STANK UND CIRCUMSTANCE
Opening of the Arsenal Curator School, the second year for this very successful educational concept. Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus decided she wanted the doll to do a repeat presentation of my Rising Stars, Falling Stars program from last year which showcased the suffragette film What 80 Million Women Want from 1913, with a soundscape collage soundtrack by the Blue Brothers Tim & kJohnny. Tim Blue just got back from Dublin with Irish film artist Paul Rowley where their movie The Rooms played to SRO crowds. Tim encouraged the Arsenal audience to interactively join in with the soundtrack to W80MWW by responding to an image,audio, describe a favorite woman, comment on what is radical art, provide an early memory about gender, or thoughts on the history of woman’s rights. The eager showboating crowd ran with it, almost a little too enthusiastically for my tastes—but that’s what happens when you open the floor to the publicum.
My performance involved having Danny Hendrickson re-edit my 2004 film Wo ist Manfred that I made with the beautiful Cyril Kuhn of Zurich back in LA. Dan trimmed things down to 5 minutes from its original 9 min length. Taking on the persona of a ditsy Estonian curator I announced how I dug through the anals of the Arsenal archive and discovered an experimental film fragment unseen since it was made sometime between 1913 and1921. Daniel accompanied my rant and the film gorgeously on klavier accenting a song by Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mammas.
Instead of drinks in the Rote Foyer this time a reception was held up in the Penthouse Terrace on the 9th Floor of the Sony Center.
Seen imbibing: The Gregors-Ulrich&Erica, Germany’s first family of film, and the founders of the Arsenal, with their daughter Milena Gregor, Birgit Kohler, Nanna Heidenreich, booty pie male ingenue Ken Duken from the Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds, German thespian Jurgen Vogel—I love his hot musclepud body and bad teeth, Chinese actress Gong Li, British musician Carl Barat of the newly reformed Libertines, humpy Chinese documentarian Lixin Fan(Last Train Home), Felix Knoke of Der Spiegel Online, handsome Jan Klesse the keyboard player with Glen Meadmore’s Cuntry Band who just graduated law school, Sean Nye, the young academic, flirting with lanky dirty blondine American Jake Huey, who just moved to Berlin, film historian Marc Siegel with his juicy intermedia actress girlfriend Susanne Sachsse, Nadja Talmi who has worked tirelessly organizing the curator school accompanied by handsome Uli Ziemons, Anna Muelter of HAU, Djane Olga Damnitz, artist Maggie Schneider, experimental film legend Birgit Hein,Heide Schuelupmann and Karola Gramann of Kinothek Asta Nielsen, Manuel Schubert the Multi Kult FM internet radio presenter with the program Film Highlights, Ena Schnitzelbaumer aka: DJane Metzgerei, artist/filmmaker Angela Melitopoulos and Maxmillian Winkler the lovesexy son of Henry”The Fonz” Winkler. Will someone please tell me what young Max is doing in Berlin? He should be engaged in wild sexual proclivities with Vaginal Davis Jr.
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Had a productive rehearsal with new music project that involves Baby Diaper Joel Gibb, Felix Knoke and Jan Klesse. The name of this super group will either be Tenderloin or Schmusique. Feel free to email my intern Gleeson Brevard at Gleebrevard@aol.com to voice your opinion as to what we should call ourselves.
NYU Performance Studies scholar Tavia Nyongo had a farewell dinner that was lovingly prepared by artist/filmmaker Liz Rosenfeld with assist by British performance artist Richard Hancock. Ms. Rosenfeld is a KreuzKoelln treasure and very talented lady who applies the same approach to cooking that she does to her art. The menu consisted of a pre-course Amuse Bouche selection of bruschetta: fresh peach, pop that cherry tomatoes and tyme salsa, Tuscan white bean spread, burnt sage with negro butter. The appetizer consisted of La Liz’s signature dish: the highly individual beet tarty tart tatain with goat cheese and late summer queer theory salad. The main dish: homemade pussi gnocci in a lemon crème sauce, roasted tupelo fennel, tomato kill karne with candied pumpkin seeds.
It was all too heavenly and topping it off for desert: Lukas Haas lukewarm chocolate cake with lavender and black eyed berries luxuriating in crème fresh.
