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Little Brother Magazine

No. 5

A twice-yearly, award-winning print magazine featuring the best of a new generation of Canadian artists and writers.

LITTLEBROTHERMAGAZINE.COM

Dolorous dolorousjewel r y.com

New Faces

Lauren Oyler (“Europe’s Capital of Cool,” p. 142) is a writer and editor formerly based in Berlin, now in Brooklyn. She runs the blog at Bookslut and frequently contributes to Dazed & Confused.

London-based illustrator Alessandra Genualdo (cover illustration) was born in a small town in Italy and studied in France and the U.K. Last year, her illustrations accompanied Ryan Gander’s children’s book The Boy Who Always Looked Up.

Erin Reznick (“Kinderhook & Caracas,” p. 124) is an arts manager who lives and works in Berlin. She produces concerts and cultural events for the online contemporary art magazine Berlin Art Link.

Monica Heisey (“It’s Blitz!,” p. 18) is a writer and comedian from Toronto. Her first book, a humour collection of essays, drawings, short stories, and poems called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better, is forthcoming this spring.

Johanna Ruebel (cover photo) is a photographer based in Berlin. She was born in Hamburg, grew up in France, and earned degrees in graphic design and photography from Central Saint Martins.

Finnish-born illustrator Annu Kilpeläinen (“Artist’s Paradise,” p. 148) lives and works in London. Kelli Korducki (“It’s the Wurst,” p. 121) is a writer, editor, and troublemaker whose good and bad ideas can be found in the Globe and Mail, Little Brother, The Walrus, Hazlitt, The Hairpin, and other places here and there.

Maisie Skidmore (“Still Life Cycle,” p. 22) is a London-based writer and assistant editor at It’s Nice That. Grace Wilson (“London Diary,” p. 66) is a Scottish artist working in comics, illustration, and ceramics. This year she selfpublished her first book Eyes Peeled, a collection of slice-oflife comics and drawings. She is currently living in London and working on her debut graphic novel for Jonathan Cape.

Born in Nova Scotia, Max Mertens (“PC Rated,” p. 30) is Toronto-based music and arts journalist who has contributed to Rolling Stone, Vice Canada, National Post, and Hazlitt. He’s been to Berlin but not (yet) London.

Masthead

Double Dot magazine explores the cultural and creative relationship between sister citiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where they part and collide.

Editor-in-chief / Art Director / Co-publisher Shannon Jager Managing Editor / Co-publisher Julie Baldassi Editor Isabel Slone Contributing Editor Bronwen Jervis Distribution Districor Printing Spirit Graphics / Imageworks Cover Illustration by Alessandra Genualdo Photography by Johanna Ruebel Contact Unit 501, 263 Adelaide W. Toronto, Ontario Canada M5H 1Y2 Email info(at)doubledotmagazine(dot)com

Contributors Annu KilpelĂ¤inen Caoimhe Morgan-Feir Chelsea Rooney Clay Hickson Eddie Perrote Ellie Andrews Emi Ueoka Erin Reznick Grace Wilson Harriet Lee-Merrion Isabel Slone Jade Blair Johanna Ruebel Kathryn Franklin Kelli Korducki Lauren Oyler Lee Marshall Louise Reimer Maisie Skidmore Max Mertens Monica Heisey Phillip Koll Sarah Blais Shelby Fenlon Sofia Luu Spencer Judge

A note from the Managing Editor

Last fall, Double Dot’s founder Shannon Jager and I traveled from Toronto to the Vancouver Art Book Fair, one of a growing number of such events internationally – and the only of it’s kind in Canada. While the practice of treating publication as an artistic platform in its own right dates back as far as William Blake’s illuminated poetry manuscripts of the 18th century, the VABF taps into a new print culture that is flourishing in spite of – and because of – the internet. And instead of Blake’s figures of ripplingly muscular gods, we encountered Vancouverite Cole Pauls’ Pizza Punk zine and the New Haven, Connecticut press Draw Down Books, whose founder Kathleen Sieboda is behind the feminist project Women of Graphic Design. We found illuminated manuscripts of a different kind. At the fair we met other publishers who share the thrill of creating beautiful physical objects; writing and art that you can hold in your hands. We spoke about Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, and other places weʼve lived, and we learned from our new friends what it’s like to live and work where they do. Our table-mate Hugh Frost of Landfill Editions, the publisher behind the truly original Mould Map comics, told us about his new home in Nottingham, the post-industrial English city where artists can afford to make work and rent. He did so not by telling us the names of Nottingham’s museums or its most picturesque season – obviously, because the most straightforward and

Berlin Phillip Koll (“Roberta” p. 86)

London Sarah Blais & Spencer Judge (“Amelia” p. 48)

interesting point of entry to a foreign city is not found in tourist brochures, but through looking at the lives of the people who have made that city home. Unless you’re holding Double Dot for the first time (in which case, welcome! Please take a seat and have a look around!), you’ll know that what we’re trying to achieve essentially replicates the sorts of conversations we had with Hugh and the others. In this issue, our first with a pair of cities outside of North America, you’ll experience Grace Wilson’s wry take on being an artist with a joe-job in a city as expensive as London, and Lauren Oyler’s attempt to reconcile Berlin’s apparently effortlessly coolness with its penchant to alienate its citizens. We hope the writing, illustration, and photography in this issue will make the sister cities of London and Berlin feel all the more tangible.

Julie Baldassi

Image from the Art Director

CON T E N T S IT始S BLITZ! 18 MONICA HEISEY STILL LIFE CYCLE 22 MAISIE SKIDMORE SOCIAL NETWORK 26 LEE MARSHALL PC RATED 30 MAX MERTENS LONDON始S LAST LIVING PUNK ISABEL SLONE

VV BROWN 40 JADE BLAIR AMELIA 48 SARAH BLAIS LONDON DIARY 66 GRACE WILSON ROUND ABOUT 72 SHELBY FENLON

LON DON

BER LIN ROBERTA PHILLIP KOLL

LOUISE 102 JOHANNA RUEBEL COMMUNIST FASHION 118 SOFIA LUU IT始S THE WURST 121 KELLI KORDUCKI KINDERHOOK & CARACAS ERIN REZNICK

124

FAST FORWARD 136 CAOIMHE MORGAN-FEIR EUROPE始S CAPITAL OF COOL LAUREN OYLER

142

ARTIST始S PARADISE 148 KATHRYN FRANKLIN VOLCANO 152 CHELSEA ROONEY

CON T E N T S

Nightlife

Itʼs Blitz! Illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion

London is much easier as an idea than a city. This is perhaps why the fantasy industry is thriving there: on any given weekend, pockets of the comfortable and affluent can be found indulging in one of the city’s most lucrative pastimes – time travel. Under a railway arch in Shoreditch (the very heart of gentrified East London), over five hundred men and women gather in a basement for a party designed to evoke the “spirit of London” during the blitz bombings of the Second World War. The big event sells out weeks in advance, and 1940s dress code is strictly enforced. News footage from the Western front plays on vintage televisions while ticket holders swing dance to big band under propaganda posters about loose

lips and sinking ships. Ration books list era-inspired cocktails. Bunting – kitschy, colourful garlands of little flags – is everywhere. Blitz parties are an almostmonthly London occurrence, although partygoers looking to enter another era have lots of options. There is S.S. Atlantica, a party set aboard a 1930s ocean liner that cruises the Thames; Belle Epoque, a “dark circus” party set at the turn of the 20th century, and the somewhat ironic Prohibition 1920s party, to name just a few. The only one I ever attended was the Blitz party, and I had an unbelievable amount of fun. I was 21, a few months into my time in London and the MA in Shakespeare Studies that had brought me there. I wore vintage lingerie I’d

London

London’s Blitz parties offer a night of kitschy 1940s-inspired escapist fantasy where women wear their hair in victory rolls and men wear moustache wax. Monica Heisey details the pitfalls of living in the nostalgic present.

purchased on a whim, and a grey dress I already owned, more 50s than 40s. I did my own hair in victory rolls and splurged on MAC lipstick, already feeling financially reckless: my £40 ticket represented just over six hours tending the bar for minimum wage at a pub in the basement of BBC’s Bush House. At the party, I danced a run into one of my thighhigh stockings and chain-smoked cigarettes out of a cheap elongated holder while nursing a champagne cocktail in the other. I ended the evening by letting an RAF pilot take me back to his Bethnal Green apartment to unlace my foundation garments. The premise of the Blitz Party is a gaudy manifestation of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls “historical inversion”: the projection of an unattainable ideal present onto the past. This inversion makes itself known in the party’s insistence on a paradoxical authenticity: the Corn Flakes tins are from 1941.

Event organizers meticulously source period-specific sandbags. Cocktails served in those annoyingly shallow glasses that are very easy to spill. Women spend hours in salons setting hairdos based on old photographs. Men ransack charity shops for period-appropriate army uniforms, hats, and canes. They buy moustache wax and vintage lighters. From the outside, you’d never guess the entire night was to be catalogued with hashtags, tweets, and Instagram photos, the anachronistic glow of iPhones the only difference between this Blitz and the real one. It is of course far from the only difference. The idea of the Blitz Party is repellent: eight months, one week, and two days of tactical bombing distilled into one night of kitschy fun! Almost 43,000 people died in the German bombing of England between September 7, 1940 and May 21, 1941. Over

London

Nightlife

London

It’s Blitz! a quarter of the city was evacuated. The ration books were not cocktail menus. Like the now-ubiquitous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster – which was designed in 1939 but never publicly displayed, and became globally recognizable after it was rediscovered and commercialized in 2000 – the free-wheeling, glamourous air of my night under the archway was the invention of a nostalgic present. For me, moving to London had represented a move to an idealized past and future: pubs where Dickens had drank and worked; streets walked by Shakespeare; impressive libraries where I would find my “voice," as a writer. The fantasy of living in this infinite past-future was greatly diminished by the daily indignities of my present reality as a foreigner in a large, unfeeling city. London did not care that I had moved to it, and I was blocking the entrance to the District line.

The fantasy joys of the Blitz party, like my ideas about libraries and authorial pubs, were fleeting. I woke up the next morning in a strange apartment belonging to a lawyer named Adrian – who was not a pilot and whose glasses had been lensless. Unaccustomed to tobacco smoke in any quantity, my throat burned. I crept out of the not-pilot’s bed into the East London morning, looking ridiculousin smeared eyeliner and bedraggled victory rolls. Vendors setting up stalls selling food, sunglasses, Luchador masks, and cheap purses exchanged looks as I tottled conspicuously down a soon-to-be bustling Brick Lane, exposed not as a time-traveller, but a tourist. On the 48 bus at 9 a.m., I looked across the aisle and caught eyes with the only other passenger on board. She took in my outfit – wrinkled grey dress, a pilfered Sainsbury’s bag stuffed with a flask, cigarette lighter, and ripped stockings – and laughed.

Gentrification

Ridley Road Market feeds art and gentrification

L i f e

Cycle 24

London

By Maisie Skidmore Illustration by Louise Reimer

Still

When Ridley Road Market was founded in the mid-1880s, it was a trading ground for just a few local families; the Mayos, the Julians, the Cains, and the Fishlocks sold their wares on the East London street, sandwiched between the old Dalston Theatre and rows of townhouses. You can still meet the descendants of those first vendors wandering chattily through the stalls, but nowadays the African, Caribbean, Turkish, and Asian market is an altogether more carnivalesque affair, stretching the length and breadth of the street and reverberating far beyond. Walking down the narrow street is akin to being thrust into the joyous, stinking heart of London’s cosmopolitanism. Cries of “sweet, sweet mangoes” and “any bowl a pahnd” spring forth, as the shouts of greengrocers, fishmongers, and butchers vie with the stalls selling multi-packs

of cotton underwear and rolls of Ghanaian fabric in vibrant prints and colours. It’s a pit of treasure, the kind only London could produce, placing Cockney originals alongside migrant families who are as embedded into London’s history as fry-ups and phone-boxes. As one of the few remaining London markets to resist the landslide of gentrification in the east end, Ridley is surrounded on all sides by the deconstructed chic of Dalston’s ubiquitous hipster bars and cafés. A few years ago, the area’s cheap rents drew in students and artists, who in turn were followed by suits waving chequebooks. The dichotomy of rich and poor in the area now is paradigmatic of many cities. In one respect the market’s success is dependent on the gentrification plaguing it, as brunching flâneurs pass through to pick up ackee and saltfish on a late afternoon.

