puppets puppets puppets.
i’m so in love!! i went and saw the best puppet show last night. called the secret under the skyscraper. made by a groups a bit like reverse garbage in sydney. they collect stuff from industry and distribute it to people to make art out of it.
this was a kids piece about a girl whos pappa was a neat freak, always cleaning and deinfecting and throwing out rubbish. the girl has to throw out the rubbish 3 times a day! but of course with this level of rubbish, a monster grows out of the rubbish. it was such a great way of talking about recycling to little ones. and they were so great!! i think i’ll only go to see childrens’ theatre from now on! it’s so much fun. the kids interact so freelz with the puppets. (for example the rubbish monster said it was the king over everyone, and one of the kids yelled back “no! we are our own kings!”) so cute.
their website for anyone interested:
www.kunst-stoffe-berlin.de
appart from puppets, life here is ok. reaching the end of uni and the sun has made a rare appearance… so i can’t really complain.
somehow this was all a month ago now.
i did intend to write a longwinded,exact description of everything…. but as i still haven’t found the time, i might settle for a blow for blow account of the most important details.
Saturday 2nd: Big demo in Rostock
Sunday 3rd: Agriculture Day. After a Skip Bloc meeting, i cycled into town for the agriculture day rally. Afterwards was a cycle 20kms to a anti-GE festival in a little town where they have been doing lots of work to convince people to get of trial genetically engineered crops. along the way there were info stops with treats. Once we arrived, a peoples kitchen, stalls, a concert and the samba band.
Monday 4th: Migration Day. In the morning was a rally outside the foreign office where people go to get visas etc. Due to over tiredness i only made it to the next demo outside a Lidl supermarket. They are a bit like Aldi, selling stuff for cheap at the expense of fair pay and workers rights. Eva and I dressed up, with some other animal rights activists, as pigs and gave out flyers on the meat industry in europe.
Afterwards was a huge demo, with about 10,000 people for the right to free movement. It was fairly ironic because we were surrounded by cops and not allowed to move at all! The police kept giving ridiculous demands before we could move; that we couldn’t be masked, couldn’t have any weapons or axes, and should promise not to throw stones! How thez were going to get 10,000 people to promise not to throw stones i’m not sure. So in about 7 hours, the rally moved about 2 kms. That was a little frustrating, however I was playing with the samba band, and had lots of fun, street partyesque.
Tuesday 5th: Anti-militarism Day. Full respect to all the actions which went on. I was ssssooo nackered, I stayed in the camp all day. Ended up not being so relaxing after all because we were busy with 6 meetings a day getting ready for the blockades.
potentially the best banner you’ve ever seen in your life…. 
there were 3 different camps, plus a commercial one which was widely called to be boycotted and i hope noone went to. southwest of Heiligendamm where the group of 8 met, nestled in the woods, was Wittmansdorf with room for about 3000 including the clown army. In Rostock, south east of Heiligendamm was a camp for approx. 5000 people where organisations such as ATTAC and Greenpeace had their barrios. Then closest to the fence, south of Heiligendamm, with a very practical train line was a camp for 5000-6000 people in Reddelich. And that’s where the aussie crew, skip-bloc, slept. the camp is organised into different communities, or barrios. the barrios in reddelich included samba, zapatista, free education, bricks and bottles (“international individuals and anarchists, no commies” said the sign), womyn/transgender, families, bicycle caravan, no lager (freedom of movement) and the queer barrio where we were sleeping.
2 weeks before most protesters arrived, a group of about 40 carpenters began building the most awesome wooden structures for the camp. including a bar, awesome spiral shaped showers, a watchtower, and a playground! the playground was fantastic, for little people and big people too. with a a climbing net, hammocks, a trampoline, and best of all, a caroselle! it was sssssooooo great! a big central wooden beam, with ropes joining 4 seats in cross formation around the central piece of wood. then you just spun the swing around and around, winding the ropes around the central beam. then let go, and it span super fast down and back up again. i can’t wait til there are photos online so i can explain better what i mean. it was so much fun!!
the residents were originally a little worried about hosting the protests however there were really strong links formed. in the 2 weeks prior the carpenters formed some really great relationships, receiving lots of help, gifts of materials, electricity and water. on the 31st of May there was an open door invitation for press and residents. it was so cute! lots of nanas and kids and people from the community were there wandering about and chatting. at the end of the summit i saw a sign from the residents asking for the playground to stay, and a really sweet, handmade collage with pictures of police hitting protesters saying “i was worried that you were the caotic ones, but i was wrong. thanks for coming”!! so inspiring. there was even a little demo in the tiny fortressed town of heiligendamm which shows how much politicisation work was done in the leadup to the summit.
the camp seemed to run really well. i’m really glad i was able to arrive a few days before most people in order to watch the space grow. the first few days i was involved in spokescouncils, translating and facilitating, however it soon became too much on top of affinity group and other meetings, and i decided to concentrate on the protesting side of things.
