Food for thought

While taking a break from scanning, website-updating and Fedex-ing to nibble on a Brötchen for lunch, I wanted to post something I came across in Art Review this morning. 

Art Review is one of the foremost art magazines in the art world. It essentially acts as an advertising platform for commercial galleries, featuring large, glossy whole-page adverts and the odd art criticism feature here and there if you're lucky. Their yearly feature for which they are most well known, 'Art Review Power 100', is a who's who of the art world. It often draws criticism for its focus on directors and collectors rather than artists themselves and indeed in this year's edition, the top 20 only featured three artists. For a publication that seems pretty lacking in critical content I was happy, and somewhat surprised, to find Grayson Perry had written a forward to a special edition catalogue published by Art Review, detailing prints, editions, plectrums, necklaces, anything as long as it is by an established artist and comes in quantities. At the end of his forward Perry writes:

“While we have so many artists that are very good, since Marcel Duchamp there has been a conception that artists can just point at things to bestow significance on them, and this has become pretty tired, I think”

Words that ring true. Painfully true in fact as the artist whose show just closed here last month was one big, lazy nod to Duchamp. 

Weekday Weekend

In these past 3 weeks any time I could get on the internet was spent locked in the purgatory that is Belushi's hostel, desperately searching for somewhere to live. Now that the crisis is over and I've found a lovely flat on Hasenheide ('hare heath') I feel it is high time I write about this month - even if it is nearly at an end. 

The very first weekend after I arrived here at the start of Ocotober, I had a visit from two friends who study German with me. Saturday Hannah arrived from Halle where she is teaching in a Gesamtschule. With the biting cold there was only one thing to do: shopping. We headed to a place I had never heard of before, a Swedish store called Weekday. Obviously they're doing well as they had an instore DJ. At 5pm in the afternoon. It was so loud my changing cubicle was shaking. I guess that's how the Swedes like to shop. 

Anyway, after our eardrums had recovered we stepped outside onto Georgenstrasse. 

After the cringe-worthy yet highly necessary photo opp we headed East to a second-hand store located in an old office block from the DDR era. 

Hannah climbing on up for that 2nd hand bargain

Evening was falafel  (full homage blog to follow) and then went to CAKE bar to see my friend Melanie deejay

Emma arrived the next day from Braunschweig, where she's working for a publishing company. Having just come from the from the Peggy Guggenheim I couldn't not go to the Deutsche Guggenheim

and so we popped in to catch the last days of an exhibition on contemporary artists' work in film and how it engages with the idea of the fairytale. The highlight for me was a grotesquely fascinating film called 'Dough' by Argentinian-born  artist Mika Rottenberg. Rather than try and explain it badly here's a video of it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPXpQPfZu4s

I found Peggy's autobiography in German in the shop which made me nostalgic. 

It was funny to see how they'd placed it right next to a film on Hilla Rebay. She was the woman who was responsible for setting up Solomon Guggenheim's (Peggy's uncle) collection which would become the founding collection of the Guggenheim New York. Hilla and Peggy had a particularly vicious series of correspondences where the former accused Peggy of profiteering under the Guggenheim name. Interesting then that she seems to be looking down her nose at Peggy who has rather insouciantly donned her brilliantly oversized sunglasses.  

We took a wander round autumn-coloured Berlin:

Emma's hair was strikingly similar to the tree's leaves

That evening we had sumptuous dinner: pumpkin risotto followed by bananas fried in prosecco, covered with melted Milka chocolate. Healthy.

NOM

 

BAUM/BBC

I have some loose ends of blog posts from Venice that I wanted to put up before I forgot. One seems particularly appropriate as a linguistic bridge between Italy and Germany.

In Venice in September I had the luck of being able to live with a former Italian intern of the Guggenheim called Eleonora. Or Ele. Or principessa depending on what time of day it was. She is a student of arts management at Ca' Foscari and had exams that she had to take in the middle of September. I also had to prepare a talk to give on a painting by Arshile Gorky that's in the Gugg collection and so we headed off to the humanities faculty library to study. But this is not just any humanities faculty library, oh no. This is the Biblioteca di Area Umanistica nontheless and they very proudly state this with the snazzy acronym, BAUM. All fine and dandy. Except in German the word baum means 'tree'. So every time I saw a new poster or notice around the place I thought there was some bizarre German tree cult that had a very prominent presence around campus.

