let's get overwhelmed: 2 radars, 2 art trips, un/noticed advice, light shadows, and: not really next station

"In the first weeks, you will be overwhelmed. And that's a good thing."

This is what one of our tutors stated at the introduction day of the art academy. That was 3 weeks ago. And since then, every week has a different, full and multifaceted vibe.

Right now, I work with several daily creative challenges / practises, to experiment and learn. There are the aquarelle sketches, the digital paintings, and there's photography. Plus: there's the 7 day black/white photo challenge.

In contrast to my own art/work, there are the art sessions, visiting exhibitions, and generally paying more attention to the perspectives new places hold. Like the unplanned, stunning moment above - looking up, and seeing a curl of multicolored October leaves right above me. All the things that are there, if only we noticed... :)

Here's a collage/screenshot from my Instagram account, and it's symbolic in various ways:

"Think of it as developing 2 radars", another tutor suggested. "One for all the art that you see, and one for your own inner space, your art/work." 

And so, each day currently has this touch of inner/outer journey. Even more so, when it's connected to a real trip. Like this week, when I took the s-train to Stuttgart, to join an exhbition to the “Wagenhallen”. It’s a container / art / atelier place. I have never been there. And learned about a new eco ticket while figuring out the route to take - one of the good side effects of going to new places.

In the train, this sign for the upcoming next station felt like the sign for these days: "Nächste Station:"

And so, here a few of the "next stations", the ones that stood out for me:

The Wagenhallen, it's a real building with artist studios, which is currently under reconstruction. So the artists suggested to move into temporary housing: containers, in a self-organized settlement on the area There are now about 50 different artists / djs / architects working there. 

Our tutor has his atelier/container there, too, and wanted us to see the place, and meet one of the resident artists: Gabriela Oberkofler is rather established already, and grew up on an Austrian alp farm, an “Alm”. Her work is about human life / nature life balance. It was so inspiring to meet her, and learn from her. Here’s herwebsite with photos from her temporary home - which is much more than a container. She created a work/meet/studio/place with alp farm touch, chicks included.

One of our group asked her how she finds the energy for all this, for her work and her projects and organizing art meet-ups and all. Our advice for us was:

"Find the theme that you really care about, and stand for, the theme you want to explore and express in your art. And then, for times, give it all you got. And at the same time, find the people who can support you, and learn to apply for funding, to get organized. Half your work as arist will be about organizing." 

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A next station: the photo course

The photo class yesterday was more like a lecture this time, about a season of photography, focusing on American photographers who influenced the way of taking photos: Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore...

Their focus was on documenting everyday life, moments encountered on the street or on the road, without the motivation to change society, but simply to see and admire life in all its facets.

I hadn't known this, but there are youtube channels of people who just browse through books, they call it "Have a nice book", and it works really well with a beamer. Here's "Uncommmon Places".

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Another next station: aquarelle practice

Some days ago, I bought a new aquarelle brush, and tried it with a rabbit aquarelle, to find: yes, it really makes a difference. Plus, it was a day of good flow. And so the rabbit currently is my insta post with the most likes. There were also some aquarelles that didn't work out, but that is part of learning. 

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Photo Biennale 

The week also brought a special highlight: there's a photo biennale happening right now, and we went to visit it on Saturday. The biennale consists of 8 exhibitions in 3 cities (Mannheim + Heidelberg + Ludwigshafen), with different themes.

Some works are really playful, experimenting with the medium photography - one was an installation from Olafur Eliasson, a set of lights, and when the visitor walk through the room, it creates multi-shadows on the wall:

Others were political, about the current migration/refugee situation. And some were really old, from photo archives. Like, when they experimented with night sky star maps, in 1903.  Another one was a project with family photo albums from workers who migrated to Germany in the 60ies. And there were new experiments, like Barbara Probst's  work from her "Exposure" series: simultanous photos of a scene from different perspectives:

The work was combined with a serial work from Ed Ruscha, "Every building on sunet strip" from '66. A work we had just talked about in the photo class, not knowing it would be presented at the Biennale. 

