This past Tuesday I was lucky to attend the German premiere of the new Spike Jonze short film I’m Here at the Babylon Kino in Mitte. For those of you who need a little hint on the director and film maker: He made Where The Wild Things Are and Being John Malkovich. His new short is a little love story of two quirky robots. It’s actually Jonze first love story to date and I thought it was really sweet and charming. I liked it a lot. They agency who organized the premiere did a really nice job decorating the whole place in candles and rose petals. They also had all sorts of candy and popcorn and long drinks for our enjoyment. After the film there even was a buffet but I kind of wish I had known that beforehand because I was already a bit sick of eating too much candy and mixing it with vodka.

The movie will be released online later this month. But after the jump you can already watch the trailer and see some film stills. The website is really worth a visit.

Do you ask yourself what the Bar 25 is doing in the winter? Did you sometimes wish you had yellow nail polish? Did you always wonder what records Hot Chip would put on at a party? Then we might have some answers for you in our party guide after the jump.

Thursday

The Stattbad guys will obviously never cease to come up with interesting events. Take for instance what they are hosting tonight; The Dulcet Tones of Skark, a 12-piece Icelandic orchestra in a special collaboration with Artists Nicolas Dusollier and Ingrid Hor. How is that for a nice evening program?

If you missed the confetti and glitter of the Bar 25 and can’t wait till the infamous party temple opens again in the summer, you should head over to the .HBC as they invited a bunch of Bar 25 DJs over to have a little fun. Confetti will be available…

Friday

Bananamania is a new label that celebrates it’s launch at the Tausendisco. I usually never go to the bar Tausend as it’s a little too posh for me. But today the event is co-hosted by the cool nail polish Uslu airlines and you will get your nails painted in bright yellow at the door. And if that’s not a reason to go I don’t know what is.

For people who are more line-up oriented in their choice of party I would reckon that Jennifer Cardini at Panoramabar (who plays the first 4 hours) is a great choice.

Saturday

The Hot Chip DJs will be playing at the Greco Romain party at Villa. I’d rather have them play live. But it’s not Christmas and it’s not my birthday either. So I will have to go with the DJ set.

Ultradicso at Kleine Reise is another recommendation I would like to send out. It’s a small relatively young club in Kreuzberg near Görli. But I hear it’s quite the rage and always pretty full and fun. I might actually check it out this weekend.

Sunday

I will preach this until all of you have been there: The After Hour at Panoramabar is just great. You will not be disappointed. They have their residents in the Sunday line-up, nothing too extraordinary, but that won’t make it any less of a hell of a party.

The attraction to small but funny design objects seems to be in the family, as my mother posseses kind of everything from Alessi’s kitchen stuff. These little plant-mosters caught my eyes at a fashion store in mitte called Storia. But you can buy them also online directly from the designer Matteo Cibic. What’s intruiging about the Domsais is the humanization of plants through design. I am always into it when a design aesthetic not only manages to be funny but also creates something that is somehow alive and let’s me think about the frontier of our own existence. Are we ourselfe having a glassbubble to protect us from the reality? Some of these days it definetly feels like it. A special edition of the Domsais in gold after the jump.

Sandor: Fuchur

This Friday the Strychnin Gallery opens their big group exhibition Childhood Heroes in support of the children’s hospice Berliner Herz. Interestingly, all artists are Tattoo artists curated by Sara Rosenbaum. There will also be a mini concert by The Boss Hoss (no kidding!). More art and details after the jump.

Imme Böhme

Sophie Hazer: Batman and Robin

Childhood Heroes

live music by The Boss Hoss (at 20h)

Opening night 12.03.2010, 19h

Strychnin Gallery

Boxhagener Str. 36

10245 Berlin

Internet and amateur pornography seem to be a hot topic right now as I noticed browsing through my usual sites and blogs. Castor and Pollux discovered an interesting artist working with amateur clips and Amy&Pink made a list of the best sexual Tumblr blogs out there. Well, I am not the porn expert in town but some days ago a met one of the PR ladies of the Berlinale for a beer and she told me that there was a really hot Mitte-hippster-trashy-artsy porn movie from Berlin showed at the Berlinale and that i should definetly write about it. Since I am such a good catholic boy I will definetly not watch Bedways from RP Kahl myself but I asume that there might be some nasty little artsy pigs between our readers who might like it. More images and the trailer after the jump.

