Berlin’s Creamcake has come a long way. The iconic progressive, queer-feminist music, art, and performance event organizer has been unearthing the most exciting artists on the internet and presenting them in real life since they started in Kreuzberg, thirteen years ago. Founded by Anja Weigl and Daniela Seitz in 2011, what started as a party and club night with a stage in the Südblock toilet has mutated into the influential interdisciplinary platform, collective, and label it is today, and it’s about time they celebrated. That’s why they’re so happy to announce Chronologies of Creamcake, their first anthology and compendium documenting and evaluating the past decade in avant-garde innovation.

Published by Distanz this February with graphic design by Berlin-based creative agency Studio Yukiko, the book delves into Creamcake’s ideas, themes, concerts, exhibitions, symposia, performances, and digital projects. It’s a 320-page volume that encapsulates the project’s unique approach with photographs and archival material, highlighting events at prestigious institutions like HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlinische Galerie, Klosterruine, Berghain, OHM, and even unconventional venues like a planetarium, decommissioned water tower, and an abandoned theme park.

Accompanied by specially-commissioned texts edited by Creamcake and Steph Kretowicz, Chronologies of Creamcake reflects on crucial developments in underground music, art, culture, and publishing in its history. Veteran music writers and critics Selim Bulut and Adam Harper contribute essays looking back on music and art publishing in the 2010s, while journalist Michelle Lhooq ruminates on the state of the rave today. There’s an interview between author Hengameh Yaghoobifarah and academic McKenzie Wark, as well as other left-of-center reflections in writer Maxi Wallenhorst’s thoughts on “cool” performance, and historian Susanne Huber’s speculations on the future of music. Artist and writer Alex Quicho creatively examines “wetware” and gendered transhumanist practices, while researcher Karlynne Ejercito proposes “post-internet” visual culture as a blueprint for today’s conspiracy matrix. Other noteworthy pieces include an epic poem by artist Ashkan Sepahvand, as well as previously-published pieces by Kretowicz, Jared Davis, Rianna Jade Parker, and Geo Wyex.

As a project focused on the cultural margins, Creamcake’s persistence represents a victory in resilience and adaptation. What started out as a reaction to the dominant techno and house sound of Berlin in 2011 would evolve over a decade into a global platform sustaining the deconstructed and post-club scene that is hard to square within the conventional boundaries of genre. Now, Creamcake is turning thirteen—give or take the years lost to pandemic. Time for a look back.