Entries from Medienschmerz tagged with 'berlin'
I recently heard an interesting story that a greater stretch of Berlin's Kochstrasse was recently renamed after student activist Rudi Dutschke (1940-79). Kochstrasse is well known as the metro stop for Checkpoint Charlie, so the the change is not an obscure one.
Dutschke was a student leader in West Berlin. He was born in the East, but fled the oppression just before the Wall. In West he quickly became a charismatic figure of city's "1968" movement. In April 1968 he was shot thrice by a local redneck on Kurfürstendamm. Dutschke survived, but just barely and with severe brain damage.
The shooter attempted suicide but didn't succeed and was duly jailed. Dutschke and his attacker engaged in correspondence while the latter was in prison. The shooter took his life in 1970. Whether the correspondence lead into any redemption I have no knowledge of.
Dutschke lived for another eleven years. Because of his injuries he had to learn to speak again. He went to Cambridge but was eventually expelled from Britain as an "unwanted alien". He settled in Århus, Denmark and was involved in the foundation of the German Green party just before dying of consequential injuries in 1979.
The new street also meets the Axel-Springer-Strasse, directly at the offices of Springer publishing company. For decades the Springer newspapers and magazines have been seen as reactionary proponents of the German media and were thus spittoons for the left-wing activists and the Red Army Faction, who resorted to violence. Dutschke split from the violent faction (who bombed Springer's Hamburg office in 1972), but nevertheless the renaming of the street was of nuisance to the Springer company.
Together with some CDU representatives and other neighbours, Springer tried to halt the process, but eventually the residents of Kreuzberg went for the memory of Dutschke in a referendum.
Poetic, if twisted justice, that is.
I've been to Wonderbar at an event where Claire Huot and Robert Majzels (left) presented their very interesting poetry concept called 85 letters.
It is fantastic on multiple levels. The output as simple as haiku – you have 5x17 characters in grid but written without gaps between the words and from top to down, right to left. Because of this awkward way of reading the recitals are quite odd from traditional.
For the material dimension of the concept they've made delicate prints on Chinese ghost paper. Some examples (and videos) are to be seen on authors' blog 285 Bungalow Drive.
The background of this project digs deep into Jewish mysticism, sinology and the art of translation in which the authors are both experts. It was also their response to the problematics of Chinese-English translation and notions of otherness.
Quite mental, right? Any questions, and I'll get into the details as far as I can in the comments...
The streets are covered with frozen waterdrops. The intensity varies, so anything from a firm step in 1 g to a pedestrian powerslide to a can happen.
NP: Giant Robot - Breaking Bones
Update 7 Jan 2008:
I just heard this sort of ice is called Blitzeis.
Berlin's other city magazine Tip just ran a story on the raising chuch attendance especially in the district of Prenzlauer Berg. It also happens to be the neighbourhood I've used to live.
As for religious denominations, the population in Germany can roughly be split up in thirds: the Catholics, the Protestants and the Undenominational occupying almost equal shares. As usual, Berlin doesn't quite conform. Here 60% of the people (pdf) remain outside organised religion. Part of this can be explained by the legacy of the secular DDR.
The surge into the church and to its activities comes from migrant "middle-young" adults with families. Babycarts are more common than SUVs on these narrow streets. This can be cross-checked from reports, that books about baptism and guardian angels are bestsellers in Christian bookshops.
Lately they discussed the notion of miracle in my favourite YLE Radio 1 programme Merkkituote. In response to the in Sao Paulo, Matti Myllykoski closed the discussion with following words (translation mine):
That is interesting. I'd personally expect – and would take it as a mirale – a counter-reaction to all this dumbness... that against the dumbness, man would choose less, which is more. That we'd concentrate more in being selective about the offerings of the surroundings, and would dig deeper into it. In the old times it was called mysticism.
I wouldn't say it's mysticism that's happening in the neighbourhood, but it is nevertheless an interesting development I'll keep an eye on.
