It's 9:50 am here. For some reason my schudule is flipped around so I'll go to bed in a few hours. Being left here in Weimar while the rest of my class is a week in Belgium, is kind of a bummer. Plus the 4 roommates thing is starting to get to me a little. It's strange. On the one hand I miss total privacy and on the other hand I'm terribly lonesome.
My neck is hurting from bending my head over the computer. I have two little knots from it. I ordered books for my students next semester. I haven't read them yet so it's risky. I did order them for myself though so I'll formulate some kind of learning plan.
I kind of like the learning system here, how they switch things up every week. Last week was pretty bad. It was a two day workshop from 9-6 with some stern woman named Suzi. She was the kind of teacher who ignores students when they raise their hands, unless they're the ass kissing students who repeat what she says but rephrase it slightly. I only made it to a few hours of that workshop, thank god! I did do the readings and they were fairly interesting. Suzi is a little to obsessed with Derrida. If a person just follows the theories of one person how are they ever going to create any original way of thinking?
This class I'm sitting in on is called art and commemoration. The other students are going to Leuven to make anti-nazi art but I'm supposed to make a project here in Weimar with an advanced undergradute student named, Anki. I should give here a call, see what she's thinking. I think I'm the wrong person to be making art about the holocaust but I can tell you the things I was thinking of this earlier evening/morning whatever.
First I looked up Buchenwald. It means Beerch wood. It was a concentration camp that starved and worked all these people to death . Its nearby here. When the American military came in 1945 they rounded up a thousand or so citizens of Weimar and made them tour Buchenwald while there were all these dead people laying around.
I guess one of the big concerns of this class is dealing with cultural memory. How are people going to remember the Holocaust once no one is around who actually witnessed it somehow? I've already formed some links in my mind that could connect southerners and germans. Here are two things they had in common.
1. some people were being tortured and murdered based on ethnicity
2. were defeated in war
Ok the situations were totally different but the time difference is what I'm interested in. The american civil war was in 1865. WWII was in 1945. Today it is 2005. No one in my family remembers the days of slavery. The only civil war story that has been passed through my family has absolutely no mention of slavery. [inlink]robin,314[/inlink] and I didn't learn about the history of lynching until I was in college in atlanta. Actually I learned about it from an art show at the contemporary. In the main room they had huge wall sized photographs of KKK member's heads in their masks. It was disturbing because you could see the details of these kkk guy's very human eyes, very clearly. Then I walked into the other room and it had all of these old lynching photographs. One of them was taken in the county I grew up in. I learned from this web site that it was a custom to take photos for postcards. This is the only hanging story i ever heard growing up [inlink]robin,60[/inlink]
Ok, So I just spent an hour or two searching for this show art show from atlanta that introduced me to the south's drawn out bloody history but I can't find jack shit. It's making me wonder if I'm crazy but no I've decided everyone else is. And so.......
My thoughts about this Weimar, Holocaust stuff at the moment are centering around this woman, "The Witch of Buchenwald" as she compares to this woman, "The White Witch of Rose Hall". Now this has got me thinking about the different representations of human torture and malice. If anyone reads this and has time to look at the links about these two woman maybe you could hit me up with some comments and tell me how you think they compare. If it were up to Suzi, the Derrida loving teacher, the White Witch wouldn't even exist because she isn't authenticated.

this is something adam sent out. It's a good idea for a non traditional costume

I so want to be leigh brasington,
he even has audio recordings.

GOOGLE-IT!

. . . . .


RECIPE FOR A GOOGLE™ PARTY
Adam Overton, April 2005
originally presented on ZBZZ.com by Aaron Spafford

A Google™ Party is a costume party where the attendees dress up like people that they've located while "Googling™" their own name.

. . .

Go to google.com (or any other reliable online search engine) and search for instances of your full name, using quotation marks to keep the correct order: "John Doe". You're looking for webpages that mention or talk about a different person who has the same (or a similar) name as you.

If searching for the full name doesn't work, try using variations like "Jon Doe", "Johnny Doe", "Jonathan Doe"

If you still can't find a match, don't complain or give up - start getting creative:

Try reversing the names: "Doe John"
Include or substitute your middle name: "John Kenny Doe", "Kenny Doe", "John Kenny"
Try other genders: "Jane Doe"
Try out nicknames you had or wished you'd had: "Cooter Doe"
Add, subtract, scramble or reverse letters: "Jhon Doh", "Don Joe"
Try single names: "John" or "Doe"
Try using initials: "J. Doe", "J.D."
Etc.

