200 years of Liszt and some pianos

There is a piano restorer in Uferhallen. Once a week or so the forecourt fills with many cars not from …

Nein! Nein! Nicht die Wunde ist es.

I heard it slightly wrong. Parsifal, struck with awareness of Amfortas and the wound is physically overwrought. “Sie brennt in …

parsifal in film

I arrive in Brussels this morning, curiously with Anuschka sitting next to me the whole way. We stay up the …

(renamed as) mm ∫-1x dt/dv ≥ ⨍(dy:fr:hf)

The last few days, Dasniya, Hartmut and myself had been in another Fabrik, with another mobile gantry. More dust and …

temperance 16mm film

With all the adding of video and making newness on francesdath.info, I started looking at the footage of temperance again. …

stuttgart calixto bieito parsifal (+ andrew)

It seems the nature of seeing a performance in another city also involves lengthy missed trains on the return for …

die singende stadt — parsifal and calixto bieito

The last day screening, Dasniya and I climbed the stairs of Hackesche Höfe Kino for 90 more minutes of the …

parsifal. end.

jardin 5 4 3 2 1 fin.

the tying before parsifal unties

I saw the first Act. Well, parts of it I’d not seem before, while loitering side-stage from shortly after Nietzsche …

castellucci is a criminal

After the fourth performance, an emotionally tough night for us, we stand outside the stage door. A woman in beret, …

half-way

Last night, the fifth performance and half-way through the season of Parsifal, was pretty much what we hoped for. I …

third and some thoughts on revulsion

(I wasn’t so happy with what I wrote here last night, so I’m splitting this up and hopefully will write …

opening & second night

Now is the difficult part. Rehearsals are easy. Turn up in the morning or when the call is, newness and …

parsifotos

Once we got into the theatre to rehearse, I decided to not show all the photos, and wait until Parsifal …

last before

I see so little. The first act is warming up, putting on ropes. The only part I really see is …

Reading: Laurence Dreyfus: Wagner and the Erotic Impulse

Laurence Dreyfus: Wagner and the Erotic Impulse

all together now (including pauses)

Oh! There are a lot of people here. I wasn’t expecting that! Not just an obvious number of friends and …

a day off and still in la monnaie

I am writing out of order. We thought to go to Gare du Midi markets around lunchtime, giving us a …

third before last

I have not so much to say today, even being aware what i wrote yesterday is somewhat cryptic; I lost …

1882, chin of nietzsche, invisible orchestra, double basses clamour to escape

Which is the title to the only image I will show today. As we come closer and I spend more …

parsifal la monnaie shibari

Either it is lack of sleep, or I am on the precipice of whatever has waylaid many of the cast …

that’s what parsifal said…

Getting stuck in Ghent at 1am after missing the last train from Brugge, talking in the kitchen till 330am and …

orchestra-ing and opera-ing (and black metal-ing)

The evening cafeteria meal was unique in being quite utterly tasteless. I had to ask Gala to try the dried …

la monnaie

Strange I have no category for pain. Two days after feeling so comfortable hanging for half an hour, I find …

Wahnsinn… Oh! – Wut… Ach! Jammer!

(Mainly because supernaut has been discovered at Parsifal, so I can no longer entertain the fancy I’m writing for my …

friday parsifal

A late start for some of us today and not even a suspension for me, though I was all ready …

the second act

Already almost 1am and still long before I find sleep. Today was another long one, with a running of the …

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 …

some parsifal-ing

The rehearsal theatre is much bigger than most company’s performing theatres. Next door is another. Below others. A cafeteria on …

berlin to brussels … again …

Much packing, organising, turning off of fridge, plants watering, courier arriving, eating the remainders of the fridge. (and so on.) …

Burka Bondage

The past couple of months Dasniya has been rehearsing with Helena Waldmann, in a piece she helped with last year …

