TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Monday, October 15, 2007

10:32 AM
Posted by jodi rose

Trying to work myself up into enough of a lather to cut-and-paste the latest grant application. The returns are so uncertain, but then, it does buy time and freedom when they're successful. What I really need is a bridge-loving philanthropist who really wants to hear the global bridge symphony and makes a sizeable gift to support it. Anyone....?

It's fantastic, the latest swirl of ideas melting down into the next series of performances, instruments and exhibitions are just hilarious.
I mean, if you can't have some fun with art made from bridge sounds, then something's wrong. And believe me, the next stage of this project is going to be both artistically rigorous and very entertaining.

The creative melting furnace that is Berlin has been feeding me all kinds of new possibilities, people and perceptions. After my Milla Jovovich moment on Wednesday night, I've had a completely insane four days. Met the most incredible assortment of people to play with, from a metal-working artist who sings in a trash-pop choir (with german lyrics) that I might join, and lives around the corner from my new apartment; to an ex-punk real estate agent with a great country house going cheap, who also worked on the dropping knowledge project and gave me some great contacts to get technical advice; to a french marine biologist going to work in tahiti; a video director and animator who also lives near my new place; a finance whiz who actually checked the stockmarket on his blackberry at babel; an advertising guru working with last.fm who filled me in on the latest methods for generating income from content (which is what creative work is this days, apparently, better get used to it!); a DIY radio activist who created a portable suitcase transmitter and station during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and with the Zapatistas in South America; and finally an intriguing experimental saxophonist with a great hat from Istanbul.

Threw myself around on the dancefloor at Kim, a minimal bar in the 'brutal' part of mitte that had the uber-hip twentysomething beautiful people all posing and pashing on the dancefloor at 5am (in that hideous retro that passes for fashion these days - god I'm getting old!), to a bizarre array of 80's tunes including Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks, with the musical highlight being the wonderful Go-Betweens 'Streets of Your Town'.

Derek's performance at Kita was amazing. Beautiful handmade motors with circular patterns projected over photo-transistors that created fantastically detailed and intricate sounds and images. Beautiful.

What more could you need, than to fill your days and nights with strange ideas, sounds and people. Yes, life in Berlin is good.