Dear F.,
Yesterday I was walking around in city and "Where are we now?" did not stop playing in my head. And this song brought you in my mind too. It reminded me how we met on Alexanderplatz and ate pizza so casually that it even emphasized the rareness of the event and how I told you how confused and uncomfortable I felt in Berlin. And you said it will be fine, based on your good will and belief in how things have to be. It went fine, because I took train and bus back home and spent some days at countryside admiring cranes gathering in groups to fly south. The sound they made! And I showed up in the academy starting my masters studies. Back then I was doubtful about that, but running away from Berlin, these magnificent cranes in early autumn air, made me go even deeper in the forest on the following years.
But where are we now? I do not know where are you, but I am in Vienna. With this song in my head, it reminds me Berlin, but otherwise it fits me way better. It is rather pompous than practical and funny than cool, like eccentric cousin. And one day, when I was waiting for a tram in Dr. Karl Renner Ring, in a spot where Vienna really feels like a carrousel, trams running every minute in opposite directions, there was a man playing "Norwegian Wood" on a banjo, stretching every note.
I wonder what you think about Olafur Eliasson. It somehow happened that I have seen two of his shows during one month, one it Stockholm in Moderna Museet and other here in Vienna, in Belvedere Winter Palace. In the plain and square halls of Moderna Museet, the light and dust and air and reflection gave lot of air and relief, it was balancing the endless row of rooms with modern art classics under the same roof. After seeing reflections, magnifying glass balls, beastly compressor pump in sandy room, yellow light and colourful labyrinth, there was a video about his studio-laboratorium in Berlin. Some of the workers there were moving around dancing, some in average way. It filled me with strange uneasiness, because the video did not seem respectful, it looked good and a bit funny, but I felt that the personal input, individual dance improvisation, by all these people working there was too big. Or perhaps it was just really good portrait of all of them, not sure...
I had great expectations for his exhibition here - the title was "Baroque, baroque" and I imagined how his works can multiply the wilderness of baroque and finally get rid of this science-museum feeling they often have. The light and reflection works worked wonderful there, emphasising the golden ceilings, shiny tapestry and strangeness of plaster figures and stucco, but I was surprised to see so much clutter. Objects and pictures that were on the way to experience the room itself. And looking into large kaleidoscopes, it felt so unexpectedly intimate if there happened to be somebody else looking in from the other end.
I hope you are somewhere where you can visit (or make) good art exhibitions. And if not, I hope you have nice and soft wind bringing all the good thoughts to you.
Take care,
Hanna