TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

4:44 PM
Posted by jodi rose

Took an audio stroll around Boston's Fort Point channel, fascinating area and beautifully produced sound walk. Hey, it's one way of being in two places at once. Katie sent me something about another project asking artists to write or make work about a city they weren't in... must find it.

Writing it up for a piece on viator travel blog, did I mention that already? If not, you can find (slighly) more coherent tales of adventure and mayhem across Europe this summer, than these rambling vignettes.

Had a meeting with the very fabulous Fotini at Program, about activities for next year, and then lay on the current installation for an hour or so. Like drifting in the clouds, get down there if you can!

Dropped in briefly to a very sceney art opening and decided I just wasn't in the mood, so headed home to another impromptu street bar with filip - my new sculptor friend who has signed on to build an impossible bridge with me - and various other residents stopping to say 'Hi!'. Met the sonoteknika (?) from upstairs, who had been doing sound for the popkomm conference talks, and greatly enjoyed one of the artist/presenters totally messing with the format, using the microphone to beatbox and not talk about ways of making more money out of music. Indeed. Met someone recently whose company uses mathematical formulae to predict hit songs, he promised to run some bridges through it for me, so I can see if the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn, or the Millennium are more likely to reach No. !. All of them most unlikely, but I find it a highly amusing mis-use of the idea.

Talking of underground sounds, made it along to Laurent's not-really-punk band at the newest gallery on brunnenstrasse - they are slowly creeping up the hill - and enjoyed a few minutes of ear-splitting audio assault before hanging out on the street, where the sound was a more gentle hum behind the glass windows. Nice scene though, lots of friends and noise artists there who I know from around/before, and more intense discussion about making a life with art and no compromise. Ended up having a nutella crepe at the cart on Eberswalder Strasse around 2am, chatting to the sweet young rock'n'roll boy who was there handing out fliers for 'death by pop' club. I of course imagined people bursting like soapbubbles in the club, one by one, as the frequency made their bones dissolve - kind of a mix of sympathetic resonance and spontaneous human combustion - but apparently it was a little more tame than that.

Gorgeous Saturday morning, dropped into the bakery round the corner (Seibert, and yes, as Seamus told me it really IS the best in Berlin); cycled up to Schonhauser Allee for supplies of various kinds, and then hung out in one of my local cafe's reading magazines - trashy and architectural (now there's a mix to think about) - then wandered through the park where I found this lovely overgrown wilderness rose garden. Am getting very fond of the people who hang out on the park benches, some older guys drinking, groups of teenagers - who incongruously enough were listening to some cheesy synth 80's pop last time I walked past, wish I could remember the song... parents with young kids catching the last of the warm days before they're confined to a tiny apartment for the long cold wet winter.

And yes, it's true, I also will be here for that winter. Looking forward to it in a perverse way, partly wardrobe related and the rest something about hibernation time, open fires, whisky. Realised this morning that the last six months has been a kind of limbo, that I think was a necessary process for detaching from parts of my old life and re-orienting myself to a new hemisphere. These last three weeks I feel like another person, a lot like the existing Jodi, but with new highlights, hidden tracks, and extra bonus features!! File under 'uncategorizable'. Having fun with it now, trying out new personas.