"arm, aber sexy."

Touch Down

2008-12-19T20:18:00.017+01:00

A asked me to go to a Christmas dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with a large crowd of Irish or Irish affiliated Berlin dwellers. The night started well when, walking down the road, a woman asked me directions in German. I understood what she said. She turned out to be one of the many people invited to the same dinner. She was German and spoke English with an almost accurate north Dublin accent.

After about an hour of chat, eating and drinking I looked again at the woman to the left of C. It was J who I hadn't seen in thirteen years. She said she had two kids and the eldest was in kindergarten learning German and adopting an authentic Berliner accent. Her German was pigeon, she said. I told her that I had made a video about the pub we had painted in Italy in '95. "Why?", she asked.

We played 'Secret Santa' and I got a bag of thyme from Greece. J got the photograph that I had brought, taken in Autumn in the gardens of Schloss Charlottenberg. It's all warm light and coloured foliage, a reminder that the grey half light will lift.

For the past two weeks the light across Berlin at midday seems not to have reached above 3200 Degrees Kelvin, rather than the standard daylight of 5600 Degrees Kelvin. Degrees Kelvin is a measurement of colour temperature used in shooting video, with 3200 being equivalent to tungsten light, and 5600 being a standard preset on video cameras for shooting in daylight.

The final night started with an exhibition opening, where they were screening a Stan Brakage film of his first child being born, 'Window, Water, Baby Moving'. There were lots of shots of his hands and his face, towering over everything.

R tried to use the toilet at the gallery and on the way found a man having a fit on the floor. She alerted the gallerist, and order was eventually restored until we set off to go to the Commonwealth Bar. As R turned towards us, the small sculpture made from little wooden blocks standing on a plinth, crashed to the floor breaking into it's constituent parts. I could see the remnants of wood glue on some of the blocks edges. "Why hadn't they used dowel?", I thought. Everyone looked at the floor and no one knew how it happened. R was worried it was her and I suggested we leave immediately. Cocktails in the Commonwealth were beckoning.

Landed in Luton Airport. About 25 minutes into the bus journey to London I saw some graffiti under a bridge. It was written in child like script with yellow paint and said: "a tea set".

Old Things

2008-12-16T22:02:00.013+01:00

M suggested I go to the 'Museum of Small Things'. 'Museum der Dinge' means 'Museum of Things' and yes most of them are small. The Werkbundarchiv (Work Federation Archive) is incorporated into this collection. Founded in 1907 in Munich, it was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The organisation was support by the state and it's purpose was to integrate traditional german craft with industrial mass-production techniques, in an effort to put German design and production on the map. Werkbund was closed by the Nazi party but was re-established after the war.

Incorporated into the eclectic hoard of mass produced objects from the past 100 years, was a contemporary art exhibition. One of the works, was a series of small circular speakers placed in a few of the glass cabinets, each one sounding out a different audio track. Peels of laughter came from the cabinet of strange electrical devices which appeared to be for diagnosis and self healing.

I met A in a bar near the Volksbühne. I love that place. The last time I was in it, it was to go to the actor's canteen with S. We got shouted at by the small pointy featured man in the booth at the actors' entrance. After a spot of drinking and thespian watching we tried to sneak out of an alternative exit to avoid pointy man. Feeling like intrepid adventurers we traveled through door after door and up and down staircases through the empty wing, only to arrive back were we began. Pointy man said nothing to us when we left.

This time there was a youth theatre group rehearsing a mock nativity play in the small neat glass pavillion to the right of Volksbühne. Girls in tutus rolled around in hay with boys wearing top hats to the sound of a show tune played by a costumed girl on electronic keyboard.

I walked back to the studio and saw that the front door of the building at the corner of the street was ajar. There was the sound of experimental jazz piano. A man wearing a hat came to the door an invited me in. The room was a mixture between a work space, a living room and a store room. He was about sixty and so was his friend, a long red haired skinny rocker wearing leather trousers and a studded wrist band. There was a pretty woman with dreadlocks who looked like she was in her twenties. They offered me a seat and a cigarette. After the woman complained about speaking english the skinny one apologised for his, saying he was from the GDR and he was forced to learn Russian.

