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imomusThursday night threw me through a fairly typical Berlin sequence. Hisae and I joined Sunshine and her friend Ollie at an opening in a building where Ollie has a studio. We asked to see his workspace, but Ollie demurred, explaining that there was an embarrassing lack of work on display. Actually, I really just wanted to see the space, up on the fourth floor and overlooking the Spree. I like seeing workspaces. Not knowing Ollie very well, I suppose I thought the space would tell me more about where he was coming from.
Next we went to Tesla where an American media artist called Jeff Mann was holding court at an open studio event. There were circuit boards everywhere, and videos playing on flatscreen monitors. Jeff was deep in conversation with some visitors, which was lucky -- unless I really love an artist's work (and I'm not familiar with Jeff's) I have the classic shy person's fear of open studios. How do you edge away from the inevitable conversation about the artist's "process"? The more interesting the work or the process is, of course, the more difficult it becomes to escape. Meanwhile your stomach's rumbling, or you have to go to the toilet, or you have another appointment (in our case it was a combination of rumbling stomachs and a pressing appointment with noise rock duo Blue Sabbath Black Fiji at Zentrale Randlage).
Above you can see my workspace. It isn't much to look at, and it's not separate from my living space. There are art magazines, and Japanese art magazines, and old art magazines from the 1960s (that's Studio International from January 1969 up in the top right). There's an iMac, an acoustic guitar, some CDs and DVDs, a few books (mostly about visual culture) and a TV which plays ambient stuff. I sit there with my girlfriend nearby. I drink tea.
I sometimes think vaguely about renting commercial space in Berlin to work in -- a place to record a new album, for instance. That's something you can do fairly easily here. As art critic Daniel Richter says in this conversation with Jonathan Meese and Tal R, "Berlin is empty. It's a very empty town. Still, it's not rich, it's not a bourgeois town, there is so much space you can rent. It's the first thing you need. You need some food and a place to work. You can't get that in Paris or Copenhagen or Hamburg, because these are expensive bourgeois towns".
Food and a place to work! Nothing bourgeois, nothing to own. Berlin is full of rather stark, functional and funky "spaces" used by artists to make their work. That's basically the look of Berlin, and what people talk about. "I have a nice space, very cheap..." In Britain, by contrast, conversation would tend to be about house prices, I think. I don't know, I haven't lived there for a while. But I was very startled, looking at the Guardian's interesting yet horrifying Writers' Rooms feature, by just how unglamorous most writers' rooms are. And how unfunky and bourgeois.
Only Will Self's space is remotely Berlin-like -- stark, funky and functional. I'm interested in the way he sticks Post It notes bearing plot ideas over a map of the Isle of Grain, mapping the structure of a sequence of narrative ideas to the outline of an existing place he knows well (this is a bit like a mneumonic -- I often remember sequences of ideas by stages on the walks on which I had them). Something about David Hare's space also appeals to me -- some distant reminder of photos of the various places Brecht worked during his international flight from the Nazis, perhaps. Some whiff of a committed "theatrical humanism" -- a 1960s radicalism doomed and dying in British theatre, and therefore to be cherished.
All the other writers in the Writers' Rooms series have pretty geriatric spaces which just reconfirm my innate prejudice against Anglo literary culture. These studies all look like unused bedrooms in dingy (yet overpriced) semi-suburban houses -- you know, the rooms parents take over for belated creative work when their offspring drift off to uni. The "home office" vibe is intensified by ugly orthopedic chairs, nasty cheap PCs (although several writers swear by ancient typewriters, claiming to hate computers), ugly telephones, meanly-proportioned windows and cluttered Victoriana (although JG Ballard updates this to the 1930s courtesy of a bad Surrealist painting). There are framed certificates on the walls, or NYRB caricatures of the writer (hello David Lodge!). There are velour tablecloths, Art Deco lamps and silly gifts. It's all very 20th century.
I suppose some of the blame for the impression of fustiness rather than funkiness communicated by these photos has to be laid at the feet of the Guardian editors, who chose a bunch of elderly and rather bourgeois writers to document. I'd like to see Ali Smith's space, or Zadie Smith's, or Mark Haddon's. But I suspect it's also a function of the difference between the creators in book culture and the creators in the visual world. And, you know, call me superficial, but I'd rather see the space Blue Sabbath Black Fiji rehearse in. As long as I don't have to live next door. That shit is loud.