TREE

Here's a pic of us hard at work

Here's what Eleonora made of the double meaning

Who knows, perhaps they were even
aware of the double meaning as this
sign suggests.....

In my room in our flat near the Rialto bridge I made a great discovery. The landlady was obviously learning English at some stage in the 1970s and she chose to do so by using a 6 volume BBC English course. Upon flicking through I started to notice that certain parts where rather Surrealist. Take this chapter heading for example which looks just like the kind of unsettlingly credible yet utterly nonsensical sentence that might be produced from a game of cadavre exquis.

It is a game that the Surrealist group experimented with in the 1920s and one that bored groups on rainy family holidays still play today. You write down a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over and pass it on to the next player who writes their own phrase and so on and so forth. At the end you fold out the sheet of paper and have a progression of seemingly linked sentences that offer unexpected and surprising concatenations of surreal meaning. The idea was that by involving chance in the creative process they could produce surprisingly poetic juxtapositions drawn directly from the subconscious. There were also some great picture pages that had the same effect:

Others made me laugh for their sheer quirkiness:

And others raised a wry smile for their depiction of the beloved British weather....

Gemeldet George

As someone from the European union if you stay in Germany for more than 3 months, by law you have to register with the local authorities. It helps them keep tabs on who they've got in the country and to make sure you're not an illegal immigrant or terrorist.

I was warned that German bureaucracy often requires many documents and so I came well prepared; get ready for stereotypically long German words. I took along a Einladungbestätigung which was essentially a proof of residence but translates as 'invitation confirmation' as if my landlord had 'invited' me to live with him. Next was a 'Praktikumsbestätigung' which was a document my employer drafted up to confirm I am indeed working and not just bumming around. Finally just to make sure I had documentary proof of almost every facet of my existence I brought along my passport, student card and a 'Immatrikulationsbescheinigung' which shows that I'm currently a student.

With all this proudly tucked under my arm I made my way towards the Anmeldeamt or registration office of my district, Mitte, past the unmissable main square of the former DDR, Alexanderplatz. The feature that is most recognisable that has become an icon of the city is the Fernsehturm or TV tower, whose profile is reminiscent of a space ship that rises high above the concrete tangle. The site itself however has been important since the 1800s as a cattle market

although it gets its name from the occasion when Russian Emperor Alexander I visited in 1805. Its current form is due to the pedestrianisation in the 1960s under the DDR which also saw a renaming of streets and the construction of huge, non-descript buildings for office and residential use. The conspicuously Communist-named Karl-Marx-Allee is an extremely broad road that seems to have been lined with grey Plattenbauten just to make you feel small and insignificant.

It was a 3-hour wait to get signed on. You queue up to get a form to fill out, take a number and then wait. After staring at my form blankly for some time, without the foggiest how to fill it out, a kindly lady showed me how. She looked bewildered and mildly disapproving when I informed her I belonged to neither the evangelical or the Roman Catholic church. Three hours passed surprisingly quickly as I struck up a conversation with an Iranian woman who was telling me all about her country. Amusingly her passport refers to Israel as 'occupied Palestine'.

In the end all of my proudly presented documents were cheerily dismissed as 'nicht nötig' (not necessary) by the man behind the desk and after he'd taken down my address and passport number I was done. Watch out Berlin, here comes a gemeldet George.

From my window I can see....

Having spent three months in Venice I've now arrived in Berlin to start the second part of my year abroad. It feels great to be back in a city that I know so well and it's exciting to be an environment that is so distinctly different from the otherworldly atmosphere of Venice. Although it's colder and greyer than the Serenissima, it certainly makes up for it with an abundance of Döner, beer and edgy haircuts. However still struggling to get to grips with the concept of cars again.

On my first night here I took a walk round Neukölln which was my 'Kiez' or neighbourhood last summer. At the time all my Berliner friends were saying that it was the up and coming place to be. It seemed like a lively place when I was living there, with several trendy bars and a large Turkish population which meant there was a wealth of shops offering exotic food and there is even a Turkish market twice a week by the riverbank. Having returned I can see the area has now definitely up and come. I counted at least a dozen new bars and restaurants within a small radius and there's even a hotel on Kottbuser Damm. Crazy.

