B EAST Magazine website

Posters on the streets of Tallinn this week:

The Death of Communism (Poster advertising a play at Teater No99).

Is There Life After Capitalism? (Poster advertising a program of discussions and plays at Von Krahl theater).

As the West drags the world into a financial meltdown, some in the East are celebrating the chance to start over again. Fucked by communism, raped by capitalism, Eastern Europe has never been given a chance to decide what kind of social and economic system it truly wants for itself.

This weekend B EAST ran into a group of neo-hippies on the cobbled streets of Tallinn who are embracing the potential collapse of financial systems. “If the banks fail, the government will pay only 50,000 EU to every customer. What could be better than that?” they said.

It was four years ago that I moved into the almost-mystical Frankfurter Allee in Berlin’s Friedrichshain.  In Berlin, that is east as east can get.  The infamous Stalinist buildings became my home.
My house is a mix of old ladies, some surviving husbands, and new Berliners who just moved here in their American Apparel head-to-toe.
One of my neighbours is Frau Fritsche, who lives one flight down on the fifth floor. She receives my packages in case I’m not home, so I see her once in a while. She’s six, 75, and looks like a hunchback. As soon as the door opens she starts yelling at me about the world. She’s somewhat bitter, which, I would say, is more than understandable, after getting fucked by the Nazis, the Communist and now the Angie government.
She has nothing. She can’t even afford a phone. When I asked her what she would do in case she needed to call family, friends, or simply for help, she answered in her rough tone: “All dead.”
Another time I saw her getting back into the elevator after picking up her mail, which is mainly advertising (as you know, there are no more friends or family to send letters). Again, she was yelling: “All these people are moving in and out all the time. In my time, we moved in once and moved out in a box!” I thought – ‘Damn right Frau Fritsche, and what a nice way to begin the day.’
Now that I know her a little, I try to talk to her whenever I see Hunchback just so she gets the chance to talk to a human being once a month. I don’t even take her insults personally anymore. I even touch her when I say goodbye, and wonder when she last had that sensation.
I feel this whole East neighbourhod is somewhat polluted by this suspicious loneliness. Stasi after-birth. I mean, try to get “hello and good morning” or a smile picking up bread at the local bakery after waking up hung-over. Good luck!
The East is mute and has no manners whatsoever. They call it ‘Beliner Schnauze’ – Berlin Mouth – and they are proud of it. I want service and give a fuck about the realness of people when going to the supermarket.
I’m moving west to Neukölln. Mainly Turkish neighbourhood. They chat, smile, and even give you something extra, and – believe it or not – say goodbye without exhausting themselves.
The next time I visit Frankfurter Allee, the name on Frau Fritsche’s door will have changed, and some British or Swedish dude will have moved in, super-excited about living in the East in it’s full realness.

Text: Can Oral, AKA Khan of Finland
Images: Ian Ritterskamp

By Joel Alas, B EAST editor

What happens when you squeeze together a boxy Soviet-style apartment with a pre-war Berlin living space? This seemingly impossible collision of floorplans representing different eras and ideologies has been achieved at a new temporary Berlin art space, with predictably chaotic results.

Architect-artists Matthias Rick and Markus Bader reconstructed the internal layout of a standard P2 apartment (the kind built by the DDR in their tens of thousands as mass housing projects) inside an existing inner-city apartment. Walls collide, passageways become constricted, doorways are rendered useless and space is wasted.

“The conflict between these two building types is very visible in Berlin,” says Matthias, who is part of Raumlabor, an experimental architecture and urban space group. Raumlabor set out to question the stigma attached to Soviet-era housing blocks, and to parody the promotion and advertising of new condiminium projects, which are marketed as a lifestyle choice rather than living spaces.

You can find the confusing combined apartment on display for two weeks as part of Torstrasse 166, a temporary exhibition in a vacant building in Berlin’s Mitte district.
Torstrasse 166 itself is a collision of ideas and ideologies. On the surface, the whole building appears to be a large squat taken over by artists who occupy each room with their concepts. Yet the whole project is funded by sponsorship, is heavily advertised and slickly promoted: Old Berlin activism meet New Berlin money and style. Is that bad? Not necessarily. The project itself is interesting, most of the art is great, and the artists have put thought into their work. That visitors must swallow a small dose of advertising is just a small reflection of the reality of funding art projects today.
And some of the apartments are used spectacularly, particularly the rooms criss-crossed with a dazzling web of string, painstakingly installed by the Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (she is also responsible for the startling shoe installation on the building’s facade).
The courtyard bar was crowded for the opening party last Friday, and several more events are planned in the building throughout the duration of the exhibition, which runs until October 12.

Address: Torstrasse 166, Mitte, Berlin. U-bahn: Rosenthaler Platz.
www.torstrasse166.de