Bel far niente…. Really?

Markus Lüpertz says this week in an interview somewhere: The general opinion of my art is that it is rejected. I attribute this to a lack of intelligence among the people.

This family is in Italy for two months. We are just outside a village not far north of Rome. The house is on top of a hill with views but Rome hides behind some bushes and trees.

Our times: after contemporary does not automatically come post contemporary but rather temporary. After minimal comes obviously minimum. After conceptual comes emotional? Hmm… for the moment I will have to be a temporary minimum artist.

What is private and what is public domain? I listen on TV to: Salman Rushdie just finished a book for his second son and now it will be read by millions. His best known book he wrote for his firstborn long ago. I never read any of his books but think I know him very well. He could be a friend. Facebook informs me what my other 313 friends do daily. My private life is public, even if it is unnoticed or unread. My phone is long empty but I walk the streets of Rome from one camera into another. I say ciao to the neighbours and one man in the local supermarket called: Elite. I imagine the man is called Marco.

Pretty bambino! Is it your son? Yes. What’s he called? Does he have a brother or sister? Well, yes but…

When I was in Rome and stood on the terraced roof of the Norwegian Institute I was overwhelmed by the view. There was just too much of it. Got annoyed. Too many roads lead to Rome. Now I hesitate to go again. My temporary home in Fonte Nuova has a large terrace too: I can just cope with this one: the olive and wine fields the odd old towers, farms and villas, the towns afar and the mountains and the sky. The sky is amazing here. The endless sky is amazing everywhere!

Which views do I miss? In the same newspaper I read that 70 million Christmas trees will be sold in Europe this year. More east Europeans can afford to buy one. I try to imagine the massive field they grow on together with the trees for the Christmases to come. It must be a mountain as big as I can see from my terrace behind what must be the pretty town Palombara which I have not visited.

I drank a glass of wine once with Markus Lüpertz in a private club. Now this is public too. It is November and we sit outside in the sun while the little bambino sleeps. I am a lucky person.

more views in lazio natland sb galleria

My Lillehammer Affair.

This summer i got myself involved as an assistant in somebody else's photo project. HH Capor is a friend. He lives in Vienna and is older than i am. Hermann is a portrait photographer and often in his works shifting borders of tolerance and questioning norms and tastes, including his own and mine, definitely.

He usually likes to capture young nudes.

This time his project is a little different so i can be in it. In short: Hermann is visiting within a period of 2 years about 30 towns he has never been before in as many trips and all over the world. He checks into a hotel and does not leave the premises for as long as he is there. He invites an assistant to go for a walk into the city and make pictures for him instead. When he returns to Vienna the proof of his visits are the images made by someone else. He says that it is about the reflection on the behavior of tourists and how they capture images and remember... or do not. I am willing to follow the thoughts.

So, I am his 12th pair of eyes and the town is Lillehammer (18 August 2010). The town is new for me too. It is about 10 hours to get here by train from Bergen. I read books about Rome up and down. While i walk out of the train station i can not prevent myself cursing loud. I instantly do not like it here. We meet in the hotel room. I get his camera and a film with 8 b/w exposures. Why Lillehammer i ask (shout?). He had an uncle who went missing here in 1943. If this is a town get it off the map! The grey rainy weather does not help. Will i be touching the clouds today?

From the room we can see a ski jump station. Hermann's horizon. So i decide to walk up there to have a birds view of my hunting ground. First to the tourist information center for a map. She says it is not far, maybe half an hour walk and i am lucky a (the?) German team is practicing. Not on snow but artificial grass. I hesitate so much making that first photo. I am surrounded by other tourists who endlessly shoot all that moves and flies by. The rehearsal of jumping is over before i... clack 1. In my mind i try to recall other cowardly events.

I descend and decide to follow a little stream through the forest. There is no path but it goes, according to the map, eventually along the hotel so i can not get lost. The stream is a postcard! I HAVE to make a shot of these waters for Hermann! Clack 2 Das Nordische Wald! Is that Hermann's uncle in a blue sports uniform on the bridge? And clack again 3. I see some questionnaire list in Norwegian on a tree next to the bridge. clack 4 is made! I am in a euphoric mood. Shall i go to Hermann and say: It is so beautiful out there and demand more film ?! Oh, I am not doing very well, I need to be an artist, oh, my inspiration is leaving me, creative guidance is needed, sunshine is not enough anymore, where is confirmation of my brilliance, HELP.... help...

