Oh my head. Half the day is lost in a haze where I balance on the fringe of a migraine. Particular to the right eye, the usual remedy is to lie down and rest for some time. Instead of this, circumstances force me to be active all day, albeit in a half-real state. Finally recovered in the evening for a dinner with Pia at Lily and Kari-Hans’ place. It was great to really have some time and meet Lily, who was one of the participants in the Eight Dialogues project. Earlier in the day, I am first at the MediaBase lab and then a bus ride with Pia up to UIAH for lunch and an afternoon of presentations at Media Lab. I finally was able to hand-deliver a print to Philip — the one of he and his two kids in a grocery store in Helsinki that I took in 1995.
There were a number of interesting Media Lab projects presented. Now, the reason for the aching head was lack of sleep which in turn was directly related to attending a sumptuous dinner party at Johanna’s flat the evening before. Visa and Eva were there along with Johanna’s sister and four other friends. Mmmmmmmm. Starting out in her kitchen at 1900 and ending up nine hours later leaving a club after a couple hours of dancing … The full moon is always a good excuse for excess. It has been a long time since I was really dancing much at all, and although it was only a disco, not live, it was fun, well, because it was with friends! And these two Swedish gurls … hmmm, but that’s another story. Good thing Eva was chaperoning.
The second day of the workshop, after a strong beginning with a lot of information, software seems to close down the openings. Tapio’s new/old bike appears at MediaBase, thanks to Kati, as wheels really help to get around town. I am exhausted by the condition of my back. I do go swimming, but cannot do much of a workout, and instead spend time in the sauna, enjoying that traditional Finnish luxury (well, not a luxury but an essential element of daily life). I contrast that in my mind with the Icelandic hot water, which, to be sure, is a rather new custom. Immersion in the heat of being. In this travelog, I find that I have little will to move my observations to much more than very arbitrary points of view, something like my photographic work to date. This attitude stems from the fatigue that generates from my broken back. The constant muscular pain and nerve stimulation drains me. I am deconstructing my life to discover why I suffer this ailment, but can find no answers. There are sensual circles that I cannot escape, monaural chants in both ears, eyes closed, but open. Tapio and Susanna are in Amsterdam for a few days, so I am now staying at their place until Tapio returns on Friday. Desdemona, their cat, craves company, and, of course, food. I listen to a RinneRadio CD and Deutsche Welle radio and the small noises of the street as the slow twiLight comes together in my tired head. I read the latest issue of SIKSI, and wonder at the usual-ness and unsurprising-ness of the Nordic Art World, like the rest of the Art World. The Hierarchy. Built and Built and Built. Torn by time and fashion and politics and its own dogs of war. Built and Built and Built. And the texts that reinforce all this. The texts that cumulatively are not dialogue, but are monologues of silent disposition.
Well. I did make a foray into the high desert wilderness near Sycamore Canyon a couple days ago. Not far, however. Too much virtuality has left me stunned. Too much driving especially, that oh-so-virtual reality where, like with digital media, we are insulated by the silicon dioxide / amorphous silica, that of windows rather than IC chips … I figured once, some years ago, that I have spent about 500 24-hour days in a car, traveling about 50 mph, since I arrived in this in-car-nation, so to speak (ohhh, now there’s a pun for you…). But as it is ingrained in my existence, I must say that I do enjoy cruising across/through the western landscape in a vehicle. The unrolling vistas, the feelings of Power, more “to be grokked”
Today I wake up with a back ache. Probably because of my heavy swimming workout yesterday afternoon, and the bed in which I am sleeping. I end up lying around all day, dabbling in The Great Books of the Western World set that my father has kept on the shelf for years. St. Augustine, Dante, Locke, Faraday, Goethe. And so on. Small fragments seem useful, but the entire selection is so skewed to an accepted idea of history that overall they become somewhat useless to the world now.
