Berlin Diary: Summer in the City

Berlin is an amazing place sometimes. The amount of green: grass, trees, flowers even weeds is a tribute to all the people who have fought to keep mother nature as one of the city’s most valued residents. Enjoy the summer days while they last. This blog is also my tribute to the all the people who live life to the fullest and do their own thing - just to show that it can be done. That was always one of the things about Berlin that fascinated me most - and continues to do so to this day.

Flyer Sociotopes

Inspired by re-visiting the Archive of Youth Culture’s work and publications (see blog post on August 15), I would like to point out two books in the Archive’s vast catalogue of “standardwerke” (German term for definitive work on a subject) on popular culture phenomena. (more…)

Save the Archive of Youth Cultures

Looking for late 80s techno flyers? Issues of German teen mag BRAVO from the 50s to today? Tapes, videos or fanzines of local punk, Goth or Emo scenes? Press clippings about moral panic that youth cultures have invariably caused, be it rowdy ducktail sporting Teddy Boys, nihilistic punks, graveyard robbing Goths, Ecstasy popping ravers, trainbombing sprayers or ultra soccer fans? An archive nestled in an unassuming commercial courtyard space in the quieter part of Berlin district Kreuzberg will provide all of the above and more. (more…)

Berlin Diary: Signs and Symbols

The BSR: the Berliner Stadt Reinigung. The only city department with its own respected tags. Take the Garbarge and Run.  Viva la BSR.

Rapper Lauryn Hill explains in one of her songs about how she got started. Her friends and family urged her on. In the beginning it was all sort of crap but she kept on keeping on. That’s how I feel about this blog. Don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but doin’ it anyway- hoping I’ll grow into it. xhiller

Berlin Diary

The top picture looks like a beach on some exotic shore but it was taken at the Krumme Lanke lake in southern Berlin. The boy is walking along the earth. In contrast, the girl is jumping from a tree - not yet splashed through the water’s glossy surface. She is ‘caught’ in the sky -the air element- traditionally associated with the male principle.

Albeit underwater, the boy has his feet on the ground. The earth is often seen as the female principle. So this is my own personal, kind of yin and yang imagery.

When the girl does enter the water she will swim to the same shore the boy is on. And actually, the strange diagonal line in the top ‘beach’ picture is a branch of the tree the girl is jumping from. The two children are actually spatially very close - separated only perceptually.  Photographs are images separated from their place of origin. This can indeed be confusing if not downright deceptive.