MEMORY / Capri 07/23

In my memory this is the sexiest movie of all time. Unfortunately though memory doesn’t work like a movie. It is changing, while the movie isn't. Why do movies age so badly? I pick three records from the year “Le Mepris” came out and listen to them. 1963. “The freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, John Coltrane's “Ballads” and “Night Beat” by Sam Cooke. Great records. Forever. Not a single note sounds dated, out of time or plain ridiculous like many of the scenes in this movie. Only one of them was as I remembered it. Brigitte Bardot lying on the rooftop of the most memorable house in the world, naked, a book on her butt. Unforgettable. The rest of the movie is like drinking sweet champagne. A different taste from another time that you can no longer appreciate, but like to keep in good memory. Memory again. Isn’t it the most fascinating feature of the human brain? It is as good as what you make of it.  

ÄSTHETIK DES REISENS / Berlin 05/23

Das Reisen erscheint einem heute wie das verbliebene Epitom einer analogen Welt. Ein Fluchtraum der Unmittelbarkeit. Zu einer Zeit an einem Ort. Wo aber sind sie, die Reisenden? Sie verschwinden während ihre buckligen Verwandten bis in die abgelegensten Winkel der Erde vordringen, um ihnen dort als Touristen die Fluchtwege zu versperren. Oder wie Jack Kerouac einst in On the Road schrieb: “There is nowhere to go but everywhere.”

R.I.P. TINA TURNER / Berlin 05/23

When I took this photo of the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll" in 1985 and sold it to a local newspaper, they published it the next day with the slogan "Like a wild animal on stage". How times they are a-changin'...

HUMAN NATURE II / Berlin 04/23

The danger of AI and its algorithmic structure does not lie in itself, but in its human origin. It destroys because it can. Whether in war or in the rainforest, on a tourist island or in a concentration camp, wherever we destroy man and nature, our algorithmic character becomes evident. The AI is our friend, the individual a deviant who does not submit, who cannot be forced to believe and think what the majority thinks and believes. The majority, that is us. The Algorithmicists.

STRAPPI / Pari 04/23

  • STRAPPO # 1

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  • STRAPPO # 13

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When I started my first “Rottocollages” ten years ago, I was intrigued by the idea of cramming all the exuberant colors and motifs of old Italian circus advertisement posters into rectangular frames of different styles and sizes. In the beginning, it was mostly old frames which, like the scraps of paper themselves, represented the aesthetics of another era and underlined the conceptual idea of the collages being artefacts. Just as the varnish on the canvas or the colors of an old painting are part of its history and aura, the shrill pigments of the analog circus posters are irretrievable materials of a bygone era. After spending some weeks last fall locating and tearing down the last old advertisements of their kind in Southern Italy, I am now more fascinated than ever by just the material itself, so I have left the new collages in the various forms of the original tear-offs, called  “Strappi”.

BILDERBUCH / Berlin 03/23

An old friend recently looked at my "Bilderbuch" that I had just compiled for my mom’s birthday. No text, just hundreds of photographs from her son’s life. He asked me if I didn’t want to share some of the pictures with the people “out there”. “Why?”, I replied. He just laughed at me and ordered a copy of the book.

AMOROMA / Roma 10/21

AMOROMAROMAMOROMAMOROMAMOROMAROMAMORAROMORAMAMOROMAROMARAMOROMAMORMAMOROMA

INSIDE THE COVER # 21 /

There is no point in discussing which is the best first symphony in music history. It is like asking which is the highest mountain. "The Titan”. Gustav Mahler’s first symphony. Apart from Brahms there is no serious challenger, but even his first symphony pales in comparison to this work, which not only changed the history of music but that of occidental culture as such, juxtaposing the sublime, antique ideal with the profane. This universal idea of ambivalence as an artistic ideal not only inspired the greatest of 20th century art but also millions of doctors to decorate their sober medical practices with Gustav Klimt's lavish women.

ROTHKO IN ROME / Roma 11/21

The first day of June 1950 was a Thursday. A day he would always remember. The day he was reborn. As a child. As an artist. His wife Mell woke up before him, opened the window of their room and let the early breeze of the eternal city flow into the room. Then she crawled back into bed smiled at him and said. "I'm pregnant". He smiled back at her silently, gave her a long kiss and got up. He put on his shirt, pants and slippers and left to buy something to drink. Good news need to be celebrated. The city was still empty. He walked the surrounding streets to the bar where they usually had their morning coffee hoping they would sell him a bottle of wine. Suddenly he noticed something he had never seen before. The Roman walls. It was like seeing them for the first time. They all had spots that were painted over with smaller and larger rectangles. Not in the same color, not in a different color, but in a similar color. The whole city was a huge palette of infinite reds and browns that changed with the different light of day and made him feel like he was living in a warm metropolitan cave. A womb.

OLAF SCHOLZ / Berlin 11/21

Listening to Olaf Scholz reminds me of a game I always like to play. The “analogy game”. So if the animal analogy (most popular) seems quite simple with Scholz (a basset that is, domesticated, sedate and bored by himself) how about the artwork analogy? If Helmut Kohl is a Moore Sculpture (even though he didn’t like the one outside his window), Merkel a Bach Cantata (Gesegnet ist die Zuversicht) and Schröder the “Falling Eagle” by Baselitz, that he adored (self portrait), how about Scholz? This is it! A paper work by the great artist and designer Peer Clahsen. I THINK THIN IN INK. It also reminds me of another game I love. The German language. “Dünnbrettbohrer”. There is no word in any other language that could better describe the guy who will be the next German chancellor.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY / N.Y.C. 09/11/21

When I took this picture one sunny day in the last decade of the last millennium I never thought it would become one of my favorite photographs. It was shot from the platform of the World Trade Center using the observation deck telescope as a magnifying lens. The State of Liberty. Blurred, unreal and yet promising in its totem-like aura. An irretrievable „remain of the day“, that will always remind me of that other sunny day 20 years ago, that forever changed the world.

