Remembering Jackie O... This is to say we may only look dead. In fact, very much alive and kicking... contemplating a fab new project which is a getaway scenario – exodus, if you will – in response to what some think of as "urban development" while many others, ourselves included, view as arrant decline – gentrification that stifles genuine cultural praxis pushing free-play venues out of existence. Berlin is the case in point. In a sense, this new venture is a rescue mission to save the endangered alt- and sub-species of civilization by offering a platform well out of sight and reach to the forces inimical, unfavorable or simply dismissive of cultural and communal imperatives.

It's also a kind of crowdfunding that instantly gives you the giver as much value as it takes from you – and so much more in the aftermath!

We have a name for it already: Verge. To verge is to incline or extend in a certain direction; to tend toward or reach as far as the horizon; to stretch to the limit beyond which something happens. To verge is to be in transition or change. This also means the name of this community will change soon accordingly, if you don't mind.

Here is a draft of the preamble which sheds some more light on it. Will post the entire concept later – all 35 pages :)

Verge is a series of events taking place on special notice once every quarter of a year – in spring, summer, autumn and winter. These events are addressed to select audiences organized around certain interests – one key theme at a time. Spanning three days on weekends, their programs – all expertly curated – generally incorporate music, art, film, fashion, performance, literature, philosophy; hedonic invigoration and eudaimonic re-calibration; exhibitions, lectures, discussions, showcases; know-how exchanges, hands-on workshops as well as other cultural, recreational, educational and self-exploratory experiences. Above and beyond, the Verge series is mapped out as a plane of interpersonal itineraries offering the framework for meaningful socialization, gainful collaboration and rewarding networking. All in all, the plane of "brilliance, rigor and charm".

This is how a straight line looks like when imported from the Riemannian N-dimensional space. Per Deleuze's instruction: you take a sheet of paper, crumple it into a ball-like object (which could be the geometry of our universe – no one knows exactly), get a knife and cut it straight in two halves. Then unfold. What looks very much like the way we traject from any A to B point in real life, especially in real emotional one. Why linear if it can be so much more interesting, indeed. Even when in the end we arrive to where we started. Dust to dust, in any case. And then again.

This is how our Berlin Terra Incognita II this Saturday at Jackie O is the result of trillions of synaptic conversations humming in parallel this very instance in your single brain and so on... "Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection; that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells; that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel; that this vast egg-like fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamed of in modern science; and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a Numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text." ― The Secret Lives of the Brain.

No, it is not something one can observe, taste, touch, count, quantify... It is one's intuition and feeling of the infinite triggering, often inadvertently, the full range of emotional and high cognitive experiences, all intense and profound, not necessarily pleasant or painful, but always revelational: awe, excitement, rapture, fascination, but also overwhelment, urgency, stupor, trembling. When we have such experiences, we sense we have encountered the reality of a superior order next to which all the moments of "normal" life seem dull, flat and meaningless.

It's a sudden impression of something grandiose out there, yet imperceptible and ineffable, confronting our unconsciousness, resonating with rocks on the very bottom of our abysmal souls.

We are not all practicing mystics and most of us do not experience the Numinous every day, if at all. But when we hear music, something is happening to this effect: We are lifted out of ourselves and carried away into another state of being.

Music is always something out of the ordinary. The one in the lineup for Saturday is very far out.

We've been planning Numinous ever since we popped up in May. It's been not so easy as the artists on the bill are in high demand playing festivals across the world, locking themselves for weeks in the studio for production, pursuing their academic goals and other lofty interests, making some time for personal lives... What they do musically, who they are as individuals, where they come from, where they are going, all that perfectly explicates our concept – the gist of which being to pull together various talents from outside, from beyond the local scene, some from afar, providing a reliable base for them in Berlin. It's a self-serving concept, too: we are developing it with a view to enjoying their creative presence, their diverse "strangeness", and as much as possible.

This Saturday you join us for Berlin Terra Incognita II: Numinous showcasing la crème de la crème of the Neue Leipziger Schule der Musikalischen Differenz, as we refer to this so far nameless phenomenon blossoming in electronic music far off the mainstream.

Taking full advantage of harmony, melody and rhythm, it sounds however much more experimental, abstract and contemplative compared to what one normally hears produced and played on the local scene. Relatively slow on beat, this music has a deep meditative calm to it. One may think it's been created in isolation and for spaces that are uncrowded. Does this style reflect the atmosphere of a smaller city and the scene that is much more intimate, perhaps? Possibly. This and more in the interview with Julian Ninze & Okaxy Tom revealing, among other things, what it's like to do music in Leipzig.