London

A Dalston Anatomy by Lorenzo Vitturi

Gentrification

London

Still Life Cycle At the same time, however, rising rents nip at the heels of stallholders, and few are secure in their plot. It’s this sinister tremor of gentrification amidst the unique amalgamation of cultures that’s the subject of Italian-born photographer Lorenzo Vitturi’s work. Collecting the discarded fruit and vegetables left behind by stallholders at the end of the day, Vitturi experiments in treating them with pigments, chalks, and dyes, before building the decaying matter into volatile sculptures to photograph in his studio. The resulting images, collected under the title Dalston Anatomy, are a testament to the perpetual pull of the urban market. It echos the Dutch masters of the 17th century, although God knows what Johannes Vermeer and Willem Kalf would have made of Vitturi’s uniquely Londonian references, blended with Creole spices and feasting flies. It’s a far cry from

a rich oak table decked out with fine silverware, but perhaps the common thread of market culture is stronger than it first seems. Markets nourish more than just the mouths that eat from them, an idea that Vitturi seems to draw on. In the context of an area struggling to stay on its feet as the rug is pulled out from under it, the fragility of Viturri’s vibrant but decomposing sculptures is unnervingly apt. Still, visit Ridley Road after the sun has gone down and you’ll be met with another take on the situation. The stalls may have been dismantled and the streets swept with acrid water, but the lingering perfume of discarded fish heads and rotting plantain form the foundation on which the capital’s cultural home is built. Take away the tarmac, and the stalls are sure to re-erect themselves elsewhere, and without a doubt, the artists will follow.

Social Network Visual Art

The opening credits of Live from 1980s underground music scene Frieze Art Fair’s this is LuckyPDF sprung up and fizzled out in squats TV feature low-fi fireworks explodlike the Peckham Dolehouse. ing to what sounds like a digital From the beginning, they have glass harp. Then, a man in a tomato been united by an interest in mass suit holding a microphone as fluffy media and collective creation. as a Sesame Street character begins LuckyPDF is a “journalist film hosting a television program of crew for art projects,” engineering interviews, music, art performances, “capsules or display solutions for and video segments, on a stage other people’s content,” says Early. covered with metal scaffolding, clear One of the group’s early successes was in 2010, when they plastic sheets, and televisions. Such is the work of LuckyPDF, an art produced From LuckyPDFTV this collective known for connecting is Auto Italia LIVE as a five-part variety television show, broadtheir expansive pool of artist friends cast live online and performed for a through television programming for live and online audiences. pseudo-studio audience. The following year, they went even bigger: at It’s core members – James the 2011 Frieze Art Fair, they united Early, John Hill, Oliver Hogan, and Yuri Pattison – live within a 50 artists (including the aforementioned tomato man) for daily shows mile of each other in the southeast London neighbourhood of that were streamed online over the Peckham,now “kind of a new cenduration of the five-day event. tre for contemporary art” in the Although video has been Luckycity, according to Hill, where a late PDF’s medium of choice, they’ve

London

Lee Marshall on the journalism art project that is LuckyPDF

S/S 2013 Photography by Oskar Proctor James Early, Yuri Pattison, Ollie Hogan, and John Hill. LuckyPDF Important Portrait (2013) by Jeremy Bailey (Original Photography: Stefan Giorgiou)

Visual Art

moved in and out of other art practices. In 2013, they released a fashion line printed with digitally scavenged and photoshopped designs. In the year prior, they established The School of Global Art, a serious and sardonic digital platform for connecting and educating artists. It’s dormant now, but LuckyPDFis still benefiting from the student cards: “On the last trip, we got a student concession pass to the Acropolis,” says Early. When I reach Early and Hill on Skype in early autumn, the two and Hogan have recently returned from a trip to Istanbul, Athens, Kiev, Warsaw, Berlin, and Rotterdam. Together, they were at work on a film commission for the Hayward Gallery exhibition Mirrorcity, which showcases a variety of London artists. (Pattison had been busy organizing a solo show called Free Traveller at London’s Cell Project Space.)

Skype-ing into Hill’s plantlined living room, backlit by a big window, the pair are assembling the film, due in three days. In every European city they visited, they interviewed artists who were previously based in London, asking each to reflect on what it means to be a London artist in the digital age. The film was screened inside a modified Volkswagen van parked outside the gallery and later will appear online. LuckyPDF’s recent romp through Europe helped them see London from a remote, outsider perspective. They asked friends and fellow artists about the necessary conditions to make art, but the conversational interviews led them to question what the necessary conditions are to call a place home. “Location is immaterial if you’re able to participate in the global dialogue,” says Early. “I think for the most part we prioritizemaintaining

London

Barbican Project Featuring Phillip Li and Eddie Peake Photography by Joseph Popper

London

Social Network social relations over creating a sort of perfect studio environment.” With this project and others, they work fluidly together without pigeonholing themselves in specific roles. Rather, they explore a variety of responsibilities as artists, directors, producers, publicists, party planners, and designers. What stays the same for Lucky-PDF is their outlook on the artistic process and dissemination. For the collective, the acts of making work and engaging audiences are art as much as the visual products they create. They see other artists, who participate (whether it’s by designing a set, performing, or being interviewed) as the primary audience. Audiences who attend the performance, taping, or gallery are secondary. I think, too, there is a third audience: anyone who tunes in online later. Each audience layer is further removed from the

Frieze Project Daniel Swan for LuckyPDFTV Frieze Projects 2011

participatory element that characterizes a lot of LuckyPDF’s work: they want audiences to take responsibility and risks, to involve themselves in the product, to coauthor the art. “We never would suggest that what we do is particularly difficult to do. It’s almost like we’re just offering suggestions for what other people can do,” says Hill. Browsing their monochromatic website from my Montreal apartment, I fall in the distant third category. What I know is that, talking to Early and Hill, I want to be implicated in the conversation. So I repeat the question they asked artists for the Hayward project: “For you, what’s necessary to call a place home?” It’s quiet for a moment. When Hill answers it’s like he’s describing one of their live broadcasts. “It’s like a fertile place for new things to happen,” he says.

Music

By Max Mertens PC Music’s unique brand of saccharine hyper-pop music manages to both entertain and confound it’s listeners Who’s SOPHIE? That was the question on the lips of music journalists and a subsection of electronic music fans last summer when the mysterious British producer’s track “Lemonade” first appeared online.Clocking in at under two minutes, the song at first comes off as more of a halffinished demo than a fully-realized idea; a track that you might accidentally stumble upon while exploring the murky depths of SoundCloud. Over a bed of fizzing

pops and aggressive synth stabs, a helium-pitched voice thirsts for the titular beverage like a funhouse mirror-warped “I Want Candy.” The song’s B-side “Hard” features clanging percussion and a chirpy voice repeating vague, possibly bondage-themed lyrics (“Latex gloves, I get so hard”). After the track was released by Glasgow label Numbers in 2014, rumours about the creator’s identity began circulating almost immediately. Was SOPHIE a man?

London

PC Rated

Hannah Diamond images by Diamond Wright QT Energy Elixir & Tielsie/Palette by Kim Laughton All other images by PC Music

PC Rated primarily reside in London, their collaborators and influences stretch to all corners of the world – from Brooklyn lofts (prolific producer Maxo) to Korean shopping malls (K-Pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu). Unlike other London-based labels at the vanguard of non-mainstream electronic music – Tri-Angle, Warp, Young Turks, etc. – PC Music feels more like an autonomous collective that exists on AOL chatrooms and GeoCities pages than something from the physical realm.

soundtracks to more straightforward house, made by acts with names like GFOTY (which stands for “Girlfriend of the Year”), Hannah Diamond, and Kane West, tonguein-cheek references and commentary on consumerism, the internet, and pop culture. There’s a sense of playfulness to the releases mirrored in their artwork – bright graphics of waterslides, makeup palettes, and soda drink cans – created by artists including Simon Whybray and Kim Laughton. While these artists

While anonymity in music (and especially in electronic music – look no further than British producers Burial and Zomby) is nothing new, Cook’s reluctance to do interviews and the artists’ decisions to operate under aliases has created an aura of mystery. The best example of this is found in “Hey QT,” a collaboration between Cook and SOPHIE, featuring a mysterious individual known as QT. Teased as a 30-second snippet, it instantly became PC Music’s most divisive

London

Woman? Daft Punk-esque robot duo? Early live appearances only added to the mystery, as the producer preferred to send a drag queen stand-in – a clever or infuriating troll, depending on who you asked. Eventually details leaked out that SOPHIE is associated with PC Music, a label started by the London producer A.G. Cook in late 2013, and which grew from his early “pseudolabel” Gamesonite. Music associated with Cook ranges from saccharine chiptune pop to electronic arcade

Music track, with the song frequently being compared to AQUA’s chart-topping smash “Barbie Girl” because of its high-pitched vocals. Online, theories about QT’s identity have ranged from the believable (other members of PC Music) to the ludicrous (EDM superstar Skrillex). After correspondence to PC Music goes unanswered, I’m surprised when I get an email from QT and SOPHIE’s manager saying the former would agree to an email interview. QT’s responses come off as playful, thoughtful, and slightly oblique. He or she signs messages with the name Quinn, two clouds and a shoe emoji. QT doesn’t consider themselves an artist (“I’m more focused on making a product that can offer people something more generous than expressing my feelings”) and, not surprisingly, deflects questions about the label’s secretive nature. Case in point: when asked to describe the room where “Hey QT” was recorded, Quinn responds thusly: “We first had a meeting in A.G.’s bedroom where we wrote the words and played with some sounds and there were cuddly toys everywhere. The song was recorded in SOPHIE’s studio which is all glass and filled with plastic flowers and this special mister that emits a kind of lavender patchouli scent. When they first played the final product for me we were all dancing

with a strobe light in the studio.” QT debuted “Hey QT” last August at a Los Angeles Boiler Room, the live/online music series that started in London warehouses in 2010 and now takes place at venues around the world. As the song’s opening notes play, a spotlight shines to reveal an orange-haired model wearing a white latex crop-top and skirt walking down a runway, eventually sitting down on a chaise lounge and flipping through a magazine. The following nine minutes sees the model dancing

while lip-syncing to the song’s pitched-up call-and-response lyrics (“Hey QT?” “Yeah!”), with flashing lights and 3D projections of a can of Red Bull-like energy beverage called QT Energy Elixir. It’s part commercial jingle for a product that doesn’t exist, part performance art, and elicits a mostly bewildered reaction from the viewers watching online and commenting in Boiler Room’s chatroom. While “Hey QT” and PC Music draw on elements from established

PC Rated genres – bubblegum pop, happy hardcore, trance, etc. – there’s a futuristic quality to the end product. When asked to imagine their dream nightclub, QT writes, “It would be almost like the inside of a glass prism. Light would come through the walls and create warming sensations. It might sound more like vibrations than music too. Only QT Energy Elixir available as refreshment of course!” Notice there’s no location given as to the whereabouts of this fantastical club.

