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 should 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 who caused the rise and fall of the paperazzi, and 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.

Ranch

The logical consequence of a long stay on a ranch somewhere in California is the release of a cassette with the title ‘Ranch.’ For the composition of this tape I used recordings I made during my stay in California. The recordings include walks, bees, frogs, foot steps on a wooden floor, the very rare Californian rain, an old piano, big trees moving in a fierce wind, a running river.

An other aspect of ‘Ranch’ is the use of cassettes I found in obsolete cassette players, amongst which a beautiful pink sony radio-cassette player. The found tapes were all recorded in the last century. A third component is a quartet of commercial tapes I was given, all four of them a reminder of the glory years of the humble cassette: albums by Joan Baez, Waylon Jennings, The Beach Boys and Judy Collins.

The fourth ingredient is a cassette with a reading on it. These types of cassettes were very popular in the last century. They provided manuals for a better life, a better economy, a better mastering of language, a better way to present yourself in public space, but also recordings of meetings, talks or telephone conversations. The qualities of a cheap and easy to reproduce medium as the cassette were used to its maximum effect. The tape I found was a reading of a Zen Master’s wise words.

When listening back to the recordings, all of which the result of a different mix, I couldnot help noticing that I had captured a moment in the newest history of the West Coast. This didnot happen because of my composing skills, if at all I have any. It is a simple result of the radio voices, the dated music and the snippets of the book by the zen master that got destructed or highlighted, but also mixed with the more intimate sounds of my recordings (that in fact could have been anyone’s recordings).

I connected three walkman to a fourtrack and used the fourtrack as a mixer and a player. In this way I could do a mix using four different sources and record them at the same time on my Marantz. All the twenty tapes of ‘Ranch’ carry the recordings of a different mix. The tape will cost you 7 Euro and will be available at the shop, or at my concerts.

For Sale! Diktat – In Berlin

Last year Diktat performed inside and outside in Berlin. The digital album Diktat – In Berlin documents the audio part of these performances.

Throw in your Dollars or Deutschmarks and make it yours:

DIKTAT in Berlin

Read Diktat outside/inside the Manufactured Normalcy Field

Follow DIKTAT @diktat_us

D I K T A T in the New World of Love

September 26th – October 3rd 2012, D I K T A T will be performing – inside/outside – in Allentown, Washington & New York, meanwhile recording material for a limited edition documentary pocket tape audiozine cassette-only release on STAALTAPE.

We will use the proceedings of this ‘live inside/outside Berlin’ digital album release to cover the costs of the band’s stay in the US: car rental, gasoline, toll, parking tickets, (for me please no) hamburgers, beer, batteries et cetera…

Needless to say that any amount will earn you a cheer; throw in €15 or more, and we’ll send you a copy of the Diktat overseas STAALTAPE release for *free*, as soon as it is available. (Also: in case of more than twenty tape-meriting donations, the cassette will NOT go on sale. It’ll be produced for your ears only …)

BUY D I K T A T

—————————————————————————————–
The seven tracks on this album were recorded live (inside/outside) in Berlin, Germany, between July 17th and 19th, 2011. Edited by Har$.

IN-sides: Ausland (7/17), Staalplaat (7/18), Sucked Orange (7/19)
OUT-sides: Tempelhof (7/19), Lohmühlenbrücke (7/18), Rütlistraße (7/18), Wachturm (7/18).

Read and see more Diktat outside/inside the Manufactured Normalcy Field
—————————————————————————————–
credits
released 10 August 2012
Jean Bordé (double bass), Emmanuel Rébus (dictaphones), Rinus van Alebeek (dictaphones), Harold Schellinx (dictaphones).

DKFRF – The Festival that never will be

Daydreams blur the borders of reality, change our surrounding world into a kind of wonderland. Recently I went to visit my own festival, a festival that never will be. Famous and not so famous architects talked about the drone of big city’s or how the city sounds bounce back from the hills of Rio de Janeiro and thus create this wild jumpy rhythm. Shanty towns are so chaotically laid out that spiraling melodies seem a very natural musical reproduction of this structure. We would hear in sound and word how big buildings not only produce but also direct and transform the traffic noises. A modern day city dweller would feel lost in a silent town. City noises create their own dynamics, and contribute to development of new ways of thinking.

Also scientists would be there to tell us that communication between plants is based on sound. We would hear those sonic impulses from the micro world, and learn that also we, speaking our languages, use the bare sound of it to communicate, that it doesn’t come down to words alone.

Ach, long distance communication between whales, navigation systems from the birds, the love call of snails, chaos theory and the buzzes of domestic flies, cosmic winds, tectonian moves, vulcanoes, tornadoes and crickets on a hot summer day, suddenly every visitor and participant alike would find pleasure in anecdotes about things they had heard and could not describe in words.