It seems no-one in this stony city keeps their WLANs open. Where's the local Petteri Järvinen¹ who has scared everyone off about the dangers & dragons of the Internet? Okay, there's at least one house in the Rykestrasse, where a couple of tenants are sharing one connection (and its costs too). It's the one that still has the bullet holes from 1945 on it. But they're hippies over there, some smoke grass and all that. They are not even the hippiest community I know. The ones who call themselves anarcho-communists even had the MAC address² filtering on their base station. Nobody knew the router password, except one guy who didn't live there anymore.
Disaster from a distance
So I've been in a bit of a news penumbra, but imaginably in Finland there's been only one subject to talk about: Jokela school shooting. Everybody's shocked and our thoughts are with the afflicted. I don't know anyone involved, but I grew up in a neighbouring settlement³ in 1978-1981. The top attraction was Aleksi Kivi's death cabin⁴.
I've been thinking that the Jokela shooting might well be a Black Swan in front of our eyes. Black Swan is a concept coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Basically it is an unexpected eventuality with three characteristics: it is rare and unpredictable, carries a massive impact, and we tend to find it very explainable in hindsight.
Obviously nobody (at least anyone with the power to stop it from happening) expected the tragedy to take place. Similarly, we've been very good at being not surprised at all in retrospective (lots of guns, lots of mental problems in the country). As to the impact, it has been terrible to victims' friends and families, but on the scale of a society, the effects are still unclear. In the worst case the reactionary forces prevail and we get more surveillance and control. In an acceptable scenario, we get better mental health care. In the best case the attitudes of an entire society change for better. Now, that will be a matter of time.
Trip to Karosta
I shared the trip to Berlin via Karosta with mkk. Of all the possible itineraries we chose to travel slow to Latvia, but to skip Poland and fly over it.
The departure was on 30th October and those days it can get quite stormy. Luckily Linda Line hadn't cancelled their first departure to Talliin at 8:00. The later ones were. M/S Jaanika is a robust hydrofoil, but even she needs to stay at port when the wind speed exceeds 15 m/s. Forecast for the day was 16 m/s. Had they cancelled it, we would have missed the bus to Riga. No redunancy in plans.
This time I developed a new technique to tackle sea sickenss. I had earlier read that professional orienteerers, when they examine the map, construct a mental 3D model of the terrain out of it. They work top-down. I attempted to do the same bottom-up: I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the water terrain. Just to get into the rhythm with the jerks and bumps – inducting the terrain based on the sensory flow and then anticipating the movement. I think it worked well, but might as well have been placebo.
Bus trip from Tallinn to Riga was uneventful. Looking out from the window, I recalled one of Tuglas Society's podcasts and a quote from Lennart Meri: "If you are a traveller, not a tourist—pass by the knights' castle and instead—take a beautiful picture of a field, that has been cultivated for 2000 years. It is a greater history, because there live both the past and the future."
For a hasty stopover lunch we opted in for the lowest common denominator - Hesburger! Then we tried to find a souvenir from Stockmann department store, but I beeped at the gates (not at the door but at the escalators, somehow). So I had dig through all the underwear for that unzapped RFID chip. Finally found the unexpected contraband, it was my paperback copy of Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, bought used from St. George's. I'm a traveller after all.
Next, it turned out that the bus to Liepāja was "overbooked" and as we didn't figure out the elbow tactics in time, there were no seats left. It all felt like a memory of scarcity: if you don't rush, you'll be left without.
From the oxygen deprived interior of the bus I remembered, how dark a country Latvia is. Not many lights lit up in the countyside after the sunset. Two days later the locals mentioned another kind of darkness; smiles can be few and far between too.
Twelve hours after boarding the ship in Helsinki we arrived in Karosta district of Liepaja city.
This time there weren't any other guests around, residence artists⁵ nor visitors. So, the Admirals' House was literally stone cold when we arrived, but on the other hand, we got some undivided attention from Calle and Kristine, the people who established K@2 centre in 2000. There seemed to be much in the air. A new media art progamme with the Liepaja Academy was about to start. Visiting architects had remixed one of the roofless buildings and renovations had proceeded in others. Plenty of playground in and outdoors.
