MMXXIV: Turpentine and tea

As I write this, my apartment smells like turpentine and tea. The turpentine is for cleaning brushes and stencils I’m using for painting on recent prints. I bought the tea in Istanbul and have just a little stash left. The atmosphere feels like this is a place where things are made and life lived. It’s a good time to look back over the highlights of 2024.

Turner’s watercolors in Edinburgh

WIlliam Turner was an English painter that lived from 1775-1851. He was eccentric but influential and is a pivotal figure in English art history. A group of his watercolors are housed at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland. They can only be seen once a year.

This collection of Turner watercolours was left to the nation in 1900 by the art collector Henry Vaughan. Since then, following Vaughan’s strict guidelines, they have only ever been displayed during the month of January, when natural light levels are at their lowest. Because of this, these watercolours still possess a freshness and an intensity of colour, almost 200 years since they were originally created.  

I planned a trip to see these paintings in person and spend a few days in Edinburgh as well. The weather in January was heavy and my trip was wet and windy, thanks to Storm Isha. I got to see these amazing watercolors though. There is an intensity to them that doesn’t translate to any book or digital image. Seeing them in person was worth it.

Coinciding with that show was a large exhibit by the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour at the same place. I wasn’t expecting such a massive collection of contemporary watercolors. Based on that show, I learned that there is a whole tradition of Scottish painters that is still really active. They have their own online gallery of that exhibit that is worth a look.

Turner’s watercolors

Photos I made in Edinburgh

AI landscapes for a problematic project

An AI related art project I started back in 2020 came to fruition in January. It didn’t go smoothly.

In 2020, online image generators were much simpler than they are now. The results were primitive compared to what is common now. ChatGPT and Dall-E didn’t exist yet and there was no real public awareness of these processes. I began tinkering with a tool called Artbreeder because it had the novel ability to generate landscapes instead of just avatars. It also use a model trained on real paintings instead of using procedural techniques that came from 3D and video game software.

Instead of a text prompt, it had a panel of sliders that you moved around to get results you wanted. I spent a fair amount of time experimenting with that tool and came up with a set of landscapes and objects that were related to my own aesthetic and art practice. Those images were then edited down to a smaller set of coherent and conceptually related images. They reminded me of some the early Western photographs by Carleton Watkins. I wasn’t sure what direction the project was going to take, so I held onto them for later.

Initially, I considered commissioning painters from Dafen, China, to create large-scale paintings of the images. The results of that would have made a compelling story. But, the logistics would have been costly and time consuming. I was also very involved in the local San Jose, California art community and thought it would be interesting to collaborate with a local painter instead. Maybe they would have contributions I hadn’t thought of.

I saw a painter I knew at Kaleid Gallery and proposed the project to her. She was receptive and the collaboration began soon after. Her first painting (shown here) was a success and I saw good possibilities for a show in the future. I ended up moving to Berlin, but reached out later to see her progress. She had continued work and even made plans to exhibit the work at Kaleid. That show happened this January.

A few weeks before the show, we had a disagreement about attribution, ownership, and money. We had an informal agreement to split everything evenly. But, a last minute contract made very different claims. This is a prime example of the problems that arise from saying, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll work out the details later.” Those details were highly problematic. It was bad enough that I withdrew from the show and refused to participate. Kaleid director Cherri Lakey stepped in and rescued that show from the abyss. It wouldn’t have happened without her diplomacy and she deserves a lot of credit.

It’s a shame because it was the perfect time to stage a show like that. Lots of people were interested and bought some of the paintings. The show did well. If I had staged that here in Berlin, it would have been even more popular. Unfortunately, the paintings that did not sell were destroyed by the painter and our working relationship ended badly.

One of the digital originals I created.
Made by the painter. Some differences but essentially the same image.
Screenshot of the tool I used to make my originals.

New prints

I continued printmaking and tried some new techniques. I still have a long way to go.

I made linocut prints in my kitchen and tried some multiple color techniques. It was difficult to make a good ink impression and I had a lot of paper waste. I kept all the results of that, though. I also bought a Gelli plate and had some interesting success with multiple generation imagery. I’ll continue working with that and have a collection of images I’ll use with it.

