years.

“

I FOCUS ON THE DRAMA

indieberlin: What would you say makes the cultural scene here typical Berlin?

Scotty the Blue Bunny: It’s so international you could choke. Other than that, glitter and candle wax. indieberlin: And what can we expect from the BIG Tickle, that you’ll be hosting on the 16th of October?

33

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Scotty the Blue Bunny: It’s going to be a great night of comedy. How funny is that? I can’t remember anyone promoting a funny strip show. I think the partnership between Champagne Sparkles and Lily Tiger is strangely complementary. I can’t wait to see what kind of goofy near-naked surprises they are cooking up. Anyone who knows those ladies knows they love the silly-nudiepatootie. See? it’s already starting! Sometimes burlesque shows can have a severe vibe to their marketing, but we really are one large whackadoodle family. The Big Tickle is a chance for performers to be sexy in a silly way so all the noodley fools can see the booblie-boos! Have I made myself clear?

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Exhibition Preview:

The Faultless Painter Less Is More

Asia Contemporary Art Platform NON Berlin September 23 - 24

The Faultless Painter:Less Is More is a group exhibition bringing together the work of an international mix of Berlin-based artists.

The show is curated by Alaric Hobbs, who asked participants to respond to the simple premise of less is more. “I wanted individual artistic responses to this idea, for example a restriction in the use of colour in a painting, or a restrained method within a sculpture. I haven’t imposed any strict interpretation of what it should mean. That said, I want to see responses that aren’t simply contemporary minimalism,” he said. Hobbs has brought together a group of artists hailing from Britain, France, Switzerland, Iran, Germany, New Zealand, and Brazil, combining practices as diverse as the range of nationalities.

Self-imposed restriction is a strategy employed by many artists. Bridget Riley was notably influenced

by Igor Stravinsky’s ideas around this methodology.

As well as mentioning his ideas in interviews, she once quoted the composer in an exhibition catalogue: “My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action.” Perhaps in the Internet age, when everything is possible and available in an instant, such limitations are more necessary than ever.

The premise sits in an interesting contrast to the curatorial philosophy of Hobbs, who drew the artists together via an open online call for proposals. “It’s interesting seeing just how different artists can be. You get all kinds of people united by the fact that they choose to make art.

Sometimes you think everyone’s going to be on a similar wavelength, though that’s not necessarily the case at all.

I’ve have been thinking about it with the way I present myself in clothing. I used to wear such a mismatch of stuff and then I learnt from travelling that people who conform to an ideal don’t necessarily portray themselves in the way they dress. Bringing those points of difference together is where it gets interesting. The outcome can be electric or terrible.”

Whilst the exhibitions title references painting, it will also include photography, drawing, and sculpture. The many different ways of experiencing or expressing a response to the premise will be on display. With Less is More, no doubt Hobbs is figuring on an electric outcome.

Top: Alaric Hobbs, Valknut, Pen On Paper, 2014. Bottom: Gabriel Centurion, How Will You Reach Me If I Go By Rocket?, Acrylic On Canvas, 2014.

34

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indielit

35

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

(

Jane Flett

)

Jane Flett Interviews Ambika Thompson Interviews Jane Flett Ambika Thompson

36

Remember that superhero business?

That’s me!

“…Recently, I’ve been researching Ukrainian military dolphins, shape-shifting Japanese fox spirits, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic (and other mass psychogenic illnesses), and threelegged crows…”

We’re very happy that Berlin writers Ambika Thompson and Jane Flett will be reading at the indieberlin book fair on the 7th in Posh Teckel!

To my request that I interview each of them, they both said, let us take care of that. Below is a conversation between Jane Flett and Ambika Thompson. Enjoy!

And like Jane, where do you get the inspiration for your writing other than from me?

Ambika: Oh hi Jane. Fancy meeting you here. I hear you’re reading at this Indieberlin Indie Book Fair. Me too!!!

Twinsies!!! So like, you’re some sort of superhero in satin tights fighting for your rights, or? What are you working on now, and what cha wear when you do it?

Jane: I would never forget that! It’s going to be delightful.

So, everything I write is either stolen verbatim from my life and loved ones (I really ought to apologise to everyone I’ve ever made out with) or gleaned from the pages of Wikipedia. I don’t know how writers came up with stories before Wikipedia. Recently, I’ve been researching Ukrainian military dolphins, shape-shifting Japanese fox spirits, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic (and other mass psychogenic illnesses), and three-legged crows.

The internet is distracting, but also utterly magical.

Jane: I’m 40,000 words into the first draft of a novel.

It’s the story of a funfair that comes to a suburban town to tempt the young people onto a more interesting path than school and homework. Kind of like the Pied Piper, except instead of panpipe music it’s queer love affairs, rollercoasters and neon.

“…magic mushrooms, a drag queen minister, horror movies, thunderstorms, and lots of punk music played loudly on cassette tapes…”

When I sit down to write, I’m very bad at working to a plan, or knowing where any of my stories are going.

I tend to start with a situation that fascinates me, put some characters in it, and see how they react. It’s always nice to be surprised by the words that come out.

It’s told from multiple perspectives (which works for me because I have no attention span) and features, among other things: magic mushrooms, a drag queen minister, horror movies, thunderstorms, and lots of punk music played loudly on cassette tapes.

Anyway, I see you’ve published about 15 stories in the last few months. How come you’re so prolific? Are you going to have a book soon?

Depending on the time of day, I write in a silk dressing gown, a vintage polyester dress, or a dalmatian-suit onesie.

Ambika: Remember that superhero business? That’s me!

I only really started writing fiction a few years ago, and I was patchy about writing regularly until last year.

I had to force myself to write every day. You know yourself that if you don’t do that you can quickly fall out of it, then have to struggle to get back at it. One of my many attempts to make me disciplined this year was to write a short story every day and put it up on a blog. I think I managed like 66 days. Anyways, I had/have a lot of stuff to send out into the world.

How about you? What’s your latest project?

Does it involve superheroes?

“…a Saskatchewan tornado exhuming all the bodies in a graveyard – disco party may or may not be involved; Soviets sending killer tigers to America, aka animal warfare…”

But a book, yeah, let’s hope that’s what the novel is for, since everybody says getting a collection of short stories published is bloody impossible. I’ve been thinking about self-publishing a collection, like zine style, and selling them at our concerts, just to get them out there, and because I love all things DIY. ››

Ambika: I’ve heard about this Attention Span problem of yours, Jane. Your novel sounds amazing. I know that you’re a bit of a mushroom picking expert, little known fact, so I hope your expertise is used in regards to the magic mushrooms.

