breakfast pönnukökur with Egill and Alva

qWe define aura as a unique phenomenon at a distance, however close it might be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon, or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you breathe in the aura of those mountains, of that branch. — Walter Benjamin

Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart with Mari and Mika

Trümmer sind an sich Zukunft. Weil alles, was ist, vergeht. Es gibt dieses wunderbare Kapitel bei Jesaja, in dem es heißt: Über euren Städten wird Gras wachsen. Dieser Spruch hat mich immer fasziniert, schon als Kind. Diese Poesie, die Tatsache, dass man beides zugleich sieht. Jesaja sieht die Stadt und die anderen Schichten darüber, das Gras und wieder eine Stadt, das Gras und wieder eine Stadt.

Rubble is the future. Because everything that is, passes. There is a wonderful chapter in Isaiah that says: grass will grow over your cities. This sentence has always fascinated me, even as a child. This poetry the fact that you see both things at the same time. Isaiah sees the city and the different layers over it, the grass, and then another city, the grass and then another city again. — Anselm Kiefer

I head on down to hear Andre Vida jam on saxophone at Wendel with Jodi. it’s smoky, cool, hot, beat, and groovin — check this redux audio out…

this is how the day started, he was awake and hanging out, then migrated into my arms, and suddenly he was snoring upside down. so, he ends up on the floor in the living room, snoozing until Papa klingles the door bell after a long search for breakfast Brüchen on this Unification Day holiday. so, a Unification baby — good planning! the afternoon is filled with visitors, babies, cakes, champagne, gifts, and song.

despite having a nasty sinus infection, well, manage to make it with Bill to one of Simon’s football matches in Brewster. the game is called for 30 minutes with an encroaching thunderstorm, but when that bypasses the area, the game continues. I hack, cough, spit, dribble, and sniff all the while.

overnight at Eric and Sylvia’s (aka Asteria) place

in Brooklyn after that nice share.dj evening at reboot in the City.

meet Trebor for lunch and coffee in Park Slope. hanging in a coffee house, cyber cafe. where hardly anyone is talking. this is the social venue of the time. wouldn’t have been this way five years, ten, twenty years ago. with Bob Marley playing non-stop on the sound system. and photographic portraits of old gypsy women on the walls. the guy across from me, in the cluster of couches full of typers gets up and leaves, leaving an ipod or iphone behind. a gal next to him in an overstuffed smoking chair gets up and runs after him. no one else looks up at the ripple fluttering of off energy. I smile at her when she returns to her seat and her computer. no more contact.

and the urban vibrato in the space from ankle to nose. along with hard pavement. I walked two miles from Eric’s down to Trebor’s. it always surprises me, the condition of the general infrastructure of the city. would it be better if there wasn’t a war going on?

helping Uncle Al get his image archive in order and safely backed-up. seeing histories of people. many of them gone. they were once lively teens, twenty-somethings, young parents. in the late 1930′s and 40′s. wondering how it was that he was using German (Agfa) films well into the 1940′s even during the war. here’s gran-daddy, John Malcolm Mackenzie at the Somerville house in 1938. the particular quality of the hand-developed film with very high silver content gives the images a special luminosity even in the digital scanned versions. contact printing these negatives on Azo #1 paper would be quite nice. but Kodak no longer manufactures that paper. time passes.

CocoBear, Nancy, Loki, Naners. Loki is not standing on a platform. he’s six-feet-two plus. at 14 years old going on 15. stringbean.

08 2007′, ’06 405

first-responders on the way home last night. on the way back from checking out the local sonic scene and to meet Shannon and Rick for their solo performances at LanFranchis, a (the!) local alternative space — reminded me very much of FishBon in Santa Barbara except folks were smoking. also met Katherine, a creative writing student at UTS. the performances were good with a decent 5.1 sound system. it would have been nice to do a mix like I did for leplacard in helsinki two weeks ago. here’s an ambient mix from the evening.

make it to Bondi this morning after long transport delays.

other notes on the antipodes: clouds (definitely the wrong word!) of black fruit bats the size of fat and dumpy seagulls drift (definitely do not fly!) in the late twiLight airs above the treetops. a … disturbing … sight. not for its natural curiosities, but for the way the beasts move — as though they are in a drunken haze of meditative zen tranquility while moving across a space of thick gaseous vortices, all lying at the bottom of the sea. and me looking upwards.

the next note: so far, while the National Art Museum has a permanent exhibition of Aboriginal Art, I have seen only two drunk Koori around Kings Cross — near the 20-meter-high Coke advertisement. enough said. maybe dumb idea along with this Colonial geometry but I would like to get a decent didje for working the breath when next in desert lands.

