I l ove it when you don't even need to satirise a situation, because the subjects serve up themselves. I overheard this conversation in a cafe in kreuzberg. This is exactly what was said.
word for word.
Most of the time I see art in Berlin…And I don’t…understand it… Artists here have no incentive to sell. They don’t need to, because they have Hartz IV…Its all so.. The art here it’s not.. idealistic or conceptual its its… self entitled.
mmm (sage nodding )Have you thought about holding talks? I mean consulting? Consulting on social media? We thought about it… But it became a side project… and we have like 800 side projects now… So just go and run with it!… Right.. right..
My thing is bad English. It like kills me. ..There is a big difference between writing something in german? and putting it into google translate and sending it? Can’t you just pay someone ten dollars to write me a paragraph?? …Something that needs to be accepted is that everyone speaks English, so there is a certain level that has to be... accepted. If you create a phrase and it;s not exact..It's just one statement to get right.. It's important. That’s it… That’s one of my big things…
I can’t I can’t can’t…. You can’t take someone seriously if they don’t know how to check something before sending it. I mean if you have a web site up? That text on your website…? Should be… correct. I’m not saying perfect but… Yeah I agree I’m not saying perfect but… I go to museums here all the time and theirtext is terrible… I mean their translation text is terrible! In a museum… ? That is embarrassing…
Yeah that is embarrassing. …
Yeah..
Yeah..
Yeah well I think this is going to work. We really like where you guys are at. You’re like.. normal.
Yeah we’re not hipsters
(they all laugh)
We’re not naïve but we’re not pushovers, but we’re not bad people you know?
Hey..(noticing someone at another table)
Oh god everyone knows everyone here!!! This is the place.
I like my work to be entertaining, being entertaining is a force that often drives my writing. Creating work for performance, particularly in the audience led world of poetry slam, means a lot of thought and consideration goes to the reception to your work, to what others think. This is very critical as far as comic work is concerned. If you write something to amuse, and it fails to amuse anyone other than yourself, you go back to writing it again..
Now, moving cities has made me go into one of my existential "what does it all mean" states.
I've been asking myself a number of questions: What is the art I am making? What are my themes? Why do I care about them? and perhaps most importantly, Why make art anyway?
There is a danger as a performer, of falling into a trap of writing what audiences want, or more dangerously, what you you think they want. There is a balancing act between going outside of yourself enough to escape self indulgence, while expanding the audience perception of what they are ready for. When you really nail it, you can change the way people think. This is one of the most exciting aspects of making work, and a difficult thing to achieve.
Recently I've come across an artist who has been successful in doing exactly that. His name is Mike Daisey. I've been making more use of my twitter account lately, and a post by beardyman led me to this podcast. I was utterly captivated by this twenty minute excerpt. His story and the telling of it moved me, enough that I became deeply interested not only in him and his play, but in the responses they generated.
This piece of theatre, adapted for radio, instigated a level of investigation in working conditions he encounters, that had thus far had little coverage in the mainstream press. This was not new news. I have a friend who is a political activist, who told me that many things, such as the matter of the suicide nets had been written up on socialist websites years ago.
What made it news now, what generated an outpour of interest, was a story, and the performance of it. The story and the art of storytelling, had humanized the issue for the public. A public who had been unaware, but now cared and wanted answers. What had instigated all this? A piece of theatre. Yes I thought, art has power.
I have since gotten hold of a number of recorded monologues by mike daisey, and seen video clips. Unfortunately being so far away from New York, I can not see him perform. But from what I've heard, the excerpt from his new show is the most powerful. And I don't think it is only because it is his most recent, and thus from the top of his form.
I think it is partly to do with him having a sense of responsibility to deliver a message. A sense of responsibility, not just as an artist, but as a human who has compassion for other humans. His talents as an artist just serve to better deliver the message. Once again, art has power.
As artists, particularly struggling and emerging ones, this is easy to forget. What you put out there has weight. This doesn't mean everything you put out has to be weighty, but maybe it is worth it every so often, to not just think about what you want to say, but about the affect that saying it, has on others.