37

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

“

I’ve got a story about superheroes, household cleaning products and fisting on a batjet that’s getting published soon, but that’s it for superheroes. Otherwise I’m finishing up some stories about a bunch of different things; like a Saskatchewan tornado exhuming all the bodies in a graveyard – disco party may or may not be involved; Soviets sending killer tigers to America, aka animal warfare – a discovery made by a Joey Ramone loving teenager who very soon after mysteriously goes missing; a romance piece that involves a back tattoo of Bosch’s The Seven Deadly Sins – and a Freddy Mercury statue made of dildos; and a failed love story between an achromat and a tetrachromat – inspired by Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. And I’ve also started working on a novel, which is set in Berlin during the spring/ summer of Chernobyl – ghosts, John Peel, pogroms and a big ass radiation cloud will be involved.

Remember Jane! Don’t tell me that you forgot that we’re going to Chernobyl for a writing retreat together in the middle of winter?

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

What about you? You’ve got a chapbook or two out in the world, or? Who put them out? What’s next?

It’s been amazing so far reading the submissions we’ve gotten in even when they’re absolutely bonkers, and to get to share other people’s stories and art with the world — I used to have an art gallery in Kreuzberg too, so it’s like bringing everything I love together, and working with amazing people to do that.

Jane: It’s true! I have The Cats’ Gravity, which came out in 2009 or something, and Quick, to the Hothouse, which was published in 2012.

The Cats’ Gravity is a short story and a few poems published by Forest Publications, a small press based in Edinburgh, and part of the Forest Cafe arts collective, with drawings by the ever-delightful Tom Moore. The Forest is also responsible for my first poetry reading in public, for taking me on tour round Europe to read in places like Shakespeare & Co, and for introducing me to some of the finest writers and humans I know.

Why’d you agree to be the poetry editor, Jane?

Jane: Well, I love poetry. But I also feel like people hardly read poetry, especially contemporary poetry. Even people who want to be poets! (Note to all people who write poetry and want to get published but somehow never get round to reading poems by contemporary writers: Sort it out. You’re being the problem. Stop complaining about publishing and go read a journal!)

Then there’s Quick, to the Hothouse, which is a collection of poems published by Dancing Girl Press, a Chicagobased indie press who make beautiful handmade chapbooks by all kinds of great lady poets.

I also hear people saying things like “I don’t understand poetry” a lot. There’s this idea that poetry is super complicated and if you don’t like a poem it’s because you’re not smart enough to Get It. Well, that’s bullshit. I just want to publish poems that have weird pretty little sentences and poems that hit you like punk music and get stuck in your gums.

And right now, I have a short story manuscript, What She Deserves, full of mermaids, myths, and girls who get in trouble, as well as another poetry chapbook manuscript, Mashnotes, which is full of dirty poems about people I’ve been kissing. I’m looking for publishers, but yup, everyone so far keeps saying “write a novel first”…

So other than the awesome writers we’re publishing in Leopardskin & Limes, who else do you like reading?

Ambika: I’ve just read a great short story collection from Vivek Shraya God Loves Hair, which was beautifully wonderful. Chelsea Martin’s stuff I like a hell of a lot as well. Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper and Mislaid, are fantabulous. Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Ilse Aichinger, Angela Carter, Miranda July, Kathy Acker, David Sedaris… but mostly now I’m trying to read a lot more writers on online journals, people I’ve never heard of who aren’t getting pumped by the big lit machine. It’s really exciting when you read something great, like a treasure hunt!

“…making fun of someone who eats an obsessive amount of kale and ends up turning into a caterpillar that falls into a kale bag…”

You draw from such a great and ridiculous variety of ideas—from world leader soul vending machines to living vagina art. Is there anything you wouldn’t put in a story?

Ambika: Yes, but dead babies isn’t one of them, just for the record. What I love most about writing is that you can make anything happen, and thinking about things to make happen is the bee’s knees. If people have issues with vagina art (the story is coming out the next issue of SAND), or a Jesus reality show where the contestants are crucified, or making fun of someone who eats an obsessive amount of kale and ends up turning into a caterpillar that falls into a kale bag and their partner finds them and throws them off their balcony to their untimely death (this isn’t actually a story), or using an excessive amount of “bad” words, well I don’t really care about that. But there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting in my stories. I have boundaries, and I try to not be senselessly offensive.

How bout you?

Jane: I’ve just discovered Vincent Scarpa’s fiction and am totally smitten and kind of jealous. He has this story called “You’re Home Early” on Electric Literature that I can’t stop rereading, discovering more and more horrible moments and perfect lines each time. I’ve also been reading loads of Dennis Cooper, who is also horrible and perfect—he has this novel called the Sluts that’s written pretty much entirely in reviews on a gay male escort website, and dissolves into this gross hole of snuff porn and unreliable narrators. It is utterly, utterly compelling. Since this list is getting a bit dude-heavy, let’s include my all-time favourite short story writers: Mary Gaitskill, Miranda July, Amy Hempel and Barbara Gowdy. Also, poetrywise, I can’t get enough of Melissa Broder. She writes these gritty sparkly poems stuffed with meat and vomit and glitter and weirdness, and I have a total crush on her.

Jane: In other news, I might be biased on this, but I reckon your new online literary journal, Leopardskin & Limes, is looking splendid. What made you want to branch out into publishing?

Ambika: When I was a wee lass in Toronto, I made a pretty fancy pants zine about cultural oddities and the such with some friends and we gave it out free all over the city, and it was great. I loved it. So this year I started sending out stories like seriously (thanks to you Jane), and it was like holy crap, look at all these journals. But only a few I really, really dig. Of course it became fairly obvious, fairly quickly that anyone can make an online journal, and I consider myself anyone. So I asked you Jane to be poetry editor, remember? And you’re doing a fantabulous job.

And Isabel Rock to do the art for the site, Verena Spilker to help with building the website and Johanna da Rocha Abreu to help with fiction editing.

So Ambika, if the world wants to know more about you, where do they go?

Ambika: I love that Vincent Scarpa as well, and I too was a wee bit jealous. My website: ambikathompson.com. Or to the Indieberlin Book Fair where we’ll both be reading.

You? Jane: You can find me on the internet at http://janeflett. com. Or, come by Queer Stories at Another Country bookstore sometime, I’ll be hosting. Or (I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to mention this), you could go see that band Razor Cunts, I hear they’re pretty awesome. ■

38

indieberlin Yearbook 2015 JANE FLETT is a philosopher, cellist, and seamstress of most fetching stories. Her poetry features in the Best British Poetry 2012 and is available as a chapbook, Quick, to the Hothouse, from dancing girl press. Her fiction has been commissioned for BB C Radio, performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and published in PANK, Word Riot and wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions.