In the world of PC Music, there’s no boundaries and no borders. In a rare interview with TANK magazine, Cook references a wide spectrum of influences, including American R&B singer Cassie, British pop group Scritti Politti’s 1985 album Cupid & Psyche 85, the Eurovision Song Contest, and Swedish producer Max Martin (the guru behind Britney’s “…Baby One More Time,” Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” and other hits). He says the label’s title refers to the computer as

a tool not just for making electronic music but “for making amateur music that is also potentially very slick, where the difference between bedroom and professional studio production can be very ambiguous.” “What interests me about pop music and commercial imagery in the first place is that it has the potential to be overwhelming, extravagant and banal all at the same time,” he says. The allure of PC Music is that its acts walk the tightrope between low and highbrow art (or, to quote fictitious character David St. Hubbins in the 1984 rock music mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever”). Music journalists and Twitter armchair critics have tripped over themselves to praise the label (“The most compelling pop music in recent memory” - FACT) or dismiss as flash-in-the-pan internet joke (“Ear-splitting squeak ’n’ bass” - The Quietus) in equal measure, referencing certain acts’ infatuation with the Japanese concept of kawaii (“cute”) or painting the 24-yearold Cook as an elusive Svengali. But many of their write-ups suffer from over-analyzation. The charm of PC Music lies in its members’ completely non-ironic appreciation of pop music, the ability to not take themselves too seriously and the knowledge that music doesn’t need to be overcomplicated to be compelling.

Fashion

Vivienne Westwood, whose clothing designs spawned the amorphous cultural blob known as punk, is the most influential British fashion designer of the last century. By Isabel Slone Illustrations by Emi Ueoka When Vivienne Westwood was five years old, she saw a picture depicting the cruxifiction of Jesus hanging on her Grandmother’s wall. Upset and horrified by this Draconian form of punishment, she immediately decided to become “Derbyshire’s only five-year-old freedom fighter! Dedicated to opposing persecution!” Since this early incident, Westwood hasn’t stopped questioning authority.During the 1970s, her bondage-inspired clothing designs spawned the amorphous cultural blob known as punk. Now at 73, Westwood is an anarchic granny with a buzz cut who manages to run a global luxury brand empire while telling people not buy clothes. (Her motto: “Buy less. Buy well. Make it last.”) Her dedication and devotion to fight for what she believes in – be it chaos or climate change – has made her one of the most important figures in British history spanning the last two centuries.

London

Londonʼs last living punk

Westwood has always been outspoken about her politics, but now she’s opening up in a different way with the release of her new autobiography, co-written with Ian Kelly. The story of the birth of punk is familiar, but it’s a thrill to finally hear it all in Westwood’s own words. “There was no punk before me and Malcolm [McLaren],” says Westwood. “And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast.” Born Vivienne Isabel Swire in 1941, she was raised in the North of England during the Second World War and learned that “clothes were politics long before ‘fashion.’” Tight rations affected the number of pockets and amount of elastic that could be sewn into garments during the war and Westwood grew up entrenched in the “make do and mend” mentality that defined her generation. Westwood acquired her famous, sweeping surname upon marrying her first husband Derek Westwood in 1962 when she was only 21 – but she truly became Vivienne Westwood upon meeting Malcolm McLaren in 1965. At the time, Westwood was a 24-year-old divorced schoolteacher and mother of one; McLaren was a 17-year-old art school contrarian who hated The Beatles. Westwood’s younger brother Gordon, who introduced the pair, describes him as a total freak who “put talcum powder on his face to accentuate his paleness.”

McLaren was a naïve kid with grandiose ideas pilfered from his art school education. “Even though I knew he was crazy, I wanted to find out more about him,” says Westwood. McLaren lost his virginity to Westwood, and soon they embarked (reluctantly, according to Westwood) upon a relationship that would change the course of fashion and music forever. Some context: Britain in the 1970swas in the economic dumpster. Morrissey recalled growing up post-war Britain as each day being “Kafkaesque in its nightmare.” As manufacturing production moved offshore, thousands of jobs were simply eliminated and unemployment rested at an all-time high of 5 per cent. The country was blighted by an energy crisis, a stock market crash, and numerous worker’s strikes, not to metion firsthand accounts of the gory conflictin Vietnam were waking a generation up to the atrocities of

London

Fashion

London

London’s last living punk war. Most young people had no jobs, no money, and no prospects, and were extremely pissed off about it. “I was so upset with what was going on in the world,” Westwood told Vogue in 2012. “I just couldn’t stand the idea of people being tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.” Instead of complacency, Westwood took the word “destroy” and made it her apothegm. She and McLaren made a batch of t-shirts to sell at a Chuck Berry and Gary Glitter concert at Wembley stadium in 1971, but the product didn’t move so she destroyed the shirts by ripping holes, embellishing them with studs, and refashioning them into knickers. “I made clothes that looked like ruins,” says Westwood. “I created something new by destroying the old. I did not see myself as a fashion designer but as someone who wanted to confront the rotten status quo through the way

I dressed and dressed others.” Later that year, Westwood and McLaren opened a shop together at 430 King’s Road in what is now London’s posh Chelsea district, but at the time was considered a bit out of the way. The area hadn’t yet gentrified and remnants of ʼ60s counterculture were scattered around. The shop, called Let it Rock, sold only vintage rock ‘n’ roll records at first, but soon branched out into Westwood’s designs. “The shop had more incarnations than Shirley MacLaine,” remembers Gene Krell, owner of Granny Takes a Trip, a shop located just down the road. Whenever McLaren got bored, he’d find a new forgotten subculture to purloin from. After the rockabilly phase, the shop was remodeled into the more confrontational Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, which sold t-shirts emblazoned with Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto and tank tops spelling out the word “ROCK” in dried-out chicken bones. In 1974, the shop was renamed SEX

and began to sell bondage gear, rubber dresses, and t-shirts embellished with chains, studs, and nipple zips. McLaren’s wacky ideas made him creative director of the partnership, but Vivienne was the disciplined workhorse who made it all happen. The clientele at SEX were a mix of punk kids and perverts, and the shop was one of the more welcoming spots in London. Krell remembers, “We had a boy come in with no feet. I remember him coming in and he had these black-leather half-legs covered in gold studs and he really struggled. That kid came out of Vivienne’s shop and he felt special and cool and accepted.” Of course, not everyone was so welcoming. Jordan, a shopgirl at SEX whose rubber dresses, seethrough underwear and Cleopatra eyeliner made her a poster girl for punk, was offered her own first class carriage on the train from Sussex to London to keep her scandalous outfit from disturbing other passengers. The shop itself was also a target for the local skinheads who made great

sport out of smashing the windows. While nipple zips seem tame by today’s standards, some of the clothing sold at SEX was still pretty horrifying. In a spectacularly un-PC move, the duo incorporated swastikas and inspiration from Nazi uniforms in their designs. McLaren explained it as the younger generation rejecting the taboos of the older generation. “We wanted to appropriate the swastika for ourselves. We decided that we liked certain icons from the past and wanted to reinvent them,” he said in a 2007 interview, ignoring the painful memories of genocide the icons tend to evoke. Then again, punk wasn’t exactly known for its reverence of tradition. The great coup of McLaren’s career was putting together the Sex Pistols, who were all just kids who regularly hung out at 430 King’s Road. The Sex Pistols sang about Anarchy in the UK, spit on their audience, and unleashed a stream of profanity during a live television interview with conservative talk show host Bill Grundy. The Pistols’ were always

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Fashion decked out in Westwood’s designs – band members took clothes from the shop thinking they were free, but McLaren secretly deducted the cost from their royalties. The Sex Pistols were a great marketing tactic for Westwood’s clothes. At the time, McLaren’s business motto was “Sell. Shock. And wait for the column inches to induce more sales.” After years of McLaren’s cultural vampirism, ironically the subculture he and Westwood had created from scratch was co-opted too. In 1977, Zandra Rhodes, another British fashion designer, produced a punkinfluenced collection, and copycat stores like BOY London opened up to capitalize on SEX’s appeal. While punk was dying a slow, suffocating death, Westwood’s career was flourishing. In 1981, the duo went their separate ways so McLaren could focus on music, and Westwood on fashion. While their collaboration amounted to a great deal of professional success, on a personal level it was extremely toxic. McLaren made Westwood cry on a daily basis with his raving jealousy, until “there were no more tears left,” says Westwood. ‟I haven’t cried properly since.” “I had decided quite consciously to be a designer. To do a show, and also to look at the past, go into history and be romantic,” she says. Westwood’s experimental designs became less about destruction and more about

subverting tiresome clichés with a dirty sense of humour; she designed Adam and Eve leggings with a fig leaf on the crotch, and dresses with cleavage so extreme, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1800s. In 2004, London’s Victoria & Albert Museum mounted a retrospective of Westwood’s career. In 2013, less than a decade after refusing to host the show because Westwood was “still alive” – the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted “Punk: From Chaos to Couture,” edifying the influence of punk on the fashion establishment. The exhibition was apparently atrocious. Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at the New Yorker, told The New Inquiry; “It [looked] like two interns got Wikipedia out and put it together in an hour.” Even if such a gross display of misunderstanding means that punk is dead, Dame Vivienne Westwood – who was knighted in 2006 for her “contributions to fashion” – is not. “I don’t think so much grief was caused to so many people by so few t-shirts before – or since,” recounts the late Nils Stevenson, one-time collaborator with McLaren. Westwood continues to remain interesting and relevant in an industry known for discarding figureheads like last season’s fabric scraps. She continues to sell clothes, shock people, and to date, the column inches are still adding up.

Brown Throughout her 12-year music career, VV Brown has weathered more than her share of artistic ups and downs. At 18, she was scouted at an audition for the music television show VH1 Divas and signed a development deal with a major label. She received a six-figure advance and recorded in LA studios along side Kanye West and John Legend, but the album never saw the light of day. Then, back in London a few years later, she was “rediscovered” by Island Records, and again tapped to become a major pop star. Released in 2009, Travelling Like the Light was a flash in the pan. But then came another ascent: in 2013, she released Samson and Delilah independently, a

180 degree turn aesthetically and sonically from her previous pop releases. Critics called it a “Yeezus-level departure” and drew comparisons to Janelle Monae and Annie Lennox, though her inspiration, she says, are acts like The Knife and The xx. Cold, sharply produced, and restrained, the album announced a shift from coddled pop star to an independent, forceful artist. Her next release is due spring 2015. Now Brown writes pop songs for other musicians while continuing to pursue her own voice. I met her last year in East London when I stayed with her roommate, and we developed a friendship over sneaky cigarettes and very bad wine.

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Interview by Jade Blair

VV Brown 12-bedroom house for 250,000 quid, and only an hour and half away.

Jade Well, I’ve been recording. It’s started. VV Already? It felt like we were just talking! Jade I’ll ask a more journalist-style question. So, what’s the deal with London? VV [Laughs] Is that really a question? Jade Will you answer it? If you’ll answer it then it’s a question. VV Okay. London is a great city. It’s aggressive. One of the best cities in the world. I love how multicultural it is. I love the history and that there is new architecture on top of old architecture, and the landscapes. I’m worried about the gentrification. All the artists – all the people who aren’t from the upper classes – are being pushed out, which is a shame because London has always been a place of deep contrast – different statuses and cultures – and now it’s becoming this boring city of just one type of person, one type of social group. People who can’t afford it are moving out to the suburbs, and for the artists to Margate or Belin. Margate is by the sea and it’s where Tracy Emin was born. The houses are so cheap – you can get a

Jade Could it get so bad you’d leave? VV Yeah. When I have children, I don’t want to raise them in London. I was born in the countryside, so I’ve had this upbringing of cows, sheep, and fields. I moved to London sort of hating where I came from and never wanting to go back. But, as I get older I find myself appreciating that sort of lifestyle. Jade You’re from Northhamptonshire, right? VV Yeah, it’s where Princess Diana is from. Jade Really? Did you know her? VV Ha, no! My mum and dad knew her dad. Jade Really? VV Honestly. My mum and dad run a school that is on the border of Althorp, and Althorp Manor is where Princess Diana’s parents are from. So my mum and dad went to their house once for a village dinner. Like, I know England isn’t perfect. It’s pretty racist. So to have my parents invited – two black people who came from Jamaica and living in the middle of this countryside village – it was weird. Mum and dad still have the wine they were given, they haven’t opened it. Jade Does it feel like you live in a kingdom when something like that happens? VV [Laughs] No, it doesn’t feel like a kingdom, even when I’ve met Prince

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Jade How are you? VV I’m good! I’m going to LA to work with the producers Jean Baptiste and Toby Gads, who wrote ‟Halo” for Beyonce – just a load of those “behind the scenes” guys. My management has been saying, “Look, we want to make you the next Sia. You have to be writing!” So, when do we start the interview?

