HOW DID I GROW INTO IT

AND DO I BELONG HERE?

"Growing up somewhere between the doors of 
Anne Imhof and Sven Marquardt."

An essay by Katharina Zorn

Don't give me anything, but just let me know that I also have something, that may be part of your whole.... 

Find me first, if I don't want to be found, I'll go to Berlin. And when I can look at myself again, then I come out and let myself be looked at. At home - wherever that is at that moment. 
Look at them, standing there. On their pedestal, in front of the altar, lined up. Quietly, stomping, everyone has their place, not like at a pop party or hip-hop club no „dance of the molecules“ no chaotic flying and bouncing. There is also flying here, but in a different way. Just the military version. Knowing where you stand - for what is mostly still unknown or simply fluid. Those who already know what they stand for, or have simply flown enough and are more likely to just stomp up and down a trampling path and thus not clear the way for the next generation, but rather end up crystallising, prefer to make room and know exactly where they should stand.

Namely on the balcony.

Next to those who wait on the bench and fill their lungs with more magic, staring nostalgically into the glittering stream, opposite the peacocks. The peacocks, those are the ones on the balcony standing with their backs to the railing, the view on the back of their necks, because:
 
why look at beauty when we can see out of it?!

And underneath you, too. Below oneself is one - correct. Because below oneself is nothing, isn't it? The nothing that has not made it to the top. But anyone who thinks that has probably not understood the philosophy of the whole thing here. 

And while you're still thinking about it now, there are already two eagle-eyes with a killer stare in the basement, ready to decide how much feathering is allowed on the balcony in the first place. 

The debating snakes are firmly in their claw grip. The rabble has long since been sorted out. The undesirable but ambivalently necessary magicians are unpacking and rearranging. And me, designer handbag filled with double standards - right in the middle.
In the body of the only snake that has counted so far. The snake whose stomach contents have often heard the word HAFTBEFEHL (warrant *German rap artist). Before the ground on which it snakes along became official Haftbefehl territory. Here, down by the Main, the sails were set upstream by a certain Ata and a Sven. One built himself a cocoon, the other a concrete temple. Some evil tongues still claim that the envy of one would reflect on the forehead of the other. But sure enough, inwardly we all know that every king loses his shine in the dark of night.  The Robert Johnson Club, or the Robert, is of course, something we collectively want to get our hands on. Because after all, it was one of us who put it there. Of all places, on the floor of the supposedly hated little brother Offenbach, but to be happy and sometimes misbehave, the intellectual art and music elite liked to make a pilgrimage to the other side of the river.

On the other hand, we also liked to welcome our Berlin friends and brag about our spaceship Cocoon or the smallest club - with the biggest sound. 

And that's where we found ourselves. Swarming crowds followed the morning muezzin call, some techno god. Somewhere between Frankfurt and Berlin. Between big egos and lost souls. 

I myself was never the biggest techno fan, but for me it was more about the feeling, the cohesion, which was sometimes so great that you would have loved to have preserved and packed the moment. The perfect atoxic high.  The connection of the temples, the club culture, the art and its players in between has always been special for me personally and still makes sense after all these years, to be somewhere in motion and not to determine the one place. Consciously not crawling into one pigeonhole has paid off. 

I was allowed to grow up in a colourful and diverse woken community. In basketball, in the hip-hop scene and also somewhere between a frighteningly talented Anne Imhof and the loving sometimes scary persona of Sven Marquardt. 

What I have always observed: For some it is and was the unnecessarily hard doors of a club, for many others, places that had to be protected, so that it was and still is possible to unfold as freely as desired. It is important to remain open. But it is also important so that we don't have to commit ourselves to one place. 

Opening the doors sometimes. 

Sometimes that goes well and sometimes it goes wrong. Actually, you're armed with innate Frankfurter street lingo for any verbal MMA fight, but the mixture makes the poison. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, it's hard to catch. Then your Russian roulette begins - then you have to hope the right person has inhaled your genie. 
But where did I grow into this and am I okay here?

I am. 
Why? 

The Community, is sacred to protecting culture. Whether it's musicians, artists, writers, intellectuals- they've all lost themselves here before and found themselves again. You can trust that. The place can change, we carry the feeling of home with us, through ups and downs. More important than the boiling blood is the common protection of the cause, and that is what makes the collective. Not against each other, but with each other. 

Even if one or two people poison themselves and accidentally piss in the stream, the river is not contaminated. It continues to flow its way. 

Up and down between Frankfurt and Berlin.