Live Diaries: More Than Techno Clubbing // Berlin, Apr 2024
Musings from a tourist at the source.
The Germans really do have words for everything. Here, I present to you the most fascinating of my recent discoveries; “Klubsterben,” or “the death of clubs” — used to encompass the alleged demise of clubbing in Berlin as of last year, spurred by economic concerns regarding rising entry fees, as well as venue maintenance costs in the capital notorious for its nightlife.
I happened to find myself amidst what resembles death but isn’t — amidst the scene’s telltale blinding smoke and strobe lighting — right at a cusp; In March, UNESCO announced its recognition of Berlin techno as part of the German national registry of Intangible Cultural Heritage, dubbing it the “soundtrack of the spirit of optimism after reunification” — a sentence that calls back to the EDM subgenre’s prominent presence in the modern history of Berlin, as a symbol of hope and openness towards novel ideas following the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Newfound access to government funding, then, promises to stall the scene’s expiration date: a plausible, necessary “welcome back” to its alienated crowds, driven out of the culture due to higher pricings which, in turn, has the ability to restore the community feeling that has been — as described by Dan Cole for The Berliner — “thin on the ground” as of late.
Community, for those few, mid-April days and nights I spent in Berlin on the pure premise of vacation, seemed to me like the center of everything. First thing, here: Wikipedia names the German capital “the most populous city proper in the European Union.” Second: Walking the uncannily bare streets of Berlin at any time and place other than downtown during the weekend, that is precisely the last thing that may cross your mind. I’ll admit now, coming from tiny little Athens where you are typically expected to share a single (visibly decaying, at that) square meter with the couple of church-going elders taking their sweet time in front, the corporate guy on his phone next to you, the pilates girl and her dog right behind, and sometimes the food delivery motorcycle scrambling to be illegally parked as well, I tend to marvel at the mere sight of spacious sidewalks no matter the context. That’s personal. Still, Berlin felt inviting in a way that transcended escapist predisposition.
There, food delivery motorcycles were food delivery bikes. Bikes that rode without difficulty in the bike lane, intact by cars and the like, that followed special bike signage and special bike traffic lights and did so quietly, in a language of movement only acquired through, presumably, chronically fussless routine. The “borderline suspicious calmness,” as I jotted down in my notes for this, extended to squares, malls, restaurants, working and living public spaces of various sorts — to be frank, not unlike what I’ve seen and heard of regarding other central Europe capitals, such as Budapest and Vienna. (Again, Balkan bias.)
I sometimes wonder if the cultural juxtapositions between Southern (so-called “olive-tomato”) and Central/Northern (“potato”) Europe parallel the American perception of California versus New York at all. While situationally existing outside of a two-meter distance from other people for most of the duration of my trip, I kept being reminded of the Marriage Story (2019) catchphrase constantly thrown at Adam Driver in defense of making the move to LA: “The space!” The structure of Berlin, despite the city’s sky-high population, gives off the illusion of vacancy — yet categorically counteracts any suspicion of sparse socialization or car dependency. Additionally, folkloric elements are hard to come by; however, not in the absence of cultural character, which practically oozes from walls and passersby. Berliners, native or not, look, for the most part, unchallenged. English is spoken and heard everywhere. Brunch places are always full, but just two minutes and you’ll be comfortably seated.
At an expat hub, particularly one where mainstream club culture warrants phone abstinence, is it remotely groundbreaking to be talking about community?
On a Thursday night, an ex-power plant battery room with capacity just over 200 was coming alive under the intro set’s ‘90s-esque house sounds. Eyes adjusting to the heavy, artificial fog and disruptive flashes, the room started offering glimpses of its make-up a handful of minutes in. Relaxedly grooving to the hard-hitting beats were clubbers of diverse types — older and younger, men and women in separate or joint groups, people who had just stumbled in to prolong an already eventful evening or the ones for whom a long night ahead was just picking up. The latter are easy to spot from a mile away, quintessential rave attire giving away their levels of experience; for the girls, big, low-stakes pants and skimpy, breathable tops (typically sleeveless, maybe mesh), with the hair mostly tied up for convenience; the guys opt for sleeveless shirts, too, sometimes accessorizing with jewelry, or a faint touch of eye makeup.