She is one half of the riot grrl band Razor Cunts and the poetry editor for Leopardskin & Limes. janeflett.com AMBIKA THOMPSON lived her past life in an alternative universe that had everything sorted out. In this universe she can’t recall what happened in her past-life so she’s resorted to living in Berlin where she is a parent, writer, and musician. She has contributed short stories to NPR Berlin, Fanzine, and a whole whack of other places.

Recently, she was The Missing Slate’s writer of the month, which made her quite happy. She is the founder and short story editor of Leopardskin & Limes, and is also one half of a cello riot grrl band Razor Cunts. ambikathompson.com

“

…this gross hole of snuff porn and unreliable narrators. It is utterly, utterly compelling…

39

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

It manages to capture vividly the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of a city that has been rapidly abandoned.

Book Review

The Berlin Diaries

by Weeklings Author Lawrence Benner

There is a scene where Noel and his new friends squat an abandoned flat. After the Wall was torn down, many East Germans feared that it would be rebuilt, and so fled rapidly into the West, taking only what they could carry and leaving their homes intact—blocks upon blocks of rent-free townhouses where anyone with a will could break in and claim it as their own. This scene offers a vivid look into the actual process of squatting, with humorous moments (the friends almost squat a flat that has already been squatted,) and it manages to capture vividly the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of a city that has been rapidly abandoned—dust-covered furnishings, dishes still in sinks, etc.

The desolation that these realizations cause her, and Noel’s inability to offer any real help, is haunting and beautifully rendered.

The scene where Noel—after a bleary, alcohol-sodden night—sleeps with an East German woman he meets at a food stand is pivotal to the growing maturity (and ultimately the disillusion) of the main character.

It is a moment where the endless party collides with the real world, forcing Noel to confront the superficiality of the squatter lifestyle and to consider the plight of the East Germans, many of whom never fled to the West when the Wall came down, but who live on in their old flats, struggling to adapt to the rapidly changing world around them.

Noel Maurice’s first installment of his trilogy The Berlin Diaries is charming, awkward, and surprisingly moving. While it is somewhat uneven, it hints at the promise of a gifted writer.

In the morning awkwardness, the two have coffee together, and the woman reveals that not only is today her birthday, but that she walked out on her husband and two children the night before. She started drinking and ended up in Noel’s bed, and now she is hesitant to go home and see her children — who will have presents and will want to wish her a happy birthday — and to confess her infidelity to her husband. The desolation that these realizations cause her, and Noel’s inability to offer any real help, is haunting and beautifully rendered.

The central conceit is a coming of age story.

The protagonist — Noel — is a young man who leaves England and goes hitchhiking, landing in post-communist East Berlin after a week on the road. There he encounters a host of eccentric exiles living in a squatter’s paradise called Tacheles and decides to stay on. In this welcoming new milieu, he learns about busking, he squats a flat, he realizes his dream of starting a band, he falls in and out of love, he suffers betrayal and the erosion of his dream, and he ultimately undergoes a personal transformation.

The corollaries of having drunken sex with a cheating East German housewife

Noel’s transformation is informed by a pair of revelatory acid trips that are urgent and poetic, and have a stylized hallucinogenic flow.

The first two thirds of the book is a series of anecdotes linked together by drunken nights and hung-over mornings. There are three outstanding scenes in this earlier section — an enlightening encounter with a West German punk on the S-Bahn, a scene where Noel and his new friends squat an abandoned apartment, and the corollaries of having drunken sex with a cheating East German housewife.

A significant portion of the book is dedicated to Noel and his friends Marlon and Clemens’ efforts to start a band. Clemens is possibly the most sympathetic character in the book, and easily the most unique and well-realized. He is an earnest but optimistic goof, prone to bouts of intense concentration that he throws over in a wash of cheerful acceptance.

I don’t want to spoil the end of the book for you, but I will say that the very best part is the final third, and this section really takes the narrative to another level.

Noel’s transformation is informed by a pair of revelatory acid trips that are urgent and poetic, and have a stylized hallucinogenic flow. He is forced to confront the past horrors of the city, the struggles of its citizens, and the disease within himself (symbolized by a mild case of leprosy.)

In the scene with the punk, Berlin newcomer Noel takes a train to the East to see what he can see. Riding the S-Bahn over the war-haunted streets, he meets a young West German punk who fled to Berlin to avoid conscription. Peering through the door of the elevated train, the punk explains why the street passing below is so broad. It’s to allow quick access for tanks to enter the city center and quell protests. He cites a bloody rebellion in the fifties when—fed up with the communist government—the East Germans took to the streets, only to be crushed by Russian tanks. The scene ends on a philosophical pacifist note as the West German punk reflects, “That’s what they all do in end. East, West, commies, Nazis, everyone—in the end they just send in the fucking tanks.”

The villain (Noel’s ongoing dissolution) is unclear until these final chapters, but when the conflict finally appears, it is very effective. We transition from a light lad’s comedy to a darker and more contemplative tale, and the change is welcome. This is the depth that we were hoping for, that has been hinted at since the scene with the East German housewife.

I look forward to reading the rest of it.

40

Ein Abend In Berlin Rausch ohne Drogen Tom Fritz erklärt auf seine unnachahmlich entspannt-belustigt klingende Art, dass er nach interessanten Felderfahrungen in Afrika nach einem Weg gesucht hat, den dortigen “Rausch durch körperlich anstrengendes Musikmachen” auf westliche Formen von Anstrengung und Musik zu übertragen. Wo die Fremden mit voller Puste in spezielle Flöten blasen, bis sie “drauf” sind, sollen wir also auf die guten alten “Foltermaschinen” steigen und uns mithilfe unserer Muskeln in Trance steppen. Wow. Das ist cool und lustig und spannend, und holt den sperrigen Titel der Fritz’schen Forschungsgruppe “Musikevozierte Hirnplastizität” doch mal gleich zurück auf den Boden, zwischen Schweißtropfen und Disco-Scheinwerfer. Bisky durfte immerhin ein paar interessante Installationen zeigen, die er im Berhain passend positioniert hatte: Eine unförmige, überdimensionierte, sich windende Schlange aus den unglaublich vielen liegengebliebenen Kleidungsstücken, die von den Besuchern im Techno-Tempel vergessen wurden. Ein Stück Tanzteppich, das von der Decke hängt und “tanzt,” vom vielfarbigen Scheinwerfern psychedelisch beleuchtet. Und Gemälde von tanzenden Leibern, Love Parade auf Leinwand gebannt.

