UC San Diego

After the fall of the Berlin wall in '89, and the subsequent implosion of the East German economy, the Berlin improvised music community flourished with venues springing up almost overnight in the East's abandoned industrial and residential areas. Artists from around the world, inspired by West Berlin's reputation as a counter- culture Mecca, moved in, taking advantage of cheap living costs and a depressed rental market. Berlin supported much of the (often illegal) activity as the artists generated cultural capital, refurbished derelict buildings, and gentrified neighborhoods. Twenty years later, Berlin has transformed into a 'global city,' while improvised music continues to flourish. What role are improvisers, and the broader subcultural arts scene, playing in this economic and political production? In this thesis I consider the possibility that improvised music functions in important ways as a formalist 'avant-garde' for the dominating and hegemonic forces of global capitalism and representative democracy. In this sense, Berlin provides a unique and liminal cultural field in which to study and shed light upon 'state-of-the-art' social, political and economic processes. Improvised music, referred to in Berlin as 'realtime music' (Echtzeitmusik), is structurally aligned with a contemporary organization of society in which commodity value lies in process instead of fixed objects, authenticity resides in the realtime spectacle of becoming and change, and power is a direct measure of speed and maneuverability