Oy. Saturday morning. Sorry I fell off. Busy final week, meeting blokes about the town, a couple mandates, an all-night film-scanning session, dinner with the Drillers in Dortmund, a 90-minute presentation on the evolution of consumption and the rise and fall of the shopping mall. Just reserved a cheap hotel room in who-knows-where Heerlen in the Netherlands, and about to scram for a couple days of cycling in the Benelux bloc. Weather's great, happy to be headed ahead, Berlin soon and Brooklyn after. So... probably will squeeze one more update in here in a few days.

All are good? Holler.

In the home stretch, and so time contracts. Above is the giant photograph I worked on (scouted for, retouched, stitched, visited at the lab while growing from infancy to obesity) and hung on Thursday in a trendy Dusseldorf restaurant opening in August. Major flair that night. After hanging the sucker, went to the restaurant owner's main spot, Monkey's Island-- a sort of fine dining affair on a micro-peninsula in the city's main harbor, complete with sandy beach, lounge chairs, and trip-hop outside. A perfect comedy for a city that gets as much sun as a closet. En route, hit a car in slo-mo fashion and forestalled what wound up being a meal of major extravagance (at least considering my typical pauper's diet...).

Spent Saturday in the company of Mr. Eduard Zapp, the boyfriend of studio queen Katharina at his miniature manor outside of the city in Ratingen. Had a lovely day strolling about, and nice to be in the company of somewhat both very intelligent and opinionated (and with good english); have had a major lack of people with this golden combination. He's preparing to write a text on philosophy of economies and a duo of other econ-literature. Also has two stunning Thomas Ruff photographs in his small abode that dominate kitchen and living room as nicely as you could imagine. Ate wild amounts of watermelon and made a portrait before coming home at night.

I've been cycling a lot in prep for a bike trip next week, and today made a longer tour to see how I'd fare on the stiff aluminum steed, sans bike shorts and gloves, clipless shoes, and whatnot. Packed the bag I'll be riding with and, a little arbitrarily, decided to make my way to the small city of Venlo in the Netherlands. Smooth enough, with a few major circles of confusion. Right across the German border, no one could tell me how to find Venlo when only 10 km away. The bike path signs vanished into thin air (they're pretty useless anyways), and after cutting across an endless farm and arriving at the same phantom factory I passed twenty minutes before, ocntinued to ask. Hungry and feeling a little exhaustion, finally got double confirmation on my plea to 'point towards Venlo,' found my own path through the city south of it, Tegelen.

Funny, but as soon as you get into the Netherlands, there's a friendlier and more unusual beat-- you see it in the houses, the insanely generous bicycle paths everywhere, and the people themselves. Had a weary pizza in Venlo, my mom calling as soon as I got off the bike. Though the city has a stretch of bars and stores (closed today), it had a real feeling of depression when I biked beyond along the small river Venlo lies on. Heckled by a trio of overweight teenagers on scooters, which is always fun.

Anyways-- four hours and change on the bike and weary but still spinning, so will take this as a good sign for next weekend's adventure. Changing original plans and think I'll leave from here to Maastricht, then on to Spa, Belgium (home of both the first spa and first casino), and then to Luxembourg before catching a night train back home for my last night in Dusseldorf.

Must eat more. Ciao.

A few interesting things happened today. Most immediate, nationally glorious, and therefore worthy of mention is Germany's football game against Poland-- an incomparable national rivalry, any way you spike it, wrought with history-- that seemed to be bound to a 0-0 tie. A couple of extra minutes are granted by the referees to make up for pauses during fouls, corner kicks, off-sides negotiations, etc., so in minute 91-- less than two minutes from the end of the game-- Germany decided, with final victory, to seal the deal with a goal. Immediate glory. The streets in the last five minutes have begun to sound off. An apartment two doors down from mine is throwing cheap fireworks-- cherry bombs, for the most part-- down at passing cars. A bottle rocket slammed into the roof of a parked hatchback. Hey, Deutschland.

Spent my afternoon and evening with Barbara & Oliver, an artist-couple/ couple-friend of Thomas at their apartment/studio where they're preparing their first catalogue/monograph. In spite of all these slashes, their work is extremely decided, in the three-dimensional rendering camp, pressed into two-dimensional images, legible in the language of photography, but absent of photography's arbitrary import, as everything is textured, lit, designed, and conceived by the computer. It is their savage and strong pursuit to earn respect in light of this, and with me, they succeed. Taught by Gerhard Richter, in some act of rebellion against their education and institution, they destroyed their drawings and paintings as they began their devotedly digital creation. Completely thought-through work has a very strong impact: if you disagree with the aesthetic, the colors, the content, the details, or the supporting story, there is a logic within that stands strong. They're totally cool and very kind and a good time to boot. You can see them in a picture a couple feet below (on the couch). Noticing their CD collection, with every Boards of Canada album in existence-- save for the new one-- I brought them Campfire Headphase to surprise and delight.

Also: the plan to rent a car to get to Berlin with all my shit changed today when I was incidentally hired as a courier of a highly valuable, highly sensitive, small and delicately lacquered/finished/gilded sculpture, that, as I understand it, will be delivered to me whenever I want to drive to Berlin, leaving Dusseldorf. Fee=costs, more or less, so a free trip, with car, bike, personalia, artwork, music, ten kilos of uncut hashish, six prostitutes, and four endangered chimpanzees will make me a millionaire--in Euros-- upon return. Celebration is no longer just a Disney town in Florida.

In the spirit of creativity with slight self-mockery, posting a link to a video I made over the weekend. Had intended to borrow one of the studio cameras that sits like a puppy at the pound to make a series of brief clips and iMovie them together for Alex, showing her where I live and taking her on one of my normal bike routes. Nothing worked out in the shooting: in the first shot (the music describes it best), I break the curtain rod in shooting for a cinematic opener. Halfway through the bike ride (and a quarter-way through the tour), the battery dies. What remains is its own artifact. Five and a half minutes, but should be a pretty quick download.

Option + click here.

{above: ceiling of the Cologne train station. The players are3x life size}

American presence abroad now has a new, benign, medium for embarassment. The United States, in a face off against the Czech Republic, was annihilated (3-0) in what is universally recognized to be the biggest thwomping of the World Cup so far. Manager Bruce Arena insulted everyone on the team but the captain. More interesting and obscure is the resignation of Togo's coach--who is German-- after his team was getting bitchy for the low payout in the games (so I hear). But (!) he's back today, having had a few nights to think about it. I know nothing about the warmth of his reception, but am thrilled to be far from any games myself.

Still, tomorrow, will venture into the belly of it all for Dortmund's powerhouse matchup: Poland versus Germany. In the tradition of forecasting tragedy before it strikes, I say Poland gets conquered (again), and personally, to be knifed, punched, and possibly, vomited on. Big Polish presence in the area, and psyched to feel the craze in this weird-o arena adjacent to the monstrous stadium. expect a late-night report tomorrow.

Nice sweaty day. Only work task was removing a dozen loads of cardboard, slicing it up, and teaching Katharina the intricacies of iTunes. The rest of the day spent sweltering on the bicycle, and finishing J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, which is absolute intoxication and difficulty. Another majestic curry for dinner (cooling by my side) and time between the cracks evaporates.

For those interested: July 4th now the day my of departure and return.

Sleeping off the defeat... eighteen hours after the fact.

A real spree today. Went for a ride through these intense hill-side farms outside of Dusseldorf, squeezing breaks on crumbling country roads, then spinning in high gear to make it up wild switchbacks. Wheat and manure in the air on the hottest day in Deutschland this year.

Came back and ran to the train station to catch a trip to Dortmund to take pictures of the scenario outside the Sweden vs. Trinidad game. Pure insanity. Sweaty train without circulation, and a thick stew of world cup in the air. Talked to a backup singer/comedian/performer lady from Pittsburgh, but living in Duisburg (near Dusseldurf) for thirteen years. Her makeup was running down her sideburns on the train. Another girl with a student pass comped my ticket when the conductor came to collect. On the tram from the Dortmund station to the arena, a dozen Trinidad fans were beating all surfaces and singing bad sports themes. A pack of Swedes boarded and mooed from the other side of the car. It was like everyone was drugged.

The situation was fucking major. No room to be without a ticket, and the Dortmund arena holding a colossal 86,000 people, the mass was surreal. the game was projected in a 15,000 person concert hall next to the stadium for free, where I hung out and exercised my right to not drink ten-dollar "Anheuser Busch Bud." funny things to link to here, but too exchausted now to pull them up. A generally wild time, and terrible pictures to show for it. A far cry from last night's contained sausage-and-beer fest during the opening night of the games, with Germany slaying Costa Rica 4-2 and then Poland botching their game with Ecuador, 0-2. The Nurnberger Wurst has my heart for sure.

