Ok so take two.
Have been getting so much ‘Kultur’ recently that have had no time to blog, ha ha. The people I am hanging out with here seem to know what’s going on much better than me so I have been tagging along to a few exhibitions. On Saturday I went to the Martin Gropius Bau to see the Stanley Kubrick exhibition, I’ve never been a big film buff but it was really interesting (and in English!), I have added Barry Lyndon to my must see list, but I think Lolita and Full Metal Jacket might be too much for me.
And then on Sunday after a quick trip to a flea market, we went to see the "Friedrich Christian Flick Collection" in the Hamburger Bahnhof. The bahnhof itself is a pretty cool space, as you would assume from the name it is a converted train station. Anyway, my friend explained to me (in German and patchy English so I might not have understood completely) that Flick is an art patron and his collection, mainly installation pieces, is too big to store anywhere permanently so it is always on loan to different galleries. They have already started packing the exhibition up so we didn’t see all of it, but some of it was really interesting. I particularly liked the work of Rodney Graham, especially "Flanders Trees". Now, far be it from me to assume any actual knowledge or insights into visual art but these pieces really grabbed my attention. They are large photographs of trees, turned upside down (the photos not the trees). But for some reason because they are not the right way up it is difficult to know them. I kept wanting to flip them round because then they would make sense as trees but because that was impossible they were very uncomfortable to look at.
And then we went to an Irish pub where the waitresses can’t speak German and watched Barcelona v. Real Madrid. (2-4)