An evening in Berlin

[imomus]

5pm: To Jannowitzbrucke to see what's on in the row of cave-like art galleries that hide under the S-bahn, bordering the Spree. There's a noticeable South American flavour; videos by Marcellvs L. of poor people walking along the side of threatening highways, seen in extreme telephoto. And a few doors down Javier Téllez has red flags, banners and videos from a Mexican popular uprising. "Long live Mexico! Long live the Socio-Political-Cultural Movement of our country! Independence--Peace--Freedom! Peasants let's join our efforts!" say the banners.



6pm: To the Café Moskau. It's Berlin Fashion Week and Ideal-Showroom is hosting an event. People who design clothes are showing them to potential buyers, and there's art too, tucked away in the back rooms. We finger clothes designed by Makin Jan Ma (of Jan Family) with admiration. There are other interesting things, sort of padded hooded tops with scribble patterns, acid yellow lines, slashed kimono sleeves, and pleasantly unnecessary folds, gatherings, rouches... I give a video interview to the roving camera crew. "What, to you, is the one indispensable thing?" the blonde interviewer asks. "My passport," I decide. "Brecht said a human being was more easily made than a passport. It's certainly more fun making a human being, though."

7.30pm: To the badeschiff, where Hisae and I sauna and bathe naked, flipping through the free fashion magazines we've picked up at Ideal. Luckily the bademeister who usually throws me out of the pool isn't there, so I do my usual inept swimming -- and don't drown, this time. Nobody interviews us here.

9pm: Thoroughly refreshed from our bathing (although Hisae feels a bit ill after swimming so soon after eating), we head to nearby gallery Peres Projects for the opening of Folkert De Jong's show "The False Prophet". This Dutch artist has made lurid resin sculptures of famous characters from the history of painting -- Otto Dix's lesbian journalist Sylvia von Harden, for instance. We team up with our friend Sunshine Wong, and meet some Japanese girls, one of whom approaches me with the line "My boyfriend loves your blog!" (It used to be "I love your music!"). Meanwhile the Peres photographer is snapping away. These Peres openings are without a doubt the best in Berlin. There's a real buzz here. The air hangs thick with smoke, and people jabber away in Dutch, German and English, quaffing free beer (while supplies last).

10pm: An hour in the Barbie Deinhoff bar across the road. It's very pink in there, with comfy sofas.

11pm: To a Vice magazine party in Mitte. The place is heaving with people puffing on cigarettes and wearing American Apparel tops as if they're some kind of uniform. I meet my friend Mario, who's making the official video of the evening on a tiny camera, and films us. Then I get interviewed by a Norwegian journalist for some new style magazine. "Are you here to see or be seen?" she asks. I can't think of anything clever to say. "A bit of both, I think." It's hard work having to be interviewed everywhere you go, and come up with a memorable soundbite at 2am. Can't a man just relax and party in this town?

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of The Believer!

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Well, dude, you've got to check it out!

http://www.believermag.com/

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

You'd look good in the believer. With something nice on the accompanying cd.

Hope they weather the storm (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/27/MNG9DNQ8TM1.DTL&hw=berkeley+publishing+group&sn=001&sc=1000).

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Technology is the key to freedom for these publishers, yet they're all stuck in the 1950s. Adapt or die, I guess.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I agree that technology helps with distribution and promotion--I use it myself--but I don't think that print is going anywhere anytime soon. Book buyers enjoy the physical object too much: the feel of the paper, the smell of ink, the look of the spine on the shelf, etc. With technology becoming more ubiquitous, these immediate physical qualities will become even more important. Besides, with the ever-tightening cycle of obsolescence, as an author I'm not sure I would want something I had spent five years of my life working on to exist solely as a digital file that may not make the next technological media leap. I would see little point in making a book if it weren't given some kind of physical form at the end (Most of the work I've done as a graphic designer over the past fifteen years is too much of a chore to retrieve, and is effectively lost.)

People like me use technology to produce books, but a few of us use the technology in an inefficient, "non-modern" way, going over things in painstaking detail, adjusting kerning pairs and text wraps "by hand" instead of slapping everything own on a grid. It takes twice as long, but it's worth it.

To discard a perfectly good medium simply because of its age is a very 20th-century sort of thing to do. Let each medium do what it does best; if technology can outdo print, then so be it--but it has a long way to go until that can happen (I would like to see books that are grown rather than printed). Technology doesn't mean we have to settle for a second-rate reality.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Print is definitely an important medium, but as far as magazines and journals go, Conde Naste can't even keep its publications on the rack. The internet just seems like a better place for those kinds-of things these days.

With books I think the medium of print should be taken to the extreme - with the book being a work of art in itself. With information, journalism, etc., going online, the physical object of the book should be an entire experience like the words within it.

The internet has made information-in-itself kind-of obsolete in physical form (say, black words on white), so if you're going to go with print, I think it should be as rich and worth it as budget/imagination allows.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Much agreed on both counts!

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< To discard a perfectly good medium simply because of its age is a very 20th-century sort of thing to do. >>

We're not discarding the medium simply because it's old. We're discarding it because it takes up space. With a book or magazine, you're stuck with a physical object to manage once you're done consuming it. What am I to do with this object? Am I to pay for its storage by making sure my housing can accommodate it?

Same for CDs and DVDs. My bookshelf contains 34 books, five magazines, 46 CDs, and 20 DVDs. And that's too much. The next time I move, I hope I can pare the collection down further (why do I need CDs when I've ripped all their contents?) I don't want to be responsible for these physical objects.

Yes, my G4 is a physical object too, but I don't mind making sure my apartment is big enough for it and carting it around when I move because it so gracefully provides access to the rest of the world.

Put the books in the museums where they belong. Or, err, maybe that's going too far the early 21st century, but just wait.

[(Anonymous)]

I can understand the practicality of compacted media, zz.
Several house moves -including two trans-Atlantic- have caused me to query the wisdom of transporting packing cases of books, LPs, CDs, videos and DVDs hither and yonder.
That said I tend to agree with Whimsy's point on the charm of books in their physicality, there is something wonderful about the serendipity of finding an old sought-after edition in a dusty secondhand bookshop or in thrift shop, about building a book collection, about looking at the spines on a shelf and considering what next to read.
It depends on how you choose to live with media, I tend to be a collector of things, perhaps I belong in a museum also..I can think of worse abode.
Regards
Thomas S.