Reading: James R. Brandon – Theatre in Southeast Asia

james r. brandon – theatre in southeast asia

blacker…

China Miéville’s rejectamentalist manifesto has been one of my favourite daily-ish reads since I stumbled into it after wondering where …

einstürzende neubauten 30

Between U- and S-Bahn returning home, Dy said, “Why don’t you write about this? After all, it’s a performance and …

reading: jonathan burrows – a choreographer’s handbook

jonathan burrows – a choreographer’s handbook

sydney’s siberia and other digital creatures

No, I don’t actually remember which Mac forum I discovered Jason Nelson and secrettechnology on. I do though highly enjoy …

reading: sven regener – berlin blues

sven regener – berlin blues

FR ⊂ DY

Dasniya and I have been talking for some time about performing together, mostly between either ideas for works I’m thinking …

enough from daniel

Something to celebrate because I lost all track of time. Adelaide’s Fringe Festival is over, which I’ve only ever experience …

SOIT – We Was Them

To start at the end. Or, an ending. Somewhere past an hour, Ivan and Harold (I think) sit on the …

soit – we was them

A good a reason as any to return to Bruxelles, or better than most. The delightful Hans, along with Anuschka, …

reading: iain banks – espedair street

iain banks – espedair street

slow southern steel

Waking up without coffee at the moment, and of course breakfast reading starts with Ideologic, and so I find myself …

save the vca

It is a long time ago now, camping on the lawn outside the front of Victorian College of the Arts …

merce

merce cunningham

i was…

… going to title this “all hail the true metal warriors”, in a private joke for myself, which I think …

impulstanz – settlement… (perhaps day 7)

I think a stop to yoga soon, or maybe exchange for snoozing or lying on the floor pretending to warm …

venus flytrap – visa for love

It’s been about three months since I first mentioned Venus Flytrap, the ultra-tranny manufactured pop group from Thailand, signed to …

relationship of command

I have been totally thrashing this album for the last few days, in-between mainlining Southern Lord and in the spirit …

autistic daughters at fad bar

Last night on the first floor of Fad bar, looking out of 1960s metal-framed curtain wall windows across architecture and …

live @ the soup kitchen – the next day

Gavin Clarke is something of a ummm … megalomaniac, performing in I think four of the ten works, curating the …

live @ the soup kitchen

This Friday night, curated by Gavin Clarke and with choreographers including Adam Synott, Alison Currie and of course Gala Moody …

burning churches – the spirit of christmas

rrraaaaghgghghgghhhhh!!!! etc. Sunday afternoon, plusplus destruction of language followed by the invention of the Hexadecimal Kickdrum (successor to the Double …

我的小飛機場 my little airport

Walking to a bookshop, walking to East St Kilda, walking through Alma Park, listening to my iPod and I was …

beyond the valley of the ultra-trannies

A while ago I was quite the fan of Lady, the Korean tranny pop sensation riding on the wave of …

两块一个走 – 2 kuai a zou

One afternoon in, I guess late April, I took Emile and Paul for a stroll through my favourite part of …

cult of daath

From Emile: Cult of Daath. cult of daath

Hell Is Invisible … Heaven Is Her/e

One of the only tattoos I ever seriously considered getting was the Psychick Cross of the Temple ov Psychick Youth, …

china power station

Lawrence Li at Global Noise Online has been blogging regularly about the upcoming China Power Station, “A major exhibition of …

she’s my man

I started the day with the Scissor Sisters new album, Ta-Dah, and it’s everything I said about the first album. …

battersea power station, guangzhou

Unlike recent high-modernist industrial travelogues in which ailing former jewels-in-the-crown of the European heavy industry age are cut up and …

what i read today

For a while I kept a del.ic.ious account (last updated almost two months ago). I also used to have one …

Robin Fox at Footscray AV Social Club

I’ve been meaning to mention some of the things Emile is up to lately, but mostly whenever we get together, …

kreator melbourne rrraaagghhhh!!!!

Kreator! Melbourne! This Thursday (and Wednesday) at Hi-Fi Bar! All nations hail the end of peace New dawn inception of …

创意广州十三行 creative canton

It was slightly unnerving, to be lying there above the swollen and turbulent Pearl River, undercutting the empty, but for …

the world is a poorer place

Sometimes I feel as if everyone who made the world brilliant, whose lives and works simply took humanity to new …

extermination – soundscape movement fest

Darling Alexis, whom I met in Vienna in 2003 at DanceWEB has been busy in the past few days being …

岭南启示录 Apocalypse PRD – uber_lingua

Everyone has gone. Emile is back in Melbourne now, and tomorrow is making Guangzhou sounds at St Jerome’s. Remember, each …

