culture
“Berlin is not glamorous,” says Hili Perlson. “It has cracks and scars. This is the kind of scene we represent.” Perlson heads up all things fashion at Projekt Galerie, a Berlin-based, multidisciplinary venue founded by East Berlin party kid–turned-promoter of the arts, Sven Kruger. Occupying a former three-bedroom apartment, two street-level stores, and a small basement, Projekt Galerie aims to peel back the surface—just a little—on Berlin’s raw, underground creative community. Experimental performances, raved-out parties, and kooky lectures (upcoming is a talk on the little girls in Stu Mead’s and Henry Darger’s work, and another on Prussian mustache culture) are married to a show space for young fashion designers, a gallery space for young artists, and a small PR agency called Homage. During Berlin fashion week, Projekt Galerie events contrast sharply with the stiff and regimented official happenings. “Sven keeps clear of the usual pompous art and fashion shows,” says Dutch model Iekeliene Stange, whose first solo photography
show, titled “I Like Ponies,” opened in the gallery this past January. Her dreamy shots—models in bunny masks, a pretty girl smoking a pipe with a pile of hats on her head, and a boy caressing the roof of a wood shed—perfectly encapsulate the alternative realities to be found at Projekt Galerie, and in today’s Berlin as a whole. So do the Tiny Disco parties Kruger throws, so named because they are located in the gallery’s supersmall basement. The parties are “like baby tornadoes wreaking little bits of glorious havoc all over town,” says curator and Queen Bee of the expat community, Emilie Trice. “Instead of the sprawling post-Factory aesthetic, Tiny Disco is intimate. There’s literally no space for voyeurs, or haters.” Ana Finel Honigman
www.projektgalerie.net
At first listen, I.U.D.’s The Proper Sex sounds like an album lost in time. Equal parts Brooklyn noise and ’80s industrial, it is a tightly wound cacophony—like an explosion in a drum factory—six songs packed with densely-layered samples and banshee wails trailing in and out of the mix like angry ghosts. Were it not for the explanatory liner notes, the tracks could have been recorded at any point over the past two decades.
As it turns out, the album—I.U.D.’s first—was recorded just a few months ago. The brainchild of Gang Gang Dance frontwoman Lizzi Bougatsos and Growing’s Sadie Laska, I.U.D. provided an opportunity for the two friends to make a joyful noise together. “We recorded the entire album in four days,” explains Laska. “We had wanted to make this record for a long time, but we both had such crazy schedules. Finally we just decided to book the studio time and turn it out as quickly as possible, which was pretty intense.” The short recording time made for exhausting 12-hour days of nonstop drumming, but it also provided the duo with the creative jolt needed to make something truly extraordinary. “Working under those kinds of time constraints really helped us, actually,” says Laska, “We didn’t
have time to over think things. The recordings really capture the energy of that. Hopefully you can hear that we were really having a good time.”
While a lot of experimental music lacks a sense of humor, neither Laska nor Bougatsos take any of it too seriously. Even though Laska is keen to acknowledge that there is something inherently radical about two women making what is very typically a hyper-masculine kind of music (as evidenced by naming the record The Proper Sex), song titles like “Girls Just Wanna (Time to Have Sex)” and the album’s cover art (a nearly exact photographic reproduction of
Sparks’ iconic Big Beat album cover, this time featuring Laska and Bougatsos) are pretty indicative of the band’s state of mind. “You know, we’re having a really good time doing this,” says Laska, “We’re not writing a thesis on women’s sexuality or anything. It’s meant to be fun.” T. Cole Rachel
I.U.D.’s Sadie Laska and Lizzi Bougatsos in Brooklyn, August 2008
The Proper Sex is out in March 2009 from The Social Registry
References:
Archives