We've Always Been Everywhere

The audio tour ‚We‘ve always been everywhere‘ guides the listener through the Bülowkiez in Berlin, a historic site of queer counterculture and sex work. Following a failed attempt to turn the district surrounding Bülowstrasse into a prestigious upper class area in 1880, the newly built underground station offered shelter for queers, sex workers and other workers in underground economies. Emerging touristic activities, the post-industrial population of Berlin and the disastrous working conditions of the working class led to an accumulation of bars, hotels and restaurants in the area. Many are queer institutions to this day. Bülowkiez remained a red light district through the decades. The audio tour leads the listener through the so-called Roaring Twenties, the experiences of sex workers in and after National Socialism, the AIDS crisis, the establishment of the sex worker‘s rights movement and the struggle with gentrification of the area in more recent times. The tour ends with a series of interviews with contemporary sex workers laboring in Bülowkiez, their perspective on their current situation and visions for the future of their community.

The research conducted for the audio walk was extensive and aimed to recover the histories of queer individuals and sex workers that shaped Berlin Schöneberg. As gentrification progresses, the ownership of neighborhoods shifts, not only literally, but culturally. As history is written to exclude those on the margins, the research and the audio walk attempt to recover their stories. Made accessible in an app often used by tourists, the audio walk enables those who - supposedly - profit from gentrification to retrace the neighborhood's history. Including the voices of contemporary sex workers it connects history to present times.