So I go to the library and ask what there is to know about the first Lillehammer affair. Not much. But they (2 ladies) take the time to search. So kind. While I am waiting a Somalian woman who is with her pretty teenage daughter starts to talk to me. Obviously she can (also) see i am in despair. She hears my story and replies: Why don't you take a picture of me? I clack 5. She also asks me out for a coffee. Hermann, do you believe this? I turn the offer down knowing i hurt him. She wishes me a nice stay in her town. I am no good, The librarian returns with visual documentation and address of the exact location where the first affair happened. Could you please copy all!

The town is small but the walk is surprisingly long. Or is it me telling myself that i missed the chance just right there to make THE shot for CAPOR. The extensive directions i have received make it easy to find it. I try to imagine what silliness happened there that evening but fail. A passerby makes clack 6. I act in the picture. I think i did the job. She was pregnant back then.

Back in the centre i clack 7. Only now i know why. Before i return to the hotel i take coffee in a park and watch some local ladies rehearsing their dances. I hesitate taking the camera but have already decided what to do with the last exposure. The window of the room is open and i shout into the town: Hermann!! Clack 8.

Back in the room i describe him the day. I have trouble describing clack 5. There is a smile. In return he tells me what he is going to do with my images. There is unbelief and i ask him for copies.

I do recall more than i type above but i select, copy, shop and paste, polish and turn like always. Time will do the deleting of the rest. There is no way for me of capturing that passing day, that past. I mold the memory conveniently and that is ... so fortunately good. I could not bare the weight of it otherwise. Thank you Hermann.

Can I have a little bit more less tits

Of course I forgot the details but there was a time that the biggest library in the world (Europe?) had about 1300 books. That is not much you might think but on the other hand it would be a library where you could say one day: I have read all of them and now i go and do something completely different. What use has a library so big it looses the human scale. How much less text is more?

Made a facebook page for Natland SB a day ago and asked everybody i know there to like it. So now 44 people like it. There are now 400.000.000 facebook people and i am sure 444 more or less would like to like Natland SB. So now I got a calculator and started to ... and got stuck and worried.. How much less is Natland SB liked now and for how long will that go on? Yes it was the Dalai Lama himself who said there were more than enough Buddhists on this planet.

Speaking in my hometown dialect (Enschedees) the windows are not opened but loosened: doo t raam is løs. Does that create more or less view and does a view actually help to see more?

The best movie lasts one second i used to claim in the times i was still into making art films and experimented in withholding actual frames in a movement or use repetition as a follow up. How much movement is needed to stand still? I know, old story, but does a tree stand still?

Less is more comes from a poem by Robert Browning about an Italian painter who was acclaimed in his time, now considered kitsch and forgotten and worthless a thought. Architect Mies van der Rohe was the person who picked it up to describe his ideas using minimalism during times when the sky was not even touched yet. Jump:

Now we are running out of practically everything we humans have quickly been learned to depend on. We have no idea what is ahead of us and are surrounded by speculators selling the leftovers of a present. Around me i for instance do not see any decrease of consuming. I witness just a new habit to separately dispose the deep freeze pizza plastic cover from the deep freeze pizza cardboard box. But how much less pizza is more grandiosa?

My precious time consuming web tracker shows that the average time of a visitor spend on a site i fill is just enough to read the header of one article, so that explains the tits in the title but not why i do not start to wake up.

Wanderings before the Natland SB how much less is more Seminar 2010 Bergen.

how much is that view?

'Dobler du høyden, tredobles utsikten'

That is what is printed on the ticket for a ride up to Ulriken mountain (624m). Can it be true that if one doubles the height one triples the view? Is there a scientific formula for the size of a view and where is the limit? Can I have unlimited view and if not where is the exact turning point where more becomes actually less? Everybody knows there are limits to zooming in or out and that there are just dots of pointlessness. Like struggling with Google Earth but also like washing powder bringing back the colors. No that last one is different but you get my point.

