„In the first weeks, you will be overwhelmed. And that’s a good thing.“
In contrast to my own art/work, there are the art sessions, visiting exhibitions, and generally paying more attention to the perspectives new places hold. Like the unplanned, stunning moment above – looking up, and seeing a curl of multicolored October leaves right above me. All the things that are there, if only we noticed… 🙂
Here’s a collage/screenshot from my Instagram account, and it’s symbolic in various ways:
„Think of it as developing 2 radars“, another tutor suggested. „One for all the art that you see, and one for your own inner space, your art/work.“
And so, each day currently has this touch of inner/outer journey. Even more so, when it’s connected to a real trip. Like this week, when I took the s-train to Stuttgart, to join an exhbition to the “Wagenhallen”. It’s a container / art / atelier place. I have never been there. And learned about a new eco ticket while figuring out the route to take – one of the good side effects of going to new places.
In the train, this sign for the upcoming next station felt like the sign for these days: „Nächste Station:“
Here a few of the „next stations“, the ones that stood out for me:
The Wagenhallen, it’s a real building with artist studios, which is currently under reconstruction. So the artists suggested to move into temporary housing: containers, in a self-organized settlement on the area. There are now about 50 different artists / musicians / creatives of all types working there.
She created a work/meet/studio/place with alp farm touch, chicks included.
One of our group asked her how she finds the energy for all this, for her work and her projects and organizing art meet-ups and all. Our
advice for us was:
„Find the theme that you really care about, and stand for, the theme you want to explore and express in your art. And then, for times, give it all you got. And at the same time, find the people who can support you, and learn to apply for funding, to get organized. Half your work as arist will be about organizing.“
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A next station: the photo course
The photo class yesterday was more like a lecture this time, about a season of photography, focusing on American photographers who influenced the way of taking photos: Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore…
Another next station: aquarelle practice
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Photo Biennale
The week also brought a special highlight: there’s a photo biennale happening right now, and we went to visit it on Saturday. The biennale consists of 8 exhibitions in 3 cities (Mannheim + Heidelberg + Ludwigshafen), with different themes.
Some works are really playful, experimenting with the medium photography – one was an installation from Olafur Eliasson, a set of lights, and when the visitor walk through the room, it creates multi-shadows on the wall:
Others were political, about the current migration/refugee situation. And some were really old, from photo archives. Like, when they experimented with night sky star maps, in 1903. Another one was a project with family photo albums from workers who migrated to Germany in the 60ies. And there were new experiments, like Barbara Probst’s work from her „Exposure“ series: simultanous photos of a scene from different perspectives:
Every building on sunet strip“ from ’66. A work we had just talked about in the photo class, not knowing it would be presented at the Biennale. I put a youtube clip together with impressions:
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Actually, not really next stations
Of course, there are all the other ongoing things, too – my freelance web work, my friends, my qui gong class, going for walks, the usual household chores etc etc. It’s a lot, and yes, it’s to some degree overwhelming, but it also is a precious phase, a time of new perspectives and encounters, and of different priorities. And the overlap of themes creates a different, larger flow. Actually, it’s not really „next station – next station..“, but more a weaving of web of themes, a long, ongoing and interconnected process of art themes, own work, exchanges, not single art times.