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

..-

i will continue to sing

It has been a while and sometimes i thought it would be too late anyway...
but it wasn't even though the mist in front of my eyes remained thick for a long time.
nostalgia is heavily linked with myself; i keep on longing for things that have been long gone. people, places and times...#
some weeks ago my only external harddrive died and with it all my digital photos that i had taken in the past 10 years. i was about to create a backup of the data, but it failed to do so when the hdd did not start again. i cannot really tell why i was not upset. i simply wasn't. from time to time some of these digital photos pop back into my mind and i can clearly see them in my mind. they are still there, somewhere in the depths of my memory.
the film negative is something else. i still have hundreds of them stored at my friend's place in london. since my move to hamburg in the summer of 2009 i have not been taking any analogue photographs.
finally, i got my camera, and i will continue to sing for nostalgia....

they taught him things

They taught him things...(2010) from Time Emitter on Vimeo.

christmas fools

Clothes pegs continued

Hamburg, Bellealliancestrasse

Tennisballs Interventions continued

Hamburg,Clemens-Schulz Strasse




Hamburg, Hein-Hoyer-Strasse




Hamburg,Clemens-Schulz Strasse

Dockville Festival 2010

thx to tom

drop box

looking for something
in every corner of the room
then outside
with the wind on my face


strange looks
when i asked for the way


i thought i had arrived
but i was walking in a circle


an old sign warned me to open the box


but when i did
i could not hear, could not see


there are no islands
where you can sit and breathe


when i thought i was quicker
the lizzard escaped my hands


sleeping all day with my eyes open
walking all night


and when you run again
i will be as quick as you


we will meet here
and remember those days gone by

tennis ball intervention

Hamburg St.pauli
hafenstrasse (close to pudels)tennisballs in braille

innerspeakers