Looking to deepest solitudes beneath my feet I walk in thoughtfulness along the summit’s verge Relinquishing my chariot of clouds that bore Me gently over land and sea through smiling days Slowly, not scattering, it drifts away from me. Off to the east the mass strains, rolling on and on; The eye strains after it, admiring and amazed… — Goethe
Somehow, I can only grasp the poetics of language, and not the meanings or deductions that are daily constructed from this tool of words and letters that we use in every hour. I wonder what thought would be without language? I met with Hope at LANKaster.com, a local ISP about internet teaching and consulting. It looks like my services are needed in this town.
Time spins more and more. Now here as visiting artist at FSU, courtesy of net-worker Paul Rutkovsky. Last night Robert, one of the faculty, had organized a group moonLight canoe trip on the Wacissa River, about 20 miles from Tallahassee. The moon was full, and there were about 20 folks, mostly students, two to a canoe, some with flashLights. We put in with a guide, Fred, at a small parking lot on the river and slowly paddled down the river a few miles to a side-stream that ended up in a 50-meter-wide underwater sink-hole which was the source of the stream. Sink-holes are earth-surface phenomena — where the ground waters under a place have eaten holes in the rock — in this case, limestone, which is very soluble in water — and occasionally these holes are so large that the very ground above them collapses and caves in … Leaving holes that can be many tens of meters across and sometimes hundreds of meters deep. There are instances where houses have been swallowed whole by one of these beasts… In the case of the sink-hole on the river, it is fully immersed and actually is a spring source with a large volume of water welling up from the hole which is connected through underground channels to a lake about ten miles away. The water is about 20°C (70°F), chilly by local standards, but in the middle of the circular pool, someone had moored a small floating platform. Being the mad fool that I am, I had to go swimming — despite not having a swim suit or towel. I tried to talk some of the others into it, but they were too shy … ach, these Amurikans … So, I hopped out of the canoe and undressed on the platform and dove in. Moonburn! OOoooooo. Cold, but totally refreshing! Magic. All tiredness left my body.
It reminded me of a personal motto that I used to frequently quote to my friends — along the lines of:
I’ll do anything twice, three times if I like it.
I mean, trying something new once will never give a real taste of the undertaking, so twice at least allows the possibility to saturate the self. And, hey, if it is fun, than that third time, well … and I don’t mean that I necessarily stop at number three … But maybe that would be an interesting path to follow, stopping — so that one does not become too attached to the material process of pleasure gratification… It is marvelous, the power of the natural world. Despite all the mediation that is a daily fact of the world that I inhabit, despite the critique of the romantic vision of the natural world, despite all that, there is still massive healing power within the synergistic interaction with the physical world … My body and my eyes were totally relaxed by the water and the moonlit darkness. I cannot explain these things otherwise than to attribute them to the power of that natural physical force. Winter is miles away from my thoughts, here in this tropical locale. Kati sends me a fragment of E. E. Cummings, the English poet. She’s in Finland, so it has heavier meaning for her (and will for me when I head back north in a few days)…
autumn has gone: will winter never come?
o come, terrible anonymity; enfold phantom me with the murdering minus of cold – open this ghost with millinery knives of wind scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and gently (very whiteness:absolute peace, never imaginable mystery) descend
I get chills, sitting here in the Mac Lab in the Visual Arts Department. memories of Finnish winter… Air conditioning. It’s warm outside, and here my eyes are burning from the dry chill of conditioning and the blast of charged electrons in my face. Where are we in this mediation?
