What is the difference between the meat on our body and the meat on our plates? Is there really one? Why does our brain rather consider a bunch of oversized fake sausages “meat” while the real meat sits naked on top of it?
For the research to his award-winning piece Requiem for a Piece of Meat theater maker Daniel Hellmann went deep into the cruel realities of the meat production industry. What he found there was both shocking and eye-opening, and turned him and part of his team to veganism. The ways how we humans disassociate a piece of meat from what it really is – a sliced-off piece from a living creature that was killed against its will after enduring a life of torture and mistreatment – is one of the topics he dissects in his piece. But it goes far beyond the treatment of animals and blurred lines of what is the meat on our bones, the meat of an animal and the meat product that goes over the butcher’s counter. It also questions how we treat black bodies and female bodies, and how lust and desire play into our associations with meat.
Nothing that you will see in this piece is done for shock value – in fact, the realities of the things depicted in the play are by far more shocking. Yet, for some theaters, the production was too extreme so it got censored and even canceled. Luckily, Berlin theater people are not so thin-skinned so we can enjoy the German premiere tonight at Ballhaus Ost with encore screenings on the following days. Some impressions and details below.
Read on…
by Frank | Theater
photo: Jason Leung
You’ve seen us posting guides on clean eating and vegan lifestyle alternatives. In truth, there’s plenty of these options in Berlin and although we’re happy to embrace the gastronomical diversity, the time has come that we give some more love to those of you who are declared carnivores, ranging from my beloved Angry Chicken to super fancy Katz Orange. Enjoy our guide for all the meat lovers out there and make sure to add your top spots in the comments! Read on…
by Michalina | Restaurants
I’d landed on my feet and hit the ground running. I knew people. My pockets were lined with the contacts of DJs, photographers, film makers and the owners of bars. Before I had even arrived in Berlin I was told that Neukölln was the place to be; and here I was right in the thick of it. Purposefully unpainted, candlelit bars selling mezcal from Oaxaca, trendy vegan cafes which serve coffee in bowls, makeshift pop up galleries, neo-vintage clothes stores with humanitarian ideologies and hipster beards galore, it’s an orgy of artists and underground musicians not wanting to make the mainstream. Weserstraße operates as one of the main arteries. When I told people was staying there they looked at me differently. Read on…
by Guest Author | Misc., Stories
photos: Million Motions Medienproduktion
“If walls could talk…” This was the topic of the call for submissions for a giant new mural in Berlin that initiated the creation of 396 designs from almost 60 countries around the world. Talenthouse Kreativplattform chose out of the innovative and highly diverse submitted material the work of Marcus Haas and turned it into a mural with the help of the art group Xi-Design and the artists Size Two and Mario Mankey. The mural depicts a chunk of meat being cut in two by a knife engraved with the phrase “Berlin 1961-1989¨. It, thus, tells Berlin’s most defining story. Marcus Haas clarifies that the division of the meat into two parts refers to the division of the city into East and West Berlin from the emergence of the wall in 1961 through its fall in 1989. Taking a closer look one will be able to notice the different districts of the city vaguely drafted on the meat. You will find the mural opposite the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Straße for a limited duration of 3 months.
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by Nikos | Art
As we already announced here we were really looking forward to see the theater piece MEAT by Thomas Bo Nilsson as part of the F.I.N.D. Festival at Schaubühne. Before doing his own thing the Swedish stage designer, performer and director was part of the Signa group from Denmark. If you ever experienced a piece from this group before you will recognize the unique touch of analog reality in this new piece. Go after the jump for a little review and some impressions of the piece.
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by Claudio | Art, Theater