The whole world was asleep. Everything was quiet, nothing moved, nothing grew. The animals slept under the earth. One day the rainbow snake woke up and crawled to the surface of the earth. She pushed everything aside that was in her way. She wandered through the whole country and when she was tired she coiled up and slept. So she left her tracks. After she had been everywhere she went back and called the frogs. When they came out their tubby stomachs were full of water. The rainbow snake tickled them and the frogs laughed. The water poured out of their mouths and filled the tracks of the rainbow snake. That’s how rivers and lakes were created. Then grass and trees began to grow and the earth filled with life. — Koori creation story

more note: in the water. for the first time in surf for a long time. body at first not responding, that combined with the size of the breaks. a few minutes conversation with a beach guard who is out in the break herding folks away from a rip. he says it’s a hell of a first day to visit Bondi — they were pulling people out all day, jet skis crashing through the foam heading out beyond the breaks to check on surfers, and hovering choppers. sets get up to 3 meters, look like even more occasionally. it’s a workout to get through even the secondary shore breaks which are easily at a meter-and-a-half. noticed the surf report online is in feet. old timers guarantee that maybe? great to be out there, though. damn. but no room for error. no body surfing, just stroking between breaks, diving deep under the curlers, and staying out of the way of anything turbulent.

day two. Elénore catches her plane from Strasbourg, but gets tangled in security at Charles de Gaulle, missing her Helsinki flight and so I am left with a two-hour morning conference panel to anchor solo at the Goethe institute. presenting the context of the workshop and the paper that I contributed to the Pixelache publication. it goes well. although there are skeptics in the back row. not vocal, but disturbing the atmosphere by talking during much of the talk/discussion. they make no direct critique of the propositions nor contribute to the lively discussion. boring people who do that.

at another point, a bit later, someone who was to show up at placard in Kiasma isn’t able to come, so, with a little chunk of open time in my schedule I jump into the corner hot-seat and do a one-hour impromptu mix for a handful of headphone-donning folks. the sun streaming in the window, I have a good view of the Parliament building as a source of rock-solid and cubic inspiration.

Erik (aka Mr. Placard) runs the multichannel headphone mixers, the stream, and keeps an eye on the irc channel.

then, there’s Manu & Mukul along with Indigo, their young boy. hanging around waiting for the screening of their film Faceless in the Kiasma Theater.

I notice a cluster of Amurikans on the platform in AmDam Ceentral Station, and then at Osnabrück, and then Münster. turns out they are 80% of the Grateful-Dead-inspired band, Dark Star Orchestra. on tour. the other 20% lost.

meetings start up early and run all day and through the late evening. (will update this entry with more links shortly) — OKNO, Argos, FoAM, and so on…

Letters written with ink (bits) do not really exist qua letters. For the letters are but various forms to which meanings have been assigned through convention. What really and concretely exists is nothing but the ink. The existence of the letters is in truth no other than the existence of the ink which is the sole, unique reality that unfolds itself in many forms of self-modification. One has to cultivate, first of all, the eye to see the selfsame reality of ink in all letters, and then to see the letters as so many intrinsic modifications of the ink. — Brad Brace, Insatiable Abstraction Engine

finally meet Marc and Ruth of Furtherfield at the home of the HTTP gallery in northeast London. plenty of good gossip about the UK scene, some histories, making connections between events, names, and faces, and so on.