I put a youtube clip together with impressions: 

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Actually, not really next stations  

Of course, there are all the other ongoing things, too - my freelance web work, my friends, my qui gong class, going for walks, the usual household chores etc etc. It's a lot, and yes, it's to some degree overwhelming, but it also is a precious phase, a time of new perspectives and encounters, and of different priorities. And the overlap of themes creates a different, larger flow. Actually, it's not really "next station - next station..", but more a weaving of web of themes, a long, ongoing and interconnected process of art themes, own work, exchanges, not single art times. 

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Links + More:

For more about me, visit my webpage blueprint21.de.

For more tiny colourful moments, visit my instapage: lifeasjourney.

Currently participating in the #sevendayschallenge and skywatchfriday

Sunday museum time with Hundertwasser, a baroque palace, and a modern literature museum

Sunday museum time - Hundertwasser exhibition in Ludwigsburg. Such vivid colors and shapes.

And such good contrasts: the exhibition is located in the Ludwigsburg Residential Palace, one of the largest baroque palaces in Germany. This is the view when you look out of a window:



Which is especially interesting when you stand inside this baroque place and look at the architecture models of Hundertwasser, and the photos of the buildings that were based on them.

And then you move to the paintings...

and then you look up, and see the baroque ceiling...



I tried to capture it in a video:



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After visiting the exhibition, I wandered a bit through the palace area and gardens, and walked into this still life with painter. Actually, there were several people sketching / painting. So nice, to see artists and art-in-progress right after the exhibition:

And here's the other side of the palace, the counterpart view to the first scenery photo. I liked the contrast of posh/perfect facade, and the plastic construction barriere, especially as it has my family name...

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After Hundertwasser, I went to the Museum of Modern Literature ... which had a very different style, very clean and modern. The iterature museum is in Marbach, which turned out to be only about 40 minutes from where I live... first time I went there. Nice to do something for the first time.

Inside the museum: thoughtful notes and quotes and reflections.

Words on walls, words on the floor.

"Die Seele eines Archivs sind seine Dinge. Sie beseelen uns mit dem Gefühl, auf einer Spur zu sein... und wir erinnern uns, dass Sprechen immer Unterwegssein heisst." - "The soul of an archive consists of its things. They touch as with the feeling, to be a on a path... and we remember that speaking always means to be on a way."



The treasures of this museum: ink on paper.

Handwritten literary artefacts.

Such surprises: Allen Ginsbergs mantra-shaped book note for Carl Weisner. A posrcard from Kafka. Mascha Kaleko's ad texts for air wick. A draft of Celan's "todesfuge". A sketch by Hermann Hesse... all those details... 

Frankfurt Bookfair 2016: Snapshots, The Arts, documenta, forbidden books, a poetic shore + a personal reflection

Themes + Snapshots 
"Rain all day" - that's what the weather forecast promised for Thursday, the day I went to the Frankfurt Bookfair. "Hopefully they are wrong," I thought. As yes, the bookfair is mostly an in-door event, but they have this gorgeous central plaza. Which comes with an open stage, a reading-tent, and and a read-and-snack-area which basically is a breather between halls. With more than 7000 national and international exhibitors, the fair is the largest bookfair of the world. At some point, you long for that breather in between all the impressions and authors and highlights.

When I read through the infos for the 2016 bookfair last week, I learned that both the settings of the different areas of the fair and the fair concept itself has shifted: it now also includes an art section. And has more stages for themes. Their focus topics in 2016 are: Asia, Kids, Education, Art & Design, Self-Publishing, Weltempfang"/Global Reading,., here's more: Frankfurt Book Fair Themes

As a starter, here some photos and links, to give a feeling for the atmosphere. For more impressions, try the twitterstream: #fbm16  and #frankfurtbookfair



The author tent in the central plaza. The author who is signing in the photo is Connie Palmen, I read one of her books some years ago.




