People of Berlin, People of the World

A few days ago I found this tweet from @radiopapesse in the post box of Radio On.

“OPEN CALL: is South just a matter of latitude? http://t.co/z5SR7OsjfC #sudenradio @ResonanceFM @Kanal103 @radio_on_berlin @ARTonAIR”

I decided to follow the link and found a proposal. You can do the same and find Deutsche Bank, Villa Romana, South, Firenze, Berlin and Invitation right at the beginning of the Call. I will use them as the titles of the short chapters that will follow.

Deutsche Bank
I work at a call center…  Before I could start working there I needed a German bank account. I chose the Deutsche Bank. They behaved the less complicated in accepting me. I also thought they would be easy to find, once I was abroad and needed to withdraw money.
They are not easy to find. The first and only one I found was on Wall Street. Pushing my naivety to the limit I walked to the door and tried to enter. A very well dressed and polite black man with the physical appearance of a heavy weight boxer approached me and explained I couldn’t get in. It was not for withdrawels. I could sense that. The light was low, shining in colors of red gold. I saw shadowy figures hardly make a move. Dark tomblike furniture. It had something mysterious about it, as if the secrets of ancient Egyptian rites were kept in the safes in the basement, together with the Nazi Gold and a couple of pictures by Dürer and Giorgione. When I was back on the street again, I didn’t look up. I shoud have done so to find out how many floors the Deutsche Bank building had. I didn’t, because I needed cash. I had to withdraw 100$. And be charged 4$ for it. On Wall Street.

Villa Romana
Ah Man, I don’t know the Villa Romana, but I know some villa’s in Florence. I lived there a great part of the nineties. I got drunk looking at the landscape, its colors, the softness of the air, the looks of the girls, the conic forms of the cypress, the sunset over the roofs of the old town and the clouds shaped like pumes, the typical smell at the fall of day when the warmth loosened itself from the stones. I was pleased to live there, to absorb and be absorbed.
I know of the perfect boredom at art openings when a chilled glass of white wine gave refuge. I know how the coming of winter smells. I saw Baggio and Batistuta play in the stadium of Fiorentina. Dunga too. The view on the hills of Fiesole is unbeatable.
I went to the website of the Villa and I saw they organised an exhibition on William Furlong. The old master had come over to set it up. I would have gone there for sure. Maybe I would have gone to the opening, an invitation is always at a friend’s distance. And then I would have walked up to him, to thank him for the inspiration.

South
South is where palm trees grow. Some day I’d like to live there.

Firenze
A friend of mine was heavily involved in organising the biennial of fashion. Biennial’s of whatever kind were very much in fashion at that time, which was the late nineties. Fashion and Renaissance works of art were put together in one setting. Or to put it more bluntly, exhibition rooms were turned into show rooms.  Elton John’s collection of sunglasses were also exposed. Elton came to the opening. My friend, a she, was very pleased to tell that he kissed her on the cheek. That makes me two kisses away of Princess Diana. But also at a two kiss distance of a lot of dickheads and assholes I don’t want to know of.
To Antonio Tabucchi, a writer, the biennial was a reason to write a manifesto, in which he attacked the town council for their policy against the Roma and Sinti. Their situation was deplorable indeed. I saw their camps, even shacks made of waste material, directly near the railway tracks, whenever I returned from the coast by train. It was the time of genocides in Jugo-Slavia. It was also the time that more and more Africans were seen in the streets. They had a piece of cloth spread out in front of them and tried to sell souvenirs to the tourist. They were housed with four or five persons in a room. Florence is not a good city for hosting misery. It doesn’t go well with the decor.

Berlin
There are no palm trees in Berlin. But there is a whole lot to compensate for it.

Invitation
Radio Papesse invited Radio On, which is 50% me, to submit a program. The theme is ‘South.’ It got explained with a few questions culminating in the observation “In the face of the multiplicity of borders, how can we approach it, without reducing the discourse to mere geographical terms? without reducing its complexity into a monolithic phenomenological entity through which and unlike to we define ourselves?” The conclusion is the biggest Babushka of the questions posed.
Let me state this clearly. The idea to spend “15 days of broadcasting with the intention to delve into many possible different dimensions of the ‘South’ ” is a brainless idea. It is very probable that the idea is not launched by brainless people.

