Location: The location of the hotel is fabulous. Potsdamer Platz is very central and convenient to explore Berlin, especially if it’s your first time. It’s also an incredible location if you want to attend any movie premiers as it is right across the street from the Sony Center.
Entrance/Reception/Lobby: Automatic doors open up to a small, but stylish lobby. The staff at reception where exceptionally friendly, check in was quick and efficient and we were offered a cold towel upon arrival. We were escorted to our suite which was on the 7th floor – room #716. The hallways were spacious and bright with minimalistic décor which was refreshing as sometime design-oriented hotels try to create a dim and moody atmosphere in their hallways – which is sexy but unnecessary at 11:00 in the morning.Nice feature: You stick your key card in the slot by the door and the door opens automatically. No need to wait for the green light.
Room: It was an incredibly spacious and quiet corner suite. Again, minimalistic décor, very bright and clean with a small, but functional kitchen. The hotel offers complimentary shopping service for its guests and we were told that the hotel could fill our refrigerator with whatever we wanted. Nice touch – we would have actually utilised the service if we were staying longer.
Regarding the features in the room – large bed, seating area, desk, 2 balconies – one off the main room with a table and two chairs (with a surprisingly attractive view considering all of the surrounding buildings) and one off the bathroom.
More here blog.zerotwonine.com
Today was the first day at the SmarterCities forum in Berlin, being held in the Grand Hyatt hotel.
We are staying down the road at the Marriott, which is a good job as the walk between the two hotels is the only time we have seen daylight in the last two days. We get a little in the room we are in between sessions but it’s not much. Coffee and water on tap makes up for it and keeps us going. Have to say the breakfast was great this morning, lots of fruit, juice, meat, fish and lovely bread.
Sam was late to kick off the event today because of a problem with the plane he was on but Martin Jetter took over and did a great job not just opening the event but also taking on Sam’s speech.
More here ragtag.wordpress.com
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Some say Berlin could be our era’s magic city. According to the recent Newsweek article, Poor But Sexy:
“Despite running up $80 billion in public debt—more than that of Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala combined—the city still funds the world’s most lavish collection of cultural venues, including 3 opera houses, 8 symphony orchestras and 150 theaters. In choice downtown neigh-borhoods, empty storefronts lacking -better-paying tenants have been taken over by artists, galleries and impromptu “guerrilla” fashion boutiques. The students, artists and creative types that give the city its edgy buzz and 24/7 culture scene—which in turn attracts a steady influx of more of the same—are there precisely because they have been priced out of more economically successful cities like New York. The city’s poor prospects carry within them the seeds of revival. Berlin has become a haven for entrepreneurs in media, film and fashion, who can take risks on edgy projects thanks to the ridiculously low startup costs.”
Yes, I agree; it does sound fun. Former Open House stars and special Strange Closets field correspondents Greg and Maribeth recently investigated and came back with this special photo essay.
More here strangeclosets.com
BEAUTY CAN SAVE OUR WORLD
Last week, my colleague from Hiphonest, Ingrid Horsselenberg and me have been selecting work of Dutch designers in fashion and products. The exposition ‘Beauty can save our world’ will be presented at the kick off of TheKeY, an eco-fashion trade fair in Berlin.
From July 1-5, during Berlin Fashion Week, Berlin will be the centre of innovative fashion. People in fashion like retailers, designers, entrepreneurs and media will be spotting new trends at the popular Bread and Butter, Premium, and of course at the streets where ultra hip Berliners will be promenading.
More here ecofashionworld.com
Berlin: These photos show the very cool touch tables at the recent gallery exhibition in Berlin held at the Martin Gropius Bau. The collection featured 60 years of German art and these Flash interactives (In English and German) let patrons learn more about the art all around them.
Sixty influential artworks are on display in Berlin to celebrate Germany’s 60 years of statehood. The exhibition shows milestones of German post-war art - painting, sculpture, photography and installation – from 1949 until 2009.
More here robbmontgomery.com
ALLORA & CALZADILLA
July 11 - September 6, 2009
The Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla. Known for their complex artistic vocabulary utilizing film, installations, performances, and sculpture, their artistic practice engages with history and contemporary geo-political realities, exposing their complicated dynamics, destabilizing and re-ordering them in ways that can be alternately poetic, humorous, and revelatory.
Allora & Calzadilla’s new work Compass, 2009, conceived specifically for the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, creates a new spatial and acoustic experience. Dividing the Kunsthalle horizontally, a new level is introduced into the space, inaccessible to the viewer and reducing the grand exhibition hall to less than one third of its normal height. Visitors can only hear the vibrations and sounds of an a capella dancer performing a choreography above their heads. The otherwise empty exhibition space is turned into a huge resonating chamber: “The performer is like a specter that moves through this flat horizontal stretch and whose sonic traces become a type of metrical language – a rhythmic and poetic means of communication with the
public below.” (Allora & Calzadilla)
Allora & Calzadilla will also present their most recent video work How to Appear Invisible, 2009. Filmed in Berlin on the site of the Schlossplatz at the close of 2008, it documents the last remains of the Palast der Republik being torn down. Bearing witness to this event is a German Shepherd dog wearing a makeshift cone collar fashioned from the trademark container of one of the largest American fast food franchises: Kentucky Fried Chicken. The camera follows the dog roaming through the barren no man’s land of the palace ruins as if it was searching for the last remains of an utopia that has vanished.
More here artipedia.org/artsnews/exhibitions
I told you the Bear Quartet would be back on the 9th of September with a new record called 89, produced by their new label Adrian Recordings and not the previous one A Westside Fabrication. Excited ? I sent Mattias Alkberg and Jari Haapalainen (singer and guitar) some little questions. They answered back with some little answers. Here is the result : a not that little Q&A about BQ’s 89.
Usually, BQ is quite prolific, but it’s been three years since the release of your latest record (now I understand its title “Eternity Now”…). It’s the first time in BQ career since you spend that much time without releasing a record. What happened?
Matti : we were busy and a little bit sick of each other I suppose. But nothing a three year hiatus couldn’t fix.
Jari : my production work (for other artists) got in the way, it was difficult to find the time… also, A Westside Fabrication couldn’t any longer give us the money (which isn’t much) we needed to be able to record in the way we felt we wanted to.
More here absolutnoise.blogspot.com
Peter Terzian is the editor of “Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives.”
My favorite songs have little pieces of autobiography in them. Pretty much all songs are autobiographical in some sense, of course. But the memoir-songs I’m talking about recount events that the singer actually lived through: a big snowstorm, an adolescent romance or a trip to Berlin. The word “remember” pops up a lot; some use real place names and dates. I understand that these details may not in fact be drawn from personal history, that a songwriter can create the illusion of autobiography as easily as a novelist can. But these songs feel true, and sometimes the facts of the songwriter’s life story back them up.
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9) On the Museum Island, Emmy the Great. This year, I fell headlong for Emma-Lee Moss, a member of an informal school of bookish young London folk musicians that includes Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn. In this gently-strummed number from her debut album, “First Love” (named after the Samuel Beckett story — that’s how bookish we’re talking), Moss recalls a visit to Berlin with a friend whose famous father has just died; now the friend has become famous too, and they’re chased by paparazzi around the city. I’ve never been to Berlin, but nothing has made me want to go more than hearing Moss sing the names “Brandenburg Gate” and “Potsdamer Place” in her bright, quavering voice.
More here papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com
