Ode to bad art

Disclaimer: your opinion of art is probably different than mine. All photos are of actual works of art presented at 48 hours Neukoelln.
Berlin is really into festivals of all kinds. Lately, it seems like I go to one every weekend, and while I like street festivals a lot, I'm getting tired of the fact that in Berlin, they're all very similar. I see the same vendors at them, selling the same greasy, overpriced street food or imitation designer sunglasses or hand crafted junk, with little to no relation to whatever the point of the festival is (multicultural pride, gay pride, neighborhood pride, etc.). So when I read about 48 hours in Neukoelln, I thought it would be a nice change of pace. The idea of this particular event is, apparently, to be really artsy. I think the pamphlet says something like "celebrating the neighborhood's creativity and diversity" or something like that. The event is essentially lots of galeries, cafes, and artists working together with local businesses to entertain/enlighten/demand the attention of the masses for the weekend through art installations in public places, free theater, extended gallery hours, and public shuttles to get the masses from one thing to the next. This all took place in the northern part of Neukoelln, so I didn't have to go to far for my free art. It'd been kind of a lonely and uninspired weekend, so I set out to explore the art and be inspired and enjoy the company of strangers.
In my optimism/desperation, it didn't occur to me that there's often a reason that free art is free (usually not the spirit of charity), as well as a reason that I prefer the company of loved ones to that of strangers, and that inspiration is not necessarily a reasonable expectation for art. So I went to several galleries, explored a couple of installation pieces, and saw a short piece of experimental (multimedia) theater before giving up and coming home.
It is obviously impossible for us to agree on a purpose for or definition of art - it's a personal thing. For me, it's got something to do with provoking thought, whether or not I could do it, and whether or not it is aesthetically pleasing. I'll get back to you with the exact formula later. This event made me think about all that, but it also reminded me of the importance of the audience - art is that which is believed to be art. It is crucial, therefore, to remember also what a gullible thing an audience is; they tend to believe what they are told. If an artist tapes plastic cups to a disco lamp (an actual piece in one of the galleries) and calls it art with enough conviction, the audience very well might believe it. What I realized tonight is that if only I had the conviction to take myself and my work seriously, I too, could be an artist. I could spray paint things silver and lean them against a wall. I could tie some garbage to a rotating fan and put it in an empty white room. I could tie a bunch of water wings to poles. I could even dance around with a paper-mache skull to a recording of myself reading a story with some trippy psychedelic 70s rock on loop in the background. With enough conviction, I think, I could probably even get people to pay for it. Of course, deadpanning could be substituted for conviction in some cases, but I'm not that good.
Now, I have to admit: this kind of consideration (to say nothing of the debates going on as I left the paper-mache theater thing) isn't really provoked by good art. Or aesthetically pleasing art, which can be deeply moving, which usually the thought it provokes is just "oh, that's beautiful." Only really bad art can achieve this kind of debate. And who knows? Maybe this was the experience that inspired the next Monet. As long as it's free, I guess I don't really mind.

Drama

I recently had the pleasure of attending the grand opening gala of the Drama Bar, Sandra's shiny new place of employment. It was fabulous: champagne, candles, flowers, and all the beautiful people who hang out on Bergmanstrasse. For those of you not totally up to date on the (dramatic) happenings in the Bergmanstrasse bar scene, here's the short version: Sandra used to work at Melitta Sundstrom, one of Berlin's oldest, most venerable gay bars, which was owned and operated by Peter and Bernhard, who were a couple as well as business partners. Peter and Bernhard eventually broke up, but continued to run the cafe/bar together, despite Bernhard's increasingly frequent looting of the supply room and cash register, until one fateful day when Sandra's coworker, Robert, refused to let Bernhard take money out of his waiter's billfold, upon which Bernhard fired everyone. Including the poor cleaning lady. Since he couldn't fire Peter, he settled for throwing a pot of hot coffee at him and then buying him out.
So, naturally, the next step for Peter was to hire back his staff (except the poor cleaning lady, who seems to have disappeared) and open his own place, which he did, right next door to Sundstrom, paint it hot pink, and christen it (appropriately) the Drama Bar. Sandra, as you can see, is really excited to be back to waitressing in a bar (she's been working at a hostel on the other side of town, and has had it with grungy backpackers and 7am breakfast service). Before Sandra was fired, I spent a lot of time at Sundstrom, so I'm also really excited to have Drama up and running. It's sort of my (hot pink, Euro) version of Cheers. Not everyone knows my name, but most of them know what I drink. I am a regular!