At this point I need some chapters of my own. I will call them Vision, Management, Speech by Obama, Oscar, More Management, Carrot and Conclusion

Vision
The presentation of the idea would have been very different if a vision had been expressed in it. I looked at the websites of Villa Romana, Deutsche Bank and radio papesse. I didnot find an essay about ‘The Idea of the South – between Cardinal Point and Myth.’ South, West, North, East. South-West and South-East. Each direction holds a promise of adventure, history and the great unknown. Each one of them can draw you to the hard surface of economical diversions and social uprise. There is myth, epic travels, the stories of loners and colonial wars. The jet-set, the rise and fall of the paperazzi, but also Vasco da Gama setting sail from the southern point of Portugal were attracted. The question if China and Chili have a south and so much more are locked up in the single notion of South. You see, once the gates of imagination are opened, a structure of thought and images imposes itself on the subject.

Management
The crew of Radio Papesse will come to Berlin. I hope that their trip and stay in this fair city of mine will be made possible by fundings. They presented a brainless idea. A brainless idea is easier to accept. With thinking it is hard to come by these days. To compensate for the lack of vision, strategies from the world of commerce were applied.
Create enthusiasm: “We look for you, musicians, activists, composers and artists, to share your inspiring contribution on this arduous and slippery field of investigation. ” And don’t forget to point out the individuality, the uniqueness and the talent of the persons in your target group.
Create a sense of togetherness and change:”We need to test our medium and our means.”
Study the great effect of repetitive rhetorics in the speeches of Obama.

Speech by Obama
People of Berlin, People of the World.
We need to test our medium. We need to test our means.
Be it acoustic experiments, be it songs, field recordings or philosophy.
We need to test our medium and our means with poetry, travel or geographical advice. We need to test our medium and our means with South-notion related classical or electronic compositions, with documentaries, interviews and chats ‘going south‘.
Artists and activists. Musicians, composers. Be your medium music or playlists, be your means radio shows or features, we are looking forward to listen to how your notion of South may be reflected in your own work and in your own research.
We are looking for content, because we don’t have the time nor the means to do this all by ourselves. We need your help. I know you can help. Together we can.

Oscar
Back to the call center where I work. Since a few months somebody thought that a sense of competition would increase motivation and results. People of different nationalities work there. Teams! One nation against the other. The Dutch won last month. They won an Oscar. A fake Oscar statue is placed on the cupboard with the fuses. I am Dutch. I was among the ten best. I got 20€ worth of free vouchers for the cinema. I don’t know what blockbuster movie to choose from.

More Management
Everybody has a computer. A computer is a great tool to administer your work. Everybody with a computer has spent a decent part of their past and present life managing their correspondence, their works, their private life, friendship and hobbies and art. We got organised in folders, blogs and websites. We got organised in groups, networking and social media. We all got introduced in the culture of management. Most of us also got used to a culture of sharing their works, making them free available for download.

Carrot
With this in mind and a budget of 200 Euro to spend on the content of 15 days of broadcasting, the budget got turned into a carrot. The one selected work of the submissions would win this amount. The other carrots were called ‘broadcast locally and on stream’ and ‘an opportunity for publication on the website.’ Easypeasy. Most of all those musicians, activists, composers and artists offered their works free for download anyway. Just delve into the culture of sharing and get your 15 days of content. The fact that they have to present a ‘production sheet’ will just educate them more in how to present themselves and their work properly.

Conclusion.
So, to resume all this.
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle is the name of the place where these fifteen days of broadcasting will take place. Deutsche Bank has also a fancy building on Wall Street, where I tried to enter at the start of this article.
Villa Romana is a beautiful villa in the beautiful town of Florence.
And you are the asshole who is going to submit his work for free.