Well, it kept me busy the last few weeks. Found that used and disposed ticket on the street and decided to re-use it as a postcard for my sister's birthday in the first week of May. The card was posted but the slogan got stuck. I did bother everybody with it everywhere days on end and still do.

Stood on chairs and tables. It was in the communal garden. Jehovah witnesses went door to door in the background. Some neighbors, masters in mathematics and logic, were convinced it might be correct and truly believed they could convince me of it and used me as a guinea pig:

'Stand up, you have to focus on one point. Do you see my hand? and now? Yes or No? Here? No? Good, now stand on that chair and look at the same point. Focus. Not not on my hand you... on the point! See my hand? and now? Still? Now. No? OK, climb on the table. Again focus. See my...?... '

And then they would explain me that i saw more while going up. It was extremely hard for me to focus on one point. My view tends to be distracted very easily. Is that allowed? Does that influence their formula? I saw more ground staring from a higher point. But do we all stare all the time?

Go all for a walk! A view is unique. You can not put it in a box! People can not have the same view!

Ha ha, to share a view: Ridiculous!

Natland SB art Galleri organizes Saturday 12 June the Natland SB how much less in more Seminar 2010 Bergen.

Wandering on eggs

This photo is made last year. That day is getting closer and closer again. It is strange. It is an odd thing to do. Ha, am i going to publicly embarrass myself. I have no idea what i should talk about. I suddenly have an urge to write the manifestation down. On a hidden note so to say. But every time when the mind seriously stands still at the approaching event i kind of get stuck in an absurd opening scene: Me, King Coolrabi of Natlandia, Queen Carotta de Pomodoria and little junior Duke Bacon waving at a silent crowd of non believers From there on the tone is set and it gets even more a bad dream and close to a nightmare: I shout like Bibikov sentences of no sense towards them through a megaphone. I bore them? Or they are not listening anyway. I do not understand that either. I loose the words and have to ask the audience what i suppose to talk about. They are just staying silent.

I am the orator and it rains that day, starting exactly at noon and just the minutes i talk. Although not one word is understood by the crowds gathered under umbrellas to protect them from the pouring rain. they applaud, smile and commence to the food and games. Some say to me: Gratulerer med Dagen!

Grunnlovsdag (1814), the National Day of Norway is a yearly returning event on the 17th of May. Everywhere in the country the day starts with a children parade. Ours goes to the supermarket (Kiwi) down the hill and back. Then there is the speech and the national anthem followed by food for all and games afterwards. Since yesterday i am two things wiser about the last category: the food will be Iranian rice with chicken and for a game they need our coffee pot. I promised the feast committee to do the talking and decided without mentioning also to take care of the song. On all You Tube versions the anthem is one key too low for my flute. I break my fingers. The Duke however is very good in covering up my failure by banging extremely professionally and loud a wooden spoon on the lid of a pan. I am covered.

Rumor goes i will speak 15 minutes or so. That is an eternity. In case it is dry that quarter I might have to juggle with words like solidarity and unity, friendship, tolerance and acceptance, future generation's progressive understanding, global peace and awareness, natural environmental respect, exchanging views and visions, trust, sharing responsibilities, equality, love, common sense, human strength, committing communities, recyclable history, maintenance, sincereness and introspection, sharing national pride and becoming true globalists. If it really rains hard enough i can add some words and act a hero by calling for a revolution or just put in some gossip and prejudiced thoughts i have about my neighbours.

Duke's grandparents are coming. They want to hear the speech. It should be light and uplifting! It will be personal. I do not know otherwise. It has to be a little funny and i should not forget the children. Maybe throw some sweets and balloons from the balcony? The flute will also do the trick. I am seriously getting better at it. I hope Carotta's spare dress will fit me too.

I know now what i am going to talk about! Thank you Barbapappa!

