snow blossoms and stone circles

so, maybe living together in a space no bigger than our old lounge room, for the better part of three months, means we're starting to bleed together into the one single entity.
It is creepy, I want my own studio back and I am tired of living in one room. (I love you Kent!)

the above image is of two separate artworks we were working on, completely exclusively, 

lucy in the kitchen, me in the bedroom/lounge/dining room.

lucy saw what i was doing on her way to get the camera and spotted the irrefutable similarity.
I actually looked at Kent's drawing and yelled "THAT. IS. Fucking. WEIRD." - and went back into the kitchen (to get my drawing of course), while poor Kent sat there, defeated, thinking that I was just dissing his work. 
Poor lamb.

spooky huh!?

we went back to the bahnhof museum today - the big contemporary art gallery - to check out some land art.

land art, for the uninitiated, is art that takes 'the land/environment' as its main material or context.

the show was excellent. Really really.

i really wanted to go because there was going to be an installation of a work by this english dude called richard long.

he's most famous, at least in the ary farty scenes of the world, as a guy who walked a line.

in this one work, back in the hey-day of conceptual art, where it was all about the idea being more important than an object, anyway, he walked back and forth, in a straight line, on some nice english lawn.
(I think you will find Kent, that it was actually a field). shit, yeah it was.
he did it continuously until he wore a path into the grass. a simple, straight line.

he photographed it, as evidence of his process of walking.

kapow!  
(Kent does a high kick and a punch in the air.)

work of genius.

the work he was showing here was called 'berlin circle' and it's just a great big circle of stones.

i'm no doubt gonna sound like a nut, but the stone circle is magic.

actual magic.
Yeah it was pretty awesome. Pity we couldn't walk on it - then something magic might have happened.

 

it's made of slate, which may, in some way, contribute to its magic-ness. 

it is pretty much perfectly circular, which also may add to it.

but seriously, i could feel that thing, like vibrating.

like magnetism.

loved.

it.

turns out, there was also a few other stone circles/ovals, a couple of turf patches and a giant wall painting that he did using mud from the river avon in bristol, where he lives.

this mud circle was enormous too.

and was basically a giant finger painting.

the scale of these things were epic and monumental and contributing to them sort of washing over you, dwarfing your presence and enveloping your consciousness.
What Kent said. (I had a rather pathetic analysis to add, but I think it's best we leave those to the expert.)

i won't ramble on too much about it, but it was good stuff.

upstairs there was some other really good things too.

one great one was another simple kind of walking event.

the artist (who i can't recall just at the moment, sorry) walked in a triangular path through milan.

as he did so, he recorded everything he encountered.

in the gallery space, he exhibited a map, showing his walk, and the audio of his walk was playing through surround sound. simple, elegant, lovely.

Fantastico!

we also got to sit in the single best video art gallery. ever.

they kitted out a whole room exactly like a movie cinema.

plush seats, surround sound, massive screen.

so comfortable and so much more pleasurable to kick back and watch the art.
I confess, I usually am profoundly lazy when it comes to video works. I am sorry, but I am a restless soul, so sitting on  a bench to gaze at something that I feel could be conveyed to me in a still image, usually just doesn't cut it for me. 
As it was with this mini-cinema, the plushness of these chairs ensured I stayed in the room for MINUTES. 
This is a big step. I may or may not have had a doze. This is unimportant. 

What is important though, is that I enjoyed the work far more and spent time watching and listening, and it was great! Nancy Holt (possibly with Robert Smithson) had three pieces playing, and we saw one film based in a swamp/woods type getup (some nasty hand held camera work), with voice-overs. Think American Country ("Coount-reh!") Men, each in turn discussing "them scary sounds in them woods at naaaaght." 
A bit spooky, and very fantastic. In a cinema with that level of comfort, it was great to settle in and just listen - something that many sound pieces seem to miss. I have tried to find this work online, but to no avail - sorry!

most video art presentation is offal. just offal.

this setup arrangement has now set the standard for us.

then we took off for a scamper around freidrichshain.

this image above is from the main train station.

i've declared before that berlin is pretty ugly, in general, but i have to say that there's aspects of it that have been growing on me. this station, while all new and a bit sterile, is also massive and impressive and clean. it lets so much light in, and air, and on sunny spring days like today it really is quite something. we could also catch the odd glimpse of the reichstag and some interesting new developments along the river spree.
 

and then occasionally, there's an oddity like this one above.

check it out, it's basically a steel and glass cube, set gently on an old brick and mortar job.

luckily the american-led obsession with slapping logos on everything hasn't fully arrived yet and so most buildings can happily be just buildings instead of moonlighting as corporate sandwich-boards to blare symbols into our minds. but, on this occasion, there's an ugly little name planted on top, so, minus 5 points from slytherin.
(YES! Jameses, I can confirm that we have officially converted Kent!)

(ps - i say slytherin coz basf made a particular nasty gas for a particularly nasty purpose during the 30s and 40s.)

check this old duck out.

once a grand commy statement of a building, now crumbling to bits.

still, there's some sort of charm going on here with the ol' dame.
Is anybody else finding Kent's analogies of buildings and women a little creepy? 

here's some more of your typical berlin affair. wonderful.

we stumbled on this joint in freidrichshain. its part of a giant complex of old brick warehouses that run along by the train lines. some sections have been turned into nightclubs, some into studios, one we saw had nights of experimental theatre and many many more were empty and trashed.

there's definitely a sense of possibility still throbbing in the air around town.

we saw two separate groups of people constructing decking and pergolas for the presumably festive activities of the warmer months. if you had a group of mates, a small bit of cash and a handful of motivation, you could surely piece together some pretty awesome stuff here. seriously, it looks like if you've got enough spunk, you just need to tidy up one of these junky dives, slap some doors and windows in, put up a sign and away you go.

maybe i'm hopelessly romantic and naive... 

no wait... 

i am hopelessly romantic and naive, but it seems all so tantalisingly possible. there's a bit of flak going around about gentrification, much of it warranted, but still, there's acres of prime location and hectares of semi-constructed space just aching with potential.

anyway, talking about romantic and shit...

the trees are snowing blossoms!!!

it's true.

with the trees out and the flowers out and the birds chirping, everything looks so nice and pretty and alive.

it even smells amazing.

check it - here's a glimpse of the snowing blossoms:

omg, ok, this is a tree library.

It actually translated to 'bookforest' - if this isn't the most romantic and glorious thing 

in the world then I don't know what is!

there's free books in there! you put in books you wanna donate, you take out books you wanna read.

how. awesome.

ooh, and i think that might be a sarah james present in the bag lucy is holding. how exciting is that?! 

Kent! Stop spoiling the surprises! 

Oh! AND. this is an old brewery near us, we just stumbled on recently. it's quite a big complex, with a cinema in it, some theatres and some bars. really lovely space.  
We had a hearty wander in our district, in my inadvertent attempt to be lazy and walk to the nearest train station (10 minutes) instead of walking home (12 minutes.) This resulted in an evening stroll that lasted a good 2 hours, ending in us positively weeping to put our feet up. But oh so worth it for the fresh air and new discoveries.

Aaah - spring does that to you!