ARMENIA

Leaving for Yerevan on Tuesday May 10. Time to revamp the blog!

ELSEWHERE

From July 23 - Aug 18 2009 I'm an artist in residence at ELSEWHERE in Greensboro, North Carolina. The ELSEWHERE folks are really big on the blog thing and have set me up a separate one for use during the residency, so for the next few weeks - check out this other one... http://rachelleviaderknowles.vox.com

Cardiff

Home for a few days to do laundry, re-group and catch up on some work things.

Budapest

Today:

So fun. We started with a steep uphill ride on a cog railway... where we joined 'the Children's Railway', a training school for kids to learn on-the-job skills. Its a real railway, run by kids, that runs through the Buda Hills. It is magical and damn funny. Lots of uniforms and saluting... After that, a hike up to the highest lookout point over Budapest and stunning views for miles around. An empty chair-lift took us down, down down, then we zigzagged our way across Buda to the Bela Bartok house just in time for a guided tour. Pictured here is his quite study and if you look closely at his portrait you can see two bullet holes...

We ended the day relaxing in thermal waters... then out for a pizza. A truly memorable, fantastic day.

Yesterday:

Morning - shopping for food at the Central Market. A feast for all the senses.

Afternoon -  we went to the Gellert baths and relaxed in the healing waters...

Evening - big home cooked meal, washed down with fine Hungarian wine and concluded with Unicum! (And caught up with downloads of TV shows, Corrie and Flashpoint...) 

Vienna

After two fabulous,  intense weeks at the Gottweig Monastery, a few well deserved R + R days in Vienna! Saw the Rachel Whiteread Jewish Memorial. Went to the Nam June Paik show at the MUMOK yesterday, followed by a peppy little show called The Porn Identity at the Kunsthalle. Not every day you get to see full-on porn in a gallery and from the looks of the gallery goers (a higher than usual percentage of shifty looking unkempt older men...) the gallery did a great job of reaching new audiences! As well as objects and installations, there were lots of screens showing films including Richard Kern's Fingered, one of my personal favourites... and a lovely 'film intervention' piece by Martin Arnold. And at the other end of the spectrum we have Ron Jeremy, 'the hardest working guy in showbiz', looking a bit orange, a bit hairy and a bit greasy, having sex with scarily realistic, corpse-like, rubber sex dolls. Yumm. BTW, in the googling i did to find out exactly what material these hyper realistic dolls are made of (rubber? silicone?) I found a site with tips for homemade sex toys... Tip one includes melons and microwaves... eeew.

Austria....

Writing this from Gottweig Monastery,  back in Austria for the final module of the Media Art Histories MA programme. Todays lecture is by curator Nat Muller.

The Louvre

Two things I did not know about the Louvre. 

Firstly, its build on the site of a medieval castle, the foundations of which were excavated when they built the glass pyramid. I'm a fan of the glass pyramid btw, it is holding up rather nicely, it still looks fresh and exciting and at night it glows like a gem.

Secondly, there are several contemporary projects around the place, including currently an installation of pieces by Anselm Keifer.

Walls

My initial obsession in Paris was cakes. Eat a different one every day and try like hell to walk it off. Now instead I seem to be obsessed with the walls, the delicate colours of the lime stone, the visual consistency of the city. I am teetering on the brink of taking alot of seriously boring photographs of Paris.... here are a few of my current faves, of course I love them! What a minimalist I have become... The most perceptive of you will see in these photographs the special glow of early spring light. I even saw blossom yesterday. Patrick, not sure if walls can ward off - 30 C winter blah, but hope these are helping!

Old bones

Yesterday I went to the Natural History Museum and it was totally fab. I forget just how happy being in a room full of wood, metal, glass and bones can make me feel. I'm an installation artist at heart, I'm inspired by spaces, and these sort of spaces make me tingle. In my mind, the best type of NHM is slightly shabby, maybe even a bit dusty, big and grand, wore bare stairs. Flecking paint is a bonus. This one in Paris is a beauty, all skeletons and gross pinky grey things in jars. A cabinet of livers, a cabinet of colons and best of all, a cabinet of deformed things. In the central hall, all the animal skeleton face in the same direction, sizing you up as you enter the space. Its like a crazy Noah Ark, all these miscellaneous species forced to get along, side by side, one in front of the other, all hues of milky pale yellows like Paris its self.

Daniel Buren project at the Picasso Museum

Site-specific installation 'La Coupure'. Given the grandness of this huge, mirrored, optical gesture, its hard to 'see'. The building is basically sliced through by black and mirror panels....