The evening before temperatures plunge by 15° celsius we get a striking sunset which looks like this…

On saturday May 25 the Life Ball (an Aids charity event) takes place in Vienna. Several stars are invited to the ball like Sharon Stone, Bill Clinton, the porn actress Jennna Jameson and transsexual Amanda Lepore from NYC. Newspapers have reports on the stars as well as pictures.

I discover a photograph of Amanda Lepore in the papers and recognize her from that Dj Hell inner sleeve i have written about in my weblog (At the MoMa). I guess I was totally wrong charging that woman 60 years old. There was something very odd about her looks what made me guess her age that wrong. She is a transsexual instead.

We go to the Ötscher, a mountain in the province of Lower Austria, where i wanted to go for years but never made it there. Approaching the mountain area in a bus we pass beautiful, partly wooden houses, from the beginning of the 20th century. Charging from those houses I think that the area must have been very rich in the past and maybe still is…
The Ötscher itself stands alone and is situated in an extremely beautiful area of limestone mountains and rivers. It offers a spectacular view of the Alps in the West which seem to be endless.

On the second day of our stay we go down through the Ötschergräben, a steep river valley close to the Ötscher. The hike through the valley takes several hours, it almost seems endless.

We arrive at a cottage which serves as a restaurant. It is situated right over the river valley.
From there we leave the valley and walk to the Erlauf reservoir. The Erlauf is a river in that area. Even that reservoir is beautiful.

After that we get to a train station of the Mariazeller Bahn, which is a narrow gauge railway running from the famous place of pilgrimage called Mariazell. Even the pope comes there sometimes. The train ride is superscenic but takes 2,5 hrs for 85 km. The first 1,5 hrs the trip is beautiful. The train goes down from around 900 m altitude to around 250m.

I am on my way back from a public swimming pool in the 16th district of Vienna. Suddenly there is a heavy smell of chocolate in the air as i get close to the factory where the famous Viennese Manner waffles are produced. The scent of chocolate is incredibly strong and mixes very well with the summer air.

Last view…

As I leave Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Brooklyn area where I stay during my trip to New York , a black guy, who sits on the sidewalk, waves at me in a really friendly way. This is very nice given that white people are sometimes not too welcome in this black neighbourhood (they usually cause rents to go up). I take it as a good-bye wish. I like Bed-Stuy.

I go to see a Jeff Wall exhibition at the MoMa. The show comprises 40 photographs made over 30 years.
The museum has an extensive collection of Picassos which I also get to see. A great painting from the blue period called „Two Acrobats with a Dog“ is on show as well as „Student with Pipe“ (1914, picture above) which amuses me a lot.

As I leave the MoMa I see a remarkable couple passing by. The guy who is in his late twenties is very handsome, the woman on his arm is kind of special. Her age is hard to guess, I reckon she is around 60 yrs old. She has been fully operated, charging from her nose and her upper lip.
I am sure I know this woman from Dj Hells last album „NY muscle“. There is a photograph of her on the record sleeve. I think she is a celebrity in certain circles…

As i walk into St. Mark’s Bookstore, a good book shop in the East Village, I notice that the attention has shifted from last year’s books about punk and post punk to books about art. Contempory art seems all the rave this year. Only that the music books came as paperbacks (had to buy a few) and the art books as hard covers (can’t really afford them). Most art books are exhibition catalogues.

Matthew Marks Gallery shows new works of German photographer Andreas Gursky. The new works comprise a big scale series of fomula one racing cars on their pit stop. The cars and their teams are bright and beautifully lit and set against a darker background. There is also a gargantuan print of an event at a North Korean stadium (poor people making up a pattern of flowers) as well as a landscape series of the Halong bay in northern Vietnam. The digital manipulation of those series is not so well done. It is just too obvious.

Rirkrit Tiravanija has a great installation at David Zwirner Gallery. He has built a big box which is set in what appears to be the garage of the gallery. You can enter the installation either through open rolling doors from the street or go through the gallery. That has the effect of entering a side spot like a garage. In the installation hot thai food awaits you which you can just take out of the pot. There is a nice social effect to it especially as that gallery is super up-market. You wander through the streets of Chelsea hungry and thirsty and suddenly there is this place you are allowed to (if you are not a bum, that is).

The Austrian electronics-mixed-with-live-instruments outfit Sofa Surfers play a gig at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Their sound is a mix of programmed beats and sounds, guitar and bass, live drumming and vocals of their Nigerian singer. They play an incredibly powerful gig. Once, during the concert I wonder how much louder you can play in a 40m2 room…
After the concert we head for the subway in midtown wondering that that had just happened in this surrounding of business and office buildings. Full moon shines down on us through glass towers…

Last alternative spot in SoHo

I come to New York for the opening of „Happiness of Objects“, a group show at the Sculpture Center. Our film „Tomatoheads“, which is a co-production of my artist collegue Paul Horn and me, is shown. We manage to get one flight ticket from the Austrian Cultural Forum. Paul lets me go to do some networking.
There are many people at the opening and bunches of people watching our video. They laugh a lot. That’s what the video is for…