Ego, schmego

In the last week, several of my colleagues have suddenly realized that I'm leaving at the end of June. This realization (possibly combined with the laziness that hits everyone this time of year) has inspired many of them to invite me to visit their classes for the first time all year. It's been kind of fun - new classes are usually a boost for the ego, especially the lower grades, because little kids can be enthusiastic and interested in a new person in a way that adults really can't. Well, adults could, but it would be creepy and weird.
So this week, I was in a 5th grade class. I was surprised to learn that I can be interesting even after 30 sets of head and shoulders, knees and toes, but it seems like I made a good impression. Kids I don't know greet me in the halls. Today I found this little angel, wrapped in a slightly grubby party napkin, with a note that said "thanks four Lincey frum Valentina." Meanwhile, my regular sixth graders have just started sex ed, where they have discovered the aerodynamic qualities of water-soaked tampons, which they use to defend their classroom against approaching English teachers....
It's nice to be appreciated.

The good life

Last week I went to Italy to meet up with Marty and the Murdock women (well, some of them aren't technically Murdocks, but might as well be) for a few days of sun. I flew into Naples, which seems to be the armpit of Italy, and got a train to Sorrento, near where they were staying. They were doing a very intense Italian vacation, including Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi, and some other towns in between. I showed up to crash the party toward the end, so I missed out on what Marty described as a death march through the Vatican.
Fine by me. This year has done a lot to define my travel style (or at least to make me aware of it), and as it turns out, I'm more of a lazy, wandering tourist than a well-informed, guided tour sort of tourist (not that I don't plan), so I didn't mind. I got there in time for a little shopping, a little exploring, and a lot of laying in the sun. No museums, but lots of restaurants (hey, food is just as valid a cultural experience as art). Marty, Aubrey, and Aubrey's sister Amanda picked me up from the Sorrento train station without too much trouble (a minor miracle) and after meeting up with the rest of the group for lunch, we shopped. The other women hunted souvenirs and gifts - apparently Sorrento (along with the rest of the Amalfi coast) is known for more than limoncello (is it cough syrup? detergent?) - and what I can only see as grown up stuff. Linens. Sandals (not flip-flops). Inlaid wooden boxes, pottery, jewelry that can't get wet. Things that needed to be shipped home. Not really my thing, and since Marty and Aubrey decided that they wanted to go to a discotech some evening, I mostly helped them look for disco clothes and bling. Ten points to Marty for getting a store to close/kick us out by practicing some moves in the changing room. I guess Italians take fashion pretty seriously. Since we were staying at a villa far away from restaurants and with a kitchen, we cooked a lot at home. I would like to award ten points to Steph and Mary, who did some intense off-the-cuff cooking and made clear to me that there is more to impromptu cooking than pasta and curry. Since too many cooks will ruin the meal, I helped out by fetching fresh herbs from the enormous stone window boxes on the balcony and watching the ocean, drinking wine, and talking with the other non-cooks. We went to Capri, where I explored long enough to find a bakery and then parked myself on the beach. I did get a little sunburn, but considering the long hours in the sun and the new bikini, I'd expected worse. Half of us went to Amalfi, which was my favorite city of the trip. It's grungier than Sorrento, and much more authentic. The road to Amalfi is probably the reason for that - it's a very narrow, windy road on the side of a huge cliff, and barely accessible by bus. We (in a car) got stuck in a line of five or six cars behind a very wide-turning tour bus and I have to say that it was above and beyond any real traffic jam I've ever witnessed. An Italian man in a pin-striped suit hopped out of his tiny, silver Lambourgini and started gesturing wildly and yelling insults at the driver. I'm not really up on my Italian, but I understood the word stupido. Another ten points to Steph for doing the driving.
Aside from the fashion (scary), the limoncello (gross), and the Italian men (smelly/amorous), the Amalfi coast is the Good Life. Everything I ate was delicious. Even the not-so-sunny days were lovely. Even the noisy, scary traffic was more relaxing there. Every ten minutes or so, I had to stop and say "That's beautiful!" But it wouldn't have been nearly as good if I'd been talking to myself.