beds empty and so the party slowly ends, folks departing reluctantly from orbit around the Manor and each other. remarkable to participate in such a once-in-a-lifetime event. something bittersweet, not to return to the same time and place, ever, again. and while each Cartesian moment is never repeated, ever, there are some that more charged than others with the enlivened energy of life movement. the last three days were such times. an amazing constellation of people of all ages and sorts. and the constellation assembled by the Light and gravity of this one person. how that is. how that kind of dynamic evolves through a life lived in some completeness and open-heartedness. I make a long sonic redux of the four days…

made a series of group portraits as people departed the temporary manor-home. not catagoric, but it included a fair number of folks. still getting used to the Nikon, and becoming handicapped without bifocals. and cannot rely on the auto-focus device. but the eye enjoys the process.

food? leftovers did not include the main courses and deserts, all of which were delicious, thanks to Tanya (for directing the kitchen for dinner (for 45) on Friday — a fantastic chicken curry), and Duncan (dinner (for 75!) on Saturday — venison, mushroom gravy, gratin Dauphinoix, red cabbage, various green things, and truffle torte with raspberry sauce).

this entry will morph in the next days, I’m really behind in getting images and entries online, so…

definitely here now. the house grows to accommodate the arriving crowd as the day wears along. several children, a dog, and a wide variety of humans. I prep chicken for dinner under the direction of Tanya, along with Jane and Jez. a fine curry from all fresh ingredients in the outrageously stocked kitchen (stocked with the food that packed the van to the ceiling). brought into the dining room set for 45 people. tonight it’ll be set for 75 folks. making sound recordings, images, and a little video tape. trying to not get too caught up in documentation to simply enjoy. massage is the theme for today — several masseuses were hired, and so folks are disappearing and wandering back to the first floor in bathrobes looking refreshed.

take a walk with Jeff and Lorna. to the church and graveyard, and around about.

over the door of the church:

Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools — Ecclesiastes 5:1

snow-drops everywhere. rain comes intermittently, darkening the sky, and flushing the air, which already has a marine feel to it, with more clean moisture. finally head back to the house after taking a wander out to the huge Cedars-of-Lebanon in what remains of the extended garden beyond the croquet field in the back yard.

steam is building, literally, in the hot-water heating system, and in the party inertia.

Gary and I head out towards Balboa Park, but don’t actually make it. I wanted to get online for a couple hours of work, so he takes me to a cybercafe in North Park where the PowerBook exhibits it’s intransigent side — something that comes up about 2% of the time when connecting to a wifi node — it can see the node, says it’s connected, but refuses to actually establish a viable connection. grrrrr. the usual spate of re-starts, config changes, etc, to no avail. Gary puts up with my whining, then calls an acquaintance nearby, Christian Michaels, a professional photographer who happened to have a wifi network at his studio. we head south on Ray Street, a funky neighborhood to the beautiful studio built in a former sign-manufacturers space. he’s got a huge video projector with a 25×25-foot projection area at one end of the main studio. as we chat, turns out that he is hosting a share event in the evening! we have a good laugh that I am the share-nomad node. synchronicity! have lunch at a taqueria around the corner, and head back to spend the afternoon with Andrea and Ryan. then Gary comes by to fetch me for the evening happening. end up meeting Morgan Sully of share-San Diego and others. there is a screening of Metropolis, and I do a short VDMX improv. nice!

slow cool morning, a tour of the great studio that Mike & Isabelle have brought together. a walk to the creek, marveling at the trees, the rocks, the land.

It is vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e., than I import into it. — Henry David Thoreau

hanging out with the family. Dana is the initial portrait for the New Year’s project — a return to the work that I dropped in the interim between stopping with black&white 35mm film-based and getting the new Nikon D200 SLR which makes that work once again possible. in between, a hiatus of six years, while having access to a variety of digital cameras, the serious lack of one critical feature made my work impossible. that feature is the near-instantaneous synchronization of the shutter — when the shutter-release button is pressed the shutter goes without hesitation. the D200 is the first digital cam that I’ve had where there is no delay. that millisecond delay in cheaper cams makes the difference between the picture and a wasted shot. it’s all about synchronicity between my eyes, the collaborative subject, and the mediatory machine.

