Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, 2014:

Techno music swells as the camera scans a crowded room, pausing on people giving interviews. A cab door slams. “Well you know, I just landed, I’ve only been here a few hours and I must say I’m already impressed.” An orchestra crashes as the camera cuts to a backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor covered in Lichtenstein dots. “This is really much more than a conference, it’s more a cultural immersion into art and technology.” A close-up of a paintbrush, an index finger on an Android, a knob of a mixer sliding upwards, a 3D printer revving back and forth, and a woman spraypainting the logo of the startup Eventbrite. The camera pulls back, a metal gate with the word ‘tech’ woven with neon string moves into focus. The music softens as a series of interviews are rapidly cut together: descriptions of Berlin’s potential fade to the TV Tower at sunset. “This is uniquely Berlin.”

A man in a blue shirt looks into the camera: “There really is nowhere like this in the world.” A gust of wind blows a table of nametags. A faster techno beat begins as an animated map of Berlin scrolls from Mitte to Neukölln. Graphic pins drop from the sky emblazoned with the logos of startups: EyeEm, ResearchGate, Wooga, SoundCloud, Trademob…

(Text: Calla Henkel/Max Pitegoff)