A new toy I got to use was an AxiDraw V3 pen plotter. I borrowed it from a colleague at the Creative Code Berlin Meetup. It uses real ink pens to draw paths sent from a computer. The kind of file it uses is the same I used for Wolves, so I had a good technical foundation.

100 posts in 100 days: an Instagram experiment

I wanted to know if all this posting on Instagram was worth it. It’s not.

Having an online presence is a reality for most working artists. The vast majority choose Instagram to be their main platform. I have been on the internet since the mid-90s and tried all kinds of ways of showing my work online. I don’t like Instagram at all, but it is a necessary evil. I spent a lot of effort build a website but the way people look at content has totally changed in the past 10 years.

So, if I’m going to use it, I want to get some benefit from it. I don’t like the idea of just feeding an algorithm monster for its own profit. I’ve researched, experimented with free and paid solutions, and even paid to boost posts in the past.

This year’s experiment was to try a posting service so I didn’t have to deal with Instagram every day. I had a marketing job years ago and we used Buffer to schedule posts months in advance. It kind of worked in that context.

I put together 100 slideshows, posts, and videos of my art. Then, on Buffer, I scheduled a post every day to see what happened.

So, what was the result? Not much. I got 40 new followers and a bunch of likes. Most of the engagement I got come from people who already knew me. I’m sure they got tired of seeing all those posts.

My takeaway is that none of the paid ways of doing Instagram really matter for individuals. It probably helps for big brands like Pepsi, but it feels pointless for us regular folks.

It really feels like a big scam and I hate being a part of it. But, I have used it as a kind of contact manager for other artists. Many art shows have begun with an Instagram DM. That’s undeniable. But, the amount of time I’ve spent posting has not been very useful.

Layer Cake in Berlin

One of the best art shows I’ve seen since I moved to Berlin was Layer Cake at Urban Nation. It was a collaborative show with the main artist chopping, painting and re-assembling submissions from other artists. Apparently they are all famous street artists, but I didn’t know them. What I saw was at a very high level of aesthetics, though.

Superbooth24

The mother of all modular synth festivals is held each year in Berlin. It’s the Mecca of modular knob twiddlers.

I don’t own this kind of gear, but I like to play with it. I’m not big on commercial synths in general and prefer to build my own for specific audio aesthetics. But, I’m not gonna deny these machines are badass and look very cool. They sound cool, too.

Norwegian heavy metal

My friend Benjamin Kjellman-Chapin is a blacksmith that lives in Nes Verk, Norway. We went to the Atlanta College of Art together back in the mid 90s. Our paths diverged after school, and I didn’t see him again until this year.

Ben was immortalized back then in a painting my friend Neil Carver made, based on a photo I took of him. Neil made a bunch of paintings from my photos and I always thought the one of Ben was one of the best.

He ended up in Norway and has built an amazing life as a blacksmith with his wife Monica. They have a blacksmithing shop next to the Næs Jernverksmuseum a few hours outside of Oslo. Never in a million years did I think I would get to visit him. But, being in Berlin made that trip much more practical and realistic. We managed to arrange it so I was there for a regional blacksmithing festival. It was a whole other world, very different from my tech art life back in Berlin.

Skulls: a more successful AI project

I built a project to identify and track little plastic skulls and then play music based on their position. It won a prize.

The idea came from a more primitive version I made back in San Jose called Oracle. I am always looking forward to new ways of performing electronic music that don’t depend on a laptop or MIDI controller. This overall approach was inspired by seeing an oracle toss chicken bones to tell the future in a movie.

The earlier approach used simple image thresholding within a predefined grid. It worked but was susceptible to lighting changes. This approach used a Grove Vision AI Module V2 with a custom model I trained myself. It turned out pretty well.

To use it, I scatter a handful of little plastic teeth and skulls underneath a camera connected to an AI module. The module identifies the objects and sends their position to a Raspberry Pi, which interprets that and triggers a software synthesizer running internally on Linux.

This project won first prize in a competition sponsored by the manufacturer of that module.