Interview

I ’ L L A LWAY S B E

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T RY I N G T O S I T AT T H E C O O L TA B L E . L O O K AT M E P L AY I N G T H E SMALLEST VIOLIN IN THE WORLD.

VV Brown that will hopefully be featured on one of the tracks. And early Dizzee Rascal.

Jade – Did a not great job of it at times – VV Not a perfect job, no. But because of it we now have this really cool country that’s so mixed. But a kingdom? Nah. Jade What was it like to leave a major label and go out on your own? VV When you are signed to a big label and you are young, it’s so easy to just plod along and be obedient. There’s the money and attention and pressure. I wasn’t really thinking creatively. It has been the most liberating transition to make music that I’m proud of. This new record is establishing me as an album artist, people buying into a concept and a body of work. Fans now don’t just know the single, they know track 7 on the record, which is some weird bleepy track. It’s a much better feeling doing it this way. I’m a late bloomer. I finally figured out what I want to do and who I am. Jade Samson and Delilah was very cold and restrained. Is the record you’re working on now in this same vein? VV The sound I’ve made for the new album is still electronic, still has ethereal elements, but now with a strong UK sound. I’ve been listening to a lot of grime music, hardcore rap and that aggressive element of UK Hip Hop. MC Sketcher. A female artist called Bella Gotti (formerly Nolay)

Jade You performed in Berlin last year. What did you think of it? VV Yes, at Berghain with Ghost Poet! I have a lot of work to do before electronic artists in that world take me seriously. So, to be asked to perform there, the mecca of electronic music in Europe, was the best experience. The crowd was rammed, the speakers were massive, and the sound was so precise. The place was incredible! They had sex dungeons with chairs where you sort of strap your legs apart. Don’t ask me what you do on that – have sex? Jade Probably have sex. VV [Laughs] It was an amazing experience. A great city. I could imagine living there – it’s so cheap. So many London artists already live there. Jade So, you’re making electronic music as VV Brown, and writing pop music for other artists. Whose career do you aspire to? VV Björk is somebody who I look up to, but I don’t relate to her career cause she’s been Björk since the beginning. I relate to Sia a lot, she had a very similar up and down journey to me, and she does lots of different things. She gives me hope that I can be that sort of artist who can survive and still release music that people are interested in. Robyn, too: from something more controlled to something more independent. I’ve been in this business for 12 years. I haven’t done anything else but chase whatever this is. It’s taken me 12 years to

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Philip or whatever. But my parents came here in the ’50s. We don’t see England as a kingdom, we see it as a place that colonized the world and –

Interview find peace and it is so far away from what I thought I wanted when I was 20. I thought that I’d sell a million records, have a house in LA, and have loads of money. Now I’m so happy with my cat, and my humble little home, and all of these projects.

Any guy who asks patronizing questions – I’ll just look them right in the eye and tell them what’s what.

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Jade I know you don’t love that part of your life anymore but I think that your earlier releases are solid pop songs. VV Aw. I think I always worry that I’m not cool. It’s like being at school or something, like, I’ll always be that nerdy kid who wants to be cool. Jade Trying to get a seat at the popular table – VV I’ll always be trying to sit at the cool table. Look at me playing the smallest violin in the world. Jade You realize we just found the pull-quote for the magazine, right? “I’m still not cool” and you’re all dressed up and posing. VV [Laughs] A picture of me in a cafeteria with sandwiches. Jade Have you found it tough? I have some friends who make electronic music, some quote-unquote cool people, and it’s a boys club to a certain extent. It’s men who need to know the technical gear, and the difference between an 808 and a 303 and which MOOG does what. Is it intimidating? VV No, I love it! I’m ballsy though. If someone challenges me I am all for it. I’ve been in the business for a long time, and you have to understand logic, and gear, and tech, and I know all about that.

Jade So, what happened when you signed your first major and then left? VV Well, I signed my first deal when I was 18, at Interscope. Then I got dropped when I was 22. And then I lived in a squat. And then I worked my way back up and got signed again when I was 24. And then I left. Jade You lived in a squat? VV It was in Highams Park, which is East London. It sounds cooler than it is, but it was actually my aunt’s dilapidated place. When I say a squat I mean a house that’s completely disgusting and wrecked. It wasn’t an art squat. There was no plumbing, no stove. I went on a date with this guy and I took him back to my place a few dates in, and in the morning both of us had to wash out of a red bucket. Jade So when you were in LA was Jimmy Iovine (the CEO of Interscope) like, “We’re gonna make you a star VV!” VV Yeah. Exactly that. [Laughs] It didn’t happen. I remember hanging out with Kanye West before he was Kanye West. And John Legend. It was surreal, seeing big stars in the studio I was amongst. That, and people in my ear like, “You’re gonna be famous.” I’ve got stories and secrets for days. I could write a book. Jade Can I get a secret? VV No.

VV Brown

Jade Any final remarks on London? VV I love London. London has given me so much. I feel like I’m giving a speech. Thank you so much LONDON for accepting me and raising me! London is London. It’s an aggressive animal and it’s changing everyday. And I can’t tame it, so I’ll probably move to the countryside and garden. But London has an edge that nowhere else has. Jade What do you mean by an edge, though – because New York, Berlin, or Montreal are edgy. What makes London special? VV In London there’s this weird cocktail of being proud of your culture and also

a real pride of being British. When those two things come together, it creates real cultural chemistry. There’s so much crosspollination going on. And you get some weird flowers, boy. So as someone who is black and British, I’m a product of what Britain stands for now. I’m the New Britain. Jade That’s also our pull-quote. We did it! We have two. VV [Laughing] Oh my god, that sounds so egotistical. “I’m the New Britain.” Jade No, I know what you mean, you don’t mean I, VV Brown, am the nexus of all things new and British, you mean you are representative of a new multicultural, inclusive, post-colonial city. VV Absolutely. Post-colonial. I’m the New Britain. Jade Yeah! VV Yeah! Jade I think we nailed it! VV [VV flashes the camera and laughs] Oh my god is this going online? Are you TMZing me? Jade I told you, I’m recording! “VV Brown, drunk on power, declares herself the New Britain and flashes intrepid reporter.” VV [Laughs and flashes the camera again)] Sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that. Jade You have a fantastic set of breasts. VV Haha, thank you! I don’t know why the hell I did that!

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Jade Ugh, fine. VV I’ll say this. A lot of artists come in and their ego is massaged. You’re 18 and you’re in this world and you don’t know about the real world. I remember coming back from LA and being completely delusional about life. I got addicted to sleeping pills for a long time, you know. It fucked me up. I think fame is evil. You put someone up on a pedestal that high, because they are really pretty and they take selfies all day? You go to a red carpet event, do a photo shoot, schmooze with the paparazzi. Some exec telling you, “Make sure you work the room. Dress this way, make sure you look really sexy, and you need to lose weight.” And if you don’t lose the weight, you’re in trouble. People who are successful, a lot of the time they say that they’ve made sacrifices, but the truth is they’ve sacrificed themselves. I’m not sacrificing myself like that. Not anymore.

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I’M A PRODUCT OF W H AT B R I TA I N S TA N D S F O R N O W. I ’ M T H E N E W B R I TA I N .

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Amelia model Amelia Hansson (Union Models) stylist Alessandra Arzani make-up & hair by Shelley Blaze 50

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photography, art & art direction by Sarah Blais & Spencer Judge

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neckless OBSCURE REBELLION bra ANNE VAN DEN BOOGAARD trousers OBSCURE REBELLION

fur coat JOHANNE DINDLER skirt & top OBSCURE REBELLION

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the capital city. For the region, see London (region). For the historic city and financial district within London, see City of London. For other uses, see London (disambiguation).Coordinates: 51°30 26N 0°739 W Sovereign state United KingdomCountry England Region LondonAdministrative area Greater LondonCeremonial counties City & Greater LondonDistricts City & 32 boroughs Settled by Romans. 43 AD (as Londinium)Government • Body Greater London Authority • Legislature London Assembly • Mayor Boris Johnson • London Assembly 14 constituencies • UK Parliament 74 constituencies • European Parliament London constituencyArea • Region 606.95 sq mi(1,572.00 km2) • Urban671.0 sq mi (1,737.9 km2) • Metro 3,236.31 sq mi (8,382.00 km2)Elevation[1] 115 ft (35 m)Population (2013)• Region 8,416,535 • Density 13,870/sq mi (5,354/km2) • Urban 9,787,426 • Metro 13,614,409Demonym Londoner Time zoneGMT (UTC) Summer (DST) BST (UTC+1)Postcode areas 22 postcodes Area code(s) 9 area codes[show]GeoTLD.londonWebsite london.gov.ukLondon is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. It is the most populous city in the United Kingdom with a metropolitan area of over 13 million inhabitants. Standing on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going

back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1.12-square-mile (2.9km2) mediaeval boundaries and in 2011 had a resident population of 7,375, making it the smallest city in England. Since at least the 19th century, the term London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the Greater London administrative area (coterminous with the London region), governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is one of the world's leading financial centres and has the fifth-or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world depending on measurement. London is a world cultural capital. It is the world's most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the world's largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe.[24] In 2012, London became the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.