Eggs

First things first: FC Twente is since this Sunday, 2 May 2010, National Soccer Champion in the Netherlands. That is the first time in the existence of the club. Born in the center and grown up on de Velve and de Wesselerbrink makes me one solid piece of an Enschedeër, and my team is FC Twente. My first visit to a stadium ended with a 3-2 win against DOS in 1967? I am a tribal member and devoted disciple. I have seriously longed for the moment this would happen. It almost happened in 1974 and i remember. Back then I followed the Sunday home matches from a toilet seat. Somehow the ventilation pipe in that tiny room amplified the sounds from the nearby Diekman stadion perfectly and I would know the score almost live.

I have been listening to along the lines radio reports in the weirdest places since. I am a radio watcher and i scream and i yell and i get really upset and unbearably grumpy and unreasonable when We loose. But this season we did not loose. We just won and won and won and won! The world will never be the same. I noticed today already this might need tiny adjustments finding out some people around me have never heard of FC Twente. I insist that everybody knows on this planet that Twente is the closest to heaven on earth. Epi Drost and Theo Phalplatz, forgive me but now i think Blaise N'Kufo is the best player in the world. And furthermore i want Sander Boschker at the gate when the time comes. (And now it is time for that bottle of beer i found and reserved for this occasion).

I am asked to do a speech. No not to lecture some students or to fool art lovers but a speech! The yard i live in has decided there is no better man than me. It fits; estimating i am the oldest on the estate but they do not know that, do they? I did warn them and told them to reconsider. Gave them a few nights. But they insisted still. I told them i know nothing of the matter and that i might do the opposite of what is expected or traditionally the custom. I did also explicitly tell them i do not even speak or even like the language. I said that i could be rude and easily misunderstood, that my senism could be mistaken for humor and my humor could be taken seriously and my sincerity questioned. But the feast committee insisted so i said: yes. Also because i can escape from other tasks by doing this.

So now when I see them on the street or in the supermarket they ask me if i already started writing things down and ask me if i have already an idea what i will talk about and i have to explain them that i never write things down when it comes to this and that i just improvise and jump from one thing to another and wander along with thoughts hoping to stay on track. They smile and do not believe me but tell me they are confident it will be great! I confess that since they asked me it is in my head. I come up with these ridiculous opening sentences like: Jeg har en drøm, jeg vil være Norsk or Norge, Jeg Elsker Deg! I proclaim them loudly while doing the dishes and i also practice on a flute. Hilde helps me with the tune and Thor accompanies on the mouth harp. I fantasize that i am the Mayor of the city and master of the hill! The gathering is on the roundabout just behind my house. I only have to open the kitchen door, step on the balcony, raise my hand like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and start: Listen to what i have to say dear dear citizens of Natlandia. My flock! Again the world will not be the same after 12.00 noon 17th May 2010.

Stop complaining (not about snow)

He pointed up the road towards the smith's house and said: This way! This is the shortest. No, I answered,it is shorter round by the quayside.

Knut Hamsum - from the novel Pan (1894)

This winter in Grimstad i went shopping on a spark! Snow is temporary dry white rain. No, snow is sometimes not white, not white at all or not white all the time. Snow is reflecting the surroundings, a mirror as much as a blanket. (wow says he). Snow actually eats color and makes other things turn black. Some snow turns black itself. Snow can not choose where it falls. There is enough space in Norway for a flock to fall decent and look good for a long time. That is nice but when you happen to be a flock hitting the town you do not lie around long before you quickly loose that pretty innocence and get real mean. Touched snow is really something else. Urban snow rapidly collects traces of footsteps and car tires, urine tracks of walking the dog. It covers but in the mean time accentuates. Snow is moved around and pushed aside. Complex landscapes appear and mountains are included. New borders are formed. Alternative routes are taken. Common places become no go areas and mini war zones. Entrances disappear and exits blocked. Suddenly we do with less space. It will all dissolve. I like to see it melt now.

Wonder which hill in my garden will melt last. This winter i have mastered the craft of catching snow right. (i say). Some snow is very loud. Today it is exactly three months lying around the house without a days leave. This is a local record. And then Glahn writes ... I roamed about and noticed how the snow was turning to water and how the ice was breaking... and rain and wind did their work and melted away the snow... yes, yes, i think, go and feet your dog, and shake my head like a vacant Bulgarian taxi driver. One more look outside: Hey, it's raining like in Mumbai!

