In search of the Pluriverse
Perceived as one of the 'old' European centres, Berlin is a layered, battered and blooming city, home to many fringes. These worlds-within-worlds manifest themselves as alternative, queer and artistic communities. Can we learn with them how to live together, in difference? What fertile forms of urban community building can fluid identities help to instigate? And what role does creative making play in supporting this 'other-than-modern world-making'?
Photo: Wong&Krier
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After investigating a megacity's ancestral and modern relationship to water with Testing Istanbul's Waters (spring 2021), and the precariousness of island livelihood in a globalised world with Thriving on Mull (summer 2021), in this third chapter of their search, Wong&Krier ask: which fertile forms of urban community building can inspire a more fluid notion of self?
"Design has doubtlessly been a central political technology of modernity. (&) Through its materiality, [it] hardwires particular kinds of politics into bodies, spaces or objects. (&) How to think about design's capacities and potentiality through a wide spectrum of imaginations?"Domínguez Rubio and Fogué, 2015, p. 143 as quoted by Arturo Escobar in Designs for the Pluriverse p.18
Despite declining economic activity over the course of the 20th century, hope and optimism seem, at first glance, to remain Berlin's main driving force - as was the case in its famous Golden Twenties. Artists, makers and squatters have always sought and found refuge here, weaving together a diaspora of different cultures.
The iconic 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall reinforces this image for outsiders: it has forever left a mark on the generation that grew up witnessing it (Sophie Krier was 13 at the time; her dad woke her up to watch the joyful wall crossings on TV). However, on the inside of the city, under the radar, different stories unfolded, as shared in this fragment of Audre Lorde's 1989 poem East Berlin:
What do official narratives tell us, and what do they hide behind closed doors? The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power." In Everybody: A Book About Freedom, Olivia Laing charts the life of renegade Berlin-based psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. She paints a colourful picture of Golden Twenties-era Berlin as a playful, sexually tolerant city, with the Institute for Sexual Research, which was initiated by Magnus Hirshfield, at its heart.
This search for sexual freedom and investigation into (sexual) identities is still alive in Berlin today. Apart from the well known parties, clubs and festivals, a more politically driven queer movement runs like an artery through the city. The Village, for instance, is a thriving community centre for gay, bisexual, trans- and queer men that attracts visitors and participants from all over the globe.
How do we embody the city, and vice versa? When does one body seek the company of other bodies and form a community, a formation? Can bodies, moving together, liquify urban masterplans? And what generates separation and isolation in a city like Berlin?
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #1
Daan van Kampenhout: F*cking with the Gods
Although in time it was our last conversation, we decided to start this string of talks with Daan van Kampenhout. His take on fluidity is inspiring and a perfect introduction to our series ‘Fluid selves, fluid Berlin’. Van Kampenhout’s interest in shamanism started after having vidid dreams during a malaria infection. He graduated from art school with a series of costumes and rituals. After a life of travel, learning, publishing and teaching, Van Kampenhout still combines his ritualistic, systemic practice with designing costumes and performing. A talk on a quiet winter day about antidotes for hate, mediating between matter and spirit, a queer ancestors ritual and the importance of Berlin’s KitKatClub as a fun, fluid techno temple.
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #2
Vertical Tripping: sensing Fischerinsel
Photo: Wong&Krier
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We start every pluriversal trip with a joined experience: a vertical fieldtrip, or an ‘acupuncture of place’ as Sophie Krier calls it. Guided by participant Sabine Zahn we (Tomás Espinosa, Kornelia Dimitrova, Benoît Verjat, Sophie Krier and Erik Wong) attempt to ‘feel’ one of the oldest, but now quite nondescript parts of Berlin: Fisherinsel. Sabine invites us to use our whole body and all our senses. We start at motor ship Heimatland that houses Hošek Contemporary, a residency/studio space that functions as our home base.
We walked, jumped, stumbled, rolled, smelled, touched, listened and observed. At the end you can listen to some personal audio notes. A very physical start of our fluid trip.
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #3
Kornelia Dimitrova: Playbook Practice
Architectural researcher Kornelia Dimitrova co-founded Foundation We Are, a collective of nine creative minds and makers. We had a Warming Up Talk in 2020 with Kornelia and her co-founder Bernhard Lenger. Dimitrova’s analytic and bright approach of the built environment and social dynamics stuck with us, so we asked her to join us for our Berlin edition. In her own practice Dimitrova helps care organisations to address spatial and architectural issues by imagining alternative scenarios for use. In the past years she developed a strategic vision for De Grote Beek, one of the largest mental healthcare facilities in the Netherlands. Kornelia published her proposals in the Playbook for Healing Environments. A talk – with a blazing fire in the background – about the value of mapping, working with what there is, and the art of proposing the right possibilities at the right time.
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #4
Tomás Espinosa: The art of cruising
Fast love. Tomás Espinosa is artist and activist. He works in both in Berlin and Bogotá. The tension between the ‘intimate’ and the ‘public’ fuels his work. He installed two hanging mirrors with holes in a Berlin park, where men meet for sex. He filmed the installation and put a soundscape under it in which you hear Espinosa cruising through the greenery, making contact with other male bodies. Is this a disturbance of a secretive meeting place, or an attempt to emancipate? He took this installation to Bogotá where he engages since 2015 with La Red Comunitaria Trans, a trans activist network. Together they develop actions, performances and videos. A talk on a crisp, cold morning about fighting violence, having sex in public places, the urgency of protest, the worth of a life and the darker sides of fluidity.
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #5
Sabine Zahn: Doing the city
Sabine Zahn lives and works in Berlin. She investigates how choreographic strategies can help understand how urban space can be lived, expressed and transformed. She creates public research projects and processes which are often based on scripts that set something – often bodies – in motion. In 2021, Sabine was appointed a fellow in the DAS Graduate programme in Amsterdam. We had this conversation at Floating University, a place for learning and experiment in a neglected water basin at the fringe of Kreuzberg. Zahn thrives in places like this, where new ways of living and being – human and more than human – can be tried out and ‘rehearsed’. A talk at dusk, when the light faded and the cold started to creep in. A conversation about the body as a tool to understand words, and words like neighbouring as the start of a choreography.
Fluid selves, fluid Berlin #6
Intermezzo: other voices, other lives
We do realise that outside our hyperfocused Berlin bubble, this city hosts many other lives and voices that deserve to be heared and recognised. And that is why – in this short intermission – we make room for Doreen, Vasille, Fluss Puss and Johanna, Berliners we met while walking the streets. What does fluidity mean to them? What brought them here? Who exactly is Berlin?
Fluid Selves, Fluid Berlin #7
Finale: Body Talk
Imagine a cold, dark and rainy afternoon in November. The group (Dimitrova, Espinosa, Zahn, Wong, Krier and audiotechnician Robert) gathers under an old amusement park bumper-car-roof. We wear silent headphones with disco lights. We are in the shadows of ModellProjekt Haus der Statistik that houses artistic and research based projects during its renovation. We use a score by Oslo based choreographer Mia Habib (All, a physical form of protest), and walk clockwise in circles. Robert stands in the middle, holding the mic.
A walking, searching conversation that covers most subjects we touched upon these past few days: fluidity, violence, urban capitalism, the relation between body, city and health. The tone of the conversation is committed yet bleak. At the end Sophie lights up the space by quoting Jeremy Wade aka Puddles the Pelican: “It’s gonna be alright, even if it’s not gonna be alright”.
Bonus: Urban Praxis
One night we found ourselves at the – packed – launch of a small but thorough book: Glossary of Urban Praxis, published by Stadt Werkstätte Berlin. Their online archive is worth a dig!