Well, after hacking for 28 hours in 36, I am beat now … I was surviving on Rilke on the long (and delayed) flight over from NYC to Helsinki. And I was happy to recall this one favorite from the magnificent collection translated by Stephen Mitchell…
We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke
So it goes, I always say. Marvelous translation, and incredible, the crescendo it reaches, the roiling descriptive power, the shifting focus and awareness. I know this torso. I photographed it in a museum in Kässel some years back, and it figured in the Apocalyptic Dream work as one of the centerpiece icons. Then I stumble on this translation just a few years ago. Shaking. I am staying in one of the oldest reconstructed buildings on Suomenlinna, the old fortress island. It was a quarters for Russian or Swedish officers — which or both I don’t know as I haven’t really examined the history of the place. The entire island is on the short list of World Heritage Sites, and, indeed, it is an incredible place, I’ve seen nothing like it in all my imperial travels … The walls of the building I am in are over a meter thick, and it has huge windows that overlook part of the bastion and the dry dock that is full of old wooden boats. Other windows look out onto the courtyard where there is a monument to one of the Swedish monarchs. There are massive ceramic tile furnaces in each room, standing 12 feet high with gleaming white columns to each side. I have been struggling intensively to make a comeback from the recent removal of my main website from the server I was using in Iceland. I have no idea what happened, but whatever the case, I have to reconstruct my site as best I can very soon … I am getting more and more attention for the breadth and personal outlook of the site, but … Now the whole thing is gone except for this travelog work and some fragments. I only have access to three free Megabytes on this server, so I can’t reconstruct everything on it anyway. I wish I had one cheap/free server somewhere with ten or twenty megs on it … Wait a minute, I am having a deja vu at the moment. Sitting here at 01:22 in the morning, on the island, after two hard days work. Typing these very words. I had a dream about this. Somewhere, sometime ago. The feeling of trying to do things but not being able to eliminate the CHAOS from life. And almost wanting to succumb to it. Well, it isn’t really chaos, it is just the conditions of living itself, nothing that can or should be eliminated from living, for it is life itself. I cannot allow the failure of these machines, of my techniques deter me from a full enjoyment and engagement in life.
Life is what’s happening when you’re busy making other plans … — John Lennon
Funny, poignant? and True! He speaks and sings true things often, in spirit.
Another day comes and goes, and still I have not cleared up my head. I had an eye examination this morning, but have to wait to get new lenses for a week or so. I ended up with another migraine all afternoon, lying around on the living room floor. And I was troubled that I have not spent significant time outdoors here. I need to do a hike or something. There is plenty of spectacular landscape here, and before I head back into the miasma of the East Coast and Europe, I should imbibe … I wish I had a partner here to do things with.
Another day lost in a haze. I was having computer problems, but I seem to have solved them. Actually, it was just a stupid oversight that cost me $18.00 to set right. I forgot that my scanner needed a SCSI terminator on it, and so I left that back east with all my other junk. I had to go out and buy another one. I am consuming media here, helplessly. I am unable to avoid turning on the teevee to watch the shameless hucksterism of the Olympics and the breathless and paranoid 24-HOUR BOMBING SPECIAL BRIEFING UPDATE COVERAGE, not to mention the absolutely disgusting back-patting tunnel-vision attitude about the TWA 800 incident. I know that Dan would be sick with the sensationalism. And the advertising. The actual amount of time spent on the Olympic competition. Maybe 20% of the time. The complex way of mixing the visuals down — distorting of time and space … The heavy nationalistic slant on the coverage is shocking. Snide comments by the announcers — for example, during the opening ceremonies, the announcers began to discuss the political situation in China when that countries athletes came marching out. And so on. Actually I hardly want to discuss this, rather leave it as simply another example of The Spectacle.
