mysterioso

"Future analysis with new technology may shed more light on the mystery of the moving rocks at the Racetrack Playa of Death Valley; however no matter how much is determined about the moving rocks, their beauty and magic will always be impressive and mysterious to those who travel the treacherous gravel roads to visit the incredible dried lake bed."

experimenta

Utopia Now looks like fun... I must go back and see it without champagne goggles on and so many hobnobbing people in front of the art. That was nice in its own way, of course, and there were showbags with little jars of chutney in them! and a view of a very full river after the big storm.

I met the maker of a work called International Dance Party I had already enjoyed at the kunstlerhaus bethanien in Berlin and I was bummed that I wasn't there earlier to see him and a French artist secretly swap name-tags to get interviewed by the ABC about their works. But I did catch them afterwards discussing in admiring terms the interviews they had given as each other (complete with an explanation for the journalist as to why a German artist had a French accent).

I didn't get to check out the exhibition version of You Were In My Dream by clever Van Sowerwine and Isobel Knowles but will be sure to when I go back.

Also wondering whether to try to catch Momoyo Torimitsu's robot businessman crawling along Collins Street this evening.

rain rain

Stacks of rain made the ceiling leak, even though there is another apartment above ours. Right above the bed, the dripping soaked through the mattress before I came in and found it.

Broken roof, to add to the list of broken things.

I went for a ride in the Tiergarten and the air was full of white fluff

Some species of tree there is going crazy with Spring, sending out something like cotton wool or fairyfloss to hang on the breeze, catch the sun and gather thick on the water.

Somebody told me a story about bumblebees that I'd like to remember

Recent viewing

- I went to see 'Vorspannkino', an exhibition of cinema opening titles at KW Berlin

Interesting exhibition design, 4 'kinos' set up in the cinema. In one, you walked through a curtain to what felt like the front 2 rows of the upper level of a cinema, looking across at a screen in the distance. It felt as though the floor below should be full of aisles and seats, but when you looked over the edge you saw only a big empty hall... the effect was somehow surreal. Another room had projections on the wall and you never knew which part of the wall would show the next sequence. So, in the dark, people moved silently around the room as each new sequence started. Another drew viewers along a trail of suspended screens...

I emerged after this into the sun. The building opposite KW has a facade is clad in scaffolding, some kind of work being done. This day, sitting up in the scaffolding, there was a man playing the cello and a girl filming him on the ground. A crowd of passersby had gathered to listen, sitting in the street. Two women got up and started to waltz in the road.

It felt like, after what I had just seen, this was the movie proper starting.

- Had a Volspark Hasenheide Picnic dinner and a movie night at Nora's. Saw Naissance des Piuevres, a French film, with German subtitles. Lucky for us, it is not so dialogue heavy. I liked it. The strange sport of synchronised swimming, as practiced by bored suburban/ small city teens. One thing that stood out was that the film often avoids establishing and long shots. Closeups and underwater shots detach the sport from the overall purpose it has and emphasise its surreal side. Then this is in contrast with a world of teens, bottled up and bored and harbouring secret crushes on each other, in a drab stretch of suburbia we never really see the shape of. This draws the viewer in, I think, to the limited perspective and subjective world of the film's main characters.

Lost Love

I lost the love of my life, Hanz Fritz. He is 52 and I am so lonley now, I sit at home all day and Pet my kitty - kat. I know no german and he spoke german. Hanz does not speak english and he is blind. If you have seen a blind old german man name Hanz, please contact me. I saw him in the bakery 20 years ago, that was the last time. I hope he still remebers me, my name is Joe Stal. Oh where is my Hanz?

(Somebody's ad in the Lost and Found section, Berlin craigslist)