Born in the far North of Germany, Matt Wiedemann had lived in six cities before landing in London which eventually anchored him in electronic music that later in 2012 drifted him off to Berlin. Hip hop and jazz coined his style in the beginning, and while he has since moved on, they can still be found in the music he plays today: a style that is just as diverse as his travels around the world, a variegated kaleidoscope of smooth, mellow, and mystical sounds.

Source & Fluence: Preferences for a certain style develop following some paths – often paradoxical: opera aficionados growing up on thrash metal and punk rock or vice-versa, from Mozart to noise. What's your musical origins and what circumstances have brought you to the kind of music we hear you playing these days?

Mattmosphere: The origins are in the family. My father is a musician and multi-instrumentalist. I grew up listening to him playing music in different styles. I learned the drums, which helps me now as a DJ – tremendously, when it comes to rhythmic patterns and groove. It's through my father that I was exposed to a lot of classic rock from the 60s and 70s – the bands like The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Dire Straits and so on; as well as to jazz, soul and world music. Also quite early, I found my way into hip-hop – this time through basketball, playing it and exploring its subculture. Though my strongest urge has always been for smooth sounds and mellow developments. I love deep, mystical and atmospheric music with a dreamlike quality to it. You find plenty of this in my sets as I try to combine chilled fluidity with other enchanting elements – to keep the minds on the receiving end fully absorbed. But it's not always applicable to all audiences, situations and settings where I play. The virtue is to stay versatile as a DJ and it's not much of a challenge for me. Because I find beauty in music of all sorts...

Care for more clouds? A monument to Berlin Summer Air 2017. Hanging there waiting for stray punks with pins.

There is a certain degree of risk putting these fine artists extraordinaire together, seamlessly in one lineup. Some music brings you back to moments in time, conjuring from your faded memories the images of places you once inhabited or briefly visited, the situations you lived through, people you met, the sensations, thoughts, urges or emotions registered in the past and sealed in the unconscious mind. Some other music carries you out of this vaguely familiar space and time continuum altogether – where there is nothing for you to recall, but everything to envision and experience from scratch. Prepare yourself for an adventure full of such wonder. Intense, but you don't want to miss any part of it. Keep scrolling.

Some moments have more resonance than other moments... Tonight we welcome back Luis Rosenberg returning from his solitary sonic expedition and carrying his ever-growing collection of never-the-same sounds from various original and often very odd sources he finds and thoroughly explores around the world. Happy to see our old good friend Constantin Sayn-Wittgenstein aka Mr.Laboso to bless us with his royal funk and whatnot – when the night falls and we may need some extra heat on the periphery of campfire. It's been awhile since we did it together in Tulum popping up the infamous Papaya Playa Project which may still be in shape. There in the tropical jungle, his noble mission was to keep the subjects chilled in their heads and corporeally intact, otherwise melting away and turning into vapors. Hardly anyone could do it more responsibly and effectively. Mattmosphere to open the session starting right now....

See? My "clever secret marketing", as they put it, does not translate into much dough above and beyond the minimal wage crumbs disbursed under the table. No read-my-lips partnership deal in the postponed gratification business scheme either. But, lo and behold!, it is alleged to perfectly frame the image of "everything Berlin stands for." Everything! Hey, Olympus, since you are so smart to figure it out and seem to be so staunch upholding this fair view, may I have one of those brand new cute vintage looking cameras you've been testing at Jackie O the other day while I was zizzing backstage? A mere peanut is what I am asking in exchange for keeping it real. If only in your dreams.

From the OLYMPUS OM-D Mark III (new camera) communication campaign: "I've been to Berlin a few times and somehow you always seem to visit the same places and do the same things. Not on this trip. It started from the moment we got on the boat towards a place only the insiders know – called Jackie O. It's a hidden spot directly at Rummelsburger Bucht and it's everything Berlin stands for. Thanks to the clever yet "secret"marketing, Jackie O remains to be an insider tip far from any touristic or mainstream location..." — wander-lust.nl

Given its very basic setup, it takes a great deal of imagination to fully appreciate the place – to even recognize it as an entity separate from the surroundings. Jackie O is so obviously far from those thoroughly equipped, elegantly furnished, finely decorated, superbly serviced venues that adore themselves (with hi-rez selfies in glam lifestyle magazines) making one's comfort and feeling-good an automatic response; where the guests conditioned by all means to just love it, all of them and instantly, turn into hedonistic robots. True enjoyment is always singular and never programmable.