In comes the artist. Each one of them would be commissioned to use the scientific and architectural and filologic and geo-specific sounds and compile a story of it, a work of art that would cause for each listener to daydream himself to a different place.

There would also be a blindfolded sound walk in this festival that will never be. Not the one as we know it, o no. Participants would be brought to different places in a stretch limousine with blinded windows. Not able to see where they are going, together in a moving capsule they would hear strange abstract sounds. As soon as the car stopped, they would be blindfolded. They entered buildings with peculiar smells, sizzlings and tapperings, mumbles, squeeks and bits of conversation. Back to the car, and of to some place in town, a bit aside of the traffic saturated part of it, another walk. Then to an abandoned site, with distant almost undetectable whispers of all kinds. At the end of this sound walk each participant should talk about the things they had imagined.

O yes, it is all possible in a day dreamed world. I guess it is this kind of imagination that fuels not only my own performances. It also determines who I choose to play at my ongoing attempt to set up a festival:

14. August, 21.30hours
Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival
with
Anton Mobin/JD Zazie
and
Young Horse Piano
at
Valentin Stüberl
Donaustrasse 112
Berlin
U7 Rathaus Neukölln

A Sunny Day ( report of BERLIN – A Sound Installation)

1. A sunny afternoon

One week before the opening I went there with mini cd’s in my rucksack, and a big roll of tape. I was dressed for Sundays. The covers of the minicds were brown/black like autumn leaves in the falling night and white/grey which reminded of the bright USA-optimism of the fifties, also because there was a picture on it of a something that looked like a vintage fridge, the one a freshly chosen dairy queen would win after her election, or maybe freshly wed couples would get one for free in those days.
To me the little things were giant pixels in the word I had to write on the window: BERLIN. It took me a while to get the N right, but in the end it was there, clean and out of place, but also naiv and optimistic, almost a self-portrait.

While attaching pixel after pixel I had noticed the little sidewalk traffic, mostly young Turkish girls with or without a head scarf passing by in groups of three or four, all of them attentively not paying attention to my activities, to make sure that not one motion went unobserved. Run down neighbors made sure to maintain their “don’t talk to me” face. Newer neuköllners showed a glance of recognition. Once the word ‘BERLIN’ was readable, it got read. At the other side of the road a man shouted ferociously at a woman in her parked car.

2. After the rains

A few days later I came back to tell I wouldn’t bring the other cd’s right away, but also to have a look at the package from Krakow and judge the cd’s by their color. The word BERLIN on the window was unrecognizable. Almost all of the pixels had fallen of.

3. Move

Adrian had the car of his housemate whom he had to bring to the hospital early in the morning. It was a fine sunny day for moving. The Emserstrasse is a very empty street. Luckily enough, it is wide and has big trees, and enough houses with a bourgeois façade from the ‘those were the days’-years. In Berlin I very often try to spot the places destroyed by bombs, which is easy in Mitte, but not overhere. Overhere, which is Emserstrasse near Tempelhof, it looks very much like history in the making. The people who live here and walk the streets here will be replaced by the kind of people depicted, yet also designed in presentation sheets and advertisements. We carried the boxes across the street. Hardly a car passed by. Petrol is expensive these days. The Hermannstrasse at one end seems a portal to another world, a world that moves. The other end of Emserstrasse is a green wall of plants. Behind it is a sports park. I have to find out if Tasmania Berlin used to play its home games there.

4. The day of the opening

It was sunny again. The day before I had covered one half of the floor of the first room. When I woke up my intuition told me to get 25 cd’s out of the left, middle and right part, and put them elsewhere. As a result the pattern became more caleidoscopic.
We worked together: Oscar covered the floor with cardboard, I followed with the cd’s. Oscar’s precautiousness was out of concern for the surface of the floor. It would also rob the installation of its loud cracks. All was ready way before the first visitors were supposed to come. I even had time to redo the BERLIN word.

I made dinner. Pasta with tomatoe sauce for me and a young girl on a visit from Amsterdam who reminded me a lot of Silvia Kristel. She liked her spaghetti with onions. I didn’t and since it was my idea to cook…
While cooking Oscar came into the kitchen. There were two persons in the gallery and he didn’t understand them.