While on the topic of style, it’s needless to say that, in Berlin — the “second-hand heaven” that lends itself flawlessly to an idea of a dystopian future where you may be handcuffed on the spot if caught sporting a fast fashion label — none of the above is optimized to communicate any sort of fashion status unless thrifted. The “coolest person in the room” title belongs to a tall figure making their way from the bar to the back space of the club (a corner just opposite the cloakroom for drinking, smoking and chatting away from dancefloor noise) approximately every 10 minutes, boasting a Y2K-style motor jacket (you’ll see these things prestigiously hung at the foreground of every highly curated vintage store across the city), ‘70s Jagger hair, big sunglasses, and a tiny, worn out, muted red handbag that would’ve made Carrie Bradshaw’s rotation in the late ‘90s.
On another edge of the spectrum is a girl who makes an appearance just after the decks handover, walking in to darker, synthy techno with the magnetism of an off-duty runway model; cut-out, black leotard over bare legs, paired with lived-in, knee-high stiletto boots, an oversized jacket and straight, waist-length hair. Her intimidating aura quickly dissolves into a warm demeanor reflected in her earnest smile as she spots a friend in the crowd and moves over to hug them reunion-tight. It’s a kind of fervor that catches the eye; cuts through the function’s icy atmosphere, through the monotone bass and repetitive vertical motion among the audience. She circles around the dancefloor greeting people here and there with unyielding enthusiasm — among them, a girl I had grazed shoulders with a few minutes prior as she rushed to her boyfriend stood right in front of me, and a raver archetype within a breath’s distance from the DJ booth.
As the night went on, the hugging and kissing as well as the amount clubbers being introduced to one another only multiplied. The safe space of the dancefloor enveloped people growing comfortable with each other, letting loose in the presence of others and, whether newbie-stiff or raver-confident, dancing wholeheartedly with their sticker-covered phone cameras in their pockets; a sight to behold in a cultural timeline where plenty resort to publically repressing said urge in fear of coming across a clip of themselves being ridiculed for it on TikTok.
The observations came hand in hand with some musings from earlier in the day. In Rave — my only non-second-hand souvenir from the trip, acquired from a bookstore/bagel place with “NO LAPTOPS AT THE WEEKEND!!!” signage on its window — cult German novelist Rainald Goetz recalls nights and early mornings spent immersed in ‘90s techno culture, through fragments of overheard dialogue and stray thoughts generated from the oblivion-inducing atmosphere and thumping bass. I’m curious about the internal process required to compose a book like this, where sentences can look like “Dope music now,” or “Pleasant thoughts, cool night,” or “The dealer is here,” with little added context concerning the actual events. The memoir read how being in the club felt, simulating some form of imaginary mental software that has the ability to transcribe one’s stream of consciousness on the spot. I similarly wished to have every fleeting abstraction from that night immortalized if humanly possible, yet stealing even a moment to make a quick note of something on my phone would’ve seemed blasphemous. Amid the smoke, there was only music and people. No barrier in-between.
In some inverted way, I guess techno must reflect the intentional lack of ornamentation of Bauhaus modernism, encapsulating bold statements through its minimalism. I suppose somewhere around these parts lies a strong correlation with its primal connotations — the return to the id, the ego death. The best raves get you out of your body and into it at the same time, and I have my personal doubts as to how much of that experience is directly influenced by lines done next to beer glasses left on the discrete wall seating. Berliners gather in once abandoned city spaces to dance and meet friends, and everything else stays in the room. They wear other people’s clothes, wear a lot of black during the day, sit at coffee shop window stools no matter if it’s freezing outside.
The third act of the night caught me on my way out. Girl in early twenties, dressed casually, sat weirdly on top of the decks with a mic in hand, vocalizing to ambient production — sensibility that evoked early FKA twigs. At that point the place was full. Percussive interjections promised a progression of the set into experimental, drum & bass-infused electronic. I stepped into the crisp, April air carrying in my mind the intimate image of her singing right into the crowd, not even a meter away from her makeshift stage; and the feeling of understanding something.