Enter Planet Dust: Staub, Alleged Renate Raid and A100 Stoppen Protest Kick Up Some Dirt

Or: Are Raids Increasing At the Same Rate as Actions Aimed at Saving the Club Scene?

 It was a strange last minute snag to a perfect Sunday. Staub had put on a spontaneous party in about.blank. As always it featured a fantastically well selected mystery lineup of throbbing, instrumentally adept techno DJs from around the scene. These are fhe kind of acts that you'd usually pay 25 euros to see. At Staub, however, they agree to play for half that price and none of their names appear on the lineup. It's very old school, like wandering through a ramshakle factory door in the 90s and having no idea what you'll see and hear - but you just plunge in and 'ave it.

After a heated dancing session in the dark, we retired to the sunny garden to recline and relax. And at some point in the afternoon, the bouncer passed by and quietly announced that the nearby club Renate had just been raided by the police. It was rumoured that another club - I can't recall which one precisely. A few names come to mind but I don't want to embarrass anyone by getting it wrong. At any rate, it was rumoured that a second club was also targeted at the same time as Renate. Both these clubs are quite strongly linked to the A100 Stoppen movement which has been trying to block the construction of a superhighway that will annihilate the clubbing district of Hauptstrasse around Ostkreuz. It seems unnecessary to even build it, since the train service to Berlin's main airport is excellent, clean, and the trains are rarely even dull. So why build an ugly superhighway from Ostkreuz to the airport that will only remove customers from trains and lure them into more CO2 emitting vehicles - taxis and private cars - whilst lowering the life expectancy and enjoyment of all residents who remain behind in the dust?

The airport is still very quiet post COVID, and the industry is likely going to remain in a lull for a long time to come, as the European economy is still in a downturn. But Berlins club tourists are mainly budget travellers who come here no matter what the economy does.

It does seem kind of ironic that the same clubs that are threatened by the new highway, including Renate, About Blank, and various left wing music project spaces, are being threatened by the same party tourists who are landing at Berlin Airport in order to go to said clubs. Crazy. And short sighted. The club tourism thing has been doing, well, ever since the Berlin Wall came down.

So. The funny thing is that both of these raided clubs had participated in a demonstration just 36 hours earlier to block that superhighway route with Soundsystems and music stages - it was the latest in a long series of actions to stop the A100 highway, that went down over the past few years.

 

Is this a continuation of the trend that we saw beginning with the raid on the (now defunct) night club Mensch Meier in 2018? That raid coincided, almost TOO coincidentally, with a huge demonstration to support Seawatch that had been partly organized by Mensch Meier. That demonstration had happened on the same day and hour as the police raid on our club. (I say "our" because I was  an employee who was working there at the time, not because I was a shareholder).

Just as a reminder, Seebrücke and Sea watch were refugee rescue operations that had been deemed some kind of existential legal threat to the sovereignty of EU nations by various right-leaning German politicians. At the time, if I recall correctly, some of the politicians were calling for refugee rescue boats to be criminalized and prosecuted. 

You could say it was an issue that was equally as contentious as the building of this new highway, politically.

Isn't the timing of these raids on clubs, which stand up for what is right and good for all Berlin, all getting a bit suspicious? 🤔

Subculture to Subcouture

 Wednesday, 19 December 2012

The left-wing activist community seems to have abandoned the arts and culture as means of changing the world, but capitalism clearly hasn't.  A glance at the Mitte quickly confirms that there is no longer any art form, culture, subculture, ethnic group, sexuality, spirituality or philosophy that is safe from being turned into something one can wear, eat, drink or display.  By ignoring the impact of arts and culture, many Berlin activists are fighting with one hand tied behind their back.  The organizers behind last week's Cult of the Personality: Commercial Christmas Special at Food/ZMF are intent on cutting through the ties that bind them.

"If you put on a black ski mask, you're not going to speak to anybody further,” says artist Penny Rafferty, one of the organizers of the event, which featured bands and an anti-fashion show. “I always have one foot in political activism and one foot in art." Rafferty's contribution to the show was a parade of Sterni-swigging punks who rampaged along the catwalk, lunging at the punters and spitting beer.  Penny chose to showcase punk fashions at Commercial Christmas catwalk because well, she is a punk. She also reckons punk has lost the edge that made it a menace to the mainstream. 
 

"Basically, a capitalist structure reinterpreted it," says Penny.  "That's what it does: it picks up something that terrifies it, repackages it and then makes it a joke for the public.”  Punk these days is all too often just an outfit worn by a model in a misogynistic ad campaign where the clothes say 'f*ck you' but the pouting, submissive face of the model says 'f*ck me'. Punk was never intended to seduce but to startle, nor was it intended to tease, only to terrorize. Penny's part of the show is a reminder of that. 


