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Cowboy Capitalism

The Art of Ping Pong Country in the New Berlin

Victoria University of Wellington

This article draws on recent discussion regarding changes in city life by focusing on specific cultural spaces and social relations found in contemporary Berlin. "The Art of Ping Pong Country"—the union of ping pong and country music as a series of events bringing together artists, cultural entrepreneurs, and new media practitioners—highlights the temporal, social, spatial, and semiotic distinctions of the city's current scene, particularly as a manifestation of the overlapping contexts of work and play in a "culturalized economy." Ping Pong Country is made up of a complex set of relationships that reveals the way artists and entrepreneurs in Berlin construct individual, group, and urban identities; how a particular relationship to flexible work patterns and urban lifestyles is negotiated; and how the city acquires and maintains its specific character and semantic force by evoking a particularly attractive structure of feeling as manifest in its deliberate "playfulness."

Key Words: play • ping pong • cultural economy • urban studies • art • Berlin

This version was published on November 1, 2008

Space and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 4, 300-324 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331208320483


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