The bridge connecting Karosta to Liepaja proper was still half gone. A tanker rammed into it a year ago and took down one half of the pivoting structure. They sent a repair bill to Georgia, but most likely EU has to intervene.
Kristine had two adorable and sociable dogs Pūce and Ūpis⁶. Due to the increased police response times brought upon by the bridge's demise, they come quite handy as well.
Technomadic Berlin
It is nothing short of fantastic to know on arrival that Jodi had returned to Berlin and that John was in town as well. That sort of lineup can only mean two things: art and dinners.
Art seemed to be mostly about blowing stuff up.
NGBK hosted the exhibition Achtung Sprengarbeiten! where my attention was grabbed by Ruth Toma's and Rudolf Herz's "Das Haus der Kunst abtragen" – a Super8/U-matic video experiment from 1980 about a plot to detonate Munich's Haus der Kunst⁷. With a stretch of imagination the piece could also be a bastardly Chris Marker (La Jetee) and Peter Greenaway (The Falls) collaboration.
At Hamburger Bahnhof no-one fared better than mad-hatter Roman Signer whose art comes about in a MacGyverian fashion by engineering various kinetic devices, warheads and mortars and the artist himself setting them off from a close range. This could be shared thanks to artist's wife having videotaped it from a bearable distance. Never grow old!
Fragmented dinners instead of one big one, so it's until February then.
Jodi, mkk and I made it to a lunch at Spätzle Express. They serve nudels Swabian style. If I ever manage to get fit for triathlon, this is where I'll come for t-24h tank up. Later, John joined in an we had a chat at Villa Orange (one of my favourites) before proceeding to see theremin diva Dorit Chrysler in a previously unnoticed hideaway behind Prater Biergarten.
The other night we managed to catch up with mi_ga⁸ as well and Fernanda, who brought the latest buzz from Web 2.0 Expo to the roundtable.
Yeah, what else... three punctures in two days. Cyclists beware. Going to go collect the yellow Jopo on Thursday. Need to see if there's a way to vulcanise that rupture in the rear tyre. All back to normal then.
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¹ I attribute this expression to Ari N.
² Every network device has a fixed, unique MAC address
³ Kirkonkylä, not Jokela
⁴ National writer, 1834-1872, died in poverty
⁵ In 2005 I met Seriall and Peter Puype
⁶ Meaning Owl and Eagle-owl, respectively
⁷ Perhaps most known for hosting Nazis' "Degenerate Art" exhibition
⁸ Remember the ASCII carpet?
Fuckparade 2007 from Mesq and Vimeo.
A chance event led me to visit the memorial site in the Bendlerblock. Situated near Tiergarten, the building is famous as the centre of resistance among the military of the Third Reich. The most famous of them was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who planted a bomb to a meeting Hitler was attending.
Director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) is currently shooting a film about the conspiracy – with Tom Cruise starring as Stauffenberg. The city officials have denied Cruise's request to shoot in Bendlerblock and at some other locations. They are at odds with The Church of Scientology figureheaded by Cruise. Berliner Zeitung reported, that the cult leaders regard Germany as the most critical beach-head to Europe. The other front being the Beckhams?
I also ran into the Fuckparade (hence the video above). The beaty street party started in 1997 as an underground alternative to the Love Parade, but is also associated with political activism against state control.
In the wake of G8 summit earlier this summer, the anti-terror enforcement has now invoked Section 129a – a paragraph in the German Criminal Code law dating back to the days of RAF. The paragraph was used to arrest a non-conforming sociologist Andrej H. and three others suspected of "supporting" a left-wing extremist group Militante Gruppe (MG).
Let's see how this mess sorts out. It's been in the regional news, at least. In any case, if accusations are based on such conspirational behaviour like – 'not taking his mobile phone with him to a meeting' or 'having access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts of the MG' – it's needless to say, that something profound is in danger here.
Our shared flat in Prenzlauer Berg dissolved and I've moved a bit further uptown to Pankow for some time now. The flat is from 1920s, so it dates back to the Weimar Republic, instead that Imperial Germany's final year 1918 of the previous address.