In other parts of the world there are people who are born, live, and die in a perpetual crowd. To be always visible — to live in a swarm of eyes — a special expression must develop. Face coated with clay. The murmuring rises and falls While they divide up among themselves the sky, the shadows, the sand grains. — Tomas Tranströmer
Okay, a late evening following a long day of mixed activities. Another huge storm circled the area this afternoon. Driving back to JAH’s place in Chino Valley (I’m dog-sitting for a week: Tigger and Tadley), there were drifts of half-inch (1+ cm) hailstones on the sides of the road. I was glad I wasn’t around for that. And that was about two hours after the storm passed through the area. It is, in local lingo, the Monsoon season, and although these storms don’t have the temporal duration of a tropical monsoon, they definitely make up for it in momentary fury … The Lightning was striking within a few hundred meters repeatedly as I drove through an edge of the storm on the way into Prescott earlier in the day. Fascinating! And the land needs the rain. Looks like the forest fire on Granite Mountain is dying out from a combination of rain and natural firebreaks. They left for a weeks vacation in Utah and Colorado. Fishing and camping and one day for competing with two of their Australian Sheepdogs in a regional dog show. They just started training and showing the Aussies earlier this year. I was telling Joy this story in an email letter: JAH picked me up at lunch so I could get her car and start dog-sitting at her place. We went by another (Aussie) trainers house to pick up a travel kennel for one of her dogs. I picked up the kennel to take it to the car and both the women kinda moved away saying something. I didn’t pay attention to their reaction until I saw from the corner of my eye on the garage floor a modest-sized tarantula. The other trainer said something and then stepped on it. Faugh. I felt a ripple of karma, kind of a shaking of space-time equilibrium, but said nothing. Looking at the destroyed creature for a split second before getting out of the place with the kennel. I thought, there’s a person who has no sense of the value of life, what a gross thing to do so off hand … Not that I am innocent of karmic crimes, but at this stage of life, I would not step on or otherwise kill a tarantula. I mean, what for? Why kill them? Lordy. Anyway.
Bastille Day. I was going to meet with Randy and Amy, Stefan and Ellen, and Kevin up at Storm King, the great outdoor sculpture park on the Hudson in Westchester County north of The City, but I have not finished the photographic work that I had wanted to. Among other disturbances to my week of printing, my eyes have been hurting quite a bit. Photographic printing is not an easy task, and I am out of shape, if that is possible. Nothing like standing up ten to twelve hours at a stretch, handling large sheets of wet paper. I love the process! Thanks Willy for letting me use your lab! Hurricane Bertha passed through the area yesterday bringing about eight hours of heavy rain and some winds. Other than that, the weather has been very mild, almost chilly for this time of year. I am stressed about the future. Plans circulate, opportunities flash in front of me, indecision makes me shudder, printing seems to slog along, concentration wavers, and eyes give out. Telephone calls to different people, friends. Still the mediated communication. I have not called Loki yet.
… The air touches you with a hand of lead. All your promises stand behind you surrounded by your vows. … — Markus Lupartz
La frase magica de hoy es: “Everything is true as long as you believe it…”
migraine headache for much of the day. This is not explained completely by a glass of wine late in the evening last night. Nor a lack of sleep. Nor the late drive to the airport and back. I haven’t had an eye examine in seven years, and I have a suspicion that this might be part of the problem, along with damaged lenses caused when Loki knocked my glasses onto the tile floor of the locker room at the pool in Dalvík.
… Was that today I kissed you goodbye and sped away in a yellow cab? It rained all day today in New York. the cathartic yet intensely melancholic type of rain that comes. Was it yesterday the Polaroid snapshots in my hand were taken?. … — Vincent Katz
Alyssa and I have breakfast at the famous Five Star Diner on Rt. 202. A favorite place of mine especially after I have been imbibing all sorts of travel-food and foreign breakfasts. I order a stack of blueberry pancakes, but can hardly enjoy them for my pounding head and watering eyes. I go home — well, where exactly IS home anymore? Where my hat is hung? Where my bags spring open, revealing a portable computer, important papers, video tape and slides (for lecturing), a portable tape deck, tapes, CD’s, camera, film — enough techno crap to … If I was only carrying my notebook and clothes, I would be a Lighter Man. Anyway, the issue of home base is all the more intense these days when I find I can’t really get anything done. I need a place, a base.
Loki is up early because he is sleeping on the bed in the kitchen and there are only Light curtains on the windows. I have something of a rare hangover (timburmann, I think, in Icelandic, for wood-head). Shortly after breakfast we head down to the swimming pool with Rebecca Rún, Loki’s island playmate who lives next door. The pool doesn’t open until an hour later because the electricity is off somewhere. Friends Hoffí and Kristín arrive on the 1330 ferry, so MB goes to meet them. I stay swimming with the kids. Late in the evening, around midnight, after a big dinner of leg-of-lamb I head to the north end of the island on a too-small borrowed mountain bike that I know will give me sore thighs tomorrow. There is a dirt road all the way to the Light house that stands on the highest point of the island about two-thirds of the way north.
