Follow the Fellow

May 2024

A storm is brewing on Revaler Straße. For some reason, its name makes me think of Disco Elysium and the city of Revachol. In this weather, as the sun is fighting with thunderclouds just like the spring is still struggling with the cold, the Revacholian vibes are ever more tangible.    

The area around Ostkreuz where I live now reminds me of so many fictional places. The Ring is like an Outer Rim on whose outskirts all sorts of unexpected encounters occur. As I walk from the station to my place, I see heavily tattooed utility workers enjoying an evening beer on the street, half-stoned ravers with the craziest hairstyles grabbing a bite at a döner joint, random tourists with the same suitcase on wheels looking for their Airbnb in a cozy Altbau, hipsters with dogs sipping natural wine in a recently opened minimalistically designed café, local dive regulars smoking a cigarette and decanting the third bottle of their booze du jour. One day I saw Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, my teenage idols from the doomgaze band Nadja. One day I was passing by a guy who suddenly said, out of nowhere and very clearly, “I’m considering a move to Memphis in this case,” as if he got teleported from Jarmusch’s »Mystery Train«.

That’s what I love about Berlin the way I got to experience it so far. There is an undeniable beauty to this randomness and diversity. There is also a brand of ragged charm specific to Berlin that made it so popular, prompting other cities to aspire for the proverbial status of “New Berlins.” Kyiv was among them in the post-Maidan years when we saw a boom in the underground scene, food culture, and international tourism, wholeheartedly embracing the “poor, but sexy” ethos and aesthetic. Kyiv hipsters cringed at the pervading comparison, and yet, as the Russian full-scale invasion started and many Ukrainians ended up in Berlin, they named a popular Telegram group berlin—the new kyiv. The title is ironic, sure, but it came to mean two very real hopes Ukrainians had: that Berlin could become a new home, even if temporarily; and that it could be as cool as Kyiv.

Sexy, Berlin may still be. But poor? After several months of searching for an affordable place in the city, I have my doubts. Even here, at Ostkreuz, the Outer Rim energy is slowly fading away. Friedrichshain still has its punk haunts but the part I photographed is already a testament to the inevitable ossifying effects of gentrification.

A German friend asks me if I think Kyiv will become a ›New Berlin‹ again after the war. I wish Kyiv to remain as vibrant and interesting as I know it to be, but the question in my head is: will Berlin ever become the New Berlin again?

…Revaler Straße keeps bugging me: what does it mean? A quick Google search brings the answer: Reval is the old German name of Tallinn, which happens to be home of ZA/UM studio behind Disco Elysium. Revachol is very likely a portmanteau of ›Reval‹ and ›Ravachol,‹ a French anarchist, making my initial association not so far-fetched, after all.

Tallinn is home to another remarkable artist: Kyiv-born Valentina Goncharova (how’s that for a segue?) who is coming to Berlin on 4 May to play at the Kiezsalon. Her experimental works from 1987–1991 were released as an exquisite 2-volume package by Ukrainian label Shukai in 2020, and I invite you to indulge yourselves in this soothing, dreamy soundscape of late-Soviet psychedelia.         

As a bonus gift from Ukraine, I urge you to read VAN Magazine’s incredible interview with Stas Nevmerzhytskyi, founder and editor-in-chief of The Claquers, Ukraine’s only media about classical music, who decided to join the army. Stas is truly a pillar of the Ukrainian new music scene and we look forward to his safe return home. The Claquers have a dedicated English-language section, so give them a read!   

April 2024

Spring is imminent. Here in Berlin, much like in Kyiv, it feels like a done deal as early as March. That’s a big change after Chicago: over there spring doesn’t seem to exist at all. It’s winter, winter, winter, and then sometime in May—bam!—it’s suddenly summer. Feels good to be back in vernal latitudes!

