The smell of eurosoup wafts over the Glogauerstrasse…

Well, it’s been a long time but finally Heini got to Berlin… born before the wall went up and now, long after it’s gone, come to have a look-see. Another aspect was this story of having been registered in Berlin at time of birth, it still being a military section-zone at the time… but it seems there is no record of it, and as such just a ruse. In any case I thought it might be appropriate to prepare my contribution to the ELAA performance fest ‘second’ in German… and it made for an interesting train of thought (I find thoughts travel differently in German..) As it happened, it was all in English… which sort of threw me, because the basic trajectory was a German one and now I ended up on a different set of rails leading somewhere close to the middle of nowhere… fine by me, and the whole thing has more of a Eurosceptic ring to it than originally intended… Essentially a short introduction into the manner of the European commission, and resulting in a sort of inedible Maccedoine soup in a dog-bone broth… held up by lashings of gelatin and wire… common garden variety as well as galvanized.

Attempts to get the populace moving proved futile, perhaps Berliners don’t like to get told what to do any more… and so it was also difficult to engage them in a poï-poï style greet & role play… to say not at all thank you. But the initiation did break a rather hushed silence which befell the situation during the first part of the evening… and so it was a sort of successful mess… especially since the soup never could stand on it’s own… as far as I know, ( have not yet heard the report from the second half of the festival)

More soon.

Re De/Construct

Pori perf11 / rearranged










De/reconstruction

Thinking of Schwitter’s comment ‘ I nail my pictures ‘ rather than painting them – here he would be in his element, re-de-contructing (or is it de-re?) and painting all together... a veritable revisitation of MERZ but then as a ‘separated ensemble’ – interesting moments during the Pori perf11 festival... more soon

ou ou ouragan

en route retour
ouragan objet beach-cabanne and all

a preamble as usual for the perf11 in Pori later in May
more soon

sloppy archive

Slush pub...




While going through the irritations of producing another defunct version of the e-version of the POD rag ‘La Jeune Avrill dUE’ I had been reading about the miscellaneous and began considering a sort of slush-publication, based loosely on a combo of blog- and picture-trove, a bit here and a bit there rather than attempting another website or structured blog-blob... (... have in the past been enraged and frustrated by the shortcomings of technological wonderment... still not quiet what it says on the box...)
So by working piecemeal and leaving it all open for corrective commentary I can slowly wriggle out of my own straightjacket of pretending to archive it all... which needless to say seems quite impossible... fifty-fifty to say the least.
(not that this idea is really very new, just thought I’d throw up a good intention while the year is still relatively young...)

early cold (snif)

Well, that’s about it then, the first decade of the new millennium. Seemed like such a promising venture at the start, but then most new things do. More recently it has the same sort of taste as the first decade of the last century of the last millennium which sort of tastes bittersweet if anything... or even quite acid. What does surprise is the speed – things seem to need to go faster all the time and slowly cracks are appearing – the proverbial standing on clay feet comes to mind – a bit of overreach perhaps? For this office Gruzemayer things have been slowing down rather than speeding up and that seems quite a refreshing tendency, and produces some interesting imagery of time and space bending slightly... here an illustration form the train, and the thoughts of pharmaceuticals this sad old man entertains while whooshing through the snow... thinking of throwing the Royal portable out of the window at speed... but the windows don’t open anymore, and it’s been a long time since we’ve see such a mechanical device where most now have their flaptops.
And a good one to you too.

FiftyBus still unsure of it's whereabouts

prototypical bus

The fifty-fifty bus excursion / 10th of October 2010
Ambulant meeting conference or colloquium as you please...
Has all the hallmarks of a regular meeting – confusion, miscommunication, a clarity that makes the Amazon look crystal clear... but all in all one might consider it a wonder that it is taking place at all...
The format is somewhat A2B, a field trip by bus from Argos in B to Bonaparte in A and back again... The whole affair will be split down the middle between Fumoir and Fifty-fifty, and associates. The notion of ‘Fifty-fifty’ as red thread through a consideration of the ‘salon’ effect – the tendency of like minded artists to group together for various reasons, more often than not one of protest or opposition to the dominant tendency of the day... but also for ex & interchange... which is perhaps more the case here...
Taking it only from the short period of regular editorial meetings in the eighties would be selling the idea short, so we’ve decided to embed the whole thing historically and then highlight the most recent trends –say from the seventies, already an interesting fifty-fifty period between the sixties and the eighties... no, really?

At this point the specific venues have still not been fixed in stone, iron or paper bags for that matter – it is a constantly fluctuating situation which will surprise even the participants once they realize that they have been had again by what has become known as fifty-fifty...

More soon...

Fifty-bus still in depot, but revving up...

Closing up August and September at the door - considering the next step...

Fifty-fifty project for Argos still slightly hazy but becoming more focused... the bus trip that is slated for the 10th of the tenth month of two thousand and ten will be construed as less of a nostalgic re-visitation than a rolling research in itself... seen as we can’t recreate the places as such we can but reinvent ourselves... with a critical note I might add... quite a few comments are such as to make you think “nothing matters” – ah, and that’s a discussion we had some twenty year back also... so any good argument likes it’s pro’s and con’s.
The trip tries to encompass some of the precursor elements and give a little sketch of where the tendency is leaning towards also... even though this is a process in flux we might as well attempt to steer towards it. The exact itinerary is not yet ready for purpose, but promises to be an interesting round-trip for all parties.