Today featured quite a huge second hand market in Gent. Though we didn’t end up buying anything, besides a CD in W.’s case, we spent about 2 hours looking at all the fabulous jumbles of junk covering an entire neighborhood in Gent. What I loved best were the juxtopositions of things, the lack of order and usefulness, the social function of the secondhand market (it doesn’t matter if you sell, it more the epxerience). It was what I imagined, but didn’t find, at the marche au puces in Paris, so I felt lucky to find this kind of ambiance in Gent.
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Begijnhof Brugges
The Begijnhof is a community of nuns living together cooperatively and the one in Brugges has been named a UNESCO world heritage site. The umbrella gives you and idea of the Belgian weather as W. and I explored Brugges tiny mideval streets and sights. It is breath takingly beautfiul, classic and interesting, but also overrun with tourists. Fortunately for us none of them seem to bother with the side streets and we spent an afternoon not only seeing the sights but taking in this town.
Detail at S.M.A.K.
A visit to S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst. Gent) proved a little disapointing and frustrating, with W. and A. informing me that many of the exhibitions had not changed since the last time they had been there several years ago and the focus being so much on really typical, if ai dare say, modern art. Personally the highlight was the Coming People exhibition, a show of student artwork picked from graduating students of Gent’s art schools. My favorite was Frauke Plaetevoet, pictured here, whose drawings and installations created a kind of fantastic vision that was also grounded in the real and used bic pens, 3-D installations and drawing on the wall. It was engaging and imaginative and I loved it.
Candles in the Canal, Gent
As a peace action and to remember the anniversary of the dropping ofthe atomic bomb on Nagasaki a group lit paper lanterns and floated them in the canal near the house. It seemed especially relevent given the war in Lebanon.
Gent at night
Gent at night is also amazing…
Gent Canal
Just to give you an idea of how beautiful the place where I am staying is, this is the canal and view about two blocks walk from W. and A.’s house.
Alexanderplatz
Leaving Berlin on the night train, a blurry dark shot of the TV antenna in Alexanderplatz. It is done up like a soccerball for the world cup.
Bionade
M. and G. aenjoy Bionade, our drink of choice in Berlin, at the V Cafe in Kreuzberg. It is fizzy, refreshing, organic and not too sugary I love the mod styled label design, though one would think it was English, not German. Maybe I can set up a Bionade import business?
General Idea Retrospective
At the Kunswerke, a really interesting center for modern and contemporary art, this Canadian artists collective had a retrospective. They also worked with ideas of design, art, media and life, but in a much, much different way than the Bauhaus. They designed publicity to call attention to AIDS (their most famous being the word AIDS in the style of Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture), staged a beauty pageant by mail and published an art magazine called FILE based on LIFE magazine. The best part was you could read photocopied versions of FILE and look at the originals in glass cases. Though it was a magazine, it seemed to have a zine ethic and even reviewed early fanzines, and I think for me it was quite an inspiration for riffRAG to see that…
Gorlitzer Park
In Kreuzberg, this park also seems to house an old train station and the these strange, modern ruins, where the city attempted to build some kind of fancy fountain and then gave up. It is quite sinister with the sky behind it I think and I think it is a really interesting concept for Berlin, modern ruins, history, how we deal with it, how we try to move forward and not cover up the past.
Killerfemme 