Berlin's New Tresor- Beyond The Superclub

Germany's best-known club Tresor is re-opening in Berlin at the end of the month
inside a gigantic derelict power station in the heart of the city.

The hugely influential club returns with a musical policy that remains 'futuristic',
Tresor founder and visionary Dimitri Hegemann told Skrufff this week, starting with
four nights of parties headlined by Sven Vath (May 24). Blake Baxter (May 25), The
Advent (May 26) and Rok (May 27)

"We're not running after every trend but we'll still be guaranteeing the artists
total artistic freedom," Dimitri explained. "On the one hand we're continuing to
work with the big, established DJs who shaped the Tresor sound, especially those
from Detroit, but we also want to build up our own residents and help them develop
along the way," he said.

What marks the new Tresor out as a truly exceptional venture- and potentially the
world's ultimate superclub- is the truly breath-taking nature of its location,
housed inside a gigantic, semi derelict concrete shell providing 20,000 square
metres of space. The new three room 1,500 capacity club will use just 10% of the
available floor space, the rest being given over to contemporary art exhibitions and
events as well as providing chill out space for clubbers.

Showing Skrufff round the gargantuan venue this week, Dimitri spoke enthusiastically
about the building's semi derelict state, explaining they're deliberately leaving it
largely untouched, apart from making sure cavernous holes in the floor are blocked
off for safety.

"I like the unfinished, the rough, the ruins . . . everything is still possible in
these places," he explained. "The building has so much energy and truth attached to
it compared to the polished and perfectly finished world that now surrounds it, here
in Mitte. Ruins carry the signs of time, of life. I have to think of a cathedral
when I walk through these massive halls and pillars," he said.

Tresor first opened in a department store underground vault near the recently torn
down Berlin Wall in 1990, and was instrumental in both bringing together clubbers
from the previously divided populations and launching techno in Germany and beyond.

"Tresor always stood as a marker for the growth of a new musical generation - an
entire new movement," Dimitri continued, "It was a major contributing factor behind
the reunification of the youth of East and West Berlin; People learned to dance
together so much until they got high and felt that freedom you find through musical
indulgence and that shaped the spirit of Tresor.

The music connected people that, even if they lived in a city which had one name
coming from two entirely different pasts and at the end of a night they'd exchange
numbers and become friends. That still makes me happy. Tresor back then was located
in the frontier area of Berlin and it became a space for freedom and unity, that
wasn't about being mainstream, but was for love and sharing."

"The new building is called Modem and apart from Tresor, our goal is to create a
unique space where interdisciplinary expressional forms of art are present,
particularly electronic arts," he concluded.

"Besides that, the idea is to bring key people together from different genres and
areas such as music, arts, fashion and design and to provide a platform for
contemporary, electronic and sub-cultural arts. We can develop great exhibitions
here as the Tate Modern did in London. Most of the people from all the different
disciplines are very excited. At the end of the year we want to gather all the top
people from all the different arts and re-establish a festival which will be called
'Berlin Atonal'," he said.

http://www.tresorberlin.de (Sven Vath kicks off proceedings on Friday May 24, making
his first Berlin appearance in three years)