Will give it another whirl tomorrow in Cologne, with Angola against Portugal. Hope there's a little more life outside the stadium there-- almost no extraennous distractions today, with two people selling pretzels and a couple poorly placed souvenir stands. Odd, considering the deluge of people.

Have to collapse; moving a forest of stuff out of the studio on Friday and then watching fussball with countless beers and then cranking the dial to eleven tonight has me completely shot. Will get a few good links up soon, though.

Homies from left to right: Oliver, Barbara, Thomas, Tara, Carolina

The past few weeks have brought me a bit closer to bubble wrap, and today gave me the chance to spend five hours with industrial-sized cling-wrap, wrapping an endless parade of large print boxes for their journey tomorrow (yesterday's transport of all of TS' negatives to a bank vault was a bit cooler). It sucks, really. Extra long days of being a photo-grunt, for which Thomas is not around at all; there is the slight tone of the underlings grinding away while the emperor is at play. We have a forest of packed boxes, catacombs of bubble-wrapped pillars and planes, a veritable parking lot of 20x24 print holders in semi-transparent plastic. Happy as hell they're out of the building tomorrow, having been at chipping away at the mountainside for three weeks now.

Have been a bit off-kilter, trying to tape down my final weeks here and also get some fun in. Just came off an 18-day rain streak, so to have a little sun these last couple days is nice, though leaving work after hours also means ready-made nourishment.

The plan, as it stands: two more weeks of work. With Thomas at the Basel art fair for most of next week, it should be breezy and hopefully time to make pictures-- it's been too long. The first world cup game is tomorrow (Germany vs. Costa Rica) and after that, games every day or two somewhere in the country. The hysteria is palpable. People cannot help but talk about it. In the meat window at my grocery market, there is a small diorama with a soccer field. Nutella is sold many places exclusively in 500-gram plastic footballs. Klaus, who by law cooks his own meals, told me yesterday in a grave tone: "nothing for the next month besides currywurst and beer." Hello blood sugar. I'd like you to meet cholesterol.

Rubbing my eyes maniacally from the cotton/pollen blend that floats through the air of the Rheinland countryside. No clue where it comes from-- I never see it growing on plants-- but tonight, it was really airborne and in attack-mode. Swaths of puffy white lined the gutters along the river; it hangs in the air like algea in the ocean, blowing with the current and sticking to eyeballs nationwide. The insects also completely, utterly out of control. Pretty it is, but a bit rustic for someone missing the dirty charms of the city so much.

Still to do: make a portrait of TS, plan an after-work weekend ride, loiter in the worldcup parking lots, research flying with bicycles and buy a 'bike box', meet Andreas of wp8 to check out his studio, rent a car and get to berlin for a fever of social fun before flying back.

Actually with good reports. Culinary victories. Hip-hop shows. All-nighter, editing a pseudo-music-video postcard. Just now held down a restaurant until chairs up with Thomas and Tara, though, and getting up in six hours to drive to buy rolls and then drive to Antwerp for a long portrait day. A weekend almost entirely, it seemed, of curry, coffee, and computer time, and a treat.

Just booked my ticket home for July 5th, and so will see some of you in Germany before then, others in the motherland shortly after.

I've had a couple of Saturdays today. Woke up, read the news, was succumbed by slumber. At eleven thirty, remembered my intentions of going to a neo-nazi rally at noon to take photographs of punks. In similar news, but for intents and purposes unrelated, I shaved my head yesterday, seizing a long-standing desire and trying to keep pace with Alex, who got a fabulous and dramatic re-do recently.

Anyways. Late to the skinhead march. Silly me. In probably a positive karmic twist, got stuck in a an anti-nazi demonstration-- one of four in Dusseldorf today (this is, I've been told, quite normal). The group is mainly young, punky-looking kids with Rebellion written all about their torn stockings, and their intention, which I think (I think) is awesome, is to beat the crap out of nazis. A whole mess of folk, myself included, got wrangled by the Polizei in typical crowd-control fashion, so a few hours spent looking around and wasting film. Nazis no where to be found. But a group of people that in America, might have been indistinguishable, climbing up lightposts and tossing bottles as aggressive cops prepared. General sense of tenseness, with ominous pops and shatters nearby...

In the last few days, have asked all kinds of people about the demonstrations, the neo-nazi movement and how recognized it is (bigger in the east, and growing in presence on the whole). The general platform, I think, is protectionism; "jobs for germans" and the like. Everyone I've spoken to has expressed confoundment for their ideology, and everyone has described them, to varying extremity depending on their English, as very, very stupid. Germany's greater hope, I think, is for the idiots, then, to get the thrash out of their system right before the World Cup begins.

In World Cup news (I'm going to wander), dozens of British police will be in Germany with the task of arresting wankers (British ones) and sending them back to the U.K. Very funny article about keeping the Brits in line during the games, and their tried-and-true/low-brow mockery maneuvers here.

Escaped Police detention at some point and felt it was time for a nap. Poor Alex is sick and sounds like a two-hundred-and-fifty year-old cigar smoker. Someone send her love. Went for a really long warm and balmy bike ride in the country and had a great time of it. All the odd paved paths through random farm fields that connect and don't connect, dung-dodging, highway-ramp entering, BMW-honking, middle-finger-waving, and end-game exhaustion. Everything from here on full of much more contentment. Made a great dinner and sitting here drinking beer from a glass. All class.

More words tomorrow. On food. And thanks, everyone, for writing in with your opinions on Iran. And when I say everyone, I mean absolutely none of you.

ps. saw baby goats and pigs today. Want two of each. One as pet, one for, well, you know. Bacon.

Something like a snow day, with Katharina ill and Thomas in Berlin. Just about perfect weather for snow here (at least we reached sleet yesterday here in arctic East Germany), so though they imagine me out making art, I suspect it's more of a book + coffffffee day.

Have to go into political-blog mode for a moment and seek wide counsel, because I'm a little perplexed at this moment. On the subject of Iran:

America's newest position is that we will talk to Iran if they immediately arrest their uranium enrichment. A few things strike me about this off-beat decree.

1. Gasp. There is an air of astonishment that seems totally lame. Isn't this like America out on the world playground, bragging about being mature third-graders? Willing to Talk It Over instead of just ruining their sand castle?

2. We will talk to Iran, but will we talk with them, as well? If we have no bargaining room-- no concessions to make beyond agreeing to talk-- is there any use to conversation? Or is this just a sort of third-rate mirage packaged as diplomacy? "conversation" an accurate term if America is completely inflexible?

3. Condi Rice says we're only willing to talk if Iran quits all uranium work. My thoughts dangle here; this is no stick and carrot or package of incentives. All America wants is for Iran to stop enriching uranium. If they stop, we no longer have anything to talk about. That seems to be the only topic for discussion. Maybe she means that if they stop, we'll open our dignitary hearts and say "thank you."

I want opinions here-- am I misreading this? Or just reading beyond the skimpily veiled politik-speak?

My recent spark of curiosity from today's NY Times article, which, just reading through to post the link, includes this completely outlandish quote from Chief Bush:

"I thought it was important for the United States to take the lead, along with our partners, and that's what you're seeing. You're seeing robust diplomacy."

Monday night at midnight, I got hold of man-with-gigantic-inkjet, Kay, and rocketed down to his century-old factury-turned home to hire him, instead of my lab (which he coincidentally lives next to), to print a big, big picture. Can't imagine where the compulsion to make such a mighty photograph grows from...

Felt like king and party promoter of Dusseldorf last night, going from work to home, preparing a project I put up at the club, biking back to Kay's with a four-foot poster tube in one arm, and on to WP8. Andreas-- one of a few heros for the evening-- helped me put the print up, a triptych I'm quite fond of (and unsure of whether I'll transport back to America).

The rush began with Carolina, who I work with at the studio. Next came Ineke, Heiko, Mike from Dortmund. No pause before Mareike and Basti and a small troupe arrived from Berlin by way of a nearby wedding. Katharina and her boyfriend, Edouard, and Tara also strolled in, splicing my attention between hugs, playlists, and attempts to keep track of my beer. Totally surreal; my full-court Germanic entourage holding it down at WP8, making it also outlandishly busy. For all who were there, you rock, and you rock some more. I'm sorry my attention was split in so many directions.

Would like to think music was good; I, at least, was as happy as I could've been, making small sprints back and forth to the bar to adjust the course. Also had to make a midnight full-throttle sprint home to get my power cord, expertly left behind while the faulty battery meter sagged into the red zone. Classic.

