Touch Down

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

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

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

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