Artist Benjamin Spalding, another organizer, holds similar views.  He got them via an unlikely source: his media studies class in university.  "A lot of [the course] was based on language, culture, semiotics and how we use these images," he says. "It was basically a breakdown of how to use culture to exploit insecurities, to have people buying more goods."  

"With the media, magazines, all these things," Spalding continues, "there is money put behind it... and money requires participation."  By 'participation', I think he means working at a well-paid job and earning enough money to buy artistic and cultural products with which one can express oneself.  This kind of participation takes energy away from DIY forms of participation like meeting up with people who share one's disaffected views and working with them to create an alternative culture of one's own.  People may be decorating the mask that society forces them to wear in ever more unique ways  but they still wear the mask; they still play their proscribed role as consumer.

The consumer's insatiable hunger for original, meaningful imagery seems to particularly disturb Spalding.  He cites the way that social media sites like Facebook inundate users with imagery from a broad spectrum of political, historical, personal and cultural sources without distinguishing between them, in terms of weight and importance.

"Everything's on the same level," he says.  "You write, 'I'm so sorry that your father died' on Facebook. Five minutes later you 'like' a photo of a cat wearing a stupid moustache.  It's the same action in both cases and it kind of puts everything on the same level... and kind of puts a 'ha-ha' novelty on it, as well."

His part of the show consists of models draped in black hooded cloaks, arms outstretched, big chains draped around their necks with oversized charms dangling from them.  They look strangely familiar.  "I chose the image of the Abu Ghraib captive to sort of point novelty back at itself," says Spalding.  The charms on the captives' necklaces are actually images of Gaza, pollution, carparks... all things that can be found in the sidebar of a Facebook page, like an afterthought to one's personal manifesto.   

Rafferty says of the show as a whole, “If you look any deeper into it, you see the irony and how much every single artist is taking the piss out of [consumerism]. It's like, is this what we've succumbed to?”  Swedish designer Bim is a good example of this playful irony.  Involved in animals rights and the Red Cross prior to arriving in Berlin, her faun-like models wear tactile, iridescent catsuits in rich shades of red, blue and green.  Dangling between their legs, under their arms are golden cords of pubic hair.  The first question that crossed my mind: what's up with the pubes?

"In Germany, it's like you have to shave your whole body if  you're a girl.  Like, I could tell you a lot of stories about guys - they have said a lot of weird things to me because I have hair on my body... which is very normal, everyone does!"  I ask her to share one of her stories and she says, "For example, I read in this girls' magazine, like for 12-13 year old girls - they wrote it as a fact that 'Ninety-nine percent of all the guys like it when you shave your pussy', which is not even true.  It sounds like a joke!  I think we should be able to look as we are and not feel bad about it."

The part of the Mitte where the Commercial Christmas took place was once a hive of Berlin subcultures: squatted buildings, psychedelic art installations and Berlin's first techno clubs.  Now it's dominated by haute-couture boutiques, brand names and "constant consumption".

"I thought it would be funny to play with the 'big boss' and create our own fashion line," says Rafferty. 

"If you're not engaged in the popular  [arts] scene in Berlin, you're not going to be shown anywhere. Emerging artists that are picked up are not glorified for their solo shows, or for any show; its just how much that they're selling their work for. People say, 'Oh that guy sold a painting for 15,000' or whatever. It's never like, 'Oh that was a fucking amazing show, did you see that?'"

"I never did fucking fashion in my life anyway... and I think that's quite clear from my work," Rafferty laughs, "but it is couture because every single stud was hand-done.  That's couture."  With this much passion and dissent going into it, it might be better to call it subcouture.


Many thanks to Emelie Larsson for the gorgeous photos! Text & design by Miss E.

Posted by Miss E at 13:58 on Saturday, 8 December 2012




Author

 Miss E I went to my first techno party in Dalston, London in 1997. Since then I've followed the stealthy tread of underground beats across the world. Currently, I live in Berlin where I have written for Siegesaeuele, Alternative Berlin, Mensch Meier and Urban Challenger. Previously I wrote for Open Democracy and Bubble Jam Delite. 



All writing and images © A. E. Elliott 2012, except where specified. Please also notify blog author when using an image or writing from it. Thanks.

The Right Way To Be "Left"

One Cause, One Tribe

At Easter weekend, I went to the talk by Spiral Tribe members at Mensch Meier.  Taking place in a wood paneled bar area that was full of yellow-lit smoke and boozy air, the talk had the ambiance of being at a 1920's meeting of banned radicals in some working man’s club (albeit one that was plastered in absurdist posters and satirical signs from modern Berlin).

