MUNICH, GERMAN: Home and Work

Arrival: Munich, Bavaria

Arriving to a very quiet airport in Munich, even if it was 11:00 pm -
did seem a bit odd.  People got off the plane and disappeared immediately.  The airport was quite large with no sign of life whatsoever with the exception of my colleague Patricia and myself.  My over-tired brain was slipping into weighing the possibilities of Munich being taken over by zombies,
until I saw Sabine walking towards us in the abandoned terminal.  She did not look like a zombie.  It was great to see our fellow artist and friend Sabine!

Sabine drove us to our artist residency at Feldafing, a small community outskirts of Munich. From the airport the drive was approximately 40 minutes.  I asked Sabine why the airport was empty when we arrived.  I could not figure out why with a city of over 1.5 million proper, that some of them wouldn't be at the airport.  Sabine told us that is what was a difference between Bavaria and the North. She said everyone works in Munich and goes home early while in Berlin it is much the opposite.  I thought that for a city that has a reputation for beer and sausage, that there would be a bit more activity, even at the municipal airport on a Monday night.

Villa Waltberta Art Residency


My new home, at The Villa Waldberta Artist Residency was built in 1902.  The house was initially to be a meeting place for the elite and artists.  In 1966, the state capital Munich became owner of the house through the Bertha-Koempel-Foundation, and since the 1980s The Villa Waldberta has been an international artists' residency. The residency includes disciplines of music, literature, theatre, dance, design, photography, film, fine arts, performance arts and the humanities, for the focus of creating interdisciplinary work.
The apartments are five fully furnished apartments in the villa to accommodate authors and artists. 

The villa is situated on the hillside, overlooking Lake Sternberg and  has an amazing view of the Bavarian Alps.  The property of the villa is large and includes large wooded grounds for walking as well as an outside art studio house.

My apartment in the Villa consists of a large 2 bedroom flat with an upstairs and downstairs separated by a small metal circular stairwell hidden in a closet.  Patricia, the other artist had one level but still as large.  Also staying at the villa was a young contemporary dancer from Uganda.

A sorry attempt at yodeling....






Welcome Lecture Introduction and Danka Shon

The jet lag is still hanging on tight.  We had a scheduled welcome dinner and lecture presentation to some of the Board and neighbors of the Villa.  There were around 15 people that were in attendance.  We reviewed past individual works and our proposal for our new group effort while in Bavaria. People were interesting and many of them spoke english or understood which was a relief to someone who could only understand Yah and Danka Shon.  




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There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed. - Gandhi


Art making

Our subject for our project surrounds the Anthropocene... defined by Paul Crutzen, Nobel Dutch Chemist  - a proposed term for the present geological epoch (from the time of the Industrial Revolution onwards), during which humanity has begun to have a significant impact on the environment. 

Initially we were a team of three - Sabine Schlunk, Patricia Earnhardt and myself.  We have added two other strong women to the team - Greta Moder a wonderful artist that specializes in body movement and Sabine's friend Iris Klienshmidt who is a strong German filmmaker.  Sabine has planned a weekend at her country home to meet and work together to form a cohesive plan of action.  In the meantime we will bring our own research and matter to the table through email and continued Skype.

Research - PART 1

We made our first journey to the Munich University to view its Paleo Exhibit.  We were interested in marks of fossils from various vertebrates - reptiles  - from the earliest fish to the  immediate ancestors of modern mammals. We were keen on viewing the fossils as inquiry to organisms' evolution and interaction with each other and their environment.  

It was interesting to view the remnants of a time before.  It is in Paleontology that formed the basis for defining most of the geological eras, periods, epochs and ages that are commonly recognized. If the Anthropocene can be defined by diverse paleontological criteria, what will be the most common biostratigraphic zones?  Humans have had an impact on our environment for a very long time and have intensified since the early-Holocene transition.  We have always altered ecosystems but the repercussions of climate change and pollution are of magnitude and more intense than the early humans were doing.  We have altered nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, carbon has increased significant - areas like the Great Lakes are some of the most overloaded nutrient polluted areas. Then areas like Africa there problem of not enough nitrogen to grow food with its overpopulation. In the Anthropocene the global economic system is the primary driver of change on earth.  Policymakers take heed.

The visit made us think of possibilities that may occur with transition and change.  Even with the realities of life on earth as we know it, there is the time in-between of human adaption.  Questions of if and how we will adapt, what will that look like, what will become important, and if this occurs what will our marks be? For some reason it made me think of a quote of Hockney of how "drawing takes time and a line has time in it".

My Field Notes for the Week:

From reading The Sixth Sense by Elizabeth Kolbert
Kolbert is a very clever writer, (staff writer for the New Yorker Magazine, won Pulitzer prize for this baby)  Her writing is basically a hard hit reality of the realities of our world today.

Now, this can be very awaking but I feel it needs to be.  She communicate this in a very clear way with added thoughtful, provocation and lovely prose.  She is worth the read.

Reading/listening: 

http://elizabethkolbert.com

Summation:

“humans can be destructive and shortsighted” she writes, “they can also be forward-thinking and altruistic.”

She argues that time and again, people have demonstrated that they really do care and are willing to make sacrifices for other creatures. But the real point, she says, is “it doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world” - both prehistoric and otherwise, and are not particularly strong, swift, or fertile. They are, however, resourceful, and as our adaptability continued to grow, the landscape alterations that eventually followed led to a huge decrease in biodiversity. That diminished biodiversity, she claims, may be behind the so-called sixth extinction.

She states that amphibians particularly are susceptible to conditions that lead to a background extinction due to their sensitivity of condition changes in environment.We really are that influential – and destructively so. And yet if all civilization were to end now, then 100M years hence, everything we have built would be compressed, in the geological record, to a layer of sediment “not much thicker than a cigarette paper”