These boys are the hype of the moment on Berlin’s dancefloors at the moment – as electronic music is continually looking for ways forward, a classically trained ensemble that will play rhythmic club music with grand pianos and percussion and the occasional harp might not be exactly pointing forward, but at least it’s something different.

There’s a BBC radio programme that existed for 70 years now. It’s called Desert Island Discs and each week a person of interest is invited to imagine what it would be like to be a castaway on a remote island. The guest of the show is asked to choose 8 music tracks which will be played in the hour that the show is on, additionally he or she can select a book to take along to the island and a luxury item such as sunblock, a comfy bed with lots of pillows or an Italian coffee machine and grinder. The choice of music tracks always reveals a lot about the guest as well as the unusual type of interview that is conducted with them. I really liked the episode with Morrissey – his (excellent) choice of songs reveals what time of musical history still plays the greatest part in his life. On the BBC website you can browse through the whole archive, starting in January 1942 with actor Vic Oliver.

Whoever travelled the balkan region with backpack and sleeping bag might very well have met the locals and encountered the people’s love for traditional songs. Making music and singing is still very common in this region and even the cool teenagers don’t find it embarrassing to sit outside with their families and singing along to bag pipes and violins. There’s a great Bulgarian documentary from 2003 that captures the emotions that come into play with folk songs and the different nationalities in the balkan region, it’s called Whose Is This Song? by Bulgarian film maker Adela Peeva.

Boris Mikhailov
Time is Out Of Joint
24.02.-28.05.2012

Berlinishe Galerie
Alte-Jakobstraße 124-128
10969 Berlin

Images by Anja Markiewicz
(Thanks, Ignant)

A thought that was also shared by Florian Kaps, a young Austrian passionate about the aesthetic of Polaroids, and who had made a very good living distributing Polaroid worldwide via his online shop, in spite of the rise of digital cameras. Instead of accepting the ways of modern times, he decided to attempt the impossible: he bought one of Polaroid’s factories in the Netherlands, took on ten of the remaining staff and founded the Impossible Project. Since Polaroid still held the patent to their technology, they simply redeveloped a new film suitable for old Polaroid cameras, using Polaroid’s former factory and employes. Two years later, the first batch of new instant film was released, at first in a beautiful silver shade, little later in full technicolour.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to wipe the dust off those old instant cameras: Polaroid is dead, but the Impossible Project is very much alive.

Photography by Heather Champ (top), Rhiannon Adam (middle) and Leah Reich (bottom)