Experimental Photography Festival in Barcelona

I had a solo show of recent experimental photography in Barcelona.

The Experimental Photography Festival is an analog-centric gathering of people who use alternative processes. That used to mean non-silver based processes like cyanotype but has expanded to include all kinds photographic techniques. This group features few computer-based images and definitely no AI work. It was refreshing and inspiring to be surrounded by such genuine experimentation..

It also attracted a truly international group. I met people from Japan, Hungary, Peru, and more.

The festival curators chose my 10X images to be one of the solo exhibits at the festival. These images are made in camera with 10 multiple exposures. I started this group on my cross-country drive back in 2021. I’ve continued to explore the different composition and color combinations possible. It’s an eclectic group of images now.

I show these as large prints and it was a challenge to get them to Barcelona ready to hang. The prints for this show had been specially made in the U.S.A. and shipped just in time in a large mailing tube. I wanted them to hang flat at the festival so I decided to fly with them in a large flat portfolio case. That turned out to be a big mistake.

As the case was too large for the cabin, I checked it as special baggage. Unfortunately, airline baggage handling systems aren’t designed for flat items, even within size limits. The case missed my connecting flight and was subsequently lost in Frankfurt, beginning a three-day ordeal to locate and deliver the prints to Barcelona.

It was really stressful, but the festival organizers were helpful and understanding. We had some cheap prints made locally as placeholders and hung those until my prints were found. When they finally arrived I had a whole crew of people helping to hang them quickly.

Besides all that, it was a fantastic experience. I made some great connections that turned out to be useful the next month (see below).

Once lost, now found.
Explaining my work at the opening of the festival
The temporary prints we hung (on the right)

Phasenpunkte

This was a last minute art show, organized and curated by me at HilbertRaum in Berlin. I got the offer to do it just a few days after returning from Barcelona.

The news came on August 7. The show was organized, hung, and then opened by September 7. That’s very fast for all those logistics, especially international. It was a minor miracle that it even happened. I ended up reaching out to 10 people to be in the show, mostly through direct messages on Instagram and Telegram. I knew some of them personally but found the rest through contacts from the recent Experimental Photography Festival.

8 artists ended up being in the show: Me, Samantha Tiussi, Hilde Maassen, Sofia Nercasseau, Gábor Ugray, Cecilia Pez, Hajnal Szolga, and Daniel Kannenberg.

On opening night, I performed music with the new synths I built, and Samantha Tussi performed with glass clothing fitted with microphones.

Here is the promotional website I made for it.

Overall, it was a huge success. I was exhausted afterward, but how often will I get the chance to do something like that? Life is short.

Phasenpunkte (“phase points”) is a reference to the points at which different materials change phase, like water turning to steam. It is a used as a metaphor to relate to the transition points between organic human experience and virtual and synthetic spaces. The human phase points are our feelings, thoughts, and imagination. Our consciousness is the membrane between the virtual and the real. This show is an aesthetic response to that idea. It’s not about technology, it’s about being human.

Programming glass robots

One of the artists in Phasenpunkte, Samantha Tussi, asked for some help programming the controllers for her glass sculptures. She constructed stepper motor assemblies that hung from the ceiling and raised and lowered pieces of glass according to her instructions. The glass was arranged as human figures and the movements conveyed emotions and a kind of slow dancing.

She used Arduino boards to send signals to the controllers and needed help with the code that ran on the boards. Although she has some technical background, she relied on ChatGPT to generate most of the code. While this initially worked, it proved difficult to modify when she wanted to make custom changes.

I agreed to help and we had coding sessions at her studio in Berlin. Even though tools like ChatGPT and generate functioning code, it can look like gibberish when a programmer is trying to read it. I ended up rewriting large chunks of that code to be able to make the customization she needed.

A big reward was getting to see her final show performed at the Acker Stadt Palast in central Berlin. It was a touching and interesting show. I was proud to use my coding skills for something like that.

These are all the changes I made to fix the code that ChatGPT had generated. It was a lot of work.

Skateboarding at SFMOMA

After all these years, what got me into the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of my skateboarding photos I took when I was 17.

