i (heart) berlin

i get tired of berlin cast in the macro. this is the real fatigue of having visitors, i think. since i live here but i'm also an outsider i'm expected to somehow put history in concrete terms, but then synthesize the present, compartmentalize street phenomena and place it into some sort of narrative. it's kind of like being in a museum and 'explaining' a painting. everyone needs to know if where we are now was east or west/ the wall, the wall.......... even it's not there anymore we all have to know where it was, otherwise we don't know where we are...

my roommate had some arty catalan young ingenues at the house a couple of months ago, they got indignant about the idea of the artist's biography, truth is i can't remember now what side they were on, but mizzi thought it was kind of funny, this art school intensity about how to talk about painting, and he egged them on til the spittle started dribbling from the corners of their lipsticked mouths. like him i didn't give a shit either way, but i was laughing too, it's tiring.

and now the saturday ny times waxing wow about the art scene and the menus at the revived bistros of charlottenburg, fetishizing smoking. there was a ny times video from 2006 called 36 hours in berlin, with the headline, "like new york in the 80s". leave it to new york times to compound the idea that freedom is a matter of consumer choice, reduce whatever was going on in ny in the 80s into a matter of lamplight, and bring a stream of 22 year old art students into the city seeking some sort of historical timeline with no other referent than themselves.

but look out.

last night i went to a barbecue in the "hole" at görlitzer park. it was a lot of japanese people in the electronic music scene and some hangers-on with LED's and oldstyle cameras with film. they had set out hundreds of tea-lights spelling out "i (heart) berlin". as the park darkened, people ceremoniously climbed over from the smoldering wurst and seaweed rolls and began to crouch over the candles and light them. from the far side of the park you could here the screams and clapping from the turkey-croatia game, "turkiye! turkiye!"
it was a labor-intensive job, burning fingers and such. then, just as the last candle was lit, and everyone was poised to take an available-light shot of this declaration in sand, a gust of wind blew threw the "hole" and extinguished most of them. i chuckled and said to daisuke that maybe the problem was they didn't love berlin enough. he laughed and started to reassemble the heart shape into an antelope or something. people started lighting the candles again.

i wandered over to the jumbotron playing the game. i got near the back of the crowd next to the african guys who sell chiba in the park, one of them kept banging on the blackboard that i guess belonged to the restaurant with the jumbotron, screaming in a rastafarian accent, "kreuzberg on fire! kreuzberg on fire!" if turkey won, wednesday would be turkey versus germany, kreuzberg on fire indeed.

as turkey put in the last winning penalty kick, the crowd went apeshit, knocking over tables and dancing in front of the screen, their shadows blocking the projection. girls in red headscarves with crescents and stars embraced, men in mustaches jigged. the germans among them, also notably the only people with alcohol in hand, smiled curiously at the displays of passion going on around them. the africans cycled back into the darkness of the park.
back at the barbecue someone had reassembled the heart back into the shape of a heart. drunk, i talked with some of the musicians briefly about nationalism and guns, and headed back through neukolln to another party.

the neighborhood was exploding.

last night marked the beginning of "48 hours neukolln", the open-door gallery and installation fest in the stealthily gentrifying northern part of the neighborhood. but around midnight, close to kottbusserdamm, the art patrons faded into black, the tastefully candlelit galleries dribbled away amidst the incessant honking and bright red flags. cars sped down kotti, girls hanging out the window, flags everywhere. "turkiye! turkiye!" firecrackers exploded, bottles smashed. as i approached hermannplatz, people and flags had taken over the intersection, dancing in the headlights. the polizei looked on, as did many germans, beers in hand. the germans looked cowed, confused, and a little disapproving. maybe because if they dance in the streets with german flags (which they secretly long to do, and did to a certain extent last week when germany beat portugual) they feel like nazis? maybe because blatant nationalism doesn't jell with the subtleties of pomo conversation and experimental noise installations? maybe because neukolln will never, ever, belong to them?

i don't know, but i'm sort of looking forward to kreuzberg on fire.