two times a year a new issue of another magazine is for sale. and each time the magazine is very inspiring. this time it featured an article about black mountain college and pippilotti rist of course with lots of stories and lots of fashion.
it is alway great to read but this time it was very special. black mountain college is in my eyes as an education "institute" of much more interest then the bauhaus: one from before the second world war and the other from after. i visited the former bauhaus building in dessau a number of times and read a lot about the school, the teachers, the students and the work they made.
but to be honest i feel now that that whole period is rather old fashioned. the world changed a lot since the bauhaus period and the ideas seem more or less rather rigid and oldfashioned. i learnt much more from the kind of artists that kept the black mountain college running, from their improvisations, their endless experiments and their continous challenging of the status quo.
i learnt for example a lot from john cage and even had the pleasure to meet him. i liked his music, his books, his stories to stimulate the development of my ideas and my thinking. but i must admit that i never played john cage music during a dinner with guests.
i enjoyed pippilotti rist 's show in the hamburger bahnhof some years ago with huge video screens showing her colourful and special videos. i also visited the opening of her show in the centraal museum in utrecht but found that show rather boring: i missed the huge screens, the colours and the clearly present energy which i got to know in berlin. i had the same when i saw in ps 1 in new york, if i remember well, years ago "die lauf der dinge" from fischli und weiss and found the film great.
recently i saw their show in the boymans museum in rotterdam and missed the energy which i felt the first time when i saw their film (which i saw many times after ps 1 and still enjoy seeing).
art for me is about energy, about seeing or doing things that hit you, that you remember seeing/joining/particapating many years later. in the same way i remember keith haring entering the former venster gallery in rotterdam also years go: he just came from amsterdam airport, we had lunch.
he started to draw/ paint on the huge window panes in the gallery, starting in the upper left corner and finishing in the lower right not long afterwards. it was great to see him working so fast, so spontaneously and so perfect.