Living techno archives in Berlin
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BERLIN, the cash-strapped capital of Europe’s top economy, has long tried to turn alternative culture into gold, but ambitious new bids to present underground art in museum settings could break new ground.
Street art and techno music took root across the city in the hothouse environment of post-Wall Berlin, drawing young creative types from around the world with cheap rents and disused industrial spaces ripe for the taking.
But as the city’s trademark brand of gritty coolness became globally renowned and then gradually more mainstream, Berlin has tried to capture lightning in a bottle: capitalizing on the best of its art and nightlife scene without losing the spark that made it so unique in the first place.
A prime example of that high-wire act is the legendary nightclub Tresor. A former underground safe room for a pre-war department store that later languished in the Wall’s no-man’s land, Tresor in 1991 quickly became the top dance club in Berlin’s budding techno scene.
Now celebrating its 25th birthday, it still attracts an international crowd of electronic music fans but has long since been supplanted by younger rivals such as Berghain, a hedonist temple frequently named the world’s best club.
However Tresor’s founder Dmitri Hegemann, 60, is ready to take his project to the next level with a museum dedicated to techno housed in the disused power station where the club moved in 2007.
He says such spontaneity and knack for reinvention have served Berlin well.
“None of the plans laid for the future of the city after the fall of the Wall worked out,” Hegemann said.
“An ‘economy of niches’ ended up in its place: open a club or a gallery, a restaurant, a bar, etc. That economy of niches dictated what to do next, and it’s what has made Berlin so attractive.”
Hegemann noted that there were 30 million overnight stays in Berlin last year and he estimates that “50 to 60 percent” of the visitors were attracted by subculture.
“Today 80 percent of our clientele doesn’t speak German. But what all these people have in common is that they have been marked by this ‘culture of renewal’ that took shape here, which became a movement and has transformed Berlin up until today.”
Hegemann, for his part, says “techno was the impetus” for all that upheaval and ferment.
Hegemann likes to refer to the place not as a museum but as “Living Archives of Techno”.
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