The Pursuit of Failure

I break of the edges of the last house in this street and hear children voice their tiny white voices. Under a clear sky, a sudden crack, wisdom smells of forgiving lives. There was the kitchen sink, and overthere the wall through which we could hear our neighbor’s laments. Late at night stinks. Eyes in your eyes. Naked fingertips waver over the skinlike fabric of her pants, her panties; a cardboard tube full of smarties explodes. Eye in your eye. Fourty years gone, and the pawnshop is still thriving. Yesterday Mr. Barnacle sold a Louis XV crystall glass full of tears.

The yelling started shortly after midnight. He wore the uniform of the Soviet army. He said, he lived in a train. She smiled wearily. We all know our Doctor Zhivago. Wait until winter comes. Tchaikovsky is perfect for skating. I always bring my cat, carry her in a fur bag. She keeps me warm and she purs in sync. That was what she said. But she was thinking of how to write a song about anger, and still be lovely and beautiful and sparkling like a dying star. A dying star, that is what she wanted to be in her next life. Or a twin star, together with Shakespeare. Roaming low in a jewel jet.

Pins of Arab origins on a false afternoon. I get out on the Pommer Avenue. See my shoes hit the pavement. Pavement is pale with cold. I fear to breath. It is so cold, it will slice my tongue, tear out my voice. Yet I feel reassured when I see my shoe hit the pavement. I could have died here today. You could have died here today. Both of us. The waiting hour strikes a windy road towards the river. Aren’t you cold? Alarm is a punishing effect. I weep the sky once more. A big ladytron smiles. Then, suddenly, you, and darkness fell on its knees.

Prince of Arabs pins fatigues. No entrance around here. Sit in an uneasy chair and wait. Annoyance squeeks. Water holes. Strange people in the kitchen. I flurry fish on Salomo’s flute. And wish those books behind me could shut up. Never your fingers on those pages. I you never. You knew that. Ferries cross the river. I could see them from my window. Winter came and my vision cracked from side to side. I used ducktape to restore the view. One night the wind was called ocean. It burst into my bedroom, covered me with the stars. I thought our universe was made out of black glass.

Chuckle chokes, or the misbehaviour of a necklace. Oranienburgerstrasse, view on the golden roof of the synagogue. The lovely girls smile at passengers. A black car with a tomato hat. I could see her now. My coffee had gone cold long ago, long before my ink had dried out. Still, the words of my letter hadn’t vanished. Then you came in, looked straight through me, probably didn’t look at me at all. The tropical plant behind me was truly beautiful. I was your book before we learned how to breath flames. Coffee stains. Satin cap. I should have ordered hot chocolate instead. Go to Africa. Reinvent 1943.

Tired of moving through layers of time, cheap beer and a harpsichord, I hide in this sofa. Tiny glue. Tiny city. Dead flies on the bottom of a coffee cup. Do you know at all what my hometown smells like? Or the rain when my hair gets wet? I under formers. I eyes covered. Gangrene. Headless Siamese twins lie back. Lie down. A dog comes for a wake up call. Wake up in the middle of the night. You not. You here. Puke on morning dew. Hangover appearances of new life drown luck. Hue bliss. I wish I could hide in my self. I wish I milk. But you no. You never no. A sniper love caused this fire.

Imagination Lost

The concept ‘public space’ has always annoyed me when it was used in combination with “sounds in” or “art in.” Main reason for this is the existence of the “public sector.” The public space is bureaucratic space made visible in myriad expressions of its rules, regulations, planning and maintenance works. An artist in public space is an underpaid civil servant, who got his job, because the bureaucrat could relate to the concept of “public space.”
The other reason for my aversion is that in a geographical sense it divides space in private and public. That is only two nominators for a lot of space. Logical result is they don’t say anything about space. Three of my Berlin recordings made me think of the concept again. 