Donnerstag, der 27. August 2015: Ein Nachmittag, ein Abend in Berlin, und mal wieder habe ich im Schnelldurchlauf einen wunderbaren Querschnitt durch große und kleine Kunst, durch die Macht der Worte, Bilder und Melodien erlebt … Ich bin immer noch immer wieder aufs Neue geflasht von dem Input, der Anregung, Unterhaltung und Kreativität, die man hier quasi überall im Vorbeigehen mitnehmen kann. Daher nur so als Streiflicht, mein gestriger Tag:

Was Musik mit uns macht Am Nachmittag in der Garderobe des Berghain, im Rahmen des MusicWeek-Nachfolgers PopKultur. (Im Bild ein Besipiel für das Werbekonzept der neuen Veranstaltung: fiktive Orte, an denen Musikgeschichte geschrieben wurde – natürlich allesamt in Berlin!) Auf der Bühne sitzen der Maler und Love-Parade-Lover Norbert Bisky und Professor Dr. Tom Fritz, Forschungsgruppenleiter am Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften in Leipzig, gemeinsam mit einer fröhlichen Moderatorin. Es soll im weitesten Sinne darum gehen, was Musik mit uns macht, mit unserem Gehirn, unserem Körper. Deswegen bin ich da. Ein mega-spannendes Thema, das auch in meinem Roman Summer Symphony eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Was dann kommt, ist aber nochmal ganz anders als erwartet.

“

Von der Poesie zum Poetry Slam Und dann, Szenewechsel. Ab nach Mitte, in den Telekom-Shop 4010 in der Alten Schönhauser Straße. Dort gibt regelmäßig Donnerstags den Jour Fitz, veranstaltet vom erfolglosesten Taubenvergrämer und niedlichsten Twitter-Phänomen Deutschlands, Jan-Uwe Fitz, dem Autor von “Wenn ich was kann, dann nichts dafür” und “Bitte entschuldigen Sie meine Störung.” An diesem Abend stehen auf dem Programm: “Depressed Industrial Metal” von Enemy I und Texte von Karsten Lampe, Poetry-Slammer, Teil der Couchpoetos und Betreiber desÜberblogs.

Wobei Poetry-Slammer irreführend sein könnte, denn was Karsten gestern zum Besten gegeben hat, war lustiger, gewitzter und auch klüger als das Meiste, was ich bisher von Slammern gehört habe. Zugegeben, ich bin kein Experte. Aber von Streifenhörnchen über Studenten und “besorgte Bürger” bis hin zu Sportlehrern, gestressten Vätern und Bürgeramt-Beamten hat er seine Figuren prima im Griff. Das Publikum grinst, lacht, denkt nach und nickt. Das funktioniert und macht großen Spaß.

Fitnessgeräte als Musikinstrumente Auch die PopKultur-Macher sind überrrascht und brauchen erstmal länger für den Aufbau, denn der Wissenschaftler hat ein paar Geräte mitgebracht, die direkt aus dem Fitnessstudio kommen. Ein Stepper, ein fast schon altertümliches Bauchtrainings-Ding und ein Zug-Rückentrainer. Was wird das, Berghain-Darkroom-Spaß? Nein, die drei Sportmaschinen sind so verkabelt, dass sie quasi gleichzeitig Musikinstrumente sind: Wenn man sich auf ihnen bewegt, erklingen elektonische Loops, Beats und Melodien. Diese verändern sich je nach Intensität – Das ist die musikalische Variante von “Schneller – Höher – Weiter.”

Ich spaziere an diesem Abend lächelnd nach Hause: Musik und Text und Bild haben sich mal wieder zu einem wunderbaren Gedanken- und Gefühlskarussell verbunden, gestern in Berlin. Danke!

41

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Musik Und Text Und Bild

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Award-Winning Author

Die Erste Deutsche Speed Review

Interview by Noel Maurice and Polly Trope

von Claudia Rapp

Jane Davis

Asphalttauben

Endlich. Das wurde aber auch Zeit.

We’re very lucky to be able to talk to award-winning indie author Jane Davis about her new book An Unknown Woman.

Wer erst nochmal wissen möchte, was eine SPEED REVIEW ist, kann in unseren Rezensionsrichtlinien nachschauen, oder ich sag’s euch einfach: Wir lesen den Anfang und ein paar willkürlich rausgepickte Passagen aus einem Buch und schreiben unsere ehrlichen Eindrücke auf. Das ist die Kurzfassung. Also los, SPEED REVIEW!

Jane Davis lives in Carshalton, Surrey with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos.

She spent her twenties and the first part of her thirties chasing promotions at work, but when Jane achieved what she’d set out to do, she discovered that it wasn’t what she had wanted after all. In search of a creative outlet, she turned to writing fiction, but cites the disciplines learnt in the business world as what helped her finish her first 120,000-word novel.

Aber es gibt auch Liebe und Hoffnung und Lächeln VertigoStrayCat hat einen Kurzroman mit dem schönen Titel “Asphalttauben” abgeliefert. Das macht schonmal neugierig. Ich mag sprechende Autorenpseudonyme.

Dieses klingt nach Rockabilly oder düsteren Spelunken.

Ich stürze mich also ins Buch. Und werde bombardiert mit den Übeln und den schlichten Fakten unserer Zeit.

Das Erdbeben in Fukushima. Habgier, Religionskrieg, Kinderpornos, Depressionen, das geht Schlag auf Schlag.

Man muss die Realität also schon abkönnen, wenn man dieses Buch mögen will. Aber es gibt auch Liebe und Hoffnung und Lächeln.

Her first, Half-truths and White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award and was described by Joanne Harris as ‘A story of secrets, lies, grief and, ultimately, redemption, charmingly handled by this very promising new writer.’ She was hailed by The Bookseller as ‘One to Watch.’ Five self-published novels have followed: I Stopped Time, These Fragile Things, A Funeral for an Owl, An Unchoreographed Life and now her latest release, An Unknown Woman. Jane’s favourite description of fiction is that it is ‘made-up truth.’

Es ist ein böses Buch, ein ehrliches und ein lesenswertes

indieberlin: What’s the worst thing about your work as an author and what is the best?

Zuerst dachte ich auch, dass die Charaktere ein bisschen Platzhalter sind, für Klischees, die wir alle kennen. Der Banker, der Penner, die Frau mit der sozialen Ader…

Aber nein, es sind klar gezeichnete Figuren, in deren Gedankenwelt wir eintauchen dürfen, müssen, und die uns wie ein Kaleidoskop zeigen, wie die Menschen so sind.

Und dann hab ich das Ende überflogen, denn was ich gelesen hatte, hat mich neugierig gemacht, fast ein bisschen atemlos. Ohne zu viel zu verraten, würde ich es einfach mal folgerichtig nennen, dieses Ende. Die Zitate, die den Kapiteln vorangestellt sind, stammen teilweise von ASP, Goethes Erben, Samsas Traum: Das schafft zusätzlich Atmosphäre, wenn man die Stücke kennt. Man hat den Sound dieser Bands dann mit im Kopf: Schwarz, hart, melancholisch – das passt.