As the good folk emptied out, I was handling the bar and music from about two until five, with the real lunatics and desperate folk of wp8 losing their minds (though not their power cords, or beers, or hashish) in front of me. An easy, smokey, sort of apalling scene, but so pleased to be at its helm, as much as anyone could be. Terrible party pics will follow, I suppose. Had a half-day today at work, with Thomas in Berlin and Katharina, feeling the night weigh on her a little, I think, leaving early. Celebrated in solitude tonight with a slamming cheese burger.

Repeated love to all the brave who ventured out last night. You make me the happiest of campers.

Alex's graduation today.

Me? I'm just pleased to have a new hat. Tore about new territories south of the city today, and spent the night in the studio getting things together for music night on Tuesday at wp8. Excited about this, though the prez of the club, Kay, hasn't returned my email about printing a 2 x 5 foot photograph for it, so fearing that a (major) part of my master plan is about to go pear-shaped.

Reading Waiting for the Barbarians, furiously, courtesy of Tobias, and new George Saunders stories thanks to my ma. Wonderful, and feeling my brain thaw. The German hasn't really infiltrated so much as turn my linguistic lobe into a tundra.

Braving the wilds of the residence permit office tomorrow. So I hear, the time to apply was during my first week. Alas. If I can't make magic happen, then I must return by my 90th day, which will put me back in the states three weeks from tonight. If granted a pseudo-visa, will be back in five or so. Besos.

Great few days, creative and bustling. Thursday was a holiday, and so went out with Katharina and her crew to a what must be Dusseldorf's coolest nightspot, Salon Des Amateurs. On the corner at ground level at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, it was opened as an extension of art and architecture student life; a former museum coatroom-turned-club. Good lighting, music, bar, with bartenders toying with vinyl between making drinks. K's friends decided at some point that it would be my night. So to another bar. Compelled to have a "stresse trink." Learned very shortly after it was tequila and tabasco. Ha-ha on America, via torture of her fine imported art interns. They felt bad shortly after and took me to a mega-divey 80s party for fifteen minutes and then STONE, a punk rock night club, where a dj plays all the stuff I listened to at fifteen or would be listening to now were I that age. Funny to see this kind of rock-posturing amongst the late-night sweaty youth of the city, celebrating the midweek bubble in responsibility. Left and consumed a giant cone of pommes frites.

Showed photographs to Thomas on Friday, so spent thursday morning and night in the studio alone, scanning film, retouching, drinking cafe americanos and Kolsch. The exit from the kindergarten, super-late-night, as I may have mentioned, is shockingly scary.

Magnificent brother and mother sent books and movies, so have a cureall for the now week of intense rain. Art openings last night, including a young photographer's from Brooklyn named Ted Partin who I spoke to for a while. Planned the Tuesday night of music and very low-level mayhen at WP8 and got schooled at "flipper" (what they call foosball which, to Germans, is an abasement, meaning to them "soccer." What kind of American pansies confuse flipper for football?). More studio time today making small inkjet prints of portraits I've taken, and will get some of those up online soon.

A kiss while everyone's looking to Alex, who, though she's been done with schooling for four months, seals the deal tomorrow morning. Send her love.

A rainy walk to the butcher.

Butcher Man, please give me a kasebrotchen, and throw in some schinken.
The butcher’s sandwiches are fundamentalist. If you don’t ask for ham, you get cheese, on a roll, with lumpy butter. Unthinkable in America (ie. “where’s the beef?”). So I ask for ham, which is weighed by the slice and egregiously, folded into quarters, and wedged in the sandwich. By layers, we now have bread/butter/cheese/ham/butter/bread. Not bad; now we’re on our way to a recognizable lunch.

I eat beneath the awning, staring at the meats in the window. Links and loafs, mostly. The loafs are really spectacular; meat parts and olive bits and clove splinters and whatnot all suspended in gelatin. Matt Barney-ish, completely, missing only Vaseline as condiment.

After a few bites, a phrase comes to mind and that phrase is “so much cheese I don’t know what to do with myself.” There’s a profundity to it, though. I’m on the sidewalk; it’s cold and rainy; I’m not about to dive in with fingers and dismember the obese wedge of gouda, tackling the grease and butter while protecting the costly slice of swine. Neither the time nor place for medieval surgery.

Still, the cheese has caught me off-guard. There’s just so much of it. In its bounty, I’ve lost my train of thought, my orientation. I was considering getting a beer to wash down the butter. No longer. A night time gallery opening, the Lilliputian kindergarten umbrella on my wrist, a meeting with Thomas in half an hour—these thoughts are obliterated. I’m stuck with the phrase in my brain, turning it over and over, creamily, churning, rolling with my canines. I’m lost. I just don’t know what to do.

Time passes, and as often as not, doing nothing is its own decision. The kasebrotchen mit schinken is a small affair, and ends shortly after its beginning. I walk back to the studio. It is torrential. Tone hand holds an umbrella so tiny that only one shoulder can stay dry at a time. The other reaches into a jacket pocket, occasionally pulling out a greasy meatball and popping it in my mouth, like a true suburban creep wandering the street. Perhaps the umbrella is saying “so much boy, I just [whimper], I just don’t know how to proceed…”.

Like a batterized bunny, my heart beats strong after a seven-hour overnight train followed by the immediate all-day organization of twenty-five hundred slides. Espresso was involved.

Sorry for the disappearance of regular posting. Faithful follower, I hope you hope it was for the presence of good times, that you were not wishing our hero conflict or catastrophe. I trust you hold me in higher regard than, say, O.J. Simpson.

Had a happening week, though. Dismembered an aging but triumphant and history-laden darkroom and saw (large) hard copies of works I've retouched. Advances made toward the studio acquisition-- negotiations, contracts, sketches on the space. Things get especially saucy on Thursday, when, after helping clear out the royal wine cellar and rewarded with two magnificent bottles of old Bordeaux, Thomas asks if I'd like to visit his wine rep with him. This lines up perfectly with an overnight train to Berlin. My "yes" is followed with harsh reviews of my driving to Duisburg (mainly on my miscomprehension of our robotic female german-speaking navigational device), Thomas slashing his finger on a plastic bottle of mineral water, and a general spirit of un-ease in the automobile. Until we get there, of course, and enjoy a two-hundred euro bottle of 1995 Pomerol Bourdeaux. The next is better. The third, which the wine-man insists, as a prime specimen of Merlot, the grape of sexiness and seduction, is a flop to me, but still in the colossally-costly region of flop. As impressive as wine, to me, has ever been.

I hustled to the station and had a grisly overnight journey. Six in the sardine can and everyone seated upright, a sweaty mess. I got to Berlin at 5:30 and staggered to lovely Conni's apartment, where key and note layed a-waiting.

Friday was the double-birthday for Conni and Kaitlin, who live in seperate apartments within the same building. A divey spot down the road called Erk's, family-run and a bit thug-like covered their pool table to make room for our buffet, the music thumped with an evil and counterproductive level of bass, and by three, the Americans in the room were en route to a notorious and motown-sporting Kaffee Burger, where the evening continued to unravel. A sunrise doner kebab and cab home and the affair was complete.

Saturday and Sunday were rainy and with little solid story to be recalled; mostly kind hours in the kitchen, cooking and enjoying some newly-acquired wine. The 1995 Chateau Lafleur-Gazin was unusually calm sea in the generally wilder oceans of Pomerol, but what is given is received with grace and pleasure, and a sexy slice of St. Nectaire. Nice to have a sprinkling of wining while dining amidst my recent desert of crappy sandwiches. Chicken wings headlined last night with immediate after-dinner departure. Spoke to a Jehova's Witness for almost an hour about his recent travels and service in Ecuador; I was initially befuddled by his earnestness, and then quite intrigued by his religious excursion. Some form of well-stretched physique helped bring me to work this morning intact, with only a wisp of shabbiness. Will end here, and address the $180 that Verizon, between colluding with disparate branches of U.S. Intelligence, has managed to charge me since being away-- without a cell phone.

Also, coming home in a bit over a month. Unless I can't get a visa. In which case I'll be back on day # 90, June 18th, my final as a legitamate tourist. Regardless, say hello. Any thoughts on B. Spears, exiting from the Ritz, carrying her drink and her baby, and dropping the baby?

I have just learned that Mareike's father, Klaus, is an avid reader of my, if you will, "volksliteratur." Formally, then: Let's barbecue, Klaus. You've got the keg and I can make an aggressive American cheeseburger that'll pair nicely with the Brinckhoff's (which I suspect you've vanquished since Easter...). (An aside: I make aggressive cheeseburgers about once every four days here in Deutschland.)

