hamburg harbour area

rhine

three guys high on coke came into my bar. i served them, but i was not as friendly as they wanted me to be. so they started a discussion that i could follow because they wanted me to listen to it. "a lack of friendly behaviour. almost like in a small town when someone thinks he is the king." i wonder who thinks of being a king while being on coke. i asked them where they were from. all from hamburg. "i am from the rhineland", i replied and one said: "we could smell!"

Timeemission (music)

Here is a mix that i made: Download HERE

after downloading, please unzip the file!
(if you got trouble with that, either google or drop me a line!)

happy easter!


tracklist:
Daniel Rossen - Too little too late
Department of Eagles - Sailing by night
Dirty Projectors - I sit on the ridge at dusk
Spoon - Back to the life
Sam and the Plants - Sound is six
Neoangin - I am taking my secrets into grave
The Books - Tokyo
Matthew Dear - I can't feel
Stereo Total - Musique automatique
Jape - I was a man
Future Islands - Long flight
James Blake - to care (for you)
Kurt Vile - Baby's arms
The Chap - Few horoscope
Deerhoof vs Evil - Qui dorm, nome's somia
Twin Sister - I want a house
Flying Lotus - Zodiac Shit
(Sam and the Plants - Cluster)
Tuneyards - Bizness
(Javelin - Africadabra)
Kojak - Art to breathe
Timmy Thomas - Why can't we live
Deerhunter - Slow hunter
Black Moth Super Rainbow - Jump into my mouth and breathe the stardust
Dirty Beaches - Lord knows best

free port hamburg 1888-2012

By the 1st of January 2013 Hamburg's free port will no longer be a free one. the custom free zone will be cancelled because most of the wares that had been passing through here originated from european countries anyway. Inside the european union there are no custom duties.


this fence marks a border of the freeport. it is located in hamburg-wilhelmsburg (harburger chausse / spreehafen) and even though people are allowed to walk to pass the fence and walk on the dyke along the water the fence has remained. someone painted scissors and a white line all along the fence expressing people's wishes for it to be taken down.




hamburg's port is also the the 2nd biggest container port in europe after rotterdam and the 8th biggest in the world (2010). so no need to wonder why hamburg is so rich. but what about the debts? almost 30 billion euros! i will look into that later on...

what other costumers experienced when the medal wasn't there

tennisballs continued (again)

alsenplatz/alsenstrasse, hamburg 2011



(the third photo shows my friend julia's intervention. she knitted this bit and inside these bowls are seeds covered in clay that will grow out into a climbing plant)


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Just before christmas 2010 i was walking through the shopping district in hamburg's mönckebergstrasse near central station and i asked people what money could not buy.
indeed, not the most innovative question to ask, everyone has already a "right" answer to this. it is like a code that everybody seems to have adapted in our society. we all seem to know that money can't buy love or health. we adapt this cultural knowledge in the course of our lives, one might even call it a truth.
but having witnessed and participated in the annual christmas shopping marathon i wondered if this truth is actually a repressed one. all these old ideas about christmas and love and tranquillity and so forth it is an absurd spectacle to watch. i buy you love and i rush to find the right thing for you. and after i have found it, i need to relax from all that stressful time that i went through to get it.
a lot of people also tell me that they dislike christmas because of this very commercialisation. think about coca-cola's santa claus and how much it shaped our modern image of this bearded man. i assume a lot of parents still try to evoke this fantasy in their kids until they grow up a little and realise it was not him who got them a present from heaven(free of charge). nope, it was provided by that massive shopping centre, just around the corner. Heaven on earth! then the kids see all these wonderful toys that they could play with. But all the parents have to say: "why don't you put it on your wishlist for christmas?! i bet santa claus would be able to get it for you." the kids arent stupid anymore. they know already that there is no santa claus at all. so they play their parent's game. as well-behaved kids they start writing a wishlist in their best hand-writing. they put it in an envelope addressed to the imaginary person and hand it over to their parents who then disappear with the words. "i'll be back soon. i just need to send it to santa claus." two days before christmas eve the parents rush through hamburg to get the presents. with the list in their hands i meet them interrupting their shopping rush.
"can i ask you a question and could you write your answer onto this tennisball here?" i hand over a ball and a pen. "what's the question then?" aks the irritated parent. "what can money not buy?" "love!" the parent replies almost less then a second after. "oh, you dont have to tell me, just write it onto the ball, please." while the parent is scribbling down the word in big letters i get a glimpse of the paper she holds in the same hand as the ball. i see a list of words written in kid's writing. only one i am able to catch: star wars. the parent returns the ball and pen. "it is quite tough to write on that ball. the surface is all hairy and my hand-writing there looks a bit like my kid's one." "that's alright, i can clearly recognise the word." "and what are you gonna do with it now?" she asks me. "i will approach more people and ask them the same question. and when i have enough answers i will stick them together with paper-clips so it might look like a bramble. then i will hang them on an old lamp post. so high, that no one can reach or read it. sooner or later some of them will get loose and fall down like a mature apple. the person that will pass by or find it will read a word on the ball that might be just yours."

less lobby

less energetic

This is the nuclear power plant in Muehlheim-Kaerlich, just 10km away from the place i was born. The construction was finished in 1986, but after two years of running it was switched off due to a false planning and construction permission. Earthquakes in this area could have occured, so it was never switched on again and it is scheduled to be taken down in 2014.
Of course, i am influenced by the events in Japan regarding Fuskushima. Only now i am truly understanding what a nuclear meltdown can actually cause. I could have understood it earlier, much earlier. Tschernobyl happened when i was six years old, to young to understand and later on maybe i never really wanted to realise what happened there or why people continued to demonstrate against nuclear power in germany over decades since the early 70s. only now i get a sense of its possible destructive and deadly force. I only need to imagine what could have happened if the plant next to my hometown had a meltdown during its two years of running time in the mid 80's. I could have run over by a car too, but nonetheless....

post loveparade

The Love Parade in july 2010 in Duisburg ended in a tragedy. 21 people died due to a mass panic in a massively overcrowded festival area. As people tried to enter or leave the festival through two tunnels at the same time people collapsed, were crushed to death or ran over. Until today neither the management nor the city or police admitted responsibility for the deaths of these people.
a week ago i went to see the area with my own eyes trying to compare the images and videos made by eye witnesses with what i would experience. These videos that can be found throughout the internet had become a memory for myself. indeed, i have never physically witnessed any of the events, but i have acquired this "post-memory" through visual media. if you are interested in reading about "post-memory" in relation to photograpy there is an interesting essay to be found here.
ps: the term itself is being used for a transmission of memory of traumatic events to the next generation that did not witness those.

S=Save