On the waterfront

Künstlerhaus – Artists' Red

"when it's dark, it ain't half bad really, but by day: what a horrible red of that 'artists' house'! Them oughta have learnt a decent job! – We gotta move those refrigerators, we gotta move them color TVs!"

Local lore from Salzburg city, Austria,

brought to you by foreign correspondent Mr. Dr. Hammerhead,

for World At Large News, worldwide

Soundtrack recommendation, by Dr. Mr. Hammerhead:

Dire Straits

Money for nothing, and the chicks for free

Once again, the blog team is split:

wemo's going for pt. I, the back office crew for pt. II, and the blogwart is apalled.

Elvis, Elvis!

As everybody on the blog team seems to just love Elvis Costello,

and wemo's getting sentimental about his academic year abroad in Bowling Green OH, USA,

1982, the very same year when 'Imperial Bedrooms' was released and available at Finders Records, B. G. where

'The Best' were burning down the house at the best-liked rock club in town

(many nice Harleys parked outside every night) …

so let there be an homage to great Elvis Costello and his unique glasses; here as a charming young man – and ain't he lovely … if anyone of us was, say, like … smashin' Dolly Parton, we'd just know what a woman's gotta do … well ever since, Elvis met a nice lady, and seems to have moved in with her, so even smashin' Dolly would've kept her fingas off.

Let them be happy ever after!

** xx !! – blogwart's just tryin' to get some 'Order!' into those crazy,

loveable weirdo fans

Bring on the night, once more

By day it was labelled 'pink sun screens', by night it's colored 'concrete poetry'.

Hard surfaces

"Life is hard and then you die."

Just a quote – from 1980s (?) band It's Immaterial. Nothing to do with anyone round here.

Says the blogwart.

True blue, v. 3

Blue_Obertauern, in color-corrected version by hannsotte.blogspot.com

wemo has announced his retreat to a Zen monastery, but made sure there would be wireless internet around and renewed his Apple Care support lease.

The rest of the blog team will stay in lieu and meditate on the color blue.

Soundtrack: Fine Young Cannibals Blue

Chorus:
Good god, all my tears
There’s no denying life
Would be better if I never ever had to live with you,
Blue - it’s a colour so cruel

From Lyrics.Time

Leaping back

in time to when it was still 'old' Residence fountain, the marble a dark yellow + all the gray & black from withering – and a strange fall sunset sky.

Telling a secret

Hallstatt, Unesco World Heritage Site for its nature as well as its cultural history.

There is a good chance that getting there you see quite a few buildings wrapped for renovation.

Well, nowhere in those tourism hot spots you will find terms of trade that would guarantee a right to see all the buildings uncovered and in a state of best repair – so a flight through the covered gate in a delivery van might be appropriate.

This is in memory of Jeanne-Claude, partner in life and arts of Christo.

Jeanne-Claude died aged 74 on November 18, 2009. May she be sketching and planning to wrap clouds or stars in heaven with friendly support by St. Peter by now.

Ehrenplatz für Ines

It is a small acrylic on paper, quite an expressive abstract study for a painter whose work at those times combined constructive elements with nature study in her larger paintings. A work she presented to me many years ago; I valued it highly, but never had it framed or displayed in any way. I came back to it recently, had it framed and put it on a shelf with some memorabilia; and managed to have an email with a Thank you & best regards forwarded to her by her gallerist. Thanks again.

Father and a stag

1982 father and I did one last hike together; in Rauris in the central range of the Salzburg province alps. Both of us did not have any serious hiking gear, so we just followed a side valley uphill, not even trying to climb a peak. Yes, it was fall, the days of Rauriser Malertage, a painters’ annual ‘convention’ – artists of all styles willing to react to sublime mountain nature, draw, sketch, or paint with an exchange of results in the evenings.

For a nature loving person that my father never ceased to be this was also the time to hear stags belling; no, no, he never was a hunter; his was not to listen to the creatures of mountains & forests in order to shoot them. His was just to listen, and maybe to see – if you managed to be so quiet and peaceful as not to shy those animals away. And I had never heard a stag belling, so my father wanted to present me with this experience, and we had found a pretext to stay off one of those informal evening meetings at the local Kirchenwirt. Well, it’s been 27 years now, and I can’t seem to remember if we actually heard a stag belling; I do remember a feeling of connectedness with my father that strikes me as a rare gift in hindsight; it took me a long time to realize just how much the two of us have in common, for better or worse; and this little story is definitely part of the better.

This is an excerpt from a piece of biographic fiction currently under construction as a part of the international network of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.

