Ōkunoshima (大久野島) is a small piece of subcontinental land near Japan’s Hiroshima that’s overrun by feral bunnies. Located in the Inland Sea, the origins of its vast hoard of wild mammals is unclear—whether released by a school group following World War II, or escaped from their toxic fate at a poison gas testing facility during the island’s grim military heyday. Nonetheless, these creatures have made the tiny sanctuary their own, roaming freely together, undaunted by the ogling tourists for whom they’ve become entertainment. Creamcake’s Rabbit Island at Spreepark and Zenner on July 29 honors this notion of adaptation to adversity, and the shifting social and cultural norms—both imposed and self-created—that dictate our own behaviors.
Taking place in the once abandoned, now slowly reviving amusement park in the north of the Plänterwald in Treptow-Köpenick, the event builds on fantasy writer Ray Bradbury’s famous quote, “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.” In this case, the keys are held by the queer-feminist interdisciplinary platform and its motley crew of musicians, performers, producers, and DJs who will overrun the decaying GDR-era funfair with extreme encounters of music from the margins.
The party at Zenner, a former GDR restaurant in Treptower Park, follows an earlier event of the same name at the nearby Spreepark, an abandoned amusement park from the same Soviet era in the north of the Plänterwald. Set to the neoclassical architecture of the building and its changing use over time—from two-storey dining hall to disco, to a Burger King before becoming the music and concert venue it is today—Rabbit Island will host an array of artists who live in their own realities.