10 = marquido + itta

Before it all passes me by again and I’m still looking like an imbecile going … wuuuuh … ? this …

taipei art-punk squats

One of my favourite blogs from Taiwan is Anarchy in Taiwan or gotmahmojo who recently wrote a big piece on …

still lazy (but reading like a concubine at an orgy)

I just can’t seem to get focussed on blogging at the moment, I think because my schedule is a little …

New Order’s Peter Hook Guangzhou Babyface DJ set

One of the most influential bands on me from when I first heard the pounding of Blue Monday, and I …

welcome to japanese new music festival

I just want to lick something drenched in acid. That’s twice I’ve seen Acid Mothers Temple and my immediate response …

art art art … noise

In a pathetic effort to make up for a few days of blaring silence, with 2am crawls to bed, hour …

acid mothers temple! guangzhou!

“Welcome to Japanese New Music Festival” I am officially a groupie, and I’m so excited I can’t even type properly. …

dancing robot umbrellas = unemployed dancing humans

As if the slime mould robot wasn’t enough to convince both dancers and choreographers in the Contemporary Dance game that …

p.k.14 – a tour of the public kingdom

It’s time to think about China and Guangzhou again as I’ll be in Hong Kong in two weeks and spending …

angel of death meets C64 & NES

Most people who know me a bit understand I love metal. In all it’s forms, from the original heavy stuff …

last night in guangzhou

More art. Hanging around the Fine Arts Academy with painter Wan Xiaojia, checking out people’s studios, eating lots of Cantonese …

a night at loft 345

Last night I went down to Loft345, which used to be Park19 (because it was number 19 whatever lane and …

lady – the blog

Lady, the hot trash Korean transgender manufactured pop band noone has listened to but everyone has seen pictures of, now …

life

It’s been five months, an unexpected length of time for me to be in one place, almost long enough to …

absolutely freak out

Acid Mothers Temple!!! Zubi Zuva X, Akaten, Ruins Alone, Zoffy, Shrinp Wark, Seikazoku!!! Welcome to Japan New Music Festival!!! Three …

濁水溪公社 ltk commune is gonna rock you

During my months in Taipei, hanging out at The Wall, and pretty much constantly amazed at what a cool arts …

lady ride the shemale bubble

Rounding off the month’s stories of chick-with-dicks even The Independent finds Lady irresistible, but being news need some controversy, so …

dana euro-trash

mmm … eurovision … it celebrated 50 years of costume and aural genius on the weekend, and some crap foursome …

some more stuff i’ve been reading

Serious pruning of my temporary bookmarks folder(s) is needed. The stuff on 太石村 Tai Shi Village is already out of …

i whore for lemmy

Last weekend I turned the page of a newspaper and saw the sexiest man living or dead. Lemmy and Mötorhead …

acid mothers temple in zurich

There’s nothing more to say. Acid Mothers Temple are the closest thing I’ve ever heard to sucking on a blotter-sheet …

scraping tai-gu off the wheel

It must be the time for old things to be revisited, and as always through whatever is going on around …

all of china at the kennedy centre

There’s a fairly huge mega-company type cultural celebration of China going on at the moment at both the Kennedy Centre …

le bal des vampyres

There’s an outpost of Little Australia in Vevey, beside the lake which is where I spent my first week in …

all-naked lady

Giving Harisu a run for her money in the Korean Trannie Superstars Awards, my favourite band of the moment, Lady …

splash life

Maybe it was last year, or very early this year, when we sat around the outside table at Sleepywood, mesmerised …

SoUndScaPe PErformaNcE!

I was just thinking noone seemed to be doing anything and thought I’d had to write even more crap about …

Sonar 2005

When I was at a very impressionable age my downward spiral away from god and into the arms of hedonism …

when art goes bad

Last night was not quite the beginning of the week of dance at the 2nd Guangzhou Dance Festival, but was …

little bar in chengdu

This was another on of those things I read a while ago and it’s been sitting in my ‘please write …

we are lady

Forget about Sylvester and Divine, and even Harisu, the new face of shemale pop is Korea’s own Lady. In the …

all about genesis

One evening in Taipei, drinking at some bar I met my evil twin. It’s not often I meet someone who …

all hail the true metal warriors

The greatest band in the universe, Morloch played last night at the Croft Institute in a tag-team battle against pop-interlopers …

