Welcome to our new weekly series, YYZ >, where we'll be speaking to expat Torontonians about what they miss—and don't miss—about our city. This week: ArtStars* host Nadja Sayej tells us how Berlin is just like Toronto… in 1994.
Nadja Sayej is the “Queen of Sass” at ArtStars* (a provocative web show about the art world), a columnist at Vice Deutschland, and a freelancer for The New York Times, National Post, The Globe and Mail and more. She moved to Berlin in October 2010.
Why did you move to Berlin?
I wanted to take my web TV show ArtStars* to the next level. I wanted to step up my game, be professional. I wanted to learn what it meant to be Canadian. And I’m learning by trotting the globe chasing the stars, from snagging John Waters at the Venice Biennale, getting Eva & Adele in Vienna, Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, and more. I travel to three countries a month on average.
Are you happy you moved to Berlin?
Of course!
Does anything about Berlin remind you of Toronto?
There are no streetcars. The transit system is super-efficient. You can drink in public and smoke in bars. Berliners, for the most part, love their mayor. Does that remind you of Toronto? Maybe in 1994.
What do you tell your friends in Toronto about Berlin?
I have friends in Toronto? Just kidding. I tease them with the real details, which are kept will hidden in my forthcoming book about Berlin, which I can’t tell you any more about.
What has surprised you about moving from Toronto to Berlin?
I can go to a party and run into [fellow Toronto expats] Peaches, [Hidden Cameras frontman] Joel Gibb and [ex-Thunderheist MC] Isis Salam, all on the same night. I can go to a press conference and meet world-class artists like Gerhard Richter, Angela Bulloch or Ai Weiwei, who will soon be teaching at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. I can take a two-hour train and arrive in Paris—instead of Brampton—and I can attend Fashion Week twice a year to check out the buzz behind Romanian design. I can take my life up to the next level and enjoy the process, become a photographer, model, DJ, writer and web personality without leaving my neighbourhood. That’s Berlin.
What do you miss most about Toronto?
There is such an abundance of counterculture and fantastic venues that have come to define the cultural fabric—parties and characters that can’t be matched anywhere else, from the legend Will Munro left behind to young up-and-coming artists who I truly believe in, like Jeff Garcia and Alexandra Mackenzie, cool galleries like Katzman Kamen, Cooper Cole and catching shows by Azari & III at the Barn on Church Street before they were huge in Europe. In other words, the memories are what I miss most about Toronto.
What don’t you miss at all about Toronto?
If you don’t miss something—anything—about Toronto, you weren’t living life when you were here in the first place.
Would you ever go back?
I always come back to my hometown in Toronto to give motivational lectures for young, aspiring creative professionals at the University of Toronto Art Centre, the Ontario College of Art & Design University, Guelph University, and more.
Nadja Sayej will be hosting the ArtStars* Crash Course in Stardom at the University of Toronto Art Centre (15 King’s College Circle, #COL) on Feb. 10, 3-5 p.m. $10.