Ages ago, I can't remember when, I kept hearing rumblings on the internet about a rap collective called odd future. I like to get in on music people like to rumble about. I like being an early adopter of new sounds. But the problem with odd future was, every time I saw a comment about them being the most exciting avant garde group in hiphop, it would be coupled with a footnote saying they were really overtly homophobic and misogynistic.
I love hip hop, and there may be a lot of it that is both, but i don't listen to that. I can just about tune out the n word and overuse of the word bitch (but hey even girl mc's i like drop that) but when lyrics sink into rape fantasies and and musings on killing f**gots I have to draw the line.
This is why, as much as I appreciate he has a great flow, I have never and can never buy an album by eminem. Yes I get that there is a character, that many lyrics are meant to shock, are not sincere. Odd future may be similar. It is notable that only press comment to ever have offended Tyler the creator is being called a homophobe. But I'm not sure how that makes it better. Spout enough that is hateful, and you have the power to incite hatred. Art has power. I have said before thatI am only responsible for what i say, not for what you understand. I still think there is some truth in that, but I now think a little thought as to how something could be understood, never hurts . In any case I was happy to ignore odd future, even when in the summer I felt their empire building, when tyler the creator got signed. The reveiws still didnt' make me excited about the music.
Then there were new rumblings about the impossible to google group the internet
they were an odd future off shoot made up of producer matt martians, and the crew's only girl member syd the kid. I had so avidly avoided the hype about odd future, that I had never noticed they had a female member. How did that rhyme with all the misogyny in their lyrics? Before i could question that further , I read on to see she was an out lesbian. What?? In hip hop? Any debate about the fact was apparently settled by their latest video. which due to gema I couldn['t play.
Until now Syd the kid has happily been in the background of Odd future. Now in a very short period of time she had become the subject of scrutiny not just because of fame, but for being the lone female in an all male crew, and lesbian. But these facts also piqued my interest, so I am guilty of the same. More importantly, she is a talented beatmaker, engineer and singer, who is very clear on the music she wants to make. She takes her craft seriously. Interestingly, after the live performance debacle of Lana Del Rey, all questions about when the internet will tour have been met with this reply from Syd: after I get more vocal training.
And autotune or not, it has to be said, this girl's voice is something else..
I fell in love with their sound. Pychadelic soul they call it, and it fits. Although just for fun I'd describe it as Sade and Aaliyah making out to the Neptunes. So a week ago I bought the album, and I've been listening to it pretty constantly ever since. Reviews have been mixed, and every one I read was taken aback by this video I couldn't' see. I stumbled across a blog that suggested it had angered some of the queer community. I wanted to make up my own mind, so i finally tracked it down.
Ok... I don't completely agree with the blogger at after ellen. I'm mystified by her presuming the "intended audience are obviously men." ???? I can see that the intention of the internet is clearly meant to make taking drugs look bad. No one could watch this and want a line of coke. From reading Syd's tumblr it's clear that promoting use of drugs or negative portrayal of gay women is not her intent. By making her character in the narrative a girl who likes girls, she is attempting something like empowerment. But then there is a power to visual media that can be underestimated, when the failure of intention can become problematic.
I think in the passion to show an out gay character, and to pass on the message that drugs are bad, other signals have been lost in the mix. Like the fact that the syd character in the video with all her cool swagger, cooly discards women. Sure the point is that the other girl takes a risk and faces the consequence. The track is dark enough to underline the message. But then at the end syd gets away unscathed. And as much as I love her talent and sound and look, It does irk me that her, being more boyish, more conventionally lesbian in appearance, is the one shown discarding a woman in this way.
Of course queer people can be just as mean and messed up as anyone else. It would be stupid to say we are saints. But maybe part of why the video has caused such a furor, is when there is so little queer representation in media, what little there is, people want to be positive. But if there was more representation in the media in the first place, there wouldn't be so much pressure on what there is to be representative for all. You can't ever represent for all.
For the internet, who had full creative control of concept of the video, they may have thought that syd's character being queer in the video could be incidental. Unfortunately, another reading of the video says that women are disposable, and/or queer people are predatory and abusive. I don't feel that seeing it, but I can understand how that can be an interpretation. I was most disturbed by comments on one site regarding the video: Syd got some swag!!!.
