THAM
THAM holding the room
THAM on Berlin, pressure, visibility, and the evolving architecture of techno
When THAM thinks back to 2015, Berlin does not appear to him as mythology. It does not arrive filtered through global headlines or retrospective nostalgia. It comes back as humidity in small rooms, as plywood booths and stacked pa- llets, as faces he would see again three nights later somewhere else in the city. From inside the booth, the city did not feel like a cultural monument. It felt close enough to touch. The distance between DJ and dancer was minimal, sometimes almost nonexistent, and that proximity shaped his understanding of what techno could be.
THAM entered that environment before his project carried significant weight or expectation. He was playing shorter sets, organising small events, teaching himself how to produce by listening obsessively and experimenting without a defined blueprint. Berlin at that time still felt materially unfinished, with empty buildings, improvised venues, and a sense that culture was being assembled in real time rather than preserved. He even lived for a period in an abandoned hospital, a detail that reads now like an allegory but then felt like continuity with the city’s rawness. Nothing was polished. Everything was in motion.
“When I think back to 2015, Berlin from inside the booth didn’t feel mythic at all, but a burst of creative energy. From the outside it maybe looked exclusive or even rough, but from within it actually felt very open. It felt so easy. You would go out and constantly meet the same people across different clubs. It felt less like attending events and more like being part of a community. Many people around me weren’t only guests, they were DJs, promoters, artists or organisers in some way and everybody supported each other, which created a strong feeling of movement and connection around us.”
The defining feature of that period was not aesthetic but social density. The people filling those rooms were rarely passive spectators; they were DJs, graphic designers, promoters, photographers,
organisers of ear-
ly-morning after-hours, all operating within the same ecosystem. Energy moved horizontally. You could play a set, step down from the booth, and become indistinguishable from the crowd again. Participation was fluid. There was ambition, certainly, but it did not yet feel industrial.
The moment when participation beca- me structured arrived at Griessmue- hle. The booth in the main room was low and exposed, offering no theatrical separation from the floor. The crowd was filled with peers, friends, and collaborators whose presence inten- sified the pressure. THAM remembers feeling a different kind of nervous- ness, one rooted not in spectacle but in accountability. And then he felt the room react.
When he tightened the tension, bodies held still. When he released it, the movement softened or expanded. The response was immediate and visible, not as applause but as a collective adjustment. In that exchange, DJing shifted from expres- sion to architecture. His decisions no longer existed in isolation; they altered the structural dynamics of the room itself. That awareness did not inflate him. It made the booth heavier.
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AUTOR SERGIO NIÑO PHOTORAPHY JONAS DEIMANN
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