trying for the third time to start this post i realize that maybe there is nothing much to say besides stressing the notion of expanded in my current life.
lucky me shared a car for the openings on friday with team of forum expanded, stefanie, nanna and uli, expanded by barbara hammer and michael snow, later marie losier and sebastien sanz de santamaria. what i loved when i actually saw the exhibitions was pavel büchler at tanya leighton gallery and i am very much looking forward to being at the artist talk with them tomorrow. karoe goldt's piece in galerie antje wachs was sort of really sad. eyes die. i find that utterly disturbing.
a must see - ludwig schönherr. i love his work. the exhibiton (as the installation in filmhaus and the filmprogramm curated by marc siegel) in halle a/14 is really something else, seriously. anything structural/chaotic that resonates within you should call you to that place. and once you're there, have a closer look at bill viola's "transfiguration" in haunch of venison. it is beautiful beyond belief.
being 'inside' the festival as somebody working there makes me feel like michel de certeau again ... no kidding, looking down at potsdamer platz from the office is ridiculous sometimes and you wish corporate design was never created, though i do believe that this year's design is sort of sweet and subliminally very much fitting the notion of unified masses hustling down unified streets in their unified ways of feeling utterly busy and important.
but tv-man on super-big screen inside sony centre said "die stimmung ist gut am potsdamer platz".
i'll go get some sleep now and hopefully will dream of that summer day when there's nothing to do besides having eyes and heart open again. maybe there will be water, too, a lake with a view or a drenching curtain that'll transfigure me back into something b/w.
you can have a look at the other forum expanded events (films, exhibitions, performances, talks, tours ...) here. don't miss "farewell" by stefan zeyen in the black box at filmhaus! and - do enjoy marie losier's gorgeous "movie boxes".
all expanded
oh bliss
two excellent new records on the shelf ...
the froosh's new lp the empyrean leaked. it is brilliant. oh so brilliant. so conceptual. so perfectly mastered. so brilliantly played. so brilliant. so surprisingly surprising.
to think how brilliant can one bass-line be: dark light
to cry with: song to the siren - what a cover!
antony and the johnsons' the crying light is difficult and beautiful. somehow and that seems weird the old material from the debut is rougher and edgier but still resonates within me far more than these songs here. it seems that the development through i am a bird now was to have structures that are most definitely less edgy. also i am not sure about the whole environment things to be perfectly honest. but - this is not to say that it is not beautiful. i think it is. but it needs replay, lots of replay. strangely enough. ha! and i will see them live in edinburgh :)
besides new music there are many things. many indeed.
i work with the forum expanded of the berlinale this year.
and - next weekend 23rd til 25th the margins student conference will take place at the institute for theatre studies at fu berlin. program on paradisaical states (paradiesische zustände) is online here. i will show an installation sui_site or how to disappear completely. please come and be with us.
that for now.
what began a drizzle leaves me bloody drenched now. i rather went to where there was only sun. i rather went to where there was no "i told you to", i rather went to where i wasn't going before. i never was on mars. no fools. no sailing. i could just go there. sail there. but there, unmistakably, is drenching rain. can i be on mars drenched? can i go to beauty shattered as i feel? never did this writing feel further away. i need to leave the drizzle.
you're totally beating up the wrong guy if you think that i have bad intentions. obviously.
shocking end of the old shit
came across this nolita-add in le. what a mess.
so let the new shit begin.
have worked a great deal on installation for margins for which we also have the programm scheduled now and you can see that here. my work "sui_site or how to disappear completely" will be shown as a video loop with performative side shows in a durational installation.
a still: 
what a difference a day makes
check out this durational 24h performance of self improvement, they're sweet :)
5 people, 1 room, 24 hours. How much can be done in one day? What have you always wanted to do but never had the time? We decided to find out. We are Beta Test; John Hunter, Simon Cummin, Cat Harrison, Iván González and Max Olesker. We started out with a length of time, 24 hours, and looked at ways of filling it. We were fascinated by this duration we'd allocated entirely to ourselves; a period with which to do whatever we wished. So. Conversations bubbled with excitement, and the ideas flowed freely. 24 hours seemed like a long time; long enough to achieve something. The question then became what could be achieved and, crucially, what did we want to achieve at the end of our day? Everything, it seemed – from a neo-renaissance tromp l'oeil relief, to a wall-sized mosaic, to a five-part harmony. Madness.
exactly
find myself agreeing with deviant kgullholmen.
but like things, too. i.e. my internship. and this gadget that makes my pics go *weeeeee* ... 
quiet and slow and not
imagine a quiet and slow place. a quiet and slow time. a surrounding of quietness and slowness and all that twice within two days. have i met my personal paradise? or is it rather only the hope of having found it that makes me all romantic and blind for its loud and fast paces that undoubtedly must have been there as well.
well, i went to two performances and liked them.
first was heiner goebbels' i went to the house but did not enter shown during spielzeit europa in haus der berliner festspiele. he directed this scenic concert performance/installation which he also composed the music for. said music was sung by the hilliard ensemble and was brilliant. the sung texts were eliot's love song of j. alfred prufrock, blanchot's madness of the day, kafka's im gebirge and beckett's worstwards ho. the whole performance very much used a filmic setting in a sense of space and maybe depth of perspective. there were always the outsides which the people (the four singers) referred to by example singing out of the window, but those outsides were not really seen. so it sort of felt very hermetic. the texts, too, are maybe not the most open texts themselves. but instead of using this spatial and textual hermetics to sort of 'show' 
something to the audience it rather felt as if it was displayed in a panorama of associations that were not forced upon us. the only thing i felt forced by was the head of that woman in front of me who was very eagerly following every tiny action and movement on stage by moving her head and upper body constantly which is a great joy for the person sitting behind in haus der berliner festspiele, i can assure you. the sounds have been amplified incredibly good so that every quietest tone could be heard - the rustling of wrapping paper, the folding of tablecloths, their breathing. it looked sort of flat but was deeply audible.