Synopsis:
Director Nina Bader wants to shoot a film about love and sex and invites her actor-friends Hans and Marie for screen tests for a couple of days. For Nina love is not necessarily a matter of emotion – she is rather looking for an authentic depiction of sex. The intimate collaboration turns into experiments with film, love and bodies and finally has an impact on the private relationships between the three of them. It seems that the boundaries between acting and reality begin to disappear.

I guess you all have seen some of these long exposure light writing photos that you will find all over the internet. It’s so easy to do you would hardly call it art. But in the case of Miam you might want to reconsider. Those guys have brought the light writing to perfection creating 3dimensional graffitis of light into urban and industrial settings. I especially like their work with LED lights that are more graphical but also look a lot like brush strokes.

This Friday they will open their new exhibition at We Make Stuff Good, the indoor gallery at Stattbad Wedding. More of their work and details after the jump.

Exposure

Miam

12.-26.03.2010 Wed-Fri 13-18h

Opening reception: 12.03.2010, 19h

We Make Stuff Good / Stattbad

Gerichtstr. 65

13347 Berlin

www.miam-photo.de

It’s Sunday late afternoon and some of you probably just came home from browsing though the fleamarkets at Mauerpark, Arkonaplatz and Boxi looking for vintage treasures. Maybe you even went to come cool second handshops this weekend too. But you didn’t find anything? And don’t want to wait until next weekend? Well, that’s where the brand new online vintage shop Jay Loves comes in. A group of girls from Berlin has piled up all their vintage clothing, accessories and decorative items and made an online shop to save themselves the time and effort of selling it all on a fleamarket. Quite clever. They even take on your stuff on comission. Check out their goods on JayLoves.

I wear colored contacts, fake eyelashes, a blond Lady Gaga wig, I am covered in black paint and my voice is distorted. Can you still guess who I am? Hint: I like to get dirrrrty…

It all started with a weird video clip of trees with arms and legs anonymously posted on YouTube about three months ago. In the end of that video you could see a blonde woman in some sort of naturalistic, dark womb. During the next weeks more videos where posted under the name IamAmIWhoami showing more of this strange woman with fake eyelashes covered in dirt. People started to speculate that this is some sort of viral campaign for an upcoming album release which it obviously is. The guesses which artist it might be ranged from big pop singers like Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga over cool semi-popular acts like Goldfrapp, The Knife and Santigold to smaller artists like Margaret Berger, Sia, Ladytron and Lykke Li. Just by looking at the videos it’s pretty obvious that it must be someone the record company spends a lot of money on. And judging from the music, it might sound dark and electronic, but it’s still so perfectly polished that it indicates to being parts or interludes of a pop record. I would consider it to be Goldfrapp if I hadn’t already heard their new album which is an 80s disco record and clearly not it. There are a lot of clues that point to Christina Aguilera (which you can read about here) and as she has a new album lined up I think she is the safest guess. I actually only like one of Aguilera’s albums which was her second: Stripped. It was quite brilliant and compared to the one before quite a change of style. So even if some people doubt it’s her because the mysterious videos are way too unconventional for a major pop artist like her I am pretty confident that she is IamAmiWhoami.

After the jump you’ll see all the videos in order of their surfacing. The animals that are shown towards the end of the video have been decrypted to point to a big revelation of the whole campaign this coming Monday 11am (Californian time, which means 20h here in Berlin). So stay tuned! I’m quite intrigued by the music you can here in the videos, especially the second one which sounds like vintage Goldfrapp glam rock!!

photo: MrClean1982

If you have always dreamed to once design a garment for one if not the biggest fashion house of the country (and who hasn’t) then your dream might come true just now. Boss Orange - the young urban line of Hugo Boss - is calling for all creatives to design a T-Shirt for next year’s summer collection. The inspiration for the design is the colorful parrot which is an element in this year’s collection. Are eye patches and black pirate hats too, I wonder? The winner will get the chance to meet the creative team of Boss Orange to finalize the design until it then becomes a special edition of the official line for summer 2011. Contestants can submit their designs until April 30th, 2010 to a dedicated fanpage on Facebook. You can vote for the submitted designs until May 1st, 2010. How clever they all are with their social media integration and all that!