At any rate. Soggy Sunday. Everybody call your mother. Unless you're a mother-- in which case, wait patiently by the phone and act like you weren't expecting the call.

Mutterstag, as it is called in Germany, was a non-event in the public forum today-- a rain out. Like a true nerd, sat in the hip(ish) Loffel bar eating soup for lunch with a camera, reading Sontag's On Photography, which grows more joyful as it goes on. New music, a bike ride, and yet still an ephemeral sense of tedium. When I left the apartment for the first time today, I followed the marching band music around the corner to a music school tent. For half an hour, I listened to 15-piece jazz band slog through renditions of seventies hits. Der Beatles! Der Beegees! KC und der Sunshine Band! Duke Ellington (an anomaly)! Cute and completely awful. The conductor had some real flair to him, though.

The weekend dissolved before me. No groceries. Two pizzas. Two baths. Two bike rides. Two generations of Krupnick matriarchs spoken to. Two meals of toasted bread with nutella and pflaumenmusse, the magnificent plum jam I'll bring back as much of as can be smuggled past Mr. Customs Man. Monday, often considered a terrible way to spend a seventh of your life, is also the event that keeps a lame weekend from becoming endless. Actually, that's bullshit-- there's always Tuesday.

A day of recuperation after a long day and night. Met with Thomas yesterday to speak about the photographs I've made in Dusseldorf, and we spoke for two hours, going through what I'd assembled. His company was really impressive, with enormous consideration and careful reading and big opinions. Great to hear someone speak with a fluency and understanding that's critical, expansive, historical, and joyful-- and directed at my pictures. Thomas believes in the importance of representing one's roots, origins, orientations. A photograph that reminded him of a Cy Twombly scribble led him on a mirthful tangent on the creation of work that in content or form or "style" resembles someone else's work. In his eyes, this shouldn't be demonized at all-- you are creating something someone else has, and are so learning the excitement they felt. It's simply necessary to find a way to let the spark fizzle and walk on. Awesome afternoon, and good to get schooled a bit. Not so many people in the pictures, and I've been asked to make five personal portraits over the weekend.

Last night, a miserable set of art films at WP8, a reign on the foosball table, assorted social oddities late into the night. Planning on Berlin next weekend, and a day-trip to Antwerp soon with T. Struth for making a commissioned portrait of a fashion designer.

Packing the studio is an infuriating dance in the bureaucratic mentality of my co-workers. Something like their minds at work conceiving of the move and my slow pacing back and forth from bubble-wrap spindle to inventory sheet to spreadsheet to tape dispenser. What could be a two-day all-out packing job has been penciled to extend for the coming month.

The on/off rain a bit of a downer today, and have spent it thus far cleaning, reading, writing, cooking. All out domesticity. And you? What are you doing?

President Ahmadinejad's letter to the American president is exciting condemnation of American power and international behavior. Feeling confused and on the verge of being bamboozled, Bush won't listen, but should.

Last night was a late one at wp8 after dinner with the work fellows. I asked about playing some part in the space's fate for a night. Immediate confirmation. Tuesday, May 30th, the club is mine for the night. Not what I expected. I need to provide a bartender (partly me, I suppose), though it's not clear I need to charge anyone for drinks. Will play music, and told to make it happen from ten until six am. If you are in Dusseldorf or could be persuaded to be, you have all my love if you show up. Get ahold of me and I'll tell you more. Good and strange time guaranteed.

Packing the studio a bit for the day, and the whole thing felt like an extended and nasty yawn. At night, went to an opening of ten small-press art books designed by a printer in Zurich. Ran into two artists who are friends of Thomas, and spent an hour talking with them before heading home; they make three-dimensional art that gets rendered and printed two-dimensionally, were taught by G. Richter, and denouncing hand-made works, burnt all their drawings. Hope to learn more, having met them a bunch by now, and they said I should come to the studio soon, joking how the "you should come by" offer in America is a perfunctory mandate, but for Germans, if offered, it's a solid invitation.

Should bed myself now and resist the tendency to grind on ceaselessly into the night. Be well, y'all.

Had a real weekend in my own town. Kaitlin made the magnanimous hajj to Dusseldorf at a good time in the season: the rain has paused, and been replaced for the last few days with warm, muggy air. Friday night we went hung out on the river in altstadt and at night to wp8 and heard good music. Free drinks at the art bar. Would have been Part Of The Master Plan, but mission accomplished before objectives realized.

Saturday, we made a tour of the extended area, riding up to the sleepy castle-town Kaiserswerth and came down along the river, through the ports, and around back up to the apartment. With Klaus in Miami, the freedom to trash things a wee bit is great. Idiosyncratic organization, perhaps, better terminology. Dinner of great American cheese burger on triangular bun, cumin fries (this most kingly of spices, I think, was the real winner from Alex's care package that has now been mostly vanquished), butterscotch pudding. We proceeded to the Nacht der Museen, at a big retrospective/homage to Vivienne Westwood. Outside were two projects with video and good beats thrown up giant-sized on the front of the museum, with an unusual and upscale impromptu lounge setting. Teak beach chairs, electronic music, affordable prosecco, etc. The city really representing. Went from there to K21, now mentioned many a-time, where I've done a good bit of work and helped to get Thomas' show up. Cool pieces of stars I haven't seen by Thomas Ruff, the professor of photography at Kunstakadamie Dusseldorf, and former student along with Mr. Struth. Good blast and sense of urban camaradarie totally foreign to the town, methinks.

Kaitlin had to head back to plan Fulbright class lessons early in the a.m., so I spent the morning stuck in the people-moving muck of the Dusseldorf Marathon. Am now a puddle of goo, inspired roughly by so many sweaty post-race Germans slugging gigantic non-alcoholic wheat beers that I went for a big ride myself. Am now a puddle of goo following a three-hour ride around the area, two of which spent around (former?) steel manufactury, half a sense of direction but having already run through my food and water. Haggard for the last leg, and now rather euphoric, a stone-washed denim of a man. This is it for now.

If you haven't (most of you haven't), click here, then on the left, go for Christopher Morris (a photographer on the Bush beat for many years) and look at "A Private View of Geogre Bush." A real jewel.

A new studio is found. In a building with a cool logo and the word BAGEL written all over it, official like. We're set.

Kaitlin coming from Berlin tomorrow for gallavanting round the dorf by bicyclette. I hung out tonight around the altstadt, which is not so quaint as it is a teeming sidewalk cafe on the Rhein which is, I remind, wide but disgusting. Thousands of people walking around with beers in the hazy sun, t-shirted, ignoring the man who fell down the central steps, cracked his head and was in quite unsightly shape on a stretcher. No one's asking him if he's got health insurance, though.

I made that all-too-rare mistake of thinking it was Wednesday instead of Thursday today. A truly tremendous realization this is. So Thursday, as it were, began with a great bike ride along the river in the morning, eating insects larger than should be eaten by nasty accident with a two-minute pause to eye the landscape and take a seat up in the beautified hamlet of Kaiserswerth about ten klicks north. Leaving a workday of heavy work in prep for Basel, found that it was only my bike that got shat on this time. Thanks, birds.

Should be cleaning my quarters instead of personal computing. Klaus, at his desk behind me, continuing with his preparation for visiting his lover, Bjorn, in Miami tomorrow. Now, this means coin separation. An hour ago, it was lint-rolling the interior of his suitcase. Yesterday, it was packing the suitcase. Ergo, at some point between then and now, he must have activated the fear of having a linty suitcase, and then decided to pursue the grooming of it. Seems like a real hassle. While his presence is hardly noticed, his absence will be greatly appreciated.

A really wonderful few days I'm just exiting from. At some point about a month ago, I went to a good apartment party in Dortmund and met all kinds of good people-- furniture makers and djs and a guy who had turned his mountain-climbing gear and a trip to Colorado into a totally lucrative business with four employees at the age of 22 before returning to Germany. Chronicled about eight feet below, I'm guessing. Anyway, the man responsible for the music was a right bloke and I liked what he presented to the people. On Sunday night, him and two friends rented a club in the city-- a pretty easy thing to do-- and held it down for a couple hundred in two rooms of a great, inconceivably smoky little place. Managed to see a pretty good number of people I more or less know, and to have good music in a room with ten people you can stop in and have a snip of conversation with felt pretty right on. Spent the morning (5-6 am) wandering about the city, slowly draining my confidence that I knew the way back to my friend Ineke's apt. All kinds of drugged zombies staggering about Dortmund-- there was an enormous all-night techno party in celebration of May Day-- and though not a soul could direct me towards my makeshift and distant bed, I helped easily a dozen young fuckups find the train station. Not the way it was meant to be. The wander ended at a gas station along something like a highway, asking the attendant to call me a cab. Huzzah.

