MetaFilter posts tagged with berlin

Jelly Donuts or Bananas?

The Whelk — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:50:32 -0800

"In hindsight, it’s often seen as inevitable that the two Germanys would reunite. But this, too, is a somewhat revisionist view. " Tim Mohr writes about the "awkward twist" about the fall of the wall, many of the protestors did not seek unification.

Kreuzberg can suck it.

quoquo — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:25:25 -0800

Architect Jakob Tigges plans to erect a 1,000 meter tall artificial mountain in the middle of Berlin. Romantic revanchism or urban penis enlargement? Tiggens doesn't actually want to build it, he rather wants his idea to act as a placeholder in the minds of Berliners, to make sure that plans for new developments on the precious site of former Tempelhof Airport won't be made without active participation of the locals. While Berliners already know their gentrification very well, fresh ideas for the redevelopment are still rare.

The Irony Curtain

jefficator — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:27:56 -0800

Twenty years ago in Berlin a wall came down. But at a free concert last night given by U2 in front of the Brandenburg Gate, MTV Europe decided to put a wall back up.

Generative art from datdatdat

boo_radley — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:14:22 -0800

the videos of datdatdat.org, Andreas Fischer, artist, designer and director from Berlin:
Palatine
Drone
The Tourist
The Omega Code

datdatdat is part of the We Are Chopchop collective.

1000 Melting Men in Berlin.

cristinacristinacristina — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:36:33 -0800

1000 Melting Men in Berlin. (1 2 3 4) from design boom: "earlier this week, brazilian artist nele azevedo, carved 1,000 figures out of ice and placed them on the steps of the concert hall in berlin's gendarmenmarkt square. with temperatures of 73 degrees fahreneheit, (23 degress celsius), the ice figures began melting within half an hour. the project entitled 'melting men' was meant to bring awareness to the world wildlife fund's warning, that melting ice could cause sea-levels to rise more than 3.3 ft by 2100." greenmuze interview last year with Nele Azevedo: "Melting Men is a series of art installations from the Minimum Monument project created by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo. Since 2005, Azevedo has been setting up her Melting Men in various countries around the world. Although originally intended as a critic of the role of monuments in cities, environmentalists around the world are adopting her work as climate change art." more images on Nele Azevedo's fotopage.

We were so free

tellurian — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:43:01 -0800

Moments in Time 1989/1990 - The Fall of the Wall and reunification. Films and photos from private collections. With woodpeckers.

"Mein Penis! It's stuck in the keyhole!!"

mannequito — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:45:38 -0800

On Sunday, Karmanoia, one of Berlin's most interesting underground clubs, closed its doors for the last time. Although not as storied or well-known as Tacheles - also facing tough times - and easy to pass without noticing, Karmanoia had a loyal crowd of oddballs frequenting it, and was notable not just for its pirate-ship-like interior, but also for the full Labyrinth built into its upper portions. The club's funeral took place directly after locking the doors at midnight on Sunday, with an orchestra dressed like skeletons leading a parade to a nearby canal to bury the key in a watery grave. A few performances to sample what you might come across on any given night in the club, as well as three out of four parts of a live set there by Brass Wood & Wires. Their pottkasten is (was?) especially great as well, including some great music and hilarious comedy skits in both English and German (sometimes simultaneously!). Post title comes from episode 10 I believe.

Spinning wheel goes round and round

geoff. — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:25:11 -0800

We are in the midst of a Ferris wheel craze. In 2009. "This year, Germany will unveil the Great Berlin Wheel. Upon its completion, the wheel will be 606 feet high — as high as two football fields are long, as high as three Niagara Falls. It will be taller than what’s currently the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, the Singapore Flyer, a soon-to-be-disappointing 541 feet high. This year, China also plans to unveil the Beijing Great Wheel. At an awesome 682 feet high, it will be taller than both the Great Berlin Wheel and the Singapore Flyer (which only debuted as the world’s tallest Ferris wheel last year) ... China has, in fact, built wheels in six cities since the start of the new millennium."

Rethinking The Marquee Tool

mannequito — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:04:43 -0800

Inspired by NYC's Poster Boy and the hilarity of online celebrity photoshop disasters, Berlin's culture jamming F.T.W. crew recently organized a hit on Britney, Christina and Leona in an underground U-Bahn station. Note from the group's flickr sets that they were also recently responsible for a project based on John Carpenter's They Live.

Yes I know people die of starvation but this is ROTTEN food

namagomi — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:39:06 -0800

Food Fight! For reasons unknown to mankind the people of Kreuzberg fight the people of Friedrichshain (two Berlin precincts) on the Brigde that connects them. Their ammunition is rotten vegetables, diapers, rotten fruit and everything else you'd find in your bio-trashcan. More (sorry only a Trailer), more and still more (in german only).

