TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Monday, January 28, 2008

8:48 PM
Posted by jodi rose

did I say hyper-drive?
we've now engaged the improbability drive, at warp-speed.
live is fairly frizzling with morphic resonance these days.

I couldn't even begin to summarise in any depth, so, to give a brief flash of some key points that have crackled my synapses since friday:

wake up. *(always a good strong start)
write story for anna to use in the transit lounge underground project.
weave together greek mythology; jean cocteau's 1949 film orphee; strands of our discussion in the many hour skype conferences; trude; Berlin nightclub lifestyle; and some of my own reflections into a contemporary philosophical dialogue between two people in a tunnel under a nightclub.

Berlin Orpheus

Followed by the short - only 2 hour - online conference/meeting, then the photographer arrived to take my photo for Zitty, an hour of thinking 'am I playing myself or being myself?'.

Henry arrived at 3 for our meeting with a bottle of wine and beautiful warm insouciant charm, talked about his fantastic, visionary international sound art music architecture project, Sound of Cities, listened to fresh-off-the-press music, his and Jasmina's when she knocked on the window for a visit; then cycled out into the night with Jas for dinner and conversation about Paris, life, art, love.

Saturday, woke up and made it to the 'Tuned Cities' Symposium in time for all the speakers, with the cute commentator box for simultaneous translation; high volume of inspiring ideas, projects, history and engagement with sound art and architecture. Props to Brandon La Belle for being the only speaker to even mention any women artists, let alone sound artists - very boys-zone, you'd never know a woman had even picked up a microphone throughout most of the day. Issues of gender representation aside, it was a good range of philosophy and practice, and I had the excellent fortune to hear Max Neuhaus, who invented the 'soundwalk' in the 60's, in conversation with Brandon. He had a wonderful attitude and approach, talking about how there was never a linear plan, he just went with the idea that excited him most at the time. Perfect. He was still waiting for a call about his 'aural soundgarden' after the plans were published in Domus 3 years ago. It's heartening to realise that even with someone of that stature and reputation as an artist, things still take the time they take.

Dropped into KW '5 minutes later' exhibition opening on way home, chatted with Somaya and Anna who were leaving after a hard day's filming in the underground tunnels; cycled back to Neukolln for a club night at o-tannenabaum, met Rinus and scored not one but two gigs with das kleine field recording festival, inveigled him into presenting and curating an evening for the Program sound weekend in march, and then went down to the cellar. After that. it's all a blur. Feel like I stumbled into old Berlin, the one I fell in love with 6 years ago when I first came here, and would pick up a flier for a gig and end up in someone's living room listening to extremely experimental performance sound art. There was just a fantastic atmosphere, really nice crowd of people - think you would have been hard pressed to find anyone there who wasn't an artist, musician, writer or combination of all three - danced with Jacob and Anya for hours, received invitations to a new studio opening up the road; found out that I was featured for one of the Freies Radio days, where Johannes played all the pieces on the website that I had given him from conversations at Pixelache; then cycled home feeling satisfactorily trashy.

Sunday was a little tricky, especially the three hour skype call and projection test that started at 11, but we all managed to muddle through. Went out to the 'Tuned Space' gig at Maria, heard some live binaural field recording, lush drone piece, Mattin's hardcore set and sadly missed the room tuning by Mark Bain, as I just had to sleeeeep.

Today has been more gentle, slowly working through lists and audio files and various elements of collaborations for exhibition. Had some great chats with Rob - miss having the no-input tap dancing festival bouncing around the studio together at josetti hofe - and finally getting my head around how to use these process recordings from the past week. He had a nice take on that, and following the 'weather principle'

"I go the way the wind's blowing and the clouds are forming. It's been years learning to live with things bigger than I can understand. I can't fit the world in my head." Then you can fit more in, once it's empty.

Which ties in perfectly with Henry's reminder of the Zen Koan about the Master pouring tea into an overflowing cup, and telling the student 'come back when you are empty.' Hence the unfilling of my head here.

Finally, a moment of clarity too about those levels of engagement and social awkwardness with people who have a certain self-perception.

It's about having a broad field of reference. Something small compressed into a very dense space, makes it seem bigger than it is. People with a narrow field of reference may look very big and important, and can make you feel scatty, awkward and too this or that; but it's nothing personal, just that you are outside their field of reference. And people who are interested in lots of different stuff; who have a broad field of reference, they're the ones you feel comfortable with. There's common ground to play on.

So, meet me in Trude and play with the transit loungers.