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Chicken Momo

Walking along the street in plain sunshine, feeling slightly hungry, being dragged just by coincidence into an inconspicuous little restaurant called Tibet Café, I ordered chicken momo just because I liked the name.
The smiling lady said: wait 15 minutes and so I did.
It smelled good there. They have a large image of the Dalai Lama, also smiling. I watched out the window: we’re open. Slow beautiful streetcar. Someone crossing the street. Sunshimmer. I have time. I exist. This is it. I understand the sense of it all.

Ambassadors Of Coincidence

It’s a game.

We played and documented it today and yesterday.
It goes like this:
A city walk game. Limit: one city, two days.
A group of 2 or 3 people.

We chose a starting point by chance (dice, telephone book) which is a street and a number. We go there, our antennas upright, find something, any item possible, any stranded goods, doodle, debris, paint, house, plant, sign, scene, mark that gives away its secret and inspires us to find the next station. We derive information from it, meaning: next street-name and number. And so on.

We tempt fate and challenge coincidence. We go with the flow, confident that the mighty spirit of coincidence will give us signs and that we, the flexible and witty artists, will be able to interpret them, capture them and find our unique personal path until the game comes to a logic end.

This game is not objective. Our personality, our view and our history colorizes the whole experiment and makes it a singular happening, an irrepeatable film. There can be beauty in banality and we’ll find it.

We film and record sounds and document the trip as a whole, the magic points as individual signs, what we see, what we get, what we think … it can lead us to surprises, to weird stories or boredom. It depends on us. And a little on the weather. Super 8 helps make a jewel out of it!

There will be a website soon.
And a film. Give me some time 🙂

Coffee Developing Trance

I’m in love with LIFT’s darkroom!
Today I tried another coffee based developer … and to refine the soup a little I used Lake Ontario water instead of regular boring tap water. And added some squirrel beer!
The result: wonderful black&white positive film!!

Baseball, S8-John & Big Fat Burrito

I met John Porter, Toronto’s most famous super 8 filmer, we bought some yummy burritos at Kensington Market („Big Fat Burrito“) and opened the baseball season at Christie Pits (famous for its riots 80 years ago), beautiful green open park, Toronto Maple Leafs against Ottawa Fat Cats. We won!

My first baseball game! Haven’t got a clue why guys were standing at different posts doing nothing while the boy in the middle kept bombing tiny balls towards another one who constantly missed it with his bat …. but it was fun to watch and John brought ice cold cider 😉

Coffee Countdown Film

How did this silly film idea come upon me … I want to make a short film, Kodachrome K40, and then process it in caffenol, see if it works … about Toronto and coffee of course, something speedy, most probably called „Toronto, I like you as much as I like coffee“ using letters that I find around here … so I thought it would be nice to start it with a countdown, spent half my day chasing numbers from 10 down to 0 which is not easy because numbers tend to come in company: they have another number left or right, especially a 4 was veeeery hard to find …

But anyway, the sun was shining brightly, summer has come into town, butterflies land on my legs!!

Chubby Chaparro

I’m so lucky to live in the chubbiest chaparriest coolest hottest center of the universe, just by chance, and here’s the hottest tiniest Mex ever, called Chaparro Cocina Mexicana … in Kreuzberg, burrito and quesadilla to stay or to go, with different hot sauces (1, 2, 3 chili signs declaring the power of hotness!) and some plusses like smoky chicken or veggie … take a beer from the fridge, dos equis xx or corona or victoria … just love them!!!

Travelers meeting: Dagie going to Toronto, Florian going to New York and Mexico, Khani coming from the Canaries, Nadine going to Italy … felt windy and worldy!!

Smørrebrød, Smørrebrød Røm Pøm Pøm Pøm

I saw that pattern on the ground and I had a hallucination, audio and video, of that Danish or Swedish muppet chef, waving some utensils while singing his signature song like wikipedia says „for example, „Aweenda shmure da froog’s legs.“ These hints are necessary as he frequently uses unorthodox culinary equipment (firearms, sports equipment, hand tools, etc.) to prepare his dishes.“
In German it was Smörrebröd Smörrebröd römpömpömpöm 😉

The Caffenol Miracle

I heard about caffenol some time ago … a developer soup made from coffee, vitamin c and washing soda! For black & white negative processing, film as well as paper.

Tonight was my night!
I bathed a double super 8 test stripe (Fomapan R) in a smelly brownish soup for 15 minutes (then regular fixing) and what came out?
A fully developed warm black tone quite dense negative! Hoooray!
Developer to drink, developer to go, developer to flush in the toilet, no more chemicals any more (except fix, but maaayyybeeee there’s a chance with salt, I’m following a forum discussion about that subject and I guess I must check it out …)

Here’s a lovely caffenol blog and here another one!

Berlin Home Coming Feeling

Nothing beats this feeling: riding the road and arriving home in my city.

Remembering: more than two decades ago homecoming was like this: passing through lightless grey East Germany (me Westy / Wessi) feeling like a decadent spy, being extremely polite to the border officers who at the slightest grin checked your car for hours … and then … lights at the horizon … civilization … yeah … embrace shiny capitalism cool stinky Westberlin! Yes! I love my home city!