i'm sitting in the airport hours too early, thanks to the paranoic indoctrinations of my lovely parents...so i decided to use the time to write about the fantastic adventure i just had in croatia.
the short of it is that last tuesday i got an email from my friend dunja, a croatian girl who i met through my friend benny two years ago (benny is the guy i stayed with in berlin). dunja told me that she was back in croatia earlier than she had anticipated, and entreated me to come to zagreb, "that night or whenever!" for we were meant to have an adventure...anywhere.
so the next day i went to the train station, purchased a ticket for the 5 o clock train. while there, i met an american girl, who was going to be on the same train as me, so i invited her back to my apartment, b/c the keleti train station is sucky and saunistically hot. later when we got on the train, she headed for the sleeper car, and i headed for the 2nd class - read: lowest class - train car, which was unbearably hot - no A/C no windows capable of being opened!. met these two brits, and b/c the train showed no signs of moving on time, we did what anyone in our situation would do: bought two bags of beer. as we clinked together our wonderful bottles of hungarian dreher, just outside the window we could see the frenchie who had been on our car, sitting on the ground with blood coming out of his head. later we would discover that he had left for a smoke, and seeing that a train car - OTHER THAN THE ONE HIS GIRLFRIEND AND BAGS SAT ON - was leaving, he panicked thinking it was the one leaving for venice (ours), and got on. when he realized that it wasn't his train, he tried to get off. but the doors were closed, and b/c the train was only moving faster and faster, he did what any sensible being would do, which is to push the conductor out of the way, and jump off the moving train.
another forty minutes were spent convincing frenchie and his girlfriend that getting on the train for 12 hours after he had suffered a head injury was not the brightest idea...so they left in the direction of a hospital that had an MRI machine.
and then we were off. celena eventually emerged from the sleeper car. but by then we had also met andy, another brit who later would regale us with stories involving his being court-martialed and spending two years in jail when he was a UN soldier during the Bosnian war, because he killed a Serbian he saw raping a young girl. also explained to us that the reason he had been living in southeast asia and travelling in europe for the past year and a half (with just a tiny backpack no less), was because after his time in prison, he had been in with the london organized crime scene, and his successes in the trafficking of Special K, had warranted a special request from the Ruskis - your life abroad or your death in London.
Rounds of drinks and 6 hours later, we hit Zagreb, where Dunja was waiting for me at the train station! The next day we hung out in Zagreb....I almost got a massive fine for riding public transport without a ticket EVENTHOUGH THERE IS NO TICKET MACHINE AT THE BUS STOPS! and no way for an english speaking tourist to know you have to buy these tickets at bodegas. we got out of the ticket, after the pervy traffic controller made comments in croatian to dunja about how i would just pay the fine because i'm american and evidently "rich", and she told him that i was far from rich and rather a broke ass student on the tail end of a trip....he let us off with an 8 dollar fine...i'm convinced he just wanted to use his position of power to flirt with us, a much of the 15 minutes was spent with him giggling at us, and making eyes....eww....what a fucking creep.
so the next morning, dunja's friend maja and her friend darian came by to pick us up. as darian was headed for the coast, he took us with him, and for the next few days, while the three of us girls rented an apartment in moscanicka draga (on the istrian peninsula) right by the sea, he would meet up with us in the evenings to take us to places you can't get to unless you have a car....! lucky ladies we were. in darian's high-powered mercedes, one night after dinner at a farmhouse/family restaurant in the middle of the woods, where they make their own prosciutto and truffle cheese, and serve wild boar and homemade pasta, he took us to the smallest city in the world - hum - and then we went to the motovun film festival's closing night on the top of a mountain. another night we went out to opatije and rijeka, two larger cities...got to the seafood konoba (little "locavorian" restaurant) just as it was closing...so we ordered a pre-dinner schnibble of octopus salad and marinated anchovies and ate it on the street, while i wore turqouise eye shadow.....jajaja! the day after that, we went to the beach in the morning and then darian took us to a "haunted house" (it burned down a hundred years ago and then someone committed suicide) - it's now a gorgeous hotel that sits on the top of a cliff looking out to the water far below....and then he drove us to the ferry landing - of course driving like my older sister, which meant high speeds on the windy cliffy coastal road and loud loud pulsating music ;), ....once there, the three of us girls got on board headed for cres, a massive island...
since we needed a ride to the main city, forty minutes away by car from the ferry landing in cres, we had to ask people for a ride. maja and i jumped at the opportunity. i think we asked 7 or 8 people....until finally we landed upon a guy with a van that was full and had room for two (but "we are like sooo thin!" dunja said) but three if we sat on each other. and we met an older belgian couple who confessed that they did not as of yet know where they were going, but that they had an RV so if they decided to go to the main city then of course we were more than welcome...
we met up with the two ride options on dry land. dunja helped the belgians with the map. maja and i discovered that van guy was a film director from austria...belgians decided to go to the city, so they took us...coolest hitchhiking experience ever.
when we got to the city, we went to dunja's friend dora's place....maja and i were to stay there for the next few days, and dunja was off to her friend maja's to stay there. and what did we do for the next few days?
1. played lots of rummy 51 with dora.
2. went swimming every afternoon at the nudist beach, which is really just a stream of tiny rocky beaches....this beach is further than the more crowded beaches, and way cleaner and nicer.
3. had photo shoots.
4. went to semana (spelling?), a festival where local vendors sold oils, and grappas, and fresh seafood
5. ate lots of tiny grilled fish - sardines, anchovies, etc. etc.
6. drank medica - honey flavored grappa.
7. ate burek at 2 am.
8. went to SHTALA (barn) the only club on the island, for all of 5 minutes
9. ate cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
10. went out wearing hats.
11. woke up hungover.
12. listened to the church bells ring for 30 minutes straight, while sitting in dora's living room.
13. listened to the church bells ring for what seemed like ages, but not quite 30 minutes, every morning at 7 am.
14. got dehydrated heat exhaustion headaches and then nursed them.
15. had danse parties in dora's saunistic apt
16. watched the sunsets.
17. went swimming.
18. taught amie how to read in croatian, and taught her basic knowledge of croatian....HVALA!
19. left the fridge open for 5 minute intervals at one point to "air condition" the room.
20. stuck up for ourselves on the nudist beach when a sexually frustrated croatian man started yelling at us for being at the same beach as him and his girl, DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT WASN'T PRIVATE, and there was an old couple 5 m away!- we weren't moving, so he finally did! JERK!
21. watched someone get in trouble with the police.
