Berlin's darkest scene

[imomus]

I first stumbled across Peres Projects in 2003 in LA -- sort of by mistake. I was in Chinatown with friends, trying to find Aaron Rose's Alleged Gallery; my favourite New York gallery had up and left for LA shortly after 9/11. I never found Aaron's gallery (I think he may already have closed it down by that point) but there on the super-picturesque Old Cheung King Road I found Peres instead. Peres himself was milling around, and told us there was some sort of performance happening later that night.



Performances are a Javier Peres thing, he likes to create events, gathering a hipstery, well-connected audience by word of mouth and e mail alerts. Here he is in a little video clip asking us to show him something "because words alone don't really do much for me".

Click Opera noted the Berlin opening of Peres Projects last September; in the year since then, the gallery (in a warehouse at Schlesischestr. 26 in Kreuzberg) has become Berlin's most fashionable place to gather, attracting a younger, more interesting crowd than the fusty galleries up in Mitte or at Jannowitzbrucke.



Peres opened in Berlin with a performance by Terence Koh, aka Asian Punk Boy. A couple of weeks ago I attended another Peres performance involving a bizarre musical theatre group (very reminiscent of Ford Wright's Rhymes With Adventure, the campy am-dram group I documented in Fakeways: Manhattan Folk) called My Barbarian.

Last night Koh was back with a performance called SPRUNGKOPF ("Jump Head"). Peres events are always dark; they take place late at night, in a dark space between the Spree river and a series of watery locks, with a big crowd gathered in an unlit courtyard. Koh exaggerated this effect by decking the walls and ceiling of the Vilma Gold gallery space next door to Peres with thick sheets of black plastic.



Supposedly "debuting his new album", Koh teased the audience -- once they'd filed into the blackened Gold building -- with 15 minutes of silence. A densely-packed audience consisting of mostly young Anglophone Berliners stood still in the pitch-black space, waiting for something to happen. In brief camera flash glimpses, a few were able to make out three naked boys, pretty rough trade / Hedi Slimane types, sitting on the stage. I stood up on a bass bin to get a better view, and when the "music" suddenly started it was like riding a crashing plane; my whole skeleton vibrated violently. It was kind of fun in a what-doesn't-kill-me-makes-me-stronger way.

The music was horrible digital distortion topped with drumming and Terence, dressed like Sadako from Ringu in a long black wig (beware, you have just one week to live if you watch that tape) screaming insanely over the top. Fingers-in-ears stuff. It lasted about ten minutes, and then the audience gingerly moved forward to photograph the remains on the abandoned stage: two charred, melted black drum kits.

Comments

[murnau.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow i'll be leaving to Berlin for a 3 weeks holidays. I 'm completely addicted to black music, mostly to soul (70's and 80's), but also to funk, dub, disco and old school hip-hop. Can you advice me some cd's shops? Thanks!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The best one in Berlin happens to be right on the street where I live:

Soultrade
(Shop linked to Sonar Kollektiv. Specializing in new Hip Hop, Disco, Soul/Funk and House of the deeper or jazzy variety. They know what their second hand stuff is worth.)

Sanderstr.29
12047 Berlin
public transport: U8 Schönleinstraße

[murnau.livejournal.com]

hey thanks! i'll spend my big spender side in that cathedral of pleasure.

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

asianpunkboy moved already long time ago to his new project

http://www.kohbunny.com

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Sounds like everything that's awful with creativity - scenesterism, exclusivity, and superficial hipsterism. Just my experience with them in NYC - they roll their eyes and laugh, and then find out you know people, and suddenly they love you.. it's very LA.

Momus, you always talk about this open humanity and gentleness, yet you support this scene of people who happily grind their heels in the necks of other creative people? Not that I personally have invested interest in it, but I'm personally tired of these absolutely hateful societies... they never create anything wonderful or worthwhile, maybe because of their anti-human attitudes.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Such scenes bring to mind a wad of gum that's been already chewed by everyone you know.

Glad I was here reading Grimm's fairytales in a tent to my drowsy niece and nephew.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

So you went to a powernoise show.
Nothing ususual there, hell, we have them here in Madison quarterly.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Would it change anything for you if I said this is a very gay scene? And that putting pretty, naked boys on a stage is a very gay gesture? And that Asian Punk Boy's website is one of the most cruisily gay (yet also gentle -- lots of cute owl and cat drawings!) you'll see? And that, as cliques go, this is a specifically gay clique? And that although Koh and Peres are Americans, they're both non-WASP Americans? (In fact, they're from the two groups that will increasingly dominate the US in the 21st century, Hispanics and American Asians)?

Just throwing these other considerations, other identities, in to dilute your vision of them as hateful hipsters. It's tremendously easy to hate hipsters.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(That was a response to Desant's comment, not Whimsy's.)

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

The music was horrible digital distortion topped with drumming and Terence, dressed like Sadako from Ringu in a long black wig (beware, you have just one week to live if you watch that tape) screaming insanely over the top.

That sounds an awful lot like my 10th birthday party. It was weird.

Anyway, speaking of LA Chinatown, did you get a chance to explore many of the little backalleys and courtyards there? It's really quite unbelievable! I take walks down there when I'm nostalgic for New York: or, the New York I imagined existing at 2am.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< Performances are a Javier Peres thing, he likes to create events, gathering a hipstery, well-connected audience by word of mouth and e mail alerts >>

Yes, one must be connected to fall within M Peres' purview. If you don't know someone, you are not welcome.

