Back in Paris

After a 4months residency in 2003 at the Cité des Arts and a one week stay in 2005 i get back to Paris. I visit an exhibition of Eija-Lisa Ahtila, a famous Finnish video artist at Jeu de Paume and the newly arranged collection of the Centre Pompidou. At friday night I go to the opening of Austrian arts collective gelitin.

gelitin at Musée d'Art Moderne Paris

gelitin have mounted a huge show of trashy and caramelized cardbord objects, hundreds of plasticine pictures, many of them funny remakes of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, sculptures of stuffed animals and a big foot.

I make my way through the room of plasticine paintings and get close to the adjacent room. Suddenly there is a pungent stench of smelly feet. I look around me for sb who took his shoes off, only that I cannot find anyone. I look down on my feet: "that can’t be possible!" I think. As I enter the next room I see a huge foot which is about 4 meters long and which is made of ... cheese! It smells unbearable. Its stench comes absolutely close to smelly feet.

Party!

After gelitin's opening there is an party which is held in the huge entrance hall of the museum. Several bands appear on stage, sometimes they mix with other bands and the sound is a big anarchistic mess. The museum gives out red wine for free, people drink from 8 to midnight and get superpissed. Some pass out, quite a few people smoke cigarettes in the hall which is absolutely forbidden in France since the beginning of 2008.

A guard catches me and a friend smoking. We have to leave the building. As we move towards the exit i look back and see that the guard is not following us. We go back and have another cigarette. One of the musicians has to pee urgently and decides to do that on the spot beside the stage. He pulls out his cock and waters the wall-to-wall carpet.

Minimetal

A 2 people rock outfit called Minimetal play a gig at the Swiss Cultural Institute in Paris. A guy in a frock and a hood performs an ancient ritual beside a box on which a video of Minimetal is projected. The video shows the band playing in a tiny room. After a while the hooded guy opens the box from which music emanates. Smoke comes out of the box and slowly gives way to the band which is playing live inside the box.

Smoke in our eyes

During the gelitin opening party a performance takes place in front of the Musée d'Art Moderne. A fire blower works his way through an ice sculpture. As we get out of the museum people throw out peaces of ice from the performance on the street.
We try to find a bar in the 16th district which is still open. We enter a restaurant, but have to leave soon, as the place closes. We find a shitty fancy bar close to the Champs Elysées and go inside. Bernhard, a friend of mine, smokes a cigarette in the back of the bar. That passes unnoticed.

He lights a second cigarette and smokes it half way as the bar manager comes running. That guy snatches the cigarette from Bernhard’s hand, barks at us and runs towards the exit door with the lit cigarette in his hand. Soon after that he comes back to our table and advises us that it’s forbidden to smoke indoors. 5 minutes later Bernhard lights another cigarette. He only manages to suck twice on that cigarette until the bar manager comes running up to us with a big bouncer. We get told to leave the place.
On our way out I notice that the bag which I had on me is gone.

A bike tour across town

Next day, I remember that I had my digital camera in my bag and decide that I really have to go looking for it. I get on my racing bike and go down to boulevard La Chapelle which passes under Montmartre. I get to Barbès-Rochechouart, a quarter of mainly North African and Black African immigrants. There are fruit and vegetable markets in the open as well as flee markets. The place is a great colourful mess. I continue towards Pigalle and Étoile (Arc de Triomphe). As I see La Défense I decide that it’s about time to head south towards the Seine. Soon I get to the Place du Trocadéro which offers the best view on the Eiffel Tower as it is right in front of it.

It’s a beautiful and sunny day and despite the fear that I won’t get my camera back I really enjoy my trip. The Palais de Chaillot at Trocadéro is a great modernist building which was built for the world exhibition in 1937. It looks similar to the Palais de Tokyo which was erected for the same purpose and which I have to pass in order to get to the place where I forgot my bag. I am superoptimistic that I get it back and race my bike downhill towards that restaurant.

