Spaces & Places

December 18, 2015 1

Lens: Four Hours at Lageso

This is Lageso (Das Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales), the State Office for Health and Social Affairs. This is Berlin's primary registration center for the initial reception of asylum seekers. This is Germany's most infamous symbol of the refugee crisis. Two days prior I had signed up to volunteer on a website called Volunteer Planner. After a cursory registration process, a click of a button was all it took to commit to a shift at a registration center, refugee home, or other institution in the city where help is needed (read: basically everywhere). [Read More!]

July 3, 2015 1

Interview: “I’m a Human Being”

Vienna. Seat of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Widely considered the gateway to Eastern Europe. Home to a United Nations headquarters and numerous international companies and universities. The Austrian capital has long been a city of immigration – even when politics have told a different story – and a staggering 50% of the population has what’s referred to as a “migration background”. So it’s not as if I expected Vienna to not be multicultural... [Read More!]

March 23, 2015 0

Lens: On Leaving Home(s)

Last month, Kelly wrote about the implications of "collecting ourselves" to make a move back home. While wrought with complications in its own right, returning to where one grew up, has family, or holds full political and legal rights is a move that Makes Sense. One chapter closes, and however painful or messy, the next begins... [Read More!]

May 10, 2014 1

Review: Seeing Berlin Through The Homeless

They wait for the subway doors to close before they address the car with a rehearsed speech. "Excuse the interruption, I am one of Berlin's annoying homeless people"... it usually begins, as they peddle newspapers and scan the crowd for an outstretched hand holding change or food. The majority of us keep our hands tucked away or firmly gripping our phones. Some of us fall into convenient bouts of exhaustion, promptly leaning back and closing our eyes. In this moment, we are restricted to a shared space... [Read More!]

April 30, 2014 0

Rave: the California Breakfast Slam Effect

Identity and belonging are closely intertwined with the foods we eat. The California Breakfast Slam, or CABslam, originally a pop-up breakfast establishment celebrating Americana classics like hash browns and maple syrup-drenched bacon, now hosts an unassuming 'Beta' restaurant space at the far edge of Neukölln's Reuterkiez. A visit allows for the giddy return to childhood memories that lead to goosebumps and pride, or a combination of both. Let's call this the California Breakfast Slam effect... [Read More!]

April 22, 2014 1

The Collidoscope Manifesto

A couple months ago, Collidoscope Berlin was invited to write its first guest post for the Global Citizens Initiative - an organization that aims “to build a network of people who see themselves as global citizens and want to build a better world”. Part of the task was to connect what we do here to the significance of borders. “Borders?”, we wondered, unsure how to proceed but mostly questioning why we had never concretely addressed the topic before... [Read More!]

March 19, 2014 1

Review: “Schwarz gemacht” and the White Audience

One attends a play about an Afro-German living in the years of Nazism and Jim Crow not because of the dramaturgy. One buys the ticket because of the topic's near absence in the German discourse. This is not a review of the play, but rather a continuation of the discussion with the cast that followed. As one of the cast-members remarked, it all comes down to audience: "Black folks probably wouldn't go to the theater to see this play in the U.S., let alone have enough money for the ticket. And here, we have a white audience. So, who are we really talking to here? Who is seeing this play?"... [Read More!]

February 27, 2014 0

Viet in Berlin: Images from Dong Xuan Center Lichtenberg

Lichtenberg's Dong Xuan Center consists of 6 hangars, stocked tightly with all the things one might come to miss living far away from a place, where a broth of cardamom and ginger is paired with any meat imaginable and the most delicate of noodles; where a certain kind of manufacturing can turn out plastic and fabric wares for all sizes and ages in bulk; where sweet things might come packaged in banana leaves, wrapped around sticky mango rice like presents. Or this is the impression one might get of Vietnam, when visiting Dong Xuan - a Mecca in the middle of former East Berlin, little Hanoi amidst not so little Plattenbauten... [Read More!]

February 20, 2014 2

Lens: An Ode to the Maybachufer

From Berlin's "problem district" to more expensive than spießig Charlottenburg: Kreuzberg's made quite the transformation over the decades, but migration continues to shape its identity and reputation as a district. The bulk of Kreuzberg's diversity stems from the '50s and '60s, when guest workers were recruited by West Germany to fill labor shortages after World War II*. Kreuzberg's dilapidated housing became home to guest workers, primarily from Turkey... [Read More!]

February 11, 2014 0

Rave: the Political Berlinale

The festival of the golden bear invites the local to become a voyeur and thereby, to recall the headlines, the paroles, the debates, the sagas of the last year - to make meaning of images and thus to make sense of things, or, at least, to just make some sense. In the spirit of the critical viewer and in celebration of themes close to Berlin migration politics, I give you this rave of timely films and the 3 local contexts that make them and this Berlinale so special... [Read More!]

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