Carnival of Cultures

Or, for you German speakers out there, Schadenfreude und Fremdscham. This carnival is part street festival (like a very diverse state fair with no admissions price) and part parade. I'm not really that into parades, but I went anyways. It was a spectacle of...culture, I guess. And of closet exhibitionists, if there is such a thing. Many of the groups were representing ethnic groups in Berlin, and got all dressed up in traditional costumes and played traditional music. One downside of this was that apparently some ethnic groups are traditionally louder/faster/more lively than others, so some groups (like the Peruvians with their quiet pan pipes) were very overshadowed by others (the Brazilians with lots and lots of drums). Weirdly, there didn't seem to be any Scandinavian groups participating....
It was also kind of hard to tell with some groups, especially the ones that seemed to represent how bored housewives spend their time in Berlin rather than the culture of particular ethnic groups. (Daughters of the Desert, for example, was actually not a bunch of belly-dancing Persian women recently liberated from a harem, but a mostly bunch of German women with jingly coin belts and too much eyeliner who spend their Wednesday evenings finding themselves while wiggling to "world beats" in a dance studio in Steglitz.) The confused looking little boy in the picture to the left kept asking performers what they were supposed to be, which, though a little embarassing, helped me too.
Some of the groups seemed to just want an excuse to dress oddly and march through the streets. There was one group of teenagers that dressed in tinfoil and bubblewrap, painted their
faces, and danced with umbrellas, barefoot or in bubblewrap frog feet, to the longest electric guitar riff ever. Later, I found out that this was a group of Berlin's socially active youth, who had chosen the theme "Cloudbreak" for the parade. Apparently they were protesting global warming or something....
The whole thing was completely impressive/grotesque/brilliant/ bizarre. Parades are fascinating to begin with (why do people participate, why do people watch, why do the parades move instead of the people, who is staring at whom?), but I haven't seen many displays like this before, and certainly never anything on this scale. Of course, the best part was the street festival. There were market stalls selling ostensibly ethnic crafts (cheap jewelry, scarves, wooden stuff, t-shirts, water pipes, umbrellas, etc.) and there were market stalls selling all kinds of ethnic food. And, obviously, there were market stalls selling (ethnic) beer and cocktails. There were also several stages set up for different (ethnic) bands. Basically the perfect setting for excess, but eating the food and dancing to the music was definitely much more fun than standing in the rain and watching other people do it.

Day Tripper

I am not, by nature, a day tripper. But I am poor enough and picky enough to have a vested interest in not spending $30 on a lumpy bed in a loud hostel dorm five minutes from the central train station, so I only spent one day in Hamburg. And, in the interest of making the most of my time there, I only spent a few hours of that traipsing down memory lane (who knew that was situated along the Elbe river?). For reference, I actually lived just outside of Hamburg proper, for most of my exchange year in a village called Hittfeld (which belonged, technically, to Hamburg's older but more obscure neighbor Harburg), and later in the town of Jesteburg. But of all those dots on a map, the only one to offer German as a second language at the continuing education school (Volkshochschule) was Hamburg, so I spent quite a bit of time in the city.
It's hard to believe it was nearly seven years ago that I arrived in Hamburg. Not much has changed there. Of course, I didn't spend most of my free city time in dynamic parts of town. I mostly hung out in the central shopping/pedestrian area between the central train station and the harbor. I was happy to discover that even after all this time, the old fish stand where I used to eat lunch at least once a week is still selling paper cones full of heart attack. Their prices have gone up (fish and chips with remoulade used to cost 5 marks), but it tastes about the same (greasy, salty, tinged with guilt).
Hamburg seems to have gotten wealthier since I lived there. At least, the bums and junkies are fewer and farther between around the train station, and the trash cans are all new (shinier and emptier than the ones in Berlin). The subways are still old enough to just about be stylishly retro, but they're all outfitted with hi-tech, graffiti-free TVs which are cute miniatures of the billboard sized TVs on the actual station walls. Of course, they still haven't installed elevators or escalators in half the train stations, but maybe Hamburg's disabled have also gotten wealthier, wealthy enough to not have to use public transportation.
I spent the afternoon with my friend Annika (a teacher in Berlin) who was spending a weekend at home and wanted to show me where she grew up. Her father is a pastor (which you'd never know from hanging out with her), so she did most of her growing up in and around his church. Her mother made us asparagus and after stopping by her mom's housekeeper's place to see some puppies (and getting roped into cake, champagne, and coffee - the housekeeper is a very determined woman), Annika and I went to a different part of town so I could meet her childhood friend Nina. Nina has a little shop where she sells high-end baby accessories. She makes Annika doubt the wisdom of becoming a teacher, because Nina never takes work home with her and only rarely has to deal with disobedient children, and, since Heidi Klum bought two of her highest-end strollers (one for Berlin and one for L.A.) and then talked about them in some interview, Nina has had plenty of money.
At the end of the day, I barely made my train. Again, I'm just not designed for day trips. But this is the difficulty with moving around (especially between countries): no matter where you live, you'll want to visit your old city, although you'll also want to go see new places, which you might like enough to consider living in someday, spreading yourself (and your time, and your resources) thinner and thinner all the time. Sometimes I think it's probably better to just stay home.

Congratulations, Marty!

Marty graduates today from Green Mountain College in Vermont. Hooray! I know you weren't really in it for that little piece of paper, Marty, so I want you to know that we're proud of you for much, much more than that. The squirrel and I are, anyways....