NIX NIX NIX NIX, Friday 24.2.12 @100GRAD

A little shtick we're doing with another Berliner jew, on this weekend's "100 degree" festival. Featuring some song, dance, death, Wittgenstein and something white.

Death proofing me softly

Subi just saw "Death Proof" yesterday for the first time, so I had the joy of watching it again. I think it's the best thing madame Tarantino shot. The way it lifts you up at the end is exactly what I wanna figure out how to do with my own theatrical shit.

This scene for example is so amazing.

And here's a little shout out I found on Youtube to the editor (yet another proof to support the argument I'm sticking with for years already: the guy is a real feminist):

Meanwhile in NJ

Israel is experiencing the biggest civil protest in its history, and in Demarest NJ we fly plastic helicopters in the rain wearing high heels, getting tattooed and experiencing the suburban lives of proper New Jerseyian housewives. Here are some images from our lazy August in the united states of america, so far.

View from living room window

Pix from Levontin show

Some images Arale took at our gig in Levontin 7 this Wednesday

Mud wrestling action

Here are some pix that the talented Doro Tuch took at the mud wrestling that happened in the lunapark

Lunapark Berlin: the story in moving images

The crazy lunapark weekend is behind is and now we're already into new adventures. Here's some (pretty shitty, iphone quality) stuff from there that maybe give some notion of how it felt:

The frogs:


Maya's Dinosaur speakers:


Keren Hulahooping in the bushes:


Maya trying to make the train work after it broke down:


The last catastrophe clock:


People dancing around the burned out man:


I can also write a lot of words about what happened there, but I'm already late to the second day of the Casino project, which is the third project in this internship I'm doing here. So here's just some pix of the wonderful rainbow that came on the first day:

short visit to Londres

So we just got back from 4 adventurous days in Landan town, where we went to celebrate two occasions: Romm's Birthday and the last concert in Maya's series "Hit & Run" in Dalston's Experimental music venue Cafe Oto. The gig was a proper free-form impro featuring some musicians that Maya invited, including the sweet, brazilian born amsterdam based Saxophonist Yedo Gibson and my dear beloved friend Keren Rosenbaum, who just came back with Maya from Amsterdam where they performed Keren's new composition, as part of the Notations 21 festival, exhibition and book launch. Check it out:

At the Barbican, there is a historical, retrospective-ish exhibition featuring three pioneers of the NY 70's scene: Gordon Matta Clarck, Trisha Brown (they love her in London - last year there was a huge tribute in Dance Umbrella Festival - probably because the UK's dance scene is somewhat dull, not to say lame) and one of my all time favorites, Laurie Anderson. Some of the works that ms. Anderson made in the 70's remained beautifully relevant, and also some of them bear funny resemblance to stuff that Maya, Reshef and me did recently, when we worked on "Chikos" and "Friday". And actually this makes me think it's a good opportunity to put some of these stuff here in the blog.
So here is a short clip from Chikos:


And here's a little moment from Friday (also Spartacus Chetwynd's performance which I'm mentioning down here reminded me how much I actually enjoyed that thing we did last year in the CCA in Kalisher and made me realize we should definitely explore it more):

"The way you moved through me" is the text that Anderson assigned to the installation, which consists of a table that upon placing one's elbows on plays music through the wood up the hands to the ears

the schub listening to the table

And here is a later thing by Anderson, from her seminal "Home of the Brave" (1984):



Continuing the line of sound-art, one morning Dus showed me this amazing video:


Another dear friend I was very happy to meet again was the lovely James Unsworth, artist whose responsible, among many other scandals, to the initiation of the world's first Ninja Turtle Sex Museum:


James invited us to join him to the opening of Spartacus Chetwynd's exhibition @ Sadie Coles Gallery. Chetwynd makes very cool performances and this was definitely one of them. A clearly cool factor was the fact that the gallery's smoke detectives couldn't really deal with the smoke machines she brought in and the opening was accompanied by the alarm. This and the huge rubber slide you could use to get to the lower level were the highlights. And the free beer.

Here are images and vids from other performances by Chetwynd, made in recent years and selected randomly:

A Tax Haven Run by Women from Charlottenborg on Vimeo.

The BFI at Southbank is having a Russian season this year, and we were there as they screened Eisenstein's "The Old and The New", a very weird, almost surrealist in style and approach, epic about the collectivization and mechanization of agriculture in Russian Villages in the 1920's. Filmed in various villages around Moscow from 1927, the work on the film was interrupted when Eisenstein was called to shoot his well known "October" that marked the 10th anniversary of the revolution. Being aware of the new sound technologies introduced during the 20's talking era, Eisentsein wrote instructions to what he thought would be a suitable soundtrack for his film, but he couldn't find the funding to record this score. The BFI gave these instructions to two british composers and commissioned the score from them. So far so good, only thing that went wrong is that these guys are slightly too boring and their music was way behind of this exceptional film. Here you have the entire thing, next time you have free 120 min. I especially liked the bride-cow scene.


And here's just a nice pic, showing Romm, Omer and Iris performing their signature personas:



All in all it was fun, and it's also very nice to be back "home". Funny this word is.

Some more pix I like from the Warsaw album

the palace of culture