The Annual Performance

Every first of May, Berlin rehearses the same set of contradictions. In Kreuzberg, the Myfest street festival floods the neighborhood with grills and sound systems and people pushing strollers—a deliberate strategy, started years ago, to make rioting physically inconvenient. A few streets over, someone burns a car anyway. The police deploy in formation, bottles arc through the air, tear gas makes everyone’s eyes water, and by the next morning it’s all been documented and filed and nothing has shifted. Berlin has turned May Day into an annual performance: the anger underneath it is genuine, the choreography has been fixed for decades, and the newspaper photographers already know exactly where to stand.