Category Archives: Brains

art, literature, thoughts, … all that stimulates the intellect

Of Hedgehogs and Cucumbers

Another year gone by, somewhat low-carb on the sensual side this 2021, much like it’s predecessor, and similarily oblomovian. Landwehrkanal froze and was ice-skated upon, later inflatable boats were rowed on the same canal. Sahara sand flew over Berlin, breads were baked, drinks were mixed, books were read, movies were watched, technology failed. Cats came, cats died. Goodbye FLockerl, you were found dead on the cemetery that was your second home by an old lady – what an iconic way to go. You will be dearly remembered …

Flockerl you were a drooly cat. After you ate dry food – half was gone and half was wet. But you were a worthy successor to Ziggy, with whom you’re now cruising through the cemeteries of cat heaven.

Goodbye Flockerl !

Hedgy & Company are very much alive to the contrary .. growing fatter and bolder, and still preferring cat food over slugs! When there is enough food for everyone, there is peace. But cat food makes you very thristy, so quickly a drink of puro agave! 😉

Sharing is caring. When there is food for everyone, there is peace.

Eine sommerliche remote work + vacation Combo in Hoheneich (und Wien) brachte etwas Abwechslung, das gelegentliche Glaserl “Joiseph”, der Platane beim Wachsen zusehen, Holz einschlichten für den Winter und fast jeden Tag schwimmen im Teich! Du was ham si’ die Zwergerl g’freut jeden Tag beim Pumpen mit dem neuen Brunnen!

‘kochte Haaße. Aufschneid’n. Schoaf. Brot (Scheibn). Gurkerl. Zwa Pfefferoni, schoaf. Budweisa. Da muss bei einen einfachen Menschen einfach Freude aufkommen.

Im Garten in Berlin gab’s heuer frische Gurken, stachelig und schneckensicher wuchsen sie prächtig im und aus dem Hochbeet heraus und kletterten an allem was sich links und rechts zum Klettern anbot. Nächstes Jahr bekommt ihr eine Rankhilfe meine grünen Freunde!

Sorte: Dicke Bertha.

A sunny Friday off during late summer led Björn and me on a bike tour through Berlin in search of brutalist and modernist architecture (yes, we had two dedicated maps ;-)) and there was lots of coarse concrete to touch!

The Shell building (top) was one of our favourites, but among the most brutal ones are mainly churches.

Um brutalistische Betonbauten auszubalancieren hilft: der Britzer Garten! Im September gibt es dort ganz grandiose Dahlienbeete zu bestaunen, und auch die eine oder andere fluffy flower from outer space:

Dahlia, dahlia … and a VERY fluffy sunflower mutant!

A week on Elba in October gave some time to explore the Tao of Physics (highly recommended – probably the best read of 2021), sample local wines (Aleatico!) and enjoy views from various high spots.

Unicorn enjoyed the view from the citadel!

2021 also saw the 20 years anniversary of my master thesis, part of which was completed in Stockholm in 2001. Frequent visits to Stockholm have taken place since then, the latest one last November/December which is a very un-touristy season and very nice just because of that already.

Stockholm then and now. Top: view from Gamla Stan towards Stadshuset in April 2001, bottom: view from Nationalmuseet towards Gamla Stan, November 2021.

The Buddha is rotated, and many things are askew as we try to embrace the paradoxical nature of the universe and are waiting for the pandemic and capitalism to end (neither of which will of course), so we are only left with practicing our minimal-vogue moves.

This would be how the pros are doing it:

With this, I send you into 2022, practice your floor work and your duck-walk, and may the force be with you, as always!

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Brains, Ears, Eyes, Hands, Heart, Life, the universe & everything, Lips, Nose

Does it dance ?

After last year’s pandemic (out)break, 2021 was again an Impulstanz year! The legacy of founder Ismael Ivo lives on. “Does it dance?” is not the question here – it does!

The weekend started with ALEXANDRA BACHZETSIS / Private Song, by whom I was rewarded to assist in opening the zipper of the latex dress during the performance 🙂

We continued with TRAJAL HARRELL / Maggie The Cat, by which we were unanimously underwhelmed. Maybe having read “Cat on a hot tin roof” would have helped. Maybe not. In the meantime we’ll practise our duck-walk …

The anti-climax came in the very end and was provided by MEG STUART / DAMAGED GOODS, supposedly one of the prime performances of the festival. Also the first ever Impulstanz performance I had to leave before the end, because it was so unbearably banal.

Funnily, others felt the same way apparantly (only I don’t stay until the end to “buh” them – the dancers are not responsible for bad choreography or lack of inspiration by the choreographer):

Interesting audience reactions and their re-interpretation through the press 🙂

Not surprisingly, the highlight was to be found in what Impulstanz calls “[8:tension] Young Choreographers’ Series”, this time sampled through SOPHIA RODRÍGUEZ / Ostentation Project. 1,5h of pure fabulousness from 23:00-0:30 at Schauspielhaus, complete with life size inflatable jumping castle (with bunny head!) in the end (it’s in the golden bag, believe it or not 😉 ):

Category “hands” to stand for “legs/feet” in this case.

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Brains, Eyes, Hands

Hats, Hats, Hats !

Meine Güte, was für Hüte!

Nicht nur das Tragen, auch das Anfertigen von Hüten ist ein großartiges haptisches Erlebnis, wie ich seit einiger Zeit selbst bezeugen kann.

