You’d think a “speed show” is a crazy idea that would work in the­ory but wouldn’t find someone to dare execute it. I didn’t expect any­one to make a premiere, but hey, count on Ber­lin to make it hap­pen. More spe­cific­ally, the dude behind today&tomorrow. It was pretty cool, although I am still not sure what the .gifs had to do with any­thing (except that they were dis­played on the com­puters and everything, I just mean that I don’t know what the .gifs were sup­posed to rep­res­ent — but it’s not like I would get it either way, so yeah, whatever).

Switch­ing the usual loc­a­tion of an exhib­i­tion from some­thing posh, eleg­ant, extra­vag­ant or formal to the very epi­tome of a store that is only needed when passed was an inter­est­ing con­trast in the con­text of ‘artistic gal­lery space’. Art, without try­ing to touch much the con­tro­ver­sial defin­i­tion prob­lems, is use­less at its core, whereas a Späti ((Spätis are Ber­liner con­veni­ence stores sim­ilar to the con­cepts of 7/11, have tobacco and some­times an integ­rated inter­net café)), or a net-café is purely func­tional in its exist­ence and has no aes­thetic require­ments to work. That’s pretty much an artistic state­ment in itself. Or maybe I’m just over­rat­ing again.

Hon­estly, it felt com­pletely nat­ural to party it up in a con­veni­ence store– being there, roam­ing around racks of drinks and snacks, buy­ing everything you need for the next day and hanging around on the side­walks out­side to meet your friends. It was like any other night on the streets but put­ting the Späti, one of the most import­ant ele­ments of Ber­lins city life, in the spot­light instead of the hold­ing track.

For those who don’t know: Ger­man stores usu­ally close down around 8 PM, so to get a drink dur­ing the night is nearly much impossible if you don’t want to spend your checks on expens­ive bars or nightclubs (or equally expens­ive gas sta­tions). Ber­lin is almost exclus­ively advanced in that mat­ter: Spätis are the sidekicks of the night, usu­ally open 24 hours and sig­ni­fic­antly cheaper than their gas sta­tion coun­ter­parts. Ber­lin without Spätis? It would never have become the city it is today.

By the way, being on the street on a reg­u­lar day in Kreuzberg is always an exper­i­ence too — mob­bing and shout­ing gang­sters, deposit col­lect­ors and gen­er­ally a lively atmo­sphere around the block. Makes Wed­ding looks pretty lonely right now.

more pic­tures at today&tomorrow and design is nowhere.