Jeffrey Chung contacted me about an upcoming show called Unity through Skateboarding. Tommy Guerrero had mentioned my photo of him riding a board with ‘End Racism’ written on the bottom—a photo that has resurfaced online over the years and garnered attention whenever Tommy shares it on social media.

I took that particular image on a trip to San Francisco with my friend Tony Henry. I took the photo at Bryce Kanights’ ramp in his San Francisco warehouse. I was only 17 at the time, using a camera I had just bought to replace one that had been stolen. I took many photos back then, working to support the cost of film, equipment, and road trips. I was convinced I would have a career as a skateboard photographer.

Back then, I didn’t get much support for that kind of photography. Most adults thought it was frivolous and my friends had no idea how much all that cost. I did get published though and made a little money. Most importantly, I got an amazing life out of it that nobody in my high school could compare with.

Now, 35 years later, that photo is hanging at SFMOMA. I haven’t even seen it yet, as I’ve been in Berlin during the organization and opening. It’s funny how things work out.

Synthesizer brain transplants

I rewrote the sound engines for some recent synths I built. They sound pretty cool now.

My performance setup for Phasenpunkte

Berghainbox

Starbox

Habanos

Modern Istanbul

I’ve been following Olafur Eliasson’s work for many years, even before moving to Berlin. I’m particularly interested in his light installations using glass and reflections, as well as his career trajectory. He doesn’t create traditional art objects, and some of his installations are incredibly complex and likely expensive—a scale and resource level I aspire to work at one day.

He has a large solo show at Istanbul Modern right now. I made plans to go see it so I could get a sense of how he staged it all.

Istanbul, Turkey is relatively close to Berlin but the flight is still 3 hours. It was at the beginning of Winter, so crowds weren’t nearly as large as normal.

The show was great, but Istanbul was interesting in itself. Visiting that place was the first time I had been in an Islamic country. That wasn’t radically different, but I was definitely aware of it. The call to prayer happens multiple times a day throughout the city.

Images I made on the streets of Istanbul

Olafur Eliasson at Istanbul Modern

Olafur Eliasson’s first solo exhibition in Türkiye, “Your unexpected encounter,” reflects the artist’s deep interest in light, color, perception, movement, geometry, and the environment. The artworks also reveal the network of relationships the artist forges between broad areas of research and his multidisciplinary practice. As well as following the personal journey of the artist, the exhibition addresses navigation and orientation on a wider scale, inspired by the site of the museum and its maritime location by the Bosphorus.

Making prints at Kunstquartier Bethanien

A long planned appointment to work at Bethanien finally happened.

The limits of my kitchen printingmaking studio were too much. I just couldn’t get enough pressure on the lino plates to see consistent results. Also, shutting my kitchen down for printing means going without cooking for 4-5 days. That’s a pain.

I am a member of the B.B.K. artist union here in Berlin. One of the perks of that is access to the Druckwerkstatt im Kunstquartier-Bethanien. Among other things, it is a well-maintained and world class printmaking facility.

For my skill level it’s way over the top. But, I did want to use the lino presses they have. Appointments are made far in advance, so I did that. The time came after Istanbul and I went in. The prints I got were far superior in every way. I also learned new approaches and got ideas for different work.

In addition to those lino prints I started a new series of collages using the older mistakes I made back in January. Instead of tossing those, I cut them and up and used parts for graphic elements. I exhibited a group of those collages in Phasenpunkte and got some really positive feedback about them. More of those will come soon.

Glide path

2025 will be my last year in Berlin. It was always the plan to return after a few years. My vision for being here is complete, but I have an opportunity to work on my art full-time in the first half of the year. I’ll stay in Berlin to take full advantage of that work window. After that, I think it’s time to go back to California.

MMXXIII: Beyond Berlin

This year was filled with travel around Europe and also back to the USA. I had a new job and a stable place to live, so I explored further into Berlin and around the region. I had my first Berlin art show and started working in new mediums. Trips to Stockholm and London brought me in contact with the international art world and I learned more about how it works, for better or worse. A trip to Auschwitz was humbling and yielded insights into the human experience of that era. I have been here 2 years now and feel like there is still so much to experience.

