illustration: Laura Breiling.
Today, we are proud to announce our next big group exhibition “Fantastic Playground Berlin” which will celebrate the unique diversity of Berlin’s creative scene. It’s been a couple of years now since our last big exhibition Uncensored Berlin so we thought it was about time to do a new one. The last two years during the pandemic with its various lockdowns and restrictions have not been easy for the art and culture scene – nor have they been easy for us. This new show is our effort to reclaim spaces and draw the attention back to the creative people that we care about so much.
For decades Berlin has been the secret creative hub of Europe. From music to art. From theater to architecture. From techno to science. Berlin became the place where cultures clash – but in a good way.
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by Frank | Art
If we’ve learned anything in the past 1,5 years is that we really really need to be more aware of our own mental health and wellbeing than ever before. Self-care was of course already a thing before the pandemic, but it certainly reached a wider audience during it due to the mental stress and isolation many of us went through.
But of course, self-care is a very subjective practice and everyone has a different understanding of it. From sharing inspirational quotes on Instagram, visiting yoga classes, or taking the time to cook a healthy dinner for one – self-care has so many faces. My personal version of self-care is taking a long bath with tinted green lights while fantasizing about hikes in the tropical jungle, and sometimes I take myself out to brunch alone. On the other hand, we have this writer who joins orgies as a form of self-care. Well, everyone to their own, right?
Our partner in crime Sophia Halamoda, with who we published the fabulous Like A Berliner book, has come out with an adorable comic about her own self-care routine, and let’s say, it is really of a different kind… But look for yourself!
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by Frank | Stories
It’s kind of hard to admit this, but to be brutally honest: I’m not doing great. It’s surprising after a year of the Corona crisis. I feel like 50% of my time I have to invest into staying somewhat sane which means a lot of other stuff gets left behind. But when I look around me, some of my friends seem in even darker places and that’s a scary thing because how can you be of support if you yourself are also not in the best place. Maybe you can’t. But maybe you can at least not do anything completely wrong.
Our friend and collaborator Sophia Halamoda who we co-created our Like A Berliner book with, has dedicated a brand new comic to this very sensitive topic. In it, she describes how she believes we should treat our friends that are in crisis mode and it takes a particularly close look at the very difficult but very real topic of toxic positivity. It’s something we have all probably mindlessly practiced once and this particular situation is making it clear, how that is a rather lazy cop-out than actual help.
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by Frank | Stories
The second lockdown is holding on to our sorry asses and it looks like it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It’s a bleak outlook, I know, but what can you do other than trying to make the best of it, right? Did I just hear you say: “Shut up!”? Well, fair enough.
I think I’m not exaggerating when I say this whole corona era has been a mixed bag. While some of us have our sanity hanging on a thin thread by now, others finally got the time they needed for self-fulfillment. I’ve seen people falling in the abyss of mental unwellness, while others keep on trucking with their lives as if nothing has happened. People’s responses to the pandemic and the lockdown could not be more divisive.
But how are you doing, dear iHeartBerlin reader? We were wondering about this so we sat together with our cherished collaborator Sophia Halamoda with whom we authored the fabulous Like A Berliner book and created a brand new personality quiz to find out what quarantine type you really are. It’s fully illustrated by the lovely Sophia, so make sure to check out all the cute little details in the drawings. We hope they can brighten your day a little.
Whatever your end result of this quiz might be, always remember, we’re all in this together and there will be another, happier day. Whenever that might be…
by Frank | Pandemic
When it comes to dating in Berlin, things are not quite as black and white as you imagine. There are all these different new ways of life and love we have come to accept here and it only proves the liberal spirit of the city we love so much,
But where are you on the spectrum of love? For our book Like A Berliner (which by the way makes for an excellent Christmas present – order it here!) we sat together with illustrator Sophia Halamoda and came up with a smart little game of questions and answers that will solve the riddle and define what dating type you are.