The north half of the island is private property, but MB called earlier in the day and got permission for me to ride to the end.
In general, visitors are discouraged, mainly to protect the vast number of breeding birds. The island has the largest single breeding population of arctic terns in Europe. These are incredibly fascinating and beautiful birds. I’m not an ornithologist or avian freak, but I can watch the terns for hours. It is unbelievable that they fly all the way from South African and Antarctic waters or so, each spring — although, watching them, you understand immediately that they represent a rare peak of efficiency and grace-in-motion. The entire ride I am accompanied by terns and other birds who swirl up from the heather and grass to run relay with me for one reason or another, all making their own characteristic sounds. I was wishing I had brought fresh batteries for my tape deck … The sounds are varied and mostly piercing, and in the case of the tern, they can actually presage a physical attack from the birds, whose sharply tapered beaks are potent weapons. Other birds on the island are Oystercatchers, Whimbrels, Curlews, Snipes (yes there is such a thing!), Woodcocks, Ptarmigans, Godwits, and Skuas. Birds comprise the vast majority of living things in Iceland, I both ignore them and concentrate on them. Although I don’t startle any Eiders, there are plenty of them on the island as well — usually seen segregated in the coastal waters — the brown females with a passel of chicks, and the black and white males swimming in a group. I recall once, out hiking on the east side of the island, I saw one of the score or so known White-Tailed eagles in the country doing some serious aerial acrobatics as it was being attacked by a group of terns.
I was last at the north end of the island four years ago, in the very spot with Nick, Chris, Debra, Chris, Stefan, and MB, who was, at that time, almost eight months pregnant with Loki.
On that night it was rather clear, or at least we got to see the sun make its transit, grazing the surface of the ocean direct to the north of us. Tonight, there is a gray pall hanging over the ocean, actually touching it just a few kilometers off shore, so the sun is not seen, except indirectly in the constant shifting of the Light omnipresent. I stay at the end of the island for a couple hours, enjoying the solitude, knowing this will be as far as I get to isolation in the coming months. The Solstice has taken on special psychic meaning for me since I moved to Iceland, and the Summer Solstice is actually a heavy time in that it is the moment when the days begin to contract until they vanish into the blue-blackness of the Arctic winter which is a complete immersion. Total immersion in a substance that is anti-Light, a Light that pulls one deeply into the earth from the other hemisphere, the one that is facing the Light … Somehow, although the landscape here is apparently vast and constantly receding from the eye, there is another aspect to it, that of closeness. When the wind dies down, and often wind still is characteristic of the midsummer sunsets, the surrounding space contracts until it appears as a room, a geometrically bounded space converging on the eye. It is knowable in a Cartesian way, within the span of the body. This is exactly what happens where I am restlessly pacing. The edge of the cliff 200 feet down to the ocean appears as clear as the corner of a room. The grassy hummock behind me is etched with a clarity that makes it sensually two dimensional. The sky is just … there. Waterfalls, where streams fall down the cliffs that line the outer few kilometers of the fjord, can be heard clearly though they are at least 6 kilometers away. They are … there. Distance is relative or just doesn’t seem to factor in perception.
Time flies in the mind-eye of this quasi-adult. In Reykjavík for some days staying with Jón and Helga, Loki’s grandparents. Loki and I make some visits to friends and family. And now Akureyri on Eyjafjördur in the north of Iceland. Akureyri is a small fishing town of totaling around 15,000 inhabitants. By a quirk of history, it is the third largest Icelandic-speaking town, behind Reykjavík and, of all places, Winnipeg, Canada, where many Icelanders emigrated in the last one hundred years. It is only a short distance south of the Arctic Circle, and at this time of year, midnight is only recognizable by a slight dimming of Light. If you climb up the sides of the glacial u-shaped valley a few hundred meters above the town and look directly north at “night”, you can see the midnight sun crossing the mouth of the fjörd. At the moment, there are clouds covering the mountains, and it is a steamy 8C (50F) or so. It is possible to get snow anytime in the summer, although in general the weather here is better — more calm and clear — that in the rest of the country, but better is a relative term … Loki is playing with three-year-old Sóley, his downstairs neighbor. Heading out to the exhibition at the Art Museum of Akureyri by the Berlin artist, Karola Schlegelmilch, who I met a couple years ago. She is an experimental film-maker, and has an installation of photographic and video works here. Val and Niels also showed up late, for dessert.