Berlin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the capital of Germany. For other uses, see Berlin (disambiguation). BerlinState of GermanyClockwise: Charlottenburg Palace, Fernsehturm Berlin, Reichstag building, Berlin Cathedral, Alte Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate. Clockwise: Charlottenburg Palace, Fernsehturm Berlin, Reichstag building, Berlin Cathedral, Alte Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate. Flag of BerlinFlag Coat of arms of BerlinCoat of armsLocation within European Union and GermanyLocation within European Union and GermanyCoordinates: 52°31′N 13°23′E Coordinates: 52°31′N 13°23′E Country GermanyGovernment • Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) • Governing parties SPD / CDU • Votes in Bundesrat 4 (of 69)Area • City 891.85 km2 (344.35 sq mi)Elevation 34 m (112 ft) Population (December 2013)[1] • City 3,517,424 • Density 3,900/km2 (10,000/sq mi)Time zone CET (UTC+1) • Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)Postal code(s) 10115–14199Area code(s) 030ISO 3166 code DE-BEVehicle registration B GDP/ Nominal €109.2 billion (2013) NUTS Region DE Website berlin.deBerlin (/bərˈlɪn/; German pronunciation: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn]

(listen) is the capital city of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.5 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany on the River Spree, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 4.5 million residents from over 180 nations Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes. First documented in the 13th century, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871– 1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–33) and the Third Reich (1933–45). Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city was divided; East Berlin became the capital of East Germany while West Berlin became a de facto West German exclave, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961–1989). Following

Roberta photography Phillip Koll styling Madeleine Machold model Roberta from Viva Models

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Work Wear In the German Democratic Republic, simple clothing matched the communist ethos â&#x20AC;&#x201C; except in the underground fashion scene that blossomed in East Berlin

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by Sofia Luu

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Fashion, for the most part, is mostly a personal endeavour. But when Berlin was a city split into two, an important item on the Communist agenda was to strip all aspects of individuality and personal flair out of fashion in order to create an ideal East German citizen. While fashion might have been a capitalist invention, in East Germany, it was a communist obsession. The core of communist dressing was reduced to simplicity and practicality. East German clothing embodied the “ready to work” ethos to match the social, economic, and political goals of the state. The socialist woman wore clothes that were free of any notions of class, with supposed universal appeal. From the perspective of the East German government, the act of sewing one’s own clothes was not a hobby but a duty to further the success of East Germany. A woman making her own clothes was fulfilling a national responsibility, rather than an individual answer to the scarcity of clothes found in stores. Being “stylish” in East Germany went hand-in-hand with “work.” The dirndl – a traditional looking peasant dress – was idealized as the outfit in which to fulfill proletariat goals. However, the dirndl never quite caught on because it had been used in similar Nazi propaganda twenty years earlier. But there was a side of Berlin that rebelled against the utilitarian fashions issued by the state; one driven by creativity and flair. Marco Wilms’ documentary, Ein Traum in Erdbeerfolie, or Comrade Couture, takes a closer look

at the East Berlin counterculture that was heavily fueled by punk, New Wave, and goth. Wilms, a former model, was part of East Berlin̛ s underground fashion scene where designers would use anything they could put their hands on in order to create avant-garde designs. The subversive label Allerleirauh (All Kinds of Fur) was at the centre of this fashion counterculture. They showed their work at unofficial fashion shows that were chaotic and rebellious to the core, with models walking down the runway in ensembles crafted of leather and made to resemble birds. To the designers and enthusiasts who took part in the scene, it was simpler than wanting to defy the Communist agenda. “We didn’t want to be trapped in a cage. And because we were trapped, we took every possible freedom,” explained Frieda von Wild, one of its key members, to The Daily Beast in 2009. One of the more famous fashion characters to burst out of East Germany is Nina Hagen, the pinkhaired, rebellious pop singer. Hagen began her career with the band Automobil, whose biggest hit was “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” Photograph by Guenther Rubitzsch

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fabric that symbolized the freer West. These products could not be easily purchased in East Germany’s controlled shopping environment. What could not be found in stores or on the black market was created in true DIY style. However, the entire concept of making new clothes was nothing radical. “Make new from old” was a motto that had been entrenched in German culture since the First World War, where shortages were similar to what East Germans experienced. Women would create their own clothes using everything from old garments to rags and tablecloths, refashioning these textiles into new patchwork dresses (Flickenkleid). In an effort to help aid the whole DIY process, there were several East German fashion magazines that published patterns for clothes that you couldn’t find in store – like Sybille, the so-called “Vogue of East Germany.” The magazine, like Allerleirauh and the underground fashion scene, captured the sentiment that if you wanted to be fashionable in communist Germany, you had to take matters in your own hands.

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(“You forgot the colour in film”); a jibe at the sterile, grey aesthetic of the Communist state. Hagen left East Germany for West in 1976 with her family to join stepfather Wolf Biermann, a dissident singer-songwriter who had been expunged from the state. It was only after crossing over to the West that Hagen’s true style could reach full-bloom. The weirdness of Hagen’s music – her squeaky voice over synth beats – is matched only by her style; a cross between candy raver and punk, featuring wild hair colours, girlish accessories, and what might as well be the entire contents of a MAC counter on her face. (Hagen’s fashion sense went on to be the inspiration for Diane Lane’s teenage punk character in the movie Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.) Such wildness was largely moot back in mainstream East Germany. As simple as dressing communist might sound, the shopping experience in East Germany was bleak. Commodities were scarce, and what could be found on the racks of East Berlin department and clothing stores were quickly snatched up or marked up to a price point that no regular citizen could afford. For instance, the price of simply-made shoes was 60 per cent higher in East Germany for the same product that could be found in West German department stores. East Berliners got smart with how to find clothes they wanted to wear. They relied on personal networks and wordof-mouth alerts. Being resourceful was key to acquiring denim, the lusted after

Allerleirauh Dome Ostsee Breitformat Photograph by Sven Marquardt

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Wurst Why is currywurst, Berlin’s quintessential street food, so damn delicious?

by Kelli Korducki Illustration by Clay Hickson

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The assembly starts innocently enough: A perfectly serviceable pork sausage (boiled, fried, then sliced into medallions), gets served in a paper boat with a fork. But then it’s doused in something called Chillup, which is exactly what it sounds like – a condiment of last-resort. The sauce was trademarked in 1951 by Herta Heuwer, a German housewife who worked as a Trümmerfrau – literally, rubble woman – scrounging up building materials from debris to help reconstruct a war-ravaged Berlin. During the Berlin Blockade, she traded unspecified “spirits” (I like to imagine an earnest schnapps) for ketchup and Worcestershire sauce from the occupying British soldiers and mixed the two together with a secret combination of spices, et voila. Known colloquially as “curry ketchup,” the sauce isn’t totally dissimilar in colour or consistency from the acrid secretions of a pissed-off ladybug. It's flavour probably isn’t far off, either: vaguely sweet, a little tangy, irrefutably suspect. It’s tough to explain, then, how it manages to grow on you. How, for no rational reason, you find yourself licking its traces from the bottom of a white paper dish and considering a second order. Currywurst isn’t the most attractive or delicious of Berlin’s street foods, but it is the most quintessential. There is a museum dedicated to its history and city food tours built around sampling its hyper-regional variations. Anyone with the stomach for it is encouraged to compare the subtle nuances from stall to stall and

shop to shop. The bravest and boldest might even notice the softness of East Berlin’s currywurst sausage as compared with its Western counterparts because, in Communist days, DDR butchers couldn’t get their hands on enough casings. If currywurst tells us anything, it’s that holdovers hang on. At a cocktail party years ago, I had a conversation with a woman whose exact origins I can’t remember, but who spoke with an accent and looked expensive. Recently returned from a few weeks in Berlin, I was still new-lover smitten over the rough urban expanse I’d explored with the company of old friends, new friends, and a whole lot of pilsners; at the party, weeks later, I rhapsodized. I hadn’t been to Paris and frankly could do with or without. London didn’t light my fire one iota. But Berlin. “But...but Berlin is so ugly,” the chic woman sputtered, less judgemental than confused. Of all the places to visit in Europe, why choose one so resolutely un-grand? If you don’t get Berlin, you won’t get currywurst either. It’s an unpretty snack for an unpretty place, an emoticon shrug of a foodstuff invented at a moment of makedo motion. It hits the spot, even if you can’t put your finger on why. On June 20, 2013 – the 100th anniversary of Herta Heuwer’s birth – Google paid her the ultimate tribute with a Doodle in her honour. Hunks of illustrated sausage sit beside a neatly-drawn stack of fries, the Google logo rendered in a regal squirt of red.

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Kinderhook & Caracas I was introduced to Kinderhook & Caracas quite early into my move ʼ to Berlin. At the opening of Jesse Garcia’s ‘Trial & Error, the small room spilled over with an assortment of international patrons just as glasses overflowed with Aperol Spritz. The owners, Sol Calero and Christopher Kline – who named the space for their respective home towns – had opened up the back wall to reveal their attached studio apartment and welcomed guests with a warm familiarity and charm that I thought only loving grandmothers possessed. Through both the project space and their independent practices, the husband and wife duo are influential participants in Berlin’s art scene. Kline, whose work ranges from painting, textiles, and publishing, has also made a name for himself through his alter-ego’d music performances, particularly as the so-called “R&B dance hit machine,ˮ Hush Hush. Calero, who exudes a certain Latin-American joie de vivre through her colourful, politically charged art-spaces, has recently shown at galleries and fairs such as Frutta Gallery, Gillmeier Rech, and Frieze London. I returned to their apartment to find them, with no surprise, in the midst of yet another project; papers sorted and splayed all over the dining room floor. We sipped coffee and discussed the development of K&C and all things Berlin.

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Interview by Erin Reznick

Sol Calero, Salsa, installation view at Gillmeier Rech, Berlin, 2014. Photograph by Hans-Georg Gaul

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Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Noviembre, installation view at Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, 2014. Photograph by Trevor Good

Erin How did you end up in Berlin? Christopher Kline I guess I had a weird idea of what Berlin was. I thought it was going to be darker. I had this idea of Berlin in the ʼ80s; of like, Nick Cave playing and everyone is grey and depressed and listening to industrial music or something. I ran into a friend who had just left Berlin and he said, “You have to go, youʼd be the most industrious person there. Everyone just sleeps and parties.” So then I came and just stayed. Sol Calero For me it was a bit different – less romantic and more practical. I was living in Madrid doing my masterʼs. When I finished studying I applied for a grant to work for an artist here. I chose Berlin because the art scene was very different than in Spain. Spain is another world.

I thought it was going to be harder for me to develop my work in Madrid because there just wasn’t much going on. It was also the beginning of the Spanish recession, so it was the right moment to leave. Erin When did you open the project space? CK We opened three years ago in September 2011. We were making booklets with other artists that weren’t very curated but that got us into working with other people. Whenever we were working on our own projects, we tried to do something else that was more collaborative. Our friends lived in this space before us but ended up moving to the US. I don’t know that we would have started a space if we didn’t see this clear opportunity.

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Interview SC It was a mix of wanting to do something but not knowing what. We had an idea of wanting to build something together and we got so lucky because we needed to move and our friends had this space. Our initial idea was to start a press, but it ended up a project space. Erin How does the city influence you practice?

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SC My art practice has completely changed since I moved to the city. Being surrounded by so many artists and seeing many different parts of the art world teaches you a lot. It influences my understanding of art. CK In Berlin you have so much input and you have to filter it. You can meet one Italian artist, and suddenly from there you meet 10 Italian artists who have their own thing going on. Then you can meet a group of people who went to a particular school or a group of people from New York who have their own scene. It’s up to you to filter what’s good and bad, how you can learn from these scenes and who your work can speak to. SC There are many options. It’s harder in other cities because the gallery world can be so segregated. It’s less hierarchical here. CK In Paris I get the impression that [the gallery world] is very hard to break into. In Berlin you can bump into quite a famous gallerist at any shitty party. Or you can meet a good curator at Berghain or something.

Erin In recent years there has been an enormous infiltration of international artists. Has this changed Berlin’s art scene and market? CK I came to Berlin when people were trickling in. In the past three years or so, it seems as if floods of groups of people have been coming in. When I moved here, there were actually quite a lot of Canadians from the Vancouver core, but I didn’t have a group, I only had one friend. We didn’t dominate a scene. Now you can see fifteen friends from New York move here and start a little colony. You definitely see certain changes in the streets and neighbourhoods. SC You see it more in this city because it’s a new city. It started growing from the ʼ80s - the changes are quite visible. In Madrid, the urban planning is so different, you don’t have the opportunity to see it develop. You don’t notice it. Here there is more space. CK Berlin is a city that has been changing for over 100 years. There was the First World War, then there was the Second World War, then the wall went up, then there was the Cold War, then the wall came down and it’s just going to continue to develop like that. There are little vacuums of history with negatives and positives to every step. I don’t like how people are complaining that the city isn’t the way it used to be. When I moved here eight years ago, everyone said ‘Berlin is over. It’s OVER.’ No, not really. It’s a real place where people live and have real lives.

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Christopher Kline, O.K., installation view at Grimmuseum, Berlin, 2014.Â Photograph by Trevor Good

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Sol Calero, Salsa, installation view at Gillmeier Rech, Berlin, 2014. Photograph by Hans-Georg Gaul

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Michele Di Menna, Selections from the Artothek, installation view at Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, 2014.Â Photograph by Trevor Good

Marco Montiel-Soto, Distanz ohne Guayabo, installation view at Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, 2013.Â Photograph by Trevor Good

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Interview Erin Are there any local galleries that are exciting you at the moment? CK I think that the galleries I like are all hit or miss. They all have shows that I like and shows that I don’t like. The more exciting thing right now are the artist-run spaces or curator-run spaces.