For your inspiration (and to distract ourselves from more important tasks) we flicked through a seemingly endless amount of parrot photos and have collected some fancy shots for you that you will find after the jump along with the flyer of the competition. There is also a parrot on that one, naturally.

www.myparrotdesign.com

photo: Tomer Arazy

“Huh?“

photo: key lime pie yumyum

“Not him again…” (rolls eyes)

photo: ^riza^

“A little lower, a little more to the right, now a little further up. Ah, yeah, right there…!”

photo: ingridtaylar

“Fuck off!”

photo: artolog

“Peek-a-boo!”

Jimbo Starlight

While it was kind of tricky to gather enough cool events for our weekly party guide lately this week is absolutely and it will be hard to decide where to go. Will we sip champagne in the Malzfabrik, go on a blind date at the Hoppetosse, get sick at Picknick or wasted at Panorama Bar? Oh what the hell, we are only young once, so let’s do it ALL! The parties after the jump.

Members of our iHeartBerlin.de Facebook Group have the chance to win guestlist spots for the DFA Night at .HBC this Saturday. So you better join now.

Thursday

We’ll start the weekend with a fun little party called Kastalia at Freudenzimmer at Ritterstr. 11 with crazy cats Jimbo Light, Beaner and Gabriel Ching.

If you are up for something more housy and cosy I would recommend the fifth edition of HOME at the WMF Bar at Klosterstr. 43 with Dirk Rumpff and Alex Barck.

The .HBC is celebrating the opening of its new big group exhibition called Tipping Points with lots of things going on you can read about here. Comme Ci Comme Ca will throw the after party at 21h at Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9.

And for those who want to check out what the hipster kids are up to: It’s Broken Hearts Club at Ballhaus at Chaussee Str. 102 again. Dresscode: Dynastie.

Friday

To ease into a long party weekend I would suggest a little opening party of the latest exhibition of the Intoxicated Demons at Schliemannstr. 12 at 19h. The New Avantgarde seems to be yet another brilliant group exhibition of urban art.

For later we have quite a nice selection on Friday. The bigger event would be the Champagnerama at the Malzfabrik at Bessemer Str. 2 (near Südkreuz, there will be a shuttle bus from the S-Bahn). They have a impressive old industrial location, a never ending line up of DJs and live acts, and way more going on than just music. It will be going on all weekend until Monday. So this is perfect for the hardcore party-goer…

As a classic there is gonna be another Blind Date Swingers Club Mix CD Exchange Party (the party with the second longest name right after .HBC Couture: Designer Scouts After Show Party by Comme Ci, Comme Ca). This time it will be on a boat: The MS Hoppetosse which is by the Arena Treptow at Eichenstr. 4.

And for those of you who couldn’t be arsed to leave Mitte there is a sweet little event going on at KIM called Out Of The Woods with video art, dance performance and of course DJs. Sounds fun!

And of course there is also La Jeunesse Doree event and party at Stattbad that we wrote about earlier here.

Saturday

Update: One big event just came together short notice: COOP is throwing a party for DFA and Nachtmusik at .HBC with DJ-Sets of The Juan McLean and Planning To Rock.

For those who are not stuck at the Champagnerama you have the choice between the Sick Girls party at Picknick or the one year anniversary of the Awesome party at Villa with Rampa.

Sunday

Panorama Bar on Friday and Berghain on Saturday are kind of over these days, but the after hour on Sunday is really still awesome. This Sunday they have Ed Davenport, Boris, Steffi and Raphael Ripperton at the decks. That is if you are not still at the Malzfabrik.