As we celebrate the release of our new digital issue focusing on the importance of queer & safe spaces within the music & nightlife scene, Berlin event series, record label, and kink-haven Gegen ties together 10 years’ worth of memories in their birthday mix made by Lady Maru for KALTBLUT.
In conversation with Gegen founder Fabio Boxikus, A. Susurration writes, “When you first enter Gegen, the immediate feeling is of having gained entrance to the sorts of mutant saturnalia you always dreamed of as a kid—Pinnochio’s Pleasure Island, Bradbury’s Dark Carnival, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse; seedy, a little dangerous, and full of hidden delights. Stretching throughout the whole of Berlin’s KITKATCLUB, its atmosphere whirrs with the promises of forbidden debauched deliciousness, woven of disco light and beads of sweat.
As the reveller winds their way through the veins of the club, passing steel poles where pulsating flesh spins a techno tarantella, winding passageways between rooms where genres become amorphous, melding into each other in ecstatic cacophony, slipping between the dance-wracked louches lounging lasciviously by the lapping indoor pool (they say there’s no p in it, which is clearly taking the piss..) it is this atmosphere that suffuses mind and body. Its unique perfume of filth-black Berlin grit and international queer expression is an intoxicating cocktail, especially for the many who have travelled here searching for an escape into this world that could only exist in this place.
Gegen is a party like no other, and that smart, sexy power has kept it thriving in a city long known for its mad raving stark.
Read the full feature in our new digital issue coming out TOMORROW!
All visuals by Stefan Fähler
Instagram @stefanfaehler
Contact
Instagram: @gegenberlin
@Souncloud
@Bandcamp
Instagram: @ladymaru
@soundcloud