And – I really get it back. I have to pass a little exam about what the bag looks like and about its content. I wanna kiss the manager as he returns my bag to me...

Time left

With my bag around my shoulders I head towards the Swiss Cultural Institute in the Marais, the former Jewish quarter of Paris. I am one hour late for a video performance of fashion duo Radic/Morger. As I arrive I am just in time for a second run of the performance which takes place in a small theatrical room with a screen and a motorbike on stage. Performance artist Djana Covich appears on stage dressed in Radic/Morger clothes. She also wears a motorbike helmet which is coated in fabric and has a long tail in the back. As she takes place on the black motorcycle a video starts.

The video is a ride through Paris with that same motorbike filmed by visual artist Stephan Lugbauer. Djana rides the bike on stage in front of that video projection. After a while the bike goes through a tunnel and Djana lies back on the seat to do one of her sleep performances. Then there are scenes of a motorbike performance where audiences which queue up for big fashion shows get „hijacked“. Djana performs in front of the people on that black motorcycle giving really gas.

Beavers attack Vienna!

A horde of beavers have launched their attack on Vienna. They started out by killing a little forest on Danube Island. They felled mostly the big trees and spared only the little ones.

Once nearly extinct, now a protected species, the beavers are thirsty for revenge. Their hunger is unsatiable. Chop, chop, chop! the people hear them working during night. They must be building a big dam somewhere to flood Vienna! Nobody has discovered it yet. The Danube in the meantime has risen to an alarming degree.

Palast der Republik

The remains of the famous palace on the corner of Karl-Liebknecht- Strasse. Almost demolished, now reduced to a skeleton, the palace appears in 2 parts which look like boxes with an empty space in between. Only the outermost parts on the left and the right side are left.

Berlin beautiful

3-legged Cat

I go up Montjuic, a mountain in Barcelona which is a place of excursion for Barcelonians and tourists alike. There is a big parc, the Museum of Catalonian Art, two stadiums and – a lot of cats. I notice that the cats mostly come in couples and that they are all grey and have black stripes. I observe several times that one of a couple limps. One back leg is stiff or cut off. I have to think of a social system among street cats, where one cat helps the other. Makes me ponder about a cat help system or even a cat welfare state...

Hijo de puta

I go to Barcelona to visit my friend Moritz. I am invited to stay at his new appartment at the Barceloneta which has a direct view of the sea. Every morning the sun wakes us up.
On the fourth day I am on my way to the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and go through Raval. I get to a little square with many people, which seems stange at first sight.
There are young women who stand around alone or who are approached by men.
I pass a Japanese guy who talks to a prostitute. He keeps his head on the side, looks down on the floor and keeps fumbling around in his pocket. It must be the weight of bad consciousness.
As I continue further a Russion prostitute in red high heels stops me. She tries to take my hand, which I refuse.

Fucking? I suck you?
No, thank you.
Are you gay?
No.
Yes, you’re gay!

It’s not the first time that I hear of a woman who calls a guy gay, who does not want to have sex with her. Only, that it never happened to me before...

Semmering

Ende dieser Woche bin ich wild entschlossen, der ewigen Finsternis und dem undurchdringlichen Grau in Wien zu entfliehen und fahre mit einem Freund zum Semmering.

In Wr. Neustadt wird es allmählich heller, in Gloggnitz erkennt man ein Himmelsphänomen, dass sich am Semmering endgültig offenbart. Zuerst sind wir nicht in der Lage das Phänomen zu benennen. Wir haben nur eine undeutliche Erinnerung, was dies sein könnte.
Langsam entringt sich uns das Wort SONNE!!!!

Symphonie des Grauens

Seit gut 2,5 Monaten ist das Wetter in Wien beschissen, seit drei Wochen hat man hier nicht mehr Sonne gesehen. Kommt die Sonne mal kurz raus, wird sie auch schon wieder von Wolken oder Nebel verschluckt. Es ist zum sich Grämen und ganz und gar fürchterlich! Ich beschliesse Maßnahmen zu treffen...

