When the Wall fell and East-Berlin was opened, a tremendous amount of abandoned, unused and empty spaces left by the old political and economic system appeared on the map. It took decades for the new system to establish order and regulations and to re-distribute these spaces.
It also set free several young generations of East-Germans, open and stimulated to explore what may come, and of West-Germans, who gradually seeped into the area and to whom an undeveloped, ruinous metropolis in a power-vacuum was unheard of. There and then, both of these groups may have experienced a freedom never known before.
People started to explore these ´unknown territories´ and relics of other times - often clear memories of sinister historical significance. To them it was a possibility-horizon for a new beginning, alternative utilization, re-creation, ideas and - quite logically - celebration. They used sites they found as a canvas upon which to create social events and experiencial moments.
Simultaneously, a new kind of music was born and since then has become inseparably connected to Berlin. Techno music introduced an experience of exclusively synthetic sounds with a computing-precise beat and a design of sine-curves arranged into cascading sound-architectures. It focused on re-discovering pure, primal, archaic rhythm found in African and indigenous music. Put together, these aspects were entirely new to Western music-tradition and to general sound-perception. Yet it provided much of the soundtrack with which communion and identity was explored in these new territories.
This photographic series brings us to places and events of several ´scenes´ from ravers to hackers, as well as to grotesque situations as they occurred during the second post-wall decade.