Jane Davis: The worst thing is the constant cycle of self-doubt. I don’t know if you saw Joanna Penn’s post about this, but it received a huge number of comments.

Link to comments The rest is all a question of timing. On a good day, when the words are flowing, writing new material can be an absolute joy. On a bad day, that blank screen and blinking cursor is terrifying. There can be a great deal of satisfaction in whittling down a jumble into something that begins to flow. I always say that I am five per cent creative and ninety-five per cent logic, and that really comes into play when editing. Difficult shouldn’t be mistaken with ‘worst’. Challenging yourself is good for the soul. But the greatest challenge is to catch those perfect words that are queuing inside your head and get them down on the page without losing the poetry and the magic.

Es ist ein böses Buch, ein ehrliches und ein lesenswertes.

So sehe ich das.

42

Friedrich Liechtenstein von Claudia Rapp

Und nun zum Star des Abends. Ich bin naiv und neugierig zu diesem Event gegangen, denn außer Edeka-Werbung und ein paar lustigen Interviews mit schön treffenden und hintergründigen Aussagen hatte ich bis gestern nicht viel von diesem Mann gehört. Jedenfalls nicht seine Musik.

Ein Beschreibungsversuch: Wenn er singt, dann ist das, als ob ein deutscher Bryan Ferry, der ein bisschen an den Kolumnisten Harald Martenstein erinnert (zumindest nach der Verwechslung von goldener Bühnenbrille und uncooler Lesebrille), versuchen würde, die Attitüde von Falcos „Jeanny“ auf ganz sanfte Art neu aufglitzern zu lassen. Eine wahrhafte Kunstfigur. Versatzstücke, Collage, Ironie. Dadaismus 2.0 oder das postmoderne Sezieren einer Realität, deren unfassbarer Verrücktheit ein Mann wie er mit einem leisen, wissenden Lächeln zu begegnen weiß? Wenn er liest, liest er nur den Epilog selbst, den Rest überlässt er seinem Fan. Und als der ihn drängt, noch einen prägenden Teil vorzulesen, wählt er stattdessen die Bildunterschriften.

Zu den Bildern im Buch, die das Publikum ja nicht sieht.

Er weist darauf hin, dass das Buch erst entsteht, wenn man es zuhause im Bett mit der Leselampe aufschlägt.

Fantasie ist gefragt.

Mr. Supergeil Friedrich Liechtenstein war Mittwochabend im Kesselhaus der Kulturbrauerei, um das Buch „Super. Mein Leben“ vorzustellen. Wow.

So wie bei seinen erfolgreichen Theaterstücken, von denen er ebenfalls erzählt. Da ist das „Pappenspiel,“ in dem ein Karton zur Mondrakete und zu allem anderen wurde. Dazu passt auch die Selbstbeschreibung, die in etwa lautet: Ich bin ein Stein. Nur weniger hart. Also eigentlich ein Schwamm. Oder eine Alge, am liebsten wäre ich sowieso eine Alge (Die Alge wird fast zum roten Faden des Abends, auch wenn man sie sich gemeinhin grün vorstellt. Fantasie ist gefragt).

„Super.“ Das erste Wort, das Friedrich Liechtenstein sagt, als er sich setzt. Sofort lacht fast das gesamte Publikum, während Henning Wehland, sein Mitstreiter auf der Bühne noch in seinem mit unzähligen Post-Ist bestückten Buch blättert.

Bevor wir uns dem Phänomen Liechtenstein widmen, zunächst ein paar Worte zu Wehland. Der war mal Sänger der H-Blockx, ist inzwischen auch Produzent von BossHoss und vielen als Jurymitglied der Sendung The Voice – Kids bekannt. Seine teilweise etwas floskelhaften Versuche, den Zuhörern das Buch Liechtensteins zu erklären, lassen mich ein paarmal denken, dass er zu lange beim Fernsehen war, glattgeschliffen wurde.

Niedlich finde ich allerdings, wie offensichtlich und vorbehaltlos er ein Fan des Mannes ist, den er hier moderiert.

Das erinnert mich an einen anderen amüsanten Verrückten. Spongebob Schwammkopf. Ein Schwamm mit „einer Menge Fantasie,“ wie es regenbogenbunt in einer Folge der Zeichentrickserie heißt, in der Spongebob und sein Seesternkollege Patrick einen Karton u.a. zum Rennauto und zur Mondrakete werden lassen. Hier schließt sich der Kreis also (Nein, damit wollte ich dich keineswegs mit rosa Patrick vergleichen, Henning!) und mehr gibt es auch nicht zu sagen. Denn das Phänomen Friedrich Liechtenstein muss man wohl selbst erleben.

Es zu beschreiben ist müßig; er gleitet einem durch die Finger wie die beschworene Alge, mit der er nach eigener Aussage einst die Welt retten wollte. Sicher ist: Er hat viel zu erzählen, und was er verschweigt, ist wahrscheinlich sogar noch interessanter. Super.

Geradezu teenagerhaft bewundernd schaut er manchmal zu dem Älteren auf, und versucht nur ganz sanft, Liechtensteins Performance zu dirigieren oder gar zu bändigen.

Mein persönlicher Lieblingsmoment, als sie plötzlich auf die Musik der H-Blockx zu sprechen kommen, und Liechtenstein schwärmt: „Du warst so jung … Und so schlank!“ Dazu muss man wissen, dass ich einst das Mädchen war, das 2002 beim Gampel Open Air in der Schweiz die Frechheit besaß, am Tisch der Band vorbei zu spazieren und Henning anzusprechen: „Hey. Du siehst aus wie der Sänger von den H-Blockx … Nur dicker!“ (Eine blöde Wette, der viel Alkohol vorausging.

Nachträgliche Entschuldigung, lieber Henning, inzwischen sind wir alle „nur dicker.“)

Donnerstag besuche ich eine weitere Lesung des Festivals Literatur:Berlin. Alexander Osang liest im Gerorg Büchner Buchladen am Kollwitzplatz aus „Comeback.“ Freitag hört sich Noel im Palais der Kulturbrauerei an, was Wolfgang Sandner über Keith Jarrett geschrieben hat, und am Samstag versuchen wir uns mithilfe des Berliner Autorenabends (ebenfalls im Palais) ein literarisches Bild der Stadt zu machen. Wer dieses letzte Event auch noch besuchen möchte, schaut auf www.literatur.berlin vorbei.

43

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Supergeil

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Interview by Noel Maurice

Joanna Penn

The Energizer Bunny of Self-Publishing My main challenge is balancing my energy across the various aspects, for example, being alone and writing recharges me but if I do that for too long, I can go a bit strange! I love speaking, but too much of that exhausts me. I will also look to outsource anything I don’t enjoy e.g. formatting print files, or can’t do, like book cover design.

