WORLD CLUB CAPITAL
by Fabian Gerhardt, CRUSHED and Vincent Stefan
28/29 January 2022 at TD Berlin
td.berlin/stuecke/world club capital
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin advanced to become the world club capital. The club scene became the city’s famous flagship. East and West united on the dance floor for 30 years – then came the lockdown. In a mix of videos, beats and insider talks, the show tells of the glorious past, the dreary present and the uncertain future of Berlin’s clubs.
After 1989 there was suddenly this large, still undefined urban space. People went underground, quite literally: the safe was a safe, the bunker was a bunker, the E-Werk was an E-Werk. A bar and a DJ desk in, done. From conversations with ex-dealers, DJs, bouncers and club greats such as Dimitri Hegemann, Carlo Nogossek, Mark Reeder, Namito and many more. a. author and director Fabian Gerhardt staged a multimedia concert about that “cosmos of pop music, hedonism, good drugs, cool knowledge and urban life” (Diedrichsen).
Today, the clubs are not only an indispensable part of a lifestyle for many, but also an important branch of the economy as a creative industry – with fire protection, building regulations and minimum wage. But ecstasy, the variety of electronic music and no curfew have remained.
The performance, originally intended for the StaTD open-air series, will be shown twice more on the former club area on the TD ground floor.
With Sophia Euskirchen, Max Schimmelpfennig, Miša Cvijović, Uroš Petković
Director: Fabian Gerhardt
Music: CRUSHED
Video: Vincent Stefan
Dramaturgy: Lars Werner
Funded by open-ended funding from the State of Berlin (Senate Department for Culture and Europe) as part of the two-year StaTD series find! of TD Berlin
Video documentation and trailer (additional video material by Vincent Stefan): Florian Brossmann