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SC Like ours. [laughs] CK These can also be hit or miss but the intentions are very different. I don’t like to see young artists clamoring on top of each other to be represented by a gallery which is actually just a name with a reputation. Galleries have bad business models. They take risks no other businesses would and we see them fail after about five years. If artists are more in control of their own shows and production, it’s a more sustainable model. It’s great to work with galleries if you can, but you shouldn’t change your work to do so. I see a lot of people trying to fit in. SC I agree. I like a lot of galleries in Berlin - some of them have more cohesive programs than others but it’s really more about the artists. By running a project space, we don’t have that commercial exchange. The relationship that we establish with the artists and the audience is very different and it’s more exciting. Erin Both of your previous work, but particularly Sol’s, involves transforming existing spaces. Is this because you want to depart from the White Cube gallery norm?

SC I want to activate the space. My projects in the past year and a half have dealt with social spaces for immigrants and I’ve wanted to transmit that into the gallery. It’s also about being inclusive in my projects and integrating other people in my art practice. For me, the easiest way to do that was to turn the gallery into a social space where anything can happen. I can have installations where I paint the furniture or have a concert and other artists can be part of the project. It becomes a space for exchanging ideas or sharing a moment. For example, I invited Venezuelan artists to be a part of my Internet Café [installation] for Frieze. When you involve other artists, the creative process becomes so much richer because it’s more about the idea and not just about you. CK We are pretty playful and easy going but we take this so seriously that if we’re going to work on a project then we’re going to go all the way. We spend all of our money, we use all of our energy, and honestly almost lose our minds every single time. I think that the aesthetic of using the entire space also comes from this idea of working as hard as we can to take our vision all of the way. Erin Your work, both singularly and collaboratively, touches on notions of hometown culture and the identities, relationships and representations that they encompass. What motivates this exploration? CK The places that you come from

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Sol Calero, Caribbean Style, installation view at Museo Apparente, Napoli, 2014. Photograph by Danilo Donzelli

shapes the lens that see the world. The longer you’re away you start to realize how not only your lens is different, but you begin to notice the eccentricities of that place. In regards to Kinderhook & Caracas, we didn’t want a name that was in English, we wanted something international. It doesn’t change depending on the language. That’s why we don’t write it as Kinderhook and Caracas. It can be Kinderhook und Caracas or Kinderhook and Caracas because we included an ampersand.

in the Canary Islands. Our dream is to keep developing this space more into a practice. It’s not just showing exhibitions by artists.

Erin All obstacles aside, how would you like to see Kinderhook & Caracas develop?

SC Oh yes, we have bigger goals! We want to buy this beautiful farmhouse next to the beach and build it Kinderhook & Caracas into something that is more of an institution.

CK It would be great to show a project by a scientist or a project by a weaver. The Canary Islands is the clearest choice for us because [Sol’s] family lives there and we love it there. Everyone here wants to go there and everyone there wants to come here. So we need to start building an exchange between people and ideas and artwork.

SC We would like to open a residency

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Kinderhook & Caracas

Sol Calero, Salsa, installation view at Gillmeier Rech, Berlin, 2014. Photograph by Hans-Georg Gaul

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Art

t d s a F war r Fo

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From a living room project space to Berlin-Kreuzberg to its new digs in Schöneberg, Future Gallery is at the vanguard of digital art

Michael Ruiz came by his art world success in an unlikely way. As a philosophy student at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, he studied abroad for a semester in Prague. While there, he travelled, on a whim, to Berlin during his fall break. After just two weeks, he was hooked: drawn to the city’s vibrancy and developing art scene, Ruiz finished his studies, packed up his life in Austin, and moved to Berlin in 2007. Within a year he turned his living room into Future Gallery, an exhibition space that’s at the vanguard of digital art.

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Nicolas Pelzer, Custom Utility, Install view 2014

by Caoimhe Morgan-Feir

Fast Forward

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Metahaven Black Transparency March 20 - April 19, 2014 Transparent Camouflage, 2011-2013 WikiLeaks scarves and t-shirts Digital print on crêpe de chine, silkscreen on cotton, aluminum frames

Jon Rafman Gang Signs Sept. 13 – Oct. 11, 2014 Room Obscure, 2014 Jon Rafman, Oil and screen print on canvas 185 x 255 cm

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Brenna Murphy skymappr, 2012 HD video 2:58

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elemental~nanostrand, 2012 Inkjet print on coated cotton 100 x 150 cm

Jaakko Pallasvuo Rasta Medusa, 2013, Dye-sublimation print on canvas 120 x 80 cm Right: DO PAINT THE MEADOWS WITH DELIGHT, 2013 Dye-sublimation print on canvas 120 x 80 cm

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Jon Rafman, Nine Eyes of Google Street View, Ongoing

each other – and their audiences – in person. Through exhibition openings and events, he endeavoured to use the space to recreate and extend the sense of community that he had found with artists online. Future Gallery’s roster includes a slew of rising stars like Constant Dullaart, Brenna Murphy, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Nicolas Pelzer, and Jon Rafman, who became widely known for 9 Eyes, in which he exhibited surreal found images from Google Street View. Although the group of artists share a common interest in digital technologies, their respective approaches and missions diverge from there: the medium is not the message. Dullaart’s recent projects delve into data and information; Rafman riffs

Future Gallery came to be in 2008, a year marked by global recession and plummeting auction results. As a business strategy, this move had all the hallmarks of a bad idea, but Ruiz wasn’t concerned with dollars and cents. Instead, his mission was to show art that engaged with the internet and digital technologies. Future Gallery became an experiment in translating digital, web-based art into the physical realm. Ruiz asked himself, and gallery visitors: “What happens when you take Oliver Laric’s videos and put them in a space? What happens when you install Rafaël Rozendaal’s websites in a room?” Beyond championing digital art, Ruiz also had a social mission: giving these artists the chance to meet

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on art history, internet subcultures, and narrative structures; and Murphy creates sculptures and installations that explore decoration and ornamentation. These artists might be in conversation with one another, but they’re not trying to say the same thing. Ruiz has focused on nurturing artists working in new mediums, and his efforts have helped cohere the digital art movement. Ruiz’s early recognition of the niche was ahead of its time, but today, he says, “Digital art is art with a capital ‘A,’ not just a subcategory. It’s just art, and this is what we’re making right now. We don’t paint anymore, we print out images. We don’t sculpt, we 3-D print.” In 2011, Future Gallery graduated from its homey digs to a bricks and

mortar space in the stylish Schöneberg section of Berlin. As the gallery grew up, so have its artists. They’ve shifted away from ephemera and towards the realm of the physical. “[Our artists] stopped working solely online,” says Ruiz. “Their practices have evolved in a material way. Rafaël Rozendaal still makes websites, and Oliver Laric still posts videos online, as does Jon Rafman. They haven’t abandoned their online work entirely, but they are supplemented by other practices.” Of course, these additional practices still reflect their digital interests: Rafman’s recent sculptural installations, for example, replicate internet “troll caves,” the dirt-encrusted desks and seats of obsessive computer users. Even without these extensions into

Nicolas Pelzer, Custom Utility, Orthopedic reconstructions, 2014 Orthopedic pillows, satin, spray paint, pedestal 29 x 72 x 390 cm

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Jon Rafman, Nine Eyes of Google Street View, Ongoing

to name a few. In championing new methods of artistic production, Ruiz has also uncovered the holy grail of the art world: financial success and prestige. Last March, Future Gallery moved into a bigger space on Keithstraße (still in the Schöneberg section of Berlin), and they are considering expanding internationally in 2016, with Ruiz scoping out spaces in Mexico City and the United States. Meanwhile, his roster of artists continue to gather critical attention and, by extension, collectors. It’s all a very 21st century spin on New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl’s advice to young artists: You move to a city. You hang out in bars. You form a gang, turn it into a scene, and turn that into a movement.

sculpture, installation, and photography, the landscape for collecting digitallyfocused work has entirely changed since Future Gallery first opened. During the gallery’s nascence, Ruiz’s collector base was a relatively small group of international collectors who were experimental and internet-savvy. In the last couple of years, though, the market has exploded. Ruiz says the collector base has grown especially since the term “post-internet” entered artspeak – a term which, like the work of Future Gallery’s artists, refers the way that the internet is no longer novel, but an irrevocable aspect of social structures both on- and offline. Jon Rafman’s work, for one, can be found in the TD Bank Group Collection, the Getty Trust, and the Saatchi Collection,

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Nightlife

Europeʼs Capital of Cool Sometimes, even when youʼre dressed in all black and sporting an architectural haircut, you’re still not getting into Berghain

A few months after I moved to Berlin, I got a job walking babies. I put it this way because it’s how I always put it: I have struggled, it says, but not without a sense of humor. Now, I have to explain: the job involved pushing a stroller of twin 6-month-olds through the snow from 8 to 11 every morning for seven euros an hour. It was not horrible, but I quickly came to interpret it that way. The German capital is known for its ability to alienate, even in the sunshine, but this – no one in the streets, very cold, and approximately four hours of daylight, if you could call the redundant gray that doesn’t so much rise as appear in the winter “daylight.” As I was wondering whether I was doing my fingers permanent nerve damage, I knew my friends to be sleeping off nights spent in unclosing bars and clubs. Even if someone did speak to me, the way people do if you possess something cute in public, it was usually to say something like Aber du bist doch so jung…?, and I didn’t know enough German to respond. More than once, as I explained these logistics of making a living as “a freelance writer,” people told me that I was lucky to have a steady flow of under-the-table cash. Most of my friends were also English-speaking expats, and everyone was broke, albeit in a comfortable, par-for-the-course way. We’d moved here for all the reasons everyone talks about moving here, vaguely artistic and concretely financial: we knew it was a good place to be poor, though not quite good to be poor. Still, none of them seemed

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by Lauren Oyler Illustration by Ellie Andrews

Europeʼs Capital of Cool

When travel writers talk about Berlin, their go-to subjects are: 1) repeated historical tragedy; 2) “nightlife,” in that respectful order. “Nightlife” doesn’t signify so much here, since common practice is to get to a club by three or four in the morning and stay until seven, eight, nine, ten; the “Berlin: Europe’s Capital of Cool” trend pieces aren’t lying. Berlin’s unique set of repeated historical tragedy has created its unique set of conditions for a fucking great time: years of economic recession; a series of oppressive (or half-oppressive) governments to rail against; subsequently lax policies on drugs, alcohol, and how late one can consume them1; plentiful abandoned buildings, which we can attribute to the aforementioned years of economic recession, that often sit in the middle of open spaces, which we can attribute to the aforementioned historical tragedy. An anecdote adopted Berliners love to share with visiting friends: yes, it’s true, some clubs open on Friday and don’t close until Monday morning; yes, it’s true, some people stay the whole time. If the awestruck visiting friends ask how that’s “even possible,” the adopted Berliner gets to showcase her (under)worldliness further. “Drugs,” she says, with a wave of her off-hand. “Do you wanna get a beer?” Another thing about people who live in Berlin is that we’re always willing to drink beer at unorthodox times. Affecting this been there, done that attitude is tempting. To be 1 You can also smoke inside.

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to be worrying about money as much and as anxiously as I was; another way to put this is that I felt like everyone was having fun without me. Some people I knew had shitty jobs, but none were the particular kind of shitty mine was, I thought, and I found out gradually – through evasive answers to questions about a new sweater here, a trip back home there – that almost everyone was also getting money from their parents. I’m not being totally objective here, obviously. The thing about alienation is that you really can’t believe you exist among others, regardless of how much you want to, and usually you desperately want to. It’s possible my friends were as worried about money as I was, but where I expressed that worry by refusing to buy a pair of gloves that actually kept my hands warm, my friends expressed it by going out all the time.