Odd future's answer to criticism has always been, our words are meaningless, you are stupid to take us seriously. Syd the kid has said the same. I guess she needs to feel that way in order to connect with them. But while it is true that the more you hear a word, the more you can be numb to it saying "It's your fault for taking us seriously" as a defense, is seriously lame.
Yes we as artists have a right to make work in our own way, with our own intentions. But as soon as we put that work into the ether, audiences and critics have a right to respond. Yes journalists can play cruel games of taking our words, and placing them in context otuside of our intentions, but as soon as we are interesting enough for journalists to take interest in us, as soon as we enter our work into the public realm, this is the game we play.
As artists we must not underestimate the power we have not only to entertain and engage, but to influence and affect change. So as I'm going all introspective, I'll be carrying forward into my work a new sense of care about my themes and their meaning. I will be much more aware of the power of and intentions behind my work, and the form that responsibility takes.
In 2006 Joyce Vincent, aged 40, was found dead in her flat in Wood Green, north London. She died of natural causes. The tv and lights had been left on. There was a pile of Christmas presents she had been wrapping. An ocean of unpaid bills had stacked up in the hallway. Joyce Vincent's dead body had lain there for three years.
When you hear the story of Joyce Vincent, you may be driven to demand why her friends and family did not step in sooner, to note why she had so long been away. What Dreams of a Life makes clear, is Joyce was the kind of woman who kept a part of herself from everyone, who liked to keep up appearances, who did not want to be known.
For those of us who move from suburbs and small towns to the cities, one of the elements that drives us to the city, is to cast aside the restrictions of small town mentality. We escape the village that is aware of our entire history, knows our every movement, a place where all of our actions have faced constant comment and scrutiny. The city, and the anonymity it provides, gives us new scope for privacy and space. Here we can choose what we reveal and to whom, all on our own terms. (The only exception perhaps being when one becomes a celebrity, but as most of us are not celebrities, this is hardly a general problem.)
Having moved away from our villages, we find we miss certain aspects of them and recreate them, whether they be through work, or through places we frequent with regularity, or within scenes and subcultures. We also miss and need certain aspects of the families we've left, and so create a new family through our friends.
This new family come without the life long shared histories that can strain, that can question changes. The new family, the one born of friends accepts us at our current state, fully formed. They are there for us when we need them, they are more understanding than family can be when we do not, when we choose to slip away.
But as much as we muddle the anonymity the city brings by creating new families of friends and new villages within cities, we are also here to have the option of that anonymity, to make use of when we choose. Having lived in London for most of my adult life, I feel the option for this anonymity there most acutely.
When people tell me they could never live in a city as big as London or New York or Berlin, afraid of being lost in the size of it, I often answer it is exactly for that size that I love the city. While it is true that if I walk around certain areas and places in Hackney and Shoreditch that I have frequented for years, I am likely to run into someone, simply crossing the town to west London, I might as well be another world away.
London, like any major city, is a place where people are busy and move at a rapid pace. It is not unusual to not see a close friend for months at a time. People get caught up with "life" , with the constant struggling juggle of work, romantic relationships (or the seeking of one), family, and friendships.
Sometimes we manage to juggle better than others. When you don't see someone you like for a while, you assume they are busy, they are away, they will get in touch when they can. We can also fall out of sync, go back and forth with oneself or one's friend being busy, never both being available at the same time.
But it is so much more easier now to be connected you may say!If you don't have the time to visit, to call, you can still keep up with people via social media, comment on someone's picture in a way that says, we are still connected, we are still involved. and then when the time comes we can meet up, or not, because the other thing is, more levels of connection are available now than ever before.
I used to be a big advocate of the above sentiment. And I do still think the varied ways we have of keeping in contact are great. Home is often a complicated question. I have friends and family that are dear to me across the globe. I've been in a few long distance relationships and have had to find different ways to stay connected.
What I've learned is: yes all these additional forms of contact certainly help, but fundamentally, nothing can ever take the place of face time. For a relationship to progress all the social media and skype and even phone calls will never be enough.