"German Aboriginals", she said.
She was drunk and I wondered why she was drunk with these two men. Hat man asked me if I was a tourist. I told him I was an artist.
"Berlin is very 20th century, it's absolutely defined and swamped by it.
Though I suppose there are not many European cities that are very 21st century...", I said.
"That is bullshit", she laughed to the hat man.

The rocker pulled down his trousers and I expertly averted my eyes so have no idea if he flashed his cock or not. I picked up a digital print of a black and white photograph of a woman and put it into my bag. On my way out he handed me a flyer. It was a photocopy of a article about his photographic work. Peter Woelek was a chronicler of GDR life. The majority of his published photographs were taken in Leipzig in the 70's.

These words

2008-12-11T16:56:00.010+01:00

After recording N's dulcet tones R asked me to have a look at a text which had been translated from German to English for a dubbing session they had booked on Friday. It was for a video promoting a training DVD called "New Life Balance". I thought the subject would be a self help video for the over worked and over paid, combining Buddhism, a bit of Yoga and a touch of L'Oreal commercial. But no. "Balance" literally means "Balance" and the video outlines a treatment, primarily for the elderly, to help them to improve their balance and move better. This involves learning to read chunks of constantly moving text off a screen.

The English translation of the German speeches to camera was so bad that it took myself and N over two hours to turn into something resembling comprehensible. N wasn't impressed by the formality of the Austrian presenter saying even to a German he'd come across as uptight. The time I spent working on the translation, meant that the money I owed for the voice over record was canceled out. I'm all in favour of this barter economy.

S and I wandered from Christmas market to Christmas market, supping Glühwein all the way. One of the markets incorporated fake street facades dotted with small theater sets of old fashioned living room interiors. Actors in early 20th century costume inhabited these spaces and acted out short melodramas alongside the stall fronts. The centre of the market had a large wooden spinning tower with painted characters inside, like large toy soldiers, all made from wood. S didn't fancy a spin on the big wheel as it was so cold. After a while, my thighs went numb.

Mash up

2008-12-05T23:31:00.016+01:00

After a trip to the cinema to see an Argentinian film called 'Liverpool', I went to a moderately expensive restaurant serving Italian cuisine with a German twist. I sat beside a young German man and a small young Korean Canadian woman who sounded like H. She wasn't happy to have someone in close proximity and covered her face with her hand. She got over it as I busied myself unpacking the €19 book on K's films that I'd bought the day before. It's called "I was the good and he was the bad and the ugly". I promptly dripped olive oil on some of the pages. I began reading "Atmosphere" one of the film scripts. The couple's conversation resumed. He was telling her that there were only 7 days each month when she was fertile. There was a pause.

"Oh", she said.
"You have beautiful eyes", he said.
"Is it a documentary or a memory?", I read.
"OK, now I'm thinking of a capital city in Europe beginning with L", she said.
"That's easy, I've lived there", he said.
"He kissed me between my legs below my hair, above any feeling you could ever imagine", I read.
"No, not Luxembourg. You know 'The Simpsons'? Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa? Well the first syllable in this city's name is the same as Lisa's", she said.
"Mmm", he said.
"Then he fucked me very, very slowly and my heartbeats went very, very fast", I read.
"And the second syllable? Well, that is the word for candy in French", she said.
"You have to give me more clues", he said.
"I loved him", I read.
"Really? Ok, the first syllable, "lis" from Lisa and the second? It's bon of course!" , she said.
"Lisbon is not the capital of Portugal. The capital of Portugal is Porto", he said.
"Then he turned my body and fucked me from behind and...", I read.
"Ok, yeah. But Lisbon is a bigger city than Porto", she said.
"But it's not the capital", he said.
"...and I put my fingers on my cunt."
"Uh oh. Hey, you want to sex me up?"
"You want to sex ME up?
"No, sex is enough", I read.

They giggled, then got up to go. I looked up at them. He was wearing a bright yellow hoody which had bold white helvetica text on the front. It said: "The aim of decision is to define space". He smiled at me. They paid and left. The waitress served me my dinner of sausage, pork and polenta.

Beating the Chill

2008-12-04T13:19:00.002+01:00

Goes around comes around

2008-11-29T17:59:00.012+01:00

Back on Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse in 'Sale E Tabacchi', stood a black monolith with the number 28. Sale E Tabacchi is a beautiful restaurant and cafe recommended by T. After a while a woman came out of one of the doors of the monolith and had a conversation with the four people at the table beside me. I could see that there were two seats inside facing each other with a table in between. I could also see a pair of headphone draped over the back of one of the seats.