Next we went to Tesla where an American media artist called Jeff Mann was holding court at an open studio event. There were circuit boards everywhere, and videos playing on flatscreen monitors. Jeff was deep in conversation with some visitors, which was lucky -- unless I really love an artist's work (and I'm not familiar with Jeff's) I have the classic shy person's fear of open studios. How do you edge away from the inevitable conversation about the artist's "process"? The more interesting the work or the process is, of course, the more difficult it becomes to escape. Meanwhile your stomach's rumbling, or you have to go to the toilet, or you have another appointment (in our case it was a combination of rumbling stomachs and a pressing appointment with noise rock duo Blue Sabbath Black Fiji at Zentrale Randlage).
Above you can see my workspace. It isn't much to look at, and it's not separate from my living space. There are art magazines, and Japanese art magazines, and old art magazines from the 1960s (that's Studio International from January 1969 up in the top right). There's an iMac, an acoustic guitar, some CDs and DVDs, a few books (mostly about visual culture) and a TV which plays ambient stuff. I sit there with my girlfriend nearby. I drink tea.
I sometimes think vaguely about renting commercial space in Berlin to work in -- a place to record a new album, for instance. That's something you can do fairly easily here. As art critic Daniel Richter says in this conversation with Jonathan Meese and Tal R, "Berlin is empty. It's a very empty town. Still, it's not rich, it's not a bourgeois town, there is so much space you can rent. It's the first thing you need. You need some food and a place to work. You can't get that in Paris or Copenhagen or Hamburg, because these are expensive bourgeois towns".
Food and a place to work! Nothing bourgeois, nothing to own. Berlin is full of rather stark, functional and funky "spaces" used by artists to make their work. That's basically the look of Berlin, and what people talk about. "I have a nice space, very cheap..." In Britain, by contrast, conversation would tend to be about house prices, I think. I don't know, I haven't lived there for a while. But I was very startled, looking at the Guardian's interesting yet horrifying Writers' Rooms feature, by just how unglamorous most writers' rooms are. And how unfunky and bourgeois.
Only Will Self's space is remotely Berlin-like -- stark, funky and functional. I'm interested in the way he sticks Post It notes bearing plot ideas over a map of the Isle of Grain, mapping the structure of a sequence of narrative ideas to the outline of an existing place he knows well (this is a bit like a mneumonic -- I often remember sequences of ideas by stages on the walks on which I had them). Something about David Hare's space also appeals to me -- some distant reminder of photos of the various places Brecht worked during his international flight from the Nazis, perhaps. Some whiff of a committed "theatrical humanism" -- a 1960s radicalism doomed and dying in British theatre, and therefore to be cherished.
All the other writers in the Writers' Rooms series have pretty geriatric spaces which just reconfirm my innate prejudice against Anglo literary culture. These studies all look like unused bedrooms in dingy (yet overpriced) semi-suburban houses -- you know, the rooms parents take over for belated creative work when their offspring drift off to uni. The "home office" vibe is intensified by ugly orthopedic chairs, nasty cheap PCs (although several writers swear by ancient typewriters, claiming to hate computers), ugly telephones, meanly-proportioned windows and cluttered Victoriana (although JG Ballard updates this to the 1930s courtesy of a bad Surrealist painting). There are framed certificates on the walls, or NYRB caricatures of the writer (hello David Lodge!). There are velour tablecloths, Art Deco lamps and silly gifts. It's all very 20th century.
I suppose some of the blame for the impression of fustiness rather than funkiness communicated by these photos has to be laid at the feet of the Guardian editors, who chose a bunch of elderly and rather bourgeois writers to document. I'd like to see Ali Smith's space, or Zadie Smith's, or Mark Haddon's. But I suspect it's also a function of the difference between the creators in book culture and the creators in the visual world. And, you know, call me superficial, but I'd rather see the space Blue Sabbath Black Fiji rehearse in. As long as I don't have to live next door. That shit is loud.