[Club Portrait]: ://about blank (Berlin)

 

 

Some basic facts

Who are you?: Ambassadora Blanka and Abouto Blanko

Owner: A collective of currently fourteen people

Where: Markgrafendamm 24c, 10245 Berlin (Germany)

Former locations: none

Capacity: Indoors 400, Outdoors 500

Floors: MDF, Lobby, Garten, Zelt

Opened in: ?

Minimum Age: 21+ (18+ only on special occasions)

 

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After these short facts please tell us something about the club and its history. What’s the philosophy behind? The idea? Which styles can your visitors celebrate here?

The basic idea of ://about blank was to create an environment where our political ideas and our passion for techno and house inspire and challenge each other. When people celebrate together on the dancefloor it is not just about pure energy or hedonistic ego-trips. The essence of rave culture goes beyond and contains many social aspects, e.g. sharing and caring, letting go and reflecting, hiding and baring, respecting and pushing borders, leaving and crossing identities, bridging roles and attributions. A club night (or day) is always an experimental setup that aims for the best possible and safe conditions so we are trying to provide this setting. A key issue for us is equal payment regardless your position, gender, origin or skill-set, which is obviously a struggle against capitalistic logic. We run the club collectively, because we strive for a society without hierarchies and capitalistic value creation – that is certainly a utopian goal. As a crew with strong ties to the feminist movement, we try to strengthen the visibility and representation of women and non-binary in all areas. Classic male occupied jobs such as bouncers or technicians are challenged by many women. Of course, the same applies to the DJs and artists.

 

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Could you give us a short overview about your technical equipment? Is there special?

://about blank loves vinyl, so we are well equipped with everything in need. Since the beginning of the club a good sound was one of our priorities. We’ve run a lot of experiments with different sound systems and different positions of the speakers to fit the venue. As we have limited resources, our philosophy is to buy old and used but approved sound systems and pimp the speakers with the newest, most powerful and state of the art drivers.

One great feature of our sound system is that all our dance floors are connected via a digital mainframe controller. We can decide which music from inside we hear outside during the night or use one of our indoor dance floors as a dark room and send music there from another dj booth. This makes our system very flexible.

 

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Do you run own parties? Do you have some resident DJs?

Our monthly flagship Blank Generation represents our musical philosophy since five years now, featuring techno and house on our main floors and leaving much space for experiments and future sounds. The Elements nights are focussing on techno in a really powerful and absorbing way.

You’ll always find some of our resident DJs there, celebrating their definition of ://about blank with the crowd on the dancefloor. At the moment there are ten residents, most if them spinning records for many years. They are all well-featured at http://aboutblank.li/booking, but the best way to get to know them surely is to listen and get involved. Some oft them have also joined our own label and are part of our About Blank Labelnights, which are featuring the label artists and new releases. Each Christmas we are hosting a solidarity party to support refugees, antifa actions and free movement.

Resident Djs see next step for details

 

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Short introduction of the residents

Barbara Hofmann …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Diwa …. Facebook | Soundcloud

DJ Xing …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Hang Aoki …. no facebook | Soundcloud

Jessamine …. no facebook | Soundcloud

Kvrt …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Kwaint …. no facebook | Soundcloud

Natascha Kann …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Resom …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Rodmin …. Facebook | Soundcloud

Silva Rymd …. Facebook | Soundcloud

 

(selected resident mixes/sets)

 

Besides own parties: are the regular parties by other promoters? Please tell us some details.

There are a lot regular parties, and some of them are shaping constantly the profile of the club. The monthly queer party Buttons, during the summer from Friday night to Sunday evening, is a massive cornerstone and brings in every time a very special atmosphere and open-minded crowd. With the Saturday techno of Staub a new era of celebrating during the day was born. Oscillate’s quarterly installements are always a visionary trip to new musical shores. And there are many benefit raves from several crews during the year, headed by Love Techno Hate Germany. But it is simply to much to name all of the amazing crews, that share their creativity and passion within ://about blank.

 

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And are there specials? Special performances? Something different?

There is always something new or special – may it be the renewed garden tent or the newborn forest floor, or powerful new formats like the Warning raves or last winter’s Sunday wonderland called LnX. During the summer the Nomadenkino visits ://about blank every Tuesday for open air cinema. Sometimes our garden floor turns into a punkrock stage, sometimes there are concerts at our MDF, and once a year we fill the garden with hundreds of kids for the special ://about kinderdisco. And if you need a cold shower, you’ll find some in the garden. And maybe it is interesting what you will find not: any kind of commercial sponsorship or corporate events as we don’t support bullshit.

 

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Please name a few artists who already played here.

Nine years of ://about blank should not be reduced to some names of the many hundreds that have played here. But we try to host every artist equally so she or he will have a nice time here.

 

Coming to an end of this short feature. What are your future plans? Any nice DJs playing here soon? Anything else you wanna say?

Summer is already coming and we are looking forward to packed weekends and many carefully curated parties during the week. Our discours format The Amplified Kitchen will also return for another season, keep you eyes open for further announcements. At the end of September there will be a special summer closing curated by ://about blank. Surely we will stay rebel against rightwing politics and try to push things further to defeat capitalism once and for all. And we will celebrate our tenth anniversary next April, if nothing unexpected happens.