The first one was made during the quarter final of the world championships football in Germany in the year 2006. Germany played against Argentina in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. I knew the stadium from earlier visits to the games of Hertha BSC. I wanted to record the agitated unisono voice of 75.000 people shouting “Deutschland, Deutschland.” I wanted to record it outside of the stadium.
The second recording is of Barack Obama holding his speech at the Siegessäule in the Tiergarten district of Berlin in the year 2008. Unaware of who or what organisation had set up this event, I had claimed Barack Obama’s performance as an appearance at my Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival. Of course I needed to go there and document his concert. It was a disappointing experience. The sounds came from big loudspeakers. It reminded too much of television or radio. I decided to leave the crowd and walk into the park.
The third recording was made during the shortest night of the year 2011. It had to serve as source material. Four other artists would make recordings elsewhere on earth. Each one of us would make a composition using all the material. I had chosen the empty space opposite from the place where once stood the “Palast der Republik.” It was reduced to a nice green lawn. I had noticed that the temporary construct of the zone offered a center of tranquility. The recording was of a highly conceptual character. I sat on the very spot where once mass manifestations had taken place. I faced the site of a governmental palace of a country that didn’t exist anymore. I was recording ghosts.

Bringing in the concept of “public space,” brought to light a central theme in the three recordings. The theme is public space against private space.

When I went to the Olympic Stadium I thought I could walk up to the entrance, as I knew it from my visits to the Hertha matches. It is there where the gigantesque stadium manifests itself as a gigantesque acoustic entity. The world cup organisation had put up fences at a good kilometer distance of the normal entrances to the stadium. The olympic stadium was reduced in perspective. I started to walk around, tried to find a place where I could come nearer, but, at the end, encountered a barrier. The call “Deutschland, Deutschland” sounded from afar. The space, normally accessible to the public, was turned into private space, accessable upon payment.

The Barack Obama walk lead me into the park. I had my headphones on and went away from the big loudspeaker sound. I ended up on a kind of trail. On this trail I found a friendly policeman who blocked the way. I saw white tents behind him. That was the place where the future president of the United States of America would drink a glass of sparkling water. Also on this recording I arrived at the border of public space. The space I could not enter was private space, only accessible to guests.

When I sat on the wooden boardwalk that temporarily connected one side of the former Palast der Republik square to the other, I disappeared into the sonic density of the night. I was at the heart of the former German Democratic Republic, the DDR. Before 1989 it was public space. Twenty-two years later it was still public space. Before 1989 the public space was confined by a wall on its west side. That’s where public space hit on forbidden space. Twenty-two years later I found myself in a public space, where a great deal of Non-Europeans would be classified “illegal,” if they’d be there without a permission.

This observation made me think about the concept of “public space” again. In my naiveity I thought of “public space” as being freely accessible to the public, without any permission whatsoever. Apparently what we in our innocence call “public space” should read as “legal space.” It is space defined by the laws of a country. To discuss such a space suddenly faces you with five thousand years of religion and philosophy. This insight took me back to my initial aversion. By working in “public space” one supports and propagates the law. An artist becomes a state artist.

A City built on Vanishing Stones

Descend, go underground, enter the sewers. The sounds of dripping water, running water, echoes from traffic rumble close in on you. Rats follow their runways. They know of each others existence even if they are miles apart. An invisible communication system that exists parallel to our languages.  I listen hard and try to understand the computer language he talks about. An invisible floating continent has come into existence. Thoughts get transported by interfaces. I take another sip of the three euro wine. The bourgeois food lays to wither in garbage containers. A nightly walk to the backyard, stand on your toes, fill the backpack with lumps of salmon that have just come back from their expiring date. The night is freezing cold. No fun. The bus driver is the last of the disciples. I take the free place next to the front exit. It is as warm as the last warm breath of a night’s out in a bar.

Waking up was the only way out of the prison. I had returned to it again. Convicted of being a drugs dealer and a murderer. I knew I had sold the drugs. I knew I had killed someone. I could feel it. But I could also feel the doubt. I knew in the backyards of my mind that someone, some organisation had implanted the thought and the feeling into my consciousness. I was guilty of not being guilty and there was nothing I could prove. Guards took pleasure in hitting me on my head, more then once. I had walked up to them with a smile, an innocent smile. They responded with sadistic smiles. The guards were uniformed. There were nine of them, maybe ten. The worst thing about the dream was the feeling of despair, of not being able to communicate. The sense of utter greyness. Salo.