In one of the international halls.



The indie lit scene: Indiecom and Pioneer Talks



Books, books, and more books, in all kind of languages, about all kind of topics. The bookfair, in some ways, it is the world in miniature.

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The Arts + documenta book project

When I read through the infos for the 2016 bookfair last week, I learned that both the settings of the different areas of the fair and the fair concept itself has shifted: it now also includes an art section, a fair inside the fair, called: THE ARTS+

It's a vibrant and surprising hall, presenting current and upcoming art themes and events. The big eye-catcher was the XXL-book of artist David Hockney:



The upcoming documenta was part of the THEARTS+ program, they introduced a special art project:



"The Parthenon of Books" is an art project that will be shown in 2017 in Kassel at the documenta, and which now officially gets started: The argentinian artist Marta Minujín is collecting books from forbidden and persecuted authors for it. For more about the documenta and the project, visit: documenta 14 / Athen / Kassel



The Arts-fair encompasses both the future and the past: there's a multi media booth of the first VR-association: Erste deutsche Fachverband für Virtual Reality ....

And just some steps from there, the Gutenberg-Museum leads back to the beginnings of printed books:

From print to the web: the international artists Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei currently invite people to join "Moon", an interactive project that transcends borders set by nationality and language.




Here's the project website: moonmoonmoonmoon.com
And here's an article about the project. "Make your Mark on the Moon"

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Guest of Honour:  Flanders + the Netherlands 

This year, the guest of honour at the bookfair is Flandern & the Netherlands. With the slogan “Dit is wat we delen” (“This is what we share”), they will present not just novels, nonfiction and poetry, but also new forms that have emerged from the book arts, creative industry and other artistic fields.

The two countries developed an original idea for their presentation in the "Forum":



A poetic ocean moment

As always, the guest country gets a hall to represent, and they turned it into an open, airy space with ocean bay atmosphere. So nice. They put up some loungers, and I was lucky and there was a free one – and the woman next to it on a chair welcomed me by the guest countries, and invited me to listen to poetry. Which she would read. Live. For me. Such a nice and different “exhibition”.

The poem she read was by Anneke Brassinga, here's the start:

BY THE SEA
The wind weighs the words
and finds them too light
the wind weeps, sweeps the words
aside, out of sight...

and here's the poem page: By The Sea

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A personal flashback/forward reflection 

The bookfair, it is an extraordinary event anyway. For me, it was special in a different way this year: the last time I've been there was 2 years ago, in 2014. It was the last day of my "normal" life. Of course, as it goes with last normal days, you aren't aware of that while they happen. It was a sunny Thursday. One day later, on Friday evening, I discovered a lump in my breast. And hoped it wouldn't be what I thought it was, yet had a bad feeling from start. Which then got confirmed a bit later, and lead to a year of cancer treatments, and a long time of recovery.

So going to Frankfurt again, 2 years later, wasn't just about going to the book fair again. It also included this symbolic element of returning to a place that now carries a different kind of meaning for me.

Here's the memory of that bookfair day in 2014:
Frankfurt International Bookfair: Printed, Digital, We are Here - Snaphots & Links,

And here's the story of what happened afterwards: c is for cancer

Making November Mindful

The days are finally starting to feel normal again. So nice. And while catching up once more last week, I came across a lovely-sounding web initiative, the Mindfulness Summit, which happened to be in October – so I missed that.

But it sparked an idea: I want to make November my personal month of mindfulness, and post a mindful post, image, painting or link each day, over in my neglected photo blog.

