Talk
March 8, 2025 – "Culture Revolution"
In an article called "Den amerikanska kulturrevolutionen" (The American Culture Revolution) in Swedish online magazine Kvartal, journalist and China Expert Ola Wong compares what is now happening in the US with Mao Zedong's Culture Revolution, which caused mayhem in China between 1966 and 1976. Wong refers to observations by a number of Chinese monitors of American society and politics, as well as American sinologists, such as a recent article by Orville Schell. In it Schell compares the recent activities of Elon Musk, with the actions of Red Guard Leader and chaos agent Kuai Dafu in Beijing in 1966.
Orville Schell ends his article thus:
Mao, who would have welcomed the catastrophe now unfolding in America, must be looking down from his Marxist-Leninist heaven with a smile, as the East wind may finally be prevailing over the West wind – a dream for which he had long hoped.
March 1, 2025 – "Hitting hard"
Last night I went to see a band I hadn't heard of until a few weeks ago: Ankor. I enjoyed it. I was particularly impressed by the drummer, a tiny Greek woman called Eleni Nota. From behind her minimalist kit at the back, she nevertheless dominated the stage. Hitting very hard. Back at home I had a quick look at the news and saw that the meeting between the American and Ukrainian presidents in Washington had broken down in acrimony. Zelensky was again totally insulted by the Americans and decided not to take it. It is so absolutely awful the way the new American regime is insulting Ukraine and its president. Aside from the very real political and existential possible consequences of this attitude – or is it a "strategy"? – the emotional impact of just hearing about it is excruciating. It hits so hard. My admiration for Zelensky for being able to continue the fight without losing his mind is immense. As it is for all the fighters of Ukraine.
This is the historian Tomothy Snyder laying out in less han six minutes the five fundamental errors committed by the American leaders in that disaster meeting I refer to above.
His words are simple and easy to follow and they are devastating. For the Americans.
February 21, 2025 – "Mystic Lamb"
This morning I sat for a long time in the freezing cold of Saint Bavo's Cathedral, staring at van Eyck's altarpiece, which was installed there 593 years ago. When I arrived, there were 5-6 other visitors, all seated quietly in a row of chairs with a wall behind them. I took one of the empty chairs. No one moved. No one said anything. We were all just looking at the paintings in front of us, as thousands and thousands and thousands of others have done over all these years that have seen so much despair, so many disasters and catastrophes come and go. Joy also. In the painting they are celebrating ultimate joy and because of the wonder of the way it was done, that joy becomes relatable and gives hope. After maybe fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, one of the spectators got up to go nearer. Then we all did. Soon more people arrived. A very special moment had passed.
February 19, 2025 – "Digitality"
I arrived in Ghent yesterday, before my work had. That was a bit worrying, two days before the opening of a big show. Three hours later a big truck arrived and the problem was solved. A beautiful wall had been built for my work and there were lots of technicians working on the other installations, which were so much more complex than mine. After I had measured and calculated I got two of them to help me and in half an hour my installation was finished. Around me the chaos continued: computers, piles of screens, projectors, wires... artists everywhere programming, connecting, working endlessly. I'm not jealous. I'm also pleased to see that my Psycho-Mapping work, which is fundamentally analogue, even if it has been printed digitally, can more than hold its own in a sea of digitality.
February 16, 2025 – "Automatic"
No longer completely ignoring developments outside (see below) I want to annouce the opening on Thursday, February 20, at Zebrastraat in Ghent, Belgium, of an exhibition with the unwieldy name NTAa '25. Easier to remember is the theme of the show "Intelligence it's automatic". I will have a large work in the international selection (as well as a text in the catalogue), chosen by curator Thierry Dufrêne.
Q. And what is the connection to the world outside?
A. My work is "Psycho-Mapping Europe Post Brexit". It was last seen in Moscow at the New Tretyakov Gallery in an exhibition cut short by the full invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
February 13, 2025 – "Singles"
Ignoring all the developments outside, which I could easily write a very long diatribe about, I can now proudly announce that also the single prints of the book "2024" have been added to the ever expanding archive.
The book itself is exhibited until February 28, in "Best of 2024" at Galerie DRUCK & BUCH in Vienna.
January 18, 2025 – "2024"
I have finally uploaded a full documentation of my (artist's) book "2024". It is the obvious follow-up to "2022". The idea behind both was to reflect the year in which they were made, and be sure to finish work on them well before the year is over. As each book has 12 main images, there is a certain calendar aspect to them, which I find interesting as a challenge. The 2022 book was all in black. The new book have two colour prints in red and flesh colour. Let's say it made a lot of sense.
