Fave sci-fi / fantasy / demonic space opera book of the year? Very yes.
I don’t have the energy to write all about it (cheers chronic ijdgaf fatigue), but if I did I’d go on about how much I loved the main characters, all the food, the meticulous discipline of being a professional musician, love, kindness, moral ambiguity, queerness, transness, west coast migrant Asian-American culture. Pretty much everything I want to read.
Yayoi Kusama’s A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe retrospective at Gropius Bau. I think this is called Love Room and is a recreation of the installation from her 1966 Driving Image Show exhibition in Essen. Nice amount of eye-bleed and brain reset here. I like her crazy, feels like next town over from mine.
(ot technical note: I ditched Photoshop a while ago and have been using Affinity Photo, which is much nicer and not Adobe. But my workflow is still kinda hacky, especially with RAW processing and colour balancing. I think this is a better job than Infinity Net A, but equally might be over-saturated and over-processed amateur hour.)
Infinity Net A in Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective at Gropius Bau.Infinity Net A in Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective at Gropius Bau. Very good on my eyes and 10/10 would steal for my private art collection. This was the one that did the brain reset, vibrating physical reaction experience. Only a shadow of that transfers in the photo, but still, I can feel a sharp physiological reaction.
Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective at Gropius Bau. One of the paintings reset my brain. This installation I could live in, very peacefully.
Dasniya had a residency at Ballhaus Ost the last couple of months, thanks to pandemic and pandemic arts funding. I got to see a private showing last weekend, with Tara (yup, Tara!) and Yui. Yeah I’m a long-time fan of her work and Glutamat confirms it.
Long time ago when I washed dishes for cash, the lunch chef was getting fancy with this beautiful knife, steel handle with black dimples and very sexy curves. She told me it was a Global knife, from Japan, and was cheaper than the usual pro kitchen knives and just as good.
Some years later, in one of those rare I have cash student moments, I bought my first one, I think a G2 cook’s knife, with which I’ve been slicing and dicing for probably twenty years, and occasionally adding chunks of finger and fingernail to whatever I’m mincing. I had some unexpected cash to finish 2020 (thanks pandemic?), and have been going down my list of necessary shit I haven’t had coin for in the last decade, and arrived at, “Buy some new Global knives.” Which I did.
I always wanted a proper blocky vegetable knife for bouncing alongside my safely clawed knuckles over a head of garlic. And having a sleek as little peeling knife to match. And here we are, doubling my collection of those dimple-handled knives. Number four is a 15cm utility knife I bought maybe mid-’00s, which is currently primarily on bread and cheese duty, though I’m very tempted to buy a couple more just for that. Along with one of them magnetic knife racks and a couple of tree stumps worth of chopping boards.
I don’t know why this car makes me love it so much, but here we are. The ultimate ’90s blue and gold burbleburbleBRAAAAAPchitterchitter. You all know I should be driving this.
’90s ’00s JDM import tuner spoiler red alert. Seen a couple of times on Weserstraße, the curbside rear quarter panel taken a beating, but oh child observe those rims. Observe the hood vent and spoiler. Observe millennial coupé hatchback hoonage. Tight. Apparently a Toyota Celica 1.8 VVTLi T Sport, or possibly a 1.8 VVT-i, defo 7th Gen. and pretty sure post-facelift, so, 2003 or later. I seriously worked out that from the side indicator lights. Memories of Chapel St. on a Friday night, bass bins rattling glass, underside lighting, proper hoonage backed up both sides from Toorak to High St. “See man driving a German whip.”
I saw the second full run-through last Sunday of Isabelle Schad’s new work, Reflection, wrapped in the proscenium arch on the HAU1 stage. Everything I could hope for in the continuation of her group works. Opens May 30th.
Isabelle Schad / Reflection / HAU1
Thursday, 30.05.2019, 19:00, world premiere, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)
further performances:
31.05.2019, 19:00
01.06.2019, 19:00
02.06.2019, 19:00A group of performers negotiates the theatre as a space for social gathering, (re)presentation and an apparatus whose motors interact with the biomechanics and different energies of the human body’s movements. Reflection is the last part of a trilogy on the collective body. From the community that we form (Collective Jumps) to the analogy of nature (Pieces and Elements), Reflection brings the focus to energetic and physical forces that make us move and the importance of the singularity to move others.
Credits:
Concept & Choreography: Isabelle Schad | Co-Choreography & Performance: Jozefien Beckers, Barbara Berti, Frederike Doffin, Ewa Dziarnowska, Naïma Ferré, Josephine Findeisen, Przemek Kaminski, Mathis Kleinschnittger, Manuel Lindner, Jan Lorys, Josh Marcy, Claudia Tomasi, Nir Vidan, Natalia Wilk | Dramaturgical & Artistic Collaboration: Saša Božić | Artistic Assistance: Claudia Tomasi | Composition & Sound: Damir Šimunović | Light Design & Technical Direction: Emma Juliard | Costumes: Charlotte Pistorius | Costume Assistance: Maja Svartåker | Theoretical Collaboration: Elena Basteri | Production Management: Heiko Schramm | Production: Isabelle Schad | Supported by: Wiesen55 e.V.In the frame of Performing Arts Festival Berlin / 28. May to 2. June 2019 / Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2019
more informations: Isabelle Schad / HAU
Seen parked on the corner of Sonnenallee for months on end, looking a bit sad through winter, and now sparkling in spring. Metallic cerulean, or ‘Turquoise Pearl 746’, 1992 Toyota MR2 GT T-Bar (MK2 SW20, etc) is one of my favourite pieces of unlikely casual hoonage on the streets of Neukölln. “Give mana-man space, let mana-man breathe.”
