Read closely.
Intimidation or harassment?
Friday, November 11, 2011
plan b / Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers "Grand Hotel"
Hospitality
Womanhood
Manhood
Parenthood
Neighbourhood (covered by an undercover spy)
(More coming soon)
Hospitality's affects on dreams
In my dream I was working as a waiter in a canteen. Not just any canteen but the one which was part of the school I attended. (In Estonia elementary schools, middle schools and high schools are usually situated in one building). I was served food, but not on dining tables. My task was to take each and every pupil's plate to a classroom. (My school has around 1200 pupils). But I was happy to do it. In fact I was laughing throughout the dream as I found it funny enough that every time I brought food to somebody, he or she was surprised. As if I had brought a gift.
I was a crappy waiter. I spilled most of the food on the floor. Eventually the floor in the canteen was all covered with brown sauce. Up to my knees! I knew what it was. It was the same groce pork liver sauce I could never eat at school. Ha! You stupid sauce, enjoy the floor while you can.
*
Anyway, in my dream I was magnanimousand terribly unpleasant at the same time.
*
Beide Messies declared a few hours ago that hospitality is not necessarily a good thing. Spot-on! It can have dreadful consequences and I'm not talking about my dream any more.
*
Elke Van Campenhout's and Ong Keng Sen's "Gift Show" had one basic error. Talk show's hosts asked their guests to bring gifts with them. Gifts are things we do not get by our own efforts. We can't order them or buy them; we can't acquire them through an act of will.
A gift is bestowed on us.
(Lewis Hyde said that.)
Not that this error affected the effects of the talk. Maike Lond's take on energy was magical. Somehow it is in life that the most magical of things are the one's most political. Straightforward knowledge. Beide Meisses reported that toes are a sign of correctness. Ong Keng Sen noted that in China when you give somebody a tie as a gift that means you want to tie the two of you together. It's a very intimate thing.
I was a crappy waiter. I spilled most of the food on the floor. Eventually the floor in the canteen was all covered with brown sauce. Up to my knees! I knew what it was. It was the same groce pork liver sauce I could never eat at school. Ha! You stupid sauce, enjoy the floor while you can.
*
Anyway, in my dream I was magnanimousand terribly unpleasant at the same time.
*
Beide Messies declared a few hours ago that hospitality is not necessarily a good thing. Spot-on! It can have dreadful consequences and I'm not talking about my dream any more.
*
Elke Van Campenhout's and Ong Keng Sen's "Gift Show" had one basic error. Talk show's hosts asked their guests to bring gifts with them. Gifts are things we do not get by our own efforts. We can't order them or buy them; we can't acquire them through an act of will.
A gift is bestowed on us.
(Lewis Hyde said that.)
Not that this error affected the effects of the talk. Maike Lond's take on energy was magical. Somehow it is in life that the most magical of things are the one's most political. Straightforward knowledge. Beide Meisses reported that toes are a sign of correctness. Ong Keng Sen noted that in China when you give somebody a tie as a gift that means you want to tie the two of you together. It's a very intimate thing.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
On Hospitality
LIFT
A lovely story about modern architecture.
1920s.. Le Corbusier's white boxes, flat roofs of those boxes,
- probably the first ever building with a flat roof in Estonia was built in the late 20s by an Estonian modernist architect. The whole of Estonia laughed about him as people just couldn't understand such stupidity. A gable roof gets rid of rain and snow itself, but a flat roof? Will the architect hire slaves for shovelling snow? -
all white interiors, maximum functionality etc etc etc is a sentence's pigtail and skyscrapers.
The coolest intwerwar European skyscraper - and a masterpiece of modern architecture - was Building No 21 in Zlin in Czech Republic.
It was a 16-storey office of a shoe factory. The boss of this company happened to be a fan of functionalism as well, so he ordered his office to be built inside an elevator! If there was a problem on the 3rd floor.. he was there. Oh no! Someone calling from the 9th... Gotta go!
1920s.. Le Corbusier's white boxes, flat roofs of those boxes,
- probably the first ever building with a flat roof in Estonia was built in the late 20s by an Estonian modernist architect. The whole of Estonia laughed about him as people just couldn't understand such stupidity. A gable roof gets rid of rain and snow itself, but a flat roof? Will the architect hire slaves for shovelling snow? -
all white interiors, maximum functionality etc etc etc is a sentence's pigtail and skyscrapers.
The coolest intwerwar European skyscraper - and a masterpiece of modern architecture - was Building No 21 in Zlin in Czech Republic.
It was a 16-storey office of a shoe factory. The boss of this company happened to be a fan of functionalism as well, so he ordered his office to be built inside an elevator! If there was a problem on the 3rd floor.. he was there. Oh no! Someone calling from the 9th... Gotta go!
Kaja Kann from the Lift.
(Oh, by the way, if You're planning to stay in Tallinn for a little while
have a look at lift11.ee)
A Few Remarks on Performance Art in Estonia
Why it affects me in such a positive way is because to my mind performance art in Estonia has really strong physical connotations. Probably it has something got to do with Non Grata (http://www.nongrata.ee/) ruling over the field for the past 10 years.
To make it really black and white then it was more or less so that officially there was no performance art during the Soviet time, as there was either only art or theatre. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and all the opening of the borders artists (and everyone else in the society) wanted to grasp anything possible from the West. Different art practices as well. So it was like reenacting the last 60 years of Westerns art. Minimalism, Viennese Actionism, performance art, happenings, body art. You name it, we can do it!
No doubt - people lost their heads and much was exaggerated. As for performance art, it turned into a heavily corporeal and object-based art form. Punch in the face! Blood! Violence! Naked body! Shit! Shit in Your face! Some more blood! And yes, more, more, more, some more blood and shit and dirt towards the bourgeois.