Existence in between snapshots of a daily routine when the ritual looses all meaning and the next steps lead from the kitchen to the toilet and back to the room again. Thoughts land on rock hard bottom. No succes. No feature. The writer I have come to love so much looses landscape in describing it. I follow.  I know Venice very well. I could have known her better. But that happens all the time. That’s why we build stations and harbours. We need to drown in our desires every now and then. It hurts. The pages of the book bring me back to prison again. This time my name is Giacomo Casanova. I am in a dungeon and the only thing I can see is the blue sky.  I watch it for eight hours without moving. I put down the book and get dressed.

Shoes scrape grit from the sidewalk. I follow the dark tubes that connect invisible destinations. Sit in a train that carries memories of a frivolous era. Berlin and your transvestites, hookers, writers and junks; Berlin and your turdy brown memory on the yellowed pages of a book by Isherwood. And all that faces, smiles, stubbornness, attention sucking TV screens with news and images for the illiterate. I am an illiterate. I am a mongoloid. Note to self: write on writing. The best thing of leaving the U at Hermannplatz is the ascension on the automatic stairs. Street life disintegrates. We are all poor and will for ever be so. Currywurst, Asia food, a bottle of beer. Traffic lights in a grim pittyless sky. I follow footsteps, my own footsteps. I am on my way to my bicycle.

I had liberated the last one with a big chain gnawer. A relic from defenseless years when Alsatians got jacked off and the bar owner’s son locked himself in his room. Him and his mount of porn video’s. His sister found out she was pregnant after three months. I had a damn fast bike. Columbiadamm in rain, sunshine and fog, forcing other cyclists to stop motion. Then it got stolen and I had to travel to the east of the city, where I met fog again. Fog and night and memories from a vanished country. Margot in Santiago. Me on a slow train to Minsk. Me on a slow bike. On the Columbiadamm I got forced to slow motion. Kids with black eyeliners waited in the melting sun for the doors to open. I read the name on the billboard. The only name I can read is written on the facade of Tempelhof. Speer und Er.

Now I am lucky again to ride over the landing strips. They are so wide that they ridicule every notion of progress. My legs move, but I am a tourist in a landscape that uses me as its pivot. Dutch ice-skaters on the horizon of a four hundred year old painting. The grey sky is an empty empire. All houses are subject to its mood. A few hours earlier, going up the Hermannstrasse hill, I took a closer look at the cinema. OFF and NO was written on the billboard over the entrance. The beautiful thing about it were the replaceable red letters. There will come a day that you can buy them at the flee market. There will come a day that flee markets no longer exist. At the other side of the cinema was a graveyard. I couldnot use the bike in its highest gear. Something went clunck, made the chain hickup. I don’t like such things. Resign and be a freewheeler. Resign and everything will get lost in the end.

Live at Pyramid Atlantic – Silver Springs

NEW! The first issue of Staaltape’s Audiozine – Glenn Branca

The cassette comes in a custom made cardboard package with  X-Ray pictures on the front and back side. The inlay is a high quality color print, plus a written piece of paper with the basic liner notes. Every copy has a different X-ray.

Price 8.00 Euro, available through staaltape at staalplaat.com or directly from the shop.

In how far this is an Audiozine, is of course to be judged by the listener. It was my intention to combine elements of essay-writing, travelogues, documentary and, in this case, docu-fiction.

If to some of you it still sounds like music, well, then let it sound like music!

More

First Autumn Leaves

Tweets from my tour, that took me from Montreal to Troy (NY), Hudson (NY), Allentown  (PA). Washinton DC to New York.

-No tweets, but very fond memories of Allentown and a visit to the woods of Pennsylvania and Bethlehem, though-

Montreal: A first day of battling with time and enduring daylight & a day of rain. Now ready to bike out and zigzag the check board streets.

Houses in Montreal look all strikingly the same in their diversity. Thought of a collection of post stamps: same image in different colours.

Sunlight, trees & shadowplay in the street, new store fronts, fragment of french language, bicycle ride, riverside, metabolist architecture

Long bridge,turn to the park, mysterious rumble in my headphones, riverside & city view, then this 1967`s naiv optimism http://v.gd/smW4Hd

Habitat 67, a rubik`s cube in a b-movie, expanded, without the colours: I get of my bike and walk, stare, enter “residents only,” hi guard!

