Berlin in daily loves

This essay traces and presents an intimate scenography of Berlin. The non-linear fragments, only partially connected and moving between bedrooms, cafes, mosques, bars, street corners, and parks, offer a multifaceted view of the intimacies of the post-migrant urban. The scenes show how the politics of time, sex, religion, and migration are queerly interwoven and critically intersect in the city. In this constellation, Berlin becomes a sly figure: always shapeshifting, never captured. Writing in the mode of auto-theory advances the idea that the city is neither fixed nor wholly outside the self, but rather an affective geography created at the intersection of internal and public modes. Intimate rhythms, ritornels, and relations of the urban suggest the many ways in which the city can be an affective entanglement that is felt only subjectively and fragmentarily.