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Cloud Cities, Tomas Saraceno, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, 15 September 2011 – 15 January 2012.

As evocative as this vision of the future is, another exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof—from the past—comes closer to my heart: the mainly early 70s video art from the Mike Steiner Collection called Live to Tape. There’s the totally engrossing documentation of an art theft, There is a Criminal Touch to Art, 1976, and, Made in New York, 1973, a hilarious film about catching alligators in New York’s sewers.

Live to Tape

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I talked to Günter Höhne — a cultural journalist, writer and historian on East German design from the GDR years — and saw a small part of his large private collection.

Definitely something I need to know more about. First impressions are that much of it is well-made, robust, designed to be repaired instead of thrown away, and made with careful use of resources. It also has to be said… a lot of it is very beautiful!

More soon.
See the industrieform-ddr website.

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I visited a neighbourhood garden in Berlin-Kreuzberg called the Prinzessinnen Gärten (Princess Garden). It was wasteland for 50 years until 2 people started it in 2009. There’s a restaurant in it. This was a rainy morning before lunch. Although almost deserted then, it’s well used. I’m going back for lunch some time soon. I love the feel of it. What Derek Jarman said of his own garden: shaggy. They have a good website with a video that has English subtitles.

Prinzessinnen Gärten

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Something attracted me about the interior of this small bar on Karl-Marx-Allee —presumably closed for Sunday. No idea of its history: Kosmetik Salon Babette?

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Kino International, Karl-Marx-Allee.

That curve!

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Through the Goethe Institute in Sydney I discovered a magazine called Berlin Haushoch, designed, edited, photographed and largely written by three people: Ana Lessing, Alexandra Bald and Esra Rotthoff.

Each issue covers the people and daily life of one district of Berlin and takes a year to produce.

While all good editors become immersed in their material, the people from Berlin Haushoch go several steps further: they set up their studio in the part of the city they want the issue to cover and work there for a year.

They told me that the name is untranslatable but I haven’t given up yet! House high? Highly? Decisively?..

More—in more depth—on Berlin Haushoch soon.

Issue 3 on Charlottenburg.

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One of the attractions of Chinabrenner is its refreshing elusiveness when it comes to being categorised. Is it art, food or design? Is it an installation or somewhere good to eat? One catalogue calls what they do ‘artistic cooking events’, which is probably the closest I’ve read so far, to a reasonably concise descriptor.

Thomas Wrobel (the one who cooks) and Jo Zarth (the one who designs) spent some (a lot) of time in China researching the idea of  ‘street as kitchen’ then brought their findings back to Germany to become artistic cooking events in Leipzig, Berlin, Essen, Milan —and I suspect more places than this.

In essence what you see, hear, taste, smell, feel—is a traditional Chinese street kitchen, picked up, and transported to you by two people with a deep fascination for a particular culture. In the near future I hope to return to Leipzig and visit Thomas Wrobel’s new but as yet unopened restaurant.

More, in much more depth, on Chinabrenner soon. The ultimate aim is to publish on paper. Blogs don’t do it for some things.

Last 6 photographs courtesy of Chinabrenner and Zarthcore

Thomas Wrobel

Jo Zarth

GDR architecture. The Post building that follows this one is empty.

Jo Zarth’s Small Business Reconstructed catalogue.
More catalogue pictures on the zarthcore site.


Last 3 photographs courtesy of Zarthcore