In case you're among those who always wanted to write that certain piece of prose, maybe an outright novel – come on in and join fun, excitement and the suspense if you manage to finish November as a 'winner' with 50,000 words written, no matter what.

If your Inner Editor is just getting the screaming fits – send him/her on a four weeks' vacation!

This is a blog here; there are editors and theorists: so there's a disclaimer to the excerpt above: 'sublime' would never ever have been used as a term for mountain landscapes by that fictional father.

Bronze?

Is it bronze, how did they fix it to the wall? Is it by Erwin Wurm, whose exhibition "Desperate Philosophers" was on at that time? Then it could have been some synthetic material and not quite as heavy.

Graffiti-Bridge revisited

For a detail see below.

Soundtrack: Prince Graffiti Bridge

Cinema Foyer

It used to be the foyer of Salzburg's largest cinema, Stadtkino. More than 20 years ago the cinema was stripped from all interior decoration and the room turned into a theatre and concert hall of pure concrete poetry. It is the main venue for Szene Salzburg.

The foyer kept its architectural charms, was spiced up with lights and a sound system. So after its daytime life as a restaurant and bar with a wireless LAN (nice MacBooks to be spotted there frequently!) it is turned into a club with 4 resident DJs, and a highlight coming up shortly:

Stereo MCs DJ Set, Oct 3, 2009, 23.00 – be there!

Ostinato

As a 4 year old, yours truly is reported to have taken his parents on endless 'train rides' along the square pavement patterns of St. Marcus Square, Venice Italy. The journey ended nowhere, as the pattern would lead back into itself.

Maybe the first loop in this looped career.

For today let it be the loops of Burning Spears Ethiopians on the album quoted below.

Designer lamp

I like the lamp.

But here's for a word from our favourite TV presenter, Bernd das Brot: "Eine Designerlampe: kostet so viel wie ein Kleinwagen und gibt so viel Licht wie eine Taschenlampe aus dem YPS-Heft".

To be seen in the background: one of the hot chefs of this popular Salzburg city venue, republic café.

Rock'n'Roll to the rescue

Johann Hauser, 1926 – 1996.

One of the artists at Gugging, a psychiatric hospital near Vienna, that became a safe haven for artists who were creative in certain mental conditions; 'zustandsgebundene Kunst', to be seen in Gugging, at the 'Haus der Künstler' – Art / Brut Center.

Werner Otte, *1922/9/4

"Hoffnung auf Regen", 1974; acrylic on canvas, 55 x 75cm.

Found at: artnet.de

Hoping for kind permission to use the reproduction in memory of a great artist.

It is his birthday today; let's celebrate an artist who was not 'just' a craftsman; he also was a master of acrylic painting.

When this was a new technique, Otte experimented with it. His sons remember a stone flag covered with layers and layers of acrylic paint that sat out in the garden in wind, rain, frost, and snow – placed there in order to see how the material would wither.

With "Hoffnung auf Regen" Otte had mastered the technique; transparent layers of colour, 'altmeisterlich', as the Germans would say. And a fine example of Otte after his 'abstract turn'.

There is always landscape involved in those abstract works and forms hovering freely above the horizon.

As a regular to the small provincial town of Rauris with its institutions of Literaturtage and Malertage, Otte made friends with Austrian writer H. C. Artmann who in his medium of prose and poetry was a close relation in his perception of the world.

I see the light come shining

The Spirit of Mozart as seen by sculptor Marina Abramovich. We humble mortals are expected to sit in those earth-bound chairs while meditating Mozart's greatness in that towering steel inferno. No comment otherwise while I meditate on the concrete poetry of bike & foot paths around Staatsbrücke.

Idylle?

It is one of the traditional café- and restaurant gardens in the old city of Salzburg, Posthof. Just recently re-designed, see also below, label pink sun screens. Now Salzburgers are discussing the move: should it simply have been wooden beer garden benches and tables, or rather cast iron 'art deco' furniture from a DIY superstore? Should the hedges have been left higher to block the views to adjacent Kajetanerplatz and Schanzlgasse? Should a commission have been employed to decide what to do with this prominent place?

Every once in a while somebody will mention Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich; he was the guy who was responsible among others for the layout of the large squares around Salzburg Cathedral. As a renaissance prince he did not ask, he would not have accepted petitions from concerned citizens, he would not have installed a Gestaltungsbeirat to assist his very own Altstadtkommission. He had taste, he knew about arts and architecture, and he simply had power and money. Good or bad – or just different? Should we have an opinion poll on the issue – or rather install a commission of experts?

Your Chill-out-Coach

ohmygawd; please see for yourself: Bernd das Brot is your chill-out-coach on KiKa (Kinderkanal) or Youtube! Thanks to derStandard.at for the hint.