Surrendering the San Jose studio

At the beginning of the year I flew back to San Jose, California to move out of my art studio. It was physically and economically difficult.

I had planned on maintaining that space until I returned. The cost of that was right up to the edge of what I could afford. The landlord notified everyone in the studio complex that he was raising rents 50-200%. Mine was set to double. There was no way I could afford that, so plans were made to fly back and put everything into storage and let go of the space. Fortunately, my new employer let me take a week off to do that. Waiting longer would have been even more expensive.

In addition to my power tools, art supplies and equipment, all of my personal belongings had been put there. It took 3 days just to consolidate and pack everything. Then, the actual moving took 3 more days by myself. It was around 7 U-Haul van loads in all. A lot of that shit was really heavy. I was still dealing with 9 hour jet lag as well.

I found a good storage spot, though. It’s secure, weather protected, and reasonably priced. It was a huge effort, but it all worked out in the end. I saved $1000s by handling it quickly. Letting go of that particular art studio was a bummer though. I made a lot of art there and was able to handle dirty fabrication and clean tech work in the same space. That’s rare to have.

On a positive note, everything is consolidated and well stored, so when I return I don’t have to deal with my stuff right away. It gives me more options.

Atlanta College of Art reunion

I had never been to any school reunions. They just weren’t something I was very interested in. I’ve definitely visited old friends though and maintaining connections is important to me. While I was planning my trip back to California, I got an invitation to an Atlanta College of Art reunion that covered many years of graduates.

At first, I thought ‘no’ because I was already spending the money on a return to the U.S., but I saw a lot of names of people I hadn’t seen since the mid 90s. All our paths diverged widely and also some were having hard times. Something in my gut said I wouldn’t I see many of them ever again. So, at the last minute I bought a ticket and committed to attending.

Neil Carver with five dollars of fun

It was a mixed experience. Obviously, it was cool to see so many people from a fun time in our lives. But, our stories since then had plenty of struggle. Some of the people we thought would be art stars ended up doing nothing and some we thought were just hanging around did quite well. I see the same upside down trend in younger artists here in Berlin. Also, Atlanta has changed so much. Whatever connection and nostalgia I had for that city has closed. That chapter is done.

I also learned that 2 people I had known well were now dead. There were stories of others on the edge. Sure enough, within 3 months of the reunion, I heard 3 more had died. I won’t get into details for privacy, but it wasn’t from natural causes. We lost some interesting and creative people. That particular group of people from that time, myself included, seem to be connected by a hardship we rarely talked about openly.

Overall, I’m glad I went. I saw some friends I really wanted to keep in touch with, in person. It was crucial to make human contact with friends that had become online avatars. Social media is useful, but it’s not real. I also see our experience in terms of what I’ve learned about art history. The paths of historic artists are not as clean and heroic as we make them out to be. For every artist we remember, there are thousands that didn’t make it into history. But, nonetheless, they had amazingly prolific and creative lives making art.

Supermarket in Stockholm

Supermarket is an international art fair focused on art collectives and artist run spaces. It’s held annually in Stockholm, Sweden to coincide with the more commercial Market Art Fair. I wanted to learn more about how different collectives are managed and run, so I signed up for their Meetings Extended package. That let me attend the fair with access similar to a group exhibitor, but as an individual artist.

I came back thinking I had seen the future. There was a broad range of community organizations. Very little was institutional or connected to a single person. They had formed logistic groups and had access to property and diverse funding sources. Co-operative art groups are nothing new, but the internet absorbed much of the energy people used to put into organizing in person. It was refreshing and inspiring to see so many effective collectives from around the world.

It was especially notable because of the failure I saw at Documenta 15 last year. That famous art festival turned over control to a collective made of other collectives. It was ambitious, but the art was weak and overly dependent on buying into the theoretical and ideological structures they based it on. It offered an example of how collectives don’t work. But, at Supermarket, I had a glimpse of more diverse and structured approaches to collectivism that do work.