I want you to come to my birthday (i too want to) I want a fish for my birthday ( what kind?) A dolphin! (you mean... ) And I want you to dig a hole in the garden where it can swim and I can look at it and play with it. (but... ) I have money from different countries. I can pay. I even have Dutch money.

It is just not true that nothing is impossible? What did Wolfram learn me this winter? Ah, yes: here after is here now and you just give the horse free rein and God will lead that horse (with you on it) towards the Good. The Horn of Plenty! Is that so difficult? But then? What happens then? I can get a dolphin somehow. I can dig a hole, i guess. But then, what then? Or is that just the point why Parzifal rode his horse for years and years through the forest before he did give it free rein... I am a coward now. (who says). I apologize but i am simply an ignorant who gets the wisdom from listening to Cash songs. Not more not less. Judge me. Oh boys, you will sit around a table one day and tell each other: he was not too bad. I make sure of that. But let me sit here now for a while and be patient with me. I wish i could assure you i take my hands off the reins one day. Parzifal has Feirefiz. Did Glahn really have to shoot the dog? Only in fairy tales snow is innocent... and in Disney films.

A talk about Parzifal in Hordaland

BEK in Bergen invited me for a public lecture Thursday evening 19.00 4th March 2010 at HKS in Bergen. Usually some 10 or so people show up here but i like a full house and aim for 20?

I will avoid to talk about older work, the amazing revival of my pop career, my slides collection, Duinkerken or Duchamp, the networks i am still using, my neighbours, my love for Norway, the work for money, Carla, unstable urbanism, the club and my future plans.

In stead i will explain why i've been looking around my house for clues and trails, tracks and traces of PARZIFAL... purely because i want to believe that the hereafter must be here now! I will illustrate my talk with loads of pictures.

This invitation is compulsory for some who read this.

a holiday i try to call a crusade

Von wazzer boume sint gesaft.
wazzer früht al die geschaft,
der man für crêatiure giht.
mit dem wazzere man gesiht.
wazzer gît maneger sêle schîn,
daz die engl niht liehter dorften sîn.

Wolfram von Eschenbach from Parzifal (circa 1220)

17th of December 2009 the snow came to Hordaland. It is the darkest period of the year and its habit to reflect was welcome to substitute the lack of daylight. The locals told me that snow is not uncommon for this region but it is never staying around long and eventually turns to rain. But not this time. The snow got the chance to age and turn icy and hard and alter color from bright white to grey brown dirt and black. It got to me. I do not like snow much except when it is fresh and i slide down a hill on a sled. Things have not been so bright lately. The snow became unfriendly, loosing the enlightened smile, so I decided to take a leave and asked my little family to join.

Some flying tickets are dead cheap. Nobody can explain that to me in times when all things run out. It is no good and still we took it.

more island snaps

So, circumstances lead the way to the island La Palma in the Atlantic Ocean. The most north western of the Canary Islands. The name frightened me. I just pictured one big endless holiday resource full with fat people under a palm. We were not going to stay in one of those places but on a sailing ship instead. That pleased me as much. This vessel was anchored in the harbor of Santa Cruz de la Palma. Sometimes i dislike myself. I do not like sun much either but adore the shadow it creates. Am i not easy to please?

Do not worry: i will not share the holiday snaps and there were no videos made. Unlike the other 6 this island is green and full of trees. Just good green with us walking on it half naked in hot January. I do not advertise island hopping. Never been outside of Europe. Did i cross the line this time?

South of La Palma lies El Hierro, the meridian island. Already known by the old Greeks and Romans and considered the end of the world (in the west). After that there was just an endless river and finally the end of the world. One just can not get any closer to Paradise than here. Oh so cautious I did not go there but was close enough to see it sticking out above the Atlantic clouds.

My habit pops up again to make all things fit whatever the curves or jumps or consequences: some weeks ago i started to construct, mainly for myself, a modern version of Parzifal and how he tries to get hold of the Grail. The gateway to a better world or key to percept religion as a natural phenomenon. And how Parzifal eventually kind of manages with the help of his older half-brother Feirefiz... obviously i still am working on the first drafts...