The Historic American Sheet Music archive

Upton O'Good — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:59:07 -0800

The Historic American Sheet Music archive at the Duke University Library has over 3000 pieces published in the United States available online, from the 1850s up to 1920. Composers represented include well-known names such as Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, and John Philip Sousa. All the music is now in the public domain, and may be printed and performed freely. [Note: Language or stereotypes may occasionally be NSFW.]

You know who else had his head torn off?

sour cream — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:24:51 -0800

Displaying Hitler alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting heroes at the new Madame Tussauds in Berlin was a bit controversial to begin with. And it didn't last long before one of the first visitors literally tore off the Fuehrer's head.

Those barricades can only hold for so long

sister nunchaku of love and mercy — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:01:20 -0800

Twenty years ago this week, the biggest escape ever over the Berlin Wall took place, but the event went nearly unreported outside of the two Germanies. The 182 persons who jumped over the Wall in the early morning hours of 1 July 1988, instead of leaving East Germany, fled in the opposite direction (scroll down to "Wolfgang Ritter") to escape the West Berlin police. East German border guards waited with trucks on the other side of the Wall in the middle of the death strip to pick up the wall-hopping protesters; they were driven to another location, served breakfast, and then taken to the Friedrichsstrasse crossing to West Berlin with the admonition to "use the usual border crossing next time." The Lenné Triangle, where the wall jumpers lived in their tent village (including a "People's Kitchen") for the month before the police raid (slideshow here), was part of the bustling Potsdamer Platz before the Second World War. On the division of Berlin it turned into a no-man's land and an accidental nature preserve. After the reunification of Berlin it again became part of the center of commercial development. In 2007, $117 million in restitution was finally paid to the Wertheim family, who had owned the property and been stripped of it in the 1930s due to National Socialist anti-Jewish laws.

Forgotten Architects

sveskemus — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:38:40 -0800

Forgotten Architects: In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime. Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of 43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work. The paper is based on the extensive research of architect Myra Warhaftig. Warhaftig spent twenty years investigating the fates of these architects and only recently published her findings in her book German Jewish Architects Before and After 1933: The Lexicon. David Sokol has written about Warhaftig and her project in an article published in the Jewish culture blog Nextbook.

Ich bin ein Berliner

namagomi — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:55:35 -0800

Do you like Berlin? The hippest city on the planet has some interesting video blogs. My personal favorite is First We Take Berlin which is pretty off-beat and covers a lot of not so hip areas of the city. In their current episode they go to the annual may riots in Kreuzberg (after a weird little mouse story). Then there is Mayda3000 which is the longest running video blog about Berlin. Watch Berlin is a sort of compilation of many different video blogs most of which are in german but there are some are in english as well. And last but not least there's Verbundstoff which is in german only and takes a look at the very underground Berlin electronic music scene.

Born with the birth of flight

Your Time Machine Sucks — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:12:10 -0800

With the grounds it was built on having hosted the first demonstration of airplane flight in 1909, Tempelhof International Airport, the world's second-oldest working commercial airport, was officially opened in 1923. Also known as City Airport, it takes its official name from the Tempelhof neighborhood of Berlin, itself named for the Knights Templar who owned its land in the Middle Ages. The Nazi era saw a redesign by architect Ernst Sagebiel at the request of Albert Speer, widely hailed as one of the classic airport designs of the 20th century despite the darkness of its origins. In the postwar era, Tempelhof was the delivery site for the Berlin Airlift, when the Western allies kept West Berlin supplied with the necessities of life for 15 months via nonstop plane deliveries from the so-called Rosinenbomber or "Raisin Bombers", despite the Soviet blockade. There have been very few logistical feats to rival the Airlift since: at the height of the deliveries, flights were arriving every 3 minutes, around the clock, with an average of 8,000 tons of goods being flown in daily. The operation succeeded, but at the cost of 101 British, American and German lives. After the blockade was lifted, this sacrifice for West Berlin's survival was commemorated with the Luftbrückendenkmal, or Berlin Airlift Monument, which remains one of the few remaining loci of the extraordinary postwar relationship between the US and the former West Germany. Nothing lasts forever. One of the big side-effects of the reunification of Berlin was that the city, formerly two cities, had multiples of everything: central train stations, operas, and a veritable embarrassment of airports. Plans were made for the BBI, a huge new consolidated airport to be placed just outside of the city in former-East Brandenburg, and these plans were made contingent on the closing of Tempelhof. Former-West Berliners were shocked, and although American Ronald Lauder has twice offered to save Tempelhof by investing a half a billion Euros to turn it into an air-accessible health (or possibly beauty) center, he has been rebuffed both times. Things took on an air of inevitability: much like the decommissioning of Charlottenburg's Zoo train station in 2006, another West neighborhood was going to lose one of its anchors as the price of progress. Oder? This winter, in a city of 3.4 million, over 175,000 Berliners signed a petition demanding a public binding refendum on whether to close Tempelhof, invoking a new procedural rule for allowing direct voting on a city policy for the first time ever. Soon, the fate of the airport will be decided: if 610,000 Berliners vote to keep it... ...well, that part isn't clear yet. Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's slightly-starstruck SPD mayor, has said that he will ignore the results of the vote and proceed with the closing plan. The conservative CDU party has made hay of this, accusing the Mayor of being anti-democratic. Even chancellor Angela Merkel has gotten into the local tussle, encouraging Berliners to get out and vote to keep Tempelhof, and referencing the Berlin Airlift in her entreaty. Did I mention that Ms. Merkel grew up in East Germany? Despite its intention to ignore the results, the SPD has decide to hedge their bets by making use of the Ron Lauder offers to invoke a little bit of class warfare [pdf], with a construction worker saying "Ick zahl doch nicht für'n VIP-Flughafen!" ("I'm not paying for a VIP airport!" in a Berlin accent) on their thousands of posters. But however the vote goes this Sunday, Wowereit's stance may have set the stage for something otherwise-unimaginable: Berlin having a conservative local government in its future. Tempelhof is the rare working airport which still manages to evoke the golden age of air travel, and I recommended that any former flight lover who has lost their faith in an age rife with humiliations make a pilgrimage to its graceful halls and rediscover their wonder. But don't wait too long to visit or you may miss your chance.