A father of a friend very kindly let me stay in his flat for my first few days. It's a beautiful turn of the century building complete with richly varnished floorboards and high, white stucco ceilings. Something particularly exciting about the place is that it was home to the author Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s. Among other works his most well known is 'Goodbye to Berlin', a fictionalisation of his experiences in the city, chronicling the various debauched lifestyles of the characters he met. The book became the basis for the musical hit Cabaret, with Liza Minelli playing Sally Bowles who also features heavily in Isherwood's book.

We know that Isherwood wrote a lot of 'Goodbye to Berlin' while staying as this flat so it is particularly exciting when you take the first line, “From my window I can see...”. This is what you can now see from his window:

During my stay there I thought I'd take advantage of the imposing space to record a new ukulele video. It's a mash up between two songs that I learnt to play in Venice and I really like the way the two songs create a dialogue with one another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BK2SVa8uzI

I've now found myself a flat just round the corner from Alexanderplatz and from my window I can see......

I'm sharing with a friendly and smiley guy from Taiwan who's here to study at Humboldt. He cooked me lunch today which was delicious. My landlord, who lives in the flat below, is also a great guy. He works in the restaurant carriage of Intercity trains. He's just about to embark on a 3 month journey in Asia for the winter. This evening we sat in the kitchen and discussed his former employment as a judge and German politics while sipping peppermint tea. Very civilised.

It's a very comfortable flat and Bertie the beaver is well settled in already. Here he is all ready for bed.

Peggy Talk

 As an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim collection you are involved in telling the public about the museum. Among the many talks we give each month is a talk about Peggy Guggenheim ; her personal life and her importance in the history of modern art. I gave mine on the terrace today during 'Spritz Sunday' when the public can come and get a spritz for free. With the support of some interns I launched into it and hoped that people would listen, eliciting some vague nods of interest along the way. At the end a couple from New York approached me and the woman said, “We wanna thank youw for ya eloquent and beaoootiful speech: we'll go back to New Yooyk with our haaerts warmed” (my attempt at transliterating a thick Brooklyn accent). Her final thank you was lovely, if perhaps untrue:“You're a work of art in yourself”. Job done I think.

For the festa is sagra

On Thursday evening we went to a celebration called a 'sagra', which as far as I can work out is a week of open-air parties for charity. Much to my surprise Bernie had a visitor – James Roscoe! He just walked right into the square and I had no idea he was in town. Good to see an Oxford face.

On Saturday was Festa del Redentore, a festival that takes place every year to celebrate the end of the plague of 1576 which wiped out 50,000 Venetians. They built a temporary bridge over the Giudecca canal just for the event. It's a pretty special evening with Venetians securing spots early on the fondamenta, decked out with food and drink. The highpoint of the evening was a spectacular firework display that went on for almost a whole hour. Luckily fellow interns have an apartment that looks directly out onto where the fireworks were let off so we watched them all from the window. Diana taught me another great German word, 'Schlussbouquet' ('Closing bouquet') which refers to the final crescendo of fireworks just before a display ends.

Lovegame

Just to solidify my reputation as a Lady GaGa fanatic, here's a video of me playing a more downbeat version of 'Lovegame'. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcWUfHpNh90

When one door closes, another opens

Even though I'm working in an art gallery for over 40hrs a week at the moment, I was recently feeling a bit guilty about not getting out and seeing what other art the city has to offer. I settled on the double whammy of Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, which are both said to house staggering collections of modern art belonging to French billionaire, François Pinault. Arriving promptly at the doors of Palazzo Grassi, I was expectant and eager. However it appeared it was shut until the afternoon as they were holding a funeral for a professor that had recently passed away. Although irritated, it turned out to be the best thing that happened that day.

Determined to get my art fix, I plumped for the nearby pavillions. What I found was a real treat. The first show I came across was by two artists Daniel Glaser and Magdalena Kunz who live and work in Zurich and Turin. You enter the ground floor of the palazzo to find in a dingy side room which feels somewhat like a prison, two figures dressed like homeless people, sitting in the corner and speaking to the viewer. Only thing is, they're not real. They're just dummies and onto their faces is projected video footage of actors reciting poetry. They're strikingly realistic yet you're aware that they're just mimicking reality and it's this constant tension that makes them so fascinating.

Upstairs I found the Iranian pavillion featuring some strong photographic work and a memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives during the Iraq/Iran war. I was in a funny mood and had tears in my eyes as the guard of the gallery was just sitting in one corner playing Iranian music on a sitar. I approached him and said something about how it was similar to the ukulele because it only has four strings. Watch this space: Lady GaGa on the sitar coming up.

