the agenda
It’s been almost exactly a year (!) since the last Taboo Symposium, and we’re starting back up again, with an informal re-christening of the group into talkin’ taboos. (‘coz ‘Symposium’ isn’t 21st-century tweet-conform and [i can say it ‘coz I named it!] kind of wanky.)
Talking to some of the regulars over the last year, we land regularly on the theme of life as an expat, particularly in Berlin. So that’ll be our first new theme. Here are some of the directions the talk might go in:
- Berlin’s landscape of culture and endless entertainment. Is it all too much of a good thing?
- Tonnes of people pour into the city for the opportunity to prioritise their creative ambitions over making money (aka working to live instead of living to work) Is this doable, or, as author Gideon Kewis-Kraus points out, [is] “the main problem with desires, …that they’re not nearly as authoritative as we wish they were.”
- Wahl(los)berliner: Over 700,000 residents (nearly a 5th of Berlin) are not German natives. Many have been here long-term (aka 10-20+ years) paying taxes, starting families, contributing to the city. But they are not allowed to vote. How does a city that does not encourage investing (politically or otherwise) in permanence hope to actively encourage democracy?
- Gentrification: a lot of us came here to escape gentrification in our home cities. Particularly over the last three years Berlin has seen long-standing venues closing down at feverish speeds and high-rises going up just as fast. What does this mean for the city?
- Friendships/relationships: In the age of digital nomadism, in which this city plays an ever-increasing role, what do stable friendships/relationships look like and how do we find them? Do big-tech-chaperoned social media platforms (fb, bumble etc, even Meetup) actually nurture such endeavours or are they false prophets in a world where our best friends have increasingly become our phones?
related links | reading
Although there are any number of websites with tips’n’tricks for your usual find an apartment/find a job/find a date in the city, I haven’t found a tonne of sources that talk with the everyday emotional experience of living in this city. But here nonetheless are a few random tidbits on the subject.
(somewhat shamefaced caveat – this is a pretty W.E.I.R.D* selection of cultural tidbits. In fact most of these talks lean so hard on middle(ish)-class white Western culture that one might wonder if there is in fact anything useful to glean about it through discussion. But there are alot of us living under this (albeit privileged) umbrella with accordingly human struggles and these sources give them a voice.)
*Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic
“In Berlin, you never have to stop”
By Robert F. Coleman | New York Times magazine
While the term ‘superpoor’ has long since become a relativism (this article was written in 2012), there are still many (particularly creatives) who maintain that Berlin allows them the opportunity to ‘work to live’ as opposed to ‘living to work’, which was the reason they left their home cities. Writer Robert Coleman tells of his own experience moving to Berlin, pointing out that we may be gleaning our hopes from success stories such as those of Nick Cave and David Bowie, oblivious to the countless failures we know nothing about simply because they were not worth telling.
“Welcome to Berlin, now go home”
By Thomas Rogers | The Awl
There is this endless question as to which of us expats really has the right to call themselves a Berliner. Is it how many years you’ve been here? Is it how often you’ve gotten into Berghain? Is it how good your German is? Is it how good your German isn’t? Thomas Rogers begins his article contemplating much the same: he is the holder of a German passport and is fluent in the language. Does that make him ‘more Berlin’ than the other New York expats fleeing unaffordable rents in Brooklyn (and inadvertently instigating the same gentrification process with their move here)?
40% German | blog / podcast
40% German is a podcast contending with the phenomenon of divergent feelings between your homeland and your chosen homeland (in this case Germany), aka. the idea that a person may feel fully integrated one day and on the next as if they’ve moved to a different planet.The blog focuses on different parts of German culture from the perspective of non-Germans, challenging our preconceptions of Germany vs. the realities of living here.
Radio Spaetkauf | podcast
Started by Maisie Hitchcock and Joel Dulroy in 2010 (? a long time ago!) this podcast, uses ‘Berlin news in English’ as a springboard to address any number of topics specific to Wahlberliners. It is a strange and wonderful phenomena to listen to the work of those who, despite not having been born here, care deeply about the city they are living in, examining its problems and reflecting on what it would take to solve them, disregarding hindrances from language to citizenship papers to pushback from cranky Einheimischen.
Citizens for Europe | Voting is for everyone!
In Berlin, more than 700,000 residents are excluded from the
elections to the House of Representatives and referendums, simply
because they are not German citizens. Since 2011, the Berlin alliance “Wahlrecht für Alle” has been committed to enabling the political participation of all people living in Berlin, regardless of their nationality.
By Stuart Braun | book
Part history, part memoir and part journalism, Braun focuses on the city of Berlin as a long-established urban sanctuary for restless sorts. It is interesting whilst reading it to realise just how long this city has served as a land of opportunity for refugees and misfits: ‘opportunity’ not in the traditional sense of wealth and prosperity, but rather in the sense of ‘stop-being-pushed-around-by-life-long-enough-to-figure-out-what-you-want-from-it’.
Berlin indisputably provides this opportunity; Expats (again, focus here on W.E.I.R.Dos) converge on Berlin to re-create their lives on their own terms without even needing to speak the language. This is of course a gift to the cause of individualism but what does it say about the city as a human collective? Can ‘home’ be a place that is intrinsically built on constant shift and change? And for those not looking for the stasis of a traditional ‘home’, how hard is it to sustain the balance between other forms of self-actualisation and the endless cultural distractions of the metropolis?
By Falko Rademacher | book
The book’s online blurb says it all: “Alles über Hundekot, sinnlose Mietspiegel, vermeintliche und echte Kriminalität, Nazis und Autonome, architektonischen Wahnsinn, politischen Unsinn, die Berliner Parteien, Psychopathen in der U-Bahn, paranoide Rentner, Fahrradrambos, u.v.m. Ein zynisches Handbuch voller grausiger Wahrheiten und politisch inkorrekter Tipps für das Leben und Überleben in Berlin!”