Thematic Scotlands in Berlin tonight!

[imomus]

One day in 1999 I was visiting Berlin when I discovered a "thematic bookshop" being assembled in a tiled butcher's shop on Alte Schoenhauser Strasse. Hand-painted in the window was a sign outlining the themes we could expect when the place opened in July 1999: the city, politics, pop, economics, architecture, design, art and theory.



When I moved to Berlin in 2003, Pro QM -- the bookshop I'd seen -- looked like this. Even if I didn't have money to spend on the gorgeous books and magazines they stocked, just visiting felt like recharging your creative batteries. That thematic butcher's shop seemed to suggest a better, more elegant, more intelligent world. Now on Almastadtstrasse, just around the corner from the original site, Pro QM continues to ride high in my list of things to see in Berlin -- usually right at the top.



If you're in town tonight, there's another reason you might want to come to Pro QM. At 8.30pm I'll be doing a dramatized reading (which means putting on pantomime accents, basically) from my new book, The Book of Scotlands:

Solution 11-167. The Book of Scotlands by Momus (Sternberg)
Book presentation with the author
Saturday, 15 August 2009
20:30 - 23:30
Free
Pro qm, Almstadtstr. 48-50, Berlin, Germany
Phone: 03024728520
Email: info@pro-qm.de
Map



There's a nice symmetry to the fact that I've just been asked to write an article about Pro QM's ten-year history for the next edition of 032c magazine, so I'll be featuring them even as they feature me.

Oh, and there's apparently (I only learned about this by reading the small type on the Facebook event page) a "semi-official after-party" at Kim Bar afterwards, starting at 10pm and featuring DJs Nan-Hi Kim and Alex Bechberger. The party's been titled Don't Leave after my 1986 Brel cover. Berlin Unlike describes the Kim Bar (Brunnenstrasse 10) as "a very minimalistic Mitte bar, with a small DJ table and just about enough seating for a successful birthday party". Things might get tight: in the strange numerical language of Facebookese, the Pro QM event has 100 confirmed guests, 128 might attend, 321 are not attending, and from 428 we are still awaiting reply.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

(Sorry to drag an old post on): I can't tell from his or her post where your prospective reader lives--kind of a key point in my objection, obviously--but in the U.S. I would have pointed them to RAM rather than Amazon.de. If the person's in Germany, as you're implying, where I imagine Sternberg has no distribution, then of course Amazon's easiest. It's a shame Sternberg doesn't obviate the issue itself by making it easier to buy from their site, as your reader was evidently willing to do.

As for 'disintermediation', it's true the term begins in the last decade, but its implications remained nascent until this one--at least in publishing--with the advent of viable print on demand and the Kindle. The actual sales of art publications right now (and I see weekly data) indicate that the art book's gain in aura--which I agree may be the case--doesn't translate to sales, and only means that art publications will become (even) more of a luxury product, and consequently will rise in price. This process is already underway. I can easily envisage a future in which stores such as Pro QM will feature lo-fi zines and luxury monographs and almost nothing in between! And there's no question the Kindle's a success, so a large chunk of the bookbuying public (myself not included) would disagree that digitization devalues--as would, for example, Kenneth Goldsmith of Ubuweb, so it's not only the buyer of airport novels that feels this way. And as I say, the Kindle serves perfectly the type of text which doesn't require 'dwelling on'.

As I mentioned previously, it's impossible to disentangle the accelerated changes in publishing from the downturn; who knows what lies ahead when things recover.

I completely agree that a well 'curated' store is of greater use than ever, and that's great Pro QM feels so optimistic about the future. If such a venture can survive anywhere, it would be in Berlin. I'm writing from New York, where things look more precarious.