After the empty handed return from this crusade the snow was still lying around. Dark ages are here. No, my name is not Gahmuret and Yes, i am aware i have opened (with Senis and some others included) within a year about 70 blogs and dare to ask: will you look at PARZIFAL IN HORDALAND? I promise not to show you my 1001 holiday snaps.

Hey, it's raining!

Simple things are complicated and keep me away from my sleep. I think that is sometimes good although I continue disagreeing. I was also thinking of course about a quote above this text because it looks so good and sophisticated and academic. I usually take it from a book I read or recently did or I find it online and claim. I have one now but it is kind of too long. Longer than my own text will be. It is not in proportion. But in the mean time it just adds a touch I will not be able to describe myself in this text properly because it is about the American Dream. A thing which is so seemingly common but equally alien to me and in the mean time what it is all about, kind of. I would like to ask you (if you want and please ignore all the drugs they are not so relevant but just a time-based thing of the early seventies) to read the ninth chapter of the second part of Hunter S. Thompson's famous bestselling very American book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I guess you have read it already years ago. I just recently did and was taken by this chapter called: Breakdown on Paradise Blvd. It just fits, dammit!

Thor, let's share the cookies. You one, i one, mama one, i one, you one, i one and mama one. How big is Norway? Well, if you take a plane from Oslo north to Kirkenes you might as well fly from Oslo south to Rome. How big would Norway be if it was as flat as the Netherlands? Haha, yes... how much space would the Alps take of middle of Europe if they were flat? How much space does it take of the Netherlands to put the Ararat on top of it ? And if all countries in the world were flat would there be enough space for ocean number 39* or for any ocean at all? We could photoshop it! So, are we equal? We are, but some have peaks and valleys or just valleys or just peaks or one peak and many valleys or... Do i have peaks? YES! Do I have valleys? ... Does Bamse have peaks? Bamse is a bear. So? Bamse is a teddybear! So?? We are all unique? Yes. Are we all equally unique? Go to sleep and let me be. Do I get a kiss?

Thinking as Heidegger says, may be much the same as wandering.

*since the 9th of August when a video was made while Thor was bathing all following sessions were numbered. The moment this text is written we are close to 40 sessions of bathwater.

I want to be

... a musician, cosmonaut, guitar player, fireman, writer, in a rock team, and ... a seller.

When I was your age I wanted to become a pilot, a fireman, a painter and an Indian, Sioux or Cherokee!

I also want to be Indian and underwater man and even a knight!

Wow, a knight!! With a horse: black or white? Yes, like King Arthur or Ivanhoe!

Look Vanja,
I used to watch THIS on TV when i was as old as you:

Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe,
Side by side
Were proud to ride
With Ivanhoe.
At his call we spring
To help him ride along,
The song we sing
Is a free and joyous song.

Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe,
Far and wide
Throughout the countryside
They know
There is freedom on his banner,
Justice in his sword,
He rides against the manor
Where tyranny is lord.

Rich and poor,
Together we go,
Forward with Ivanhoe,
With Iv-an-hoe.

Email conversations with Vanja, August 2009.

I self reflect as twitter as I can

I had the strong need to put some things in order for myself lately. So I wrote it down. I put the text here knowing it might interest some angels who have been looking over my shoulder for awhile and like to do so in the future. Furthermore it might help the passerby making any sense of the things I have been writing on this blog or the other 29.

From the moment I had to kind of leave Vanja behind and Thor came into my life I thought I had to go steady and secure. Settle down and get a longterm contract job at an academy for instance and share my knowledge and beyond and around. So the two beloved sons would at least be safely supported with coins by a hardworking father. Shuffle.

Early 2008 I started teaching at the school for architecture (BAS) in Bergen. I enjoyed the work very much and I actually thought I had pretty much an agreement to expand the activities but there seems to be a misunderstanding and there won't be anything for me to do before at least early 2010 or something like that according to them and maybe. I say nicely now that I am disappointed with these developments. Breath.

Having the habit to check the backside of pictures in hotel rooms make my disappointments slowly turn into relief and learns me again the variability of trust. Yes, you too helped me out, Hammons and Hamsun, but don't start bragging it around! And a longterm steady teaching job? Was I not warned some time ago by some of you? Yes, I am the kind of type students and colleagues endure with a totally different expiring date. I finally am starting to listen? Hear me!