Instead of working men, the place was bustling with a restless, flushed cluster of Generation Y techno hippies.  The strikingly youthful Tribe members didn’t look much older than their audience, despite being part of a much earlier rave generation.

They were energetic and chatty and seemed up for a debate, but it wasn't forthcoming from the crowd which was awed and sitting back in typical German reverence, allowing the speakers to say their piece, and the wisdom to seep in.

One comment sticks in my mind, which was made by Debbie of Spiral Tribe. She said,  “We’ve been together for 25 years and it hasn’t been smooth sailing the whole time. There are some big personalities in the collective. We haven’t always gotten along.  It takes a lot of hard work to stick together.”

It resonated with an off-the-cuff comment made by Laurie Penny, two weeks later, when she was speaking at HAU.  It was something to the effect of, “We should avoid perfectionism in left wing.” About a third of the people in the audience sat up and started nodding their heads in affirmation. 

Maybe it's because Penny's talk was also taking place in a wood-paneled theatre with a 1920's ambience - a place where you could imagine Rosa Luxemburg giving a speech to a disgruntled crowd, back in the day - but I connected her words with what the Tribe members had said two weeks earlier. A new consensus seemed to be suffusing Berlin's linke scene about the right way to be left. 

There is good reason for people on the left to have divisiveness on their minds, lately.  On the news, and on social media, the leftists that we see most often are those who take a critical stance: ranting and raging at each other, calling each other out over this badly-phrased thought or that impulsive tweet, exposing one another as less liberal or tolerant than their comrades are.  We're also regularly force fed images of 'activists' who are dressed identically in black and who are attacking cops that seem to be dressed for a round on Robot Wars.

There is a common theme underlying both kinds of coverage: in it, we only ever see the left wing in a state of conformism, a state of attack against whatever doesn't fit neatly into its narrow parameters of 'ideal'.  At a subconscious level, this preconditions us to view activism as a rejection, rather than an affirmation, of certain ideals. As a result fear, not hope, becomes the public's only motivation for living up to the Left's demands.

Perhaps this unbalanced view of how activism works is the only one that the media is capable of giving us. The media is a mirror which only reflects what it knows how to see, and conformist execs who live in fear of being rejected by their peers will tend to identify with activists who behave in the same way. So the kind of activists and left-wingers depicted in the media are necessarily a reflection of the media industry's own biases.

Unfortunately, these same biases can also be found nearly everywhere in Berlin's left wing scene. 

Instead of fighting back against the prevailing status quo, many activists here seem happy to mirror its habit of excluding or rejecting anyone who doesn't fit into their ideal of what an 'ethical' person is. Even looks are ground for exclusion, it seems: for example, I recently heard about a certain queer collective in Berlin that is refusing to admit anyone who wears dreadlocks or ear plugs, on the grounds that such styles amount to 'cultural appropriation'.

Leaving aside the question of what culture can even claim to the be the true originator of dreads or plugs, is that even a practical model of how the left can achieve meaningful social change... via a dress code? Or is it just a case of leftists slotting their ideals into a pre-existing social construct, limiting their efforts to negation, because that's what the superficial mainstream tells them to do?

Corporate Collectivism vs. Left Wing Isolationism

It dawned me the other day that, in order for any activist movement to properly challenge the neoliberal, corporate status quo, it would have to become exactly as integrated as the corporate conglomerates that it is fighting against.

Look at how the big companies - Apple, General Electric, McDonalds etc. -  act. Even as they try to sell us on “the power of the individual”, urging us to customize everything from our burgers to our shoelaces to our life insurance plans, their own power is grounded in the all-inclusive collective: the corporation.  It’s a collective that only cares about getting rich, but a collective nonetheless.

Now look at the way that such corporations tell us to behave: "Vote on your own.  Stand on your own.  Express yourself.  Rely on yourself.  Be your own boss.  Stand out from the crowd."  Even as they're saying it, these corporate entities speak as a unified collective.  It's a stark an illustration of the dictum “Do as I say, not as I do” as can be found.

Perhaps they push the masses to stand alone and unsupported because that's the easiest way to keep us in our place. If the Berlin left were to stick together like the big corporations do, it might suddenly become a force to be reckoned with. But for the most part it's too fragmented and exclusive to reach out to the newcomers that are making up an increasingly large part of the city's demographic.

An Example

A few years ago when I was organizing my first Berlin party with some people from the London free party scene, I took them to the Köpi to ask the collective there if we could rent their cellar.  When a punked-out resident of the Köpi eventually appeared in the doorway (covered from head to toe in band names, political slogans,  tattoos and pins) and we told him that we were interested in renting the cellar for a party, he snapped, "We don’t do commercial party here, sorry," and a few seconds later he was shutting the door in our faces.  We barely had time to sputter out a whole sentence, let alone describe what kind of party we were planning to do. Both the DJs and the crowd that we were representing are firmly rooted in the UK squatting / direct action community and would have been a perfect fit for the ideals of the Kopi. But apparently all that mattered was that they weren't a perfect fit for its look. 