In cities we live apart from one another. Never more so when we live alone. I have lived alone for years, in London and Berlin. It is rare when I've known my neighbors, and when I say I've known them: I mean I say hi to them in the hall. I have lived for years next door to people who I would never invite into my home, who have never invited me to theirs, who I might not notice if months pass and I don't see them, and even if I did notice there absence, I probably wouldn't think much of it.
Perhaps it is notable that Joyce Vincent died in a time before social media had become pervasive as it is now. Perhaps then even as she was a private person, who would sometimes fall from contact, a lack of her online presence would be noticed. More likely however, is that people would assume she was on to other things, or not using social media anymore.
I have no desire to go back to a time when I lived in a suburb and our archetypical nosy neighbor (ours was a woman who lived across the street) would come by and knock at our door at anything she deemed suspicious. So please do not think I am in any way romanticising the concept of the small town. However, there is a trade off to living in a place where one does not ever question the movements of ones neighbor, with fear of being invasive. If someone does not have close friends, if someone is single, if someone is no longer close to their family (which is often the case of those who move to the city) it is much easier to go unnoticed than any of us would care to admit.
The truly poignant thing to me in watching Dreams of a life, was not a sense of "How strange for this to happen" but more "How likely this is" because whatever you say, if you live in a city, and you haven't seen a friend in a while, particularly if the friend is the kind known for dissapearing from time to time, (and I think many of us have friends like this), the chances of most of us going round their house to see if they are alive are pretty slim.
Maybe you might call them after time, or write them, or ask after friends in common, but even then, this is not the kind of thing you think would happen. You are more likely to invent reasons why they are too busy. Which in the case of Joyce Vincent, is exactly what happened.
There is also something about her being a woman, about her being by all accounts a very attractive, sexually appealing woman. It is almost as if her attractiveness and inherent glamour enhanced the distance between those who knew her. It is as if they felt something bad could never happen to someone as alluring as her. There are preconceptions that for someone to go missing, they must be introverted, visually unappealing, when actually the act of being outgoing can also be a mask, a far more powerful one.
Maybe the other thing is, for those we lose touch with, those that we like, in some way the idea of the friend and friendship lives on in our head. We like to imagine they are going on and living well and that at some point we will meet again and pick up where we left off. Or that even if we don't meet, at the very least we like to think that they are well.
But by not making the effort to maintain contact, whether we like to admit it or not,we hamper our ties with the friend. Friendship, like any other relationship, demands effort and care. We choose to forget this at times, and when we learn of bad news of a former friend, we our plagued with regret . This happened to me recently, and it is a complicated thing to grieve.
Dreams of a life is a heartbreaking and poignant documentary , that makes a strong comment on relationships in contemporary urban society. It leaves us with more questions of answers, but manages a powerful task: that of commemorating an elliptical real life character, who thankfully to the film, will now never be forgotten.
An exclusive screening of Dreams of a Life followed by a discussion and Q&A with Director, Carol Morley, and leading actress Zawe Ashton will be taking place at the Babylon Kino in Mitte on Monday 13th February. This event is the second in a series of events in english for Berlin Black History Month .Limited advance tickets can be reserved here.
Having said I have lived in Berlin for four years, I have to make an embarrassing confession. My german is terrible. Well I sometimes put it like this:
Ich habe Deutsche gelernt fur zwei Monaten, und fur das Ich denke, meine Deutsche is sehr gute!
Und Wann Ich sage das, manchmal the Deutsche Leute sagst
Jah. Stimmt!
Aber.Ich habe in Berlin Gewohnt fur vier Jahre, und fur das, meine Deutsche is sehr sehr sehr sehr Schlect.
It is sooo schlect that the Mensch can not believe how schlect it is. It is embarrasing. I know. And I can tell you this, it is only in Berlin one can get a way with that. And it is still very hard at times, and I am often ashamed of the fact. But I'm moving back to London and so now I can only say it is what is.
In the mean time, I am part of a vibrant poetry slam community here, that has been above and beyond welcoming, despite me performing in English. I am very grateful to that. I am often humbled by it. I only ever perform somewhere because I have been booked, because I have been invited. The promoter decides if their audience can handle it. With our generation I'm lucky, most can. Most speak english very well. You can always gauge it with comic texts, when at the right times, the punchlines, they laugh.