It turned out to be a Christian Boltanski project. He is collecting heartbeats. The black box was designed by "some architect" and the heart beat recordings were being taken by a lovely young German woman who kept getting mixed up between English and French. I was surprised by how valve like my heart sounded. I asked her about the number 28. She told me she felt too embarrassed to press the button to change the number displayed, a device to call the next participant, as it made a loud ringing sound that would resonate around the restaurant.

I could hear the conversation between the well dressed middle aged German man and his younger American male friend at the table beside mine. They were speculating about the black box. I interjected as I was getting up to leave, telling them it was a Christian Boltanski project.
"He's an arsehole."
"He is a very nice guy."
"Is he?"
"Yes. His art is shit but he's a really nice guy."
"All art is shit. There is only one artist over the past century who was any good my dear."
"Who's that?"
"Picasso."
"And Duchamp? And Beuys?"
"Beuys was a fucking lunatic."
"I agree about Duchamp. And of course Kurt Schwitters."
"He is shit. I have three Schwitters."
"Sell them."
"No, I wouldn't sell them if I were you."
"Do you want some sex?"
"No, I get enough thanks. Bye."
"Bye."

What the fuck are you laughing at?

2008-11-29T17:56:00.002+01:00

Missing

2008-11-25T13:38:00.007+01:00

There are always a couple of no shows when you hold auditions so it wasn't a surprise to me when one of this mornings didn't make it. Communication with him had been patchy. Had I told him to call me when he got here as I have no bell? In one email he changed his audition time, which isn't how it works, so I emailed him back with another time that didn't clash with anyone elses. He didn't reply. An hour and half after I the time I suggested to him, I got a text:
"Fucking shit! You sent me over here and I had to find your room and then you are not here."
A couple of emails and text were then exchanged. S suggested that I shouldn't have been so reactionary.
"I take great offense to being addressed in this way"
"I think its even a no budget art project, otherwise you would handle with the actors more professionell and wouldnt be such a mimose."

Mimose is German for Mimosa, a genus of tropical and very delicate shrubs, herbs and trees. Mimosa Hostilis is a plant that contains large levels of the powerful hallucinogen Dimethyltryptamine in its roots. Dimethyltryptamine is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and other tissues of humans, and other mammals. Several speculative hypotheses suggest that it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of dreaming and near-death experiences. In medical tests, patients whose bodies produce an excess of Dimethyltryptamine or have ingested Dimethyltryptamine, have reported contact with 'other beings'. These are alien like, insectoid or reptilian in nature often set in highly advanced technological environments. Subjects reported being 'carried', 'probed', 'tested', 'manipulated', 'dismembered', 'taught', 'loved' and even 'raped' by these 'beings'.

Similar to a Bucks Fizz, a 'Mimosa' is a cocktail drink made from one part champagne and two parts chilled orange juice.

Fun and games

2008-11-24T15:44:00.007+01:00

J and P told me about a shop completely dedicated to table tennis, somewhere in Prenzlauer Berg. This would be good to find, so I could take advantage of the public table tennis tables that are in the many mini parks and squares around here. I wonder when these were installed? On reflection, trying to play table tennis on your own is nuts, so forget it.

Last night, while waiting for a train, a middle aged middle class German couple chatted with me and a couple of twenty something English boys who had just arrived in Berlin on holiday.
"Have you called for the train yet?", the German man teased the boys.
After waiting for a long time in the cold we got on a train. As a group we spread ourselves across a number of seats as out of four sets of two double seats, we took up three. The fourth was occupied by a young man and his little white dog which had a thing about licking people's earlobes, especially ladies earlobes.
Turned out, the middle aged couple live near me.
"Go to the Wall Museum on Bernauer Strasse", they suggested to the boys.
The young man with the little white dog turned around and smiled.
"I live in Wedding", he said.
Reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, he deftly flicked out, his switchblade. This was the kind of gesture that I suspect to those in the know, would prove that he does indeed live in Wedding. The blood drained from one of the English boy's faces. The dog man folded the blade back down and put it back in his pocket.
"What's Wedding like?" I asked.
"Not good. I have two children." He shrugged.
"I'd say it's cheap to live there at least".
"Yes, and my house in my castle".
The train stopped at the next station. He got out. So did the German couple. The train sat in the station for a couple of minutes. Then it reversed it's direction, taking me and the English boys back to where we came from.

