This is Badland issue #05 'to be free'
Text: Tanja Horvat – Korent
A MULTIVERSE OF LOVE
Not resisting the temptation to be obvious, the following is a FOMO-inducing personal recollection of the impressions from the event that took place on 08/06/22:
A mighty gathering honoring the launch of This is Badland issue #05 accompanied by the Bimba Y Lola x Kentaro Okawara SS 22 Beachwear collection – peak vitality, an omni-celebration of love.
Having just made my return from Paris, Berlin greets me with “every day is tomorrow” and a 9 EUR Monatskarte. The first one a welcoming billboard ad at the new Brandenburg airport and the latter a literal joy.
I am back, tired and broke, and can’t find my favourite mules, but I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I take a half-delirious rooftop-heated nap and head towards the happening. Kottbuser Tor. The notorious yet familiar location is an inevitable cocktail of stimuli – unusually endearing, refreshing, grounding and real. A few steps down Ritterstr., it’s busy, buzzing, and alive.
I’m here. The building is the perfect cradle for Badland’s avant-garde aesthetics and performative executions that are in flawless coaction with their intellectual curiosity. Reimagining the cultural phenomena known as the Balkans – not in terrain but phantasma, the big fat cherry pie of bewilderment encourages the multiplicity of voices on a singular topic and seems to be in wonderful mimicry with its surroundings at play!
Our Balkan-loaded table amidst the open-air beachfront wannabe setting was LOUDEST and she came to conquer the city – I hear. Smeared plates, full mouths. Familiar faces and those that are new; accents and roots intertwined. Voiceovers and crossovers. Screams, hugs, chatterboxes. To be free. I almost forgot.
Gentle mockery and self-mockery are our signals of care. And every family gathering a stand-up show, where nothing is sacred and everything is up for grabs. A thunderstorm of laughter spreads amongst our circle and it’s true. It’s funny because it’s true and we all know it! It’s nice to be able to speak in such stereotypes in all their amusing glory. I’m home.
I’m restless and impatient; I head straight for the food. I’m Croatian, I have no shame. The offerings were an overload and an absolute seductive treat. Langoš, sarma, baklava – all the usual suspects and more. Čevapi elevated with fresh herbs! TOURLOU restaurant did it. Kudos to you for doing what we don’t dare touch and expanding on the traditional Balkan taste pallets! Your hospitality was disarming, mama couldn’t do it better.
With my focus in free-flux and hard to fix, I sense a pot-stirring to my left.
Commotion, a voice, a chant. There are more! And it’s a chorus! What is that?! Where are we?! Which language do they sing? What were the skies like when you were young? The sounds are mesmerizing, and it draws us in.
Bulgarian Voices Berlin, welcoming us to the secrets of Bulgarian folklore, casting aside our arguments, acknowledging biases and riding the soundwaves of our shared humanity.
Only then, I realize, the front-women of the chorus were ready for the beachfront — Bimba Y Lola full-on! The pavement is dressed in technicolor, fluorescent stenciled creature features on the floor. Everyone is dressed in technicolor! Within the Tokyo-based artist Kentaro Okawara’s cosmos of brightness and lightness, and for the SS2022 BIMBA Y LOLA beachwear capsule collection on display, he highlights the significance of making connections – up-close and personal. Eye-to-eye and face-to-face. Dancing to the sounds of 80 Yugo-pop and Enya that filled the space after the ethno interlude, and out of the pen of DJ Bell Towers, to do otherwise would be mission impossible.
The latest volume of This is Badland explores this sentiment of what it means to be free in the world where coexistence of freedom, movement and restraint seem particularly thorny and acute. With our concerns about the fracturing reality – both off- and online, the event can be read as an homage to a temporary tangerine bonanza dream state where spirits are high. Write to your loved ones and make shadow animals against the Sun. Extend the mingling, cross-pollination, and experimentation!
Because our fruitful scene is progressive and dynamic, and still manages to avoid the customary codes of conduct. Unsettled by the settled arrangements – both in culture and society, This is Badland manages to lure into its orbit the trendmakers and tastemakers of today without compromising authenticity.
Inviting, non-selective, a melting pot of plenty. A perfect concoction of humans and characters; a Balkan-Mediterraneo jollification of all.