U MUST BE EL33T

But it's so true also of the San Francisco art scene. Most (not all) of the art collectives here are quite exclusive, and do not trust you if you are not wearing clothes they approve of.

Having said that, one of my favorite collectives, The Shipyard, welcomes freaks in off the street on a daily basis! Jim Mason loves freaks! And he is a better artist for it.

http://www.theshipyard.org/

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I also take issue somewhat with this idea that art shows are for "the elect". What other social gathering is free of charge, gives all comers free alcoholic refreshments (while they last) and free entertainment?

Come on, this isn't the masons! You can walk in off the street! Last night, some were doing just that. "What's going on here?" We told them, and they joined the party. But sure, most people were having a conversation that went: "What kind of work do you make? I make..."

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

hi Momus, it's just that the way Peres promotes his events sounds quite chummy. It's cool that people walked in off the street and were welcome! I just think that this sort of hand-pressing, hush-hush, (only tell the special people!) approach to attracting an audience/participants is dumb. Why not just tell everyone they're welcome and deal with it at the door?

Because then the crowd might not be dressed properly for the photo ops, I guess.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm telling the world right now on Click Opera! I'm linking to the websites that list the events. I'm throwing it open. But some people are saying "That's not for me." So it seems that some of the exclusion going on is self-exclusion. It may be insecurity disguised as disdain.

[iamcoreyd.livejournal.com]

"powernoise"

ugh.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I've brought people from all walks of life to 'art' events.

It's just strange reading that other people think it's elitist - that goes against what I've experienced in Europe or the U.S. The art may be elitist, but the people at the show rarely are. (The people behind the counter are another story all together.) Lastly, artists tend to be un-glamorous - they tend to be dumpy and awkwardly-dressed and not-very-social. Not exactly a recipe for 'elitists' or 'hipsters'.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Galleries don't have the time or money to widely promote (e.g., through printing flyers or taking out ads). However, they all issue press-releases, so you generally can find their events by reading your nearest weekly-guides.

Galleries need collectors or press, so it's their job to get in more people than the artist knows. However, they don't always do their job, so events are typically filled with friends of friends.

I can't talk about Peres specifically, but in my experience, it's not deliberately exclusionary.

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

That actually sounds like fun if I were hooked up with some of those chinese ear-silencers you have, there.
Nobody does crazy-ass digital distortion better than Alec Empire and Atari Teenage Riot; at least that I've heard so far.
Hooray for stuff that's so-bad-it's-good !

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think I'm going on a tangent from here.

There are only so many hours in the day to get the word out. It seems, judging from the photos, that the word of mouth tactic is working very well for Peres. I was only in Berlin for 3 weeks, but I found that the events I went to that were solely word of mouth seemed to be much better attended than things that I got fliers for and were generally more mainstream "promoted". An interesting juxtaposition.

Your friends and their friends always guarantee a supportive receptive audience. Is that such a bad thing?

Momus, your comment asking whether it was less elitist considering that the artists were from marginalized groups in the West begged my head to consider the line being toed between elitism and marginalization. I never really thought about how the two can come very close and/or be misinterpreted for the other. I'm now picturing these so-called "elitist hipsters" running around thinking how misunderstood and marginalized they really are. poor hipsters. no one considers their plight, do they? Thanks for the fun Sunday brain candy.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Honestly, my opinion above is probably personal-made-overblown. I've never felt unwelcome in open, creative environments, though I'm talking more than visual art galleries.

So, no issues with the "hipsters" or creatives, probably just my bad luck for meeting the handful of out-of-touch kids who laugh at the poor, the homeless, and the outsiders, and then try to create something human. You witnessed some of that when you were in NYC and had a few bad words about it, from what I remember.

This is why people should travel more.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

begged my head to consider the line being toed between elitism and marginalization

Well, it's very much a continuation of yesterday's thought about how economic migrants are the new "jet set".

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

I'm utterly convinced now that my room needs a blacklight!

[atarashi.livejournal.com]

this is quite a trivial question, and perhaps even facetious in light of your views of transnationalism (or postnationalism), cosmopolitanism, etc...

...but you mention that terence koh is asian american, i'm wondering if his parents or at least his dad are/is from singapore or malaysia, given that 'koh' is a typical surname from round these parts.

i've always been fascinated by singaporeans who move to america (and vice versa) - transplants transplanting themselves again, exchanging the identity of one immigrant nation for another - and who may or may not at the same time maintain some sort of link to a perceived 'original' asian heritage e.g. motherland China or India...

[trini-naenae.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Maybe I'll get to go to a show like that someday (and I'll have to remember the earplugs).

Word of mouth does work better than flyers/etc for events/music like you are describing. I'll admit that I generally don't bother with the musicians who try to add me on MySpace, but if a friend of mine who is more into music than I am is gushing about a band, I'll probably check them out. However, I'm a lot less picky with visual art. I suspect that has more to do with the fact that I create art myself, and feel more comfortable in having a conversation with the artist.

Oh, and I agree with uberdinvsus that artists can be unglamorous. I've gone back to the buying my shirts at thrift stores so I can still use my money for drawing and photography. (Especially photography!!)

I don't think operating by word of mouth is elitist. I think it's trying to add some form of human contact to the experience.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< the elect >>

By the way, momus, my crude EL33T was "elite", not elect. Same difference though.