Sleep didn't happen so much, and I got up at eleven to get back to Dusseldorf-- about a 90-minute trip on the local-- and recouped for the May Day (essentially worker's day) party at T. Struth's. Much more a five-star affair. The evergreen intern, I was asked over to help with knives, graters, mandolines. Tools that might cause you to lose a digit at the knuckle. I brought pumpkin bread, courtesy of the greatest international care package imaginable from Alex a few weeks ago (butterscotch pudding, girlscout Samoas, pumpkin bread mix, music, a cigar box, etc.; ie. total necessities.). Had my first experience opening a case of wine, which happened to be an insanely delicious French wine from '96. Cooked by five and shared amongst twelve, the meal was real extravagance:

Magnificently cooked venison with juniper berries, a gift to Thomas from the CEO of Astin-Martin upon the shooting of the stag by the CEO's step-father. Spetzle to die for. Perfect polenta with fresh-plucked mushrooms. Carmelized carrots; Turkish string beans, wine and champagne, followed by espresso, panna cotta with raspberry coulis, and chocolate mousse.

Katharina and her boyfriend there as well as frenetic and totally cool godson of Thomas and his new girlfriend from Lesoto. A few other artist friends of the fam who I knew also around. A totally good time had by all.

This morning a bit of a bust, then, with a rough trip to work. Checked in on the leading studio choice with basically everyone at the party last night, and decided it was a no-go, so stressfully back to the drawing board. Tonight was bike ride and a burger.

Just got the new Paul Simon album and hoping a higher power will deliver me the new George Saunders book before I break down and check what Amazon's going to charge to send it here.

That's it for now. Your turn.

"You used to think I had the most imperial moustache."

"I know, Cervantes, but check out that 'stache over there."

For the first time in recent memory, I'm afraid I side with our President, 'throwing my bone to the right' on the issue of a National Anthem in Spanish. You can listen to it here (option + click to download if you want to compose the remix, though you may get beat to the punch by Fat Joe). I remember Alex once explained to me that America's anthem ranks amongst the world's toughest to sing, its lofty and wandering melody an anomaly amongst far simpler scores that every other country opts for their tunes. Of course, this is a losing battle, and the "himno" will either die an ebonics-like death or else be the summer club banger in my neighborhood. I'm guessing the latter for The Avenue of Puerto Rico.

So I just got back from Spain last night. Lots of time in museums, fun pictures taken, the first sunlight in a month absorbed. Afraid I am not at liberty, really, to talk about what I was up to, so, exhausting days of "artist's assistance," with personal stories to follow, in person. Stayed in a cute and severely angular hotel in the center of Madrid, and was working round the clock, so got a very limited sense of the city. Great sprawling side streets and a sense, as I'd hoped, of real late night lifestyles. Had a fun meal at the classic Cervantes Cerveceria with Thomas, with an organic carpet of olive pits, tissues, prawn tails, and cigarette butts, growing thicker as we sat at a little table and the standers nonchalantly spat and tossed and scraped waste on the once-marble floor.

A good deal of chorizo and excellent beer and one life-changing steak peppered the trip, with expanses of awkward time and running about. Nice to be there and, oddly, to be back, though the gray skies and thirty-five degree temperature drop are also quite depressing.

This week will be, once again, slamming, with hopefully the last leg of the studio pursuit, with six weeks to orchestrate the transfer. In theory, to wind up with more time to work on a project of my own here, though this seems unlikely; the chopping down of major things-to-do off the laundry list is usually followed by the growth of new heads on the hydra. Which is very okay; the days dissolve into minutes while the weeks-- counterintuitively-- stretch into eons. Looking likely that my duties will extend a couple weeks, either until a move is elegantly complete, or I lose my housing and am catapulted towards Berlin, Scandinavia (possible road-holiday), or New York.

Outside the hotel door

This morning, at K21, taking a survey of yesterday's hanging. We spent the day in the museum making sure things went well. I photographed a bunch of it, and cleaned the plexiglass with a six-hundred dollar lint-roller designed for cleaning airplane guts and microchip cleanrooms.

Tomorrow morning, off to Madrid for a few days. A cool thing. The El Prado museum is royalty-owned, and the chief curator is a polished thirty-eight year-old (basically an unheard-of age for such a senior position of a major museum) and speaks no English or German, so I hear. Do I bring the suit? Probably bringing the suit. Have been forewarned from Katharina to expect a sweet suite and high-dining. Thomas, who I've heard complain about a restaurants' wine list being "too chaotic" or "somehow restricted," will, I hope, live large with intern in tow.

Must pack and eat and get ready to sleep; it'll be a very early airport trip and we're straight to the museum to get busy. Oh, and retouched the big picture to be unleashed at the Basel Art Fair in a month or so, which is pretty cool.

Pretty unoccupied tonight and so have turned to the internet for consolation. Spent the morning with Thomas shooting on the hilltop. Fun to watch him respond to the Sunday afternoon recreators of Dusseldorf, along with everyone's barking dog walking in the shot. Before the sun died, I spent a couple hours crawling in dumpsters of dirt for picture making. Different aspirations for all of us.

As it is Sunday, the nation is ostensibly paused for prayer, or else cooking food they bought yesterday. I didn't, so sentenced to yet another ham pizza from Hello Pizza downstairs. So delicious, but why do they salt the cheese?

Klaus had some bad beer at a bar (they actually interrupted him mid-drink and were like "hey, stop drinking. Immediately."), so he's nursing himself in the lounge with, as standard, the telephone. It is our single platform of competition. Sort of an uneventful day, so maybe I quit here and take a shower. Wild week up ahead.

Had my first excellent evening in Dusseldorf. On Katharina's recommendation, went to an art space by the train station called wp8. Small storefront, and like every truled great place I've enjoyed in Germany, it took a handful of drive-bys before registering exactly where the hell it was.

I was greeted by an atmosphere of cultured reservation: cello tuning, local intelligentsie chattering, cheap drinks at the pseudo bar in the second room passed out more than served. What ensues is an off-the-wall free-jazz movement, forty-five minutes of experimentation and pastiche of saxophony. There was pause on the brass for moments of improvisation, often quite tounge-in-cheek with tin drum, harmonica, snorkel, chop stick, box of thumbtacks and chickpeas, and rib of a lamb. At one point, standing on a table with a plastic bag over his head playing the saxophone through the handel in the bag, our man paused on the reed, tore the bag and proceeded to wile out on the plastic bag, getting about the same tones from it as he had on the sax. Laughable, but measured too.

When they wrapped, I began talking to a guy who turned out to be head of the club, a photographer, and then later the saxophonist (also second-in-command of wp8), a totally cool artist, 55, former university student with Thomas Struth. All cool things talked about. Couldn't have been more fun, unless act two had a deejay. (Act two: four-person polish family-band of rural, rural folk with dronish chanting, two fiddles, and various slavic drums. A polyphonic siren, but interesting to check the crowd they brought in.)

So a cool quixotic night unraveled, and got home astonished to find it was five in the morning. Hoping I can show prints there before leaving-- they're open Tuesdays and Fridays, and were saying in spite of the semi-established artist community that helps keep the place intact, they don't get so many people with work or gumption approaching them. So we'll see. A thousand good details in my brain from the night; cultural victory.

Took pictures today and shooting with Thomas tomorrow. Monday is a big night for the studio and Wednesday through Friday, we're in Madrid... which is rad.

Also, if anyone saw the article in the Times yesterday about the Rhine, it begins with a long and detailed description of the monument you see here, at Krupnick Blog Central, a few posts down, yes, that's right, never failing to up your awareness of the world and me at the same time, what balance and poise from afar, what grace, what unspeakable lack of social life and camaraderie. What do you mean you didn't read that piece? About salmon and pollution and restoration of the Rhinish ecosystem? Bugger off. You don't even get a link.

Crummy way to start the day

This dude, Ralf, wants me to take pictures of him with his girlfriend who is twenty years younger and from Cameroon.

If you can be persuaded to read one good thing this week by a blog (persuasively: "I'm not a blog. I'm your friend."), make it this article on Google in China, and more broadly, the outlines of the Chinese Communist Party's censorship policy for self-preservation... great cultural, social, economic, historical stor. I've already said too much. None of it is boring. I'm boring all the time. Read that instead of proceeding here.

