die pflichten der frau

"Radsessel von Kaiserin Elisabeth Christine
Nußholz, Buche gebeizt, Porzellanziernägel, um 1740
Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Wolffenbüttel wurde 1708, nachdem sie zum Katholizismus übergetreten war, mit Erzherzog Karl, König von Spanien, dem späteren Kaiser Karl VI. vermählt.
Um ihre Fruchtbarkeit zu erhöhen, verschrieb man ihr Eßkuren, durch die sie an Leibesfülle zunahm. In späteren Jahren durch Krankheiten wie Gürtelrose, Rheutmatismus, Rotlauf und offenen Beinen gesundheitlich angeschlagen, wurde sie zusehends immobil und war auf Bewegunshilfe angewiesen." Museumstext

peter fox

i like the lyrics a lot. the video is a nice try but not really good.

my educational method: "i don't know how you'll understand it. anyway i am going away"

For further information and videos, please visit UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning blog

Sugata Mitra's "hole in the wall"

....update 25.5.2011: the links above are dead. but not this one:

illusions

education

Ken Ronbinson again
(i guess my parents did something right. and so did lower six and art foundation course in britain.)

ephemeral art

thank you, szpilman, for giving a platform to this and much more

a feeling in time all over the place /notdone1

"Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling""
more by Jonathan Harris.

his project "the whale hunt" reminds me of "norman roman", an email-storytelling-group-project i started with friends back in 1999 and never properly executed.
the setup: 7 people would write each other emails the way we used to write letters: as kind of diary entry, glimpses on our lives, not so much in the form of communicating information like email usually is.
we could chose whether to take on a fake personality with an invented life or to be ourselves or to do a mix.
depending on who i would write to, i would use a different tone or perspective to describe the same event, highlighting different aspects or details of the event, depending on how close i am to that person, what that person's interest are, what kind of humor he or she has, what we have shared in life so far.
i was the only one in the group who knew everybody, the others knew between 2 and 5 other people in the group, we lived in different places, spoke english and/or german.
certain events would affect all of us, like new year's eve eg. some could affect just some of us, like sunny wheather or a plane accident. some of the events were fixed in advance, some would be made up as we went along - or actually happen. the line between fiction and reality would blur.
those different threads of communication would then be laid out in such a way that the reader could follow one person with all his/her conversations, one set of conversations (between just two people), one event and how each person wrote about it or a mix of all of this.
so we would be writing and reading at the same time, taking what the others just wrote as an inspiration for ones own writing and vica versa.
my friendes thought, this was all to confusing and time consuming, so we tried out a reduced version for a little while and then lost interest. the rocketmail account we used for it was later on closed without us realizing, so now it is lost forever.

todo: random-dinner-marathon

ps: i don't really know what google wave is, but it sounds similar to his universe thing.
thanks, nora, for pointing out the whale hunt

huge pieces of reality

"Boyle Family is best known for the earth studies: three dimensional casts of the surface of the earth which record and document random sites with great accuracy....

Each of these groups of work has involved various random selection techniques to isolate a rectangle of the Earth's surface. In the case of the World Series 1000 sites were chosen at random by visitors to the artists’ studio and the ICA exhibition. Participants were blindfolded and either threw a dart or fired an air rifle at an unseen wall-sized map of the world, which now forms part of the work itself. This random selection serves several purposes: nothing is excluded as a potential subject; the particular is chosen to serve as a representative of the whole; the subjective role of the artists and creators is re-designated to that of ‘presenters’. Boyle Family seeks to present a version of reality as objectively and truthfully as possible, calling this process ‘motiveless appraisal’.

Once the random selection of subject has been made, the artists recreate the site in a fixed and permanent form as a painted fibreglass relief...They attempt to present a slice of reality as they found it at the moment of selection, but no matter how good the re-creation, it is still a re-creation and only an approximation of reality. Boyle Family know that it is impossible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but in their work they try to isolate and reduce randomly chosen elements to as truthful an approximation as is within their power.
Their search is to find out if it is possible for an individual to free him/herself from conditioning and prejudice. To see if it is possible to look at the world, or a small part of it, without being reminded consciously or unconsciously of myths and legends, art of the past or present, art and myths of other cultures.

‘We also want to be able to look at anything without discovering in it our mothers' womb, our lovers' thighs, the possibility of handsome profit or even the makings of an effective work of art. We don't want to find in it memories of places where we suffered joy and anguish or tenderness or laughter. We want to see without motive and without reminiscence this cliff, this street, this field, this rock, this earth""

moments and gaps

jorge macchi

miranda july

she has the mida's touch as far as beauty, humor and magic is concerned. (and i like it that the hallway uploaded itself)

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.

don't predict the future, shape it*

"She was six and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute.""
Ken Robinson
*i used to think this was an old apple-slogan, but i cannot find any reference to it on the web.
thanks, phil

toll

die bühnenbilder von katrin brack sind einfach toll. ebenso wie diese inszenierung. frau böwe sowieso, wie immer. und auch herr symanski. ein toller theaterabend.

die zeit

"Warum sagen wir: die Zeit vergeht? Und nicht ebenso betont: sie entsteht?" Alexander Kluge

"sich dem druck der zeit zu unterwerfen ist das, was einen tatsächlich unfrei macht. dabei ist die zeit eine spirale und wird irrelevant, sobald man sie ignoriert." xy

community work (part2)

the ted community is truly generous. you can now get translations in the form of subtitles in up to 23 languages per talk plus interactive transcripts in those languages, that will take you to the point in the video that you click on in the text. replacing esperanto by voluntary community work.
talking about talks: listening to words features talks from all over the place, themes and genres.
thanks david

community work

i often walked past this place but it took me a while to figure out what it is all about. it is what it says: a superhero supply store. and it also is a place for kids to write and do their homework. the man who initiated all this also does 826 valencia in san francisco (followed by eg 826la), wonderful dvd magazine wholphin, the believer, mcsweeney's and writes his own books. if i had stayed in ny, i would have applied as a tutor there.
thanks kevin, thanks sashka

"remember me"

"Act One. Thinking Inside the Box.David Wilcox tells the story of how his mother, who was dying of lung cancer, made a short videotape for his sister, who is severely developmentally disabled. She hoped the tape would become a daily part of her daughter's life, like the other music and movies she liked to play, that she would watch it and remember her mother. But she also knew her daughter might never even watch it. (9 minutes)"

it breaks your heart.

blinking and gazing

"...the blink is either something that helps an internal separation of thought to take place or it is an involuntary reflex accompanying the mental separation that is taking place anyway" (Walter Murch). more about the girl.
thanks, lucy

quote

"mein leben - ich konnte nicht viel damit anfangen, aber alle anderen waren begeistert" what a great title for a biography. yet to be written.

aging

thanks, phil

thanks, hygi

"der große malspaß" by diceindustries

currently at the kabinet. more to see and to buy.
reminds me of "comic abstraction" at the moma ny. and of rachel whitread.
wie schon bei der max ernst ausstellung liegt der reiz darin, die arbeiten im original zu sehen. in der gedruckten reproduktionen kann man die unterschiedlichen arten von papier nicht mehr erkennen, die verschiedenen schichten der collage werden zu einem bild, die klebespuren sind weg, ebenso wie die kleinen korrekturen und schumeleien.