Wenngleich der Filzhut ja eher ein klassischer Winterhut ist, wie uns Massimiliano damals im Sommer erklärte, als wir seine Werkstatt besuchen durften, und momentan ja nun wirklich keine Wintertemperaturen herrschen, habe ich nun endlich die Zeit gefunden ein bisschen den mad hatter raushängen zu lassen! Diverse frühere Akquisitionen haben die initiale Kollektion von Urgroßvater Johanns Hüten anwachsen lassen, und naja, nun sieht sie so aus:

So. Many. Hats. Latest addition and self-made: black wool-felt with altrosa hat band, amber vintage belt buckle and pink ostrich feather flower. Petruzzo Hats 2021.

Filz, Shellack, blauer Architektenhartschaum, lederne Schweißbänder aus NYC, Deko aus diversen etsy-Untiefen und Straußenfedern aus Großbritannien, ein paar Stunden youtube und Arbeit, und schon kann man sich wieder zeigen im Adlon! Vergessen Pandemie und jogging Hosen! Karl Lagerfeld, du darfst wieder stolz sein. Und Josef und Barbara sowieso:

Great-grandmother Barbara, who was Modistin in Vienna
Great-grandfather Josef, who was a tailor

Man muss nicht unbedingt von der rohen Alpaca Wolle starten, obwohl, es geht schon auch: enjoy …

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Brains, Eyes, Hands, Heart, Life, the universe & everything

The past can always be re-arranged

Strange times bring fabulous discoveries, and here is a late entry that might actually have made it to the top of the 2020 list: the japanese avante garde artist Shūji Terayama and his 1960s to 1980s theatre group Tenjō Sajiki (named after the japanese title of the 1945 movie “Les enfants du paradis“, itself on the top 10 list of phantasmogoric discoveries this year – “Le publique demande sans cesse du nouveau!”).
Their main venue seems to have looked like this (although performance in public places apparently was very common, too):

Historical photo of the theatre site in Shibuya, Tokyo (source).

Two video art samples, which I can highly recommend are “La cage” (1964) and “The Labyrinth Tale” (1975):

And of course young people should be taught how to do cinema, I agree:

Continued lockdown (please, stop nagging about the first and only political decision in ages which is actually aimed at putting peoples’ lives over economic gain and stop complaining that you can’t go out for a drink, and instead start demanding politics to change the sick economic system – it is Human-chosen, not God-given – into something that decouples money for survival from labour and that favours less consumption or at least stagnation, as well as a reduction of people on the planet, over a blind increase of everything no matter what) provides us with ample time to catch up a bit on or knowledge about 20th century experimental art, and some gem stone examples of grotesque eroticism can be found in Terayama’s “Pastoral: To Die In The Country“. Recommended drinking alone at home beverage: Ki No Bi (Kyoto) Gin Sour (drink three to five of these slowly during the movie) or Absinthe Sour (reduce the number of drinks if need be, but do drink them slowly either way). Recurrent topic of the movie: time, and the inability to stop it, in particular vain attempts of mothers to do so by trying to prevent their children from growing up. Never have the horrors of forced family closeness and false intimacy, an eternal topic, not only but above all in post-war Japan, been displayed in such phantastic colors – a visionary movie, as if made for 2020 😉

Once you’ve watched all this, well, you can continue to dig for yourself, but one not so hidden piece of amusement (it is linked on one of the above wikipedia pages) is a newspaper review about a performance of Jashumon (“Tor zur Hölle”) somewhen in the 70s in Munich, Germany. Absolutely worth the read, I can only say: Glotzt nicht so exotisch!

And remember a) “Sometimes we remember things that have not really happened”, and b) “The past can always be re-arranged”!

But now, the year ends and more than ever it’s time to Throw away your books and Rally in the Streets (in 1971. in 2020 keep a bit of distance while rallying 🙂 )

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Brains, Life, the universe & everything

Eternally Unfinished

“Men speaks many different languages, the king said
Children speak only one: the mother language
Mothers don’t speak; they hear
For men don’t know what to say, but this is okay
For older people don’t hear nor do they speak
For having come before, they learned how to see
How to decay, while they observe” [1]

Sometimes we are above, sometimes below, but we are Eternally Unfinished, even if we knew ALL the languages, as I sometimes wish.
The second guided tour I had the pleasure to experience with Juan wasn’t any bit less intriguing than the first, which was this one:


I am therefor very happy that a centrepiece of that exhibit has found its way into my realm, where it can remind us of the most universal und powerful language of all: silence.
As Juan emphasized back then, the skull is a symbol of life, not of death. As we unearth it, layer by layer, we uncover and discover his-story, auf Deutsch: die Ge-schichte(n). Just as we ourselves are many-layered stacks of stories, some of them lost, some hidden, some fragile and fading, but some strong enough to provide us with a skeleton that supports us for some time.
Which stories will remain?


The skull (category: Brains) is a multi-layered symbol of life.

And those you fear neither Death nor Hell nor the Florence Foster Jenkins of Finnish Tango go back to www.petersch.at and make sure their browser doesn’t block audio autoplay. Qui vit sans folie … (category: Ears) 🙂

[1] from Juan Arata: “What makes us human? – A model of Migra Tion”, Booklet for Ruberoid Festival 25-26 Sep 2015, ACUD Kunsthaus, Berlin
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Brains, Ears, Eyes, Hands, Life, the universe & everything