22. generally had an amazing time.
i left cres 2 mornings ago by bus and ferry boat ride...got to zagreb, spent a few hours in the city center, then hopped on a train, got to budapest late night....
yesterday, i packed, went to a housewarming part on buda side, and met someone involved in the arts trade and arts management in hungary.
i think i'll be back in the city that never sleeps in like 17 hours or so if all goes well.
much love to you all,
amie
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
art'ing around london and vienna
first, sorry it took me so long to write a post - i hope the events of the last week of my little jaunt haven't entirely escaped my memory...
so where were we? yes, i was about to run off to get mussels with my friend david and his friend ryan at a belgian place in covent gardens where the waiters are ever so subtly dressed as monks....and where the mussels are shockingly good.
then we went off to the tate modern (yes, again), but this time to see the cy twombly and street & studio photography exhibit. both were great....i really like the tate modern more than the new moma....for a whole list of reasons that i won't get into here, but i'd be more than happy to discuss this with anyone interested, whenever...
then i went back to max's flat in bloomsbury (the west end), and we took a stroll - among other things i saw a BEDFORD square (hipsters eat your heart out) - and then met up with his friends from lse for dim sum & beers. then we went to a bar, but too bad, last call was at ELEVEN THIRTY ON A SATURDAY NIGHT...so then we went to another bar, which had the same policy, but had been swamped by a birthday party, so we were able to order one round...london is great and all, but midnight, seriously?
anyway, next day i went to the markets - spitalfields and old brick lane (or something like that) - i wish all the pound prices were really usd prices, because i would have bought up EVERYTHING at some of the stands. like this one artist who makes ridiculous jewelry - necklaces with rocking horses, 3-D shopping carts, bicycles, etc. in bling gold...lots of very very unique, cool stuff.
after i had spent everything i had just taken out of the atm 3 hours prior, i strolled about and then returned to max's, where we had dinner and watched british tv....aaah, the wonders of british humour.
next day, natalie picked me up in the morning...natalie is a twentysomething lawyer at white and case - hungarian too! - who i met in california during spring break two years back while with my sister, through my sister's friend...and after i had missed my flight to new york for cardozo admitted weekend, i decided to stay in san fran with my sister and the two of them to go drinking around napa, and "hang out" rather than go back to school ;) anyway, so nat and i hung about her flat by hyde park and walked around the notting hill area...at one point we made the mistake of walking into some floral potpourri soap place, which was all disheveled, and english country cute, but not tacky or overwhelmingly nauseating in terms of smell, and this was all a mistake because the woman was off her rocker.
"do you want to smell something-something rose thing?"
huh? "uh, no thanks, just looking"
"well it doesn't cost you anything to smell"
etc. etc. etc.
later we went to see a woman named natasha panas perform - jazzy soul singer who went to nat's high school - b/c her single just got released...quite good, and i got to meet one of nat's best friends who has the same birthday as me, as does her sister, who is two years younger than her - nuts.
next day, among other things, we did a whirlwind tour of the landmark sights, shopped in chelsea, had linner at a wonderful bistro, and went to selfridges (really nice dep't store) because i had to pick up my shoes which were in repair, and we had to see the clothes, chat with the guy at nars, and test all this perfume, like teenage girls. haha.
left for vienna next morning (wednesday). out of luton...liked that experience more than stansted, in case any of you ever need to decide b/w the two. also easy jet makes ryan air look like shit.
anyway, got to vienna....gusts of wind and rain. freezing. my head cold of the past two days had turned into something worse because of the whole flying thing, and b/c of the rain that lasted for the next two days in vienna, by friday, i felt like crap ;(
so i got to the hostel, and met up with felipe there. then we walked in the rain for like an hour... got dinner and then went to a place called 1516 brewing company, where they have beer that they make according to the old beer laws of 1516...good stuff. also drank copious amounts of hard cider.
next day we went to the leopold museum where we saw a huge amount of egon schiele and gustav klimt's work. some kokoschka as well. AND this was interesting...there was an exhibit of the modern art of the faroe islands - an island chain between iceland and the uk. random, no?
then we went to the secession building, where you can see the real beethoven frieze that klimt made...at the neue gallery earlier this year, at their klimt exhibit, you could see a faithful representation of this frieze. it was entirely different seeing it here at the bottom of this building, which feels surprisingly austere on the inside, considering the gold-leaf dome and gilded lettering that define the building's exterior.
later we went to the albertina, where you can see dutch masters, old state rooms - super cool "wallpaper," downstairs there's an extensive paul klee collection....and though we went to the permanent gallery...there was no art on the walls, room descriptions - yes, audioguide numbers - yes, but art - no. you can even see the hooks where the paintings used to hang. i'm surprised we could get in...
we got tea, and decided that since it was 5ish, we would go to this place called Trzesniewski that i had read about. it's a stand-up cafe, where you order tiny open face sandwiches, with like egg or fish toppings, and it comes with a teeny mug of beer (125 ml), and it's awesome. there were all these 40/50/60/70 somethings coming there after work to enjoy this or just getting a box of this toasts to take home....i loved it.
we strolled over to a part of town called "bermuda's triangle" - so-called b/c it's a pub area, and b/c people that get drunk there tend to get "lost" inside it...get it...!!!?! went to a funny little bar called mojo, which had weird decor and red lighting, and still managed to feel like a chain....got rounds of drinks, played mash (my new favorite drinking/bored in class/whenever game), and hangman...after a few rounds we decided to head off in search of a late-night meal...and came upon immervoll, which was very cool - reminded me of westville, but cooler, and different food, but same chalkboard, meets casual white tables, meets gourmand dining kind of thing.
then we headed off in the direction of home, but first stopped off at a bar called Rhiz, which is below the u-bahn (metro), but not in the metro station, just below the rail line....very cool. we proceeded to drink a lot. the music was awesome. we drank a lot. we stayed a while. i think we got home at like 4.
i of course entered my hostel room (3 beds including my own...weird for a hostel)...to find the couple i shared a room with sleeping in the same bed...went to the bathroom, came out, they were in separate beds. this exact thing happened the night before too. straaaange.
next morning, i get woken up by the happy couple, b/c they were fiddling with plastic bags. how many? i couldn't tell you, b/c i'm blind as a bat without my contacts in, and don't have my glasses with me. but it went on for an eternity. and of course, i was hungover, with a head cold (i'm a genius), and i wanted to pick up one of my bags and crumple it over and over again, but i didn't. but really, i think this went on for over an hour. i wanted to shoot them. or suffocate them with their own plastic bags. they finally left, and i finally fell back asleep, of course, hungover, aaagh, feli came in at like noon, by then i felt fine....in our legs exhausted, coming out of hangovers disposition, we proceeded to get ready, get on the u-bahn and go to the summer palace of the hapsburgs....VERY COOL. the audioguide was actually good too.
later, we went to the belvedere, b/c i wanted to see more klimt, including the kiss, which is worth seeing in person, i think, and judith...
i think we went back to 1516 after eating sacher torte at the hotel sacher, which you can't go to vienna and not do...and of course it was great. i think the rest of the night we just drank and got another late night schnibble at a place called stomach - feli was very keen on this name....and then we dipped into a weird weird bar called 3 centimeters...where they were playing johnny cash, and bluesgrass, and we were like the only people there, even though it was friday night...and most of the bars and restaurants were closed, the streets were empty....
next day i went back to budapest....where i've been for the past few days. i know i said i wasn't going to croatia, but i think i might be going tomorrow night. jaja.
kusse,
amie
so where were we? yes, i was about to run off to get mussels with my friend david and his friend ryan at a belgian place in covent gardens where the waiters are ever so subtly dressed as monks....and where the mussels are shockingly good.
