Blade Runner 2025: Running Across the Blade of a Wind Turbine

Another blade runner. An overwhelming sensory experience: bright, fiercely visual. It feels interstellar, like your consciousness has been kicked into space.

Zelia and I climb the ladder inside the tube to the generator room.  Colours flat, No horizon, just metal and darkness.  The space is narrow, constricted. Then we reach the hatch and everything changes. One moment it’s noise, dim light and machinery… the next it’s pure infinity: a blinding white turbine, blue above, green below, the sun beating down on all of it. A giant blade stretched out like a sword.

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What makes this experience so intense is the contrast between the tube and the open air.  It feels like being born. For Zelia it was especially intense, considering it was her first time climbing something so high. A first-time experience like that shocks the mind and the whole system, it’s like seeing a new colour for the very first time.

We can just about make out home, Berlin in the distance. Fields and forests fill the rest of the scenery, other turbines quietly keeping us company in our little pocket of space.

We embrace the visuals. Lying down, sunbathing 140m up, skin coated with grit and soot from the oily ladder. Then I strap on my parachute and wait for the blade to move into the angle I need.‍I start.

I start.

Running along the blade, every pixel of light is absorbed. Every breath is enhanced. The further I go, the more unbalanced it becomes as the blade starts to wobble and bounce under my weight.

At the very tip I’m totally exposed: a pinprick in the sky. I take one look to my right at Zelia, to embrace this rare visual of the madness that  I’m seeing… and jump.

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After that, we take a one-way trip to Berghain.
Ze Germans have hedonism down to a science. The most pristine sound and light system, brutalist techno temple architecture, and a very selective curation of the right freaks. No other place in the world has it like this. Ze Germans are INCREDIBLY INTELLIGENT when it comes to ENGINEERING a really good party. Combine that with running off a wind turbine blade and reality bends into another dimension.

I love Berlin. Not many places in the world can accommodate my pursuit of beautiful madness. The experiences I’ve had in and around this place make it a home away from home. I don’t know if I was built for Berlin or Berlin was built for me. 🇩🇪

By

George King

The Shard Climber

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