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Art Boat Ragers Set Sail in Berlin

A sightseeing boat is an official venue of the 9th Berlin Biennale, featuring DJs, installations, video art, and more.
The Blue Star sightseeing boat venue of the 9th Berlin Biennale (bb9). Image courtesy bb9.

As curators of the 9th Berlin Biennale, the DIS Magazine team have done a lot of things unconventionally, like making one of the official venues a sightseeing boat that regularly takes viewers on tours down Berlin’s River Spree. Along with Akademie der Künste at Pariser Platz, the European School of Management and Technology, The Feuerle Collection, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the fifth venue is a Blue Star Sightseeing Boat called Reederei Reidel.

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Decked out with an installation by artists Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gjovic, including a video about human extinction, There’s a word I’m trying to remember, for a feeling I’m about to have (a distracted path towards extinction), viewers can watch from the comfort of bean bag chairs on the lower level while the upper deck serves as an artistic installation for a weekly series: Boat Rage.

Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gjovic’s viewing environment. Photo courtesy bb9.

Boat Rage #2 featured K-Hole cofounder Emily Segal performing Novel Leak III, a reading of excerpts from her upcoming personal-narrative-meets-branding-for-dummies novel. In theory, the novel “centers on the confluence of art, brand strategy, and entrepreneurship,” but the most memorable excerpts are the character incessantly referred to as “Founder Daniel,” or the parts where she has lesbian sex with someone from the marketing department on the roof of an office building.

Emily Segal performing Novel Leak III. Photo by the author.

After Segal’s performance, the real “rage” began, when Cape Town-based producer and NON Records affiliate ANGEL-HO stepped behind the decks at the back of the the boat. Slowly, the super cool art scene crowd filled the stage. Then, Copenhagen- and Berlin-based DJ Why Be finished off the two-hour boat ride, and some truly magical, Willy Wonka moments transpired when the boat passed under the low-hanging bridges, amplifying the sound and creating the ultimate party tunnel. We just wish it went later than 10pm.

The Boat Rage stage. Photo by the author.

Boat Rage is a weekly performance series, leaving every Saturday for the duration of the Berlin Biennale, beginning at 8pm from Märkisches Ufer 34 in Berlin Mitte. More information about further Boat Rage performances and other programming can be found on the Berlin Biennale website.

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