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... 

that sparkle of chance

It's almost Christmas time. It should be a week of peace in the world. Instead, it's a week that started with another terrorist tragedy. It's painful to think of all those who went to that market to have a bit of christmas joy, and then find themselves trapped and hurt. 

It's what I thought of when I went to Stuttgart on Tuesday - but then, I didn't want to be trapped in that fear the terrorists want to spread. And so I walked the way I had in mind, the one that leads through the city, through streets full of x-mas decorations and music - and to the Chrismas market at the "Schlossplatz", the centre of the city.

That's also where the art museum is - they have an interesting theme for their current exhibition: “Zufall” – “Chance”. And the museum has lovely city views from the museum floors. The image above is a reflection photo, and the one below is from inside the exhibition:

The theme of chance, it touched me more than I expected. It made me remember the article I read earlier this year that compared different reason-of-death-risks, and the way we react to them. In Germany, the risk to die in a terror attack is lower than the one of flight accidents, which is about 1: 3.360.000. So statistically, we wouldn't need to worry. There are activities with much higher risks: driving a car: 1 : 20.200. And there is smoking: 1 : 260. But all this are just numbers. The art approach, the play with patterns and rules and with chance elements felt closer to the way life presents itself.

There’s more about it online, here: unexpected. And here’s my personal chance zen riddle moment, the 3 panels say: “Chance or art?” – “Chance doesn’t exist” – “You are here due to chance.”

It also made me think of that poem I wrote once about chance, which got published in Soundzine. Well, looking it up, it turns out the poem wasn't about chance, but about it's sister: luck.  

LUCK: 

good or bad fortune in life
caused by accident or chance

           in German: Glück
a word that is close to Lücke – “gap”

which points at the close scale
between good or bad luck

in the case of missing a bus,
or a look
or a realization
by a minute
on an everyday Thursday morning

and all the causes
and consequences
this gap between

your life as it is    //    your life as it almost would have been

/a  gap that you obviously never
will be fully able to grasp/

may encompass

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First winter skies, day in Zurich, Westworld

This week was so full of impressions - on Monday, I went to Stuttgart, to meet up with a former colleague - we haven't seen each other in ages. Afterwards there was a work meeting. On Tuesday, our art group met again. And then Wednesday - starting with the election news. And continuing with a Modpo webcast which was the most emotional of all so far, one that brought a feeling of connection across borders, and of the touch of poetry in difficult times.  

Wednesday, it also was get-it-all-done-day, as I knew I would be not here the next two days. Together with 3 colleagues, we went to Zurich on Thursday, for the "faceliftsummit" - a social media day. It was a long, and inspiring trip. We met up near Stuttgart university and then drove from there to Zurich together. Our route lead through the Black Forrest, and had a first real touch of winter, with snowy fields along the way:

We arrived in Zurich "just-in-time", at 9.15. I guess none of us had really believed that would work out with morning traffic. 

Then the meet-up - here are some impressions on the twitter-feed, it's in German, but you see the keywords: social media trends, local/national, media monitoring, chatbots, videos, influencer marketing: #faceliftsummit 

It was a bit sad that we didn't get to see Zurich, but it was a rainy and grey day there anyway. In one of the breaks, I went for a walk around the hotel block, and saw a bit of the area: we were in Zurich-Oerlikon. That's the railway station, almost like out of a model railway set: 

And the opposite view: an international touch of christmas:



We came home late, and Friday again started with a meeting - but then things slowed down. And the day had an after-effect of the unexpected kind: while driving, we listened to music, and talked about films - and one of our team recommended the new series "Westworld", which is available here via one of the paytv stations in the original version. I checked it out, and first wasn't sure. But I actually saw the original "Westworld" film, and the whole theme of AI is interesting.

It made me think of the story that won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Short Story: "Cat Pictures, Please" by Naomi Kritzer. Here's the starting passage, about the difficulty for AIs to help humans...:

"I don’t want to be evil. I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts—I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”—one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort..."

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more skies: skywatch friday

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

Cologne early morning skyline / old city walls / and even older: one of the city gates from Roman times. If those stones could talk...

roman road trip with mammoth + celtics

Following roman roads - that's what I did last week, when I drove to "Rottenburg", which once was a Roman settlement called Sumelocenna. And the history of this town reaches even further back: the name is derived from the Celtic tribe Sumelo, which lived there another couple of thousand years earlier.
Rottenburg, it's part of the: "Römerstrasse", the "historic roman street" that connects settlements here in the South of Germany. In Rottenburg, I met up with my sister at the edge of town, and we went for a walk along fields, which still look like it probably had thousands of years ago:

Actually, not only Romans and Celtics walked here: Rottenburg was built at the river Neckar, whichis a long-distance connecting route. Here's a signpost along the way, with waymarks: the Camino de Santiago passes through, following it will take you through France and Spain. And the mark on top, the green "Main-Neckar-Rhein-Weg" is a 540 km long walk along the major rivers of South Germany.

Beyond the forest, the view opened to fields, and to "Sankt Remigius Chapel" on a hill, which dates back to the year 1050: 

A suprise encounter along the way: a "Mammutbaum" - a redwood tree, which was a  gift from overseas. And interesting about names, I assumed that the English name for it would be "Mammoth Tree", but it is redwood.

And finally, at the end of the walk: Rottenburg city, with the river Neckar: 

Such a good walk through time, under blue skies. And nice to connect to the memory of an earlier Roman road trip , which was more about the town itself and its Roman museum: 1-day road trip along Roman roads and home rivers

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links:
more home journeys in this blog

more skies: sky friday

more road trips: photo friday 

walking along summer paths in winter, or: leaves

It was in September 2013 that I walked along this nature trail that leads through a marsh area, and noted:

 "...my favorite passage of the walk was the way along birches, with the first autumn leaves falling"

Somehow, the memory of it bubbled up this week, so when the sun turned Thursday into a startling blue-sky-day, I went on a drive to the Alb, and revisited the path. Up there, it is still winter.  And the trail looked all different:



So fascinating, to see the difference of seasons. It even was visible directly on the trail: they had a trail sign that points out the marsh animals, illustrated with a spring image of the area:



And one more photo: the view from the plateau down to the Neckar valley. You can see the difference of altitude: up there, it's all white snow. While down in the valley, the snow mostly is gone.



Links...

• The original summer trail post is up here: nature home walk & a sense of place in time
• And for more "leaves" from around the world, visit photo friday

from modern art ... to ancient celtic ways

after the art short trip to "Cool Places", i made a counterpart trip on Sunday, both by direction and theme: i went to the Alb Plateau, and visited the "Heidengraben".

it's a place where once, a Celtic group had built a settlement, one of the largest and oldest of the region.

i've been to before once, in winter, and first didn't find it. now it was easier.

there's a celtic walkway, which leads around the settlement area in a loop - 

walking the loop would take about 27 Kilometres / 6 hours.

here are some impressions and maps from the web, the first image shows the rather safe and island-like place of the settlement: on the plateau, above a stone cliff:

(here is more on a webpage "Heidengraben" ( in german)

it's always special to walk those ways, knowing that thousands of years ago, people walked there already, so close from here, and so far away in time.

and here's the blog post and an image of the first visit: 2200 years ago, near here

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 ...