Things happen fast.

I was just reading what I wrote a month ago and realizing how fast things can change.

Now I am not really painting again and not feeling blocked at all. Instead I am making small furniture (what?!) and photographing it. Look!

My Mom is coming on Tuesday and is here for a week. Then a couple of days before my trip! I am going to Budapest and Vienna with my flatmate Isis and then going to do yoga in the alps for 2.5 days and then a night is Salzburg (think Sound of Music). I was literally singing "the hills are alive" at the bar with my classmates the other night for the entire night. By the end everyone was singing their favorite sound of music song.


It is going to be a busy few weeks.

Parking

Today was an event I helped organize called Parking.

Here is the description from our materials: a temporary, autonomous project in a London park organized by MA Fine Art students at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Artists were invited to do projects that consider the context, address the public as audience, and respect the park. People did all sorts of things from performances, to installation, to events. We created a map for the event:


It is the 20th anniversary of my Dad's death so I wanted to do something around that, sort of a memorial/ritual of sorts that wasn't too sad. So I decided on....Bagels! A Sunday tradition in most Jewish homes, or just Long Island homes for that matter. Instead of just handing out bagels you had to give me a stone for a bagel and add it to a pile of stones.









Explanation:
Stones: Jews don't bring flowers to graves, they bring stones, which symbolize eternal life (they don't die like flowers and are "circular" like the life cycle. Also, grave stones were not always used, sometimes a pile of stones is/was used to mark graves.

Bagels: Trading a bagel for a stone is remembering but also celebrating, to me. True we eat when mourning (Jews eat on all occasions!) but it had more of a picnic feel than a mourning ritual. Also, Bagels remind me of Sundays growing up and they are round, like stones. Lastly, I wanted something to be ingested during it. I have been reading some psychoanalytic theory that prompted this idea. Basically it is said that a person in mourning suffering from 'object' loss can suffer from "melancholic cannibalism" in which the person has fantasies of eating the object (object = other) that was lost because it is better to destroy, digest, eat, than lose the person. A bit dark, I know, but I bet you're not surprised.

Newspaper: My Dad read the newspaper on Sundays and it is also a favorite thing of mine to do: sit around on Sunday and read the paper and chat about it. I couldn't get a New YorK Times in paper form on a Sunday (apparently you can get it on Mondays, naturally) so the observer had to do (thanks Rebecka).
Rebecka making a face due to something she read:



Since it was my first time doing something like this I think I was a little shy about it. I didn't really want to include strangers, which was my original thought. Lots of people passed by, dogs tried to eat the bagels and take the stones, even a kid tried to play with the stones and Rebecka accidentally gasped at him. HIlarious. Also, it was cold out and not picnic weather, as you can see from the dark pictures. In my mind the rocks were bigger and the food spread was more elaborate but in reality it was a little make shift. It worked out nicely, my friends were there and then we went for an alcoholic ginger beer and baked camembert. So overall a good day.

Hampstead Heath, my new favorite place in London:

It was the WURST trip ever.

By wurst, I mean best.

The German words that got me through the trip:
Wurst: Sausage
Kunst: Art
Bitte: Please
Danke: Thanks.
Weisswien: White wine.

I just got back from a great 5 or so days in Berlin. A big group of us from school all went to Germany for a gallery weekend taking place in Berlin from Friday to Monday. There were a lot of openings and galleries stayed open on Sunday and Monday. It was mainly an art based trip but you can't avoid history in Berlin, which makes it a charged and really interesting and exciting place.

We spent Friday wandering from opening to opening, drinking beer, chatting, and marveling at the great gallery spaces and cycle lanes on the sidewalks.



Saturday we walked all over and went to around 100000 galleries. Sat in an amazing garden restaurant for lunch.



Sunday Nat, Mark, Carla and I rented bikes for the day and set out to see some Berlin sites- Holocaust Memorial, The Reichstag, etc. The Holocaust Memorial was a highlight (below). As was Natalie on her bike (she was a bit apprehensive since it had been a while and may have crashed into a man within five minutes. That was the only incident :)





Reichstag:


Wiessbiers by the river Spree:




Monday we were on a museum mission and on foot due to rainy weather. Happy couple:



We saw Frida Kahlo and Olifar Eliasson exhibits (both were excellent), had bratwurst and pommes "rot-weiss" (red and white: fries with ketchup and mayo) for lunch, then went to the Guggenheim to see Wangetchi Mutu, down the road to another show, then to the Jewish Museum. It was a long but great day. Natalie and Mark set off to have dinner and Carla and I napped. Our last night in Berlin was a literal snoozefest! But for a good reason at least. Maybe it was the nitrates.



Tuesday was our last day. Natalie and Mark had earlier flights so after a long walk in the park (Tiergarten) we said goodbye and Carla and I headed a little outside the center of the city to see another memorial. It was a former train track were 50,000 Jews were shipped off to concentration camps from. It is small and quiet but worth the trip. The edges have the dates and places that the train went, along with the number of people it carried.



We cheered up with a pint at a local beer garden afterwards. And a last wurst for the road at Curry 36, apparently a Berliner institution. So I only had two official wursts but enough meat to last my pseudo-vegetarianism for quite a while! It was wurst every bite. Okay, no more wurst jokes, I promise.