Sandy, Kathy, Maureen, Jake, and Lon — hiking partners on a nice 6+ mile loop around Yeager Canyon in the Prescott National Forest.

on the way home there’s an ambulance heading out Williamson Valley Road when we come up Pioneer Parkway to the light. heading north out Williamson Valley to mile 5 there are some cars pulled over, the LifeLine ambulance crew unpacking the stretcher. not apparent quite what is going on but as we drive by a large heavy-set Latino guy drops from standing to squatting next to the crumpled front drivers fender, sobbing. so it goes.

Sharmin will hopefully augment this shot of Sonya with some of her ample photographic records of the long weekend’s adventures. later in the evening…

turns out that the Search By Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project — is a globally-deployed effort by an extraterrestrial intelligence to keep tabs on the human race…

long conversation with Chris and Scharmin. well, Scharmin dozes off in front of the fire part of the time. the cabin is such a comfortable space for hanging out with friends. Sonya and Alex have stored up magic memories of the place, the surroundings, and the magnificent physical environment it is nestled into. I wish Loki was here with us. somehow I am not completely convinced that his absence from the US this summer is simply due to the need for teenage companionship. but that cannot be substantiated.

no chance to use the telescope productively. there is enough overcast so that the sun cannot be seen well enough to make it worth it, and it is cloudy all three nights. not to mention too cold to be hanging out of doors for long periods when there is a warm bed to fill later after the stiff margarita to sip!

and don’t ask how Christian unstuck his hand from the saguaro spines ;-) …

lines of the hand, with the skin thinning, turning to trapezoidal textures that shimmer differently than they used to do. cool tonight, here at altitude, in the dry west, when the sun goes, warmth goes as well. remembering the nights in the desert, so many times. no matter the heat of the day, the night gives the heat back to the darkness of the sky. only in deep summer, is there more heat delivered than can be reflected away, so that only at the null hour, a time before dawn, does the air loosen itself of the burden of heat. but as soon as fall comes, with a couple days of cloud cover, the night air is an empty chill.

time: money: energy. what about this triad? the conversion between the first two concerns a number of roles and activities that one undertakes. probably the first thing to notice is that time as a phenomena exists outside the framework of the social system. at the same time as recognizing this, a primary task of an evolving social system is the construction of a regulated mechanism for quantifying time. this is a feature of even technologically ‘underdeveloped’ cultures — where the importance of the cyclic variations in the seasons was carefully framed and marked by religious holidays to remind citizens of their places in the (agriculturally) productive life of the society.

time as a raw phenomena is an intangible, of similar import to gravitation and Light. however, the development of devices which would demarcate apparently consistent segments of time has been and is important to any social system. one metric of the advancement of a society can be tied to the accuracy and extent of standardization of temporal measurement devices. framing of time is a key element to any set of basic standardization metrics. and, to the extent possible, these metrics are rigidly applied to all parts of the social system — you know, those kind of people who don’t wear a watch? a little revolt against the microscopic reach of hegemony in the social structure. try meeting someone without depending on some kind of shared standardization of time. at sunset? at high noon? at the first moon after the vernal equinox?

what is “spending time”? it is a commitment to share a portion of the lived expenditure of life-energy on some activity. life-time, and the co-committed life-energy that is ‘used’ in a unit of (standardized) time cannot be retrieved. time is a uni-directional flow that often appears to change speed, irrespective and independent of the standardization applied by the social system. cosmology suggests that perhaps there are regions of the universe where this flow is distorted significantly, though not reversed or stopped. it is a given that the existence of our local system of complexity that life-time flows in one direction. therefore, ‘spending time’ has a significance equal in importance to any other fundamental choice facing a sentient being. along the flow of time, biologic entities, at least considered as discrete material objects, display the uniform characteristic of increasing entropy according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. there is a clear relation between the limited amount of energy an entity can obtain, generate, use in an apparently materialistically limited existence and passing time.