Some interesting groups I connected with:

I was there for 5 days and learned practical approaches to organizing and met lots of interesting people. When I return to the U.S., I hope to bring that logistical knowledge with me. American art institutions, in so many ways, are collapsing. These collectives are the way forward.

The new lucidbeaming.com

This year, I completely redesigned my website to match how people actually use it. You’re looking at it now.

I’m a member of a local tech art group called Creative Code Berlin. Each month, a variety of people give demos of projects they’re working on and a short presentation. At the end, people post some kind of contact info. Overwhelmingly, people share their Instagram accounts and not much else. A few have dedicated websites, but most depend on Instagram to do the heavy lifting of showing off their work.

That has serious drawbacks. First, it’s a commercial platform with limits on content and it weighs content using a proprietary algorithm. It’s also designed as a feed and not an archive. It’s much more difficult to see historical activity in context. Art is not always made like that. Artists aren’t content machines. We’re human.

It gave me the idea to take the useful aspects of sharing an account link but retaining context and ownership. I simplified the main template to be mobile first and fast-loading. Interactivity is basic and javascript features are limited. People are used to swiping and scrolling static content, so that’s what they get. Not many slideshows or video carousels. Everything is embedded on-page and doesn’t require accounts on external platforms. I even removed Google Analytics and don’t have any personal tracking at all.

It’s been the most effective redesign yet and I still get compliments on how simple it is. Most importantly, I don’t have to depend on Instagram to be my internet presence.

3D scans

My phone has lidar, which is a tiny laser that can be used to make volumetric scans of objects and areas. That means I can make 3D images of lots of things. I used it to scan a variety of sculpture I saw this year. Here is a video with the best results.

Leidkultur at HilbertRaum

I had 5 pieces in a group show here in Berlin, at a gallery called HilbertRaum. I was invited based on the glitch portraits I made last year of problematic sculptures at the Zitadelle. They are fairly political and I’m an American, so I was surprised to get asked to show art about German history at a German gallery.

It was an excellent grouping and the space was well suited for my work. I presented them using transparencies on large light panels. The portraits themselves were detailed, vibrant, and somewhat unsettling. Showing them in a way used in bus stop advertisements was a gamble, but I’m happy with how they turned out.

ICC Berlin

The Internationales Congress Centrum Berlin was built in the 70s as the largest conference center in Europe. It’s a massive facility and looks futuristic and monumental. It never lived up to the hype though and has been closed for many years.

photo from bz-berlin.de

They opened it this year for visitors on just one weekend. I had to reserve time slot weeks ahead of time. I wanted to make some photos inside with my old Polaroid SX-70. I also brought my digital camera and made many 10X layered multiple exposures.

Here is a slideshow…

Berghain Box

I built a kick drum machine out of a cigarette tin. It’s named after a famous dance club in Berlin called Berghain that stays open for days at a time.

Near my apartment is weekly flea market in a place called Mauerpark. It has declined in quality since I moved here, but there are still some vendors that have authentic objects from pre-unification East Germany and Eastern Europe. It also seems to do brisk business in selling the belongings of dead people from retirement homes. The number of very high quality family photo albums is somewhat disturbing.

One of my favorite booths sells old cigarette and tea containers made of metal. The graphic design is classic and the boxes are a handy size. I bought a few to hold small Arduino synthesizers I make. The latest is this drum machine.

It has no patterns, shuffle, or other drum sounds. It only cycles a kick drum endlessly. It has tap for tempo, pitch, timbre, and filter. There is no stop/start. I made it as a machine to sync other instruments to and to drive a techno track. I intend to use it with the Nachtbox effect box I made last year. Used together, the yield is a noisey, glitched out industrial drum collider.

Auschwitz

This September, I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. It was something I’ve wanted to do to since I arrived in Germany. It took a while to get the logistics timed right, but things came together in the Fall.

I took this as I was leaving, right before the site closed.

Auschwitz is an important place in human history, not only for what actually happened there but what it represents. During World War II, the Nazi regime of Germany gassed and incinerated 1.1 million people at this site, from 1941-1944. They were overwhelmingly Jewish and most were killed immediately upon arrival. The were told they were being relocated and when they arrived, led into what looked like showers for bathing. Then they were gassed with a range of toxic chemicals. Prisoners at the camp loaded the bodies into nearby ovens and they were cremated. It’s not the only place where this happened, but it is the most notorious and the only one left intact as a memorial and museum.

