Have you ever been to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, dear reader? Even if not, you can assume that Pyongyang is surely more livable than Berlin, where it feels like everyone has probably been at least once, but no one knows why. It’s probably the same as Kurt Tucholsky once described about absurd conformist hypes: “Most people celebrate Christmas because most people celebrate Christmas.” And no one knows why… If you’ve never been to Berlin, dear reader: just don’t go!
The “New” Berlin
When the blow-dried fool Donald Trump, in his white-male superiority vibe, dubbed some African countries “Shithole Countries” years ago, he probably didn’t know Berlin yet: in the cesspool of a city that is Berlin, there isn’t a single beautiful park; the only two comfortable benches happen to stand right in front of the Chancellery; in Berlin green spaces aren’t generally cared for, probably out of conviction, and otherwise nothing works there at all. And as far as fashion, taste, aesthetics, manners, or even friendliness go, Berlin has mostly been a rumor mill — unlike Hamburg, Düsseldorf, or Munich. While the “old” Currywurst Berlin was merely stuffy, the “new” oat-milk Berlin of the tightly scheduled smartphone zombies is intolerable.
Only Neukölln’s Futschi Crew Holds the Line
Since the last punks have gone extinct, at traffic lights not only in the smoke-free bourgeois hell of Prenzlauer Berg do people seriously wait for the green light, as if in Swabia. Only one district isn’t playing along with this whole charade: Neukölln. And an old-Berlin native and her girls’ gang proudly wave the banner of the “old” Berlin in the “old” Neukölln: Ades Zabel’s Neukölln Futschi clan is to Berlin what you hear in a Napoli rap song from the series “Gomorra”: “Good kid, on the other side … with the weapon in hand.” This very special Neukölln clan doesn’t even need a weapon, because their own madness serves as a mirrored weapon against madness. Against the “new” Berlin of madness, there’s nothing but survival aid..
Madness as a Weapon, Visual Shock as Method
To stop at almost nothing in the name of humor is the brutal, yet secretly charming demolition recipe for this new lifestyle magazine “Jutta’s Futschi Freizeit” by Adels Zabel’s stage partner Bob Schneider aka the tavern keeper Jutta Hartmann. The recipe of this magazine works best in its optical horror-splatter look, when the supposedly universally known truths about everything and everyone that the smug majority society believes it knows about the marginalized—believing it does good by the poor fools—are simply laid bare. The supposedly universal is revealed as merely the majority’s projections, fantasies of their own madness, held up against reality in the most absurd possible form and above all in spectacularly grotesque images that expose the so‑called “normality parade” (Arno Gruen) for what it truly is: pure misanthropy.
A Lifestyle Magazine as an Attack on Reality
“Crack-Hure and Cardboard Childhood” — that’s the headline on a two-page spread in this all-too-colorful magazine. Visually, it looks like RTL-level chaos mashed with Japanese comics and splatter films, shaken together: welcome to the reality, the reality of the absurd, where others’ suffering is mercilessly capitalized on: “When misery becomes aesthetics and pain becomes the canvas” — “Crack instead of baby food — Jutta spills.” Admittedly, it’s not for the faint of heart. But “faint-hearted” is, after all, a luxury phenomenon of the pampered majority society that marginalized people simply cannot afford if they want to survive. The Neukölln Futschi crew has, with “Jutta’s Futschi Freizeit,” surely raised the stakes once again in a painfully witty way, continuing the boundary-pushing that their stage performances are known for.
Not for the Prenzlauer Berg Crowd
If you can’t stand it, you belong in the “new” comfort Berlin in the oh-so-beautiful Prenzlauer Berg. For people like that, this magazine isn’t for you! “Jutta’s Futschi Freizeit” is like the unabashed counterattack against those who the majority society, in its pity‑mood, likes to present as public gawkers in Prenzlauer Berg. But not with them. Reclaim the Feeds — that could be the magazine’s motto, as it excels in its crafted edge, including anti-German jabs at NS-era tropes in German schlager, for instance in the Zarah Leander example.
But of course, this well-executed artistic project is still part of the capitalist madness. And one question remains: why did the big release event on October 1 at the legendary Berliner BKA Theater, a relic of “old” Kreuzberg, offer tickets for well over 30 euros? Diversity, participation, and inclusion obviously look different. But perhaps the art audience in the “new” Kreuzberg prefers to stay among themselves anyway?