This was my pre-dinner warm up: a cicheto (sort of like a Venetian equivalent to tapas) and the ever-necessary spritz.

And here's a picture of the crazily huge cruise ships that pass by the island, totally dwarfing the buildings.

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside...

For a city that is built on and surrounded by water it is frustrating that you can't just take a refreshing dip in the canals, that is unless you want some vile disease. With temperatures approaching 40 degrees the other day Andrew & I decided enough was enough and headed out to the Lido, a 12km long barrier island just to the south-west of Venice. It's most well known for hosting the film festival which is starting at the end of next month, and its beaches. We chilled with some beers while Andrew introduced me to some 80s Canadian music. So chilled. When it got too hot I splashed about in the sea which was glorious.

As any 'old' intern here will tell you, Monday night is Piccolo Mondo night, or 'Piccolo Monday' as they like to call it. We all have Tuesday off so the night before is obviously party time. Due to their stringent dress code (because I would obviously offend the empty sweaty room) I wasn't allowed in my tank top so a very nice intern lent me his rather interesting Helmut Lang shirt which had a texture somewhere in between plastic bag and silk. Oh, and it was semi-transparent. The 'club' consisted of one dingy room fitted out with all the tat you find in the stalls of Venice. It was good trashy fun and we ended it up at about 3 in the morning, sitting outside in the calle jamming on Sasha's harmonica. 

Island hopping

Having just eaten an entire packet of chocolate wafers as my breakfast I thought I should try to assuage my guilt by updating my blog.

One of the high points of this week was being mistaken for a German at the ticket office – brilliant. Another was discovering lambrusco; a fizzy red wine which comes in litre and a half bottles and is as quaffable as ribena. I was also very happy to discover that one of the Italian interns here is a big Patrick Wolf fan!

On Friday I left the main lagoon area for the first time , making the journey to Burano and Torcello with fellow intern from New Zealand, Chloe. Burano is a mad place. For no apparent reason (as far as I could find out) the residents of the island decided at some point that they should paint each of their houses a different, garish colour. It's sort of like Balamory minus the cretinous singing and dancing, with a whole load of Japanese tourists touting some serious photographic equipment instead.

It was a short vaporetto ride across to Torcello which had a cathedral with a beautiful Byzantine mosaic covering an entire wall depicting the Last Judgment. It was strange to see something so imposing and ornate on an island that is so out of the way and unassuming.  

Guggy's Got Talent

 Today was an awesome day. It started off ordinarily enough, cleaning the various sculptures in the Nasher garden. I still had 'Closing Time' in my head and so was singing it as I went about doing my thing. Later on I was on shop float which means I have to ask the shop if anything needs restocking and then go find the corresponding items in the store (just in case you wanted to know, the Italian for bubble wrap is 'Pluriball'. Win.). I ran into Valentina who asked me if it was me singing earlier and I said yes and of course mentioned my blog where I upload my uke videos. “Facci vedere!” was the response. So I showed her.

Later one of the capi got a call to the student room where we take our breaks. The shop wanted me to drop by when I had a minute. I'd only just been there rolling up posters. I arrived slightly baffled at the shop to find Valentina waiting with this amazing thing:

It's of the Mario Marini sculpture that is on the Gugg's terrace. It's such a sweet present and it now has pride of place on my desk. Grazie Valentina!

Other excitement was provided by various familiar faces dropping by the gallery. While I was guarding the Pollock room Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest casually strolled by. Amazing. Later on I was giving a fellow intern a 15min break from guarding in the wonderful temporary exhibition on the collection of Illeana Sonnabend. You can check out the exact room I was in by clicking this link which will take you to a virtual tour: http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/exhibitions/virtual_tour/sonnabend/. So I was studying the Jeff Koons, still trying to figure out if it was made from one block of wood or not when through the doorway came my aunt and uncle. I know it's a cliché but I really was so taken aback that I was speechless. Think X-Factor contestant just being told they've got through to the next round. It was so lovely to see them and good to hear that they liked the exhibition.

The day was rounded off by a trip to the Lido, one of the larger islands in the lagoon, where we listened to some late night jazz. A pretty sweet day.