David does Berlin

namagomi — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:54:49 -0800

David Lynch talks about invincible Germany in Berlin. Why Mr. Lynch should learn german.

Brigid Berlin

bustmakeupleave — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:31:30 -0800

Brigid Berlin makes today's hollywood train wrecks look lame. "In the early 70s, I went to Woolworth's and bought a jigger so I could have just one getting-dressed drink. By the time I left the house, I'd had 20. One time, I was in a hairdresser under the dryer getting bored. I went to the bar across the street in my rollers and had a glass of white wine. Then another glass of wine and another. I can't remember anything else until I woke up in a Howard Johnson near La Guardia Airport. And there were pancakes and maple syrup. There was a cute boy in the room watching Kids Are People Too. I think I thought that Andy would put him on the cover of Interview. He didn't."

Art Experimental: Ruttmann vs. Milant

carsonb — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:11:47 -0800

Ruttmann vs. Milant
Alexis Milant has composed scores for three experimental animations realised by Walter Ruttmann. The pleasure in watching and [listening to] this come from the reactivity in the same temporality between sound and picture. Walter Ruttmann is perhaps best known for his silent documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City* (1927) and for his carefully orchestrated abstract animations. (Ubuweb has Opus I-4 in one.)

Alexis Milant has impressed us before with his excellent art is a game and game an art, aka awesum fingerboarding video! Turns out the impressive sound design of that video is his specialty.

Finally, here are some one-off videos of interest:

Another modern score for Opus I-4
Michael Szymczyk's modern-day re-imagining of Berlin, Vienna: Symphony of a Great City (not silent ;)
A video fingerboarding tutorial

*in 8 parts—you might want to put on some music for this

Bilderbook

hama7 — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:14:35 -0800

Bilderbook.

Long live our Soviet Motherland, built by the people's mighty hand.

Mayor Curley — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:48:08 -0800

The Soviet Army fights its way into Berlin and then, in a Very Special Episode, Uncle Joe drops in for a visit.

warnings: YouTube; violence followed by extreme melodrama

Berliner Trance

empath — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:47:44 -0800

Berliner Trance. A 1993 documentary tracing the origins of modern trance music in East Berlin. Featuring interviews with many of the biggest names in trance, including a very young Paul Van Dyk, now currently ranked as the #1 DJ in the world.

Autopsy may show that Yan Yan died of an accidental overdose

phaedon — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 23:59:02 -0800

After twelve years of not getting laid, Yan Yan the Chinese panda finally kicked the bucket late Monday at the Berlin Zoo. Officials admits she died alone and nobody immediately noticed. Now the media is running with the story that the popularity of Knut the polar bear cub may be the reason behind the death of his neighbor. In other news, the European Union celebrated its 50th birthday in Berlin. Nobody noticed.

Goodbye, Lou.

ijoshua — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:00:44 -0800

In 1973, Berlin, Lou Reed’s somber follow-up to his upbeat, glam-rock Transformer, was described by Rolling Stone as “a disaster,” by others as “horseshit,” and was never performed live — until now.

What a pratfall!

parmanparman — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 07:33:56 -0800

The Berlin District Court has ruled that Deutsche Bahn must rebuild whole sections of the new Hauptbahnhof according to the architect's plans, setting a spectacular precedent. Berlin's new main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, cuts a solitary figure in the surrounding wasteland as it awaits an urban development that will complement its ambition, aesthetics and vast dimensions. But the verdict pronounced by the Berlin District Court on Tuesday November 28 has brutally nipped this development process in the bud. The judges ruled that the German rail company Deutsche Bahn has unlawfully violated the intellectual property rights of the station's architect, Meinhard von Gerkan. The rail company must rebuild the station according to the architect's plans. The station opened in May this year after a 13-year construction period.