All stories about "Emilie Trice"

Since spring has finally arrived in Berlin (like, yesterday), the streets are teeming with life, and not just the cracked-out vampire kind that dominates the sidewalks during those sunless winter months. With the promise of multiple hours of daylight comes the heavy burden of mischief-time management for many of the city's urban art assassins -- those who had the luxury of winter's endless darkness to do their bidding in relative safety. Not anymore. The days are going to get long -- uncomfortably long, in fact. So what's a street artist to do? Hibernate until winter? Niemals (Never). Just find a corporate sponsor to fund your mural or a gallery to exhibit your work legally and call the rest of your external endeavors "exhibition promotion." Here's another look at Berlin's best graffiti ambassadors, and a sampling of galleries that have embraced urban art and its messiahs as the city's up-and-coming cultural creed. (Our previous coverage is here.)

Helen Schneider may not have immediate name recognition, but this stage siren is nothing short of a legend, especially in Berlin. She was the first American to perform behind the Iron Curtain in the now-defunct Palast der Republik. She was the original Sally Bowles in the first-ever production of Cabaret in Berlin. And she had a hit single in the early 80s off her record Rock 'n Roll Gypsy. Currently she's performing a one-woman show in the west, which will close next Tuesday. Although her resume is impressive in and of itself, the charm of her current stage production, A Voice and a Piano, has as much to do with her powerful renditions of classic songs from musicals like The Threepenny Opera and Evita as it does with her intermittent anecdotes about life on the road early in her career, including narrow escapes from the Mafia in New York, the Hell's Angels in Vermont, and showgirl pimps in Vegas, not necessarily in that order.

This weekend the Berlin Biennial officially begins, sparking one of those rare occasions when the city's art community erupts in a fervent spasm of hyper-activity and shameless courting of visiting collectors. With so many events strategically opening to coincide with the Biennial's commencement, atheist artists across the city are actually praying to God for blue skies, reliable public transport, and bountiful prescription stimulants. As we've noted before, Berlin's cultural sector heavily depends on out-of-town collectors coming to the city to financially support the local scene, and the Berlin Biennial is one of three major art events that promises fiscal payback (the other two are Artforum and the annual gallery weekend). Openings, after-parties, bellini brunches, and exclusive private views will dominate the upcoming weekend, so here's a guide to help filter an otherwise overwhelming social agenda. It should be noted, by the way, that the easiest way to tell if you're in the right place is if Adel and Eva, the couple pictured here, are there too. (photo)

The DIY ambience that has come to define Berlin's basement club culture has proven too babyish for many of the city's more mature clubbers, assuming that "mature" means showering in cologne, donning a designer-brand encrusted muscle tee, and gelling your faux-hawk until it resembles a dead porcupine. In light of the dollar's steady decline, Europe's privileged classes have a real reason to celebrate, and for Berlin's nouveau riche, it's no longer enough to snort a mountain of speed and run around the labyrinth halls of the city's cavernous clubs. They've done it all, and much like the stretch pinstripe shirt that still dominates their wardrobes, they've outgrown it. Let the nu rave kids sweat it out in the cellar, the nouveau riche kids are moving up to rooftop views, champagne flutes, and VIP rooms. In honor of their graduation, here's a quick list of the most expensive, garishly overdone, and elitist clubs in Berlin -- for whenever you feel like taking out the euro trash. (Please, like you didn't see that one coming.)

The fifth edition of the Berlin Biennial isn't supposed to officially begin until the 5th of April, but like any good party, this one is starting early and going late. Today, a series of artist-curated exhibitions will open at the Schinkel Pavillon, and, in addition to the contemporary art fiesta's standard "daytime" program, 63 "nocturnal" events will keep the candles burning at both ends across the city throughout the Biennial's two months. Entitled When things cast no shadow, the traditional exhibition will be divided among a respectable museum (the Neue Nationalgalerie), a staple of Berliner kultur (Kunst Werke), and an outdoor site that makes use of the former no-man's land where the Wall once stood (Skulpturenpark). The night venues have yet to be announced, but considering their stated theme, which translates to My nights are more beautiful than your days, it's fair to assume there will be lots of red lights, tequila, and fog machines, since this is how Berliners justify self-imposed insomnia.

Street art has gotten a lot of press lately in the New York Times, but the "Bombing Berlin" video and accompanying article failed to mention Die Fleischerei, possibly the most emblematic street art store in town. This was an unfortunate oversight, since it's facing eviction at the end of this month. Die Fleischerei (it means "the butcher shop") is on the noxiously hip and ever-gentrifying Rosenthaler Platz, so the fact that this nonprofit urban boutique/gallery/screen printing workshop would eventually fall victim to rising rents was sadly predictable. It's a pity, but the show must go on.