The first posts are online. For the start, I created a mandala, which now also turned into the icon for this month. Also included are: videos, photos, notes, a mindful app and more. It's all online here:

Once upon each day: Making November Mindful

Nov 1: Mindful November Mandala
Nov 2: This mood of autumn: yellow leaves falling (+ yoga video)
Nov 3: to feel calm
Nov 4: Handmade chain reaction (or: cookies)
Nov 5: Perspectives on Mindfulness (research summit link)
Nov 6: the same place / a different place
Nov 7: Spaces + Borders (art therapy moment)
Nov 8: Insight Timer (meditation app)
Nov 9: Ornate Mandala
Nov 10: life is..
Nov 11: chalk leaf patterns
Nov 12: moon strings (blog memory)
Nov 14: a troubled world (Etty Hillesum)
Nov 19: do more of what makes you happy (flow magazine)
Nov 20: sky friday rituals (sky friday)
Nov 21: nothing & the ocean (ocean quotes)
Nov 22: life is made of moments (Instagram)

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I also want to put a reflection together on the time since the cure - or rather: a longer post on the whole year of going through the breast cancer diagnosis and the time of chemo and radiation. But so far, I didn't find the right mood for it. Right now, the mindful month feels like the way to go, to play and explore and enjoy.

Parallel to that, I started to sort through things in a sort of November-spring-cleaning. Or rather: returning-from-the-shadowland-cleaning.

Step by step...

Meta Cool Places, or: Paintings about painting - an art short trip

At the start of the year, I was in Stuttgart city for some meetings, and knew I might have some spare time at the end of the day before the museums close. In the end, all that remained were 30 minutes. I still went, and what seemed to be just a short art moment at the end of a winter day turned into a rough plan for the year:

"Trying to make space and time for mini-trips and for art - that's what I started in January 2014, and each time, I was glad for it." (Places & Links: art short trips)"

Cool Places

Last week, I was in Stuttgart again, and revisited the same museum, with its new exhibition "Cool Places". The exhibition features paintings that together form a reflection on modern painting, it was rather varied and colorful, with good contrasts, but also a bit abstract. I probably wouldn't have visited if I hadn't been in Stuttgart anyway. But again, I am so glad that I went.

Here are some impressions from the museum, combined with the official introduction - the museum is rather modern in architecture, constructed as a cube made out of cubes. The different rooms and levels open into each other, which creates open connections between the paintings and scultpures on display:

"With "Cool Places", the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is devoting a large exhibition to important aspects of current painting, ranging from abstract and figurative to conceptual approaches. It includes examples of Neorealism, as well as works influenced by Appropriation Art, Constructivism, and Op-Art."

"On view will be over sixty keyworks, with numerous large scale pieces by Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Günther Förg, Philip Guston, Jeff Koons, Beatriz Milhazes, Albert Oehlen, Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter, Bridget Riley, Julian Schnabel, and Christopher Wool. The selection will be supplemented from sculptures by Glenn Brown, Jeff Koons, and Rebecca Warren, as well as films from Darren Almond that highlight the impact of painterly modes of expression in other media."




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Beyond the paintings

While at the exhbition, I enjoyed being there, but felt a bit overwhelmed, too - both by the abstract theme, and by the open space that keeps pulling your attention to the next thing to see, wherever you are.

Also, I felt that the exhibition for me felt a bit too mixed with the different styles and topics, many different painters. But then, you probably need this kind of variety to develop a self reflective meta-theme and its many layers.

A day later, I looked up one of the painters, Bridget Riley, and was fascinated.

I saw some of her work before, and always thought she belonged to the current contemporary group of artists, but she is a pioneer really – and is 80 now! And still working and giving interviews and being part of exhibitions. I was stunned, and read an interview with her. Here is an image collage of Riley's work:

And now I am curious for the other painters, too. So maybe this is an exhibition that grows slower from effect. And good that there is the internet, which makes it possible to continue the exhibition in another way. Just following links to Riley's work brought me to 2 art network webites with blogrolls and exhibition links:

• Painter's Table - From the Art Blogosphere
• e-flux art network & links

So the Cool Place (which actually is the name of both one of Riley's featured paintings, and of the exhibition itself) now leads to more cool places..