I am going to miss Tavia who is related to President Obama, but he will be back in Berlin next year.
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Word out to Jens Lichtman the Swedish indie pop star! Give Maggie McDonald publishing credit on your new song “End of the World, Is Bigger Then Love” She came up with that lyric and the idea behind it, so do the right thing if you know whats good for you.
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My partner in Sonnenallee crime Daniel “Haji” Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muslim will be returning to the states for ten days to visit his parental units in Nashville. He plans on giving me a full report on his trip to Dollywood—the exclusive Dolly Parton themepark in Pigeon Forge. Are there Dolly Parton rollercoasters and Ferris Wheels at Dollywood? The park is only opened during the summer months and I bet its much better then Disneyworld, Busch Gardens or Coney Island combined.
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Little triva item I learned from NPR Berlin. The popular quirky/offbeat grocery brand Trader Joe’s that has stores in California and more recently in New York is owned by the Albrecht Family Trust. The Albrecht Family are a German company that owns Aldi Discount Grocers. See what you learn by reading this very blog.
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One of the cute kasse girls that works at The Arsenal named
Moa, who hails from Stolkholme, Sweden has a delicious art studio in Neu Koelln called Loom, where she and a colleguen do handcraft art objects, and woven sculpture installations and an assortment of other interesting projects. If you’re in the neighborhood check it out. Berlin is really filled with unexpected gems like Loom.
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Film historian Marc Siegel had a family emergency and had to return abruptly to the states, so he wasn’t able to do his workshop at the Arsenal Summer Curator School. Nanna Heidenreich and the Vagimule doll filled in at a moments notice with something we called, . . .I’m Not One To Gossip So You Didn’t Hear It From Me--The Lore and Lure of Archival Modalities. This was our decription:
What makes an archive? They emerge from dealings with relationships and people, they grow out of passion, obsession, idiosyncrasies, but also coincidences. They consist of stories, loose ends, wild associations, and true encounters. Their ingredients are constantly rearranged, as memories are made up or fail, knowledge is passed on, or forgotten and reinvented. Archives are gosssip and gossip is the one true endless archive.
Our presentation was very extemporaneous,featuring clips from Mae West flicks Klondike Annie and She Done Him Wrong plus the Louis Delluc short Fievre. Nanna was great as always, but because I have had so many writing deadlines with an assortment of essays due for art catalogues, I wasn’t able to get a good night sleep and was pure excrement for brains. The young radio presenter Manuel Schubert was in the audience, and he told me afterwards while he was interviewing me for his program that the audience got the point. Oh welpsis, one can’t be on top of it at all times.
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Just heard from Uli Ziemons, the handsomest man in Europe that the new Sylvester Stallone film The Expendables is quite a hoot. One of my old pals from Los Angeles Tim Palen aka: Big Daddy Dino is a theatrical marketing co-president with Lion Gate Films. Daddy Dino use to work for Sony Pictures in the Marketing Division and was the boss of my former Club Sucker partner Frank Rodriguez who now runs his own design firm called Custom Creative with Jeffreyland Hilbert who use to do the hot 90s queer clubs SitnSpin and Hai Karate.
Well getting back to the Stallone flick,I hear it’s the latest guilty pleasure. I haven’t seen it but am curious because the British action star Jason Statham is in it and I would sell my grandmother to get a night in the sack with Mr. Statham who is super yummy. The other stars in the flicker are sexy Jet Li, a long on the tooth Dolph Lundren, Bruce Willis, The Arnold and plastic surgery spokesmodel Mickey Roarke. Ain’t hollywood grand?
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The international fashion design demi god Rick Owens is doing a hard bound coffee table book for Rizzoli. In it will be a section on the famed Hollywood dive bar The Spotlight. The book will feature photos by fotogs Brad Fierce and Albert Sanchez and pictures of luminaries like Ron Athey, Glen Meadmore, Goddess Bunny, Kembra of Karen Black Gaultier muse Eugenie, WandatheMan, Jolee, Michele Lamy, Scarlette Rouge and the Vaginal creature. I wrote a special essay for the book with lots of fond memories.
THE
. . .From the Counsel of Inter-Continental Balistic Principalities
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