Closing Time

At the end of each day at the Gugg we have to put the paintings to bed by putting them in their Pjs. They're absolutely adorable. I think I get way too excited over them:

When we finally clocked off at about 9 this evening Semisonic's 'Closing Time' popped into my head. I'll upload it when I've got a faster internet connection.

Valerio, Bilbo e Peggy

Today was orientation day at the Guggenheim. All the interns met over a café and a brioche and they're very friendly and interesting, coming from places as diverse as Moscow and Basel. It's a very international crowd.

The day consisted of a whole series of talks and presentations about the ins and outs of the gallery in an underground library that at times felt not unlike a bunker. First up was the director of the gallery; a short and energetic man, he encouraged us to get out and see Venice at a time when, “there's more art crammed in here than there is in the entire universe”. Then there was the full fire and electricity brief from Valerio, a Venetian in his late 60s, sporting a deep red 'tan' and gaudy golden jewellery who proceeded to give us a chemistry lesson, explaining all about the fire triangle. He was very keen to alert us to the ever present risk of fire, and couldn't resist a cheeky sexist digression about how women faint if they stand up too long and something to the effect that it's much better when they're on maternity leave.

Head of retail was to follow. He gave us a real insight into the facts and figures of the museum. The Peggy Guggenheim shop makes 1 million euros alone a year, selling among other things 80-90, 000 postcards and almost 5,000 rubbers!

A bit startled and far too overloaded with information we were given a comprehensive tour of the museum, including the temperamental photocopier called Bilbo. The collection is eye-poppingly impressive. Every new room you walk into you see a work of 20^th Century art that is instantly recognisable.

It was Aperol all round in Campo Santa Margarita as we relaxed and chatted in the early evening sun.

I've just moved to the island of Giudecca where I'll be staying for July. My flat is very modern and fairly non-descript but I can't complain. I've just spent a wonderful evening with two interns: Andrew, from Toronto and Diane from Basel. We sat around admiring the Giacomettian properties of carrots while a lightening storm raged in the background, sipping grape-flavoured artisan tea. Yep, I'm definitely on a 'yah abroad'.

Scontrini, scontrini, scontrini

Having just awoken from my afternoon nap I've suddenly remembered a curious thing. In Italian law a scontrino or receipt must be given out for anything you buy. So that means this morning when I bought some delicious biscottini with apricot jam a receipt was pointedly placed on the counter even though a whole 100g was demolished in no time at all. Yesterday I even got a receipt with my apple. Good to know that if I find a worm in it I could take it back, proudly presenting my proof of purchase.

These past couple of days have been very pleasant. I've been wondering around with one of the interns, Johnny, who I'm sharing an apartment with until my one becomes free on Giudecca. This is his first time in Europe, let alone Venice, so he's constantly alerting me to how much it differs from his home town of New York city and of course there's the usual banter about how differently we both speak English.

So far we haven't strayed too far from Dorsoduro, which is the southern part of the island where you'll find the Guggenheim. Surprisingly it's not too crowded and it's so nice to wander through deserted squares (which in Venice are called campi rather than piazze) and drop in to the local enoteca to pick up a panino which is made right in front of you with fresh ingredients. It's delicious.

Tonight we're having salad and preparing for orientation day tomorrow by knuckling down for some reading of the Interns resource pack with the monstrous creation that is half chicken/half Vanessa that my wife gave me as a leaving present, Gertrude.

Defying Gravity on the Uke

So this is the video I wanted to upload last night: I think it made more sense pre-flight but the sentiment's still valid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21zzs1O5WkI

Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity...

My room is far too hot and sticky, my hair is ruffled from countless sweeps of my stressed hands running through it and Dad is meticulously weighing my suitcase at intervals while I frantically throw out any unnecessary items. Suncream is in, Dante's 'Paradiso' from the Divine Comedy is most definitely out. Mum has resorted to taking a little nap on my bed. Buzzwords: stress and sweat.

Now two hours later, with my case having been packed, unpacked and repacked I'm finally set to go: year abroad here we come. I'm up in about two hours to set off on my journey to Venice where I'll be for 3 months, being an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The idea of this blog is to share my travels with whoever cares to have a look. I'll be posting my thoughts and pictures about everything Venice and my experience there: any tips for places to visit, things to see, places to eat would be much appreciated! A regular feature will be ukulele videos of songs old and new. I wanted to post a video which relates to the title but didn't appreciate how horrifically long it takes to upload to YouTube so that will be up in a few days.

So here I go. Ciao for now.