left sort of satisfied and sad. satisfied because i really enjoyed the brilliant music and performance with its quietness and slowness. sad because the texts seemed to stir something in me and that, i thought, was sad because it was sad texts by 'old men' and on stage were only 'old men' and heiner goebbels may also be an 'old man' ... but then, i learned afterwards that prufrock for instance was written by eliot aged 23. don't know it sort of made me even sadder.
from the love song of j. alfred prufrock by eliot:
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use;
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
from the madness of the day by maurice blanchot:
I am not learned; I am not ignorant. I have known joys. That is saying too little: I am alive, and this life gives me the greatest pleasure. And what about death? When I die (perhaps any minute now), I will feel immense pleasure. I am not talking about the foretaste of death, which is stale and often disagreeable. Suffering dulls the senses. But this is the remarkable truth, and I am sure of it: I experience boundless pleasure in living, and I will take boundless satisfaction in dying.
I have wandered: I have gone from place to place. I have stayed in one place, lived in a single room. I have been poor, then richer, then poorer than many people. As a child I had great passions, and everything I wanted was given to me. My childhood has disappeared, my youth his behind me. It doesn't matter. I am happy about what has been. I am pleased by what is, and what is to come suits me well enough.
Is my life better than other peoples lives? Perhaps. I have a roof over my head and many do not. I do not have leprosy, I am not blind, I see the world—what extraordinary happiness! I see this day, and outside it there is nothing. Who could take that away from me? And when this day fades, I will fade along with it—a thought, a certainty, that enraptures me.
I have loved people. I have lost them. I went mad when that blow struck me, because it is hell. But there was no witness to my madness, my frenzy was not evident: only my innermost being was mad. Sometimes I became enraged. People would say to me, Why are you so calm? But I was scorched from head to foot; at night I would run through the streets and howl; during the day I would work calmly.
second was maybe forever by meg stuart and philipp gehmacher (who both danced) shown in volksbühne theatre with fantastic music by niko hafkenscheid whose music was sweet and melancholic (sort of reminded me of vincent gallo) and sad and sorrowful but never failed to grab you, and the two dancers, with its progressing ever so slightly promising rhythm (waltzes, mainly). the set design here was also very flat, a half circle marked by dark green curtains which were, towards the end, opened a little. in the center there was a big picture of a dandelion clock, halfway blown away, that was sometimes in a sepia shade, sometimes almost colourful and bright and shiny. the dancers were sort of repetitive in their movements and the music, repetitive, too. but then those subtle changes, a hand here a minor chord there. shifting from something you think you recognize to something that seems very strange to you back to something you feel sure is directly performed for you. the strange thing was, you felt lulled and lured into it and only at points could realize the subtle shifts. then those came as a big surprise. (which now, as i write this reminds me of a thought i had on the sublime and subliminal. etymologically somehow connected, it seems contradictory and paradox to think of the sublime as something you would only be aware of subliminally. but then again, maybe it's those surprises you're facing with incredibility, those that found their way subliminally into your sub_conscience. once you focus (again and maybe consciously), they're there and struck you as incredible, maybe even sublime.)
one for/ces all
it seems a little unreasonable to me but proves that one can petrify a system. cute in a way. outrageous as well.
in short: lutz heilmann, former member of former gdr ministerium für staatssicherheit, now member of die linke leftwing party and member of deutscher bundestag has decided that this article as being linked to by german www.wikipedia.de is not exactly to his liking. and has forced www.wikipedia.de to shut down their site.
today at hamburger bahnhof
kult des künstlers:
(ayse erkmen)
(?)
(sarah lucas)
(rodney graham)
(not really beuys)
nay, seriously, what a coincidence
mueck's big man with nico's janitor of lunacy. hah, and that song is covered by soap&skin as well.
Janitor of lunacy
Paralyze my infancy
Petrify the empty cradle
Bring hope to them and me
Janitor of tyranny
Testify my vanity
Mortalize my memory
Deceive the Devil's deed
Tolerate my jealousy
Recognize the desperate need
Janitor of lunacy
Identify my destiny
Revive the living dream
Forgive their begging scream
Seal the giving of their seed
Disease the breathing grief
mueck(e(t))baudrillard or i just wanna be the cigarette
i wish i was them sometimes. today for instance. they're actually really small. and they're not alone.
or why not her? mueck paid huge attention to her. that's good, isn't it?
"Alles trägt zum Versagen des Systems bei, das sich unfehlbar gibt. Und angesichts dessen, was wir im Rahmen seiner rationellen und programmgestützten Herrschaft bereits erleben, kann man sich fragen, ob nicht die Unfehlbarkeit des Systems selbst vielleicht die schlimmste Katastrophe wäre" said monsieur baudrillard in le monde diplomatique. and also in the perfect crime: "The absolute rule is to give back more than you were given. Never less, always more. The absolute rule of thought is to give back the world as it was given to us — unintelligible. And, if possible, to render it a little more unintelligible."
or maybe i just wanna be the cigarette in luca's hand
oh, and here are parts of angstbörse, one really interesting, very interactive work on our fears by performance collective dramazone as shown in the akademie für angewandtes leben, hotel subbotnik: .
one book
another book
