A BOOK ABOUT THE HOOD

in summer a photographer asked us to take a picture of tom and me and the PLATOON.area.. today he and angelina from berlin story publishing presented the result to us: a book about our neighbourhood, schönhauser strasse

a realy nice book about a nice area and it's people! see some pictures..

the name of the photographer: stefan maria rother:

“Berlin is a city to discover. To show the greatness of this city, my photographic expedition concentrates on the small things, the streets, the people and their places.
Berlin is a city of changes. At the beginning of the 1990s you could find cool clubs in the Alte and Neue Schönhauser – the in-crowd dominated the area. Today, the street thrives on this legend. The Schönhauser is everchanging, a balancing act between shop windows of global fashion companies and passionate people with dreams.

Berlin is the city of its people, and maybe one needs to look at the faces of this city to give Berlin a face.”

here you can order it!

mobile clubbing

the „new" craze shaking up London these days has hit again...this time in the literal sense of the word.
last friday at 18:12 a crowd of flashmobbers met somewhere in London for a massive open-air pillow fight!

it´s not the first time...we heard about smart mobs already sometime ago....nevertheless since then, large gatherings of pillow fighters and I-pod dancers seem to have become more popular then before.

in fact during the past months we had the pleasure to observe an escalation of these kind of extravagant public meetings...the fact is that people love to get together and most of all they love to party for the sheer pleasure of it.

Mobile Clubbing started since Pillow Fight Club's first event (17:40, 6th oct 2004, outside st pauls cathedral). since then several gatherings have been witnessed, astonishingly all over the world.
*have a look at this blogspot
and this first-hand account

however the meeting on the 11th of october at liverlpool street station and the one following on the 30th of november at paddington station, where about 3.500 clubbers attended, made it again a very popular trend...and for sure one that isn´t driven by any commercial or political reason. also media representatives could not simply ignore it...reuters reports....
daily mail article

well, we hope to see more of that....perhaps we should think of something to do over here...and since we have the advantage of getting a lot of snow (actually what happened with all those white fluffy flakes?) we might even gather for a massive snow fight....anyone up for some action?


*further links for Mobile clubbing on myspace

4th Pecha Kucha Night in Berlin

Tuesday 12.12.2006
Ballhaus Ost
Pappelallee 15
10437 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg)

start 20:20h | open from 19:30h | entry fee €3,-

presented by Pecha Kucha Berlin, pechakucha.de
Pecha Kucha or 20/20: fast, furious, fun and information.

Arrive early, they start at 8:20 pm

Guests:

Georg Betz (leg extensions, Gebrüder Betz)
Hiroko Oda (design student)
Sascha Lobo (author, Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur)
Stephan König (Genausoundanders)
Thilo Staudt (painting, graphic design, art, BUTTERBAY:ORG)
Graco Spinner (Spinner)
Olivier Froehlic (film music "Der rote Elvis")
Thorsten Rauser (Adam - the intelligent elevator, The Binary Family)

more about Pecha Kucha around the globe!

New York Street Action

as i already mentioned it is not big fun to stay in new york in these times. more and more bans for everything. absolute ban on smoking in any restaurants, bars, clubs etc. coupled with an alkohol drinking ban on the streets it´s really discriminating for us as smokers. you are not allowed to take your drink outside from the bar for a smoke. and when there are too many people outside smoking it is also not allowed because of the right of assembly. it could be a demo....;-(

anyway you can feel that the americans are totally affraid about an eventual next attack by themself. for me it seems like they have a bad conscience about their conduct of war and at least therefore they would have everything under control. now you must carry with you your id-card by law everywhere in the states.

but there are still some combatants out there who are taking high risks for spreading out their rage against the goverment and the society. one of this actions took place last week in front of the carnegie hall.

jason flores williams is an attorney to be, with mexican roots and he reckoned for this reason that he would get arrested for this action. In fact it only took 2 minutes untill the police arrived. but the officer was really cool and he only kept a close watch on the scene. probably because jason wore a business-suit and looked so reliable.;-)


watch the video..

after the action we went to a small bar on the 59.th street to celebrate jason`s birthday. it was fun......


at the end of the night we took our last drinks at the nublue. a small live-club with a really nice trip-hop live-performance. that was really hot.....but as i told you before without smoking it is not really fun.;-)


this is the carnegie hall speach in written words:

The Inside of Despair

I am ripping apart my head. Hundreds of characters. A dumpster of diseased efforts. An army of let downs. Nothing but another lost child of the 21st century. Its scars are all are scars. We are the monkeys of mass delusion. No vision, no authenticity, so harmless that we’re dangerous. Never here. Never there. A messiah society of Christ figures stuffing our faces with food, lying on the couch and fondling our respective genitalia.
Denial and fear are in the air. Does anyone have the guts to stand up anymore? To be a freak anymore? To be controversial in a way that counts for something? To be anything more than a mere shadow of the next fucking guy. To be a little less well adjusted in a world in such deep shit.
Call me raw and immature – but I want to beat the hell out of these cultural elites. I want to grab them by their tuxedo collars, throw em down on the ground and say. “Yo, open the gates, let us breathe some life into this dead culture. Give the new a chance to be born.” You might think you’re special and unique, but from where I stand you look like beat down robots. You’re miserable inside and you can’t tell what’s down or up, so let go or get out of the way.
Subvert everything, everyone is complicit and nothing deserves to be left standing. And when you ain’t got nothing…right?. Standing right here, right now is the only way I know how to fight the apathy. Standing right here, right now is the only way I know to fight the disconnected creeps who control this society. Being right here right now is the only way I know how to take on the anemic art world, the elitist culture pigs, lame dead writing, lame dead people and the sell out of our souls and lives. Being right here right now is the only way I know to disturb these rich people who don’t give a fuck about anything as long as they can get dressed up, come to Carnegie Hall and pretend like everything’s okay as long as they give a couple bucks to the democratic party.
(the boss) No retreat, baby, no surrender. They can marginalize us dismiss our art, evict us, deny access and lock us out of their fancy venues like they’ve always done. Let them, their ways are dead! Creative resistance is the new art. Fuck their consumer culture, their wars, power governments, mega-corporations, identity distortion, mass media, evangelism, emptiness, apathy and zero integrity. Fuck whatever it is they have to offer because I aint gonna shut up and go along with the plan. I rather hang around in misery for another forty years –fighting for the goddamned dispossessed, expressing my fractured soul and living a life that the mainstream doesn’t give a shit about. If a tree falls in the woods with no one around, does it count for anything? Probably not. But I prefer being off the radar screen to being recognized as on of THEM. I will stick with the homeless and the convicts. I’ll stick it out in the pouring rain. I’ll stick with the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
Not one person I admire bowed down to the establishment. Not one person I admire sold out for comfort. Not one gave up their visions to go along with people who wouldn’t know life if it punched them in the face. My heroes were shunned by places like Carnegie Hall; they were segregated, doomed, fucked over and mocked as inconsequential. The world has always been run by whores. The smug (UWS) pukes who think that maturity means going out to fancy restaurants and insulating themselves from the struggles of the world. But it’s the ones who stood their ground, who walked down dark alleys when they heard screams, who fought for art and justice when no one was watching…They’re the ones who broke down walls and forged new consciousness.
We’ve got a sacred duty to subvert this sick culture. Because you can walk these streets forever, and have no idea what we’ve done to other people. You can stand on these corners forever, and have no idea that we’re at war. If artists have any role to play it all, it is to blow apart the hypocritical, unimaginative fat gut of American society. And now that we’ve been gentrified out of our own spaces and neighborhoods, now we’re coming up here to do it!

text by Jason Flores-Williams

about JFW
Jason Flores-Williams believes that creative resistance is the new relevant art. Subvert everything, nothing deserves to stand! We must produce culture that is beyond their cooption. We have to fight The Man on his own turf. JFW wrote the High Times' Call To Resistance, which was at the center of the 2004 Republican National Convention protests in New York City. His novel "The Last Stand of Mr. America," has been a controversial cult hit and got him banned from reading at Columbia University. JFW is a frequent contributor to the Brooklyn Rail, is currently in law school, and has organized protests all over America.

once upon a platoon-jungle-bar....

o o o -we are so sad, we have to see that our jungle-bar need build down for a new hotel-building.













we had a really happy time the last two summers, with party-friends-drinking-cooking-eating-laughing-dancing.




















it makes melancholy, but perhaps its autumn-time too....
































....and those who know the platoonees could be sure, that there is going to be another idea for next summer.

ONE VILLA FOR TWO NEEDS

PECHA KUCHA : ANOTHER SPEACH:
STEPHEN K MOLLOY
stephen also made his diploma at the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) in 2006. but in architecture. his project is a really unexpected solution for the two needs of modern megacity-inhabitants: on the one side you want to live in the pulsing center of the city with its subculture, people, noise, speed and smog.. on the other side you have moments where you are in need of nature, silence, privacy and peace..

so he invented a house for these two needs: a house which is devided in two parts: one is located in the center of the city – the other part is placed in the green outskirts – connected via a direct 25minutes ride with the metro.

look at his gorgeous presentation of the diploma..

i would rent it! wouldn't you?