then we went off to the tate modern (yes, again), but this time to see the cy twombly and street & studio photography exhibit. both were great....i really like the tate modern more than the new moma....for a whole list of reasons that i won't get into here, but i'd be more than happy to discuss this with anyone interested, whenever...
then i went back to max's flat in bloomsbury (the west end), and we took a stroll - among other things i saw a BEDFORD square (hipsters eat your heart out) - and then met up with his friends from lse for dim sum & beers. then we went to a bar, but too bad, last call was at ELEVEN THIRTY ON A SATURDAY NIGHT...so then we went to another bar, which had the same policy, but had been swamped by a birthday party, so we were able to order one round...london is great and all, but midnight, seriously?
anyway, next day i went to the markets - spitalfields and old brick lane (or something like that) - i wish all the pound prices were really usd prices, because i would have bought up EVERYTHING at some of the stands. like this one artist who makes ridiculous jewelry - necklaces with rocking horses, 3-D shopping carts, bicycles, etc. in bling gold...lots of very very unique, cool stuff.
after i had spent everything i had just taken out of the atm 3 hours prior, i strolled about and then returned to max's, where we had dinner and watched british tv....aaah, the wonders of british humour.
next day, natalie picked me up in the morning...natalie is a twentysomething lawyer at white and case - hungarian too! - who i met in california during spring break two years back while with my sister, through my sister's friend...and after i had missed my flight to new york for cardozo admitted weekend, i decided to stay in san fran with my sister and the two of them to go drinking around napa, and "hang out" rather than go back to school ;) anyway, so nat and i hung about her flat by hyde park and walked around the notting hill area...at one point we made the mistake of walking into some floral potpourri soap place, which was all disheveled, and english country cute, but not tacky or overwhelmingly nauseating in terms of smell, and this was all a mistake because the woman was off her rocker.
"do you want to smell something-something rose thing?"
huh? "uh, no thanks, just looking"
"well it doesn't cost you anything to smell"
etc. etc. etc.
later we went to see a woman named natasha panas perform - jazzy soul singer who went to nat's high school - b/c her single just got released...quite good, and i got to meet one of nat's best friends who has the same birthday as me, as does her sister, who is two years younger than her - nuts.
next day, among other things, we did a whirlwind tour of the landmark sights, shopped in chelsea, had linner at a wonderful bistro, and went to selfridges (really nice dep't store) because i had to pick up my shoes which were in repair, and we had to see the clothes, chat with the guy at nars, and test all this perfume, like teenage girls. haha.
left for vienna next morning (wednesday). out of luton...liked that experience more than stansted, in case any of you ever need to decide b/w the two. also easy jet makes ryan air look like shit.
anyway, got to vienna....gusts of wind and rain. freezing. my head cold of the past two days had turned into something worse because of the whole flying thing, and b/c of the rain that lasted for the next two days in vienna, by friday, i felt like crap ;(
so i got to the hostel, and met up with felipe there. then we walked in the rain for like an hour... got dinner and then went to a place called 1516 brewing company, where they have beer that they make according to the old beer laws of 1516...good stuff. also drank copious amounts of hard cider.
next day we went to the leopold museum where we saw a huge amount of egon schiele and gustav klimt's work. some kokoschka as well. AND this was interesting...there was an exhibit of the modern art of the faroe islands - an island chain between iceland and the uk. random, no?
then we went to the secession building, where you can see the real beethoven frieze that klimt made...at the neue gallery earlier this year, at their klimt exhibit, you could see a faithful representation of this frieze. it was entirely different seeing it here at the bottom of this building, which feels surprisingly austere on the inside, considering the gold-leaf dome and gilded lettering that define the building's exterior.
later we went to the albertina, where you can see dutch masters, old state rooms - super cool "wallpaper," downstairs there's an extensive paul klee collection....and though we went to the permanent gallery...there was no art on the walls, room descriptions - yes, audioguide numbers - yes, but art - no. you can even see the hooks where the paintings used to hang. i'm surprised we could get in...
we got tea, and decided that since it was 5ish, we would go to this place called Trzesniewski that i had read about. it's a stand-up cafe, where you order tiny open face sandwiches, with like egg or fish toppings, and it comes with a teeny mug of beer (125 ml), and it's awesome. there were all these 40/50/60/70 somethings coming there after work to enjoy this or just getting a box of this toasts to take home....i loved it.
we strolled over to a part of town called "bermuda's triangle" - so-called b/c it's a pub area, and b/c people that get drunk there tend to get "lost" inside it...get it...!!!?! went to a funny little bar called mojo, which had weird decor and red lighting, and still managed to feel like a chain....got rounds of drinks, played mash (my new favorite drinking/bored in class/whenever game), and hangman...after a few rounds we decided to head off in search of a late-night meal...and came upon immervoll, which was very cool - reminded me of westville, but cooler, and different food, but same chalkboard, meets casual white tables, meets gourmand dining kind of thing.
then we headed off in the direction of home, but first stopped off at a bar called Rhiz, which is below the u-bahn (metro), but not in the metro station, just below the rail line....very cool. we proceeded to drink a lot. the music was awesome. we drank a lot. we stayed a while. i think we got home at like 4.
i of course entered my hostel room (3 beds including my own...weird for a hostel)...to find the couple i shared a room with sleeping in the same bed...went to the bathroom, came out, they were in separate beds. this exact thing happened the night before too. straaaange.
next morning, i get woken up by the happy couple, b/c they were fiddling with plastic bags. how many? i couldn't tell you, b/c i'm blind as a bat without my contacts in, and don't have my glasses with me. but it went on for an eternity. and of course, i was hungover, with a head cold (i'm a genius), and i wanted to pick up one of my bags and crumple it over and over again, but i didn't. but really, i think this went on for over an hour. i wanted to shoot them. or suffocate them with their own plastic bags. they finally left, and i finally fell back asleep, of course, hungover, aaagh, feli came in at like noon, by then i felt fine....in our legs exhausted, coming out of hangovers disposition, we proceeded to get ready, get on the u-bahn and go to the summer palace of the hapsburgs....VERY COOL. the audioguide was actually good too.
later, we went to the belvedere, b/c i wanted to see more klimt, including the kiss, which is worth seeing in person, i think, and judith...
i think we went back to 1516 after eating sacher torte at the hotel sacher, which you can't go to vienna and not do...and of course it was great. i think the rest of the night we just drank and got another late night schnibble at a place called stomach - feli was very keen on this name....and then we dipped into a weird weird bar called 3 centimeters...where they were playing johnny cash, and bluesgrass, and we were like the only people there, even though it was friday night...and most of the bars and restaurants were closed, the streets were empty....
next day i went back to budapest....where i've been for the past few days. i know i said i wasn't going to croatia, but i think i might be going tomorrow night. jaja.
kusse,
amie
Saturday, July 19, 2008
prague (again), berlin and the first day in london.
