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The Aquadom, at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin, is the largest cylindrical aquarium ever built. 900,000 liters of seawater, 2600 fish, and a glass-enclosed elevator that runs through the middle. Apparently, two full time divers are on staff to keep it going.
Maryam Jafri, Staged Archive (video still), 2008 [image courtesy of Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin]
Maryam Jafri, Staged Archive (video still), 2008 [image courtesy of Galerie Alexandra Saheb, Berlin]
Maryam Jafri's exhibition at Galerie Alexandra Saheb in Berlin (April 26 - June 13, 2008) took me by surprise. Jafri, a solid storyteller and a kind of shaman, works in the traditions of theater and sculpture: with heavily built sets, props and lighting.
Staged Archive seems to float between nonfiction and the surreal, finding a location solidly supported by personal narrative and experiences I would expect everyone shares, regardless of age, race or gender, although each of these categories is wrestled with in the work.
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM'S, Berlin]
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM'S, Berlin]
Adrian Sauer, Atelier (video still), 2008, 23:45 min., ed. 5+1 a.p. [image courtesy of KLEMM'S, Berlin]
Under the category of "this-is-not-what-it-seems-at-first-glance," Adrian Sauer's video installation, Atelier at Klemm's in Berlin, begs the audience to underestimate and then be surprised. As the video slowly circles the artist's studio, closer examination reveals that everything in the video is not real. All surfaces are computer processed and lack depth. The effect is beyond mere posterization and suggests the landscape is either computer modeled or Flash-vector traced from video: either way, a generous reward. The exhibition also includes several photographs of similarly created environments. Atelier closes June 21, 2008.
Peter Eisenman, Monument to the Holocast Survivors, 2004
Peter Eisenman, Monument to the Holocast Survivors, 2004
Perhaps the best piece of public art I've ever seen. As a visitor, you enter a grid of coffin-size monoliths that get increasingly deep (or said another way, the path descends into them). Once inside, people appear and disappear unpredictably.
The Berliner Dom Cathedral
The Bust of Queen Nefertiti, Altes Museum
[unrecorded item, presented extremely well] Altes Museum
Pergamonmuseum
The Market Gate of Miletus, Pergamonmuseum
Alte Nationalgalerie
Alte Nationalgalerie
Guggenheim Museum Berlin
Here's where we had dinner, pardon the shaky camera hand, we've been up for a while (just got off the plane from Dallas). In brief: oh my, Berlin is beautiful.
We're busy getting ready for our next project in Finland. This last several weeks we've been getting tools together and packing. We've got some pretty severe weight restrictions so it's taking some time. At some point in our travels we're gonna have to stick camera batteries in our pants pockets to make it.
At the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden:
Nam June Paik, Video Flag, 1985-1996
Mindy Shapero, The Infinite Truths of Flatterland (inside the black thing there remains everything, perpetually without motion), 2006
Juan Munoz, Last Conversation Piece, 1994-1995
Dan Steinhilber, Untitled, 2002, (paper-clad wire hangers)
At the National Air and Space Museum:
At the National Museum of Natural History:
We're currently doing some Spring cleaning, part of getting ready for our upcoming project in Finland. This week we're Ebaying old equipment: tools bought for projects years ago and never re-used.
We're also streamlining our project digital archives, focusing on projects completed before 2005 that have too many images taking up premium hard-drive space. Some projects have hundreds of images created to get the one or two images that would end up summarizing the project.
I don't want to throw anything away but I fear an untamed mountain of data more. It's also true that the more time goes by, the more we understand a project and can delete files reliably. Current projects have 1000s of images, but projects 8 years old seem to get edited down to less than 20 images [and in some cases less than 5].
It's like I remember things in my head. I have more memories of recent events and fewer memories of what it was like a while ago. It seems right to have fewer memories of older things.
Jacques Villeglé, Rue de Tolbiac, c'est normal, c'est normand, 1962, Ripped posters mounted on canvas, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Back in January 2005, before we wrote almost exclusively about art-related things, Murray wrote a blog post he jokingly titled "The Myth of Fast Metabolism" in which he complained about how his usually fast metabolism had failed him by allowing him to gain 5 pounds over the holidays.
It's a few dry-witted paragraphs that are about as far from sound dietetic advice as one could possibly get. He makes the entirely unscientific observation that "Unfortunately, fast metabolisms have a dark side: I gain weight just as fast as I lose it. " He also confesses that he's stopped exercising because he forgot to bring his exercise clothes on our trip.
This post, now well over three years old, is the number one reason people come visit our blog on Google searches. This post is currently listed third on a search for "fast metabolism," under other legitimate health-related sites. At times over the years, it's been first on the list.
Here's the thing about this post: it still gets comments. All. The. Time. What started with people vehemently correcting Murray's "analysis" of metabolism — "thats ridiculous, i have a super fast metabolism and do not gain weight." and "Debora, i completely agree with you sister. Don't ask that other dude [i.e., Murray] to add 1 + 1, he'll probably say the answer is 3." — has now become a place where people post their teary confessions about the struggles of living with high-speed body chemistry.
A normal person can go eating one meal a day. If I tried to do that I would be sick to my tummy crying in pain. If i [sic] go just a little to [sic] long with out eatting [sic] my body turns on my self and I swear starts to eat me.
i always had weight loss problem and in my case it is not good cause i am now a mum and sad to say im [sic] only 30 kg (66 lbs) and i cannot hold my child like the ordinary mums do...
my ribs and spine stick out, i have no chest, im [sic] too tall, square hips, all boney, no boyfriend... and people call me lucky.
Thank God I found this site. Now I dont [sic] feel so alone. People ask me if I'm bulimic and anorexic and I had to go through a family intervention!
Only one sly reader seems to get the irony:
Darn you Captain Matabo. You steer your ship of irony and wit into a sea of poor pathetic preachers drowning in their own myopic woe-is-me... Why must I lazily and rhetorically fall back into parallel structure. This is no soup opera. Why must I google you if you consume my life unless I just want to show you off. Oh it's a showdown between Captain Metabo and Calamity Vanity, I'd steak my life on it. I'm sure of it.
Bless you, Jon. You must have made good marks in reading critically.
our travels visualized on TravellersPoint.com
In seven weeks, we'll be in Turku, Finland, working on our next video project. Five weeks from now, we'll be Kökar, on the Åland archipelago, filming. Four weeks from now, we'll be exploring Hamburg with Murray's sister. In three weeks, it'll be Berlin.
Two weeks from now, I'll be in New Orleans on the 4th day of a cross-country road trip with a good friend and her three-year-old, en route from Providence to deliver the dog to my generous parents, who offered to keep him for the summer while Murray and I are in Europe.
In the span of the next seven weeks, I'm going to spend time in Boston; Providence; Baltimore; DC; Fredericksburg, VA; Asheville, NC; New Orleans; Houston; Dallas; London; Berlin; Bremen; Hamburg; Helsinki; Kökar; and Turku, Finland.
Forgive us if blogging is light for the next week or so as we finish up all the coordination needed to accomplish this journey. Once we're on our way, though, you can expect regular, daily updates.
