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Ode To June 7

“Ode an Juni” is a kind of infinite life work shot on Super 8.
In 2008, I started to capture June, my ultimately favorite month, in picture and sound.
Diary film, Berlin portrait, life excerpt, colorful poem, something like that now every year.

Number 7 from this year’s June is almost ready!!!!!
I am just about to edit the credits!

Update: Here it is!!!

Kino z fusów – Kaffeesatz – Coffee Grounds

I was invited to give a workshop in Warsaw at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art last weekend. Pure pleasure! Great group of 7 people, one day intense super 8 … filming and developing in good old coffee and nice new chrysanthemum juice! Chrysanthemum! Flower of the dead, used only for funerals or on graves (at least in some European countries), flower of the dead month November … we transformed it into something living, pulsating fresh analog film.

Oakland Day #1

Oops! Suddenly I am on another planet. Car dominated too, but louder. Different colours, many colours, warmer wind, more palm trees. Gentrification buzzing in real time. A Russian truck with yummy Russian Food: Pelmeny! Beer breweries everywhere. One millimeter, sorry: inch! away: many many homeless tents. A little Kreuzberg feeling coming up. No, much tougher, I guess. Do I like it here? Yes!

Fav Bagel

I read so many news today and they really make me feel sick but what is feeling sick when others die, one after the other in an ocean of coldness and without a horizon in sight and get killed by very empty and ill young losers – what can I do? What does it mean if I smell the fart of toxic masculinity which is so harmful not only for women and the whole society but also for men themselves.

So I post a lovely bagel topped with smoke salmon cream cheese and salsa (medium hot), and my shabby golden shoes which have seen better days but I love to keep on walking in them.

The Crazy Welterklärerin

… means „the crazy world explainer“ … explainerina … explainerette …

It is my youtube channel! Follow me! I tell you all my secrets about analog film developing in eco drinks and more! Here: www.youtube.com/channel/UC2HCES7eg5hBfijVmWNaw4w … I need some more subscribers: from 100 I can put the name of my choice in the url!

Pinhole Power Pole

I don’t know why but for some reason I am fascinated by these electro poles or posts or however they are called … maybe for me as a European they look so retro?

Anyway, of course I must portray them. Set up my tripod and my Illy pinhole camera, hole pointing pole upwards, never really knowing what comes out, perspective for sure unordinary, risk of sunlight beams falling into the camera, they would darken the negative but who cares, I’m the devotee of adventures and accidents!

Right on the bottom: first of three, positive paper from a negative, both developed in coffee.

Redwood Pieces

How can I present my photos?
I made positives from the pinhole negatives using 40 years old ORWO (made in the GDR) paper which is still amazingly awake and alive and gives me crisp results! I develop them in coffee / turmeric / bark tea / kelp-coffee …. and some more.
I thought about wood pieces. Noel (one of the two founders of North Street Collective) said: „Oh! I have lots! You can have them!“, came over with his gigantic chainsaw and sawed me some little pieces.
Pictures of tree, developed in tree, mounted on tree. I love it!

TinType Fake App

I love it! People think, me as a puristic super 8 filmmaker would hate these fake apps but on the contrary, I love my 8mm app and my TinType app!

(“A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion”, says Wiki)

(“This incredible filtering tool will have you looking old-timey in no time”, says the app)

Illy On The Beach

I put my favourite pinhole camera on the beach and let it take dramatic pictures!! 🙂
In the can: a piece of black & white negative sheet film. Put it on a piece of photo paper – FOMAbrom baryta – so I receive a positive image! Develop it in Caffenol … which seems to give it an extra dramatic tone! Brown-greyish. I love it!

CC Rider 65

I’m in love with the bus line 65 that takes me from Willits to Fort Bragg. 32 miles. A curvy street through the forest. A trip a little more than 1 hour. A 16 seater van.
Today, a hot day, a crisp blue bright day. Pure beauty for a long moment, I forget everything, all the shit and crap and assholes that are about to kill our wonderful earth and for a moment it all swooooshes in the unimportant background, there is only the bus and us 3 women on bord and rock’n’roll in the bus radio and countless glimpses of beauty looking through the window. Even Bob Dylan does not ruin my mood. Mama’s in the factory, she ain’t got no shoes – Daddy’s in the alley, he’s lookin‘ for food – I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.

CC Rider by Chuck Willis

Cowboy Sage

Cowboy sage (Artemisia californica) smells strong and makes a good, powerful developer!
„It is endemic to the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, in coastal sage scrub, coastal strand, chaparral, and dry foothill communities“ says Wikipedia!
„In the past it was employed as a treatment to fight coughs and colds by the Cahuilla natives. They chewed the leaves, either dried or fresh. It was used by women of the Cahuilla and Tongva to alleviate menstrual cramps and to ease labor.“ I love it!

Little Beauties In My Garden

My first week’s circle is quite narrow: I wander through the village, I get to know my streets, my neighborhood and all the plants in our garden. My pinhole synapse itches! I brought two pinhole cameras made from a coffee and a spice can. Simple but wonderful. I browse the garden and get attracted by tomato plants, by peppermint, by pink lillies, by a planetlike flower, already dried, by other unknown garden fellows.

I take small photos (negatives), develop them in Caffenol (instant coffee, washing soda, vitamine c), and then later at night when it’s dark I lock myself in my improvised darkroom and make sandwich prints on paper. Then I have positives! Testing them with Caffenol, later then probably in their matching soups (tomato picture – tomato soup!!)

Come back!

First Week In Willits

… in North California. I am a lucky artist, I got an artist-in-residency here up North in Mendocino County where the sky is high and blue, marihuana lingers in the air and the wild ocean is so close! Actually 33 miles and there’s a bus going there but only twice a day … not more, why, everybody has a car in oil wonderland! No, that’s not true, I see cyclists. I realize bike lanes. It’s California!

I live in a sweet village house together with two other female artists and I love our daily life: someone makes tea, someone talks to the phone organizing poetry congresses, someone is looking for walnuts to dye something, someone sits on a withered wooden chair leaning on our (our!) garden redwood tree, someone stirs magic developer made from cowboy sage (me!!) and falls in love with the huge outdoor sink every single day …

7 more weeks!