Welcome to the Club
by Elisabeth Breitkopf, b+b enterprises

Berlin not only offers young people an extremely broad range of leisure activities, but also enough space to develop and implement their own creative ideas. The city has always attracted pioneers and original thinkers because of the many niches that people with an experimental bent could find here. The fall of the Wall has greatly enhanced Berlin's attractivity. November 1989 became a magical turning-point that separated yesterday from today and the old from the new.

Since then the city has been characterised by dynamism and change. Every day new areas are opened up and old ones change. In this unique historical situation enormous free spaces opened up that demanded to be shaped anew. The definition vacuum that suddenly emerged after the fall of the Wall turned Berlin into a laboratory and a projection screen for aesthetic and organisational plans, including those of the young generation. There was an atmosphere of gold-digging which seemed to make everything possible. The creative young people who already lived in Berlin or who flocked to the city from all over the world always regarded the historical upheaval as a new start that offered them the freedom to discover new things and take over new fields of action. Within a very short time a large number of new arenas for art and projects were opened up. Clubs, bars and shops were improvised in original locations and discovered by those thirsting for new trends. New model labels created the right outfit - the designers knew just how to place their creations quickly in the windows of scene shops. New sounds developed in the music scene that reached an international audience. Love Parade as a mass techno event has become a trademark of Berlin, just like the enormous spectrum of diverse musical styles that can be heard in the multi-faceted Berlin club culture. In the area of media it's particularly media agencies like Pixelpark and ART+COM which have grown rapidly and become internationally known, but German cinema has also been given a boost by young filmmakers like Tom Tykwer.

At first the young creative scene was concentrated in Mitte district, where many spaces and sites lay empty like a kind of no-man's land. Squatting was particularly prevalent in Spandauer Vorstadt, with its large number of empty premises, but also in the area around Auguststraße and Oranienburger Straße, whereas the big wealthy investors concentrated on the site at Potsdamer Platz and the area around Friedrichstraße. Against the background of recent urban development, we can regard these young activists as pioneers who quickly and skilfully turned the regained territory of Mitte into an important place and, in this respect, gave it new life.

Kunsthaus Tacheles in Oranienburger Straße is part of the standard tourist programme today. Investors and the Senate have battled over it for a long time, but the ruined department store is now officially recognised as an institution for the arts. When a group of artists squatted Tacheles in 1989/90, it was a spectacular first step towards developing Spandauer Vorstadt into a location for art. In 1991 Kunst-Werke moved into a disused margarine factory close by in Auguststraße. As a new kind of place for producing and presenting contemporary art, this institution rapidly became the key catalyst for a cultural restructuring of this area. Unlike Tacheles, Kunst-Werke does not have ruins as its trademark: its organisers have been able to carry through an extensive renovation concept with private and public funds. Today, behind light façades, Kunst-Werke provides twelve studios and a 2500-sq.-metre exhibition space for artists and exhibition makers.

Within a very short time a young gallery scene with international links has established itself in Auguststraße. Its protagonists are looking for new, up-to-date concepts for displaying and selling art. The most important galleries include EIGEN+ART, Arndt & Partner, Wohnmaschine, neugerriemschneider, Klosterfelde, Contemporary Fine Arts, Schipper & Krome and Galerie Neu.

Alongside the galleries, in backyards, former supermarkets or other hidden locations are a large number of art and project spaces that don't operate commercially, are often temporary and adopt an interdisciplinary approach. These include, for instance, loop - raum für aktuelle kunst (space for topical art), an old factory building in Schlegelstraße where exhibitions and projects by young Berlin artists are regularly on display; or shift e.V., which offers a flexible platform for exhibitions and interdisciplinary events in backyard premises in Friedrichstraße.