Joanna Penn is a major force on the international self-publishing scene. Starting off as a professional speaker and non-fiction author she quickly moved into writing fiction and continued to speak and write advice books for self-published authors. Referred to as “the Engergizer Bunny” of self-publishing, she writes intelligently and coherently on subjects such as how to leverage Amazon to make your book sell well and public speaking for authors. We came across Joanna on our own research into improving the lot of self-published authors and she was nice enough to give us an interview.

I try to bring my business experience to this world of creativity, which is quite an unusual approach indieberlin: I understand you’re translating your book about book marketing into German at the moment.

Any idea when it’ll be out? And will that be released through your website and Amazon, or…?

indieberlin: You’ve built up quite a career in balancing fiction and non-fiction writing, podcasting, speaking and giving advice to authors…which bits do you enjoy the most, which the least, and do you find that the different activities hamper or help each other?

Joanna Penn: How To Market A Book should be out in German by mid 2015 and will be available in ebook and print through Amazon, Thalia and all the other online stores. Self-publishing is really taking off in Germany, so hopefully it will be useful for authors.

I learned what I love and what I don’t enjoy about work, and then I designed my current business and my life based on that

Don’t compare yourself to other authors.

No journey is the same

Joanna Penn: Prior to this author-entrepreneur life, I spent 13 years as a business consultant implementing Accounts Payable systems into many different companies across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I spent 12 of those years trying to find out what I really wanted to do with my life, with forays into running a scuba diving business and property renovation. Through those ups and downs, I learned what I love and what I don’t enjoy about work, and then I designed my current business and my life based on that. The short answer is that I enjoy everything I do – from the research and finding ideas for stories, through the writing, publishing and marketing sides of running a business as an author.

indieberlin: Quick advice to new authors: Three do’s, three don’t’s.

Joanna Penn: Do write a lot. Even if it’s not for publication. Don’t compare yourself to other authors.

No journey is the same. Do learn about the business of being an author. Your books are assets and your creative work is valuable. Don’t wait to be chosen.

Choose yourself.Do start building an email list of people who read your work as soon as possible, so you’re not reliant on another company for income in the future. Don’t get lonely. There are lots of indie authors globally now, so come join us!

44

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin: You’ve been described as an Energizer Bunny. How does that feel?

Joanna Penn: It’s funny really, because I’m an introvert and need to spend a lot of time alone and quiet. I even wear earplugs in the library where I go to write! But when I speak, I am very energetic and enthusiastic. I can’t help but be passionate about how amazing it is to be an author at this time in history, when we have unprecedented opportunities to reach readers across the world with our words. indieberlin: You talk a lot about the importance of authors developing multiple streams of income. You for example speak professionally a lot. What other ways would you suggest for authors who don’t feel comfortable with public speaking?

Once you understand the magic of how rights work in publishing, you can see how many income streams an author can generate

Joanna Penn: Learning how to become a successful indie author is a lot like growing any small business – you have to learn the business side as well as the creative side of things.

Joanna Penn: Speaking is actually a minor part of my business and I generally only do one talk a month.

It is only around 10% of my income – my main focus is on writing and selling books.

There are lots of us who share our experiences for free online, so you can learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before. My Author 2.0 Blueprint is a start and covers all the various options for self-publishing these days. I’d recommend spending a decent amount of time researching the best practices and that will save you time, money and heartache along the way.

• Format: have your books in ebook, print, audiobook formats • Platform: have your books available on all online stores and not exclusive to one so you are paid by multiple companies (if you self-publish) • Genre/topic: write multiple books, write different series, write non-fiction if you write fiction and vice versa • Country: make sure your book is available globally. My own books have now sold in 64 countries through Amazon, Kobo and iBooks.

Once you understand the magic of how rights work in publishing, you can see how many income streams an author can generate.

You can also consider other income opportunities, for example, sponsorship or affiliate income if you have a blog or podcast, or selling your own products and courses either on your site or Udemy. None of these require public speaking! indieberlin: Self-publishing (or indie authorship) seems to be coming into its own right now, and it’s a very exciting time to be involved in writing and indie literature.

If someone wants to set up a publishing interest that is adapted to the new challenges and possibilities, what would you suggest they do?

45

You can also join an organization like the Alliance of Independent Authors, which has education, community and also lobbies for the rights of indie authors with the media. We have a great Facebook group where people can ask questions, as well as online and live hangouts. indieberlin: What are you working on right now? A nonfiction book or a fiction book? And do you find it possible to work on more than one project – or more than one book – at a time?

Joanna Penn: I’m in the final stages of editing One Day in New York. I’m also researching and plotting Deviance, the next in the London Psychic series, and I am in the first draft of a non-fiction book on mindset for authors.

This is about as much as I can cope with at one time!

All three are at different stages so they get different parts of my brain, but I do only ever have one first draft going per fiction project. Things get complicated otherwise!

“

Multiple streams of income can just be around your books, for example:

Successful indie authors have a lot in common with the start-up culture, sharing a ‘can-do’ attitude and willingness to learn new things

indiesex

46

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Interview by Mia Morris

Sheila Wolf

Ich Fliege Eben Unterhalb Des Gesellschaftsradars Sheila Wolf ist ein Berliner Orignal und auf den Bühnen in Berlin, Deutschland und Europa zuhause. Privat Vater einer Tochter, auf der Bühne Burlesque Diva und Show Lady. ››

47

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Sheila: Ja… vor genau 10 Jahren meine Frau… Sie war anfangs voller Ängste und Befürchtungen. Auch heute noch geht ihr der Rummel um mein Alter Ego manchmal auf den Sack aber im Grunde hat sie verstanden, dass es für mich ein Ventil der Kreativität ist und kein Fetisch.

Obwohl ich mich oft dabei ertappe, neue Outfits und Kostüme zu suchen… ein bissl Besessenheit steckt dann wohl doch drin. Ach und natürlich liebe ich die Kostüme jenseits des Charakters Sheila Wolf… als Gremlins Frauchen, Borg Königin oder auch im Avatar Mädchen.

Das schockiert dann schon manch einen Kerl, der denkt dass dort letztendlich eine Frau druntersteckt.

Ich wurde schon oft angefeindet indieberlin: Bist Du schon einmal aufgrund des Transgenders angefeindet worden? Wie gehst Du mit Kritik um? Hast Du vielleicht einen Tipp, für diejenigen, die sich nicht so wohl in ihrem Körper fühlen?