I went. Two young Turks had walked in. A red haired one with a square face who looked as if he saw water burning. The other one looked as if he had died yesterday. He had a metal bridge over his nose and two very black eyes, black as in what you get if a fist hits it hard and more then once. The guy must have gained consciousness again pretty recently. He didn’t say a word , just looked. The other guy talked the way you talk when you are suspicious and also the way you talk when you know you can parasite on somebody else’s good behaviour, like mine. What was this place, what are we doing here, and what is here ( the kitchen, it is private). You can come back at seven. Then he said something very peculiar: ” I just say one word: orgies. I have an eye for that. ” He walked away a few meters and asked if it wasn’t a waste to cover the floor with new cd’s? I smiled and said yes. At the door the guy who had just raised from the grave turned and made a little round carefully driving his shoes into the cd-’s to make sure he would destroy them. Meanwhile he watched me. I thought this kid is so bleeding stupid you would need a baseball bratt to hit all that stupidity out of his head. At the same time I thought you sucker you are doing precisely what I want. I felt some disappointment that the cd’s didn’t crack louder, and thought of his skull.

5. The Exhibition

At the opening hour Michal came walking across the street. He lives in the Praha neighborhood of Warsaw, which looks a bit like Neukölln. This was a global village visit at its best. We took some chairs, a bottle of Lokomotiv beer each and talked. The evening was still a few shadow lengths away.

To cartographs the first visitors must have set sparkles of delight, a little bonfire to celebrate the naval explorers. We sat with our back to the south. Who ever came from the right, eventually arrived from the East. And those three were all from Australia. Okay, one of them lived near Sonnenallee, but the couple was a genuine visiting pair. They had travelled half the world to visit BERLIN. No wonder they had brought a recorder. A little small talk later two girls rushed in from the left: South Americans. The hello,hello was very short, but long enough to spot the recorder. I started to dream about re-mixes that soon would sail the digital oceans.

Angie came with her dog. She is American. Americans express immediately their delight. So did Angie. She liked it very much to actually walk on CD’s, thought it was a great feeling. “May I jump?’ The toe nails of her dog went tick tick tick.

A young boy stood at the entrance. He watched the Cd floor. “Krass” he said. That is the word most Germans use when they forget to say “cool.” How many Cd’s … wow.. how much time to put them on the floor? …. krass .. and why? I convinced him to enter and walk on it. He accepted the invitation, to be polite.

At ten o’clock just enough people had come and left ( some of them showed the thumbs up sign ) to turn BERLIN into a minor succes. The next day I wanted to be there again at seven o’clock. My little television showed the quarter finale match of the female football world championships between Brasil and USA. I couldn’t leave Marta and arrived at the gallery just before ten. I was told that it was almost impossible to use your skateboard on the CD floor. Someone had come back to buy six CD’s.

6. Goodbye BERLIN

An advice given to a friend of mine brings it to the point. She was told that it would be better for her to leave Berlin, and go to London or New York. In Berlin she would never get the recognition for her art that she deserved. The visiting friend stated that Berlin was a city of losers.

For our kind of sound Berlin is without a point of reference.There is no venue (with a budget) you can visit on whatever day of the week, no matter what the programme offers.

People who come to Berlin are attracted by the low rents and the (dance)club scene. The street I live in has seen a major change with new bars and small galleries opening at the rate of one a month. Even from a short distance all the people who flock in look the same. Probably I could connect to each one of them on facebook, join the virtual ghetto and receive an update about their lives every five minutes. But I am not a facebook luser.

I don’t notice that experimental musicians from around the world want to move to Berlin because they can play three times per month at Sowieso, in a program alongside to singersongwriters and children’s theatre. The so-called echtzeitmusicians play very often and occupy a lot of stages, but nothing of high international standard developes out of it. Yet they get a lot of visibility. One could almost think that while nothing is going on nothing else is going on either.

This city is great for riding your bicycle. If you want to find fundings for your ideas you need the skills of an accountant and a manager at the same time. Accountants and managers are not the best artists or curators I’d say. A fancy flyer is almost a guarantee for a waste of time, money and energy, an evening better spend at home.

7. Illusions

BERLIN was a protest, an experiment with a political and an aesthetical side to it. I would love to do it again, not necessarily with BERLIN as a title. DATA could be an other one. But for such an exhibition I would need a lot of data burned on Cdr. It would be great to have people walk on and destroy their digital memory. I am not the only person who recognizes the force of forgetting or the even greater force of transforming memories into stories or works of art. It is through this quality of inventing and re-inventing that civilisation rolls on.

Echoos of August and other days – an Interview by Marc Zendrini

picture by marc zendrini, showing staalplaat shop, adrian shephard and me behind the window and marc behind the camera

On Monday the 24th of August, one of those days that found the bees humming and dancing above the flowers, Marc Zendrini came to the Flughafenstrasse 38 to ask some questions about field recordings. I proposed to stream it, and store the result as well, because requests like this arrive with every season. A future interview could start from here. (click to listen to the interview)