But for some, the act of someone speaking english in their scene is not a welcome. I sort of understand. I guess its like deciding you want want to see a hollywood film, and then suddenly watching an art film with subtitles. You want to be entertained, you don't want to think. Or maybe it has more to do with feeling like english language culture is so pervasive, in music in television in film, and wanting to have a break from it. All I know is none of that is my fault. I just go where I am booked, where I am paid to go. mostly the response is great. and I never take that for granted.
last Friday night, I make my way through crowd of excited hundreds, all devoted slam fans, in an amazing venue, the oldest techno club in Leipzig. I have been introduced as being from both Berlin and London. I get to the mic and say in my broken germanJah, Ich sprache diesen bizarrische dialect aus Berlin... heist English(Yeah.. So I speak this bizarre dialect from berlin... called English)
This is generally when the crowd warms to me and sometimes laughs... No one laughed. But its not a joke really, so that's ok. I begin to make an introduction to my first piece, now speaking in English, and just as I am about to start my text, someone near the back calls out, football hooligan style, from the darkness
AUSLANDER!!!
Now for the non german speakers, this word means foreigner. It's not an insult or a slur. It's just the german word for foreigner. But it is a word that when shouted, has a sharpness . The emphasis on the first syllable, which sounds like another german word: Raus!, which means Out!, Go, Leave.
For the briefest of moments, it felt a bit tense, I decided best not to rise to it and carry on like nothing had been said.
Soon enough people were laughing along with me at all the right parts. The eye contact I had from the audience suggested they were with me, enjoyed my stories. I nearly made it into the final round. By all accounts I had gone down really well. How did I think it went? I was asked by the promoter.I didn't mention the awkwardness of that brief moment. Neither did he. The evening that followed was wonderful. I got on well with the other poets. I had some nice chats with people in the audience. no one mentioned that moment.
Now writing this, I still almost feel as if it didn't happen. I wonder why anyone could be so angry at simply hearing someone speak another language. I can only imagine, it comes from feeling threatened. But as that man never came up to me to explain why he shouted it out, I will never understand, I will never know.
I was on a mini tour of two cities here recently. Last Friday morning in Dresden, after great gigs with wonderful people, I got a text from my boyfriend asking how I was. I responded
Sunny. I feel great.
In March, I will have lived in Germany for four years. I have loved it here.Though I couldn't say I have toured here extensively, I have a fair bit, and in that time I have seen a little of this country. It is important for me to note, that what happened later that morning had never happened to me before.
Trains in Germany are almost never late. You can usually set your clocks by them. But on this icy -10 day, standing alone on an empty platform , my train *was* late, and every ten minutes, announced as later still.
Ten minutes late became twenty minutes, became thirty.
I was freezing.
I was so cold all I could think about was how cold I was.
Out of the corner of my eyes I saw them. Two tall police officers, approaching up the stairs with no sense of urgency, talking to one another. I kept focused on the display board hoping there would be no further delays.
The policemen approached. As they drew closer I still didn't think they could be coming over to me, until there they were asking, politely I should add, where was I going?
Leipzig.
In the pop quiz I wasn't aware I was taking, this was the first wrong answer. Why was i going from this platform, when I should be going the other direction?! ah, because of a problem with the trains, I had to go change at the main station. ok, fine. Was I living in Dresden? No? Ok. Did I understand German?
I smiled. This struck me as a funny, as it was in German that we were speaking.
English?!
He questioned/demanded. In German I replied.
Yes, perhaps, better we speak in english.
And then he asked.
Can I see your passport?
In Germany, the police have the right to stop anyone at any time and ask to see their id. If you're a foreigner this means carrying your passport. You hear that you can carry a drivers license or a photocopy of your passport, but this isn't true. By law you must carry your passport with you at all times. In Berlin, many foreigners I know that live here, don't.
I always reckon its more likely my bag get stolen or lost than a random cop asking for id, so i risk it. It was luck that I had decided to take it with me this time. I have toured many times in Germany having left it at home. I didn't feel great about this random check, but instinct told me to be polite and cooperate. That way it would be over with quickly.