Sun Wonder

On 1 January 2008 for the first time in three weeks there is sunshine over Vienna! That comes like a miracle after a period of about two months during which the sky showed only different shades of grey. In 2007 the weather turned shitty already mid-october to stay like that until the end of the year. Now it’s almost unbelievable that the sunbeams really make it through the fog.

I rush out of my apt to go to the Vienna forest. As soon as I get out on the street I see clouds moving into the city from the west. Slowly - but with pleasure, eat seems - the devour the sun again. I am quite frustrated.

My mood gets better as soon as I get to a snowy area in the forest. At least the snow works well against the grey.

Dropping Furniture

On 18 December 2007 me and my friend Paul Horn shoot our new project on film which will be both a video installation and a film in the end. From a height of around 7 meters we let furniture fall down on the floor so that everything breaks apart beautifully. We shoot with two 16mm highspeed film cameras from two different angles in order to get slow motion in the end. Eventually the work will be a 2 channel video projection projected on two walls.

Krautrock

The Viennese electronic Krautrock outfit VILLALOG play a concert at FLUC (Vienna). It’s the release party of their second album „ZWEI“ which has just been put out on „Angelika Köhlermann“, a record label run by Electro musician Gerhard Potuznik (GD Luxxe).
Villalog consist of Marc Muncke (electronics, synths) and Michi Duscher (guitar). Bernhard Fleischmann appears on drums and Japanese musician Teppei Ozawa as singer. Villalog play a mesmerizing mantric sound which derives from 70ies Krautrock. B. Fleischmann hits the drums hard, Teppei Ozawa sings and shouts great. The music goes partly in loops, it’s live version comes quite hard and from time to time reaches the peak of ecstacy...... We happy......

Pigs

I go to a party of Austrian artists Konstantin Luser and Christian Eisenberger which takes place in their Viennese studio. Christian has built an installation of cardboard pipes which covers an entire room. The pipes are held together with adhesive tape. There is another room with a dj and a buffet, a small kitchen and a yard. I guess around 100 people are there.

Around 2 in the morning I see a couple standing in the corridor of the house waiting for sth. From their appearance I can see that nothing good is on their minds. They are completely alien to the party. I guess they are waiting for the police which they have called – and I am right. Usually people who report a party to the police never show up, they always hide in their appartments, the lights probably turned off. But this couple is clearly different.

The police are out in the yard closing one room of the party . The couple is with them and I see the man getting aggressive. He gets close to both artists and the police, screaming. „These people are not artists, they are pigs! They piss in the stairway! Don’t you see that they make fools out of you (policemen)?“ One of the policemen tries to calm down the angry neighbour.

The music has to be turned low first and then off alltogether. The police are around for a while. Soon afterwards they leave. Somebody turns on the music again and people start to get into the room of the installation and start to jump against it. The cardboard pipes break one after the other. Christian, the artist, likes that and jumps against the installation, too. He encourages other people to do the same.

The music gets louder and people get back on the dancefloor. Christian and some other guy start to wrap adhesive tape around people. Groups of dancers get taped together as the guys circle around them.
It's extremely funny to watch the dancers stumble on the dancefloor tied together in groups.

Temperature plunge

The evening before temperatures plunge by 15° celsius we get a striking sunset which looks like this...

Amanda

On saturday May 25 the Life Ball (an Aids charity event) takes place in Vienna. Several stars are invited to the ball like Sharon Stone, Bill Clinton, the porn actress Jennna Jameson and transsexual Amanda Lepore from NYC. Newspapers have reports on the stars as well as pictures.

I discover a photograph of Amanda Lepore in the papers and recognize her from that Dj Hell inner sleeve i have written about in my weblog (At the MoMa). I guess I was totally wrong charging that woman 60 years old. There was something very odd about her looks what made me guess her age that wrong. She is a transsexual instead.