posted
place: en route Järfälla, Sweden - Turku - Pori, Finland
Thankfully, this morning, Martin decided to drive me all the way to the Silja terminal, about 30 minutes away from Järfälla in Stockholm proper. It was raining heavily, and that would have been an added hassle to make the two train connections and a 500 meter walk to the terminal. At this moment, I am on the Silja Lines MS EUROPA, heading east across the Baltic which can barely be seen out the windows in a brilliant dense fog. I am happy that the boat has a few electric plugs available for me to use with this machine, as my battery only lasts about twenty minutes these days. (Somewhere in the background the World Cup in hockey, between the Czech Republic and Canada is playing itself into a frenzy). Strange energy running on the ship. Finns all around, of course, along with a real variety of folks. A tribe of freaks from the UK with dreads a meter long and jack boots taped together. Not a band, just a tribe heading god knows where. In the huge cocktail bar trimmed in granite, with laser Lights and all, a Finnish honky-tonk/tango band just started up, people are dancing! It’s early in the afternoon. The ship is moving through dense fog, and I have a bit of a feeling that I am in a TwiLight Zone. Downstairs is a shopping mall and, among other consumptive enticements, a MickieDees at which, to be truthful, I will probably have a Big Mac at later. The tango dancing is getting more frenzied, lemme outta here! The traveler, in this age, at least when moving by the techno means of the day, often must surrender him/herself completely to technology. Boarding a boat, a plane, a train, bus, u-bahn, subway, tram, and so on, at that moment, biological life is given over to an Other that is usually faceless and who, him/herself, navigates the space-time of movement in a way that is more or less mediated by technology. What of traveling with the old ways. Walking? I did have that walk from the Barkaby train station back to Martin and Selma’s place two nights ago, as the last train arrives after the last bus. Seven kilometers or so. Puts the reality of sore feet into the technological equation. (fog horn blows). After arriving at the port of Turku I make a quick transfer to the train to Tampere. The train ride puts me into a state of floating awareness. Perhaps this is because when on a train, either one sits so that all things are falling away or so that all things converge. Or, floating because I was on a boat for ten hours. Whatever, I suddenly was aware that I had re-entered the Arctic Realm again. Not sure where/when the dividing line was passed over, but it had been crossed. Perhaps it was the visual experience of watching the twiLight come to the land. I write:
Darkness is blooming from deep under the earth. There is not yet much of it to be seen, but it is there. Driven deep by the reversal of energies that comes each year. It starts at the base of the biggest fir trees, waiting for the right moment when no one, no thing is watching. Creeping upward at the instant one turns away from meditating on the possibility that it may get dark — at some distant future moment which might be an eternity or no time at all. There are times when any thought of darkness becomes impossible. Absolutely beyond the sensual capacity of a human be-ing (and only other things are left to know what will eventually happen, not humans). But, now, darkness is entering the houses, slipping up the trunks of the trees, and spreading through the loam of needles that receives in silence below the green canopy darkening above.
Changing trains:
Tampere
Darkness has consumed the railroad tracks, but the sky has not lost its Light. The Darkness will eventually consume, devour all things touching the earth — phone poles, even the high-strung wires will be turned to total blackness. But the sky will not succumb. Here in this Place. (I feel that I am in a place, a place new to me. A foreign place. A strange place. But a comfortable place.) I am a traveler. I travel. The artificial Lights outside the train window are being sucked into the Darkness. Man produces Light, or, perhaps, only concentrates it in one place or another. But the Darkness consumes it. (Still the sky is Light).