Carpet art

2008-11-15T17:40:00.013+01:00

D came over and suggested a Stasi Museum excursion.
"Why not".

Well for one, it's difficult to find if you do not know what you are looking for. It's situated in 'Haus 1' within a complex of unremarkable high rises in Lichtenberg; a complete Stasi Village, which apparently once had a total staff of 25,000. One of the buildings, which is currently concealed by scaffold covered in heavy duty plastic sheeting, looks like it has bronze mirrored windows similar to those in the former Palast der Republik. If this hadn't been under wraps we would have identified the block immediately as former GDR and therefore close to, if not the, destination. There are no street signs for the Stasi Museum.

I went into Morgen Rot, a vegetarian bar near the studio. I was searching for 'the longest latte' that J had told me were the pinnacle of artist residencies. Instead I found a rooibos. They were playing Grace Jones' new album and it was the first time I heard it right through. I thought about the guy who runs the rehearsal studios across the road from my place in London and how chuffed he was telling me he was now playing bass in her band. This two degrees of separation prompted me to read a Sunday newspaper interview with her. She said how disgusted she was with the current permission seeking culture in New York, compared to it's hedonistic heyday in the late 70's and 80's.

"But in saying that, you should just do what you want to do".
At a lecture last night at e-flux, which is the site of the former united nations plaza the speaker discussed possibilities for the 'agency of contemporary art' using three ideas, 'pandemonium', 'amusement' and 'secrecy'. There was no conclusion. I imagined Z spitting out a retort about the ineffectual maxims of liberalism and thought I must finish that book of his that I bought before coming here.

Please

2008-11-15T17:36:00.001+01:00

Thanks

2008-11-05T18:02:00.007+01:00

Well done America.

And a huge thanks to C, who saved the angst, repetitive strain and tears caused by a funding application from being utterly futile.

I found the franks doing a search on Obama at bellepoq.wordpress.com/tag/obama/

Whether you ask or not

2008-11-03T00:00:00.014+01:00

A woman who is in the process of doing a Phd proposal about Berlin as a centre for cultural production suggested to me in an email that I was "integrated into the Berlin art scene." She has never met me and has no idea what I've been invited to.

A man called Marco in Charlottenberg fixed my radio mic's for free. This makes up for last weeks tripod trauma. It's also a relief as rental in not cheap but it is surprisingly easy in comparison to renting video kit in London.

Last Friday night, with an abundance of artists in town, we did the classic, troupe marches for over an hour across town for the right restaurant. K started feeling responsible and he took a call from another K who told him that he'd previously presided over the same scenario in Oslo. We eventually stopped and ate pizza at a place on Auguststrasse which was like being dropped into an Irish wedding - although you wouldn't normally eat pizza at an Irish wedding. As the place filled up it reminded me of music nights at The Macbeth when R and J ran the Hoxton Distillery above it.

Now all the Art Fairs have packed up and the cold is moving in. I bought a bike for €80 called Hercules off a Canadian woman who is moving back home.

Auf Wiedersehen

2008-10-30T16:54:00.002+01:00

I just want a new tripod

2008-10-28T00:24:00.006+01:00

As I walked out of the studio building and onto the street, I noticed a man grappling with a large American flag whilst in a phone box. Another man held the phone box door open, whilst another filmed proceedings with a small dv camera. A woman was crouched down close to the guy with the camera, watching and commenting. As soon as I passed them they folded up the flag and walked away.

Finding video equipment here is proving harder than I thought.
“Well if you don’t stock it, could you recommend somewhere that does?”
“Where? In Berlin? No!”

The Art Fairs have moved here for this week and the openings begin this Wednesday. After checking out Preview Art Fair’s website it was confirmed that this blog is post zeitgeist. On the front page is an excerpt from a documentary film from 2007 which is also called "Berlin – arm aber sexy".

This 1 min 27 second piece shows a series of speeded up beautifully controlled tracking and panning shots of Preview’s Preview 2007. These are followed by some real-time static and crane shots which include details of some art works, shots of people looking unnerved by being filmed and a young child in it’s buggie. The sound track accompanying these images is an electronic piece that repeats the vocal sample “love, love, yeah”.

