Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Angkor Photo Festival

I am very pleased that I am given the opportunity to exhibit my images on the Khmer Boxers in the course of this year's Angkor Photo Festival. Please check the website:

www.angkorphotofestival.com

A sense of failure...

This blog entry has again no photographs, maybe I'll find some in due course. It also might be very cryptic for some, my friends will understand, though.

Monday marked a big defeat and failure for me. Not that I did not see it coming and not that I cannot and will not be able to live with the end result. I was in fact contemplating - no, that is too weak a word - I was working towards the very same objective and outcome. However, by my own volition and in my own timing.

But it feels - of course -different whether you control your destiny or whether someone else makes the decision for you, however desirable the outcome for you.

In particular if you get ambushed by the people who impose their decision on you and let you walk into this blindly and unexpectedly. You end up with a sense of defeat, powerlessness, vulnerability and even awkwardness. And of course, a sense of failure. But ultimately I will get over this.

Well, probably I could have guessed it - I had a very real and intense dream during the night from Sunday to Monday. I was dreaming that I felt a very potent threat. The only escape drove me to slide down a brightly-lit tube which was filled with blueish/greenish water. As I slid down the tube, it was filling with ever more water and I started to drown before I reached the exit of the tube. In panic, I had to force myself to wake up and leave this nightmare. I continued to fall in and out of this nightmare during that night.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

I fell in love...

... with a chair. This week I stayed at the King George II Hotel in Athens and in my room there was this lovely chair, made by Italian manufacturer Cornelio Cappellini. Even if I sound blasé like Tyler Brûlé now, I just adore this piece of furniture.















Sunday, October 15, 2006

But is it art?

I went to the Tate Modern this weekend to look at the latest installation in the Turbine Hall (the seventh since the inception of these installations in the main hall). It is a tube construction by German artist Carsten Höller. It consists of five steel tubes, each of which allows people to slide down inside the tubes, wrapped in some sort of cloth. One of the five tubes extends from the top of the Turbine Hall all the way down to the main hall floor.

Naturally this attracted quite a few people (and of course a lot of children) to visit the Tate. And it seemed that not only the children enjoyed this kind of entertainment. I just asked myself did they come for the art or the entertainment? And how different is this tube construction (aka art) from the ones found at fun fairs?





















The Kiosk, Petersstrasse

The series of weekly evening events at the Kiosk Petersstrasse is a congenial combination of a predominantly gay event at a down to earth location, typically frequented by blue-collar patrons.
 
The brainchild of Jan and Matthias constitutes as such as an antidote to the over-styled and overstated überchic post-glamorous events, which have become the mainstay of gay clubbing fare in the Madonna-age.
 
The events also epitomize in some way the extension of the East London grime culture or the East Berlin music and dance events at some former industrial facilities and warehouses.  
 
The resulting images stem from the final event before this year’s winter break on October 5th.

A fuller version has been posted as a slideshow on youtube.



















Saturday, October 14, 2006

Kindereien...

Last weekend at my brother's place...












Monday, October 02, 2006

Piccadilly Line