so i forgot to mention that i did a tour of the jewish sites in prague. for those who know virtually nothing about jewish prague - like me before i got there - here are some interesting factoids:
according to written records, the jewish presence in prague dates back to the 11th century. according to archaeological findings and oral traditions, the jewish presence may date back even hundreds of years prior to the 11th century.
the jews were persecuted throughout their time in what is now the czech republic, but persecutions depended on the strength of the kingdom...when times were good, jews were left well alone...when times were not so good, jews were treated worse (i.e. increased head taxes, etc.)
the jews lived in a ghetto for hundreds of years. kafka grew up in this part of town, and witnessed the end of the reconstruction of the ghetto, which started in the late 19th century, b/c the ghetto had by then descended into squalor and decay. the reconstruction project was one of the biggest urban reconstruction/planning projects of its day, and was heavily initated/financed/supported by the government.
there are 5/6 synagogues in a very very very short distance from one another (i'm only mentioning 3):
1) the pinkas synagogue, which is now a permanent memorial to those czech jews who perished in the holocaust and the pogroms leading up to it. the names of all the jews found in the records are written on the walls of the synagogue, and are listed according to the town from which they came, with their immediate family members. their respective dates of births, and for most, the day they were shipped off to the camps, are listed as well. a recording of a special mourner's kaddish recited by a prominent rabbi a few decades ago is looped. the names were written on the wall - by hand, you can still see the pencilled line marks - in the early 50's, but when the soviets took over, they painted over the names and closed the synagogue. when the wall fell in '89, the synagogue reopened shortly thereafter, and the names were written on the walls once more.
upstairs, there is a permanent exhibition of drawings that were made by children while they were in thereisenstadt, before they were shipped off to auschwitz and murdered.
behind the pinkas synagogue is a terribly old, terribly beautiful jewish cemetary. despite the fact that you enter it after emerging from a holocaust memorial, and that it is a cemetary which holds dead bodies, it feels quite alive. this is because in the jewish tradition, cemetaries are called "beit chaim" (house of lives)....rather than viewed as houses for the dead, they are perceived as houses of those who are now living something like an "afterlife," but it's a bit more complicated than that, and i can't really explain it. anyway, back to the cemetary. imagine a massive grove of trees, and grassy "mounds," as there are hillier parts. now imagine there are gravestones, of different shapes, colors & sizes emerging out of the earth at various angles. some appear as though they will fall over, some stand virtually erect. there are different types of stones, different types of inscriptions. this jumble is the result of multiple factors: 1. the cemetary represents 600 years of jewish burials. 2. according to jewish tradition, you cannot disturb the dead once they've been buried. so, the jews layered dirt on top of the primary layers, and buried more bodies. apparently there are 6 such layers in the cemetary. archaeologists and art historians can decipher the era that a gravestone represents even when this information is unclear from the inscriptions, b/c of the text used, the ornamentation used, the type of stone used and the way the stone is cut. so, for example, they can tell that one stone is a 14th century gravemarker, and that another came from the mid-18th century. fascinating stuff.
2) the Old-New Synagogue - the OLDEST synagogue in the world. insane. the bimah, the ark look ancient, but very much intact.
3) the Spanish Synagogue is wonderful. gorgeous patterns, colors, and a pretty ridiculous collection of jewish objects that were suprisingly guarded by the nazis, for reasons that "historians still argue about." and then the soviets wouldn't allow for the work to be showcased (shocking)....
alright....on to BERLIN.
berlin is AWESOME. i can't wait to go back.
i stayed with my friend benny in kreuzberg, which is a part of town that has a massive turkish population and a bunch of great parks, cafes, bars, boutiques....young, not gentrified....gentrifying, yada yada....everyone knows the end of this story, but the point is, kreuzberg is still very cool and not yet gentrified.
so on monday, i met benny and some of his friends for late lunch at a russian place in prezlauer berg....really cool as well. to be honest, i expected berlin to be this kind of dark, glib, industrial sort of city. but it's quite the opposite. huge, wide streets - streets, not avenues. tons of trees, green spaces. interesting facades. color. great street art. better dressed people.
did a very cool free tour of berlin on tuesday morning...this organization comprised of young students, etc. believes that everyone should get a great tour of a city regardless of their budget....and it was great. for four hours we walked around, and this really really brilliant, young australian woman who reminded me of my european history teacher in 7th grade (a norwegian jewess named ingrid) told GREAT stories about everything we saw, and everything i probably wouldn't have noticed. we went to the brandenberg gate, learned about the statue on top of it that napoleon stole and then the prussians later carried back from the louvre after defeating him....we saw the memorial to the murdered european jews...and stood above the bunker where hitler auf'd himself...and saw the place where the nazis burned over 30,000 books, and learned about the tv tower - an idea drummed up by the east german government to show off its commie technological and scientific knowledge, which ended up almost failing, but succeeded once the government smuggled in some swedish engineers to finish the job.... !!
anyway, stumbled about, daytime beer drinking, b/c it's berlin and summer...reading "zeno's conscience" by italo svevo...pretty intense memoirs, which start off with his recollections of the first cigarettes he ever smoked and his inability to quit, and his furious imaginative jealousies involving his wife.
another highlight of the week: benny had plans one night, so his roommate paul and i had some of his friends over for dinner....i made ratatouille mom! lol. it was great.
thursday morning i had a meeting at the deutsches musik archiv (the german music archives), which is part of the german national library....awesome meeting. the woman i had been in correspondence with invited two of her colleagues to the meeting and we all chatted for like 2 hours or so about copyright law, and their attempt to create really cool interactive search engines for music...
also went to the neue national gallery - saw the hiroshi sugimoto exhibit, which i missed when it was in san fran last year. very very cool.
then i went to the jewish museum, which was designed by liebskind...interesting building - in parts. but the exhibition was so awful, it actually made me feel physically sick and fiercely annoyed, so i left.
got to london yesterday (friday) morning....met up with my friend max, who i met during the program in budapest and with whom i'm staying with for the next few days....then ran over to the tate to meet up with david bae from wash u, and then later met up with patrick also from the budapest program, to see marc & sara, the two founders of the street art site wooster collective give a presentation also at the tate. met this guy named devin while waiting in line. after the talk, devin, patrick and i, and a few other people joined marc & sara for drinks nearby. then patrick, devin and i walked by the thames, got some beers & walked to the cannes tunnel which the government recently set aside for stencil artists to post their work - it's AWESOME. banksy, blek le rat, faile, toaster, etc. etc. etc. all have work featured there.
then we had chicken "doners" (schwarma?!/) b/c this is apparently what everyone does anywhere in europe now ;) except budapest, lol, where pizza and ketchup or pogacho (little baked things with cheese or cabbage) are still in vogue for late night schnibbles, and i headed off to kensington/notting hill with devin where we met up with some of his friends and then went to a very cool place called the notting hill arts club, where a dj was spinning motown/soul/funk/surf rock....;)
it's very cool finally being in the city where buses are red and double deckered, and telephone booths actually look like that - as opposed to being placed in random places like novelty items (telephone bar in the east village, disney world) - and people sound utterly sophisticated and academic even when asking questions at a street art talk, and being on the tube watching a man vomit between cars, and realizing that it's called the tube b/c it really is a claustrophobic sort of tube nestled far below the earth (@ one station, i walked down almost 200 steps on a chinese staircase to get to the platform!). all of this is great and all, especially the realization that the us dollar is really worth quarter-pound(ers) here.
