Potsdam, 2063
Oct. 30th, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe girlfriend and I caught a suburban train to Potsdam to catch the last day of Ideal City - Invisible Cities on Sunday. Potsdam may only be 40 minutes from Berlin, but its combination of low solid baroque buildings and communist brutalism (not to mention uplifting Cold War era mosaics and sculptures) makes it feel quite different. And of course this is the town responsible for The Singing, Ringing Tree, so it has a certain otherness about it.
(Click the picture to see a larger version.)
Even in the rain, events where you navigate from one location to another in an unfamiliar town can be exciting. The best venues in this art-meets-urbanism show had the same tacky charisma I noted in my piece about the Berlin Biennial, The war on patina. In fact, this often felt like the Berlin Biennial Part 2. The Old Military Hospital, for instance, had the same endless institutional corridors and chopped-about, history-enhanced rooms as the Jewish Girls School which was the Biennial's most evocative venue.
And, just as at the Biennial, private apartments had been turned into exhibition spaces. Artist Les Schliesser's enormous, lino-floored, ceramic-oven dotted flat was full of shabby glamour, and even contained one of the most interesting pieces from the Biennial: "Scene for a New Heritage II", a six-minute DVD projection by Croatian artist David Maljkovic. Set in 2063, it shows a group of young travellers visiting the Petrova Gora Memorial, a dramatic communist monument erected in honour of Yugoslavia's World War II dead. The idealists sing Laibach-style comments to each other in traditional Slavic ullulations:
"I suggest we change the function of this building."
"We can't, this place is sacred."
"It looks to me like there's no god in here."
"Come on, we're tired, we'll come again."
The combination of ostalgie, futurism and ancient Slavic tradition takes us to a very rich and interesting place indeed, opening up a view to a parallel world where ideals have become visible.
(Click the picture to see a larger version.)
Even in the rain, events where you navigate from one location to another in an unfamiliar town can be exciting. The best venues in this art-meets-urbanism show had the same tacky charisma I noted in my piece about the Berlin Biennial, The war on patina. In fact, this often felt like the Berlin Biennial Part 2. The Old Military Hospital, for instance, had the same endless institutional corridors and chopped-about, history-enhanced rooms as the Jewish Girls School which was the Biennial's most evocative venue.
And, just as at the Biennial, private apartments had been turned into exhibition spaces. Artist Les Schliesser's enormous, lino-floored, ceramic-oven dotted flat was full of shabby glamour, and even contained one of the most interesting pieces from the Biennial: "Scene for a New Heritage II", a six-minute DVD projection by Croatian artist David Maljkovic. Set in 2063, it shows a group of young travellers visiting the Petrova Gora Memorial, a dramatic communist monument erected in honour of Yugoslavia's World War II dead. The idealists sing Laibach-style comments to each other in traditional Slavic ullulations:
"I suggest we change the function of this building."
"We can't, this place is sacred."
"It looks to me like there's no god in here."
"Come on, we're tired, we'll come again."
The combination of ostalgie, futurism and ancient Slavic tradition takes us to a very rich and interesting place indeed, opening up a view to a parallel world where ideals have become visible.
Re: Dear imomus
Date: 2006-10-30 03:04 pm (UTC)'My girlfriend' is a good way of relating the person to yourself in front of the reader.
'The girlfriend' is a good way of reducing a person to a simple function in front of the reader, which is dehumanising.
But I've seen this expression many times used by native english, so it doesn't upset me. And apparently not Hisae. So life goes on ...
/bug
Re: Dear imomus
Date: 2006-10-30 03:12 pm (UTC)Re: Dear imomus
Date: 2006-10-30 03:47 pm (UTC)Re: Dear imomus
Date: 2006-10-30 04:07 pm (UTC)Phew, just managed to wriggle out of that one. Got to watch out for these touchy feminists!! Bunch of rug-munchers!!!
Re: Dear imomus
Date: 2006-10-31 03:50 am (UTC)hey cityamrica, yes, no matter how ugly the comments are, they will still be there tomorrow. I don't offer alcoholism in hopes of forgiveness, but as an explanation of my mind set. I say things when drinking that never occur to me when I'm not drinking. Where do those ugly things come from? I don't like that person.
Momus, thanks for listening to my words. I read your writing one sentence at a time, and think about the sentences as stand-alone comments. One day I might do something interesting with your essays, I mean, piece them all together and mix them all up and see what comes out with a creative algorithm.
Hey anonymous, it sounds like you understood my hangup with "the girlfriend." It is very different than saying "my girlfriend." I would totally yell at any boyfriend that referred to me as "the girlfriend" or "the wife". But I see how that's a cultural difference.
Hey Momus, how does one get invited to the wedding? Oh, I'm just teasing you, I promise I'm not a real stalker for heaven's sake!!!