Sheila: Ich sehe mich in der Regel eher als Frauendarsteller. Selten überziehe ich das Make-up in Richtung einer Dragqueen, möchte aber auch nicht in der Masse untergehen wie eine Frau mit transsexuellem Hintergrund. Die Schubladen der Trans* Gesellschaft sind vielfältig und ja, ich wurde schon oft, sowohl aus der Trans* Gemeinschaft als auch aus der restlichen Gesellschaft angefeindet. Transfrauen werfen Menschen wie mir vor, mich zu sehr in die Öffentlichkeit zu drängen und den „schweren“ Weg vorübergehend verlassen zu können. Das stimmt absolut – dennoch fühle ich mich nicht im falschen Körper und somit geh ich den Weg, der sich für mich richtig anfühlt.

Ich fliege eben unterhalb des Gesellschaftsradars Und der Weg, der sich für mich richtig anfühlt, das ist eben die Öffentlichkeit, die Red Carpets, die Bühne und die damit verbundene Aufmerksamkeit, die man bekommt.

Aber auch dort bekommt man natürlich befremdliche Blicke und ab und zu einen bösen Kommentar. Doch in der Regel lächle ich das weg und stöckle freundlich drauf zu… um den Leuten zu zeigen, dass ich kein Freak bin – nur eben unterhalb des Gesellschaftsradars fliege.

Wir haben mit ihr über ihre Vorlieben auf der Bühne und in der Mode, ihr Leben vor und hinter der Bühne, über Berlin und das Schockieren im Auftritt gesprochen und sind wieder einmal begeistert von dem Charme und der Offenheit dieser Performerin.

indieberlin: Du betreibst ja auch das Fashion Magazin Burlesque-Fashion, das sich mit Rockabilly, Vintage, Pin-up oder Latex Fashion beschäftigt. Hast Du einen einfachen Tipp für Einsteiger, die nicht gleich das komplette Diven-Outfit anziehen möchten? Womit fängt man styling-mäßig am besten an?

Sheila Wolf im indieberlin Interview indieberlin: Wir kennen Dich auf der Bühne als Sängerin der Teaserettes, Master of ceremony, Burlesque Diva und Show Lady. Gibt es eine Rolle oder eine Performance, die für Dich besonders heraus sticht, in der Du Dich am wohlsten fühlst?

Sheila: Ja, Burlesque Fashion war immer ein Teilbereich meiner Queerlesque Kolumne und irgendwann wurde das Interesse so groß, dass ich diese Kategorie ausgegliedert habe. Vintage und Pin-up haben mich seit meiner Jugend begleitet. Ich war als Jugendlicher RocknRoller immer auf entsprechenden Konzerten und bei der Entwicklung meiner Figur Sheila Wolf hab ich lediglich auf die Sinneswahrnehmungen von damals zurückgegriffen. Dabei dreht sich alles um ein hohes Maß an Detailverliebtheit und Geschmack. Das wichtigste beim Styling ist eine anständige Frisur. Natürlich gehört ein leichtes Make-Up dazu und mit einem Pencilkleid kann man auch kaum etwas falsch machen. ■

Sheila: Das ihr mich kennt, ehrt mich wirklich!! Ich freue mich immer, wenn Menschen an mich herantreten und das gut finden, was ich so kulturell verzapfte. Allerdings würde ich nicht so weit gehen und ein Publikum mit meinem Gesangstalent quälen. Das sollen andere tun ;)… ansonsten bin ich am liebsten als Moderatorin und Performerin auf den Bühnen Europas unterwegs. Ich liebe es, neue Menschen aus der kreativen Vaudeville/ Burlesque Szene zu treffen und neue Orte kennen zu lernen. Abgesehen davon hatte ich auch viel Spaß vor der Kamera und würde mir wünschen, auch da mal wieder mehr zu machen.

Mein Alter Ego gehört zu meinem Leben

Fotos by Grünes Header Foto: Berserker Weißes Outfit mit Revolver: Natalie Herlinghaus Blaues Outfit im Waschsalon: Magnus Lila Haare und Leo Outfit: Krizzi

indieberlin: Hast Du schon einmal jemanden richtig schockiert?

48

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

How to Have Better Sex:

We Talk to Santi Sex Coach and Intimacy Advisor Interview by Mia Morris

Wondering how to have better sex? Well you’ve come to the right place. Santi is an Intimate Adviser.

She specialises in helping people – especially but not exclusively women – refind their sense of eroticism, something that often gets lost in longterm relationships, after couples become parents, and also as one grows older. Santi has teamed up with Brafinette, lingerie boutique in Berlin, to offer workshops for women to help them rediscover their erotic side. The next workshop is coming up on the 10th October, so if you feel that this is talking straight to you, then drop her a line and see if the workshop would be something you’d like to take part in. Or follow the link here.

but also relating to knowledge I had gained for myself, especially after having given birth to my child, when I needed to learn my sexual self once more. I was almost always really interested in the topic – I mean not only “practically” as every teenager is, but I had this theoretical drive. I am an academic philosopher, so it is probably the same will to know, to learn, to search for the truth.

“Two years ago my blog was hacked and my real identity uncovered” Two years ago my blog was hacked and my real identity uncovered. I deleted the blog, but because I was always getting a lot of questions as to how I do this, how I do that – I realized that I didn’t want to resign completely. And I was fascinated with the women I met on the way. I was already working as a philosopher giving philosophical counseling – then I just made my decision to professionalize my biggest passion – erotic love.

Meanwhile, below is our interview with Santi – get to know who Santi is, where she’s coming from, her tips on how to have better sex, and how she became an Intimate Adviser and erotic expert to start with. I mean, just how do you get into that line of work? A question I’ve long pondered…

indieberlin: We have the section “indiesex” because we feel there is the need to talk and act diversely and independently about sex, as an alternative to how sex is sold and marketed in mainstream films, internet sites or TV. What is your approach to the individuality of sex and how do you go about it in your coaching?

indieberlin: Santi, you’re an Intimate Adviser for regaining eroticism in a partnership – did I put that right? How did you become an Intimate Adviser?

Santi: It’s a very accurate description of my profession.

Many people think that my job is about frivolousness and having something to do with bringing real life closer to the atmosphere and scenes from porno movies.

And that’s terribly wrong! I work mostly with women (only sometimes with men) who want to feel passion in their lives to better understand their sexual identity and just need to develop also in this area – for themselves and for their long-term relationships. After years of bringing up children and having fears about bank credits and so on many of them realize that not everything is as great as it appeared when the couple first met.

“There is no such a thing as objectively great sex” Santi: Maybe it’s shown best through my definition of great sex. Great sex is when you experience what you would describe as great sex for you. It’s the lack of a collision between needs and expectations on the one hand, and the real experience on the other. There is no such a thing as objectively great sex. Even movies – did you know that if you show a porn movie to a group of women, around 30 % will see it as seductive, about 30% will take it only as ridiculous and 30% as contemptuous. The same movie! So our sexual standards, values, expectations and dreams are very diverse. And that’s beautiful!

