Embroidery

back from a 4 day visit to Ulm, the town where i grew up. preparing, supporting and celebrating the big party on the occasion of my parents 70ies birthday. it feels like i have been away for more then a week, met so many members, friends and companions of my family, very turbulent days and the biggest parts of them quite joyful.

in a rare moment on my own, doing some errands in the pedestrian zone i met this turkish men. sitting there, very calm in the middle of a busy road, making this embroideries that are describing his state and needs in a very discrete and beautiful way.
being handicapped and not able to work but in the need to earn some money for his family, asking for donations, either materials or money and offering commissioned embroidery.
he was very friendly, open and not bitter. i really would like to make something with him, unfortunately i did not manage to meet him again and have been too surprised when i talked to him first. I will ask my mother to do it for me, she knew him already.

much more to report but i have to fill the advent calendar for lou, she so wants to believe that it is not me doing it.

have a wonderful week!

Stars

thats what we see through the windows of our apartment at the moment
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found a nearly forgotten big big box with old polaroids this evening, another prove that time goes by so quickly but I liked what i saw and the medium suits that times very well ...i will post some soon

Encounters & Snow

So many encounters last week.
Usually I work until late and nobody expects me to socialize, but I decided to have a break for the rest of this year and my social life starts changing. I really like it but I have to get used to it too.
there have been some dinners with friends at our home, like with my friend G., i haven't seen her for about 7 years despite living in the same city, an invitation to a big one yesterday night, only women, numerous afternoons with lou's girls and one with a dear friend of mine, rehearsals with a childhoodfriend and my sister for the parents event, a rainy but wonderful day with Ola, another turbulent afternoon with her and the children, trying to make advent wreaths at the steiner school bazaar and inbetween a horrible and memorable encounter with an old but not so close friend, obviously homeless (but denying it) and somehow mentally ill.
all of it an social overdose. happiness and being irritated at once.
the last nights snow (unfortunately melted already) and rereading anna karenina, given to me by L. is a good antipode.

The Gang

they read everything, they play and cuddle like kittens, they invent stories in the bus, they sing and dance on the street, they are jealous, very different, they set up a bakery in our flat with a sign at the entrancedoor and i had the best day with all of them.
and my camera drives me crazy, overexposure in the automatic modus, i knew how to deal with it at the beginning, have to reread the mannual.

My Daughter

used to wear exclusively dresses and skirts and i always enjoyed to collect and make them for her. even in the coldest winter she refused to wear a trouser. we always had two pairs of wonderful big woolen leggings to keep her warm.

recently she decided to wear only trousers, enjoys soccer and is very proud to be the only girl in a new kungfu group of eight (older) boys.
this weekend, starting from friday morning, she spent at the countryside at a schoolfriend's house. yesterday i called her friend's mother to find out how she feels after i haven't heard anything for 24 hours, she just told me that she was fine and if she was aloud to pass the telephone back.

now she is back home and i have to learn again that our love doesn't become smaller in any way with her developing independence. We spent the loveliest evening together, feeling as close as we always did.
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tomorrow there is no school and i will spend the day with at least three 6 year old girls in jeans.

My sister

and me, early 80ies and just her today.
We had a lot of fun making objects out of cardboard for a little performance that we are planning to show at our parents 70ies birthdayparty, later this month.

lanterns

at the saint martins day yesterday, late afternoon with the kids and tonight at the opening of our friends exhibition. a street lantern in an aquarium in a snowstorm. Johannes i like your work!

Los Muertes

directed by Lisandro Alonso, 2004. a young and highly talented argentinian, interview here.
the film is breathtaking, beautiful, straight and raw. jungle, death, jail, a men's journey through a high producing nature back to the jungle where it all began, searching for his unknown daughter. the pictures tell much more.
I want to see everything he did.
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more interesting projects from argentina here and here

Breakfast with Ruhleben

sunday breakfast with family drawing. Lou said our drawings were boring because we did not add something made up to the still lifes, whom she called Ruhleben (rest lifes). L accepted no criticism and invented a story of a boat in the sea around his grapes for her but i added some faces, both made her content.
i made a drawing nearly every day last week, i really have to find back to a style i like, it's changing constantly but i am not very ambitious, more playful, thats new and good.

Details, a Tag

1. clothes
as a costumedesigner i am a little bit neurotic with my own clothes but if i manage to get dressed it is a mix of:
dark colors, preferably dark blue, sometimes a little bit red,
my friend C’s finds and gifts that are always perfect, mostly fleamarket, slightly altered by her.
bespoken dresses, skirts and blouses by my wonderful seamstress H, sadly i don’t sew for myself anymore, no patience.
obsessions: sweaters, handknitted, secondhand, Margiela and Wolfen , 40iesdresses, belts and Bally shoes.

2. furniture
my ideal would be: Donald Judd like custommade wooden furniture, personalised with individual finds and the normal family derangement.
we live on a wonderful dark green linoleum floor, very improvised, some second hand, fleamarketfinds, a few designerpieces, inherited furniture, a couple of things i would like to get rid of and some art we still want to hang since we moved in about 6 years ago.

3. sweet
i try to stay away, sugar is my drug

4. city
to live in: berlin , the first city i feel at home
good memories: bangkok, ny, marseille, vienna

5. drink
sparkling water, green tea, wine, vodka

6. music
the list would be too long, mainly singersongwriter, i am spoiled because i live with a man who got the best taste and a huge and always updated collection in music, i just have to anticipate, my choice for every mood: Kate and Ann Mc Garrigle

7. tv
no german tv, just american hbo series on dvd, the wire, deathwood, westwing...

8. film
indipendent and surprising, in the sence of directors trusting their own vision and the intelligence of the audience. To name a few:
Claire Denis, Gus van Zand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Angela Schanelec

9. work-out
I have the luck of being teached once a week by a friend in „cantienica“, a method to strengthen the inner musculature.
In my premothertimes i used to do kungfu which i am still practicing in my dreams.

10. pastries
tarte au citron made by my friend A. the last director i listed.

11. coffee
black

i was tagged by Hanna and i tag my sisters D and J to make it a familyportrait of details

Traces of Time

+ a blouse, i bought like this, just dyed it.

+ a shirt i made for a doll which i made for a film about ten years ago, the fabric seems to disappear

+ L's jacket out of a small series of uniformlike clothes for women and men i made seven years ago. He now has a new one but seems to like this one much more and i agree, i don't like new clothes, i start to like them after traces of wearing appear, it's like they begin to tell a story.

no matching pictures

we are back home, traveling through the snow that fell the night before we left.
Found no matching pictures from the last days because i am not synchronized with anything but liked the skirts blowing in the wind on the poster i saw at one of the many exhibitions we visited this weekend (can`t remember the artist). saw too much bad art, made me even more disorientated.
and i decided to do better next week and:
+ be not so impatient and unsocial anymore
+ get the undone things done step by step
+ make a drawing per day
+ hopefully meet ola
+ restart my project
+ enjoy more