Kreuzberg, rejoice: cupcakes have arrived, directly on Kotti. Since August 27, Ruckzuck – Cupcakes & Time Travel has been serving everyone’s favourite treat, alongside top-notch espresso drinks and €7 wheatgrass shots.
Okay, there’s a catch. Ruckzuck is a pop-up concept store, created by Berlin-based artist collective copy & waste. Inspired by Back to the Future, Knick-Knack To The Future is a two-parter. In the afternoon, it’s a store inside the West Germany space, selling the aforementioned treats, as well as clothing and artwork riffing on the film trilogy. At 8pm, expect “time travel meditations”: fully bilingual multimedia performances featuring live actors, video and music. The goal, as in most of copy & waste’s work, is to raise questions about changing urban spaces and to dig into Berlin’s biggest Schimpfwort: gentrification.
Though the project is far from a straightforward screen-to-stage adaptation, Marty McFly, Doc Brown and the rest of Hill Valley’s inhabitants still provide a departure point, giving the audience something to latch onto as the material spins into headier philosophical territory. Jörg Albrecht, who co-founded copy & waste with Steffen Klewar in 2007, points out that Back to the Future also explores the notion of parallel universes, as when Marty experiences different versions of 1985. These divergent historical paths jibed with the project, which travels to two very different places after Berlin: first to hollowed-out Mülheim an der Ruhr, and then to lively Graz, Austria.
“When you go back to 1985, Hill Valley might look as Berlin looked in the 1980s,” Albrecht says. “In one year, it can look like Mülheim does now, while in another year it looks like Mülheim in the 1950s, when it was a flourishing town in an industrial area.”
For those who aren’t keen on time travel, all are welcome at the store – provided they can stomach the price tags. “Instead of a 99-cent store,” says collaborator Daniel Brunet of English Theatre Berlin, “think of a 99-euro store.” Klewar interjects. “Entschuldigung,” Brunet says. “999-euro store.”
KNICK-KNACK TO THE FUTURE Sep 3-6, 10-12 | Skalitzer Str. 133, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, store open 15:00-19:00, performance 20:00