On a 9km/hour bike (20cm below my size): enter the fairy tale railway station with the phantom hall, where no-one leaves and no-one arrives.

Old canals, 1970`s concrete bridge walking the waste land, polished bicycle lanes and refurnished factory buildings, green mountain, clouds.

Which all means that I start to get a feel for Montreal,growing curiosity for Canada and its enormous distances,thanks to a greatlittlehost!

6$ to get into the USA made customs routines look like a theatre piece with audience participation. I wonder, who got the door money though.

BUT: The train ride, a continuous monumentum to travelling by foot, horse or carriage, and at that speed we moved along the lake, its birds.

Mohawk river, third and fourth branch, Peebles Island (formerly known as Hoppe and Haver island) view on Cohoes (formerly known as Kahoos).

Walk around that island & record leaves moved by the wind, far industrial & traffic rumble: following fourhundred year old Dutch foot steps.

Suddenly, while admiring the view and getting ready for recording, I heard “HO.”Half a second later a golf ball landed at 70cm from my head.

Yesterday evening. Performed in bookstore that had a bar and a selection of local beer: wood, covers, stools, chairs. Wonderful combination!

But pumpkin beer? I had a sip of it, ’twas like Christmas speculatious cookies. I left it to that one.Two pints would have changed my life.

A wonderful living in slow motion two hours moment while the train moved along the river Hudson, its green hills, the reflection of the sun

Waiting to leave the web and go into town, to find our way to the island just in front of The Watergate Hotel.. to add yet another sediment.

Washington DC, walk around H & 13th just to see the houses people live in; notice that all the houses escaped from a near death experience.

Notable, only one idiot had his USA flag erected, which gave me a short punk retro flash, imagining to hold the flame of a lighter under it.

With Emmanuel Rebus on H Street a short moment before he got to eat the worst taco in the world, with half frozen meat. pic.twitter.com/7s8GvXyy

Driving into New York on something95 from south is eh…well:buildings famous buildings, high low towering blocking, Hudson Brooklyn Bridge!

My obligatory day of rain in New York. A marathon walk with @diktat_us around Williamsburg started with a dry performance in Askhenazyville.

Coffee around the corner, in a few square meters store, with milk; but not as creamy as the new york accent of the elderly man who sold it,

Coney Island yesterday: ocean without horizon, fog horns, boardwalk talks, identical Jewish families with their offspring, beach, recording

A bloody tourist today I walked around Chinatown (never go into Chinatown when hungry) rermembered Penguin pocket Breakfast at Tiffany in fr

ont of Tiffany’s. Wondered why the hell this country is so air-conditioned, because the sound of it is louder then traffic, caught a glimpse

of Brooklyn Bridge at the end of the streets and thought of Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan,’ continued to ex WTC area for some real hard core tour

ism. Noticed there is nothing special about it – just a construction site, where the highest building points at the clouds- walked Broadway

, entered Chinatown again and bought a favourite cassette for one dollar, postcards, stamps, continued for Little Italy, loads of restaurant

and tourist shops next to each other, then forgot to buy a kosher cookie in a corner store near the Bowery, then picked up my suitcase and h

eaded for Brooklyn, pushing new suitcase along. Then coffee, freshly brewed in the little shop around the corner. Here? Banjo, Snare, Songs.

Eyes heavy with 6 time zones, shuttering, as if light is too sharp; close and see New York skyline from Wiliamsburg Bridge again, clear sky.

my twitter-account: @rinusnews

Then, in Paris

The next issue of the magazine Gonzo Circus will include an interview with me by Theo Ploeg. Such an article comes with pictures. I was asked to send some. Digital memories lead an orphaned existence in my life. That’s why I came across this set just a day too late. Here is the story that comes with it.

The hand in the picture is mine. You can see blood. You can also see a small part of a walkman that I bought from former topmodel Magnus Schaefer, just before his move to New York. The first appearance of the walkman as My Walkman was in the 4 minute road movie about the Berlin Tape Run which was shown on German, Austrian and Swiss TV.

