The city that never sleeps. The city that is known worldwide for its music and its clubs. The Mecca for all those who are addicted to deep, dark beats. Berlin dominates nightlife like no other metropolis. People travel from all over the world to be part of this unique experience. Names such as Berghain or KitKat have long been internationally renowned – and entry is highly coveted, because there’s a lot going on behind their doors. But not only there: Berlin has many other top clubs to offer – including ones that don’t have the word “wild” in their name by chance. Wilde Renate in Berlin is one of the city’s most popular and most frequented techno clubs. It only survived a fire in June – and reopened its doors to its fans with impressive speed. But the Renate is much more than just a club: anyone who enters here lets the deep beats take effect on them and loses themselves in a chaotic, playful labyrinth that you won’t soon forget.
In the most bizarre club in town
From the outside, Wilde Renate looks like a nondescript Berlin apartment building – gray façade, narrow windows, nothing to hint at the chaos behind it. But once you step through the doors, you find yourself in a labyrinth of rooms, corridors and floors. This intricate architecture provided the ideal setting for an extraordinary art exhibition. Behind a hidden door, a surreal descent into its own depths began: the Peristal Singum – a walk-in art installation that was created within nine months under difficult structural conditions and without funding by the artist collective Karmanoia(www.karmanoia.org) and opened in 2010. It was accessible in a separate part of the Renate building until 2014.
The work consisted of a labyrinth made from recycled materials. Named after peristalsis – the undulating movement of the digestive tract – it led visitors through an organic system of tubes, corridors and chambers. You had to crawl, climb and feel your way through darkness, flashes of light and narrow passages. The path was never predetermined; every step required trust in your own senses. In the end, you found yourself confused and disoriented in the bar, as if the structure had swallowed you up, digested you and spat you out again.
Even though this art labyrinth in the Wilde Renate no longer exists today, the bizarre structure of the building remains the same. Each room tells its own story – sometimes in the vintage living room with wallpaper from the 70s, sometimes as a dark cellar with a flickering strobe, sometimes as an attic full of wild energy. Between winding staircases, crooked walls and hidden floors, you quickly lose track of time – until all that remains is you and the beat. Like a surreal house party in which you are completely immersed, forgetting about life outside while the party inside is constantly changing. No two rooms are the same, no two nights are the same.