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by Frank | Products, Stories
While Berlin’s weather is too unpredictable to count on it, at least you don’t have to worry about always having to find the appropriate outfit for the current circumstances. Berliners tend to be quite liberal as far as putting together a look goes. Or taking a look apart, for that matter: showing some skin is often a viable option. At the first glance, it might look like they’re just throwing on random stuff they just picked up at Humana, but there’s a logic to this aesthetic madness.
Together with the illustrator Sophia Halamoda, we’ve analyzed some of the most prevailing Hauptstadt fashion trends for our book Like A Berliner (available here) and extracted some advice for you on how to get the Berlin look from the chapter Look Like A Berliner!
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by Michalina | Fashion
Berlin’s nightlife and club culture have been a driving force for many young people coming to Berlin hungry for new experiences. There is so much history and intrigue about it, it’s like it has developed its own myths and stories, some of which we captured in the chapter “Party Like A Berliner” in our new book Like A Berliner that we published in collaboration with illustrator Sophia Halamoda. One of the comics from this chapter is dedicated to the different stages that you live through while waiting in the club queue. Of course, if you wait in front of a club for several hours you have way too much time to think, so some very interesting emotional states will kick in ranging from anticipation, joy, doubt, struggle, panic and of course dread when you realize you might get bounced and waited for nothing. We deciphered these stages for you and want to show you 10 of them.
The Club Queue comic is also available as a poster (70x50cm) at Hallesches Haus and Urban Spree, as well as in our webshop.
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by Frank | Party
This was fun! On Friday we launched our new book Like A Berliner that we’ve been working on for the past 3 years with illustrator Sophia Halamoda and that is available to order now in our new online shop. We had the incredible honor of doing our party at Kantini in collaboration with Bikini Berlin. It was such a match made in heaven – the wonderful design of the place mixed with the cute illustrations of Sophia that we pasted all over the place.
To make the evening extra special we invited a couple of really unique performers to embody the spirit of our book and take our guests by the hand to make some memorable experiences. From Jennifer Aniston tarot readings by Esben Holk, to anti-confessions with Olympia Bukkakis, tactile sensations with crochet artist Anto Christ, fetish research with drag queen Purrja, and unsolicited plant advice by Miss Poppy Cox – there was something for everyone – and it was great fun. As a special treat, we invited The Darvish to give us a little belly dance, and boy did he deliver!
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by Frank | Books, Party, Photos
Get ready for something really exciting. For years now we have been quietly cooking up a very special project together with the talented illustrator Sophia Halamoda, whose amazing work we’ve been featuring on the blog for a few years now. You might remember her iconic Berghain comic, the hacks on how to become a “Real Berliner”, the Winter guide and the Flatmate Roulette. All of these beloved illustrated stories have just been the foreplay for something bigger: Our brand new big book “Like A Berliner” is coming out in just a few weeks is out now! It is most likely the cheekiest Berlin guidebook you’ve ever seen – and we‘re throwing hosted a party to celebrate its launch in collaboration with Bikini Berlin – the innovative concept mall in the West of Berlin.
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by Michalina | Books
illustrations: Sophia Halamoda.
The history of the German division and the Berlin Wall is – to put it mildly – a rather complicated one. Especially since even today, 30 years later, it still feels the country has not completely recovered from it. I was only 7 when the wall came down so I feel my memory of life in the East is pretty much seen through the eyes of a child. I don’t remember life for my family being bad in any way, we were quite happy actually. There were a lot of things we didn’t have – but also we didn’t know about them, so we didn’t miss them.
But once the two German countries re-united, it did feel like something exciting and good was happening – at first. It took us all a while to understand what was really going on. On the surface, we were re-uniting but underneath it was more of a take-over. I don’t mean it in a hostile way, and I’m not blaming either side for what had happened. It is, as I said before, more complicated than that. But in the few decades, those two parts of Germany developed so differently under such different circumstances, that throwing them together again like that was just going to cause some collateral damage. If you only look at the election results or statistics such as unemployment rates you will see a country that is maybe not as united as it should be.
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by Frank | Stories