Vammala
My eyes are so tired that I cannot see what I write when the train is moving. My eyes start to jitter and shake. But now we slow to the station at Karkku. In this place, Darkness has almost won. The trunk Light of a car Lights hands and torsos loading luggage, but then all Light is consumed. The sky is now at risk. At 10:45 in the evening, five degrees south of the Arctic Circle.
Harjavalta
Perhaps the conductor of the train and I are the only ones in existence now, except the others who wait. The conductors wife, she waits. Perhaps watching teevee. Programs played by people who no longer exist or maybe never existed. She watches and waits. His children are already asleep, they have entered the Darkness of Night.
Pori, finally, Kaisu there at the station. Kauniita unia (Sweet dreams…)!
Well, let’s see. Long day today. Started out at the Breaking Eyes show at the new space Fargfabriken. Tapio Mäkela of MUU Media and Jeremy Welsh were curators of the show which included works by Andy Best & Merja Pustinen, Mats Hjelm, Simo Alitalo, Marita Liulia, and Palle Torsson among the eleven works by fourteen artists. They had a PC connected to the internet, so I was, finally, able to at least check my mail, and fortunately there was nothing of great importance… I also took a detour to Galleri Index which had a small show of photographic works by Larry Clark, Collier Schorr, and Søren Martinsen. Clark’s work was from the Teenage Lust in Tulsa (is that the right title?) era, while the two other photographers were showing recent works. On the way back through the Old Town, I took a detour down along the docks where there were a number of warships docked. One, the HMS Gävle, was open for the public viewing, so I made the circuit of the deck, looking at the weaponry of the King, and wondering why these objects of war still draw me to their clean functional forms. Is it a mute feeling of satisfaction that the horrors of war have not sullied the tidiness of technology?
Objects change Objects have limits Objects have meaning Objects exist in Time Objects carry content Objects exist in Space Objects have form Objects are found Objects are (not) recognized Objects are watched Objects are worshiped Objects are held Objects are described Objects are used Objects are manipulated Objects are bought Objects are sold Objects are coveted Objects are represented Objects are synthesized Objects are consumed Objects are destroyed Objects are transformed Objects are remembered and forgotten (Human Beings are Objects)
I then walked up to Galerie Roger Björkholmen, where there is an exhibition of work by Olof Glemme (the other half of the photo department faculty at Konstfack), I happened to run in to Mats Bróden, one of the founders of ArtNode (finally!). We made arrangements to meet tomorrow in the afternoon at their office. I also gave Bettina Pehrsson at Gallerie Nordenhake a call to see if there was anything else I should check out in Stockholm before I was to leave on Sunday. She suggested that we meet at the Royal Academy tomorrow evening for a performance by the students of German performance artist, Ulli (I have to update his name, sorry), who was in Stockholm at the Academy leading a ten-day performance class. Okay. and Annika Eriksson at Galleri Andréhn-Schiptjenko has a video installation of a performance by the Telecom Brass Orchestra.