As I prepared to write this I noticed that I made a post here about having – finally – uploaded the documentation of "2022" also in January of the following year. Have a look.
January 16, 2025 – "North Pole"
I am back in Berlin, and will soon leave again. After the plane had taken off from Haneda, I was watching the map on the screen in front of me, waiting for it to turn westwards. But it never did. It flew north, and north... passing east of Sachalin and later we were over Alaska and the next airport (for emergency landing?) was Barrow... and then we flew north of the arctic Canadian islands and I wondered how close to the North Pole we came, before we were over Greenland and then at some point, begun heading south, towards warmer climes. I kept photographing the map, to be able to prove to myself, where I had been. I own many analog maps, but now I think I need to buy a globe as well.
I have added pictures of the Man Ray exhibition, including my individual photos from his studio and grave. I have also added the final Trial Drawings finished at the end of 2024. Some of these were actually begun years ago, and then left lingering in a box, when I didn't know how to continue. Last summer I picked up some from this box and started adding to them, hoping for content to come and meet me. And for these drawings it did. For which I am very grateful.
January 12, 2025 – "Translation magic"
For a long time already I have been using software translation apps. First Google translate, nowadays almost exclusively DeepL. I had already been using Google translate for years (being continually frustrated by the unreliable results), when at the end of either 2017 or 2018 something decisive happened: overnight the results were suddenly so much better. What had happened? I learned later that at this point Google had reorganized the whole machinery behind the app and begun using neural networks. At some point later DeepL appeared and it soon became clear that it was even better. Yet what I wanted to note now is that yesterday, in the Man Ray exhibition, which has extensive commentary on wall labels, to basically all works and objects (and only in Japanese), I started using the camera function in the translation app. I don't know why I never even tried this before. But wow, is this not magic? To be able to point the phone to a dense Japanese text, and after a little while there appears a completely readable and fluid translation, which has very few mistakes. I'm astonished.
January 11, 2025 – "Hachioji"
I'm in Tokyo, I arrived yesterday and have spent the day in Hachioji, at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. This was the first day of the exhibition "Man Ray of Our Affections", with the subtitle "An Exhibition Celebrating the 135th Anniversary of His Birth". I'm in it, together with Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim... and lot's of Man Ray, of course. I have seven documentary photos which I shot in Paris between 1979 and 1983 (I can't be more precise, unfortunately). Six of these are from the studio, which I used to visit frequently after I had become friends with Juliet Man Ray in the beginning of 1978.
One photo is of Man Ray's tomb, in its first version, when there was just a simple handpainted sign on a stick. It said: "Man Ray, 86 ans 1976". A couple of years later Juliet made the decision to add an egg shaped vertical slab with the inscription "Unconcerned but not indifferent – Man Ray 1890-1976 – Love Juliet". It was one of his soundbites, and it made sense, and it was still simple. Coming up from the grass. After Juliet had passed in 1991 and was buried here as well, her family (her brother) made the decision to turn the grave into something rather different. You can google it if you like.
The exhibition is based on work from two extensive Japanese museum collections, the Fuji Museum's own, and the Okazaki City Museum (I was surprised how much both of them have) and the private collection of my friends Teruo Ishihara and his wife Junko. Their collection is truly a labour of love and it couldn't be more fitting that we first met in Man Ray's studio on Rue Férou in the summer of 1982 – when they had their honeymoon. Which they combined with a pilgrimage to Paris and managed to be invited for a visit. Teruo had been obsessed with Man Ray for more than ten years already, and he still is. On that day, I was there as well.
I spent the whole day at the museum and in the evening we went for dinner at an izakaya. It was lovely. The exhibition is great, it includes a number of very early work which I had no idea existed, and it has lots and lots of super interesting printed matter which Teruo has managed to locate and acquire. Our friendship is very dear to me. We have met now five times: in 1982 in Paris, 2014 in Kyoto, 2024 both in Kyoto and in Vienna – and now 2025 in Hachioji. It feels like family.
January 1, 2025 – "Stormy"
One year ago, I asked "What will the world look like on January 1, 2025?".
It is now 1 pm on that day. Where I am it is grey. The wind is roaring with brutal force in trees which are waving and bending over. It is not a day to go outside.