On The Radar: Berlin Festival

 
Art & Culture

This year will be the first that Berlin Festival is no longer at its birthplace, making the move from the iconic Templehof airport, to what has now been named Arena Park in Kreuzberg. Taking place over two outdoor stages and a multitude of indoor spaces, including Arena, the renowned Club der Visionäre and Glashaus, the festival’s new home will allow a non-stop 48 hour programme for those that think they can handle it.

The festival will also host an Art Village, sponsored by everyone’s favourite pencil makers Staedtler, holding live art pieces, performances and installations which will sprawl throughout the site for us revellers to get lost amongst. One such art piece is Paint Club – where two teams of artists ‘fight’ on one canvas under a given topic with whatever their preferred medium, be it sharpie or spray can. The Art Village will also hold the Art Market, where we can spend our petty cash on pretty things that, let’s be honest, we’ll probably lose later on in the night.

The line-up at this years Berlin Festival has been hand-picked from some of the finest names in international music, spanning a wide variety of genres that will peak almost everyone’s interest. Indie Rock your thing? Keep an eye out for Warpaint and Bombay Bicycle club over in the Arena Main Stage. Techno? Sven Vath, Nina Kraviz and Magda have got it covered. The festival also welcomes a whole host of other names including Moderat, Woodkid, Editors, Darkside, Chase & Status, Foreign Beggars, Trentemoller and many many more.

If the huge number of names is starting to become a bit overwhelming, don’t worry your little socks off. You can now create a fully personalised timetable over on their website to ensure that you’re not going to miss anyone that you’re almost weeing yourself over wanting to see, which is the kind of situation I’m in with finally getting to see Moderat.

Having never been to a festival outside of the UK before, or even an inner city festival, it’s going to be interesting to see how the two combine in such a raw industrial complex that backs onto the River Spree. Unfortunately I never made it to Berlin Festival whilst it was at Templehof, but if anyone has let us know how it compared in a couple of weeks.

Jake Davis