DELI AN DER SCHILLINGBRÜCKE
Berlin, Germany, 1999
“The early 1990s in Berlin were shaped by an extraordinary political situation: the peaceful collapse of a state - the German Democratic Republic - created a power vacuum, and it would take years for the "upgraded" Federal Republic to take control of its new territories. These were years of joyful anarchy, characterised by the absence of organisation, religion, telephone networks, and constituted power.
While studying architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin, I spent most of my time wandering the city at random. The variety of situations that grew out of squatted buildings and the many informal squares left by the bombings of World War II made this exploration constantly unpredictable. The destruction of the tidy Prussian grid traced a new topography and revealed an unexpected and stunning urbanism. I came from Rome, which was quite the opposite situation.
In 1999, I finished my studies and, after years as a "culture consumer", decided to become an active part of the city's underground cultural scene. With friends, we rented an abandoned 2.000 sqm factory in Berlin's Friedrichshain district for €350 a month and called it Deli an der Schillingbrücke. The space was gorgeous, right on the banks of the Spree, but had one major problem: no windows and no heating. There was no way to warm it through the long, cold winter.
So we started making DIY bubbles and inflating them with a hot-air blower to offer smaller, heated lounges.
The project began as a hybrid concept to display the wide spectrum of cultural activities we encountered in '90s Berlin, and ended up as an underground techno club. This first period was marked by a very open decision-making process that led to controversial situations. With some of the people involved in those first pneumatic installations (Michael Heim, Pietro Balp, and Raffaele Distefano) we continued to work together for a while. In this context - the Berlin void - Plastique Fantastique was born”.
Marco Canevacci
Team
Pietro Balp, Marco Canevacci, Raffaele Distefano, Michael Heim
Photos
Michael Shot, Daniel, Canedog, Friends.