On a mountain

We go to the Ötscher, a mountain in the province of Lower Austria, where i wanted to go for years but never made it there. Approaching the mountain area in a bus we pass beautiful, partly wooden houses, from the beginning of the 20th century. Charging from those houses I think that the area must have been very rich in the past and maybe still is...
The Ötscher itself stands alone and is situated in an extremely beautiful area of limestone mountains and rivers. It offers a spectacular view of the Alps in the West which seem to be endless.

On the second day of our stay we go down through the Ötschergräben, a steep river valley close to the Ötscher. The hike through the valley takes several hours, it almost seems endless.

We arrive at a cottage which serves as a restaurant. It is situated right over the river valley.
From there we leave the valley and walk to the Erlauf reservoir. The Erlauf is a river in that area. Even that reservoir is beautiful.

After that we get to a train station of the Mariazeller Bahn, which is a narrow gauge railway running from the famous place of pilgrimage called Mariazell. Even the pope comes there sometimes. The train ride is superscenic but takes 2,5 hrs for 85 km. The first 1,5 hrs the trip is beautiful. The train goes down from around 900 m altitude to around 250m.

Smells like chocolate

I am on my way back from a public swimming pool in the 16th district of Vienna. Suddenly there is a heavy smell of chocolate in the air as i get close to the factory where the famous Viennese Manner waffles are produced. The scent of chocolate is incredibly strong and mixes very well with the summer air.

Good Bye New York

Last view...

As I leave Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Brooklyn area where I stay during my trip to New York , a black guy, who sits on the sidewalk, waves at me in a really friendly way. This is very nice given that white people are sometimes not too welcome in this black neighbourhood (they usually cause rents to go up). I take it as a good-bye wish. I like Bed-Stuy.

Views of the city

A visit to the MoMa

I go to see a Jeff Wall exhibition at the MoMa. The show comprises 40 photographs made over 30 years.
The museum has an extensive collection of Picassos which I also get to see. A great painting from the blue period called „Two Acrobats with a Dog“ is on show as well as „Student with Pipe“ (1914, picture above) which amuses me a lot.

As I leave the MoMa I see a remarkable couple passing by. The guy who is in his late twenties is very handsome, the woman on his arm is kind of special. Her age is hard to guess, I reckon she is around 60 yrs old. She has been fully operated, charging from her nose and her upper lip.
I am sure I know this woman from Dj Hells last album „NY muscle“. There is a photograph of her on the record sleeve. I think she is a celebrity in certain circles...

Paradigm Shift

As i walk into St. Mark’s Bookstore, a good book shop in the East Village, I notice that the attention has shifted from last year’s books about punk and post punk to books about art. Contempory art seems all the rave this year. Only that the music books came as paperbacks (had to buy a few) and the art books as hard covers (can’t really afford them). Most art books are exhibition catalogues.

Street Art

Art in Chelsea

Matthew Marks Gallery shows new works of German photographer Andreas Gursky. The new works comprise a big scale series of fomula one racing cars on their pit stop. The cars and their teams are bright and beautifully lit and set against a darker background. There is also a gargantuan print of an event at a North Korean stadium (poor people making up a pattern of flowers) as well as a landscape series of the Halong bay in northern Vietnam. The digital manipulation of those series is not so well done. It is just too obvious.

Rirkrit Tiravanija has a great installation at David Zwirner Gallery. He has built a big box which is set in what appears to be the garage of the gallery. You can enter the installation either through open rolling doors from the street or go through the gallery. That has the effect of entering a side spot like a garage. In the installation hot thai food awaits you which you can just take out of the pot. There is a nice social effect to it especially as that gallery is super up-market. You wander through the streets of Chelsea hungry and thirsty and suddenly there is this place you are allowed to (if you are not a bum, that is).

Sofa Surfers kick ass!!

The Austrian electronics-mixed-with-live-instruments outfit Sofa Surfers play a gig at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Their sound is a mix of programmed beats and sounds, guitar and bass, live drumming and vocals of their Nigerian singer. They play an incredibly powerful gig. Once, during the concert I wonder how much louder you can play in a 40m2 room...
After the concert we head for the subway in midtown wondering that that had just happened in this surrounding of business and office buildings. Full moon shines down on us through glass towers...

