Teufelsberg update + Non Random Sample
Posted: April 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: abondoned, Berlin, Cold War, listening post, nsa, photo, ruin porn, ruins, Teufelsberg, urban decay, video Leave a comment »
5:40 am and my train moans to a stop at Army Street Station in West Berlin. One hour until sunrise.
An early bird, I am, with a mouth full of worms, but I am on a mission.
A mission of love to visit an old friend I have written of before.
I got a date with sunrise at Devil’s Mountain.
Capturing sunrises and sunsets on film is a recent jag of mine.
Weird, I know. The film is below. Read the rest of this entry »
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Non Random Sample Treptower Park
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: abandoned, amusement park, Berlin, fun park, German Democratic Republic, kulturpark planterswald, photos, ruin porn, spreepark, sunrise, travel writing, treptowerpark, urban decay, video Leave a comment »
(Below is a video mash-up of early March sunrises in Treptower park, mixed with images of the abandoned fun park, Spreepark, some of which I posted here)
The reason I’d never been inside had nothing to do with my repressed fear of all things clown, circus, carny or even county fair. No.
A Communist amusement park didn’t sound exceptionally scary either. No, sir.
Actually, from outside the park didn’t look like much–a few broken rides on one end, the ferris wheel, and then a big octagonal tent thing at the other is all you can really see. Stumbling inside that first time, I was blown away. I found a beautiful mysterious world, an overgrown fun park as one might imagine, much larger than it looked from outside. An it was a frozen, clear and crisp day. And doing a bit of research, I found out it wasn’t even really a Communist ruin anyway. So I lost my fear of the place. I wanted pictures of the Ferris wheel, I might even climb up the sucker. So a few mornings later, I returned.
“There were no ghosts,” I told myself. Read the rest of this entry »
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Reflection crazy
Posted: March 21, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, German Democratic Republic, Germany, photos 1 Comment »
Give me a mossy lamp, a broken window with a good reflection in it, an old funky mosaic or a little chalk in the form of…(is it a cat?) and you’ve got me distracted for at least a good while.
I’ll plop right down on the sidewalk in the middle of rush hour with my camera jammed into my eye and the crowds milling around me.
I’m happier than a fly at a dog park.
Here’s a few picts. Read the rest of this entry »
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Random Sample Episode Three
Posted: March 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, falafel, geese, Graffiti, laundry, photos, video 1 Comment »Random Sample is back! Alas, my little Kodak died after a long illness, so I got a new camera, one of them Hero 960.
Don’t expect me to jump off any cliffs or to go parachuting anytime soon, let me just say right now, but it’s a pretty cool little camera.
Still learning the camera/video cutting ropes, but I’m starting to get a bit faster with producing these.
One thing I do want to mention is that I don’t of course claim any copyright on the artwork, or the architecture, or the design, or the gardening, or the faces that I take pictures of in my vids, or even the sounds and voices that I record. I don’t know why I mention that, but it is just an absurdity that, say, I will post this and not have a problem (hopefully, the music is ‘overheard’ live street performance), but if I put a whole song into the video, one that I fucking payed for and own on CD, nevertheless, I would get in trouble and have to pay hell. Artists do need to get their pay and respect for their work, but this current system is a bunch of horse shit. And honestly, if they can’t work out copyright laws between Germany and the US so I can watch like every goddamn music video ever posted on youtube, they can suck my ass.
Anyway, without further bla bla, here’s the flick.
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Accidental trip to wonderland
Posted: March 16, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, Deutsches Demokratisches Republik, German Democratic Republic, photos, ruin porn, ruins, urban exploration Leave a comment »
Once upon a time, under a government long-fallen, there was an amusement park in Berlin.
Yes, even Communists amuse themselves.
I knew it was there, had walked past many times, but there are a lot of ruins in Berlin. If I just hopped every fence in the city, I wouldn’t get anything done. This morning was an accident.
But there it was…a big gaping hole in the fence…and I couldn’t resist. despite myself.
I tumbled down the hole into Wonderland. Read the rest of this entry »
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Sunday lost and found
Posted: March 12, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, Graffiti, photos, street art Leave a comment »
‘Tis a poor workman who blames his tools, but… Kind of frustrated at this point now that WordPress has erased the last two versions of this text. I try to blog for the first time here in months and the fucker won’t jive.
I said something about spring being around the corner and that today I was wandering around and taking pictures…and it was funny. You should laugh at my blog. It’s funny what I wrote and is now disappeared into the ethernet. Good shit.
You should laugh.
And enjoy my pictures. Read the rest of this entry »
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Captain Kirk achy-breaky heart stuff
Posted: February 7, 2012 Filed under: Fiction, Lost in Berlin, Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, heartbreak 1 Comment »Like a comet into the side of Kansas. Whack.
I was out cold two months from the sheer impact. The hole still smoking, I am just beginning to emerge from my pod, feeling pretty damn crappy. And I am emerging from this hole slowly, mind you. I want to make sure the people here are not warlike. I am simply trying to look outside the ditch and see what’s happening on the outside, in this new world. Maybe it’s the shock of impact but everything here looks so different from what I knew. Read the rest of this entry »
Tyred, cloudy and missing my gloves and pacifier
Posted: December 29, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, Berlin, Graffiti, photos, street 1 Comment »
There are those who say that art is meaningless, that it simply represents what it is.
A picture of deer in a meadow maybe. A canvas full of color splashes. A funny sculpture that doesn’t even look realistic. A prudent long-term investment.
I, on the otherhand–and I know I am not totally alone in this, even nowadays–I say art always has a deaper meaning.
I find the political in a love song. The deaper meaning in even the kitsch old housewives hang on their walls.
It can be a problem. But I don’t care.
I say art has a deaper meaning, , even if (sometimes–especially if) the artist didn’t intend one. Read the rest of this entry »
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Non random sampling episode two.
Posted: December 13, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, Kreuzberg, neukölln, video Leave a comment »Honestly, I just don’t know what to say. I think I don’t know much.
Sometimes I walk around my neighborhood and some of the sometimes I take my camera. Document the world around me. History repeating itself. Edited for the exciting parts.
I must admit I’m a touch overwhelmed. Just trying to be quiet…trying to listen and see.
I’m writing this with all my might trying to keep it strait, like I don’t want to hear what I have to say, so let’s keep it short, shall we?
I took some video and kept my mind off of other things with editing it around until I found it half interesting.
But it’s not, really.
Reminds me of the trash bag in American Beauty. Pretty cliche shit.
Oh, well. I have nothing else right now to add.
Berlin non-random sampling
Posted: December 2, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Kreuzberg, market, neukölln, turkish, video Leave a comment »A moving slideshow. Almost everything but the digger and the barking dogs taken near Schönleinstrasse. At least mostly pretty near.
Don’t know how the digger got in there, but I like it.