in the camp there were about 7 kitchens, the bar with a small stage, a security team, medics, an out of action/chill-out tent, 2 sets of showers and taps, loads of portaloos, a sexual assault awareness group, a camp info tent, an action info tent with maps and pinboards and a newsboard with the latest info, indymedia tents with computers and wireless, a big stage with music, a circus tent for spokescouncils and more probably which i can’t remember or didn’t discover.
there were worried that the camp would be attacked by cops or nazis, and the security alarm rang twice in the middle of the night. however the camp remained safe, and the motive seemed more likely to disrupt our sleep before the barricades than any real desire to search the camp.
it was really inspiring to see such a massive group of people interacting so successfully together and creating such amazing protests and experiences. i’m real glad i had the opportunity to be there.
wwwoooohhooo!!
i’m back in berlin after 2 weeks of happy protest.
wow. it was so exciting, exhausting, exhilarating, and many other adjectives which dont start with ex.
the first big action was a massive demo on the 2nd, leaving from 2 destinations, winding through rostock to the harbour.
hilariously diverse attendance estimations range from 20,000 to 80,000. somewhere towards the upper end i reckon, from all sorts of groups, with theatre and puppets and balloons and music.
i was with my puppet crew, performing what we’d prepared a few weeks ago. firstly a crew go into the demo and build a fence out of 5 banners, then the 3 big puppets dance up to it, play around, then tear it down. all with samba beats played on pots and pans. it was so fun! it felt really great to have plan and a use at a big demo like that. and we had lots of really good feedback. there are some photos on http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/183551.shtml to give you and idea of how it looked.
the end of the demo is probably what you would have seen in the media, where black bloc and the cops had a bit of biffo together. i won’t spend much time bemoaning the horrors of mainstream media. but really. there was so much more to it than black hoodies and stones.
i mainly kept my nose out of that. stuck with the samba band and away from the tear gas. samba is so ace in that sort of situation. it really relaxes the situation, calms people and helps with a little clear thinking when things are getting hot. the cops were unbelievable. huge robocop monsters, 6 watercannons, backpack pepperspray. and unfortunately, this was not to be the first interaction with them. i’m surprised that there were other police anywhere else in germany. there were just sssoooo many! on every corner, in every forest, constantly doing rounds in vans, on horses and with dogs. they were so aggressive, it wasn’t long before i felt like throwing rocks at them too.
yay!! life is good again!!
as my lovely friends always advised me, i just needed to get out there and get busy and i would inevitably meet some nice people. but it’s kinda hard to get motivated when you’re a bit down, and you can’t believe that anyone would even want to talk to you if you were to leave you bed.
luckily i got myself out of my bed and away from the chocolate, and to a theatre and puppet making workshop about 3 hours from berlin, in verden.
yay for puppets!! it was so fun. together 40 odd people from 4 months old to 70 years made a theatre piece for the big anti-g8 demo on the 2nd of June. there were so many nice people. it was really fun.
we ended up making 3 giant protester puppets and a fence. then we play that the puppets break through the fence. i reckon it’s gonna look awesome! the big demo looks fun. they are expecting about 70 big puppets! a huge samba crew, theatre, clown army and radical cheerleaders… then the camping begins for Block-g8.
let the games begin!
Today I had an I-like-this-place sort of day!
I skipped class and went to a clowning workshop as part of a week of anti-g8 workshops.
It was great to meet a few people and get excited about the upcoming demo and its possibilities.
Then during the day, police searched around 40 houses, squats, offices and activist spaces apparently under anti-terrorist laws, but clearly as some sort of pre-g8 scare tactic. A demo was called for the evening and 5000 people turned up! With less than 12 hours notice! Awesome.
I’d estimate that approximately 97.765% of the protesters were wearing black hoodies. The rest I assume have only misplaced theirs, and look on fearfully in case someone notices that they have defied the strict dress code.
The police wear funny looking green jumpsuits and carry “hitting sticks” (the German word for baton!). Among them are police who are no doubt thoroughly trained in non-violent communication techniques, as they wear fluorescent yellow vests saying ‘anti-conflict team’. I can just imagine them trying to converse with black bloc crew wielding bottles and rocks. “Now I want everyone to take a deep breath. I think we could all just settle down a little here….”
I suppose, as I look around and see the other 500 odd non-fluorescent-vest-clad cops sitting around waiting for their wagons to be filled, that they must be the ‘conflict team’.
Luckily we don’t have much to do with them, and the protest is more like a jovial stroll around the neighbourhood, with regular pauses to dance to a very good samba band. At one stage I was tired and thinking of going… then they started playing TNT and well. I just couldn’t help it!
I met 2 lovely womyn from the clown workshop, and had numerous nods to people I’ve met briefly. And I feel at least temporarily, somewhat happier here. There is an amazing network of people just waiting to be found. And I guess I’ve just been a little impatient, wanting to arrive and be immediately part of it.
I rode the super fast victory lap through empty streets home, and fell asleep, happily exhausted, to dreams of fantastically successful protest.
hello, welcome!
after my first feeble attempts at blogland, i’m having another go with a site which i hope is less commercial and easier to use than myspace (now it wouldn’t be hard, would it). hopefully people can leave messages and i won’t feel like i’m writing to no-one.
talk soon i hope