I've spent the last couple days in the studio, absorbed and glazed by the gigantic monitor while retouching new images to be show in a museum later this year, as well as doing panoramic stitching of shots made a week ago that will eventually grace some pretty tremendous walls. Exciting the know the product of my labor will be publicly eyed over; a pride-of-association also conferred on spell-checkers of great documents and beer delivery-men. Tomorrow will be a culminatory blitzkreig, with a lot of extracurricular homework (trip to the forest, grooming the 8x10 camera, learning how to use Thomas' new digital Leica rangefinder, etc.). Shooting over the weekend and hopefully attending a night-time bash on Sunday in Dortmund. More on this when some of it, you know, happens.

If you make it to the article above, you must try entering some illegal things on Google China and if you live in New York and have a curiosity (and a dearth of free time), you've probably wondered what the deal is with Falun Gong (think: Chinese subway protesters with oblique brochures), check out what wikipedia (which is banned in China) reports on it. Totally strange.

Anyone who's lived in my company for a month or more in the past forty has heard, if not tasted, Jacob's meatballs. They are a derivative of my mother's meatballs, but bigger (usually cue-ball sized) and vaguely jewel-shaped from my five-side cooking process (essentially a triangular cooking process with tops and bottoms attended to breifly at the end). And if you've been even a drop critical and not completely consenting in this narrative, you can make out a simple silhouette to explain it all: I have berry little to do tonight, and so Spanish supermarket wine and a mound of meatballs has shaken into a diatribe.

With T. Struth out of the office at an unrequested but long-since-promised Venetian Spa visit, I'm in the studio, grinding Apple computers into the dirt. Today was spent trying to find *free* ways to dissect DV video, isolating particular moments and converting them to mpeg-4. No thrill, but a fair amount of emails tended to, with not a single form letter. Went to drop off film at the city's good developer after work-- they're intensely expensive and super-fast-- and got back two crappy prints. One of lovely Alex which goes pretty much wherever it'll be seen most often and the other of a desolate railyard in the area that's not worth looking at too much. I mean, two thirds of it is good, and so were it a) on the computer or b) in my own hands to print, I'd just crop the sucker. But no. Dusseldorf's premier film developer and photo intern strike again. Am I boring you?

I'll err on yes, and so say goodnight. Just discovered adultswim has streaming content and given that a mediocre rap album was based on the subject matter, I feel I should check in. And besides, that's like, free entertainment.

{{{I miss movies so much. I even strung the musicality of Baz's Moulin Rouge into three evenings of tepid fun. Someone send me ten films?}}}

Hello. I am your German breakfast. I am: eighteen condiments, six complex yeast-based carboydrates, nine dairy products, four meats, two fish, caffeine, active culture, organic and hard-boiled. I require seven separate utensils and inflict 650,000 calories. Guten appetit.

Easter is a serious affair in Germany, more like a snow-day that stretches from Friday to Monday than any nationally recognized event in America. The cities are silent, and as far as I can tell, only the Turks break the strike to open up their businesses. Which, without any open markets, has driven me lately to increased kebab consumption.

I went to Dortmund for Easter, spending Saturday exiled from Mareike's kitchen and home as her mom baked. If someone is cooking for you, they are of course able to put you out as much as they please. Unfortunately, a pretty sleepy day to tour around a shabby city; both Mareike and I agree it reminds us uncannily of New Jersey. Mareike's dad, Klaus, runs his medical practice out of the ground floor of the house, doing a couple dozen accupuncture treatments a day. His wife, Heike, often assists. The downstairs operating room segues smoothly into a full bar with six seats, powder blue and white all over, hundreds of bottles above and a majestic tap readied for the weekend. It's completely bizarre but also entirely cozy.

Dinner (with the grandmother) was festive and completely drunken. I've been told that Klaus, a medical professional, and inconquerably nice guy with a hint of Scottish to his articulate English-speaking, downs an average of eight beers an evening without guests, and both parents speak often about their love for partying. And so it went; roasted vegetables and a phenomenal roasted fish with a homemade italian masterpiece of a dessert, all cascading into my final minutes with Klaus, alone at the dinner table, being guided through a simultaneous single-malt Scotch/German pilsner tasting. The moral of the story is go buy Balvenie 12-year.

Sunday was a bit lazy for us, though Klaus was up working at seven, which is nothing short of shocking considering the previous evening's shocking food and drink, treating emergency Easter patients. Thirty-seven were in and out before dinner time. Sole accomplishment for the day was a very good haircut by Kaitlin, but of course this is a pretty passive act on my part.

Tonight I spent partly terrified, cycling after the sun had set around a colossal abandoned parking lot for the gigantic LTU Arena (I've heard 80,000 seats, though suspect it to be untrue). Weird spells of grass, and endless empty space punctuated with lightpoles, spindly trees, and rabbits jumping out all over the place. Wandering about the vacant arena steps and subway and adjacent convention center was a real 28 Days Later experience, and I expect suitably awful dreams. Was by the Rhein taking pictures in the dark and embarrasingly scared by the bunnies, jumping out in front of the bike in small suicidal packs. These are my confessions. Up early, so stopping here. Hope all are well.

Overlooking Dortmund from the 130 year-old monument to Kaiser Wilhelm, now also the site of a hilltop casino.

Mareike, brother Mirko, mother Heike

Hello there. It's friday night, a national holiday in Germany (both day and night), and I've spent the day shooting in the slight drizzle, riding around the Rhein listening to the new Gnarls Barkley (Danger Mouse + Cee-lo colabo) (thanks be to Ramin; the link will disappear by 4.20.2006). Audible gold. Big nod to Tobias for setting me up with this Boards of Canada video for one of the lushest songs alive, "Dayvan Cowboy." Also the most absurd I've seen all week: Russian freestyle walking at its finest.

The week dissolved into studio trips and erranding, some time finally spent shooting in the forest. Getting good at loading the sheet film. Thomas is off to Italy for a week with his family in celebration of his mother's eightieth birthday. Tomorrow, I'll find myself in Dortmund once again for a couple days at Mareike's for an Easter bash. Monday is also a holiday, so I'll be back in my hood shooting more oddities of the German countryside.

I have friends (see right). Turning the german ride-sharing website into a verb, I mitfahrgelegenheited my way to Berlin on Friday. Chocolate and traffic jams and an insufferable nerd named Ralph. Made it to the city for dinner Friday night after photographing swank and bizarre office spaces in Düsseldorf in the morning. Kaitlin and Mareike live in an apartment that tends towards triangular spaces. Mareike's friends and man a part of a fun drunken evening. Reunion fare is the dullest to describe next to how it feels (astonishingly comforting).

Spent Saturday as an accomplice (but not helper) to friend Julia's move and hanging out with Kaitlin, friend from school and home. The fallout of any language barrier is a huge comfort and pleasure. Day becomes night and night becomes midnight. Cuba Libres become Rosi's illegitamate railway-side dance club, which becomes fun, and fun begets a night that ends in the morning and a ten-am wakeup to go see art.

Sunday, went to the Berlin Biennale, and felt a bit adrift. So was the curatorial intention: named "Of Mice and Men," after both poem and novel, the show "looks at life as a series of traumas and at art as an enigma. Anxiety and paranoia, an impenetrable obscurity and a looming sense of suspension are some of the recurring atmospheres in the show." Want a good way to spend your sunday? Impenetrable obscurity is a sound course. A hell of a lot of obtuse video shit and not-very-interesting drawings; a fair amount of the unintelligibly creepy.

The trick is in the presentation: thirteen sites along a Auguststrasse in Mitte (a nice gallery neighborhood in central Berlin), an intentionally motley assortment of closed spaces, private apartments, cellars, courtyards, and a shipping container parked outside a construction site. Unfortunately too much of the pleasure of a day at the Berlin Biennale, I think, falls on the enjoyment of strolling around different, novel spaces.

A few jewels in the rough: Nathalie Djurberg's canny claymation videos (she has a Zach Feuer show on now), Marcel van Eeden's imaginary W.M. Wiegand journey told through 137 watercolor/charcoal pieces, Reynolds Reynolds' video piece, "Burn." But a huge presence of impenetrable annoyance. Did, however see a performance piece of a make-out session in the Mirrored Ballroom that was fun to watch and observe others in their discomfort and surprise during.

Had an epic return trip, waiting two hours in the very cold as my train arrived later and later. The cabin room contained the following:

-One drunk dude, smoky smelling, passed out against the glass

-One twitchy goth girl, underweight, scratching herself

-One Czech couple, drinking beers, attending to their:

-Baby in a bag. A baby bag. Took up a whole seat, though.