anyway, off to meet up with david and his friend ryan to get mussels and have a second go at the tate....
cheers,
amie
according to written records, the jewish presence in prague dates back to the 11th century. according to archaeological findings and oral traditions, the jewish presence may date back even hundreds of years prior to the 11th century.
the jews were persecuted throughout their time in what is now the czech republic, but persecutions depended on the strength of the kingdom...when times were good, jews were left well alone...when times were not so good, jews were treated worse (i.e. increased head taxes, etc.)
the jews lived in a ghetto for hundreds of years. kafka grew up in this part of town, and witnessed the end of the reconstruction of the ghetto, which started in the late 19th century, b/c the ghetto had by then descended into squalor and decay. the reconstruction project was one of the biggest urban reconstruction/planning projects of its day, and was heavily initated/financed/supported by the government.
there are 5/6 synagogues in a very very very short distance from one another (i'm only mentioning 3):
1) the pinkas synagogue, which is now a permanent memorial to those czech jews who perished in the holocaust and the pogroms leading up to it. the names of all the jews found in the records are written on the walls of the synagogue, and are listed according to the town from which they came, with their immediate family members. their respective dates of births, and for most, the day they were shipped off to the camps, are listed as well. a recording of a special mourner's kaddish recited by a prominent rabbi a few decades ago is looped. the names were written on the wall - by hand, you can still see the pencilled line marks - in the early 50's, but when the soviets took over, they painted over the names and closed the synagogue. when the wall fell in '89, the synagogue reopened shortly thereafter, and the names were written on the walls once more.
upstairs, there is a permanent exhibition of drawings that were made by children while they were in thereisenstadt, before they were shipped off to auschwitz and murdered.
behind the pinkas synagogue is a terribly old, terribly beautiful jewish cemetary. despite the fact that you enter it after emerging from a holocaust memorial, and that it is a cemetary which holds dead bodies, it feels quite alive. this is because in the jewish tradition, cemetaries are called "beit chaim" (house of lives)....rather than viewed as houses for the dead, they are perceived as houses of those who are now living something like an "afterlife," but it's a bit more complicated than that, and i can't really explain it. anyway, back to the cemetary. imagine a massive grove of trees, and grassy "mounds," as there are hillier parts. now imagine there are gravestones, of different shapes, colors & sizes emerging out of the earth at various angles. some appear as though they will fall over, some stand virtually erect. there are different types of stones, different types of inscriptions. this jumble is the result of multiple factors: 1. the cemetary represents 600 years of jewish burials. 2. according to jewish tradition, you cannot disturb the dead once they've been buried. so, the jews layered dirt on top of the primary layers, and buried more bodies. apparently there are 6 such layers in the cemetary. archaeologists and art historians can decipher the era that a gravestone represents even when this information is unclear from the inscriptions, b/c of the text used, the ornamentation used, the type of stone used and the way the stone is cut. so, for example, they can tell that one stone is a 14th century gravemarker, and that another came from the mid-18th century. fascinating stuff.
2) the Old-New Synagogue - the OLDEST synagogue in the world. insane. the bimah, the ark look ancient, but very much intact.
3) the Spanish Synagogue is wonderful. gorgeous patterns, colors, and a pretty ridiculous collection of jewish objects that were suprisingly guarded by the nazis, for reasons that "historians still argue about." and then the soviets wouldn't allow for the work to be showcased (shocking)....
alright....on to BERLIN.
berlin is AWESOME. i can't wait to go back.
i stayed with my friend benny in kreuzberg, which is a part of town that has a massive turkish population and a bunch of great parks, cafes, bars, boutiques....young, not gentrified....gentrifying, yada yada....everyone knows the end of this story, but the point is, kreuzberg is still very cool and not yet gentrified.
so on monday, i met benny and some of his friends for late lunch at a russian place in prezlauer berg....really cool as well. to be honest, i expected berlin to be this kind of dark, glib, industrial sort of city. but it's quite the opposite. huge, wide streets - streets, not avenues. tons of trees, green spaces. interesting facades. color. great street art. better dressed people.
did a very cool free tour of berlin on tuesday morning...this organization comprised of young students, etc. believes that everyone should get a great tour of a city regardless of their budget....and it was great. for four hours we walked around, and this really really brilliant, young australian woman who reminded me of my european history teacher in 7th grade (a norwegian jewess named ingrid) told GREAT stories about everything we saw, and everything i probably wouldn't have noticed. we went to the brandenberg gate, learned about the statue on top of it that napoleon stole and then the prussians later carried back from the louvre after defeating him....we saw the memorial to the murdered european jews...and stood above the bunker where hitler auf'd himself...and saw the place where the nazis burned over 30,000 books, and learned about the tv tower - an idea drummed up by the east german government to show off its commie technological and scientific knowledge, which ended up almost failing, but succeeded once the government smuggled in some swedish engineers to finish the job.... !!
anyway, stumbled about, daytime beer drinking, b/c it's berlin and summer...reading "zeno's conscience" by italo svevo...pretty intense memoirs, which start off with his recollections of the first cigarettes he ever smoked and his inability to quit, and his furious imaginative jealousies involving his wife.
another highlight of the week: benny had plans one night, so his roommate paul and i had some of his friends over for dinner....i made ratatouille mom! lol. it was great.
thursday morning i had a meeting at the deutsches musik archiv (the german music archives), which is part of the german national library....awesome meeting. the woman i had been in correspondence with invited two of her colleagues to the meeting and we all chatted for like 2 hours or so about copyright law, and their attempt to create really cool interactive search engines for music...
also went to the neue national gallery - saw the hiroshi sugimoto exhibit, which i missed when it was in san fran last year. very very cool.
then i went to the jewish museum, which was designed by liebskind...interesting building - in parts. but the exhibition was so awful, it actually made me feel physically sick and fiercely annoyed, so i left.
got to london yesterday (friday) morning....met up with my friend max, who i met during the program in budapest and with whom i'm staying with for the next few days....then ran over to the tate to meet up with david bae from wash u, and then later met up with patrick also from the budapest program, to see marc & sara, the two founders of the street art site wooster collective give a presentation also at the tate. met this guy named devin while waiting in line. after the talk, devin, patrick and i, and a few other people joined marc & sara for drinks nearby. then patrick, devin and i walked by the thames, got some beers & walked to the cannes tunnel which the government recently set aside for stencil artists to post their work - it's AWESOME. banksy, blek le rat, faile, toaster, etc. etc. etc. all have work featured there.