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a tourist is to be an outsider – alienated – which is why to be called one is a damning insult in Berlin, a symbol of all that is going wrong with the city. Germans are being forced to learn English, the influx of wealthy expats is driving up rents, the clubs that are an inherent part of what brought them here are being forced to close because developers buy their spaces to build luxury condos or simply because their owners are tired of dealing with the newly yuppie clientele. But the first year you live here, no matter how not-wealthy an expat you are, or how casually you talk about the cheap beer, the unfathomably well-trained dogs, the “nightlife”: if you’re an expat, you can’t help it – you’re the same as that wide-eyed visiting friend, driven by the pressure to see and do and experience. And often as quickly as possible. Especially because so many people come to Berlin without any concrete plans to stay, days can feel numbered. You end up feeling torn between conflicting desires: you want to experience what is extraordinary about Berlin during what may be your limited time here, but you also want to become an insider, which means converting the extraordinary into the normal, the “nightlife” into simply “life,” do you wanna get a beer.

The most fun I’ve ever had, no question, was while clubbing in Berlin, though I’m ashamed to admit it. I’m not talking about a particular point during the sixteen hours I was “out,” either; I’m talking about the entire thing, both the fact of the sixteen hours and the sum of what I felt and did during them, and it didn’t even include having sex. It did include taking drugs, and this is where the shame comes in: although the point of taking drugs is that they make you feel extraordinary, acknowledging that they make you feel that way runs counter to the prevailing culture in which they do so. It’s not cool. The outsider/insider dichotomy that rules Berlin also rules – or feels like it rules – its clubs; if you’ve heard anything about Berghain, Berlin’s biggest (I think), best (I know), and most New Yorker-profiled (whatever) techno club, you’ve heard about its inscrutable door policy, helmed by a giant man named Sven who has face tattoos and a memoir. Sure, the sound system and the DJs are the best in the world, but Berghain’s reputation has expanded far beyond the small group of people actually able to discern sound quality even when high on MDMA. Part of the reason Berghain has become so notorious is its exclusivity; the perpetuation of its myth requires that some people not know exactly what goes on inside, both because some people would

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Because the experience I’m talking about was so extraordinary to me that I’m compelled to talk about how extraordinary it was, I’m exposed as an outsider, an essentially-tourist; how did they even let someone like me in? Yes, it’s true; there are people who stay out for sixteen hours, and much more, every weekend; there are people for whom drugs are – I assume, because that’s how they make it seem – a given 2. The one time I was turned away from Berghain, I was with a friend like this; she has an architectural haircut and dresses primarily in black, which is what all those blog posts advise. It was two on a Sunday afternoon, and as we walked down the long gravel path that leads to the abandoned power station that holds the potential for the best time in your life, I felt excited – and then ashamed to be excited – remembering the last time I’d been, the aforementioned most fun ever, and I was anxious to top that in whatever unanticipatable way the club had in store. It’s so big, and notorious, and there are so many different kinds of people willing to meet you – because they’re high on drugs or on the place itself – that it’s not unlike Berlin, actually. We stopped talking as we reached the entrance, and I tried to maintain a look of aloof calm that implied Sven’s decision would have no effect on my happiness. There was no one in line in front 2. By drugs, I mean: ecstasy, MDMA, ketamine. Speed is prevalent, but it’s more out of practical concerns – you don’t want to crash while you look for more, or while you wait for the more to kick in. Cocaine is popular as well, but I’m told it’s bad compared to what you get elsewhere, Berlin lacking the wealth and geography to make itself accessible to a ruthless and violent South American drug trade. Also, I don’t really do it, see: lacking the wealth, and the ruthless and violent South American drug trade. I’m sure there are other drugs, the obscure but wackily named subjects of VICE feature articles, but given that this essay is about how I’m not cool, it follows that I wouldn’t know much about cutting-edge advances in psychological enhancement technology. People also smoke a lot of weed, to calm down.

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ruin it and because some people need to yearn, vocally, to know. Many-a blog post has been dedicated to deciphering how to emerge from the line, which can be around three hours long on Saturday nights, inside, where an efficient German woman in a headset will pat you down, check your bag, and say, in English, the language you have been warned not to let Sven hear you speak, to make sure you watch your drink.

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Nightlife of us, two very stylish Chinese tourists having just been rejected, and we made sure not to walk too quickly through the zigzagging barriers that mark the final approach. My friend and I had agreed that she would do the talking, since she speaks German. We thought we had picked a strategic time to show up, and that it was good we could have easily been interpreted as lesbians, Berghain being, historically, a gay club. When we got to the front, the security guard standing next to Sven moved to block the entrance, as if he expected us to blithely skip right past four hulking men in combat gear and possibly bullet-proof vests. “Just the two of you?” he asked. My friend nodded and said it was, yes, just the two of us. The guard paused, looked us over, and told us to wait. He turned around to look at another guard, who then looked us over in a similar way, and they turned back to conference, though they seemed to be communicating psychically, or through Morse code via blinking. A sweaty couple emerged from the passageway looking jubilant; the guards moved to let them pass into the fresh air. I felt like a child. Finally, he turned back. He looked us up and down again before shaking his head. An almost imperceptible but nevertheless definitive “no.”

Neither my friend nor I had expected this; I can only describe what I felt as shock, which is totally ridiculous but nevertheless indicative that, yes, actually, Sven had quite a lot of control over my happiness. We moved to the side; the sweaty couple was lying on the platform where those rejected could watch wistfully as those just taking a break from the party inhaled deeply, swayed to the bass, and conveyed a strange sense of being both completely detached from the world and a part of something huge and amazing that you could not understand. My friend was upset. “It’s your shoes,” she said, pointing at my white cowboy boots. I had gotten them for two euros at the flea market, and their previous owner had dirtied them past the point of trying to preserve their color, which, I had thought, made them even better. I’d worn them to Berghain the last time I’d been. “You have to wear different shoes,” she said. Her hands shook as she pulled a vintage cigarette case out of her purse; she had tears in her eyes. I wanted to take great pleasure in thinking that crying didn’t seem very cool, but I couldn’t, really: I felt like it, too.

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Culture

Artistʼs Paradise

Illustration by Annu Kilpeläinen

Hauptstrasse 115 is an apartment building situated in Schöneberg, the historic centre of Berlin’s gay scene. The building’s chipped butter yellow plaster walls and aged marble entrance belie its significance as a major cultural landmark. Between 1976 and 1979, David Bowie and his frequently shirtless collaborator Iggy Pop moved to Hauptstrasse 115 to escape the bacchanalia and frenzied pace of Los Angeles. Ironically, Berlin (especially West Berlin) in the 1970s was also a den of sex, drugs, and 24-hour bars. Arguably not much has changed since reunification.

Bowie’s first encounter with Berlin came through reading the stories of Christopher Isherwood, written in the 1930s during the rise of the Third Reich. Isherwood’s Berlin Stories describe a decadent city filled with drinking, dancing, and late nights in smoky cabaret halls. A native Brit, Isherwood had made the move to Berlin becauseof its permissive attitude toward homosexuality; writing definitively in his memoir Christopher and His Kind that “Berlin meant boys.” Bowie was seduced by Isherwood’s stories and when the two met after one of Bowie’s concerts they had

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For almost a century, artists and would-be artists have flocked to Berlin to steep themselves in the city’s decadent history. Kathryn Franklin explores why this perception prevails.

reminisced,“Some days the three of us [Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Coco Schwab, Bowie’s longtime personal assistant] would jump into the car and drive like crazy through East Germany and head down to the Black Forest… Or we’d take long, all afternoon lunches at the Wannsee on winter days… At night we’d hang with the intellectuals and Beats at the Exile restaurantin Kreuzberg.” What is it about Berlin that makes it a refuge for artists and glamorous outcasts? The city conjures up fantasies within the urban imaginary as the louche cousin of popular bohemian destinations like Paris during the Belle Époque era or New York City’s Greenwich Village in the ʼ60s. In the early years of the Weimar Republic, Berlin represented a place where artists and intellectuals alike could carve out a space in the relaxed mores of the Golden twenties. Berlin-based artists Otto Dix and Christian Schad, proponents of the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity), famously depicted the city as a paradox of grotesque glamour made up of fashionable figures and prostitutes. Images of Marlene Dietrich as the sexpot Lola Lola in The Blue Angel helped launch Berlin’s status as an exciting metropolis filled with the promise of promiscuity and indeed, lust for life.

a long conversation about the city. Isherwood tried to convince Bowie that his version of Berlin was a fictionalized account and that it was not the capital of decadence as depicted in Cabaret. Fortunately Bowie ignored Isherwood’s advice and made the move to Berlin anyway a block away from Isherwood’s Nollendorfplatz apartment where he had written his stories, to produce a similarly astonishing body of work. Bowie’s classic albums are commonly referred to as the Berlin trilogy: Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), and Lodger (1979), and Iggy Pop’s groundbreaking Lust for Life (1977) and The Idiot (1977) are routinely acknowledged for their creativity and innovative style. The introduction of the Thin White Duke in 1976 – Bowie’s elaborate homage to German Expressionism – having long retired his otherworldly personas Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, anticipated Bowie’s move to the city. Berlin served as urban muse, with Bowie and Iggy Pop steadfast in their devotion to soaking up the culture of the city as part of their creative process rather than drying up the city’s bar taps – at least not on weeknights. The weekend, as Bowie sang on “Heroes,” was when he “drank all the time.” In an interview with Uncut in 2001, Bowie

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Culture Despite the looming shadow of the wall which divided the city, artists flooded to Berlin in the 1970s and ʼ80s hoping to recapture the spirit of imaginative freedom of the golden ʼ20s. At the same time the anxiety of the prevalent surveillance culture under the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, helped fuel their work. In Bowie: A Biography, Marc Spitz writes that when Bowie was recording in the Hansa studios, “there was always the uneasy sense of being monitored, which might have contributed to the defiant emotionalism of the lyrics Bowie began to write.” The Stasi ruthlessly suppressed any perceived threat to the stability of the GDR by infiltrating the lives of those that expressed political dissent or nonconformity. Certainly Bowie and his entourage would have raised more than a few eyebrows (see the Stasi file on Michael Jackson)1. While artists in Berlin today no longer have to fear the Stasi, a similar rebellious spirit exists through the myth propagated by mayor Klaus Wowereit’s declaration that “Berlin ist arm, ager sexy” – poor but sexy – in a 2004 television interview. This decade-old claim combines the best parts of the Weimar Republic with the more relaxed policies of reunified Berlin.

In the years since Bowie and Iggy Pop frequented East Berlin haunts in the 1970s, subsequent musicians such as U2 and Depeche Mode have made their way to record albums at the Hansa studios. Meanwhile, a large influx of artists (and would-be artists) have taken over the city to take advantage of the cheap cost of living. In early January 2013, Bowie released the first single off of his forthcoming 24th studio album, The Next Day. The music video for “Where Are We Now?” shows Bowie and an unnamed woman projected onto amorphous conjoined puppets as they sit in an artist’s studio (possibly resembling the one he shared with Iggy Pop at Hauptstrasse 115) while black-andwhite footage of Berlin in the 1970s plays in the background. The song initially sounds like a lament for Bowie’s Berlin heyday when he was arguably at his creative peak. The melancholic melody is seeped in nostalgia with lyrics about a man lost in time as the camera focuses in on Bowie’s worldweary, 66-year-old face. Even the cover art for The Next Day seems to evoke the celebrated era of “Heroes” featuring a white square obscuring Bowie’s youthful face in the iconic Masayoshi Sukita photograph. Of course Bowie’s renewed fascination with Berlin is not simply an excuse for him to “remember standing by the Wall.” Rather the footage from “Where Are We Now?” shows Bowie tapping into the current Berlin zeitgeist and reminding us that he was one of the first to face the strange.