I looked at the walkman again. It is a different one. The walkman that served as a red thread in the road movie is not in the picture. What to do? Now you know that both my -MY!- walkman and I were on TV I can take advantage of this fact and promote Berlin Tape Run2. I sold two copies of it thanks to its appearance on German, Austrian and Swiss TV. Grab your copy before they sell out. Get it here: staaltape.

Sometimes after a concert I find myself a salesman. Visitors are mostly more driven by curiosity then by a strong desire to buy a tape. They pick up the cassette. I start my promotional talk, but encounter a look that tries to find a polite balance between contempt and ‘man, I have one hundred thousand free downloads on my hard drive.’ Then the visitor walks up to the bar and buys a beer, or rather exchanges a few coins for a bottle of beer. Those coins must have lost every connection to monetary or existential value… Existential!

Paris is clearly divided by its surface. There is life going on under it, and on top of it. Zillions of people use or have used the metro. I like it. I like the smell, the sounds, the sudden change of pace. The metro system follows its own logic. Travelling to a destination is not a simple matter of going from A to B. There is detours in the dark, mysterious squeeks and threatening rumbles, there is eroticism, thought, misery, work hidden under the looks and appearances of the travellers, there is seemingly endless and labyrintic movements whenever you have to change trains, there is determination. There is epiphany whenever you get to see the sky and the apartments once you walk the stairs. I am sure Parisian philosophers were inspired by their metro system.

I am on my way to Anton Mobin for my fourth appearance at his A Maïzing Session. He lives on walking distance from Père-Lachaise. In my agenda is written the metroline, where to get of (Alexandre Dumas), the address, and the secret codes of the front and second door. I have just a backpack with gear, no suitcase (weight 20 kilo), because he lives on the 6th floor and there is no elevator. I always enjoy the short walk up to his apartment. The street I follow is a bit run down, houses and shops lean against each other, seek comfort, some of them moan softly, a bit sentimental, remembering better times. I look inside bars and imagine to have a beer and watch how everything slows down.

Anton’s series of home produced (web-) radio now run in their fifth season. To me it is an essential part of what netculture is about (it is, actually meet and play together with the person you met through a website or an email). The A Maïzing Sessions offer a welcome and welcoming appointment with homebrewn- and visiting artists. Moreover, when you are back on the streets again after the radio show, you’ll notice that the neighborhood looks just that bit more familiar. It makes you feel, well.. just good:

The 11th of September was a pleasant late Summer day, a day that makes domestic silence enjoyable, Anton had just come back from a holiday in Barcelona and enthused about the San Miguel beer he had found in his street. He showed the new tap of the bottle, which made opening it far more easy. So we opened our bottles at the same time and cut our fingers at the same point.

Dawn of the Tape in Linz – The Video!

Between the 4th and 7th of July I spend some highly inspiring days in Linz. I listened to the raw power of tires eating wet asphalt. I saw buildings bleed with colourful electric light. I saw teenagers parade with bottles of whiskey and rum. I spend dark hours behind a veil, while listening to the abstract mumbles of night dwellers on a bar’s terrace. I watched the Donau, and, at the other side, the strange metabolist building with trees growing on it. I bought three handmade rolls for only 73 cents each. I interviewed Sylvia Necker about the upcoming exhibition ‘Hitlerbauten’ of which she is the curator. I interviewed Christian Stefaner-Schmid on the culture of coffee. I drank coffee. I talked and walked with Al Margolis under a burning sun, a walk that became a bit allegorical, because it spanned thirty years of tape history, and touched upon his move from New York City to a little town upstream the Hudson. I saw the pictures of the bear that visited his backyard. I eventually got to see a bit of Linz and its buildings elegant as an old ladie’s Sunday afternoon cake. I did a performance, and I joined a discussion about everything possible and impossible you can say and think about magnetic tape and its use in every day art.

Follow the link to watch the video, that was made by DorfTV

From Left to right, Al Margolis, Christian Stefaner-Schmid, Sylvia Necker

And the link to the video with my live set, and,

from 36th minute onwards the trio with Sylvia and Al