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A small personal photography project about club Berghain by night.
Location: Am Wriezener Bahnhof, East-Berlin - Germany
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Berghain is a Berlin nightclub, named after its location on the border between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. Philip Sherburne has described it as "quite possibly the current world capital of techno, much as E-Werk or Tresor were in their respective heydays."
The club is located in a former power plant in Friedrichshain, behind the Berlin Ostbahnhof railway station. The building is distinguished by its enormous dimensions, which accommodate an 18 meter high dancefloor and space for 1500 guests, and also its minimalist interior design, dominated by steel and concrete. The club contains a "cavernous" main room, as well as a smaller upstairs space called the Panorama Bar, which is decorated by enormous Wolfgang Tillmans photographs and tall windows with a view of East Berlin.
Berghain has a strong reputation for decadence and hedonism; a New Zealand Herald article describes "people openly indulging in sexual acts" inside the club, and the basement contains a dark room specifically set aside for that purpose. Photography is strictly forbidden. The door policy is selective and mostly random, but there are no VIP entrance or VIP areas. Special guestlist is restricted to a few guests for each dj and maximally two guests for each staff member. As a special feature, no mirrors or reflecting surfaces can be found anywhere in the club. Like many Berlin clubs, Berghain hosts extremely long events; a Philip Sherburne column in Pitchfork Media describes a Carl Craig set that began at 3:00 Sunday afternoon and continued until the club's ending time. Jesse Rose has described "Entering Panorama Bar is like going back in time to an age when people went out to really party."
The music is mostly techno, tech house, detroit techno, and minimal techno. The Panorama Bar hosts well known house and electro DJs. Nick Höppner, a resident DJ who manages the club's record label, states that "The simple division is that Panorama Bar more or less caters to house... and Berghain is really the platform for purist techno."
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