This is Badland issue #05 'to be free'
Text: Tanja Horvat – Korent
A MULTIVERSE OF LOVE
Not resisting the temptation to be obvious, the following is a FOMO-inducing personal recollection of the impressions from the event that took place on 08/06/22:
A mighty gathering honoring the launch of This is Badland issue #05 accompanied by the Bimba Y Lola x Kentaro Okawara SS 22 Beachwear collection – peak vitality, an omni-celebration of love.
Having just made my return from Paris, Berlin greets me with “every day is tomorrow” and a 9 EUR Monatskarte. The first one a welcoming billboard ad at the new Brandenburg airport and the latter a literal joy.
I am back, tired and broke, and can’t find my favourite mules, but I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I take a half-delirious rooftop-heated nap and head towards the happening. Kottbuser Tor. The notorious yet familiar location is an inevitable cocktail of stimuli – unusually endearing, refreshing, grounding and real. A few steps down Ritterstr., it’s busy, buzzing, and alive.
I’m here. The building is the perfect cradle for Badland’s avant-garde aesthetics and performative executions that are in flawless coaction with their intellectual curiosity. Reimagining the cultural phenomena known as the Balkans – not in terrain but phantasma, the big fat cherry pie of bewilderment encourages the multiplicity of voices on a singular topic and seems to be in wonderful mimicry with its surroundings at play!
Our Balkan-loaded table amidst the open-air beachfront wannabe setting was LOUDEST and she came to conquer the city – I hear. Smeared plates, full mouths. Familiar faces and those that are new; accents and roots intertwined. Voiceovers and crossovers. Screams, hugs, chatterboxes. To be free. I almost forgot.
Gentle mockery and self-mockery are our signals of care. And every family gathering a stand-up show, where nothing is sacred and everything is up for grabs. A thunderstorm of laughter spreads amongst our circle and it’s true. It’s funny because it’s true and we all know it! It’s nice to be able to speak in such stereotypes in all their amusing glory. I’m home.
I’m restless and impatient; I head straight for the food. I’m Croatian, I have no shame. The offerings were an overload and an absolute seductive treat. Langoš, sarma, baklava – all the usual suspects and more. Čevapi elevated with fresh herbs! TOURLOU restaurant did it. Kudos to you for doing what we don’t dare touch and expanding on the traditional Balkan taste pallets! Your hospitality was disarming, mama couldn’t do it better.
With my focus in free-flux and hard to fix, I sense a pot-stirring to my left.
Commotion, a voice, a chant. There are more! And it’s a chorus! What is that?! Where are we?! Which language do they sing? What were the skies like when you were young? The sounds are mesmerizing, and it draws us in.
Bulgarian Voices Berlin, welcoming us to the secrets of Bulgarian folklore, casting aside our arguments, acknowledging biases and riding the soundwaves of our shared humanity.
Only then, I realize, the front-women of the chorus were ready for the beachfront — Bimba Y Lola full-on! The pavement is dressed in technicolor, fluorescent stenciled creature features on the floor. Everyone is dressed in technicolor! Within the Tokyo-based artist Kentaro Okawara’s cosmos of brightness and lightness, and for the SS2022 BIMBA Y LOLA beachwear capsule collection on display, he highlights the significance of making connections – up-close and personal. Eye-to-eye and face-to-face. Dancing to the sounds of 80 Yugo-pop and Enya that filled the space after the ethno interlude, and out of the pen of DJ Bell Towers, to do otherwise would be mission impossible.
The latest volume of This is Badland explores this sentiment of what it means to be free in the world where coexistence of freedom, movement and restraint seem particularly thorny and acute. With our concerns about the fracturing reality – both off- and online, the event can be read as an homage to a temporary tangerine bonanza dream state where spirits are high. Write to your loved ones and make shadow animals against the Sun. Extend the mingling, cross-pollination, and experimentation!
Because our fruitful scene is progressive and dynamic, and still manages to avoid the customary codes of conduct. Unsettled by the settled arrangements – both in culture and society, This is Badland manages to lure into its orbit the trendmakers and tastemakers of today without compromising authenticity.
Inviting, non-selective, a melting pot of plenty. A perfect concoction of humans and characters; a Balkan-Mediterraneo jollification of all.