Living in Norway had another consequence too. In my Dutch period I really tried to make a difference as an artist. Not all was so contemporary but I discovered (with /K) new directions, crossed and moved boundaries. No, not totally hopeless. I could actually do the tricks, did many exhibitions, made it into history books and museum collections and got well granted and awarded and made my parents proud once in a while. Hurrah! Yes, it was a nice exposure time which lasted long enough and peacetime followed.

The following 6 years in Moldova I was pioneer or colonialist (you choose). But here in the dark North the Vikings do not need other explorers than themselves so about a year ago I thought it would be good to anticipate this and change my profession and become a former contemporary artist and started to write down the consequential explorations of small man online. Eden.

But natural resources have run out. So much that I have decided to sell some soul again. You find the advertisement which my temporary art consultants came up with attached in the comments below.

You may laugh or wonder but thank God for the loads and variety of berries everywhere at the moment. They are so healthy full of anti-oxidants and vitamins! While eating them with the home made bread I talk with my girl every day every hour every minute about what to do and we agree. We are going up the mountain soon, here we come!

Billy comes in 6 colors

It is a Sunday and rain is endlessly pouring down. Not drizzling, not just raining but really endlessly pouring down. And not just now but already for quite some hours and according to the weather report in the local newspaper BA it is going to continue for days to come. The report is accompanied by a map of Hordaland and Sognefjord with just little black clouds drawn in. Very Norwegian clouds, pouring, not raining, till at least the next Sunday to come. Outside I see Norwegian girls passing as two waterproof pink dots in grey. It is a black day, I guess I should start saying goodbye to the summer earlier than I am used to... It is for many years now that my father calls me on Sunday morning, to compare how our weather is. Lately he wins when it comes to hours of sun. He lives in Twenthe where I was born.

My first summer memory is from there. Or maybe it is constructed through the countless recalls of my family members. It happened just like I will write it down now.

Father worked on an airbase and for us children this had some really nice advantages. One of them was the access to a military open air swimming pool. A large pond with a thousand frogs and beautiful green meadows and a kiosk for ice cream, surrounded by old pine trees. That is where it happened in the summer of 1963. So I was a little more than two years old when I saw for the first time a black man. He was huge and round sitting in tiny shorts on his towel and enjoying the sun. I picture him now like a smiling Buddha. He was however an American soldier. My mother just gave me a handful of some sweets so I went up to him and asked: Wil aap ook snoepje? My good father, always in the neighbourhood, was willing to translate without censorship: Does monkey also want a sweet? The man laughed and took one and strokes me kindly over my red curly head. I liked that. Some years later I became a huge fan of Eusébio da Silva Ferreira , legend football player of Benfica. So now the soldier looks exactly like Eusébio, only much heavier and rounder. Memories are always colored and black American soldiers are now called Afro American soldiers.

Just before this period of rain started I was a little wandering around the house and sort of repeating loud what I had read in the newspaper that morning. I do that sometimes. Boat goes missing in the Baltic Sea and 350 animals discovered in the Himalaya! Amongst them the Macaca Munzala, a new monkey with not much tail!! Behind me passed, at first unnoticed, a neighbor. He is Afro African and he shook his head in resentment and walked on to the gym. Only much later I made the link that he might have put a meaning in some words which was not there.

This reminds me of driving through Amsterdam and waiting for a green light in Amsterdam old west a long time ago. Friend Calin was walking on the sidewalk and I opened the window and yelled something like: Hey, still not out of the country yet? And suddenly minimum 20 persons were staring at the vehicle. Gas, Gas! I said to the driver hurriedly, being sure I was not able to explain this quickly enough to a lynching crowd.

Oh, we are all prejudiced without exception. But racist is another thing. The first is just a question of ignorance the second however is based on hatred. What is hatred?