I knew about about this history and had read plenty about the context. But, I really wanted to see the place for myself. I wanted to know what it felt like to stand on the grounds and see the trees and hear the natural sounds of the area. I also wanted to make drawings of the buildings and interiors, as a way of staying present and focused.

In the morning I took the group tour, which I hated. The people I was with were there for very different reasons. I think most of them just wanted to see the spectacle of it all, like a haunted house. For them, it was one of many places they breezed through while touring Europe or Poland. People took selfies and did video streaming, got bored and talked over important information from the guide. Thankfully, I had another ticket for later that let me roam the grounds independently. That ended up being the most meaningful experience.

One building had 100s of prisoner portraits in the hallways. I made some drawings of a few faces, but wished I had more time to do studies. I discovered that most of the images were made by a Polish photographer who was captured and put to work in the camp. His name was Wilhelm Brasse. When I returned to Berlin I watched a documentary about him and also found an archive of many of the images he took.

I started to make drawings of the prisoners, a few each day after work. I also visited the site of the Wansee Conference. It was the meeting where the practical plans for the elimination of Jews were made. Auschwitz was a direct result of that meeting. I made drawings of the Nazi organizers that were there.

My drawing style is too cartoonish to do justice to these images. I kept drawing anyway because it felt like a constructive way of actually connecting to the individual people in these photographs. Instead of thinking of them as “the Jews”, I though a bit more about what their individual stories might have been. I have no idea what I’ll do with these.

One of the biggest impacts of that visit came when I returned. From landing at the airport to riding subways, I was seeing the Germans next to me differently. I didn’t think they were Nazis. But, I wondered if they were put in that time, in that context, would they have ended up that way? It’s similar to thoughts I had growing up in the Southern U.S. If I had been born in 1850, would I have been a Confederate or had friends in the KKK?

We tend to have these easy conclusions in hindsight, from decided history. It’s very easy to pick the right side of history. I’m skeptical when I hear people make righteous proclamations about what they would have done in historical times. It’s crucial that we continue to reflect on our principles as people and societies, to make sure they continue to come from place inside us that is real and enduring.

A few doors down from my apartment in Berlin are these markers. They indicate the people living there were extracted and sent to Auschwitz, where they died. Markers like this are placed all over Berlin as incorporated history. Reminders that we are all living right where the terror began.

Frieze London

One of my goals while living here was to visit a major international art fair – the kind that gets written about in ArtForum. I considered Art Basel in Switzerland or Frieze London in the United Kingdom, or possibly both.

I picked Frieze London and attended in October. I sort of knew what to expect. Mingling with the global super rich in the heart of London was bizarre and not very revealing. I got the feeling there wasn’t much beyond the obvious there. It was such a contrast to the independent art scene in Berlin and the co-ops of Supermarket in Stockholm.

This was hardcore transactional culture on parade. If you didn’t understand the art it was because you didn’t know the right names or follow the right galleries. Most importantly, you had say it all sucked, because putting down artists and gossiping is the social currency there. I was so far out of my element in that place.

I really tried to walk around and find art to connect to, but it was hard. So much of it was designed to be seen and bought, not felt or resonated with. I’m sure many of those artists had other work that offered that, but not there. The whole place reeked of cocaine sweat and plastic wrap, with breezes of expensive perfumes.

Here are a few pieces I did like.

New work

My own art was pretty scattered and sparse this year. Full-time work and limited space suppressed my creative output. I did find some success, though. I made the best of my small working area and focused on new techniques and mediums that were appropriate for that. That meant works on paper with Polaroid transfers, screen printing, leather collage, drawings, lino prints, and print transfers.

I haven’t done this kind of work in a long time. Sometimes I was pushing too hard to get things “right”. I had to just let go and accept that I was a beginner again when it came to printmaking. I also tried to stay focused on imagery and vibes that are natural to me, instead of imitating something I saw on the internet. That impulse turned out to be the most constructive result. I had a regular activity that pulled from somewhere real within my life.