The Guardian's Travel site recently posted a rundown of the best art blogs in Europe, focusing on specific cities that included Germany's "poor but sexy" capital, described as "so-cool-right-now-it's-almost-uncool Berlin." Although the hype surrounding Berlin's art scene surely has hipsters far and wide rolling their ambivalent eyes by now, the truth of the matter is that (surprise!) it is actually not cool to be poor. (photo)

[Photo]
Back when I was gainfully employed by an art gallery on Berlin's Brunnenstrasse, I spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up the courtyard. This was pre-gentrification, during Brunnenstrasse's infancy as a gallery row, so "cleaning up the courtyard" meant coaxing bleeding junkies off the cellar stairs and back onto the street, sweeping up broken beer bottles, and washing away mountains of dog shit. And then the windows started to appear.

One undeniable benefit of living in Berlin is the immediate access that someone of absolutely no consequence (read: me) has to people of incredibly staggering brilliance. From a distance, the cultural landscape of this city appears vast, like some urban frontier yet to be settled. But when you're here, you realize immediately that the creative community colonizing Berlin is, in fact, tiny, even incestuous (especially for foreigners). So, what happens is that people like me end up hanging out with people like Gary Shteyngart, the novelist whose debut, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, earned so many accolades that his awards CV is longer than my actual CV (just to put it in perspective). Gary was a fellow here last year at the American Academy, during which time he did some writing for an upcoming novel, gave some readings from his last book Absurdistan, and more or less just ran amok all over town, screaming in Russian or initialisms (WTF) depending on the evening's activities (read: alcohol).

[Photo]

There is obviously a vast divide between conceptual highbrow fashion that ironically references fascism and labels that are actually related to neo-Nazi extremism. Two weeks ago, a store with ties to the far right opened in an upscale boutique-laden street, to the horror of its neighboring locales. Tönsberg, which defines its inventory as "urban street wear," moved into Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 18, an emblematic number for Adolf Hitler's initials (1=A, 8=H). The store also carries clothing by the brand Thor Steinar, a well-known label worn by followers of the rechtsextremismus (extreme right). In addition to the general outrage at the thought of possible Nazis on the block, their presence there also causes unease. But not everyone is deterred by the threat of violent racists.

Berlin is a beloved destination for avant-garde aficionados -- especially admirers of graffiti, that illegal aesthetic practice that garnered its own task force in New York back in the 1990s under Rudolph Giuliani's "broken window" theory of government. Thankfully, Berlin has yet to demonize its urban artists, and all forms of street art remain an integral staple of Berliner Kultur, as evidenced by both the continuing prevalence of graffiti on the city's landscape as well as the recent publication of Benjamin Wolbergs' impressive city guide/anthology, Urban Illustration Berlin. Street art, generally the work of the global counter culture's more subversive agents, has also invaded the commercial gallery sphere, movie theaters, boutiques, and other locales beyond the sidewalk. Here's an introductory sample of Berlin venues that offer multiple perspectives on outlaw aesthetics and lowbrow culture -- for the street art novice to the contemporary urban art scholar and everyone in between.

Berlin's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week kicked off with one of the few big names on the program -- Hugo Boss. Before I start in on why Hugo Boss overdid it, it's important to note that Germans overdo everything, so it's probably unfair to give Hugo a hard time. (This first photo, for example, is from the collection by the fine folks at Torsten Amft.) Let me explain: Do Berlin clubs really need to stay open until 5 p.m. the next day? No. Do Germans really need to drive 180 miles per hour on the autobahn? No. Must they drink beer at breakfast? Hopefully not. But they do -- because they're German, and somehow, therein lays their charm. If the Germans are going to do anything, they're going to do it to the extreme. They take a good idea -- or even a bad idea -- as far as it can go, and then some. Nihilism, hedonism, and sadomasochism all have their own niche in the collective German consciousness. And let's not forget fascism. Berliners definitely haven't, since it's all over Fashion Week here.

MLK day passed here in Berlin with little ceremony and definitely no time off. But if you're like me and fascinated by the political climate in the States right now, you honored Martin Luther King, Jr. by watching Obama's speech at the Ebenezer Church and crying like a little girl. That was a good speech. But who to talk about it with? The Germans? Not likely. They just want to harp on what a douchebag Bush is, which is true but painfully old news. What you need are some Americans. Unfortunately, they're not always so easy to find, especially when you've moved abroad to avoid them in the first place. Unless, of course, you know where the hamburgers are, in which case Americans must be close by. Plus, the word burger in German, if you add an umlaut to the "u," translates to "citizen," so political jokes are already rampant in the city's hamburger locales -- making them the perfect place to mock your least favorite candidate. That being said, and based on broad stereotypes of national appetites, here's a quick list of burger joints in Berlin, so you can debate with your own kind.