then there is the issue of money. money is not the thing itself. money represents something, being only printed paper, it shares a parallel history to the development of the printed word, and before that, the abstraction of written language. but since the social system designates a set of equivalencies — sometimes of limited number, sometimes in near-infinite variety — to actual configurations of matter, or actions undertaken by other sentient beings. (to be continued) …

flying times. didgeridoo player at Whole Foods, in the aromatherapy aisle. reminds me of the pseudo-bluegrass band playing at the Pharmacy in the Newton, New Jersey ShopRite. something about Nero and Rome burning. here in Boulder, however, it’s different. food samples being offered everywhere, so people come to the store to get a meal. word gets around. even Boulder can’t insulate itself by the cloak of liberal caring diffidence. society out of touch. schisms, chasms opening wide. John Brunner’s book The Sheep Look Up crosses my path again after 25 years. and it is more accurate, with the exception of missing the cyber-developments (like the “Neuromancer” caught), in its prognostications of a world ruled and consequently destroyed by technocrats and technological implementations in the service of consumers. so it goes. a travelers notes might well continue here in this immobile condition. as the social matrix around is foreign, and re-mark-able. and in the complex sliding process of multi-phased decay and degeneration. I had forgotten that much of the action in Brunner’s book takes place in Colorado, for whatever reasons. ending with Denver under martial law, and the dominoes had started toppling.

Cari Stillman, Christine Spehar, Elizabeth Chapin, Elyza Pierce, Eric Nelson, Hannah Dunn, Jennifer Moses, Joel Foss, Sam Wick, Christopher Martin, Kristin Thomas, Jennifer Egbert, Lauren Segel,  Morgan Blaul, Niki Egerman, Roman Montoya, Taylor Bischoff, Blake J. Nolan, Casey Koehler, Rayna Manger Tedford

Xenia Axenova, Alena Sorokina, Katia Glushkova, Egene Medvedev, Kirill Medvedev, Vitali, Alexandra Epichkina, Natashya Barysheva, Yuri Popov, Anton Leskin, Max Kashirskey, Leon Rusnak, Alexandra Korovina, Andrei Ustinov

last session before heading out, then a group portrait, then back West.

Back at Atelier Nord for the Oslo Presence get-together: good crew of folks intent on setting up a collaboration platform. It’ll be called N.I.C.E. (Network Interface for Cultural Exchange) and it grew out of the TempLab at Kiasma last year.

THE MEDIA SPACE NETWORK

This new network will support local initiatives and develop cooperation between the members. The network will function as a mediator between the local initiatives and larger, other networks and institutions, inside and outside the region.

Main aims of the network:

* To establish, support and develop new media centers and media labs.
* To discuss and develop models and principles for new media centers (media labs) and virtual networks outside.
* To collaborate in projects like joint servers, exhibitions, events, common research.
* To share and exchange information and resources.
* To develop common financing and funding strategies.
* To cooperate with other networks and institutions dealing with new media cultural issues and policies (Syndicate, European Culture Backbone, Baltic Interface Net, Partnership for Culture)
* To conceptualize new media culture.
* To work towards new cultural policies.

Network tools

The network is facilitated by the members. The members share responsibilities for the practical work necessary. The network will run a shared art server and maintain a web site and information channels like mailinglist and newsletters. The network can negotiate applications on behalf of the whole network or a consortium of members.

Membership

Membership is open to artistic and cultural non-profit initiatives that share the aims and principles the network has identified.

and this ex post facto:

OSLO PRESENCE a presentation weekend and workshop at Atelier Nord, Oslo, Norway facilitated by Kristin Bergaust

Around 20 different projects that combined new media art, social and political awareness, were presented to the public in the premises of Atelier Nord media lab at the end of March 2000. The presentation weekend was also an introduction to the workshop that was held the following week.

The weekend event was open to the public. Norway has been quite isolated from what has been going on in new media culture in other parts of Europe, and this was the first presentation of its kind in Oslo. The aim was to introduce media art concepts and practices to an audience of Norwegian artists and interested public. The event was also introducing ideas for the development of a Norwegian network of media-labs and other initiatives as well as developing further international networks and connections.

The workshop
During the following week a team of people worked on questions and solutions concerning group-software, tools for co-operation and ideas for network activities. The workshop resulted in a common understanding and development of some tools for the NICE network, as well as the idea of the Mobile NICE. Mobile NICE is the plan for a three-month bus-trip around the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The bus will visit media initiatives in the area, who will cooperate with the changing bus team in what they want to happen at their stop along the route, as well as cooperating in projects and tasks for the bus along the way. To sum up this idea: Mapping, developing, connecting and supporting the Nordic-Baltic new media art and cultural activities through travelling education, presentation, production, research and exhibition.