As you can imagine, it felt like a two-hour late time-bomb. Everyone behaved, and I got home in time for an hour's nap, a shower, and a real stumble to work. Most of the day, fortunately, spent scouting the forest for shooting to happen this week. Thomas returned from New York this morning, so some elements of the internship machine start spinning much faster while others come to a standstill.

In a way, sad to leave the oasis of good contact and good fun, but will see roughly the same scattering of characters next week in Dortmund, nearby, during Easter dinner with Mareike's family clan. Her father has ordered a refill on his keg.

In a former east-German natural-disaster crisis-management office, masquareding as a busted-up house in a wealthy suburb of Düsseldorf; a misbegotten leg of the studio hunt. On the right, micro-Katharina.

The most interesting thing about the biennale is definitely the space and form the work is presented in. Which is a little bit like great wrapping paper and a crappy gift. In art discourse, perhaps, it has more meaning, impact, and effect, therefore deserving more credit, but look at that cinematically peeling paint in the old Jewish girl's school-- it's the coolest thing for blocks.

In the last issue of The New Yorker (the style issue, which I read cover to cover on the aeroplane in lieu of sleeping), Christian Dior Homme king Hedi Slimane is credited with inventing the faux-hawk. A man named Hedi. The faux-hawk. Same dude.

Beckham, as we all know, is accredited with bringing this do' to the world marketplace. Many years ago. And yet here in Deutschland, it's like that shit just hit the market. Bigger than beepers. Bigger than Backstreet. They rock it so hard it's absurd. Especially the Turkish. 100% faux-hawk, no doubt.

I bought a bike today. It's divine. All purple aluminum, yellow wheels, matching saddle, and stiff as a brick. No logos. My alternative to the faux-hawk. Was asked to make a regional tour, from the north (an area called Wittlaer) down south of the city. Wound along the Rhein and it was pretty cool; at times very bumpy and with plenty of sidetracking. So nice after being relatively sedentary for months to hop on a tasty road bike and cruise the extended territories. All of these little townships that were once their own village, now swallowed by the city of Dusseldorf. There are paths of some varietal (paved, stone, dirt, mud, brick) in all different directions; it's a welcome change to the scripted directions you can move in in America. Great chilly, windy few hours. Prepared myself the most triumphant American cheeseburger, sesame-seed bun and all to seal the deal.

Made a few pictures that I'll put up another time; I need to get up super early and prepare for my trip to Berlin.

Anyone else digging the new Ghostface album? Is it my solitude that has convinced me it's gold? Reeling still, solid flashback style, from the Cold Cut show on Saturday at the fabulous club Gloria in Koln. Thanks to the tallest man in the room, a 19 year-old named Jens from Hamm for making it a suitable ninja tune high time. Jens was prepping for an eve with a lady he met the night before, and had gone home that morning to Hamm and come back for date #2 and to hear his favorite pack of instrumental nerds make four lap-tops sing. Yes, four dudes. Mad cords. An extra emcee. Aural magic.

Doing research for all kinds of studio and fire-proof safes and cabinets. Not that fun to do in Germany, or rather, not that fun to do in German. I don't understand German. At all. There is humor in this, but it is with you, dear reader. No one laughing on my block.

Doing some sort-of curating for a small addition to D-dorf's Struth room. Six photographs. It seems like it's somewhat my choice, or at least privvy to my steering. I'm not sure I believe it at all, though. I think I'm just a pawn in case things go pear-shaped and they need an intern to flog. Spent a couple hours going through archives, which was cool and mesmerizing.

Buying a road bike tomorrow. Used. Purple. And yellow. Made here in town. That's it. No logos. Will then do a mandatory ride from fifteen miles north down south following the Rhein south towards and beyond. Jens will be probably be in social studies class with a good view from the back row. Then checking out luxury shelving, venturing into the forest for more scouting, and praying I can get enough done to make it to Berlin this weekend for the Maurizio Cattelan-curated Biennial. And people who know how to laugh. Rideboards here actually work, btw...

Email me.

It's a truth widely known that the cost of a well-functioning raincoat is wet pants (there is of course some irony to this). On my fifteen-minute bike-spree from my apartment to the opening of a new museum show, I caught all twelve minutes of the day's righteous downpour. I arrived looking like I’d just stepped out of a kiddie pool, sopping up to the belly. Really cool exhibit, though, at K20 on progressive museum design in the 21st century. Tons of models and photos and conceptual sketches. Some cool work in France, something abominable Daniel Liebeskind in Denver, and a wild nautilus-conch-tornado-inverted-coliseum-inspired piece in Greece which, opening in 2011, will surely bomb. Definitely want to check out a crazy triangular looping-ramp building, the new Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart that opens in May.

Thomas’ studio manager, Katharina, guided us (her & boyfriend) to another opening after that. Basically a synchronous world with the openings in Chelsea—though more drinks, people smoking cigs in the gallery, more difficulty in avoiding bumping into art, and eventually, a DJ taking command. Pretty rad, with no compliments toward the art being celebrated, but had fun talking to people Katharina knew who came by. Also, the gallery-folk fired up some stove tops and cooked everyone beef chili and coconut-curry soup. Above and beyond, says I.

So the heat is on with studio searches; we’re preparing for shows and Thomas is off to NYC for a week in a couple days. I’ll wind up with more free (or at least unstructured) time while he's gone, to be spent researching a dozen things for the studio, working with prints, and meandering. By the time he returns, I'm expected to have a city-based project he'll critique.

The woman who works at the bakery across the street is a wicked thing, cruel with her correction of my pronunciation. There’s always a drunk-looking older woman supporting her chin with a hand on one of the bistro tables smoking a cigarette and drinking an instant coffee in the back, and usually I’m the only other person there. And for some reason, the bakery lady feels compelled to walk back and forth muttering unforgivingly to her other paying customer about my pronunciation of ministreuselschnecke. As of this morning (bakery trip #5), I’m getting pissed, with the ordering of baked goods really reperesenting the pinnacle of my abilities in conversation, specificity, and politeness in German. It being Saturday, with a small line, she muttered just when I walked in the door. Will have to figure out how to tell her, debasingly, that their pudding is absolute shit. Which someone should tell them anyway.

A weekend looked forward to. Tonight, I’m heading to see Coldcut at an old restored movie theater. Know there music mostly from a show in Berlin in January which was more than good enough to justify the trip to Koln tonight for a repeat, probably solo. No matter.
Hope all are doing well.

An awful morning outside, though rain hides from the camera. I was supposed to make a few-mile ride down to Bauhaus (sadly, the local ‘home depot’ rather than the Gropius/van der Rohe Architecture school in Weimar). But that’s not going to happen, and so the purchasing of a dolly for large-format photo work will wait. Day four of consecutive rain; the weekly forecast is a uniform line of rainy-cloud icons. We keep intending to shoot, but are outdone by the weather.

The last couple days have been good. At home, cooking a lot (kilos of bolognese now dominate the fridge) and last night succumbed the the 2nd Lord of the Rings flick. For some reason, I'm immune; they bore me. At work, excitement comes all the time in understated ways, and there’s a point in every day when it is too difficult to remain stone-faced. For example, yesterday:

Went to the art storage facility to check on a photo that needs to be reframed and sent to a museum. But (!) the art handling joint, Knab, that moves his shit around is a big art handling company in Europe (or at least Germany). Walking through their wharehouse, there are Thomas Demands and Gurskys and things leaning here and there. Passed a colossal 12” square crate, covered with transparent plastic housing one of Gerhard Richter’s exquisite abstracts with the scraped paint, just chilling in the industrial lamp light. We stood in a catacomb looking at the picture in question (Struth’s) and he explained that it was his catacomb, really, that he has a storage space bigger than my apartment (or his studio, for that matter) filled with his giant prints, framed and well-labeled and packed, for the most part in, in cardboard, ready to ship, sell, exhibit. At some point, it will be my task to spend a day or two there, compiling lists of what is there for the production of even better, longer-lasting labels— a mundane task with the singular bonus of being in an open (if poorly lit) contemporary art museum very much closed to, well, everyone.

Lunch, too, was a trip. Thomas Ruff, another artist known for mega-large portraits, cool distorted nudes, and craftily pixelated pictures, met a cabinet-maker twenty-five years ago and asked him if he could make frames. The answer was yes, and now the frame maker (also Thomas’ for 20 years) is the frame maker to the stars (of D-dorf and beyond), and him and his family/factory workers (there are four, including the wife and step-father) bang out 500 or so large, large frames a month, all, I believe, made from oak. Unbelievable. Also Thomas Ruff’s, Struth’s, Demand’s, and a Gursky I believe I saw with Alex at the last Gursky showing in Chelsea last year. On the wall, with a bit of sawdust and soot coating their plexiglass. So sad to miss the Wolfgang Tillmans show on right now in Brooklyn, but caught a colossal print from it framed there; we had to boot it to make room for Thomas’ photo of people gazing up at Michaelangelo’s David. Stayed for a freshly made Italian lunch. This is when lack of language hurts.