My first Berlin spring began with MaerzMusik –  namely, the Meet&Greet opening mixer co-organized by INM. I enjoyed meeting new people and having a good chat, but I enjoyed being gently choreographed by the organizers more. Take a seat here, switch to another table in 30 minutes… Fun! Someone told me it was a perfectly German thing to do since people wouldn’t know how to mingle otherwise. I concluded that in leisure as in work, Ordnung muss sein. And I think it’s beautiful.      

One of the conversations we had was about suffering as a prerequisite of good art. My interlocutor pointed out that evolutionally, we’ve always been driven by challenges, and our ability to adapt is what made us human. Fair enough, thought I, and yet something about the starving artist cliché just doesn’t sit right with me. Did Messiaen suffer to write »L'Ascension« while cruising between Paris, Neuchâtel, and Monaco? Or so many other talented artists who didn’t exactly struggle? But more importantly, do we want our contemporaries to suffer for art’s sake, normalizing artists’ precarity?

As a cultural manager from Ukraine, I have a rather straightforward view of this. As we are wrapping up KCMD’s program Instrumental providing instruments to Ukrainian musicians in need, I am thinking about some of the applications. Cruel though it may sound, we had to ask the applicants how the Russian full-scale invasion directly affected their lives. Among a myriad of stories about burnt-down apartments, forced relocation, captivity, life under occupation, and – naturally –  destroyed instruments, one answer stuck in my mind for some reason: “Thank God, [I was] only morally [affected].”

I am strictly anti-suffering. I don’t think it should ever be normalized, no matter the purpose. And if we can make each other’s life just a little sweeter –  even for fear of our art becoming desperately mediocre – I’ll take that bet.   

But hey, this blog is getting long! And I promised you a gift from Ukraine in every issue – so here you go:

Alla Zagaykevych is a pioneering figure in the Ukrainian electroacoustic scene, active since the 1990s not only as a prolific composer but also as a professor and festival organizer. A truly influential figure. Check out her Guy Debord-dedicated »Contre S.« for Kontra-Trio (fun fact: KCMD brought them to Kyiv for a master class in 2017) and then come back for more at our page about her.

_les

March 2024

So, who’s this Fellow guy? I’ve spent the first 32 years of my life in Kyiv studying French literature (being a Georges Perec fanboy, to be more precise), playing in doom metal and post-rock bands, and managing contemporary art projects. I helped IZOLYATSIA build a new community in Kyiv after Russians turned its huge post-industrial art center in Donetsk into a prison in 2014. I was the Head of Visual Art at the Ukrainian Institute, a state organization promoting Ukrainian culture internationally. For me, art and culture have had much more to do with real, palpable social and political change than ivory towers.

In 2021, I moved to Chicago with my wife who studied there and that’s where we met the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ironically, it was also on the shores of Lake Michigan, 5,000 miles from home, that I joined Kyiv Contemporary Music Days (KCMD), a concert and educational platform for new music I’ve been working with to this day. Without KCMD, I wouldn’t have known the beautiful people of INM/field notes, and without INM, I wouldn’t be here today. Mysterious are the ways of Neue Musik!

And that is how after Chicago, Illinois I ended up in Berlin, which Mark Twain affectionately called the »Chicago of Europe.« And that’s where we are now.

I promised you a gift from Ukraine. Last week, KCMD, with the support of INM, brought one of Ukraine’s most talented violinists, Orest Smovzh, to play a very special show… at a bar in Kreuzberg. »Condensed Music« was a mosaic of over 80 pieces and improvisations from 4 to 110 seconds long, hand-picked and carefully assembled by Orest. With stuff from Peter Ablinger to John Zorn while also featuring works by obscure and non-professional composers, it was »a bit punk a bit crazy a bit contemplative a bit inebriated a bit nostalgic for unseen Berlin,« to quote Orest himself. Below are a few snippets of that madness for you to get the taste.

Don’t miss Orest’s next concert when he’s in town. And I will keep you in the loop of the upcoming KCMD events and share my other curious findings in the next episodes.

That’s all for now!

»Follow the Fellow« – ermöglicht im Rahmen des Stipendienprogramms »Weltoffenes Berlin« von der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.