With their high degree of personal initiative and pioneering spirit, the young curators and gallery owners have reacted with great commitment and flexibility to the challenges of the location. In doing so, they have revived Berlin as a location for art after all those years when it hardly played a role - and especially in relation to a competitive art market. Berlin has now become an internationally recognised centre for contemporary art. Last but not least, events that have received big media coverage and have had a big impact on the public like the berlin biennale for contemporary art and the annual trade fair art forum berlin, which has been running since 1996, have helped the city to achieve a new reputation.

Apart from the art locations, Spandauer Vorstadt is especially characterised by its large number of restaurants, bars and clubs. The quarter has become an eldorado for people out to enjoy themselves and is recommended as such in all the tourist guides. But now you only rarely find the improvised charm that was typical of Berlin after the fall of the Wall, which involved a playful attitude towards the given circumstances and offered rich opportunities for artistic "style exercises". More and more, lavishly decorated restaurants and bars are setting up one after another. They don't see themselves as platforms and discussion venues for artistic positions, but are exclusively dedicated to offering food and drink.

Berlin's international reputation in the night-life scene was established most of all by the club organisers who, after the fall of the Wall, transformed the empty spaces in the east part of the city into attractive meeting-places for the scene, not so much with money but with loads of enthusiasm and inspired ideas. The two bastions of the techno movement, E-Werk and Tresor, became famous far beyond Berlin. The high hall of the former transformer station in Wilhelmstraße that was converted into E-Werk, and the steel vault of Wertheim in Leipziger Straße, once Europe's biggest department store, where Tresor was set up, provided the ideal breeding-ground for techno, probably the most influential musical style at the beginning of the '90s. E-Werk is now closed; but its former organisers focus the eyes of the world on Berlin every year as the organisers of Love Parade. During the '90s Love Parade developed from a spontaneous action into a mega-mainstream event and a significant commercial and image factor for the city.

Not only the big venues, but also the many small ones which were discovered and converted into bars and clubs in an inspired, improvised way, are the experimental field for a music scene that revels in innovation. Alongside techno, it includes an enormous range of musical styles and emanates musical impulses that point towards the future. The new club concepts are marked by the fact that parties are combined with other types of events. Clubs like Maria am Ostbahnhof or WMF not only present DJs and musicians but also exhibitions, installations, literary readings etc. as an integral part of their programme.

In the early years the club scene benefited especially from the fact that the authorities were preoccupied with structural and staffing changes and were unable to keep track of the empty premises. This organisational vacuum meant that so-called "illegal" bars and clubs opened and sprang up in cellars, disused depots or factories. Some of these locations were intended to be temporary from the start; others were forced to close.

Some of the leading figures who decisively influenced the Berlin club scene at the beginning have now adopted a professional approach and largely given up the improvised interior. Along with the techno-club, the organisers of Tresor set up the Markthalle restaurant in Kreuzberg and Schwarzenraben in Mitte, which rapidly became a popular place for a new, more up-market clientele in Mitte. The former organiser of the legendary club Delicious Doughnuts has now moved to the Hackesche Höfe and runs the club Oxymoron, which is furnished in salon style.

Mitte district is changing its structure once again. After Spandauer Vorstadt in particular experienced a major boom through the activities of the young founders in the creative sphere, a large number of buildings have been renovated and rents have risen considerably. Many young activists can no longer afford them. The premises that are still empty are a viable prospect mainly for longer-term enterprises with strong financial backing. This development has given rise to the search for alternatives. For creative people who want to implement their ideas quickly without a long period of preparation, and are looking for places to do this, Prenzlauer Berg is increasingly becoming an attractive possibility. The area around Kastanienallee is a particularly popular location for young enterprises. Friedrichshain is also gradually being discovered - and Kreuzberg rediscovered. While the freebie magazine Flyer Up-Dates is moving from Kreuzberg to Mitte, the model and casting agency Type Face and the glossy magazine Style & The Family Tunes are moving in the opposite direction. The young creative scene in Berlin is under threat of losing Mitte. The winners will be the other districts, which can expect revivals over the next few years.