BAM-C inaugurated in 2019 with the vision of positioning Bosnia and Herzegovina as a music and creative industry hub in the Balkans according to BHRT. The 2021 event ran from October 8th-10th with the BAM-C Advanced Panel taking place on the 9th. Hegemann accompanied United We Stream CEO Anna Käthe Harnes, SEE Contact CEO Martina Keškić, and other speakers in a discussion on how the Igman Hotel could be repurposed to that end.

Image credit: Dimitri Hegemann

Ahmed Dzuvic designed the Igman Hotel to host the Winter Olympic Games held in Sarajevo in 1984. It suffered structural damage during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 and has remained vacant in the decades since.

Dimitri Hegemann’s Tresor is celebrated for its role in establishing techno culture as a symbol of Germany’s reunification. The nightlife institution includes a record label of its namesake that recently celebrated its 30-year anniversary with a compilation called Tresor 30.

In 2016, Hegemann had designs on opening a club in Detroit’s disused Packard Automotive Plant. Last year it came to light that the owner of the land, Fernando Palazuelo, made plans to sell it off.

No video of the BAM-C Advanced Panel discussion has been made available for public viewing by the conference’s organizers at the time of writing.

Tresor and Kraftwerk Berlin founder Dimitri Hegemann has shared that his vision for the Tresor Foundation Berlin is essentially seek to gain national landmark status for iconic German nightclubs such as the ones he owns. He explained the purpose of the organization in detail in a recent Facebook post.

“The real estate markets are boiling over; gentrification is causing the displacement of the socially disadvantaged, the traditional social mix of neighborhoods is disappearing and with it the presence of cultural and creative spaces in the center of cities,” wrote Hegemann in the post.

“The Tresor Foundation Berlin therefore aims to appropriate real estate for the realization of charitable purposes (e.g. acquisition and further development of the Kraftwerk building on Köpenicker Strasse 70 in Berlin-Mitte) and thus to withdraw it from speculation and secure it permanently,” he continued. Real estate owned by the foundation will remain the property of the foundation. This aim will be achieved exclusively by means of public welfare-oriented and forward-looking measures.”

In the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, organizers like Hegemann were able to fashion nightclubs and social spaces in old industrial buildings with very little government intervention. Since then, newer developments have forced those club owners and organizers out of their spaces, displacing them or forcing them to fold entirely.

Emily Dust explored that history and the current state of Clubsterben in Germany in her documentary, “Berlin’s Nightlife” on BBC‘s Art Of Now. Hegemann’s newly formed foundation will combat the Clubsterben, and preserve precious sociocultural spaces like Kraftwerk Berlin, whose future is even more dubious after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a comment on his Facebook post, Dimitri Hegemann elaborated that the Tresor Foundation Berlin will begin work after obtaining its certificates, and that a website will be launched soon. No further details have been released at the time of writing.

Palazuelo had acquired the building in a tax foreclosure auction in 2013 and made plans for a sweeping renovation. Over the past seven years, however, he fell behind on taxes and other bills, not to mention that the Packard Plant bridge over East Grand Boulevard collapsed in January 2019. According to Crain’s Detroit Business, Palazuelo enlisted the brokerage house Newmark to help him market the property to prospective buyers in October.

The firm plans to demolish the historic building. “When we get customers, we will raze the structures and develop new properties,” said Newmark Senior Managing Director Larry Emmons.

“[Palazuelo] wishes that the administrative building on the north side of East Grand Boulevard be maintained, but it’s going to turn on the customer’s needs” he went on. “There is definitely going to be demolition and new construction.”

It remains to be seen whether Dimitri Hegemann will seek out another Detroit space for a nightclub at the time of writing.

As Selector recently touched on, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 opened the door for event organizers to utilize a wealth of industrial spaces with little lawmaker intervention. In recent years, however, new developments have forced more club owners to relocate or discontinue their business altogether. Dust interviewed Tresor founder Dimitri Hegemann, Georg Kössler of Berlin’s parliament, and Berlin Club Commission Chair Pamela Schobess among others to paint a detailed picture of the dilemma.

According to the documentary, nightlife brought the city €1.5 billion in 2018. Schobess said that in 2019 the Commission had published research intended to educate the public on clubbing’s economic impact, and Kössler mentioned that one potential solution to the Clubsterben might be to explore ways clubs can occupy public spaces instead of private ones.

“Berlin’s Nightlife” can be streamed in its entirety via the BBC website.