then we had chicken "doners" (schwarma?!/) b/c this is apparently what everyone does anywhere in europe now ;) except budapest, lol, where pizza and ketchup or pogacho (little baked things with cheese or cabbage) are still in vogue for late night schnibbles, and i headed off to kensington/notting hill with devin where we met up with some of his friends and then went to a very cool place called the notting hill arts club, where a dj was spinning motown/soul/funk/surf rock....;)
it's very cool finally being in the city where buses are red and double deckered, and telephone booths actually look like that - as opposed to being placed in random places like novelty items (telephone bar in the east village, disney world) - and people sound utterly sophisticated and academic even when asking questions at a street art talk, and being on the tube watching a man vomit between cars, and realizing that it's called the tube b/c it really is a claustrophobic sort of tube nestled far below the earth (@ one station, i walked down almost 200 steps on a chinese staircase to get to the platform!). all of this is great and all, especially the realization that the us dollar is really worth quarter-pound(ers) here.
anyway, off to meet up with david and his friend ryan to get mussels and have a second go at the tate....
cheers,
amie
Sunday, July 13, 2008
berlin
in berlin. left prague. prague was awesome. i'll write about it when i have some time. but highlights:
1. GIANT metronome in the park.
2. huge 6 floor contemporary art museum hosting a trienniele,
3. mucha museum
4. walking around til my legs fell off
5. kafka museum
6. the sculptures/art around town (see 1 also).
hope all is well in the states,
love,
me
metronome.
men pee-ing in front of the Kafka Museum.
at the art museum.
1. GIANT metronome in the park.
2. huge 6 floor contemporary art museum hosting a trienniele,
3. mucha museum
4. walking around til my legs fell off
5. kafka museum
6. the sculptures/art around town (see 1 also).
hope all is well in the states,
love,
me
metronome.
men pee-ing in front of the Kafka Museum.
at the art museum.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
leaving budapest...
going to prague in the morning.
spent mid-day sunday at the jewish synagogue - biggest one in the world, 2nd biggest in terms of seating (first being Temple Emmanuel in New York). The tour guide told us about what happened to the synagogue during the second world war. though it wasn't bombed, buildings not too far away were, which caused the stained glass to break, and for rain and snow to come into the synagogue. nazi officials used the benches for fire, but surprisingly left a lot of the torah scrolls in tact. they put cots for soldiers in the sanctuary...and at other points stuffed hordes of jews in there before taking them to auschwitz and other concentration camps in neighboring countries. there is a cemetary on the synagogue grounds, which runs directly counter to jewish tradition, but it is the burial grounds for some 5,000 jewish people who perished in the ghetto (modern day Jewish quarter). The last winter of wwii was the coldest of the war, and when the soviets liberated budapest, jewish survivors and some soviet soldiers buried the bodies there: 1) because there was a raging typhus epidemic, and the sooner the bodies were buried the quicker they could mitigate it, and 2) because roads were destroyed, they were extremely low on fuel, and so it would have been impossible in terms of resources and infrastructure to transport the bodies elsewhere. behind the synagogue there are a few memorials. one is a metallic tree of life, and embedded in the sculpture is another meaning - if you flip it upside down, it is a menorah, and the branches stemming out of the tree, can be perceived as light. at the end of the metallic strands are tags bearing the names of thousands of jews who died in the holocaust - one strand = one jewish name. another memorial commemorates those non-jews who helped save jewish lives. four pillars are marked with their names, and they look inward on to a stone in the ground engraved with Raoul Wallenberg's name, a non-Jew who saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives during the war. next to this memorial is a stained glass piece that depicts flames, commemorating those who were cremated during the war - something else that runs directly counter to jewish tradition, as jews are traditionally buried, not cremated. within the flames, a serpent winds its way to the top right. it represents fascism.
the synagogue interestingly enough, was built in the 1850's, and even then was not an orthodox synagogue, as there are multiple sets of organs in the synagogue, and these were used on yom kippur, and shabbat (musical instruments are not played in orthodox synagogues during these days). franz liszt and others played concerts in the synagogues, and apparently they had christian people playing the organs during the high holidays and shabbat.
something else i found interesting, the whole church-state thing. first of all, the government pays for the electricity, the salaries of the rabbi and cantors, and others who work in the synagogue. this is apparently so that no one has to buy tickets to attend services (as is typically the case in many synagogues). *but* there is no national census taken of religious groups, because here, it is apparently rude, and very politically incorrect (especially given the history) to ask someone their religion, but perfectly alright to ask them how much they make an hour.
then i went to the jewish museum, also on the synagogue compound. really incredibly heart-wrenching exhibit on the uprising of the warsaw ghetto, supplemented by photographs taken by someone who had press access and was able to take 4 rolls of film before the SS made him stop.
after all of that, i darted off to the ludwig museum (the contemporary art museum), 3 bridges south. 2 temporary exhibitions there were so so, but there was a really cool one about a bosnian conceptual artist from the 60's/70's who was interested in authorship and the idea of shifting conceptions of celebrity/passerby in the public space.
....
don't remember what i did after that...think i went somewhere for drinks and food on an outside square...was still reading Free Culture (which i'm done with now, and it's awesome)...
spent the rest of the week ambling about, reading, doing research on digital libraries, and law firms....dorian (my roommate) and i cooked dinner and drank a bottle of cheap white tokaji every night this week (;))) , since the food here sucks to put it mildly...;)
leaving for prague in like 8 hours.
puszi (kiss in hungarian - haha!)
amie
spent mid-day sunday at the jewish synagogue - biggest one in the world, 2nd biggest in terms of seating (first being Temple Emmanuel in New York). The tour guide told us about what happened to the synagogue during the second world war. though it wasn't bombed, buildings not too far away were, which caused the stained glass to break, and for rain and snow to come into the synagogue. nazi officials used the benches for fire, but surprisingly left a lot of the torah scrolls in tact. they put cots for soldiers in the sanctuary...and at other points stuffed hordes of jews in there before taking them to auschwitz and other concentration camps in neighboring countries. there is a cemetary on the synagogue grounds, which runs directly counter to jewish tradition, but it is the burial grounds for some 5,000 jewish people who perished in the ghetto (modern day Jewish quarter). The last winter of wwii was the coldest of the war, and when the soviets liberated budapest, jewish survivors and some soviet soldiers buried the bodies there: 1) because there was a raging typhus epidemic, and the sooner the bodies were buried the quicker they could mitigate it, and 2) because roads were destroyed, they were extremely low on fuel, and so it would have been impossible in terms of resources and infrastructure to transport the bodies elsewhere. behind the synagogue there are a few memorials. one is a metallic tree of life, and embedded in the sculpture is another meaning - if you flip it upside down, it is a menorah, and the branches stemming out of the tree, can be perceived as light. at the end of the metallic strands are tags bearing the names of thousands of jews who died in the holocaust - one strand = one jewish name. another memorial commemorates those non-jews who helped save jewish lives. four pillars are marked with their names, and they look inward on to a stone in the ground engraved with Raoul Wallenberg's name, a non-Jew who saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives during the war. next to this memorial is a stained glass piece that depicts flames, commemorating those who were cremated during the war - something else that runs directly counter to jewish tradition, as jews are traditionally buried, not cremated. within the flames, a serpent winds its way to the top right. it represents fascism.
