The Tresor exhibition at Red Gallery London started with a packed night on Thursday, 7th of June 2012. The openingnight included not only a very nice selection of photoprints, but additional we installed two monitor-video-installations, we were running a video-lounge, we had the “Im Klang der Familie” book-reading with a chapter ´bout Tresors first days, the screening of SubBerlin by Tilman Künzel and a very interesting paneltalk with Rick Kay, Johnnie Stieler, Mark Reeder and Dimitri Hegemann.





So what is/was this exhibition all about?

Basically we came up with the idea of presenting an insight of Berlins subculture development from the viewpoint of one of its originators – Tresor - which started back in 1991. With timetravelling videoinstallations, a good selection of prints from our archives, painted and pasted artworks, the documetary screening in combination with a paneltalk, Red Gallery helped us presenting all this in their amazing space. By the support of Visit Berlin we were able to run this exhibition with two special highlights: the openingnight and the Tresor Partynight at Red Gallery, happening on the 16th of June with Mike Huckaby, Marcelus, S_W_Z_K – actually those are the creators of our latest three releases on Tresor Records (251, 252, 253) .








How Techno became the soundtrack to the reunification & regeneration of Berlin as a cultural symbol.”The walls were very thick and the energy in there multiplied. That’s why the ceiling was dripping. That’s the way it had to be.”

Tresor’s famous underground dancefloor, which hosted the first generation of the techno-movement until the club’s original premises closed in 2005, saw many things. It saw the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when creatives flooded into East Berlin to squat, set up galleries and host clubs. It saw the explosion of techno in Europe, with the arrival of a new wave of DJs from Detroit attracted to Tresor’s aggressive aesthetic and sound system. It saw an “anything goes” door policy which helped cause clashes with the police. And it saw closure, and reinvention, in a new building.

Tresor was born just after the fall of the Berlin wall bringing east and west youth together to the soundtrack of the minimal electronics sound from Detroit.


The exhibition opened an insight into the impact that the club has had into the regeneration and re-branding of this new Berlin.