And due to that the word performance artist had become a swear word in Estonia (and I suppose that's the case in all the post-communist states) by the middle of the 90s. As it still is.
I suppose that most of the people in the arts have digested this notion by now and take performance art as something more broader. Or what's more important, they take it without any prejudice.
*
This subconscious prejudice (which I can't deny is part of my consciousness) is the reason why so far all my blog posts have been über positive.
And now one could go on for hours talking about how geographical circumstances affect people living in different parts of the world,
how could and dark winters turn one piece of land's artists (and writers) into chronic northern lights.
The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information
Being myself an irregular DJ not interested in diddling with the mixer but just trying to make people feel good and groove, there was no was I was not going to enjoy the DJ who gave too much information.
More about it coming soon.
Beide Messies. The Last Salon I: Shem’s view
I made friends with Andreas at the breakfast table. "So what do You do?" I asked.
"I try to survive in Berlin," he answered.
'
"I try to survive in Berlin," he answered.
Is it that hard to be the one who knows how to make people feel good?
'Some years ago in Tartu in a second hand shop. In steps gentleman with at least 80 years
on his shoulders. Goes through the ties section and.. Gotcha!
Takes his new tie to the salesperson and proudly reports: "One thousand two hundred thirty fourth!"
And the blatant answer?
"One".
A song with a rhyme and beat as simple as the heartbeat always helps.
Every now and then someone needs to explain the pictures to the dead rabbits.
This one was a tour de force for every dead rabbit around.
And our Lord regretted!
I have some fun
Dear audience, this is Your Gregor speaking to You.
I have some good news to You: life is such an amazing place. Just splendid.
I have some good news to You: life is such an amazing place. Just splendid.
Tuesday at NU Performance Festival.
Hello, this is Gregor again. I'm writing from Tartu. I havn't written about the performances I witnessed yesterday. So here's my account.
*
As I wrote yesterday, my evening started with a performance for one spectator. Apparently it's a popular format these days (and rightly so). For example every year there's a young artists art auction in Tartu. Young artist come with their beloved paintings, engravings and vases and try to persuade politicians and businessmen to buy their work. This year the work which was sold for the highest price was a performance performed only once for the buyer.
I guess we all enjoy a personal touch. Your own personal Jesus, isn't it?
*
What followed was "The Love Piece".
(Nino Bokan, Alice Chauchat, Pravdan Devlahović, Mihkel Ilus, Taavet Jansen, Jarmo Karing, Zvonimir Kvesić, Ivana Pavlović, Ivana Rončević, Nina Sakić)
I just turned twenty five. That's not a long time (my aim is not to die before I'm 114 years old, which then just happens to be the year 2100), but it's still something. A whole quarter of a century. Looking backwards I would only need 80 of my own lives to go and shake Jesus's hand. Now why would I want to do that if I have 14 billion other hands to shake in this very life? And add another 14 billion eyes to be amazed by.
We sat opposite each other and while laying my blinded eyes on my brown-eyed blind date's forgiving eyes with one eye on my diary (for which I'm sorry as it wasn't a pretty sight) she opened my eyes as I realised that after 25 years of casting my eyes down, these were the first two third four fifth six seventh eight nine tenth eyes I've given unprecedented attention for one single half an hour.
What a relief, at least this day came and there will be more.
In one of Ywan Goll's novels there appears a downhearted man who walks for years desperately around Paris looking for that somebody who would burst into tears while turning her eyes to his. I read this book at highschool and felt immensely inspired. I must have thought something like I have to seek for those eyes as well! Or maybe it was more like I knew it! I knew it! That's what I've been feeling for a long time, but I didn't know how to put it!
No matter what I felt these were genuine and needful thoughts for a 16 year old romantic. 10 years later, without any real needs for overpowering tears, these eyes found me. Not that she cried. No way. It wasn't about tears.
*
"The Love Piece" is a very loving piece indeed. Pure magic, established several millions of years ago.
*
As I wrote yesterday, my evening started with a performance for one spectator. Apparently it's a popular format these days (and rightly so). For example every year there's a young artists art auction in Tartu. Young artist come with their beloved paintings, engravings and vases and try to persuade politicians and businessmen to buy their work. This year the work which was sold for the highest price was a performance performed only once for the buyer.
I guess we all enjoy a personal touch. Your own personal Jesus, isn't it?
*
What followed was "The Love Piece".
(Nino Bokan, Alice Chauchat, Pravdan Devlahović, Mihkel Ilus, Taavet Jansen, Jarmo Karing, Zvonimir Kvesić, Ivana Pavlović, Ivana Rončević, Nina Sakić)
I won't give You any spoiler warnings as there won't be any spoilers since
You can't spoil a child through love.
We sat opposite each other and while laying my blinded eyes on my brown-eyed blind date's forgiving eyes with one eye on my diary (for which I'm sorry as it wasn't a pretty sight) she opened my eyes as I realised that after 25 years of casting my eyes down, these were the first two third four fifth six seventh eight nine tenth eyes I've given unprecedented attention for one single half an hour.
What a relief, at least this day came and there will be more.
In one of Ywan Goll's novels there appears a downhearted man who walks for years desperately around Paris looking for that somebody who would burst into tears while turning her eyes to his. I read this book at highschool and felt immensely inspired. I must have thought something like I have to seek for those eyes as well! Or maybe it was more like I knew it! I knew it! That's what I've been feeling for a long time, but I didn't know how to put it!
No matter what I felt these were genuine and needful thoughts for a 16 year old romantic. 10 years later, without any real needs for overpowering tears, these eyes found me. Not that she cried. No way. It wasn't about tears.
*
"The Love Piece" is a very loving piece indeed. Pure magic, established several millions of years ago.
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