I finally arrive, by train, bus, and foot, at Björn’s place around ten in the morning. Completely exhausted, especially as his flat is a fifth-floor walk-up, but a good breakfast and good conversation revived me. Björn has just gotten an arts grant from his home country, Sweden, to continue work on a multimedia opera in collaboration with a number of colleagues. We spent the morning catching up on things and looking at his new computer equipment (enough toys to keep Bach busy). Finally, as the weather was a truly stunning sunny 25°C (75°F), we were compelled to go out and walk around the city. The Danes, being typical Scandinavians, were in various states of undress, and enjoying themselves in the summery weather — it is as though there had been no spring, rather a direct transition from winter to summer. On the City Hall Plaza we stopped in the sun for a beer, joining a delightful elderly woman, probably in her mid-eighties, Elly Justesen, a stranger to us, at a table. She told us how happy she was that spring had arrived, as she could get out and work on her golf handicap (which stood at an impressive 36 at the moment)! more “long day”
posted
place: en route Vienna, Austria - Würzburg - Hamburg, Germany
I leave from the Wien Westbahnhof early, around eight, hoping that the train will be on time for the change in Nurnberg. It isn’t. I miss my connection to Hamburg by fifteen minutes, and in a vain attempt, go on to Wurzburg to see if it will catch up. No chance. So, what to do. I decide to hang in Würzburg until early evening and take the ICE train to Hamburg, arriving at 2300, then wait for the first early morning train to Copenhagen at 0235. I decide this based in the reputation Hamburg has as a night city with lots of strange characters wandering around. Nothing like the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof in the middle of the night. More pleasant and safe than the Port Authority Terminal in NYC, but … So, the afternoon in quiet Würzburg is spent drinking cappuccino, writing, and wandering around the town. Hamburg, on the other hand, was all action, which I tried to avoid. I arrived too late on the 280 kph ICE train to buy more water and had to repeatedly ask the guy at the McDonalds for ice in a cup to refill my water supply for the night before they closed at 0100. By that time I was sick and tired of sitting and writing and so sat on the platform and waited for a train which was coming from Paris; one that ended up being 90 minutes late. Nothing like the suspended state of being one enters after midnight waiting for a train in a foreign land. And the scenes that play themselves out before tired mind and eye. Two Spanish immigrants get into a fight on the next platform. Undercover cops, who I had seen previously and wondered who the hell they were, dressed so silly, appeared in seconds to intercede. When the train finally arrived, it was crowded and there were no first class compartments at all, so I ended up in a 2nd class smoking cabin with a couple kids who were heading for Lübeck. I was able to open the windows and stretch out alone after Lübeck, only to be awakened by the Police doing passport checks (who says there are open borders?) before the train got on the boat to Denmark. I guess I got two hours sleep all told. So much for easy travel and the Deutsch Bahn (German State Railroad) reputation for timeliness. Although, to be fair, the trains originated in other countries — and it makes me wonder how the EU (European Union) can survive.
A busy day today, with lots of possibilities. I had lunch with Heidi Grundmann of Kunstradio, a program of ORF, Austrian National Radio. She is the director of this innovative program which has a regular 40-minute weekly broadcast of a variety of art radio programming. Most of the things you will hear on Kunstradio are works made especially for radio, although the program also has an Internet presence and has initiated a number of cross-media projects like Horizontal Radio and a new project Rivers and Bridges. This latter project looks interesting, and I have been thinking today of possible things to do as a participant. As my current web site is subtitled a bridge from eye to soul, there seem to be some common threads, most especially in the networking I have been involved with for the past ten years. Heidi and her husband, Bob Adrian X are pioneers in applied technology in experimental arts and networking, and both of them have been working in this field since at least the early 70’s. After spending a couple hours with Heidi and her assistants (Elizabeth Zimmermann and August Black, an American who, coincidentally, is on leave as a student at Syracuse University), I went to the EA Generali Foundation to see a video exhibition. And then I got online FOR FREE from the library of the Technical University again. Tomorrow I will use the facilities to do some web work, transferring files like this one from my PowerBook to the PC’s they have there and thence to my web site in Iceland.
What else? I sit in the middle of the Arctic Night (The middle always remains the same, no matter how long the night is). Waiting for sleep to fill my head, looking at a CRT screen. Eyes are getting crippled by the stress of focusing. Goodnight.
The next day late morning. All is gray. When I develop film here I notice the lack of contrast, especially after Colorado. The Light is different. I have taken to capitalizing the first letter of Light, and I have also quit using the Lord’s name in vain you know? Two changes from my previous life. You can look forward to wonderful things like this happening when you finish graduate school.
The work you sent arrived a bit worse for wear, and surely to the perplexity of the customs/postal people. They keep a close monitor on my post here, almost all packages are checked… A bit disturbing, but also amusing… more “Letter to Dan (RIP)”
