Together with my family on June 16th, I attended one of the best live shows I have ever seen: Radiohead played in a park in Monza, Italy, in front of more than 50 000 people. We accidentally bought fan pit tickets and got to be only 20 meters away from the stage. Even the opening
CategoryCampus Life
#3 The Awful German Language (a podcast by Claire August)
The BCB Summer Language German Intensive Program came to a close earlier this month. From the 10th June to the 10th July, a handful of students from various universities immersed themselves in the German language and took part in cultural events across Berlin. This podcast includes snippets of conversations with some of the participants on
The Continued Adventures of a Clown: A follow up with Veronika Rišnovská
A few days ago I followed up with Veronika Rišnovská about her clowning project. The project is part of the Civic Engagement initiative at Bard College Berlin. It aims to train students as medical and social clowns so they can bring joy to children in hospitals, orphanages, and refugee camps in Berlin. Since our last
Pride Month 2017: Activism, Rainbow Capitalism and Right-Wing Queer Tokenism
The first time I attended a Macedonian Pride related event was in June 2016 when I saw African-American intersex-born, genderqueer performer, artist, and generally wonderful human being Vaginal Davis. She projected some of her experimental films and gave one of the most entertaining Q&As I’ve witnessed. Anders Stefanovski — one of my best and queerest
Shave Ice
For two summers straight I sold shave ice to sunscreen-slathered Northerners who arrived in droves to the beaches of Florida with the seagulls that circled like vultures overhead. It was good business for me and the seagulls. When the sky was clear and the temperature broke one hundred degrees, the tourists sweating white bullets would
Survivor Scapes: Urban Geographies of Tenderness
I came to Berlin as a person with a complicated love relationship with cities. New York City often grips my heart so close it hurts. The relationship between the city and the survivor of sexual violence–or the survivor of any kind of violence or trauma–is a very particular one. Many stories and cultural narratives refer
Privileged Exile
You read the words of Mahmoud Darwish, his nostalgia, revolution and melancholia swirl the desert dust over times and places to reach your eye. Yes, I swear. This is how the tear settled on my dry cheek. And Nizar Qabbani whose eroticism, love and poetic (but also political) fight for social justice make you tingle
Gala für Alle: Exposing the Fake Feminism of the 1%
“I would start by saying that the protest was twofold. Firstly, we protested Ivanka Trump visiting Berlin as an official representative of the United States: Her presence represents perfectly the hypocrisy and nepotism of the Trump administration. Secondly, we were protesting the event that was the context for her visit: the Women 20 Summit.” Julia