It's nice to have new surroundings to explore. So far I've run into a women's prison, a Jugendstil church, a small-time mall, blockhouses as usual, and a wasteland which I think is an out-of-order Red Army cemetery. All in all it seems I'm in brackish waters where new, old, urban and suburban intertwine.
The best thing of course is, that the flat is curiously located on the exact same latitude as Mega.
Mega is a location near Hönow village east of Berlin. It only exists on Falk maps' 2003 edition and in the minds of the people who've heard about it.
I recommend watching mkk's great four-minute road movie Mysterious Mega on Vimeo.
I've been based in Berlin for almost two years now. That's a long enough period to become receptive to certain changes in the environment. I consider them as "weak signals".
They all sound a tad negative, don't they? I had one positive weak signal in my mind, but I forgot it. Maybe later.
I first became aware of the "weak signals" via Elina Hiltunen's eponymous blog (although I haven't been following it since it moved). According to her weak signals mean "strange things that exist today and that can tell about big trends in the future".
Artist's vision of life in 1984 / Pecha Kucha Nights Berlin
Simo Järvinens plats, Esbo / Hansaplatz, Berlin.
Yesterday's adventures in Berlin Ringbahn reminded me of a new environmental development in the city. Namely, this summer might be the last one for retro cars. In 2008, all the cars without catalytic converters (Katalysator) will be banned inside the city encircling S-Bahn railroad. As all of them cannot be refitted to comply with Euro 1 emission standard, a great deal of Trabants, Citroëns, Minis and W123s might be gone next year. Automobilists protest accordingly.
Before I left for Helsinki I had a chat with Tibor, who stayed in our flat for a couple of days. He studies architecture at TU München and they have designed a really nice solar powered boat. Called "Solar Proa" its design is based on eponymous proas (a.k.a. catamarans) from Pacific Ocean and it's powered by solar panels, which cover the whole deck surface. The picture shows how clever it is, with that convertible canopy and everything. So far, the design has been featured in Der Spiegel, and their own website will go live later.
I'm suspecting the illustrators at Der Spiegel also read the excellent Strange Maps blog.
I was at the embassy following the election results TV coverage. Very cosy and informal event. Some of the diplomatic service were there and a couple of reporters.
Voter turnout abroad is understandably low, only 13%. In Germany, voting was possible in seven cities. For comparison, in Spain, there were eleven polling stations, including five extra-consular ones put up in Fuengirola, Playa del Ingles, Tenerife, Torremolinos and Torrevieja.
I was told that there are 1500 Finnish citizens in Berlin. Considering the magnetic power the city has among arty and bohemian types, who flat around off the books, there are probably more Finns in Berlin than in Lehtimäki.
It would be very interesting to know, for example, how Berlin voted compared to the other foreign cities. Or regions like Costa del Sol. Such statistics however don't exist, because none of foreign locations are actual voting districts.
Coinciding with Berlinale festival, filmmaker Peter Greenaway recently gave an open lecture at the Humboldt University. I was there and took some notes, which I'm going to unwind here.
If you've seen him in the last few years (like in Helsinki in 2004) you've probably heard his main points already. For a quick recap, user Armeror has clips on Youtube.
As a presenter he's arrogant, elitistic and unsympathetic as ever but highly articulate and the amount of information is enormous. Therefore, a kind of a uncertainty principle applied – I could concetrate either on listening or writing, but not both. Ok, but now I just get on with it…
Cinema is dead, long live the cinema (working title)
What's wrong with the cinema
Some quotations
31.9.1983
Education
What is he going to do about the situation?
Age of Uranium
The atomic number 92 of uranium features heavily in Greenaway's work. We are living the age of uranium that began in Hiroshima 1945. Uranium connotates both Armageddon/Paradise. It promises vast amount of energy and progress, but it also has doomsday potential.
Greenaway hints that we should reconsider nuclear energy. As fossil fuel reserves draw empty and alternative energy sources come short of supplying the demand - uranium could become an option again. One cannot be sure if Greenaway really promotes nuclear energy or does he say that just because of his long affair with number 92.