working on a sunday, kuala lumpur

offices temporarily based at the g-tower hotel, kuala lumpur. malasya. nice to be in asia again. is been a while. the heat, the people, the food. i love it here. were working on a documentary with a fantastic film crew. really happy that is happening.

our talk with chris dercon about books is out in kaleidoscope

i used to work with chris dercon before he moved to london to take the direction of the tate modern and we spend a lot of time together between books, talks about magazines and amazing catalogs in his private archive. so i always thought that i wanted to have a talk with him and give it a published shape about this amazing moment we are living between the paper and digital publication and also the conversation was an attempt to reflect his personal collection and book choices since people is what they read and wanted to portrait chris more from the intellectual perspective than the public persona.
the talk has been published in the fantastic italian magazine kaleidoscope, which is also something very special. i wanted to thank cristina travaglini and giovanni majer from kaleidoscope for their help and also jennifer bailey from tate for their quick response in a holiday timming and paul geddis for his aditional perspective. most of all i wanted to thank chris for his time and amazing energy.

friday 9th december, opening in barcelona/visual diaries/girls@ras

barcelona is really inspiring. nice to be back. come by on friday to ras

luz de otono

malva, ocre, morado, oro, cobre. el otono a punto de entrar por la ventana y atraparte entera.

Para MAMÁ y para la ABUELA

Visual Diaries/Girls Photo Exhibition: Our Next Stop will be BARCELONA

Hallöchen there! we are very excited about this post because it means that our collective exhibition Visual Diaries / Girls will be hittting the south european city of Barcelona at the beggining of december. Which is something that makes us extremely happy because we will be able to enjoy a great getting together with friends that we havent seen in quite a while and that a great party will be expected at the opening in the galería Ras. Opening will be the 9th of december and will stay there until 14th of january of 2012. I wouldnt miss it if i were you since you will be able to see the work of a marvellous selection of young girls photographers from all over the world! BARCELONA HERE WE COME! ;)
-as appetizers, some pics of how the exhibition was featured in Viena, at the PS Art Space-





the pretty photos here were done by Claudio Farkasch for PS ArtSpace Wien

p.s. things we learnt in Wien with Visual Diaries
-they love to have events and they wieners have such a great small talk for the openings and events- magnific, light, from here to there, outstanding good, the laughs, the hey meet this one, hey somebody else new comes, all very armonic and not posed or boring or intellectual very amazingly fun and ellaborated but that seems very light and unique -that supposely comes still, from the times of the austrohungarian empire, when the court use to hang out together, for the waltz balls and for the other happenings they used to have back then, and still have now, for one reason or another, there is always something going on.
-you shouldnt-under any circumstances- mix the Weißburgunder wine with red wine. no no no. you will go straight to the toilet to puke.
-Wien is a great city with an amazing cultural life.
-Is one of the best cities in the world to have brunches in old Palaces converted in Museums- probably after Saint Petersburg...-
-The buildings and arquitecture is beautiful. The students live close to the old apartment of Sigmund Freud and their flats are marvellous students palaces with ceilings of 4 meters and art noveau everywhere- i havent seen that anywhere else, sorry, well yes, now that i think about it...maybe in Prague, very close to Wien btw...-
-They are very open minded and nice and lovely and we had a great time there and want to go back as soon as possible.
-Their caffees are also amazing.
-I would move there. No doubt.

ps2. thank you geronimo, ivana and hannes.
vielen lieben Dank für alles!

more news coming up soon! ;)
music by the knive: " you take my breath away"

cathrin, cremaster 4 - haus der kunst münchen

beuys über alles

some people like to listen to music when they dont feel well, or read a book, or draw, or write, some others like to go for a walk or other options that may work as efficiently. I like to read this book over and over. this book came to my hands almost three years ago and is just magic. it transports you somewhere else, to the 80´s, to a very special artist who was joseph beuys, and it features the work he did for the diferent Documentas of Kassel where he developed several actions that were taken in the art context but where more political and ideological more than anything else.

The first time i remember having a mention to Beuys was when i was 17 and I was living in the north of Germany. The family i was living with took me to a fantastic museum in Dusseldorf where in one of the rooms, i found a bounch of pieces made of solidified wax, feld- fieltro, and blankets. Kennst du Beuys florencia? they asked me when we were walking around the pieces and they told me a story about the artist which sounded like a fairy tale, where during the war, he had had a plane accident where his plane crashed and he was found in the snow by nomads which took his body and covered it with wax and blankets until they brought him back to life. i thought that was a movie or something, but germans dont usually lie, so i believed it. then i started to find a bit more about him. I still dont think the story was true, but, i really liked the idea of how a visual idea could inspirate such a body of work.

many years later this book came into my head and hands and had information about all the actions that he had prepared for the documenta of kassel in detail. and it felt like taking dosis of something so powerful that calmed me down because it enhaced a beauty that i couldnt really explain but that did me a lot of good. The Documenta is a big art event of Germany, it takes over the city of kassel and beuys in the documenta of 1982 decided that his action was going to plant 7000 oak trees around the city of Kassel. and he invited the citizens to enjoy him in the act, to help out, found private finance to help out to cover the cost of the action and as a good politic and artist developed a campaign with advertising around the city with the action.


if you participated in the action planting an oak tree, you would also get a tree certificate for being part of the action by the free international university, an institution also created by beuys- who was also an professor- during the previous documentas where debates had been taken place about so many diferent topics. Like an open university or a debate space which was called Die Internationale Hochschule für Kreativität und Interdisziplinäre Forschung.




im very happy because next week is an opening at the thomas modern gallery of münchen with his work and there will probably be many pieces i havent seen yet in person. next thursday, in münchen.
the book about his documenta arbeit is still marvellous. it has a power that doesnt expire. he was great. the more you dig into his work, the more you realize its pureness. it does a lot of good. it pregnates your kopf and herz and geist.

working in leipzig

mit cleo, jenny und jens. tolle film crew.

country living at the atlantic ocean

zen it up!

bea, invierno

italian interiors/ il piamonte

a night out, rotte sonne, münchen

un domingo con ani

a visual comparative "Aus Zoologischen Gärten" /Die blauen Bücher 1927-Germany/ vs. The Gentlewoman /2011-U.K/

i love old things, old publications, clean design, basic elements, this elegance that sustains simple books like photographic essays of german zoos from the 1920´s. But i feel happier when i see that magazines that somehow i feel are doing something nice, and beautiful, have LITERALLY taken -more or less- the creative direction of the beginning of the last century. finding jewels like this blaue buch in antique book shops in münchen is lots of fun. german book design+ visual aesthetics use to be something absolutely fantastic.