干花乐队 dead flowers at park19

Having blown my remaining change of DVDs again, including weird old documentaries on the history of Hong Kong filmmaking, I …

19-T somewhere south of the river

Besides the main Park-19 where all the artists have studios, there’s another one, a bit further west of the University …

park 19, 19-T and shanshui records

This Friday night at Park 19, Shanshui Records and a bunch of others have the Guangzhou part of their tour. …

taiwan punk fucks the shit up

I missed The Deported play at 這牆 The Wall a few weeks ago, but this piece by band-member AndyO on …

gangstalean and beijing bookworm

So I go away for a couple of weeks, and look at all these new websites. Bloody hell, I’m glad …

music non-stop

I paid a visit to 這牆 The Wall on Saturday night. Well only got as far as the record shops …

aakzb – channel_a

The last couple of nights a big bunch of guys from Burkina Faso have been playing long into the evening …

小白兔唱片 white wabbit records

Downstairs in the underground alleys next to The Wall is a world of Taiwan and Asian music purgatory. No Kenny …

金屬永生 satanic beast spawn

This one’s for you, Emile. What I really needed to do was get out and bang my head, and last …

第三现场 – 第二届新年国际音乐节 live home 3

After a couple of months of silence and a website announcing the days of 第三现场 Live Home 3 were over, …

176*144 – performance art for 3G phones

My next project in Taipei is performance 3G mobile phones. With Big Brother in Australia getting on the bandwagon with …

colin at the taipei artist village

Last night Colin, one of the Australians staying in the Taipei Artist Village played a concert in the main gallery. …

UBU and TRSIMF

One festival finishes, another begins. Last night was the final of three ear-splitting nights of some of the best rock …

硬地音樂展都會嘉年華 UBU 2004

Last night was the start of the UBU 2004 Music Festival, around the corner from the lawn party 華山創意文化園區 Huashan …

down at the xinghai concert hall

Friday. My last day in Guangzhou. Two weeks of teaching dance at the Guangdong Modern Dance Company School, Yoga at …

i hope someday you will join

The 迷笛现代音乐节 Midi Music Festival is on again in Beijing until today, which is probably the best festival in China …

“Let the bodies hit the floor…that was the motto for our tank.”

Last night the ABC screened one of the most disturbing documentaries I’ve seen in a long while. Soundtrack To War …

comfortably numb

Imagine it’s 1987, and you’re like 12 years old, and all the commercial radio stations are playing Elton John and …

i like my noise noisy

In Guangzhou this Saturday, a group of noise-makers from across the city will be shaking the rotten concrete out of …

Iain Mott at 大山子艺术节 Dashanzi Art Festival

ANAT, The Australian Network for Art and Technology have just published the July-October issue of Filter devoted to sound. One …

5,6,7,8′s in Taiwan

One of the best bands in the world, the 5,6,7,8′s who like Mach Pelican have spent more time playing the …

sonar at schleswig-holstein musik festival

sonarsound is returing for the third consecutive year to the schleswig-holstein musik festival from July 16. The festival, which this …

korean punk

Asia Pacific Arts wrote about the punk scene in Korea a couple of weeks ago, and the scene around Skunk …

海洋熱 – ocean fever

Director Chen Lung-nan’s rock n’ roll documentary of a bunch of underground bands playing at the Gong-liao Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival …

bobby and ben

Last night I saw a face on SBS tv who looked really familiar. I met Bobby Singh when musician Ben …

Guangdong Symphony Orchestra in Sydney

The Guangdong Symphony Orchestra blew into town on Thursday for a one-nighter at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall performing …

cui jian – the father of chinese rock n roll

asia pacific arts has an interview with Cui Jian, the ‘father of Chinese rock n roll’, who started out playing …

rive droite

Something has been happening in Guangzhou in the last year, which always seems like the poor second child to Beijing …

第三现场 3 Live Home – Rhythm Construction

Things are going wild at 第三现场 3 Live Home this month. This week is the first hip-hop week in Guangzhou, …

跳舞時代 Viva Tonal – The Dance Age

The emergence of a local recording industry, dance halls, pop-stars under the shadow of Japanese occupation makes 跳舞時代 Viva Tonal …

第三现场 livehome3 rock out for 3 nights

Last weekend it was the first punk/metal/hardcore festival in Hong Kong, this week it’s three nights of action in 广州 …

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