Monday: the sun has been shining all day until early evening the rain returned. At that time Thor Erland had to go to bed anyway.

the guilty camera

The Yashica Electro-35GT is the space-age camera your family will love. Take beautiful pictures day or night. Automatically. Without any nonsense. Just aim, focus and shoot. The GT's computer brain and electronic will do the rest.

recycling an advertisement Susan Sontag used in In Plato's Cave - On Photography (1977)

Does not happen often that I fall for some gadget let alone a camera but I went into a shop last week to see the new Olympus PEN. The young assistant in the store was willing to open the vitrine with his keys and put it into my hands and I hear myself mumble: Got to have one one day! Just the looks of it! And I also said something smart like: this is the beginning of a new era and finally digital photography is getting mature. Haha, I was a walking advertisement for something I hardly know anything about or actually have money for. And still I want one. It is good it was not recorded. I would have looked really silly. Boy wants new toy!

Sontag wrote thirty years ago about the camera being a replacement of the gun in that first essay and it makes me think, struggle, question if we both still agree. Hands up and put the camera down!

It was in Croatia in 1993 along the Drava on a deserted industrial estate the same day I visited Nemetin. The place was heavily damaged of the ongoing war. Along the river were some tall freight cranes for unloading ships, partly burned, collapsed and hanging over the water. I had the bright idea of climbing into one so I could make a shot with my 8mm camera. A so-called pen. I thought it would not harm and did not bother to ask the guides for permission. The other side of the river however (Baranja) was in the hands of the enemy Serbs or Cetniks. On the top, above an empty nest of crows, I caught in my viewfinder a speedboat with soldiers rapidly coming towards me. On the front some kind of machine gun. It took a few moments before realizing the camera resembled perfectly a gun too. So I canceled the shot and instantly tumbled down to the safe ground. Where Blanka said: now we earned a drink!

This week I read two peculiar and in the mean time deeply sad articles in a newspaper. The first one is about a young Dutch family on holidays visiting some French coastal town. The woman was pushing a pram with a few weeks old baby and wanted to make a photo of the picturesque scenery so she let go of the pram which found it's way down the quay and the baby was heavily injured and later died in hospital. The second tragedy just happened around the corner. A Norwegian father and and 17 year old son were mountain climbing. On the top they made pictures. While the father photographed his son the latter takes one step back and falls off the mountain. Two dead children because of compulsory photographing.

Can a harmless camera kill or is it really just the tool of the user? It was all an accident but it would clearly not have happened if we all were not so occupied in photographing all we see and do. A holiday without pictures is for many not a holiday but what are these families going to do with these snapshots... Delete or frame them? Blame the camera and throw the whole machine away? Will they go on holidays or climb a mountain again? Will they ever make a photo again? Hey photo festival curator, I found a hole in the market! Would it not make a cool exhibition with similar shots like this? We could call it The Real Last Picture Show! Shoot now!

And another small thought on Sontag: In the book everybody has read she ends the same essay with: Mallarmé said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph. In the 2009 version it can be re-edited in: Today everything exists to end in a twitter. So the circle is round and we are back to literature! Or it actually means that in a period of about 140 years we see a development from a whole book via one image to a 140 characters. Does that not sound hopeful? Are we not getting closer to the essence of things?

I will not put the camera down.

Fragment of the conversation from the middle of the world

...There was this old man in the garden. He was really old: 94. And he spoke a little of German and English. He studied Theology in his time and I think he also was a teacher in it, later. But he already stopped decades ago, also bothering about that. He told me he was born the same day as ???? I never heard of this person and have forgotten the name now, but it seemed really important for him. I had to ask my Hilde later and she said it was some Norwegian hero from the 17th century. So I told him that I was born on the same day as Albert Einstein. He replied that he had been in his place of birth. He took a little thinking time and said: Donau – Ulm! When was that, I asked. Oh, I remember clearly he said, it was in the year of the world exhibition in Brussels, 1958 and I went there on a moped. During our talk a plate with slices of mango and kiwi were served. He ate it all. Then he said he was still frequently swimming in the fjord near his house and that it got him into the local paper recently. I was not listening anymore. Too busy thinking about the year Einstein was born. I went inside the house and looked it up in Wikipedia. When I came back in the garden the moment had passed to continue the beautiful conversation we could have had...

From: Sluik self interview 1.6