Not so photogenic, if at all, while also sidestepping the rough wabi-sabi aesthetic that has been a recent trend against the sleekness of technical perfectionism, Jackie O is addressed to and anticipates an universally perceptive and deeply insightful type of audience endowed with resourceful, autonomous and active minds, special mental faculties to form their own images of objects and processes that may not be immediately present to the senses. So imagine: One day we roll out an old grand piano, set the instrument up in the middle of nature planting it in the primordial dust and have our neoclassicist virtuoso friend Nicholas Bamberger do all the key magic upon it. One day...

Today? Go hear the maestro doing nearly just that at Fraenkelufer 2, 10999 Berlin from 18:00 to 20:00.

For the record, here is an evidence of direct sunshine this past Summer in Berlin. Not to forget it was Summer! Photo by Kurt Georg Dieckert (who didn't blink to miss the moment).

The name "Sisyphos" would apply so nicely describing what we have anonymously been doing behind the scenes around the world for a decade or so. Popping up clubs here and there is very much akin to rolling a heavy rock up the hill only to have it roll down when abandoned. Or, as in most our cases, to have it stuck there on top or half-way for a while seeing us away to attend to another boulder at the bottom. Up and down, again and again, no respite, no retirement... But Sisyphos the name is already taken, bolted to the gates across the road from our current futility pop-up comprised of a decayed canvas tent found partially intact in the recycling bin on ebay. More "underground" would be to actually dig a hole in the ground and call it a club.

Another proper mystical reference is the biblical story of Cain condemned to the life of a wanderer, never settling down in one place for very long.

The problem with these names: they both signify a curse, a punishment for some kind of transgression. Transgression? Perhaps for Till Harter it obtains from his advanced degree in Economics; for me, it implies the Liberal Arts* and Social Sciences. What are these knowledges, ironically, if not a pile of discordant hubristic heresies constantly challenging the laws of human destiny, cracking the mysteries of individual and collective existence, reinterpreting truth and beauty, inverting all values and turning the cosmic order upside down... so that nothing is what it seems. Gods keep their world-pattern well guarded! – by punishing inquisitive smart-ass offenders.

Indeed, this is how it feels sometimes – as a divine curse. But also as a helluva blessing: Just as our rolling stones gather no moss, neither do we!

So what does the future hold for Jackie O in the long run? The picture is unclear beyond a few weeks ahead. Couple events in the Fall and we are switching into the hibernation mode for Winter. Good timing for some laid-back memoirs, casual reflections and calm prognoses. I will be posting all that here periodically in the form of extended comments to photos from our other ventures – past, concurrent and prospective – in Mexico, Brazil, Greece, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Georgia...

Besides, we have something else and very different in mind for December and on quarterly; something we've never tried before – in scale, in content, in quality, in organization, in space and time – and which requires a special introduction, let alone actual planning and preparation. We may also need a lot of creative help doing things which will pay back in one form or another. In other words, stay tuned and you will hear of this first.

* Those studies which since classical antiquity "make men free enabling them to realize in themselves that which is most truly human and best."

Photo: "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Popping up in Tulum, Mexico. Circa 2011

Our latest hip popup in Berlin is comprised of a decayed canvas tent found partially intact in the recycling bin on ebay. More "underground" and real would be to actually dig a hole in the ground and call it a club. But let's not be too perfect. Welcome to Jackie O Berlin!

The horror in Las Vegas this week marks (at least in my mind disturbed by the images) the beginning of the end of the festival culture which manifests itself most vividly through the series of indiscriminately overpromoted mega events regularly held in the pre-fixed locations, yet unsealed on their perimeter. Never fancied most of them on their merit anyway ("I am 10 years too late for Burning Man" – as Till would put it) and now this!.. Which, on the positive note, ushers in the times of unpredictably mobile, compact, clandestine happenings with programs tailored to particular interests and unique tastes; with personally cross-referenced attendance. The fests that don't grow in scale and profile, but evolve in substance, quality and intimacy.

Paranoia or not, given the circumstances, I simply cannot imagine any other way for this culture to last in large format and for the participants to fully enjoy their celebrations of scheduled unity. The global politics is deep shit stirred by the elite human larvae of all shapes in order to maintain the level of back and forth violence which justifies their toxic existence and necessitates more power. On top of that, too many psychos out there, lowlifes who can dream of nothing else but "scoring". And they keep inbreeding… Expect the authorities to make your next Tomorrowland and suchlike outings impossible.