There is no excuse for coming up empty handed.

. . .

After searching for a bit, choose the alter-ego that seems most interesting and try to figure out how this person might dress. Always check first to see if you can find any pictures of the person -- perhaps you can emulate some facial or bodily features. If no pictures are to be found, then use the content on the site to figure out what type of person you're dealing with -- businessman, athlete, porn star, frat boy, cheerleader, church elder, etc. Especially keep your eyes peeled for clues that might indicate a time period or location, especially if your source is a news article, historical document or obituary.

Finally, dress to impress at your next Google™ Party and live it up as your alter-ego.

. . .

VARIATION 1
Instead of the party, go about some or all of your day as your googled alter-ego.

VARIATION 2
Instead of the party, do a performance as your googled alter-ego.

Robin: There is a definite distrust of the Federal Government today in
the US. But you need to remember that there was also a distrust of the
founding fathers during and after the revolution. When you really
think
about it, it is not a distrust of the government, but distrust between
the different social classes that comprise any society. In short, this
distrust is a problem that first started when man came down out of the
trees and will continue until man no longer inhabits this earth.
Culture dictates how man acts, not politics.

-my dad

and so...


founded on distrust?

Happy late birthdays, ladies.
So I've been reading a bit about lilho's birthday and i think I must have been getting some psychic vibrations which directed me to party because I had a wild night last Friday. Here is the story. An Italian woman named Naomi, who is in my class, came to my flat to pick me up. I had purchased a bottle of sekt, sparkling champagne like wine, and we proceeded to drink a few glasses. Then we went off to find out other classmates. Before we found the others we stopped off at the liquor store and purchase some grass vodka (at my suggestion). The we went to sam's, british dudes, and I had a beer while waiting for dušica, a serbian woman, and Nickol, a greek dude. Then we drank the bottle of grass vodka and walked to the club. At this point I was already quite intoxicated. Upon arrival at the club i ordered a glass of straight vodka, drank it, order another then another. I also was buying the bartender a drink along with mine just because sometimes I feel a bit weird about not tipping so free drinks makes up for it.
I was wasted. In the room were my friends were there was a 80's reminiscent, cure sounding band with a guy in red panties acting like he was going to strip on the stage. I got excited and unbuttoned my shirt to encourage the guy to go on and drop his pants. Eventually I crawled/fell up onto the stage to just tell the guy, "I really think you should drop your pants and lets have some public nudity." After that I went into the other room and passed out on a bench. dušica sat watching over me and stroking my head. dušica, sam and I left shortly later. dušica invited us to her house for some grub annd we sat and ate and she told us it was ok and we could sleep in her bed. so I passed out on the bottom of a dušica sandwich.
In the morning I woke up and sam and dušica were not there. I put on my jacket and looked around for my bra. After realizing that I must have lost my br at the club I stumbled into the kitchen and dušica's flatmate and her 3 month old baby were have some breakfast. there was also some asian dude there. I was all where am I? Where is dušica? I was informed that dušica was in the shower. I told her goodbye through the door and was on my way out. I stopped by the store to get some water and an orange and I ran into sam. I told him I lost my bra and he was all, ha ha ha that's brilliant. Then I went back to my house where I realized that my night of excessive drinking had left me with some unsightly marks (perhaps from my glorious stumble up on the stage at the club.) I told my flatmates about my wild night and they were laughing and started telling their own old drinking memories in German. I went and passed out again.

The end

Oh a serious note, because I do take myself so very seriously, school here is kind of interesting. Reminds me allot of the work of Arzu and Perini. People are cool and I make a presentation in the morning of my video installation work.

so my computer is about to cut off not much time....

Last week I became very frustrated with this paper work visa crap so i stopped everything and went and got a bottle of jack and went home and drank it. I later found some video which incidentally, I don't remember shooting.









Later i went to Berlin and met my friend Bjorn and we hung out at some painters studio. Some crazy woman stopped in and smoked hash with us all night.









another day i was lounging by the riverside with my eyes closed and I felt something bite my bare foot. I jumped up and saw a rat in the water who quickly scurried out. I think that it fell out of the tree onto me.



I stayed in a youth hostel and there were always school kids on the corner in the day.



I finally got tired out and returned to my sweet home in weimar.











one thing i've learned is to stop shooting video when i am all blow.