Isn't that the performance artist who often dresses up like a bookie, taking direction on a shoot for a commercial?

2008-10-23T13:47:00.007+02:00

Home is where the work is

2008-10-23T00:08:00.004+02:00

I was back in London for a load of meet, greet, meet and meet.

“Did you study history?”
“Me? No.”
“There is so much history in your work, that your works will be relevant to many people for a long time”.
“I didn’t make them to last forever”.
“What?”

Art Fairs, Performances, Lectures, Openings, Dinners, Exhibitions, Conversations. Snippets from the week: "selling out, missing artwork, the moustached one, generosity, inspiring, brand, collector, marathon, we have met before, duo, your card, important political work, glorious, guest pass, fixity, glue, protect," and "arrogant."

I met a woman at the opening of ‘Fake ID’, the London exhibition that I have a video work in. She told me her friend stayed in my current Berlin residency studio three years ago, and that her time there was miserable cold and friendless. I assured her I wasn’t.

At a post opening dinner a man called Mad stared at my breasts every time we spoke. It was so extreme I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. Then there was the one about the artist who beat the shit out of his brother at the opening of his exhibition in a church near the Freize Art Fair location. He was exhibiting a huge wax Lucifer covered in fairy lights.

l'ultimo pasto all'aperto di quest 'anno

2008-10-22T23:44:00.004+02:00

A closer look

2008-10-17T01:09:00.006+02:00

Met C at Box Gallery at Kreusberg, an elegant space with an equally elegant show. The post opening excursion was Italian food at a restaurant at the corner of the street. I sat across from a press photographer. His mannerisms reminded me of südlichen Deutsch J, whom I haven’t seen since Documenta.
“Oh, so you are Irish. You sound normal to me.”
We discussed which Scottish accents we consider the most impenetrable and going on drinking parties with journalists. S thought his calzone had meat in it. The photographer did warn him.
“It’s folded, how will you know what you are eating?”.

The appearance of a professional video camera with tripod, shotgun mic and headphones has stopped people in their tracks. They politely ask if it's okay to pass in front of the camera lens. While I was operating the camera, a passing family asked me to take their photograph. This struck me as odd as I presumed I looked as busy as I was.

Last week in the park I was out numbered by photographers with medium format cameras. It was a beautiful bright warm day and one photographer had turned his attention to the pond. Then he spotted me on the bridge. With our lenses pointed towards each other from a considerable distance a photo/filming stand off ensued which lasted quite a while. A passing amateur also took part, sauntering down to where the photographer was standing to grab a few a snaps of me as I stood beside my camera laughing.

S gave me the address of a second hand bike shop where she bought one for €150. She said she had sold it back to him four weeks later for €100 which she considered to be a good deal.
“No, no, we have nothing for under €230”, he said to me dismissively.
I took the €230 bike on a test run around the heavy populated cobbled square. It seemed to be a nice bike from what I could tell, though I don’t know much about this kind of thing.

A glance to the left

2008-10-09T18:25:00.000+02:00

Palaces and prisons

2008-10-06T15:53:00.011+02:00

S made me a Palace of Butter. This was prior to visiting the gardens of Schloss Charlottenburg. There was an impressive range of different kinds of park benches and a very tall obelisk style contemporary art sculpture there. The sculpture was carved at the base on all sides in four different languages. The text said something about how March 11 could be a significant day.

On 11 March in Stuttgart in 1976, a second post-mortem was conducted on the body of Ulrike Meinhof’s at the request of her sister Weinke Meinhof and the Baader-Meinhof defence lawyers. The presiding examiner, Dr. Werner Janssen, issued a statement after the examination: "...Frau Meinhof suffered death by hanging. The findings of the examination so far available give no grounds for suspecting any extraneous factors.”

‘Der Baader Meinhof Komplex’, a 2008 film about the Baader-Meinhof Gang, has been in cinemas across Germany since September 25th. It’s release has been controversial here and there have been mixed reviews. Unsurprisingly in a film that spans almost ten years of German history there’s a lot of information, a multitude of characters and story twists. The film makes clear that Gudrun Esslin was the most powerful and ruthless member of the group and I almost felt sorry for her that her name was not immortalised in the gang’s title rather than her boyfriend Andres Baader and the journalist Ulrike Meinhof.

