Alle Macht der Super-8

The queens of loud machines: Knitting and making music in West Berlin in the 1970s–1980s

“…In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, the risks and inaccessibility of West Berlin-placed as it was in the middle of East Germany and cut off by the Wall-resulted in most large German companies moving away, leaving few to no career opportunities. In the early 1980s, there were around 170 squats in Berlin, a result both of real estate speculation and of the misguided "Flächensanierung" (mass renovation), sometimes referred to as "Kahlschlagsanierung" (eradication renovation), which sought to redevelop Berlin by tearing down whole blocks of older and often still war-damaged buildings (see Kulle, 2013). The squatters moved into these unrenovated buildings, with some putting a lot of effort into renewing them and others just enjoying the free (and decaying) space.…”