the synagogue interestingly enough, was built in the 1850's, and even then was not an orthodox synagogue, as there are multiple sets of organs in the synagogue, and these were used on yom kippur, and shabbat (musical instruments are not played in orthodox synagogues during these days). franz liszt and others played concerts in the synagogues, and apparently they had christian people playing the organs during the high holidays and shabbat.
something else i found interesting, the whole church-state thing. first of all, the government pays for the electricity, the salaries of the rabbi and cantors, and others who work in the synagogue. this is apparently so that no one has to buy tickets to attend services (as is typically the case in many synagogues). *but* there is no national census taken of religious groups, because here, it is apparently rude, and very politically incorrect (especially given the history) to ask someone their religion, but perfectly alright to ask them how much they make an hour.
then i went to the jewish museum, also on the synagogue compound. really incredibly heart-wrenching exhibit on the uprising of the warsaw ghetto, supplemented by photographs taken by someone who had press access and was able to take 4 rolls of film before the SS made him stop.
after all of that, i darted off to the ludwig museum (the contemporary art museum), 3 bridges south. 2 temporary exhibitions there were so so, but there was a really cool one about a bosnian conceptual artist from the 60's/70's who was interested in authorship and the idea of shifting conceptions of celebrity/passerby in the public space.
....
don't remember what i did after that...think i went somewhere for drinks and food on an outside square...was still reading Free Culture (which i'm done with now, and it's awesome)...
spent the rest of the week ambling about, reading, doing research on digital libraries, and law firms....dorian (my roommate) and i cooked dinner and drank a bottle of cheap white tokaji every night this week (;))) , since the food here sucks to put it mildly...;)
leaving for prague in like 8 hours.
puszi (kiss in hungarian - haha!)
amie
Saturday, July 5, 2008
booked some flights, here's the plan.
as soon as my friend feli and i work out the logistics, the plan is i'm meeting him in prague sometime this week...then i'm going to berlin....from there i'm flying to london, from london i'm flying to vienna. then i'm coming back here for a few days, then hopefully i'm off to pula, croatia to go "fishing" at my friend tomislav's house on the shore, and then it's back to the city.
didn't make it to gay pride parade today b/c i was too busy climbing all the hills on buda side...but from what i heard, it was nothing like the one in new york. meaning, some jerks threw eggs at those parading...and i don't mean just a few, i mean a lot. and there were a lot of police about apparently...not just for show, but really there for security reasons. come to think of it, there were quite a many police officers at the gay club we went to a few weeks ago. seems budapest has a far way to go in terms of accepting gay people and gay culture.
other than that, spent time this week doing research...walking around in the heat until i couldn't take it anymore...went to lake balaton for the day on thursday - two and a half hours away...got a lot of sun....met some dutch girls, went to dinner with them, and then rode the train back together. lake balaton is massive, and could easily be a weeklong trip - wine tastings and the like, but i didn't really want to stay....had to figure this trip stuff out, etc.
also, met up with a street artist earlier in the evening...we didn't talk long b/c he barely speaks english and i clearly don't speak hungarian - which is starting to wear on me!!!! no one understands me! this is insane. how does no one speak english here?! i mean, english isn't the enemy anymore?! the wall fell like 20 freakin' years ago!
but anyone, friedrich is on the national fencing team, and he is also a street artist - very talented, i think - and he makes clothing, etc. which sells very well in the shops around here.
finished the kertesz book, reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig - brilliant! It's wonderful having time to actually think again!
Well I'm off,
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send me suggestions of things to do in those cities!
Also, I got skype: my im name is: amie.sapan, easy enough, no?
beijoux,
amie
didn't make it to gay pride parade today b/c i was too busy climbing all the hills on buda side...but from what i heard, it was nothing like the one in new york. meaning, some jerks threw eggs at those parading...and i don't mean just a few, i mean a lot. and there were a lot of police about apparently...not just for show, but really there for security reasons. come to think of it, there were quite a many police officers at the gay club we went to a few weeks ago. seems budapest has a far way to go in terms of accepting gay people and gay culture.
other than that, spent time this week doing research...walking around in the heat until i couldn't take it anymore...went to lake balaton for the day on thursday - two and a half hours away...got a lot of sun....met some dutch girls, went to dinner with them, and then rode the train back together. lake balaton is massive, and could easily be a weeklong trip - wine tastings and the like, but i didn't really want to stay....had to figure this trip stuff out, etc.
also, met up with a street artist earlier in the evening...we didn't talk long b/c he barely speaks english and i clearly don't speak hungarian - which is starting to wear on me!!!! no one understands me! this is insane. how does no one speak english here?! i mean, english isn't the enemy anymore?! the wall fell like 20 freakin' years ago!
but anyone, friedrich is on the national fencing team, and he is also a street artist - very talented, i think - and he makes clothing, etc. which sells very well in the shops around here.
finished the kertesz book, reading Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig - brilliant! It's wonderful having time to actually think again!
Well I'm off,
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send me suggestions of things to do in those cities!
Also, I got skype: my im name is: amie.sapan, easy enough, no?
beijoux,
amie
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
acciones en casa...
that was the title of the best video art piece i saw at the video art festival this past weekend...by marc vives, and david buestue....imagine two twentysomething guys doing the oddest ODDEST absolutely oddest things in their apartment....hundreds of things....the video went on for over half an hour, and it was incredible. no dialogue either, just one-line scene numbered scene descriptions. so in "pyrotechnics", one of them gets all of the liquids out of his fridge and cleaning supply cabinet, puts them on a table and performs a pyrotechnics show by squeezing all the bottles ! ketchup, milk, soap, mustard and on and on. in another scene "risk your own life", he puts two bars of soap on the floor, takes off his slippers, and stands on the soap, while pouring water out of a flowering can onto the floor and then trying not to crack his head open while cleaning the floor and "dancing" on top of these soap bars and slip sliding around....and then of course in "cross the living room without stepping on the floor" he jumped from object to object and then used the mop as a pole to get across....if you want to see it,: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNXP1qu5RQA i think that's the longest fragment you can find on the web.
other than that, went to WAMP, the monthly fashion/design/crafts fair on sunday....alright stuff, wicked overpriced. didn't really get anything. hung out at a cafe reading "the journey of man" which anat sent me a while back - about what genetics can tell us about our shared heritage....
yesterday was rainy, so dorian - my roomate - and i went to school, and then i met up with a friend for dinner. started reading "free culture" by lawrence lessig. it's really worth reading if you're interested in any or all of the following: IP law, the "rip, mix, burn" culture us 'young kids' are participating in, copyrights, the Internet, media ownership in the US, 'piracy'....I've spent the past few days researching organizations that engage in archiving, digital libraries....
