48HOURS

Putting together a new project is always a bit daunting when there is so little of anything that is concrete. It's always a strange non-linear process of inspiration and invention and finally production and making. Made all the more difficult with lack of money.
Die Trommel is Neukoelln's oldest still existing Schwul-kneipe.
This year will mark it's 37th year at it's small location across the street from a cemetery.

Every social sub-culture requires it’s own spaces of history- it’s own places of refuge from other minorities or the predominating hegemony. Through these spaces, those gone and those that persist- a subtle cumulative memory creates a culture passed on from generation to generation. An exemplary model of the phenomena may be found in Berlin’s Neukölln in what may initially be perceived as a typical German Kneipe frequented by one of Berlin’s enduring minorities once besieged by the terror of the Nazis and later marginalized during postwar reconstruction. A sometimes loose and often tight community of gay men, women and transgender citizens of Berlin for nearly 40years such a small place on the periphery of a cemetery has been the space of private joy and comrade between these citizens and their neighbors. It is a space that cultivates ‘family’ among acquaintances- creating fast friends and most certainly rivalries. In so creating a space of intimacy it serves as the vehicle for encounter, friendship and loss This joy and sadness are inscribed in the posters, flyers, photos and objects that line the walls of this public living room. Every longstanding bar develops a family over time but a minority community left to fend for itself through the ravages of prejudice or unforeseen epidemics sustains a memory through experience and the subtle transmission of character such as the sub cultural ‘camp’ known by homosexual (western) culture- one can point to language as a carrier (such as Polari) of cross generational memory.

• main Image: "Katja Strophe" (Berliner Dragqueen. Deceased 1996)
• Dachreklame/Public billboard-structure Promotional
• Text-Prose (on die Trommel) by Mario Wirz [On Lauftschrift-maschine/ LED message board]
• Memento Mori/memorials (dead "Kunde", dead "Tunten")[paperplates]
• Kitch/Camp [the language/voice of subculture ie: Gay iconography ie Knepf, Alexandra, Minelli, Schlager etc]
• Fanzeen "Trommel Info" Special Edition [ed/auflag500](collage, memories, history, updates+ *Poster)
  
• "Leben" video/film(Doku) by Siggy und Werner [video monitor(s)and player]
  

STRATEGIES (to consider)

• Private Life v. Public Life/
• Invisible v. Visible /
• The Ordinary v. The Spectacle

Articulate the joy and the tragedy

video- 13.März 2010/ Schlagernacht an die Trommel

Katja Strophe (g.19__–†1996)

"TROMMEL INFO" Kneipe-Fanzeen by *Siggy & WernerLiberation literature 1980s DDR

Karl Marx Strasse Neukoelln/ Old "Dachreklame" structure

Hermanplatz Dachreklame (Circa 1933)

Dachreklame (Havana)