Stories

by Tori Gruber

At Marcus Garvey park in the summer of 2021, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic, residents in Harlem gathered in protest to contest the placement of drug-related services at what is perceived to be an unsubstantiated rate and an overwhelming presence of treatment facilities, including methadone clinics and new safe injection sites.

by Solenn Real Molina

Error.tpg* is a queer collective from Marseille organizing parties by queer people for queer people : LGBTQIA, QPOC, sex workers. To them, partying is political, because our queer bodies, music and lifestyles are political. These posters, stuck on the walls of their last party in October 2021 and posted on their social media, are a way to reassert it.

by Louise Fabian

The archive is more than a container for documents, and has been used to both witness, provide evidence, justify, explain, educate, entertain, support research, help protect human rights, confirm identity, invoke imagination, manipulate, seduce, and lie.

by Sage Anderson

Set in the seasons leading up to 2020, this story takes place in a public community garden in Bonn, Germany, in a small lot surrounded by low-rise apartment buildings, in a quiet part of town not far from the Rhine. There was once a playground on this site, but it fell into disrepair and disuse. Increasingly overgrown with plant life – and thus shielded from street view – the abandoned playground was subsequently used primarily by people consuming drugs and alcohol.

by A. L. Hansen, L. Fabian & E. Warburg

Report and images from coronavirus shutdown, May 2020

In the early 1970s, the emerging narcotic cultures of West-Berlin not only drew the attention of the public and the media, but came into the focus of academics and public health institutions, First studies and surveys were conducted with one paper standing out in particular. It was entitled “Drug Consumers Underground” [Drogenkonsumenten im Underground] and authored by a collective of young social workers, drug users and educators, some of them with aliases.

The Grinder, a device for grinding dried herbs as e.g. cannabis…. and its ubiquitous presence in Berlin “Späti” late night shops

by A. Hansen & L. Fabian

Insights into the governing of the narcotic city of Copenhagen

In 1981 the Rotterdam Junkie Union organized a guerilla methadone program. The junkies wanted to offer an emergency provision of this synthetic opiate to the large number of destitute heroin users in the streets, who often suffered acute withdrawal symptoms when they did not have the means to buy heroin. In their report, published in 1983, they explained their efforts in detail.

by Peter-Paul Bänziger

Not only for the Swiss counterculture were certain places in the cities of central importance. Here one could buy drugs and consume and philosophize together. In Basel, people sat on the wall at Barfüsserplatz.

The Dutch capital has been a magnet for drug tourists for more half a century now. The iconic image of Amsterdam as a tolerant, friendly place filled with people who are 'high' all day, has its roots in the 1960s. In 1962, Robert Jasper Grootveld (1937-2009), the playful leader of the Provo social movement who organized famous "happenings" at the Spui-square. He dubbed Amsterdam the "magies centrum van de wereld", the magical center of the world. In the video below from 1966, you see him talking about addiction and consumerism.

by Boris Michel

In 2019 a number unremarkable pink lines sprayed on the asphalt of Berlin’s Görlitzer Park caused some trouble in Berlin and a remarkable global media coverage. Somewhat sloppy drawn, these open boxes appeared alongside some of the park’s throughways, especially around some of it’s entrances.

Nederwiet refers to cannabis originating from the Netherlands, i.e. so-called weed, which is essentially based on the breeding and optimization of new cannabis strains. These THC- and CBD-rich plant strains not only revolutionized the use of smokable cannabis flowers, buds, and leaves, Nederwiet also laid the foundation for an ever-growing cannabis industry in Europe and North America, if not on a global scale.

Platform Zero was a financially supported volunteer project near Rotterdam Central Station providing aid and shelter to drug addicts and homeless people. After its foundation in 1987, the Platform grew into an international open drug scene. Eventually the increasing number of visitors and criminality led to the closure of the platform in 1994.

The Rotterdam Junkie Union was the first user-created interest group for drug users. It was formed in 1980. In the 1980s the union organized multiple protests, provided harm reduction measures, and spoke out against forced treatment for drug users. The union received subsidy from the city of Rotterdam and had close ties to Rotterdam St. Paul’s Church.

by Mélina Germes, Luise Klaus

Look at this picture. It’s a huge drawing of how an ideal city could look – but not just any ideal city: the city of drug users, imagined from a variety of marginalized positions.

by Boris Michel

Since their invention in the 19th century, thematic maps have been widely used to map what bourgeois authors perceived as social ills and moral lapses.

by Stefan Höhne

In the mid-1960s, West Berlin saw the first glimpses of an emerging public drug scene, which would become a widespread phenomenon in the decades to come.

by Mélina Germes

Queer cultures are more than often associated with partying practices and also with drug consumption.

by Jaar en Dag Media

In 2018, Truus Oldenburg and professional writer Renate Guitink published the life story of Truus, who was then a woman of 58 years old and living in Amsterdam.