Oodekkah rundgang

With about 4600 students (and annual costs of about €200 per student, including foreign ones), Berlin's Universität der Künste (known as UdK or "oodekkah" for short) is Europe's biggest art school. This weekend it throws its doors open to visitors, with its annual rundgang (walkabout) taking rubberneckers on an art safari across eight buildings. Magnificent old buildings they are too, equipped with beautiful blockwood floors and mysterious old fuseboxes from 1975. Hisae and I went yesterday to see what the students had been up to.



Here I am with some Laura Ford-like figures. And that's Hisae in a room with a painting installation. In another room there was a video of a naked man masturbating into a glass and drinking it. There was, as usual, tons of crap -- especially the painting and print-making. But there was some very good and very interesting work too.



I liked this tabletop installation about Alpine walking tours, with its seed packet-like tour packages. There was also an audio element -- headphones you could clap on to eavesdrop on a travel agent trying to seduce clients into taking the tours.



The same Germanic restraint was in evidence in the work of this student, who plots the shapes made on walls by posters and papers on a crowded noticeboard, plots the shapes with blocks of pure colour, then labels the blocks with mysterious abbreviations.

I really think I've missed my vocation in life -- twice. First, I should have gone to art school. Second, I think I'd have been happy teaching at one. I just get so excited and delighted walking around these lofty yet lived-in buidlings, with their smell of paint and their cool bohemian feel -- factories of art, finishing schools for Momus girlfriends, and birthplaces of the world's best bands!

More snaps on my Flickr page.