So Berlin's cafes have indeed succumbed to the judicial constraints sweeping the western world and extinguished that beautiful vice of seductive self-destruction, the cigarette. Despite the so-called grace period, which some cafes are clinging to like a telephone pole in a tornado, the majority of coffee shops here have actually embraced the ban, leaving most Berliners shocked and dismayed. But Berlin cafes have other redeeming qualities, like comfy armchairs and unique interiors, melodic background music, and, on rare occasion, charming staff, all of which can sooth even the most agitated nicotine addict. So in an attempt to see the bright side of this turn of events, here's a list of choice cafes in Kreuzberg, one of Berlin's more colorful kieze (neighborhoods), that are resurrecting Berlin's café culture like a phoenix from the ashtray.

This past Wednesday would have been the 150th birthday of Heinrich Zille, the artist described by Kurt Tucholsky as "the purest incarnation of Berlin." Besides Zille's cache of pornographic works on display at the Erotik Museum, his art mainly dealt with the city's working classes and the hinterhof milljöh, the milieu established in the city's countless courtyards by their blue-collar residents. Hinterhöfe (back courtyards) continue to be an iconic component of Berlin's urban design, regardless of whether they're unkempt littered cesspools or beautifully renovated and pristine.

If you're among those in Berlin who swore off clubbing on Monday night, I commend your resolve and want to support it by offering an ersatz (alternative) to the typical mind-numbing weekend revelry that dominates this city's nightlife: Karaoke! Good clean fun for the whole dysfunctional family. Berlin has a handful of great little locales where you and your friends can take over the stage, or a private room, or even make your own low-budget music video. For introverts, karaoke may seem torturous, but fear not. Watching Germans sing karaoke is a guaranteed good time. Who else would take such pride in belting out that Scorpions classic "Wind of Change" while dressed entirely in leather and stonewashed denim? No one, that's who. It's like a musical freak show with drinks, and sometimes brunch, and, just sometimes, drinks, brunch, and cosmic bowling. No need to thank us, we're just doing our part to keep you informed so your New Year's resolution makes it till February, or at least Monday.

Nothing says New Year's like a bottle rocket to the face. At least in Berlin, where fireworks are legal (one night a year) and treated like party poppers. Beginning around noon on December 31, the city's streets become quasi battle zones, with pedestrians ducking for cover from impromptu explosions. For travelers just passing through, here's some advice to heed: That cylinder that fell from the sky and landed at your feet isn't a present, so don't pick it up. Keep your windows closed all day, or a wayward rocket may fly in and burn your building to the ground. Avoid groups of small children laughing manically, as they are probably packing explosives. And, come sunset, grab your sparklers and head to high ground.

Despite the Christmas cheer percolating in Berlin's Weihnachtsmarkt-infested squares, winter in this city can be a dismal experience. There's just something depressing about missing the day's only sunlight because of an ill-fated decision to catch a matinee. The constant darkness turns most residents into hermits and renders holiday shopping a fluorescent-lit nightmare of pasty-faced German throngs fighting over dubbed Sex and the City DVDs, Camper clogs, and neon spandex. By the time Christmas actually rolls around, it's not uncommon to want to disconnect the phone and stay in bed, biting the heads off chocolate Santas and watching Kafka remakes that echo your despair. But, for those of you contemplating throwing yourself from a bridge into the Spree, stop and reconsider. Not only will that not kill you, but there are plenty of other remedies for the winter blues short of suicide. Chin up, dear reader, this too shall pass.

So you were naughty this year and probably aren't going to get jack-shit from Santa. No worries -- you're not alone. If anything, you're in the majority of Berliners and can rest assured that there are plenty of clubs with holiday parties catering to those of us who would rather listen to Booka Shade than jingle bells. In fact, Berlin offers a multitude of events December 24-25, so you don't have to stay home alone, counting your lumps of coal and crying in the corner under your naked tree. Christmas comes but once a year, so why not make the most of it by staying up for two days straight? There will be plenty of time to recover before the New Year's festivities begin, and it's pretty much your last chance to get in some good old-fashioned hedonism before the annual ritual of swearing it off (for good this time) come New Year's Eve.

Berlin is the poor man's Amsterdam. Stoners in Berlin can pretty much indulge when and wherever they want, but unfortunately, the same can be said for heroin junkies and speed freaks. Weinbergspark, the seemingly idyllic park in Mitte across the street from a police station, continues to defy all logic by boasting the most dealers per square meter than any other leafy hide-out in Berlin, despite being profiled this past fall by two city magazines (one of which ran a cover story entitled "Drugs in Weinbergspark") and newspapers like Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt (among others). One would think that with all the publicity, the police would motivate, walk across the street, and crack down on the dealers aggressively vying for the attentions of every single person who traverses the lawn. But alas, they are more concerned with the crackheads congregating in the subway stop at Kottbusser Tor, even though recent postings on city websites have warned that dime bags in Weinbergspark are laced with lead.