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ONLY BE BERLINER
Only-Be Berliner
The Juwel Palais in Berlin
The massacre that was perpetrated in Oslo the past July by Anders Behring Breivik has evidenced a growing phenomenon in Europe that is worrying. It´s the sustained rise of the antiestablishment ultra right-wing, or at least its xenophobic and ultranationalist discourse. Not only in Norway, where the Progress Party (where Breivik was part of its ranks for many years) recently obtained 23% of the votes, but in different countries of civilized Europe, we attend an escalated increase of backing received in the polls to organizations that, taking advantage of the consequences of the recession and the way that many conservative parties like the social-democrats seem absolutely incapable of separate themselves a single inch from the solutions imposed by the markets, bankers an qualifying agencies that are responsible in the first place for the economic catastrophe, defend a return to supposed national essences that exclude and proclaim more and more eagerly all the time the need to witch-hunt and scapegoats. Maybe what´s more worrying isn´t the way that postures that, until recently, common sense would have mostly dismissed as neofascist now obtain the backing of hundreds of disenchanted voters, but the progressive infiltration of their ideas and discourse in conservative European parties that currently occupy power in most of the continent. The presidents of France, United Kingdom and Germany publicly express their disdain for multiculturalism and behind that there isn´t an anthropological or sociological explanation of the term but a justification for the cutting of rights of immigrants and the persecution, banning and expulsion of large contingents of people with the aim of attracting the vote of those citizens that...
The Berlin Wall
It is a symbol of the days of Cold War and the German division and was given the title “the death strip”. It also symbolizes the division of Germany from 1961 to 1989. During the days of crisis, the Communist government built this wall to cover the escaping routes of the country to curb the continuous flight of East Germans towards the Western side. The fenced barbed-wire got gradually replaced with thick concrete slabs which were given a special shape to prevent people from clinging to it. The Berlin Wall was a kind of barrier built between East (GDR) and West Berlin for over 28 years. With the end of World War II, the Germany was separated into four zones which were fully under the control of the army. This ushered a period of great depression between East and West. This tension peaked when the Soviet Union closed any type of connection between Western occupation zones of Germany and the West Berlin. It was raised between the two cities to refrain people from having any kind of contacts. Though the people belonging to both the states possessed the same nationality but they have different passports. The border between East and West became a death trap not only in Berlin but in the entire Germany. The soldiers were ordered to fire on anyone trying to cross the border area which was equipped with more and more terrifying equipments such as high voltage fence, land mines, and the barbed wire. The people protested and complained about this system and find numerous ways to meet their family and friends on the other...Fassbender & Rausch Restaurant Berlin
Restaurant and chocolate shop, it´s a must-see place for the lovers of the good life.
Gallery La Siguaraya Berlin
La Siguaraya is a gallery that promotes Cuban art and, also, generates debates related to film and literature.
Modern Times in Berlin
A great event to enjoy Berlin in a different way is the exhibition that the New National Gallery on the collection of works of art, ´Modern Times. The Collection (1900-1945)´. which will be open until the 3rd of October. The exhibition is organized around the works of the modernist period and will give way to the exhibition that will cover the period after the Second World War. The exhibition recovers the convulsive history that the Berlin National Gallery lived through these works. From 1900 until the end of the Second World War, both Berlin and the Gallery lived the avatars of a political era of great changes: two World Wars, oppressive politics and social convulsions. We just have to go back to 1937 when the Nazi regime imposed oppressive rules on art, qualifying expressionism as ´degenerate art´, banning the exhibition of artists of this trend, persecuting and murdering the artists who defied this rule. During that period, the Berlin National Gallery lost innumerable works of art, like the work of the German expressionist painter Franz Marc, ´Tower of Blue Horses´. The division of Germany meant a rupture in the art trends that, until 1945, had built the most brilliant avant-garde in Europe. Many artists emigrated from Germany to the United States during the War and others fled to East Germany as a political compromise at the end of the war. And so, while in East Germany the artists took up a role of art workers for the socialist ideology that the USSR dictated, in West Germany other avant-gardes came up who rebelled against capitalism and the industrial society. The...
