An Exaltation

The Hamburger Kunsthalle’s curent exhibition „Pop Life“ in the Gallery of Contemporary Art, a collaboration with the Tate Gallery in London, started displaying the works of your usual Pop Art suspects three weeks ago.  This weekend, I finally made my way into the display of consumerist art. I myself displayed a piece called „the effects of excessive alcohol consumption in your favorite bar the night before“. My memory remains fairly foggy.

I spend a fair time, in any gallery I visit, examining the people in it. This exhibition, to my amusement, was particularly fruitful, mainly due to several rooms labeled something like „this part of the exhibition is inappropriate for minors“. Jeff Koons makes it happen. His piece „Exaltation„, which is basically the chintziest version of a cum-shot I’ve ever seen, gave me the opportunity to witness myriads of appalled, disgusted, intrigued, even genuinely compunctious reactions.  This is not to say mine was that of a chronically underwhelmed been-there-done-that. But the stimulus satiation, invoked by the motive itself, and more so the kitschy style, together with that title made me laugh hard. Another nice place to stand and watch was the room in which an untitled piece by Maurizio Cattelan stood, or rather: lay, to tickle reactions out of visitors.  Seeing little kids widen their eyes in terror, teenage girls jump into the arms of their boyfriends, literally squeaking, the empty expressions on adult faces as they practice composure, it was all a treat.  Don’t get me wrong – this is pure interest in the extraordinary, no masochism.

Beware one golden room full of old-school hip-hop. My ragged body’s reaction resulted in flight, I could not withstand that room’s blast, not in my state. Also, be sure not to spend too much time in front of the McG/Takashi Murakami video of Kirsten Dunst singing The Vapors‚ „Turning Japanese“, lest your brains come squirming from your ears. See that here.

Now, go out! It’s worth a visit.

Sam Skarstad

When we arrived back in New York, exhausted after a six-week-long trip through nearly all American states and some fair parts of Canada in a van, we were invited to stay with friends of friends in a New York suburb.  Going there was just the right thing for our worn-out minds and bodies – the family we stayed with were the most kind, interesting and hospitable people, and the suburb’s tranquility was a welcome treat. But the greatest thing was meeting Sam and his music.

Sitting there in his attic room, amongst myriads of instruments and equipment, I already imagined myself giving out forced compliments. After all, the chances that this was going to be shit are significantly higher than the possibility of finding something extraördinary. But extraördinary it is!

Sam comes from a musical family (his mother is a composer, his father a violin maker), he and his brother both studied music. There is an immense density in his songs, you just know that he spends hours editing his music. There seems to be more thought in one of his songs than what you would otherwise expect in a whole album, and it takes a few listens to appreciate every nuance of it. The way he works with sound is remarkable, his carefully manipulated recordings pull you in and out of moods, make your mind jump from one image to the next while you listen through his meticulously composed songs, all the instruments for which he plays himself. You’ll want a good stereo to really enjoy this stuff.

He was working on a new album when I left him, and planned to release it under the name Sam Bay. I can’t wait; the new songs he showed me make me desperate for more.  In the meantime, I strongly suggest listening to his remarkable album Serkus from 2007.

Prosody with Mr. Fry

Hier ein kleiner Text über Steven Frys sehr lesenswertes Buch „An Ode Less Travelled“, den ich mal für die Uni schreiben durfte.

Steven Fry’s pace is slow.  Slow enough to be dangerously close to insulting.  That is to say: just right.  His seemingly effortless, undaunted approach to prosody, the art heretofore responsible for many a headache, makes you confident, his pace makes you feel at ease, the familiarity with which he tackles the topic makes you optimistic.

Steven – and I now refrain from using his last name deliberately; the tone of his lecture is that amicable – has managed to write an idiots’ book on prosody without allowing himself to capitulate to oversimplification.  Not even to simple simplification, to be exact.  He does not even think to reduce the prepossessing palace of prosody to a shoddy shack that resembles little more than prose, to the contrary:  he literarily bombards the reader with the complete range, shoots every available gun, hurls any piece of rhyming debris in your direction, but, unlike other authors, does this in such a gallantly simple way that even I believe to have understood the ins and outs of versification.

Steve’s book, comprehensible even to an Arthur Figgis, steadily moulds the rules of verse and all the accompanying technical words (those ghastly things you had previously feared) into the reader’s head, and solidifies them with enjoyable exercises that he eloquently encourages, nay, requires him to complete.  But not without setting a good example first – he readily provides the initially petrified reader with his own attempts with every hurdle he imposes, allowing no space to even anticipate embarrassment.

Thus, Stevey manages to evoke a feeling unknown to most classrooms, that feeling of a friendly learning ambience, the kind unique to the supreme teaching style of benevolent, great instructors as he.  Verily, his good-natured mode of instructing the reader – which is not merely worth being applauded, but should furthermore serve as a role model to anyone in the teaching profession – leads to something quite special; the reader, or student, is no longer obliged to find the material painfully dry.  Instead, the topic is moistened and, consequently, allows to greatly improve the efficacy of the sieve that is our brain.  How cunningly executed, don’t you think?

I cannot choose but marvel at this monument of competence, rarely equalled in insight, never reached in didactic expertise, perfectly executed – even the cover design is only semi-horrid.  Undoubtedly, Stevey-Baby’s book is absolutely great, utterly amazing, just so super; the nonpareil, the unrivalled, surely the most marvellous book ever to be written – by him, on poetry.

Kleiner Nachtrag: 1,0 – Yeah!