ein bühnenweinfestspiel, some books, a story

“A funny story.”

(As I remember it from 9am, or, how black metal brings us all together.)

“I said to my brother, “No one ever makes dance to Throbbing Gristle”. Then he was in Adelaide and said, “!!! Throbbing Gristle!”. So I googled ‘Frances d’Ath’ and then someone said you, here.”

(Hello Anne-Lise.)

Some warming up. Some suspensions, but the ropes have left some deep bruises making for enjoyment-absence. A short rehearsal and then a look through the libretto. A run out the door to find beautiful Ivo waiting for me, just leaving for Sofia. We go to a bookshop and I come out with Howard Barker’s Death, The One and the Art of Theatre (as does Ivo) and Frank Dikötter’s Mao’s Great Famine.

Dasniya, Gala and Jorgos continue with some suspensions and we all trawl the snow with our boots towards the shops for food and home to talk and eat and soon eat once more.

(Addendum: Parsifal is blogging Parsifal.)

blacker…

China Miéville’s rejectamentalist manifesto has been one of my favourite daily-ish reads since I stumbled into it after wondering where he’d got to having not seen him on Lenin’s Tomb for quite some time. It was a few days ago now I read Well grubbed, and of course clicked the links. Something about Reza Negarestani and the line, ‘Everywhere a hole moves, a surface is invented’ ensnared me. And so…

There is a certain feeling I experience when I am being drawn into someone new. It reminds me of discovering Deleuze, as if both pulled bodily into and through a choking, dirt-rimed tunnel, and simultaneously unearthed onto the steppe; vastness wherever my gaze might fall. Reza has this for me now.

I read what I could find of Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, and of course messaged my favourite Berlin bookstore, Saint George’s (who seem to have a new website). Ah this spending on books (having bought two today from the estate of Manfred Durniok)… 

I look more for Reza and discover ‘Hideous Gnosis – Black Metal Theory Symposium 1′. Why would I not be feeling an immediate sense of coming home? Philosophy? Black Metal? Graaaaaghhhh!!! (double kick drum!). And I see a link… blackmetaltheory.blogspot.com. And so I shall spend my evening reading ‘Hideous Gnosis’ and passing the time waiting for Reza to arrive.

uferhallen at night

Apparently the fire department will come and take me down if I attempt to climb the chimney in Uferhallen. Well, it has a ladder, and with a harness and a couple of ‘biners on slings I should be safe within the relative context of the word. Photos from the pinnacle at dawn would be beautiful.

The last days it was surrounded by a silverish bulbous alien abode (or maybe Zaha Hadid was visiting); a ring around its base that last night glowed from within, even resembling the much-reduced Beijing bird’s nest stadium. Uferhallen was opening. After many long months of drilling, hammering, digging, moving piles of earth from one place to another, various loud noises associated with engineering, the studios are finished.

Berlin’s Wedding now is home to something of the size and feel of Vienna’s Arsenal; 14 studios on the south side of the street alone, for Tanzfabrik, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin and others, and even more vast space on the north-side.

I finally got to go into the old generator hall beneath the chimney last night and my photos really don’t do any justice. It is cavernous … and the stairwell leading to the underground labrynth … mmm I would like to venture down there for exploring and camera-ing.

Stumbled home around 1am, not too late but the week has included Osada Steve (who has beautiful red fingernails at the moment) and much Shibari, Kinbaku and other rope adventures with Dasniya, so tiredness was in order.

“Reading: … ” Book of the Year (Non-Fiction): Jonathan Safran Foer – Eating Animals