ABC: Contemporary Art in Berlin
Of all the formats that art has had during all its history, perhaps painting is the one that has have the most importance for centuries, possibly the one that most defined many artists. Painting was associated with empires and religions earnestly, for example, the first locations where arts were instructed religious centers or monasteries. During the Renaissance period, artists gained a different image, they were then considered as businessmen, and the terms “master” and “Apprentice” appeared everywhere. As a consequence of that, many paintings were labeled or were given ownership by certain painters who commissioned their disciples to make such jobs. Thus, painters became arrogant, wealthy people coming from courts, empires and governments, who were always aware of lucrative payments. Jumping into the twentieth century, we saw that art became the “pharmaceutical product for jerks” as Tristan Tzara said, and well, modern art is another story, which comes even to this day, when “apparently”, the painting has been put aside by other means like video, installation, architecture and graphic arts. In spite of that, many artists continue to explore their possibilities of painting and the risks that it has. This is an important and inaccurate reference point to continue the exploration of current global art. This year´s edition of ABC: Contemporary Art in Berlin comes to prove the past wrong, as it will focus on painting, in an exhibition called, “About Painting”, which will display paintings from contemporary practice, presented together with videos, photographs and sculptures that deal with this classic media. Twenty years ago, few exhibitions focused on painting as a high influence media in conceptual art, believing...
Schopenhauer versus Hegel in the University of Berlin
When we think in Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) the first that we do nearly inevitably is refer to his incomparable style. A delicious and seductive way to write and present his ideas, so interested in putting in contact Western philosophy with some important aspects of ancient wisdom and Oriental thoughts, which has subjugated from its emergence to a large part of the most select and important writers of the last two centuries, unable to resist the influx of its siren call. From Nietzsche – who abandoned philology for philosophy on its hypnotic rise – to Borges via Marcel Proust, the most important and delicate craftsmen of the literary creation of the male pantheon have had him as a light which made hours milder and more enjoyable shedding unused light into life´s long and gloomy night. It´s not strange, given his extremely offensive misogyny – which may have to be understood under his conception of art of insulting as the last resource when it becomes apparent that the opponent is superior and it´s not possible to be right or to defeat him with reasoning – that women, generally, have maintained their enthusiasm for him on a secret and critical level. However, Schopenhauer himself was in charge of reminding us in more than one occasion that having something to say wasn´t only the first rule of the good style but the only one necessary, despite that all German writer, particularly philosophers, distinguished themselves for transgressing it from the time of Fichte, cultivating what he ingeniously named the Homeopathic Method: “a minimal and weakened portion of thought in fifty pages of waffling, and...
Whisky Autumn: Whiskey Festival in Berlin
When you watch a cowboy film, everyone´s drinking whiskey. If you think of Lemmy from Motorhead, he´s never stopped drinking whiskey. Parties, losses, celebrations, deflations… whiskey has always known how to feed the fire of so many drunken times which has been part of our every day life. The history of whiskey is long and deep, and it´s possible that it began to be distilled in Mesopotamia, around the year 2BC, by the Babylonians, with distilled aromas and perfumes. And so, the process of distillation was taken from Africa to Europe by the moors and its use began to spread among the monasteries, especially for medicinal use in the treatment for paralysis, colics and smallpox. As it was to be expected, from 1100 until 1300, the distillation process spread around England and Scotland, with distilleries existing in monasteries in Ireland from the 12th century. As well, because both islands have few vineyards for wine production, wheat beer was used instead of it, thus the appearance of whiskey. What´s true is that today, whiskey is one of the most drunk alcoholic beverages in all continents. Imagine a party where there´s not a single shot of whiskey available, it would be completely boring. There are so many versions of whiskey as there are of beer. They say that the first versions of whiskey were so strong that they were dangerous., and it didn´t happen until someone, by chance, opened an abandoned barrel that had been so for many years. Whisky Autumn Festival in Berlin is another chance to have a good time with friends and to try the best whiskey from...
Rockstar Models Night at Hard Rock Cafe Berlin
Fashion never stops. For people not to grow weary, new forms, new faces and new concepts must be invented all the time. For some time, we have been surrounded by images of reality, without pictures, without digital figures, and without advertising or commercials, there is nothing. Let´s analyze it, the morass of signs that is given to our senses, which makes most forms in the world to have meaning and be part of a consensus, are the result of rubbing vertical visual stimuli. It is not simply that you choose to wear black for the your boyfriend’s party to look thinner. To achieve this decision, you have considered the pink skirt with blue dots and the black tight dress, you had to go through all the connotations of each of those dresses, from the design, the cleavage to the way the fabric falls on your legs. You had to check what accessories to complete the outfit you should wear to match your attitude and desire for the chosen night. In this way, fashion, today more than ever before, is part of a reality that cage us and does not let us out. The sin of fashion is that, it is just not for everyone. The body that fashion establishes as beautiful, the same that deifies, which contributes to alter what we believe, because ultimately what we consider as beautiful about a male’s and female’s body, has little to do with what´s on the street, the bodies that are on the beach. Thus, the fashion becomes a spectrum of desire, the desire for the impossible, something we want to be...