And hey: why listen to a stranger for long enough to recognize that you might have something in common beyond the superficial details, right? Who has time for that, these days - we're all too busy fighting the capitalist system? Ironically, the fastest way out of that system might be to simply stop treating other people like an afterthought... or an inconvenience... or a threat... to the aims of the Left. That's something that any one of us can do at any time if we really want to throw a spanner in the works.

Similar scenarios have played out at many of the Left political events and meetings that I've attended, here: people refuse to speak to the obvious stranger in the group, even as they bang on about inclusivity and breaking down barriers of gender, race, sexuality etc. The inclusivity mantra itself has become another reason to reject anyone who hasn't read, memorized and recited it in the right way. Maybe I've just been unlucky but many of the activists that I've encountered here seem like they're only interested in preaching to the converted - in being reassured that they are 'right' instead of taking on the kinds of risks that are associated with the Left.

The corporate world, meanwhile, succeeds because it has learned the truest lessons of the Left. Even as it sends out divisive messages to the public, it understands that solidarity is the fastest route to success. It prioritizes togetherness and mutual support in the face of all criticisms, no matter how valid they may be.  And, okay, it also takes that support to a frankly obscene level by overlooking sexual harassment, for example, or criminality within its ranks. But in every situation, the corporate world's first impulse in the face of adversity is to support its peers. Perhaps the left would get as far as McDonalds in its bid to change the face of the planet if it would adopt (or rather, reclaim) that same approach.

Being More Than Just "Against"

Stories like the one above make me want to put my head in my hands.  In my own activist lifespan, I’ve witnessed materialist anarchists bashing pagan anarchists; first-wave feminists being trashed by third-wave feminists; queers trashing trans people; vegans getting trashed by vegetarians.  For a while, all this griping and sniping nearly put me off politics altogether.

Eventually I realized that, for many people, rejection is the first step on a long road that leads to reform. But while recognizing a thing as 'bad' is the first step, dealing with it is the essential second step toward enacting that reform. And rejection and avoidance are just ways of postponing that second step from ever happening. After all, it takes a whole of society to create a biased or consumerist (or whatever) person. By logical extension, it takes a whole society to reform them, too. Shutting out individuals who are less enlightened - or enlightened in a different way - is kind of passing the buck for society's problems on to them and them alone, instead of dealing with it as a collective. I can hardly think of a worse way to express "solidarity".

In an age where people socialize alone, through the medium of a computer screen, the habit of unfriending and blocking people who one disagrees with has become an almost unthinking first resort for dealing with disagreement. But these tools of rejection are just another corporate product that the likes of Facebook have forced upon us, to further isolate us from our communities.  And each time that we employ them, we further those corporate aims rather than the autonomous ones we seek to create in the Left. The prospect of true unity - which takes effort, as Spiral Tribe so effortlessly explained - grows dimmer.

So what's the solution? Well, perhaps Berlin's left scene could try organizing meetings where the only goal is to meet new people and share everyday experiences and backstories... without judgement.  Safe and non-defensive spaces for leftists to meet and mingle have been in short supply, as far back as I can remember. But activists are people too, and they need the same freedom to explore, enjoy and even (gasp) make mistakes without judgement that all people have. Currently, capitalism has the market cornered on all those kinds of mindless and fun activities.

Activists still need that kind of a space where we can just be together; where the ever-present pressure to be the "best" or the "most egalitarian" person is gone.  They need a place where they can create a balanced scene by being a balanced person, who is allowed to have strengths and weaknesses, ups and downs.  And they need space to experiment, too, instead of expecting to hammer out the perfect rhetoric and then go about fixing the world without any doubts or hesitations whatsoever. Rhetoric has a dangerous tendency to narrow the world down to blacks and whites, when it's mostly made up of grey areas.  Doing this would make it easier for activists to see each other as people, works in progress rather than just symbols of a cause. 

Eventually, you just run out of things to stop, reject and be against and after that, you’re left with whatever you are and the strange, discomfiting fact that it is all that you will ever have to work with.  That's when the real work starts to happen. 


Breaking up is easy, but sticking together?  That's the real test of one's ideals.



Published Tuesday, 31 May 2016

"The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power."


George Orwell, 'England Your England', 1941


Miss E ...is NOT a fashion blogger! I write about underground music, activism, social media rights. Other publications that I have written for: OpenDemocracy, Urban Challenger, Siegesaeule, Alternative Berlin and Sensanostra. View my complete profile