“I was blogging for almost 8 years about sexuality, I was writing very personal stuff anonymously” How I became an Intimate Adviser? Firstly I was blogging for almost 8 years about sexuality, I was writing very personal stuff anonymously,

indieberlin: do you feel that sex is overrated in our society? ››

49

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Santi: I feel that this medial version of sex is overrated.

Sex also as the emotional relationship firstly with myself, and then with others is underestimated and unacknowledged. Moreover, we used to associate sex with youth and beauty. But what about sex when we aren’t beautiful anymore and we are old? What about women with children who are socially recognized as mothers, and their need to express themselves also as lovers is acknowledged fully by hardly anyone around? The discussion about sex and society in general is huge. Let us stay by these general impressions of mine.

“

indieberlin: how does the sex life of teenagers, couples in their 30 – 50s and couples over 60 years old change in your opinion?

Santi: I can tell you about women. I’m more experienced with that being a woman myself. We have some periods in our lives. Firstly, there’s the phase when we discover sexuality. It’s full of insecurity, but also full of unlimited curiosity, and characterized by great appetite.

With the first child we step into the phase ‘mother & lover,’ we need to find ourselves once more. We literarily experience for the second time our first time.

There is some repetition in experiencing insecurity, but it’s easier to overcome it since we have done that already, especially when we understand the changes and have some support from the closest persons.

The mature lover is not interested in any proving of her worth to anyone

And then there comes the phase of being really mature, the phase of the first changes signaling the menopause.

Unfortunately they come earlier than we usually think they come. It’s not at the age of 60 but sometimes in the early 40s. But it’s not over! It can be the beginning; maybe you know the proverb “woman is like wine, the older the better.” The mature lover is not interested in any proving of her worth to anyone, nor has she any fear of unwanted pregnancy; furthermore, she is, in many ways, free, but she is also fed up with unsatisfying experiences. So, having sex with such a woman will always be a challenge for her partner, but as in life – what takes much effort is also the sweetest thing eventually.

“Don’t try to realize your fantasies. Just let them burn in your imagination” indieberlin: do you have a safe tip to bring more eroticism back into a relationship?

Santi: Yes, of course. I have many, but I will tell you about one. Just start to use your erotic imagination.

Do you remember your spontaneous sex in the beginning of your relationship? You were thinking about it, playing different scenarios in your head. Do the same now.

Of course the temperature will be different. But just start to do naughty daydreaming. Don’t have time for this? Use the time when you stand in queues, going by metro etc. And just play with your imagination.

What is important when it comes to reality is, don’t try to realize your fantasies. Just let them burn in your imagination. It is best as a warm-up for your mind and body. But when you finish your warm up, you don’t think about it any more, just play, as if you played volleyball, don’t think about it while having sex. Fantasies can get us in the mood. What can happen after that? It’s up to you. ■

“Put your needs, not only the needs of your newborn on the table, and negotiate, also for your own sake” Foto by Anika Kasza Dress by Protas Fashion

50

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

fashion

51

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Leather Look Bags From Recycled Bottles.

Possible?

52

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Fotos by Alessandro Caracci

Melissa Righi Says Yes. I’m back with a new look! After these long, cold and stressful winter months I felt like changing a bit.

One of the good things in these months? Winter sale!

That’s where I got this wonderful piece.. I always say it’s wrong to be too materialistic. But I have to admit that my heart beat a little bit faster when I finally got my Matt&Nat bag.

I really love the material! It’s unbelievable that this bag is made of recycled plastic bottles. It’s water resistant and really looks like leather. Matt and Nat is an amazing vegan brand, for me the best when it’s about vegan handbags. I will definitely buy other items from sMatt & Nat. I’m not 100% vegan though, because even if my diet is vegan, I still wear leather shoes and bags. It’s even harder being a make up artist and vegan, unfortunately I use a lot of not cruelty free products. But if it’s possible I take the vegan choice.

Step by step in a cruelty free life

53

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

Bahar Berlin

Edeltrash Fashion Show

Interview & fotos by Noel Maurice

54

indieberlin: What is your taste – can you pin it down to a singel word, a single sentence..

Solange Pulat: It’s based on love.

Bystander: Lovely clothes, lovely…

Bystander: Why neon yellow?

They had a stand outside with drinks including green smoothie shots (and beer, don’t worry) and Solange Pulat, boss of the place, bopping around smiling at people and chatting away happily. The shop too was a brilliant find: It’s been open for ten months, specialising in vintage fashion, plus whatever takes Solange’s fancy – she stocks the shop purely on what appeals to her – including pieces from Berlin independent designers. Solange has a great aura and you can imagine her being a thoroughly welcoming shop host. We managed to stop her bopping for a few minutes to answer a few questions:

What’s on offer at Bahar Berlin Edeltrash Solange Pulat: I, you know, I like neon yellow. indieberlin: What about the name?

Solange Pulat: It’s to honour my roots, I have Turkish and Italian roots. Bahar means new beginning, and it was a new beginning for me with the shop, but also for the clients, who buy their new favourite clothes here.

Bahar Berlin Edeltrash

indieberlin: Can people find you online?

indieberlin: So you can buy everything in the shop?

Solange Pulat: They can find me online, yes: edeltrash.com.

Solange Pulat: Yes! The clothes, the furniture, the hangars, trinkets… indieberlin: Could I buy the shop itself?

Solange Pulat: No. Everything else in the shop though.

Apart from me. indieberlin: How long did it take you to accumulate all this stuff?

Solange Pulat: About a year. People bring me the stuff, well, they bring a photo, like when it’s a couch or something, and I say yes, no, yes, no, we make a price together, and that’s it. indieberlin: Where would you say your tastes are centred?

Solange Pulat: On vintage clothes. I like a lot of modern stuff when it’s my style and it fits the shop, but generally I prefer vintage. indieberlin: And what is vintage?

Solange Pulat: From the 18th Century…the twenties, the thirties… indieberlin: I think there’s a rule, anything that’s older than twenty five years…

Solange Pulat: Yeah. Btu if I like it I take it. indieberlin: And you have things from local independent fashion designers?

Solange Pulat: Yeah, it depends the people who bring me the things. European designers, lots of different things.

55

indieberlin Yearbook 2015

In the summer we were out and about in the city and dropped in on Bahar Berlin Edeltrash’s fashion event, where they took over the street in front of them and turned the stretch of pavement into a fashion runway. The colour, the great atmosphere and the music sucked in anyone who happened to be going past and it ended up being a great party.

indieberlin Yearbook 2015 Yearbook 2015

56