1 The Stasi had Michael Jackson under surveillance when he visited Germany in 1988 for a concert in West Berlin for fear the concert might incite a riot because of its proximity to the Wall.

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A N by Chelsea Rooney Illustration Eddie Perrote

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The rich couple, parents to the redheaded boy who punches, are standing in the corner. Their son doesn’t notice the art on the walls. He doesn’t know he is supposed to look at the art on the walls. He looks, instead, for the next butt to pinch, the next hip to punch. Does he know, at nine years old, that the butt is sexual? Does he know that he should not touch the butt, especially the butts of women, and is that, therefore, why he does it? June’s butt, in particular. To June, it feels personal. Most things always have, she knows now. The boy is young, and there is something inside him that he cannot express. June sees it. He does not have the words, but he has the anger, and she watches him, afraid. She knows he will come at her again. He will punch her again. When he does this, she doesn’t know what to say. What to do. Sometimes, his parents pretend not to notice. Other times, they offer limp shrugs, pained frowns. Greg might say, “Tro!” in a voice that used to be sharp, but has dulled. The parents don’t know what to do, either. The rich couple keep talking to whomever they are talking to. Or rather, Greg keeps talking. Letta, the German billionaire, stands beside him, silent. She sips from a real wine glass. Everyone else holds tiny plastic cups. Greg says, “American moral relativism is spreading like cancer.” June, wonders, where did Letta get a real wine glass? Greg says, “Sure, it’s the golden age. On cable. But look at television. That’s the real America.” From the look on his face, it’s a tragedy. Letta must know more English than she lets on, June thinks. For some reason, she’s hiding behind her language barrier. Out of either scorn or fear, she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. June assumes scorn. With that much money. This gallery is too shabby for Letta. Too makeshift. Who does this young, white, male American artist think he is? Trying to write his object labels in German. He doesn’t deserve Letta’s attention. Berlin itself is too untidy. Too dynamic for Letta, who is steady and dormant. Inert, like a pillar. June reaches for a small plastic cup of red wine. She holds it. Smells it. Saliva curls at the edges of her tongue. She doesn’t drink it. Today is her 817th day of not drinking it. For the 817th time since her last drink, the same two thoughts occur at once, one on top of the other, as though chewing each other’s tails. “This would be so much easier if I were drunk.” And, “Thank god I am

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Berlin itself is too untidy. Too dynamic for Letta, who is steady and dormant. Inert, like a pillar. sober.” June doesn’t know where these thoughts come from. She doesn’t identify particularly with either. But there they are, again. She puts the plastic cup down. Greg is still talking. He says, “My racquetball partner had a heart attack at thirty-nine years old.” The mammoth black canvas beside June dwarfs her. It is the last piece in the series, a collection of growing stretches of black fabric silkscreened with fluorescent geometric patterns. June is an ER nurse, and to her the pieces look like heart monitors. She is not moved by this art. Finds it prosaic. The last piece is mostly black and takes up the entire wall. A flash of green light blinks at the edge of the frame. June rereads the object label next to the work. The English text – translated from the artist’s butchered German – takes up the most space. “Here, the use of color asks, ‘What is its function? Is all color just a selfish peacock’s fanfare? As a species, would it be more honorable for us to let blackness win and reproductive ambition die? Considering the state of all things?’” June wonders about the translation, what has been lost or gained. She should have left Berlin days ago. The day of the volcano. She made it all the way to the sliding doors of the airport to encounter the paper easel with hasty text scrawled: “All flights canceled due to volcano.” When she returned to her friend’s flat in Neukölln, she called the hospital. “I won’t be able to come into work, because of the volcano.” Her supervisor responded dryly. It was the truth, though. The ash cloud wouldn’t fall. Letta has the conserved look of the very rich. Leathers, linens and silks. Tans, creams and greys. She has been kept, safely, from labour and sun. Tailored and trim. Some old German shoe company that became some sort of new philanthropic foundation. Or something. June can’t retain the details, doesn’t speak the language of money and so the words, without the traction of context, slip through her hands, out of her mind. The money is

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Letta’s, she knows that, and that Greg – who comes from a line of intellectuals–met her while backpacking through Frankfurt a decade ago. “Jackpot,” June thinks, and then feels bad. They are probably, certainly, very much in love. At least, that’s what their mutual friend Marie says. June herself cannot possibly know. She met them just this morning. Greg is still talking. “America is the best, and the worst. The two extremes, and nothing else. The polarity is everything, right? Everything. The best technology. The best athletes. The best humanitarianism. And the worst.” June focuses on the kid. She wonders if his red hair has something to do with why he is not adjusting well. Not developing socially, in time, with his peers. Are they cruel to him? Call him names? Or is their bigotry subtle. An unquestioned exclusion from clubs and games. An immediate assumption that they can’t reach him because he looks different. This might cause a boy to pinch someone. In the butt. He wants attention. “Can it really be his hair?” June thinks. “Are we that terrible a species?” She turns away form the art and looks out the window. Cups her eyes to see past her reflection. The outlines of the concrete steles sharpen. Her breath catches. She loves when her breath catches. A reminder: you have a body. You have a body, and it is not yours. It is the art’s. The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, in moonlight, is devastating. Five acres wide and long, sharp grey blocks at varying heights, nightmarish maze. Imagine if, when she first saw it, she hadn’t felt anything? The horror. But she had. She knew what the designer had wanted her to know. June, so removed from the Holocaust, had felt it in her chest. A whirl, like a weak tornado behind her ribs. In her throat, a clench. In her tummy, a curl. Greg is still talking. “Oh, you’ve got to come to Los Angeles. Everything’s happening there right now. MOCA just appointed Laura Bomback as chief curator. She’s a queer woman of colour. Very progressive. Very interesting. The exhibitions right now are fantastic. A show by Sheila Shondelle. Sculptor. Works with silicon and horsehair. She fashioned these scalps – they look exactly like human scalps, like you would swear they are human scalps that have been ripped from skulls. Red and sticky underneath. Perfect hairstyles. Supermodel hairstyles. Bomback’s great. She’s going to bring a lot of girls into MOCA. It’s important to have girls making those kinds of decisions.

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She should have left Berlin days ago. The day of the volcano. She made it all the way to the sliding doors of the airport to encounter the paper easel with hasty text scrawled: “All flights canceled due to volcano.” It’s important to represent girls.” The redheaded boy sees June watching Greg. She meets his eye and he starts running toward her. Greg doesn’t notice. Greg’s wife, Letta, moves her hand toward her son. “Tro!” she calls, but he ignores her. He does not listen to his parents. This is one of the problems. June shields her lower body with her arms. “Don’t,” she says, sharply, and Tro slows down. Retracts his fingers. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I’m listening.” “Why?” June looks at him. Pauses. Lets her heart slow down. Lets his. “What do you think of the art, Tro?” He crumples his face. He is annoyed that she has spoken to him outside of the set parameters. Doesn’t know how to talk to an adult who isn’t scolding him. He looks at the walls. “It’s boring.” June smiles. Tro looks at her. He doesn’t know what to do. He cannot pinch her. He cannot ignore her. June wants to believe that in this moment she can help him. She can nudge her hip into him and knock his trajectory a little to the left. He will end up somewhere different. But she mostly believes this isn’t true. It takes more than one nudge. Or, it takes a shove. A push off an edge. A catastrophe. We all need one major catastrophe, June knows. She knows this as deeply and as mundanely as she knows how to find the vein in a patient’s arm. Greg is still talking. “That was just this morning, at the Freie Universität. The Professor of Economic Sciences was a colleague of my father’s. His secretary let us in to the archives and we were able to see the documents of their correspondence

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during the years leading up to the collapse. Fascinating stuff. Dr. Avram was making predictions far beyond the fall of socialism in Germany. Far beyond. It’s incredible. Into the digitalization of assets. The monetization of ideas. Selling people, ideas, lifestyles. That sort of thing.” Greg pauses, drinks deeply from his plastic cup of wine. “My father was, of course, skeptical.” He laughs too loudly. Letta touches his arm. June knows how Greg feels about his father. He’d told her as much, earlier, on the boat in Tiergarten. The plan was for all four to get in the boat, but at the last second, Tro started to cry and Letta, in rushed German – the language of commands – insisted that Greg and June go together – June understood zusammen, zusammen – and Letta would stay on land with Tro. At the thought of being alone with Greg, June had clenched her jaw and bit the inside of her cheek. But there was no way out. Greg had held out his hand. She’d paused. Thought of what her energy healer back home would say. “Imagine Greg is the vessel through which divine love flows.” Her energy healer, Raz, his hands in prayer. “Imagine how different the world would be, if we received everyone as though they were divine?” And for a moment, in the boat, she had seen it. The golden light streaming down from the sky and into Greg’s head, out of his eyes, his mouth, his groin. She felt his warm heart. He was still talking. “Father spent a lot of time in Berlin.” The oars had sliced expertly into the water. She knew he’d rowed at Princeton. “Everywhere I go, I meet his friends. And they all talk about him as though he lived in their city. With them. Instead of with us.” June imagined Greg as a child. At home, alone. Reading his father’s heavy books. There is a tragic air about Greg. He is the kind of person who June describes as, “Too smart for his own good.” Choking on privilege. Keen to the dark side of things. These are the sorts of men who commit suicide. Wheeled down the halls of June’s hospital in the late mornings. Bearded and intellectual. Tattered and too well-read. After the boat ride, Letta had looked at her differently. Expectedly. She must speak more English than she lets on, thought June, not for the last time. June had said, “What did you and Tro get up to while we were on the lake?” But Letta just closed her mouth, looked to Greg. Greg, with his fist, pushed Tro’s head. A little too hard. The boy stumbled. Greg kept talking. “They probably just cried

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together on the shore, right buddy?” And the golden light dried up.

In the gallery, June touches Tro’s shoulder. “Let’s go outside,” she says. Letta is watching, and June takes Tro’s hand. She points to the door. Letta raises her eybrows. June mouths, We’re going outside. Letta nods. The air is cool and the moon is bright enough to cast shadows. Tro slips into the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe as though it is a playground. He has spent a lot of time here, June knows. Greg had told her, on the boat. He had shaken his head, shrugged. “He loves it in there. He’s very calm in there.” To June, it makes sense. These uneven columns of concrete. Does the ground roil, or do the walls grow up around us? It reminds Tro, June knows, that there is something outside of himself. There are laws of nature that he can either know intimately, or ignore. Either way, they will work on him. There is no point in asking Tro if he knows what the memorial represents. And so June begins to run. Tro’s eyes widen, and then, he runs with her. They are alone in the maze. They run faster. Is it disrespectful? Blasphemous? Risky? June tries to lose him, ducking quickly to the left and right, spinning the other way, pivoting. Tro keeps up. Here is your talent! June thinks, joyous. You are so good at this! You are agile and perceptive. You are predicting where I will go. Do you understand? You are good! And then it happens. Tro’s foot catches on an edge, and he flies. Flies through the air like a volcano erupting. June scans the look in his eyes as he soars. Wonder. It is so quiet between these concrete blocks. In the blue light of the moon, Tro’s red hair gleams, pulses, like lava. This is going to hurt, June knows. Something might break. Something might shatter.

Later, in the hospital room, for the first time since arriving in Berlin, June feels at home. She touches charts. Reads their numbers. This is her language, the units of body. Pump, breath, blood. Greg is still talking. She interrupts him. “Did you know? The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was designed by an American. He won a competition. I personally love it. It really unsettles me. But, of course, not everyone agrees.”

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