Participants in the workshop were Thomax Kaulman and Udo Noll from Germany, Jaanis Garancs from Latvia, John Hopkins and Mari Keski-Korsu from Finland, Nils Claesson from Sweden along with Norwegians Kristin Bergaust, Atle Barcley, Kenneth Korstad Langås, Bodil Furu, and others.

Since the event in March, the Norwegian network between Atelier Nord in Oslo, BEK in Bergen, and Top Floor in Trondheim is more established and has already started working on some projects together. News will be published on the NICE mailing list.

Oslo Presence was organized by Kristin Bergaust, artist and director of Atelier Nord.

Financial support was granted by the Norwegian Council of Cultural Affairs as well as the City Council of Oslo.

Overview of the program of presentations:

Eric Kluitenberg (Amsterdam) opened on the Saturday with an introduction to media art, presenting the the CD-ROM Permanent Flux produced at De Balie containing the history of multimedia art in the 20th century, from the early avant-garde to the contemporary techno culture. Eric also presented the event “Next 5 Minutes” organized by de Balie and others in Amsterdam and discussed the notion of Tactical Media, giving a critical perspective on what it is really possible to achieve, using the grave and difficult situation of Radio B92 in Belgrade as an example.

Daniel Garcia Andijar (Valencia) showed examples of his “Technologies to the people” then presented his installation work with a focus on how security is not understood or taken seriously even by the people responsible in major telecom companies.

“Ted – Media and slander.” A prototype of a media spokesman was presented online and as a video by Karin Hansson (Stockholm).

Nomade & Gediminas Urbonas (Vilnius) showed excerpts from their project: “TVV Plotas” -a series of interviews and reports on themes connected to contemporary art presented on national television.

Heath Bunting (London) presented Rachel Baker´s “Art of Work” as well as his own, among them the Cultural terrorist Agency and the Superweed.

Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits (Riga) gave an introduction to different international networks, among them X-change for net-radio activists, NICE for small-scale media culture initiatives and informed about the plans for the media center RIXC in Riga.

The final presentation on the Saturday was by Thomax G Kaulmann who introduced some of his work, and the principles behind it, among them Radio Internationale Stadt.

Sound work by Nomade & Gediminas Urbonas new project was presented in the evening along with projections from the Norwegian club project “Le Big Sloppy Kiss” and music from orang.org and other sources.

On the Sunday Goran Boardy from Valand, Gothenburg, presented a quick-time film festival on the net in connection with the conference Elpub.

Udo Noll (Cologne) described and showed his projects “Of The Equator And Some Otherlands” and “H|U|M|B|O|T”.

Borderland -a documentary project by Kristine Briede and Calle Biörsmark from Locomotive, Riga was presented by Rasa Smite (Riga).

The Norwegian presentation featured a video presentation of the performance group “Motherboard”.

Jaanis Garancs (Riga/Hamburg) talked about collaborative web interfaces as an art form and showed experimental web based, groupware services that are being developed for the networks NICE, Xchange and the Baltic Interface Net.

Nils Claesson (Stockholm) demonstrated his “Say voff- the international dog sound interface” a work based on the concept that the only international languages are bad jokes and music.

Mari Keski-Korsu (Tornio) presented a student´s point of view and showed some of her work.

Finally John Hopkins (Helsinki) shared his thoughts on educational models, practices, and policies.

excerpted from ACOUSTIC.SPACE 3

Raitis’ brother, Artis, has a car, so we pile in for a trip to the Baltic seaside after stopping at Normunds and Ilva’s house for a short visit. Brrrr. It’s COLD, it’s March, but there are plenty of people out strolling, or purposefully taking a walk by the sea.

Loki and Aron at Loki’s birthday party.