And finally, to follow the series of art selfies I started to take, here's the one from last week:

Links

• art short trips 2014 
• the start: "art, selfie & the first exhibition: Baumeister"
• reading the world ...

green sky / yellow garden

right now, the Villa Merkel park not far from here is an art park. there is a line of old trees, and next to one, there's a sky / tree installation, with panels that move slightly in the wind. here's a photo:

i also tried a video, i will add it at the bottom, but first 2 more art moments:

This is inside the Villa Merkel - one of the spots where the inside and outside

develop a dialogue, with the window-framed world outside and the

wall-framed painting inside seem to corresponding:

right in front of the Villa is another outside installation, a "mobile garden",

created by artist Lois Weinberger who works with nature

(more about his work, here: Green Man)

back to the sky/tree installation, it's from The Chapuisat Brothers. They note: "Our constructions transform space, turning interior and exterior boundaries inside out and toying with the perception of a subjective reality."  - enjoy the perception!

related links:

more skies from everywhere: skywatch friday

art moments 2014: art short trips

Villa Merkel exhibition info

International Flash Fiction Competition + Disobedient Objects

It was sunny most of the week, and now it's the weekend - and rain.... but at least the rain brought 2 good web surprises this morning:

A Virtual Museum for Dialogue & an International 20K Flash Fiction Competition 
While looking for international short stories for my summer reading challenge, i came across the page of the Museo de la Palabra, a musuem that "supports and encourages dialogue between different cultures, ideas, religions and sensibilities. The result and the existence of this dialogue is in itself a museum piece, and configure as a meeting place, the unique virtual museum in the world in which nothing is exposed.."

The museum organizes micro fiction contests - in the third edition, authors from 119 countries participated (map), the stories are online here: Flash Fiction Competetion III

And now the next edition of the contest is open: the slogan is: "Mandela: Words and Concord", stories must not exceed 100 words, first price is 20.000$ (!), the competition ends on November 23rd, visit the webpage for the Short Story Competitin Guidelines + Participation Form.

Disobedient Objects 
London's news magazine The Guardian wrote about a thought-provoking new exhibition that opened its doors: “Tools of protest: Disobedient Objects, the V&A's subversive new show” – when I read it, I thought “V&A” must be an avantgarde gallery, but it turns out it’s a place I’ve been to myself once: “The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design”. Here is the link to the article: Disobedient Objects 

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Extra Links


The summer reading challenge: reading the (missing parts of) the world 

More disobedience: photos of "Disobedient Objects"

More reading notes in this blog: life as a journey with books

design museum "red dot"

trying to find the space and time for mini-trips and museum visits - that's what i started in January and each time, i was glad for it. so when i was Essen city earlier this month, for a meet-up, i remembered that there is a design museum not far from there: the "Red Dot Museum". i noticed it last year already, and this time, made time to go there.

the museum is part of an old mining complex which now is turned into offices and museums. here's how it looks from outside (and here's more about the area: comic coal metropolis)

and here's an inside view, 

this is a part of the permanent exhibition 

the thing is, the architecture and the "steam noir" touch of the mining time dominates each space in the museum, which is interesting, but also distracting. and from sheer size, the objects on display are sometimes rather small compared to the halls and elements from the mining past:  

altogether, the museum felt fascinating, a bit overwhelming, and also a bit weird and unsorted (how to design exhibitions …. ?). but it was good to have this extra time. and the question “what is good design” of course relates to so many layers of our days, especially when it comes to the different elements of design, the combination of form and function, of look and usability

a part of the exhibition also focused on "communication design": 

and this was my favourite spot: the white sculpture resembles a paper/note tree.
it is created as a symbol for communication:

Previous museum trips

• museum trip 4: JR in Baden-Baden (street art, history + a road trip)
• museum trip 3: space / art / territories 
• museum trip 2: old stones & a square museum 
• museum trip 1: art, selfie + the first exhibition: Baumeister
• more museum trips