Semantic Desert Malls: Montblanc at OFF Berlinale

February 24, 2023

“When I write, I feel larger than the limits of my body.”

— Ocean Vuong

Constructing a sentence is like formatting a world. In writing, you cannot make mistakes. Each word has to be coherent, you cannot reinvent grammar or the basics of linguistics—these are imperatives to make words, sentences, and compound-complexes comprehensible and accessible to audiences outside the limits of your own body. But writing is not ruled by laws. Although it is determined by these technical prerequisites in its first stage, they only actualize the freedom that comes with writing.

Last Friday, Montblanc celebrated writing culture in collaboration with OFF—the annual Berlinale party, which takes place at changing “off” locations and is the unofficial get-together of the German film industry, including personalities such as Matthias Schweighöfer, Luise Befort, Elyas M'Barek, Ruby O. Fee, Tom Tywker, and Heike Makatsch.

The material utopia that potentially arises out of writing requires a site that is fully embedded in the bustle of a society and simultaneously secluded from distracting impacts of a world that is not yet utopian. Quartier 206, an Art-Deco-influenced shopping mall, which opened in central Berlin in 1997, was this year’s “off” location. While the building normally houses some stores, and for one night a wild party—no photos allowed—it feels like the remnants of a once teeming world—a deserted area, which invites building (through words).

Writing is a practice that multiplies your consciousness, that enlarges your self.

Writing is a practice that multiplies your consciousness, that enlarges your self. During Montblanc’s evening, guests were able to send letters to each other, which were picked up and delivered by a porter. With each person having an individual writing style and register, it was a way of mingling and intertwining these singularities that amass and transform into a diverse formation, which might serve as the fundament of a novel landscape, where writing governs us and makes us reach a genuine utopian state.