In an interview in June 2007, Mia Bloom, assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, answered questions relating to women involved in global terrorism in which she stated: “There are several examples of women's leadership in such organizations. The most famous is Ulrike Meinhoff after whom the Baader-Meinhoff group was named. But the actual leader of the group was named Gudrun Esslin.”

In 2002 German director Christopher Roth entered his film ‘Baader’ into competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Critics of the film stated that Andres Baader and Gudrun Esslin were given a hip, Bonnie and Clyde style treatment. The festival audience were said to be totally astonished by the directors decision to stage Baader’s death as a sensational and heroic one by hail of bullets, when in reality he had committed suicide in a German prison cell in 1977.

Bottle disposal

2008-10-06T14:18:00.008+02:00

Went to M’s (that’s M no. 3) opening at Autocenter. The gallery is above a Lidl in Friedrichshain and for what I have come to expect from a non commercial space, it’s huge. M said that one of the guys who runs it also runs a local bar and he puts all his profits into running the gallery.

The large corridor and balcony outside the exhibition area were good for hanging around. There were two guys serving beer from a deli style counter, complete with glass front. One of them, a skinny thirty something, had a thin moustache and a short curly mullet.
“Thank you”, I said when he handed me two bottles of beer.
“Your welcome”, he laughed.
On reflection he was probably laughing because I had paid him the required €5 for the two bottles of beer. They were Becks beers.

Becks beer is the most popular beer at openings in Berlin. It is a brand of the brewery Brauerei Beck & Co which is based in the north German city of Bremen. Becks are former sponsors of Becks Futures, the Contemporary Art Prize organised by the ICA which ran from 2000 until 2006 in the UK. Before Beck’s Futures, Beck's had sponsored several exhibitions of contemporary art in Britain by providing free beer.

Some openings start and end much later than the usual UK gallery schedule. This often cuts out an en-masse trip to the local bar or pub. It also means the gallery has to have a duel function on opening night, as both as exhibition space and party room. I find that the lighting conditions are not often conducive to both.

The following night I met M(no.4) at the opening of a group show he was in at 'The Forgotten Bar Project' in Kreuzberg. This show was the last in a series of one day exhibitions that had been running at the bar since July. The space was long thin corridor made up of two parts, these being divided by three steps up to the second half at the back. The bar took up one half of the front space. Being a bar, there was a broad selection of bottled beers for €2.50 each. Everyone sat outside and the majority of the clientele were the artists in the show and their friends. The bar owner looked exhausted.

Bier Halle on Gordon Street in Glasgow’s city centre is a Pizza restaurant. The direct translation of Bier Halle from German to English is Beer Hall. On the one occasion I was there, Bier Halle had run out of most of the beers listed on it's extensive drinks menu. The pizza was very popular and that night they were offering two pizza’s for the price of one. I was dining alone. The Bier Halle’s manager, an irregularly pierced, bald Glaswegian man, and I argued. This was because I attempted to give my second pizza to a complete stranger who had just sat down across from me in the restaurant.

I met a Greek Artist who said he could not sleep the night before as he had been so inspired by the sight of M’s show at Autocenter. When I told him I was doing a residency in Berlin he said:
“At the Bethanien?”. This is a common question.

The Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, runs an established International Studio Programme from it’s premises in Kreuzberg. Funding for the residencies is provided by a number of International organisations who support artists from Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Canada, Spain, Hungary and Belgium. There are currently no British or Irish based organisations working with the Bethanien.

Observing the map

2008-09-26T17:44:00.015+02:00

One half of Kochstrasse is now called Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse which immediately makes the tourist map I picked up at the airport last week out of date.

On 11 April 1968, Rudi-Dutschke, a prominent activist in the left-wing German student movement, was shot in the head and chest by a young man named Josef Bachmann. It has been written that Bachmann was heavily influenced by a campaign against Dutschke by the mass media, particularily by the newspaper Bild-Zeitung who ran the headline "Stop Dutschke now!". Some students held the newspaper responsible, sparking riots and the siege of Bild’s facilities across the country.

Throughout most of its history, Bild’s head office has been based in Hamburg, but in March 2008 Bild moved its headquarters to Berlin. The new Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse runs from the offices of the left-wing daily newspaper ‘Die Tageszeitung’ to the base of a soaring glass high-rise which houses the new Bild offices.