Today, I met with one of the founders of ARTPOOL (www.artpool.hu), the leading archive on underground Hungarian art during the Communist era and beyond. It was INCREDIBLE. First of all, Julia, one half of the founding couple - her husband being the other half - was wonderful. For almost two hours she took me on a tour of the place and told me stories about art during communism in Hungary, the story of the "Bolgar chapel", which was an art space by Lake Balaton (about an hour outside Budapest), developed by her husband...the idea was to convert it into an artist's colony. But then the authorities caught wind of what was going on there, and after two years of struggling with how exactly they would shut it down: 1. the church was a very delicate matter in those days, 2. there were no laws per se about art exhibitions in non-official, non-public spaces, and since this was a private space.... the state finally shut it down in '73. Then in '79, Julia and her husband founded Artpool, made a newsletter, by utilizing the black market (i.e. bribing the few with access to xerox machines to make some copies) and their contacts with foreign institutions, they told artists about upcoming exhibitions, where they could send submissions, and asked artists to send Artpool their art, music, etc. so that it could be archived. As time passed, the newsletter turned into a samizdat (self-published) zine. Julia laughed as she told me that the political samizdat of the time was so ugly, and so unreadable, that she and her husband just wanted to create something that was designed better, that samizdat didn't have to be ugly....But the magazines weren't just designed better, they were extremely valuable. The zine was published monthly, and each issue would contain articles about the underground art scene in Hungary: happenings, exhibitions, artists, etc. And they contained articles about foreign art trends; for example, she showed me this issue from 84 about Scharf and Keith Haring, and then she said, this was the first issue about graffiti and street art, and it was the first source available to Hungarians to present this culture/movement. The zine also contained removable art books - one called Imaginable Music, contained clever drawings constructed out of a simple musical note.
Now almost 30 years later, the archive is MASSIVE. Artpool has the largest art stamp collection in the world. One of the largest Correspondence Art collections. A massive room in the back contains International material. And everything is organized VERY WELL - so you can pull out a folder about a gallery from a certain year, and then all of their pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, etc. are right there. I spoke with Julia about the digital library movement, and how the archive has been digitizing aspects of its collection. To date, they've transferred their entire VHS collection onto DVD, and their cassette collection on to CDs. But she criticizes the move to digital libraries as an inefficient use of money and resources. For one, she asks, who knows whether any of these digital libraries will hold up in terms of technology in even three years. Secondly, she thinks that many of the people employed to do archival work probably don't know the ins and outs of the collection, so likely spend more time then they need to. She says that Artpool has been invited to join in these projects, but that they have declined. For now, she says it's not urgent. What is urgent? Organizing the material and the database in a way that is most beneficial to researchers.
I also asked her whether they had ever had any legal issues b/c some of the art is posted on parts of their page, and she said that she is anti-copyright laws, that most of the artists are, and that if someone sends something to them, she assumes this means that she can post it, and that if they didn't want it posted, they shouldn't have sent it. But, she also told me about how when they were putting together an anthology/exhibition catalogue to complement their recent exhibit on Fluxus in Central/Eastern Europe, they asked all of the artists for their permission to reprint some of their texts - because printing/publishing is "different." A few of the artists said they didn't want their work published "in that context," which Julia thought was strange considering as how their work had been published in other Fluxus contexts! And one of the artist's wives - the artist is deceased - demanded some sort of payment....
Well that's all....sorry for the longer post...but I think this stuff is very cool.
I'm off...
beijoux,
amie
other than that, went to WAMP, the monthly fashion/design/crafts fair on sunday....alright stuff, wicked overpriced. didn't really get anything. hung out at a cafe reading "the journey of man" which anat sent me a while back - about what genetics can tell us about our shared heritage....
yesterday was rainy, so dorian - my roomate - and i went to school, and then i met up with a friend for dinner. started reading "free culture" by lawrence lessig. it's really worth reading if you're interested in any or all of the following: IP law, the "rip, mix, burn" culture us 'young kids' are participating in, copyrights, the Internet, media ownership in the US, 'piracy'....I've spent the past few days researching organizations that engage in archiving, digital libraries....
Today, I met with one of the founders of ARTPOOL (www.artpool.hu), the leading archive on underground Hungarian art during the Communist era and beyond. It was INCREDIBLE. First of all, Julia, one half of the founding couple - her husband being the other half - was wonderful. For almost two hours she took me on a tour of the place and told me stories about art during communism in Hungary, the story of the "Bolgar chapel", which was an art space by Lake Balaton (about an hour outside Budapest), developed by her husband...the idea was to convert it into an artist's colony. But then the authorities caught wind of what was going on there, and after two years of struggling with how exactly they would shut it down: 1. the church was a very delicate matter in those days, 2. there were no laws per se about art exhibitions in non-official, non-public spaces, and since this was a private space.... the state finally shut it down in '73. Then in '79, Julia and her husband founded Artpool, made a newsletter, by utilizing the black market (i.e. bribing the few with access to xerox machines to make some copies) and their contacts with foreign institutions, they told artists about upcoming exhibitions, where they could send submissions, and asked artists to send Artpool their art, music, etc. so that it could be archived. As time passed, the newsletter turned into a samizdat (self-published) zine. Julia laughed as she told me that the political samizdat of the time was so ugly, and so unreadable, that she and her husband just wanted to create something that was designed better, that samizdat didn't have to be ugly....But the magazines weren't just designed better, they were extremely valuable. The zine was published monthly, and each issue would contain articles about the underground art scene in Hungary: happenings, exhibitions, artists, etc. And they contained articles about foreign art trends; for example, she showed me this issue from 84 about Scharf and Keith Haring, and then she said, this was the first issue about graffiti and street art, and it was the first source available to Hungarians to present this culture/movement. The zine also contained removable art books - one called Imaginable Music, contained clever drawings constructed out of a simple musical note.
Now almost 30 years later, the archive is MASSIVE. Artpool has the largest art stamp collection in the world. One of the largest Correspondence Art collections. A massive room in the back contains International material. And everything is organized VERY WELL - so you can pull out a folder about a gallery from a certain year, and then all of their pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, etc. are right there. I spoke with Julia about the digital library movement, and how the archive has been digitizing aspects of its collection. To date, they've transferred their entire VHS collection onto DVD, and their cassette collection on to CDs. But she criticizes the move to digital libraries as an inefficient use of money and resources. For one, she asks, who knows whether any of these digital libraries will hold up in terms of technology in even three years. Secondly, she thinks that many of the people employed to do archival work probably don't know the ins and outs of the collection, so likely spend more time then they need to. She says that Artpool has been invited to join in these projects, but that they have declined. For now, she says it's not urgent. What is urgent? Organizing the material and the database in a way that is most beneficial to researchers.
I also asked her whether they had ever had any legal issues b/c some of the art is posted on parts of their page, and she said that she is anti-copyright laws, that most of the artists are, and that if someone sends something to them, she assumes this means that she can post it, and that if they didn't want it posted, they shouldn't have sent it. But, she also told me about how when they were putting together an anthology/exhibition catalogue to complement their recent exhibit on Fluxus in Central/Eastern Europe, they asked all of the artists for their permission to reprint some of their texts - because printing/publishing is "different." A few of the artists said they didn't want their work published "in that context," which Julia thought was strange considering as how their work had been published in other Fluxus contexts! And one of the artist's wives - the artist is deceased - demanded some sort of payment....
Well that's all....sorry for the longer post...but I think this stuff is very cool.
I'm off...
beijoux,
amie
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