FERRAGOSTO / Castiglione della Pescaia 08/21

FERRAGOSTO

the holiest of holidays

by emperor’s grace

feriae augusti

the one giveth

everybody taketh

a country at the beach

under god’s own sun

snake taking a day off

like everybody else

running free

in the breeze of

the holiest day

tomorrow shall never come

FERRAGOSTO

CARPACCIO / Tuscany 08/21

The best carpaccio I ever had looks like this. No lemon, no parmigiano, not even a drop of oil, just a round plate of thinly sliced, raw Chianina beef. A meat head. If you look closely you even see his eyes, nose and mouth. The only thing superfluous is the salad wig, which reminds us of the stupid habit in kitchens all over the world to offer an alibi to a carnivore he never asked for.

FRAN LEBOWITZ / N.Y.C 01/21

Watching “Pretend it’s a city” is like going back in time and hangin’ with members of the family long gone. It does not only indulge in the good old days (which they were) but revisits a culture almost completely forgotten. The beauty of complaint, the culture of dialectic opposition. Isn’t it great to watch a smart and funny grouch in a world of likes and wannabeliked.

Thank you Netflix and Martin Scorsese for putting Fran Lebowitz in the spotlight.

“Polite conversation is rarely either.” Fran Lebowitz

MAY 12 2021 / Berlin 05/12/2021

Könnte sich der Deutsche entscheiden, aus welchem Material er geschaffen wäre, er würde den Filz wählen. So wie Joseph Beuys und Millionen anderer Pantoffelträger. Der Stoff der deutschen Träume. Er ist günstig und widerstandsfähig, er wärmt, obwohl nur schwer zu entflammen, ist vielfach verwendbar und grau. Oder andersherum. Er ist grau, vielfach verwendbar, er wärmt, obwohl nur schwer zu entflammen, ist widerstandsfähig und günstig.

INSIDE THE COVER # 13 /

Why would you put a photo of your lover on the cover of your new record and call it "Sorcerer"? Wasn't Miles himself the sorcerer? The greatest player in the devil's orchestra. He was. A sorcerer who fell for a witch. Cicely Tyson. The good witch. She married him twice, saved his life and buried him, the man she had called the sorcerer. 

MARADONA / Napoli 11/20

At a time when people are trying to reinterpret colonial history in the name of a new woke world order, the greatest footballer of all time dies. Shouldn't this be a moment to turn the page and accept colonialism as the historical phenomenon that not only has given the world endless suffering, but a lot of beautiful things too. Like coffee and cubism, tomato sauce, jazz and Diego Armando Maradona, the greatest football player who ever lived. It is hard to imagine a better example of colonial bonanza. An Italian spirit in an "Indian" body. Since the excavations in Palenque we not only know about the early form of football in Latin America, but also about the stature of its first great players, who unlike the Europeans had their center of gravity in the metric middle of the body. Like a spinning top, rotating on its own axis, letting the ball appear as an integral part of its body.

HUMAN NATURE / Berlin 09/23/2020

While fall 2020 has arrived and the world seems to drift apart more and more each day, an aphorism by Heraclitus from the 6th century BC came to my mind that most accurately describes our time as well as human nature itself. “Unity of Opposites”. You don’t get the one without the other. Life without death. Day without night. Light without shadow.

DINNER MUSIC / Berlin 06/20

The pairing of food and music is as old as the idea of the joint dinner itself. People like to eat in company and indulge their senses. Do as the Romans do! It even is part of musical history. Tafelmusik. So with all the restaurants closed and only the food supply chain serving us, the concept of holding joint dinners on a regular basis came up easily. The pandemic reminded us of a most beautiful (pas)time that we seemed to have forgotten. Having dinner with music. Not some random sound in the background but real music, analogue, coming from a good stereo, one record at a time, one record each plate. Dinner Music.

CERTAINTIES / Berlin 05/20

He looked at all the names in the newspaper. Over the last two months nearly 100.000 people had died from the pandemic. They had died because the guy in charge whom everybody called the president had failed. Again. The president was killing the people who had voted for him. Most of them were old white men. He would soon be an old white man too. He hadn’t left the house for weeks. The pandemic had not only changed his life, it had changed everything. Nothing would ever be the same again. The pandemic had taken away the certainties of life. The sun would still rise every morning, but apart from that? The problem with certainties was their intolerant nature. Intolerance is not sexy. Everything is possible. That’s sexy. Everything can happen. The biggest liar on the planet was our elected president. Shit happens because everything can happen. A certainty? Maybe. Man will not survive nature. Now that’s a certainty.

ATTRAPPE / Berlin 04/20

The word “Attrappe” is one of those German words, that even though of latin origin, only develops its real beauty in the German language. It is not just a fake, a counterfeit or a dummy but more than that describing a “deceptive experience”. The other day I had that kind of an experience passing by the Reichstag. Even the flags were blowing in the wind like following a higher German order.