Locking down the club has put the whole nightlife scene in the most difficult situation it has ever been. While other countries are already back to the party, the Germans have yet to free their clubs from their forced hibernation. In our previous two stories, we’ve already taken a look at what Berlin clubs do when they close and what Berlin partygoers do without their clubs.
As if by magic the big news had fallen yesterday, this most famous club in Berlin – Berghain – will turn into something else for the rest of the club’s lockdown from September 9: Berlin’s largest gallery. Together with private art collectors Boros who display their pieces in another large gray cement building that was once a nightclub – the Bunker – the new exhibition will most likely include resident artists from Berghain such as Wolfgang Tillmans who has his abstract works of art at the Panorma Bar, Joseph Marr who made the sculptures of the sugar men inside the Klobar, and Norbert Bisky who has his large painting downstairs in front of the cloakroom, as well as Sven Marquardt, Marc Brandenburg and Piotr Nathan.
Other names on the list of over 80 participating artists are Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Cyprien Gaillard, Isa Genzken, Anne Imhof and Rirkrit Tiravanija. The full list will be released today.
Berghain is of course not new to the presentation of art. Besides the aforementioned resident artists who have their work permanently installed inside the club, they have already shown two large group exhibitions in their large Halle space, “Workers” showcasing the artistic achievements of their creative staff, as well as as “10” celebrating their 10th anniversary.
The recent sound installation ‘Eleven Songs’ has already been a great success and has given club-goers a chance to set foot in the sacred halls of Berghain again – even if it was ‘just’ their Halle space which is mainly used for events of this nature and rarely as a dance floor. So we can already imagine how excited everyone must be to finally return to the club’s main venues after months of lockdown. One can only hope that some of the performance based works will have a bit of a club vibe (Anne Imhof, hello?).
In general, we hope that this decision inspires more clubs to come up with alternative concepts during the lockdown – because quite frankly we have no idea how long this is really going to last …
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