They both peered closely at my passport, passing it back and forth between them a few times. The first started to bend it back at the sides. Then he flipped it to the front page, inspecting the biometric chip. He flipped it to the other side, gave me a long look that suggested comparing me to the picture within it. He asked, suspiciously
You were born in washington dc?
Yes
You also have an american passport?
I used to but it expired. I moved to Europe as a teenager, Since then I havn't needed it.
I am used to official people being confused about dual citizenship. a lot of people, even people working in customs and passport control don't get it. I would be happy to explain, what I didn't expect was for him to change his tone and ask sharply
Why do you have this document?
Sorry? I don't understand?
I really didn't.
How do you have this passport?
my father is english.
this also appeared to be the wrong answer.
You do not have an american passport?
I did. I stopped using it. I have lived in europe since I was as teenager.
He nodded. unconvinced. Passed my passport back to his colleague, who flipped through the pages at various speeds, stopped, played the front page back and forth in the light, checking the hologram, took out a small magnfying glass and scanned the small print.
What were they looking for? Why were they doing this? What would they do next? How long would they keep it?
And then I understood...
They think my passport is fake!
The guy who had been inspecting it now walked off a couple meters, calling someone on his phone. I watched with concern as he walked away further. His colleague kept close to me. I asked him
Is there a problem?
No. Don't worry. nothing is wrong.
(unexplicably, he was smiling.)
The sentiment seemed to be, it was silly for me to be concerned. As if them checking my passport didn't suggest that they thought something with it might be wrong.
I watched the board. Ten minutes later I was given back my passport, with no apology or explanation as to why it had been taken and inspected. They just walked to the end of the platform and had a cigarette.
Mercifully, my train came. I was confused as to what had happened.When I got back to Berlin days later, I did a little online research. I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. I tried the key words: police passport check racist germany. I found a few horrible stories.
It sounds funny in english, but the act of police doing this is called: controlling. So you are controlled by the police when you are asked for your passport. Weirdness and darkness of that phrasing aside, it is clearly a form of racial profiling, that many deem to be institutional racism.
The way it works is this, in a place like Dresden for example, where people of colour are scarce, when a policeman sees someone who doesn't look ethnically german he or she thinks, ah, there is a chance they are an illegal immigrant, particularly when that person or persons are spotted at and around train stations, or in trains. So the police carry out a check.
I thought this kind of thing couldn't happen in a place as diverse as Berlin, so I was horrified to discover that in the last years Berlin's airports and certain so called "dangerous" areas of Berlin, police had been actively encouraged to utilise racial profiling. Which I suppose in the case of airports doesn't mean so much, considering all they are doing is sanctioning something that tends to happen anyway...
But back to being controlled in and around trains and train stations, in most of the stories I read, the people who had been controlled, had all asked why they had been approached. Always the police response had been to either:
Ignore the question and ask for the passport again, or
Act offended/angered at being questioned. It was in their right, they had no need to explain.
Before writing this blog, I spoke to a friend of mine, a dj and a woman of colour, who tours the country frequently. I asked if she had ever been asked for her passport by the police, she told me of a time it had happened . she said
What really bothered me, is that he refused to tell me why he wanted to see my passport. Yes I think I know why he would want to see it, but at least it would be good to have confirmation of that.
Would I have felt better if they explained to me why they wanted to take my passport? Maybe not. But knowing that the police also have an obligation to explain their actions, particularly when one has not done anything wrong, might at least make those that are *controlled* feel less powerless.
Funny thing is, in the moment, as I felt myself get angry and upset, I thought:
This would never happen in England!!!
And then I remembered the reports after the riots. All those kids stopped and searched, sometimes daily, in their own neighborhoods. Sadly I thought, no, even there something like this happens all the time.What must it feel like to endure it regularly ? Near your home? How uncomfortable had it made me feel, having happened this one time?
When I think of those two policemen, for the most part they were nice. Abrupt but not aggressive, kind of polite. It may never occur to them, how what for them may be a routine action, could unsettle someone in such a way. But isn't that the point? Shouldn't they be made more aware ?