Loki and I meet Mark, Frieder, Susi, and Stefan for lunch over at the UMC, eating the cheap and relatively good enchiladas. Stefan takes us on a tour of his sub-basement lab in the Physics complex. it rains incredibly hard for several hours.

an old place I used to camp back in the 80′s. but first some hanging out in Medano Creek in front of the dunes, keeping covered as the sun is already blazing at 0900 in the morning.

then a short stop at the Center again on the way out.

early in the blazing day, a walk around some of the constructions of Chaco — the Grand Kiva is marvelous. then launching north over Wolf Creek Pass, across the San Luis Valley.

arrival at a camping site a Sand Dunes is preceded by an early evening visit to the Center of the Universe. what are words?

dinner at Hannes, Jerelyn, and Fiona’s house in Bordesholm. with a host of their friends. I ran out of film, and had no other documentary materials, so, for the first time in awhile, I felt rather lacking — because it was one of those special dinners, one time, one place, that convocation of people will perhaps never happen again. time compresses toward leaving the continent. I call Loki in Sweden at his Aunt Selma’s house. we cross paths in ten days. after so many kilometers in those days, I wonder if I will be conscious!

1.5 km swim. a quick drop in on the graduation party of Esko’s daughter, Liisa. long enough for coffee, cakes, and champagne, and a family portrait, like the ones that I used to do. am I allowed to move back in time? can I move forward? stupid questions.

about to head out. tomorrow morning. today Jakob and Mindaugas and I head to Eckernförde to visit with Norbert at his house/gallery/studio on the strand there. I had first met Norbert when he was teaching in Iceland in 1991 or so, on a lost weekend under Vatnajokull with Rikki, Hilde, Birki, and others, yep, at the base of Svinafell … the last time we had crossed paths was in Helsinki at the Media and Ethics conference.

then it’s back to the Muthesius lab for a short time to check mail and do a few other things before going off line for the next days en route Kiel-Tornio.

here for a couple days. visiting Kaisu who has an artist-in-residence atelier here for some months. yesterday we take a day trip to Köln. unusually clear and warm for this time of year. it is strange to be in that city again, with all the personal history that has happened there for me. a visit to the Ultimate Akademie finds Hans-Jürgen and Lisa, I speak with Rolf on the phone and find out that Volker is indeed around, but has a disconnected telephone, a group of them had been in Chaing Mai, Thailand for some weeks, and Volker had not paid his telephone bill. so, I will probably see him when I return to Köln later in this month. circles draw tight. smaller circles, and every time I look at Works of Art, I am repressed, not depressed, but re-pressed. they repress me in the way of a reminder of the drives that exist around us in the world, the drives to control the world, maybe only to make sense of things, der dinge. needing strong touches of being. impressions of materiality. impressions on body. simple burdens of. intersections of material and body. no, it is not the intersection of body and material, but more the exercise of control. not making any ideas here. no ideas are better than formations of being that are simple and forward. Hans-Jürgen says I should do another performance at the Ultimate Akademie when I am back in Köln — he jokes about the other performance a bit, and seems a bit impressed that I am STILL traveling! meeting so many different people constantly. it begins to strike me that I am also now moving through spaces that I moved through when I started this mnemonic device two years ago. so there is introduced a reflexive element to my ramblings, being some place again. a cycle of memory, what do I recall? a dinner-party with several artists living locally, telephone calls from Claudia, who I missed by only a couple days in Finland, I haven’t seen her since 1989 in Köln when she had an exhibition there and in Roma also in that same year. I introduced Kaisu to her remotely a few years back when Kaisu was staying at the Finnish atelier in Roma, and they have since become good friends which is nice. Claudia’s new catalog which Kaisu shows me illustrates her strong and evolving works — now using photography. all things cease in mind, I am a receptacle for liquid experience, and not more, a vessel. even consuming experience. biting air, and chewing a stick of words that issue from mind to mouth. fiber. chewed and flayed like papyrus, bound together in bundles, dipped in wax, lit, they become torches carried by those who search darkness for the meaning of being. Kersten is home when I call there to say hallo, she is going out on a date and is in a hurry; I will see her also later in the month. Still no contact with Hubertus about the teaching in Kiel. catch Adele in Budapest, but she will leave for the weekend, and I will probably not cross her path. too bloody complex, these arrangements, even with email. telephone is easier. why? and sitting face-to-face better still. Samu and I talked about that. incontrovertible that Presence is the base to build on. writing through time.