Back in New York

Last alternative spot in SoHo

I come to New York for the opening of „Happiness of Objects“, a group show at the Sculpture Center. Our film „Tomatoheads“, which is a co-production of my artist collegue Paul Horn and me, is shown. We manage to get one flight ticket from the Austrian Cultural Forum. Paul lets me go to do some networking.
There are many people at the opening and bunches of people watching our video. They laugh a lot. That's what the video is for...

4 cities in 4 days

I take a flight to Brussels, Belgium to see my friend Lieven. I take a tour around town and visit the Atomium which was built for the world fair in 1958. The Atomium has been recently renovated and now looks all new and shiny.

I visit the Grand Place which is the old city center. There are some really beautiful buildings from the 16th century. There is a French touch to Brussels which is nice, too.

From Brussels I continue my trip to Antwerp. Belgium is in fact devided into a southern French and a northern Flemish part. The Flemish part is much richer than the French part. There are many people in that part who want their separate state...

In Antwerp I meet the people from Lokaal 01, an independent art space. After two nights in a great and cheap hotel I continue my trip to Utrecht, Holland to visit Impakt Festival (for film and video). One of my films is shown in the festival. Utrecht is a beautiful town of around 300,000 people. The old area consists of mostly little houses which are neatly arranged for example alongside a canal. Utrecht is a university town, thus you see lots of young people in the streets. They all ride bikes. The canal gives a great quality of life to the town.

I pass a coffee shop and see two huge guys standing outside. They look like bouncers, although i am 100% sure that they are just standing there. Between their massive bodies I get a glance at the people inside the coffee shop who look really pale and wasted.

Another old lady

I am out on the corridor on the way to the toilet as I see another demented woman. That woman is hyperactive and always busy doing sth. She often comes to the nurses' desk which is right opposite of our room. She is very small, the expression of her face is without any emotion. If it wasn’t for her moving around constantly she seems like a figure in a museum of wax. This time she sits at a small table and has a cigarette in her hand. She sucks on the cigarette which is not lit. I have already passed her as I hear a nurse’s voice telling that Mrs. ... should put on her clothes. I turn around to see the old lady naked except for huge diapers which she wears.

A night at the hospital

One night after my operation an old woman, who has cried „please, please...“ the night before, screams for help.
The nurses go to the lady’s room and take care of her. I reckon the old lady gets tranquilizers.
There is a second lady in another room who also starts to scream for help. That makes a kind of a weird stereo effect.
The second woman does not calm down. I am out on the ward passing by her room. I get a glimpse on an old woman who tries to get up from her bed to open a window and cry for help.
„Help, criminals, thugs... “ the demented lady screams.
Accidentally there is a strong wind that night which makes bizarre noises like in a horror movie.

Meniscus

I have an operation of my right knee's meniscus one year after my injury in New York. Back then I could not get any medical treatment except for a physical therapy which helped and made me walk again.
This year in January I finally find the time to have my knee examined. An x-ray does not produce any result so I go to get a MRT. The result tells me a rupture of the meniscus.
My doctor sends me to a hospital to get some advice. Quite typically for a visit to the doctor's in Vienna I don't get any information but instead a date for an operation: 03/12/07.
One week before the operation I go to get blood tests. I also try to get some information whether an operation is necessary or not: i manage to get a doctor's opinion which is not clear.
Finally in the hospital I get to speak to a doctor when he visits our room on his ward round. It is one day before the operation. That doctor asks me why I get the operation and gives me some info in the most impolite tone possible.