I was speed walking down a street.
Suddenly a tall young guy ran up beside me. He was holding a microphone attached to a hard disc recorder. He said something incomprehensable to me as he struggled to keep up. I laughed.
“I can’t say, ‘I can’t speak German’, properly in German yet!”.
“What do you do here?”
“I am an Artist”.
“How do you find the mood in Berlin?”
“Relaxed.”
“It’s better than London?”
“It’s different.”
He told me I’d be on a radio station that evening then skipped across the road and went into a building.

The show that M and C both recommended to me separately is at number Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26 (formerly Kochstrasse 60) MK Galerie Berlin. This is not to be confused with Merry Karnowsky Gallery on Torstrasse. The gang of galleries at Rudi-Dutschke 26 are similar to the other local clusters at Zimmer Strasse and Lindenstasse. Every space had used the same floor paint that I’d used to paint the studio floor this week. I have paint finish envy. Two thin coats on a porous floor will not give you the showroom quality finish that these spaces have.

I visited the knicky knacky photography shop near where I’m staying. The man who owns it asked me where I’d come from, then told me how lucky I was to live in the same country as Paul McCartney. I told him he should visit Liverpool, full of strong swimmers from Ireland. He was interested in a zebra crossing near Abbey Road Studios. I told him this was in London.

When I told T the title of this blog she said “No! That’s that awful quote from the Berlin Mayor’s speech.”

It turns out that T’s auntie used to babysit the Johnson kids when their family lived in Brussels. She couldn’t tell us much about Boris as a child, with him being the eldest and keeping himself to himself. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is the eldest of the four children of Stanley Johnson, a former Conservative MEP and employee of the European Commission and World Bank, and the painter Charlotte Fawcett.

A change in temperature

2008-09-21T19:26:00.004+02:00

“Forty two keelomeeters”, he said. We both smiled and nodded then smiled again. He was late and explaining that the distance he’d had to travel meant being any earlier was impossible. At least that’s what I imagined he was saying.

The car was large, a six seater. The back seats pushed forward to make room for the large mirror I had been carrying. Later on, when stopped at traffic lights, he jumped out of the car. He went around the back and opened the boot to check if the mirror was still intact. It was.

Turkish Techno reverberated around the space. The bass lacked the umph to spread further than the car.
“Sie hören möchten diese?”.
”I don’t understand”, I said.
He turned the volume down then back up and I tapped my fingers on my knee to the beat.

A took us to our first opening this week, which is ironic as she doesn’t live here. She was obliged to go having travelled from London to place a box in front of a wall for the exhibition and we were most willing to accompany her. It was a large and tasteful group show at the Former State Mint.

The short description of the Former State Mint (no money, no more) on berlin.unlike.net (the definative city guide for the mobile generation) states:
“the former State Mint now hosts cultural events. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll find some good old Deutsch Marks tucked away in the wall cracks.”

A got a small blue plastic cable tie from the exhibition's organisers which entitled her to free drinks. The quantity of free drinks she got at any one time depended on the attractiveness of the member of staff she asked. The better looking, the bigger the quantity.

I don’t think M understood my joke about the explosion. I told him it immediately after he’d told me about the conversation he’d had with the two government workers in the restaurant. They had said to him how surprised they were that the studio group were going through official channels, applying for planning permission for their new gallery. He expressed pride in his gang’s anarchic reputation and so I thought he would enjoy the story about D telling me to contact him should I want to blow up the studio. M looked at me blankly. I quickly changed the subject saying that the portions of food served in restaurants in Berlin are as large as those served in any American city. M did not response.

A dark curly haired American woman on the train stared at me for a long time, then opened her bag, took out a notebook and pen and wrote something down. I didn’t blush. This was good because I then realised she was writing down information from the poster above my head.

B’s performance the following night was fun but I can’t imagine it translated being so Brit specific and full of accent. The gallery opens just three hours a week but they’ve got a decent window shopping facade.

I’d arranged to meet L there. She texted me saying she was wearing sliver shoes. I was wearing metallic boots but tempting as it was I didn’t enter into a game of text back, instead scouring the floor to find her. She said she had been looking for someone who looked Irish and that I wasn’t what she imagined.