Went over 8x10 camera stuff also, and loaded giant floppy 8x10 inch negatives in total darkness, virginal art material, into their film holders, which is something of a nervous trip. Handling prints a lot, ‘re-drying’ them, improving their ‘high gloss,’ cataloguing and staring a lot. Enjoying his photographs more as I understand what their affect (and effects) are, as well as the intentions behind.

Off to check out a studio space. Besos.

The lord is good to me and has granted me an apartment. A lovely, gigantic, immaculate apartment on Derendorfer Strasse, sixty-seven steps above a flower shop. Also down below are a tram, a bakery, three legit supermarkets in two blocks, a Turkish fruit and vegetable grocery, two places to bet on sports, and on the corner, an entire building painted with musical stripes and adorned with tarnished trumpets, French horns, tubas, and bits of broken mirror. I'm four very long blocks to work, about a ten minute trip. Very very awesome.

A good and debacle-filled weekend in Dortmund and Koln. Went to Blauer Raum, a night club in Dortmund shaped roughly like an inverted pyramid with hot-pink interior and high-quality reproductions of baroque art on the walls. Small-city Germany pulls it off. Saturday, wound up rather fortuitously at the 36th birthday of a guy named Mark who makes custom furniture and has a few hundred plants in his apartment—a hobby to stave off boredom, television, and overeating when he was unemployed a few years ago. Also some of the best music I’ve heard in a while courtesy of DJ Mirko, whose DJ moniker I do not know, but whom I personally made at least three Cuba libres.

The full-scale move to Düsseldorf yesterday was unnecessarily endless, a two-hour dead-period spent on the train, the dozens of twelve year-old kids heading back to Stuttgart twitching spasmodically beside their rolling suitcases in the close quarters. Talked to a guy from India, standing next to me with a giant backpack, moving from Bangalore to Düsseldorf to work for Nokia. Lacking other allies, I suspect we'll hang out soon.

Arrival was sweet. I left to go shopping to cook my first dinner tonight, wandered the Turkish market for a bit and came out to find everything had just closed, commerce in Düsseldorf obeying a strict 8 PM bedtime. Retreated with my carrots, clementines, and a solitary chili pepper, and then went out for pizza. Maybe tomorrow.

All kinds of very interesting things stirring in the studio, and living near makes long hours much more tolerable. Spent a few hours in the rain in the forest this morning making photographs, then retouched and cleaned the long-defunct darkroom, converted every magazine article ever written solely on Thomas Struth to legible and sharable format, and showed him my pictures from the scout. Mutual excitement about making the real picture, mine both independent of and fueled by his—he is spare and honest with opinions and compliments, and so both are happily received. At least two new skills to learn tomorrow, possibly more. Also working on getting a bicycle (a studio bike—paid for out of another pocket—seems in the cards) so I’m off this purple lady’s contraption that forces me to peddle in squat position. I will miss the bell.

It is a small but significant percentage of my time I spend here running for trains. It takes two to get to the main train station; I take another on or two to D-dorf, and a tram when I get there. My core is exposed, shuffling about, nervous, vaguely directed and hapless.

Watched a friendship soccer game between America and Germany last night with Thomas + Tara. I brought an expensive bottle of German wine-- the only German red wine I can claim a parcel of knowledge of and affection for. Wine man being twenty-five and with good English, I made conversation by asking if the 2004 was as good as the 2003. "Better. Like nothing else made in Germany. Truly fabulous." It made Thomas wince in dread, sip after sip, partly, he explianed, because it so cold from my walk over. A little let down myself, I offered "it smells like a margarita with salt." Tara said: "Thomas is a wine snob. I think its really delicious." So? A three-headed coin, and a sad echo of the morning's beginning with my making of coffee for myself and my studio-mates. No criticism was offered here, so I won't bastardize my trio of macchiatos.

The boss headed for Venice for the weekend leaves me to scour the forests (begun today) in search of a suitable site to make a large portrait of Düsseldorf au naturel. Have advice that is in some ways intensely specific and in others, visionary and extremely general. In essence, it will be my job over the next three or four days to "look really hard." Also, to move into my castle in town to stop spending thirty bucks and three and a half hours a day commuting which is getting old quicker than it sounds.

Today, I spent the afternoon and evening at the printer's looking at new, mostly behemoth prints. They're exceptional, and the process is oddly draining. The detail spread out over hundreds of square feet of photograph is bewildering, demanding, luscious, enviable, rewarding. Those photographed (mostly in museums) are cought in a very unusual state of mind, really magnifying the idea of a "candid" photograph. The pictures address-- neither dogmatically nor melodramatically-- broader group behavior in a way that's satisfying on many levels. <comment censored>

Feel the burn of the day, as is standard, and made it through from 9 until 9 without a food break, so tonight's crushing beer-and-kebab duet is to be my outro.

My address, now active, is:

Jacob Krupnick

c/o Klaus Ackerman

Derendorfer Str. 23

40479, Düsseldorf

Germany

the kindergarten courtyard outside of the studio

4:30 in the morning. Awake by unavoidable accident. A dumb stagger towards Köln Hauptbanhof to catch a train to Düsseldorf. Bungled it, but bushwacked impressively through both cities fueled by a terrifying streusel cake the size of a plate, two breaded patties hardly containing well over a pound of sweet, sweet cream. Grotesque.

Made it, though, and got a briefing, and then ran off to Grieger, a kingpin in large-scale printing. They top out at 180 cm x 30 meters (I've gone metric) and are Thomas' central printing force. Saw the world's largest test strips there, flopping about like gigantic Claes Oldenburg strands of pappardelle. Thomas and a woman named Tata Ronkholz did a large-format project on old port factories and industrial buildings in Düsseldorf in 1979, both making two negatives of each shot and then sharing the collected archive. She died recently and on friday, a local gallery will open with a show of her prints. It falls on Thomas, then, to go over all these ancient negs to make sure the prints aren't, in fact, his-- this responsibility trickled down to me today as I went over hundreds of postcard-sized negatives.

At some point a cease-and-desist call came from local government announcing that we'll be evicted in three months. No more magically inexpensive (though undersized) studio on the top floor of a kindergarten. Originally, the internship was to begin with the move to a new studio. No new studio presented itself. Now, it seems that my work will at least end with the transplant expected. Intermittently, we visited potential studio spaces around the city (real estate dealers are an identical breed in Germany). I've seen a few prints about-- they're exquisite-- and being taller than I am, there's a need for space both lovely and voluminous.

Had tea with New York gallery queen Marian Goodman. Lunch with Tara and Katharina, Thomas' girlfriend and studio manager. On the 26th of April, I'll go to the Prado in Madrid <comment censored>. Very cool.

The door-to-door is about an hour and a half, making my move to D-dorf on Sunday highly anticipated. Must get to bed before another day of it.

The blog, as concept and practice, is a mighty self-important thing, and it's with natural reservation that I embark on this here project. There are more than a few people who have asked me to keep in good touch, and I think I can do that best by having a bit of a pool of common tales. If I run short on adventure, at least I'll have a place to post pictures.

Arrived sleepless yesterday afternoon to the enormously appreciated rescue of Katharina (my host, on the right) and Ineke (my once-upon-a-roommate's sister) and drove to Dortumund, where the day dissolved with a television spree. I am anything but a proponent of TV, but the first season of Lost is a true pleasure. A glass of wine at eleven and I left earth for thirteen hours.

This morning, we left Katharina's parents' quite posh manor (breakfast of wheat bread and six German condiments) for her place in Köln-- pronounced elsewhere as the male equivalent of perfume. Katharina lives in a lovely pad on the second floor of a pseudo-retirement community. The remains of the day spent in the city with kooky trio of extremely similar looking cousins. It seems likeable. Also pumped up my phone and am contactable at 015117556027, though who knows the prefix. I'll work on that.

Getting a feel for geography and national pride in local beer. Surrounded by vegetarians, and therefore not yet normalized to predicted wurst-heavy diet. This is probably a plus. German butter is good, with an intense and lingering creaminess. Tomorrow begins studio time with my reason for being here, Thomas Struth (click for the most extensive interview and example of his work I've found online). Very excited. Address to follow soon.

Will try to keep this place from getting too vapid. Keep checking in. Hope all are well in your respective places.

katharina

trio