Secession

November 06: We install an exhibition of Stan Douglas at the Secession, which is a museum for contemporary art in Vienna. We have to erect about 200m2 of walls. There is only one big hall for the show which therefore has to be devided in 3 parts. The show comprises a video projection in the dark but also photographs which have to be shown in light.
The construction team of the Secession has developed a perfect way to erect perfect walls which in this case go from the floor to the ceiling (which is about 8m high).
This system of creating a perfectly white wall consists of 6 steps. First painting of the prefabricated and already erected wall panels, then closing the gaps between the panels with a spezial duct tape. Fill the gaps with spackle. Abrade redundant spackle. Put on a second layer of spackle as the walls are not yet perfectly white. Paint the walls again...

Berlin

I go to Berlin to see my friend Nuno and to visit Art Forum, the official Berlin art fair. I get to see Berlin's best sides. The weather is warm and sunny, there is not only one art fair, but there are three. There are a lot of gallery openings and big museum shows. I also see "Kaprow City", a new play by Christoph Schlingensief at Volksbühne which is a great anarchistic mess. Quite a few of the actors seem to be retarded. Nevertheless it's interesting to watch them play.
The city is superinspiring and relaxed. The greatest thing about berlin is its liberalism which makes a lot of things happen.

A Photo Shooting

I get a job as set designer for a photography campaign. A photo series is shot for a (female) hunters’ calendar. The concept is to make catwalks in nature, where the hunters get watched by stuffed animals. It is a huge production. We are around 15 people on the set.
The hunters are dressed in beautiful clothes by a fashion designer. The style is somewhere between the Habsburg Empire and Fellini. We shoot on various locations near the Ötscher in Lower Austria, on a mountain at 1800m altitude, by a waterfall in Styria and at Neusiedler See.
In two trucks we transport around 200 stuffed animals from bears and deer to birds. The whole setup of carrying around dead animals is rather bizarre and also interesting.
The photos turn out to be beautiful and surreal.

Mallorca

I am invited to Mallorca to attend a friend’s wedding in Port d’Andratx near La Palma. The wedding takes place in a little church at the seaside. Then we are taken to the port of La Palma and have a three hours cruise on an old wooden ship.

In the evening we are invited to a beautiful finca in the mountains where the wedding party takes place.

The next days we rent a car and drive around the island. We discover beautiful landscapes of mountains, rocks, forests and a deep blue sea. I begin to understand why that many people either go on holidays to Mallorca or buy a house there. The climate is extremely pleasant, too.

Sinaia

is a mountain resort in the middle range Karpats in Romania. We visit the Peles Castle, the summer residence of King Karl I., a member of the German Hohenzollern family. Karl I. was made the first king of Romania (1877-1914) after 400 years of Turkish occupation. He was called 1866 by the Romanians to unite the provinces of Wallachia and Moldova and then was declared king of Romania in 1877 after an independance war against the Ottoman Empire.

On the way to the castle we pass a blind bear which is held as a tourist attraction (want a picture?). We have lunch in a restaurant where we meet the Lover Cat. A Siamese cat approaches Ioana. She sits down on the floor in front of Ioana and watches her for two minutes, which is probably the time she needs to figure somebody out. Then she jumps onto her lap. Ioana caresses her and the Lover Cat slowly makes her way up towards Ioana's neck. She then starts to lick it and does so three times.

Fat Boy Slim

We go to the Romanian seaside to a place near Constanta. Fat Boy Slim plays a dj-set in a resort called Mamaia. Some 10,000 people are expected to come.
He starts his set with the vocals of "Praise You" mixed with a music and beat different from the original. The gig takes place at the beach. The stage is huge, it has video projections and dancers.
Norman Cook grins like a Cheshire cat during his set. I very much suppose that he is on pills. He sometimes takes a break from dj-ing and sits down on the edge of the stage smiling at his audience.

Karaoke at Winnie's Bar

Winnie's Bar is a great Karaoke joint on Bayard St (Chinatown). We have our farewell party from the ISCP NY. The guests love to sing and some of the them are great at it. There is a 50ish Italian guy with a tight shirt stretching over his big belly. He just looks like a mafia guy from Little Italy.
During certain songs the tension in the place rises pretty high, people laugh, sing and scream.