Upcoming plans

I’ve been here 2 years now. It’s been a visceral experience and I’m not done yet. In the next year, I hope to be in more shows and make more solid connections with other artists and gallerists. That isn’t something that can be forced though. I just need to stay active and engaged. Eventually, I meet the right people for me. That’s the way it’s always been.

At the end of this year, I have begun to think of what my life will be when I return. I have no intention of living as an expat. I’ve met many Americans here and they don’t have lives I want to emulate. This move was always time boxed. I’m going to learn what I can and then return to continue a life in art.

I have some technical projects and more multimedia work that is unfinished. I’m not posting many here, but there are all kinds of tech projects cooking right now. They will probably start to manifest in Spring. That will be a whole new chapter of this experience in Berlin.

MMXXII: Berlin

Last February, I moved to Berlin, Germany to connect with the global art world and explore new ideas in technology and art. It has been challenging, surprising, and fulfilling.

The move was inspired by a failed California Arts Council grant application. I had planned to use that grant to visit Berlin during some key art festivals. While I was waiting to hear about the application, I spent a lot of time researching Berlin and to make best use of the time that grant would enable.

I didn’t get that grant. The feedback I got from the review was conflicting and confusing, but I didn’t dwell on it. Instead, I made plans to drive across the United States as an art making expedition. That turned out well and I returned to my San Jose art studio to work through multiple bodies of work generated out on the road.

The owner of the house I lived in decided to sell his house and I was looking at options for where to live the next year. Post-Covid Silicon Valley didn’t look very appealing and all my options were very expensive. It dawned on me that I might be able to move to Berlin instead. I had done a lot of research already so I knew where to explore that option. Within a week, I decided to take the gamble.

I started applying for jobs in Berlin and 3 months later, I had one. A month after that, I arrived at Brandenberg airport with a backpack, a laptop, and some clothes. A year has passed since then and the experience has been intense and inspiring.

Impressions

Berlin is a very modern large city. It has a strong public transportation network and diverse civic infrastructure. It has been able to absorb many class and culture imports and offers a strong social support network. Culturally, it has the most active and engaged art audience I ever seen in a city. More than New York.

It is not a skyscraper city, but more spread out into neighborhoods defined by rows and rows of 6 story apartment buildings. Much of the architecture is relatively new. Berlin was heavily bombed in WWII. But, there are integrations of historic places everywhere. The past is not forgotten here.

The late 80s East/West culture and re-integration is still a dominant influence on cultural history. The art scene is steeped in stories of an explosion of culture in the early 90s. But, recent shifts include immigration from Arabic and Global South culture. Also, the internet has diffused many of the cultural silos that defined European regionalism. Many books have been written about all these topics. It’s fascinating to be in the middle of it all.

Berlin Art Sites

One of the first things I did when I arrived was look for art events. There are so many here, it was hard to sift through them all. Specifically, finding galleries showing work I was interested in was a chore. There are over 300 galleries here. Then you have regional institutions on top of that. Going through their websites turned out to be a big hassle. Many weren’t made well and it was a slow process.

I wanted a quick way to look at all of the sites without all the pop-ups and GDPR notices. So, I created a web script that made screenshots of all of them and put the images in a folder. That turned out to be pretty useful and I though others would be interested in the results.

So, I built Berlin Art Websites (berlinartgalleries.de). It uses a tool called Puppeteer to make screenshots of all the websites, each Sunday morning. The results are always up to date and show the latest work on their front pages. It just runs on its own, quietly grabbing the latest from all the galleries around Berlin.

Screenshot of the top of the Berlin Art Websites main landing page

I posted a link to it on Reddit and the response was huge. People seemed to really want something like this.

Artwork

In the past year, I have gone to 1-5 art events a week. I’ve seen the best and worst of what Berlin’s art scene offers. I now have a collection of hundreds of postcards and brochures from the shows. Not sure how I’m going to get them all back to the U.S., actually.

Here is a slideshow of some of the highlights.

190 images in a 15 minute video slideshow, with background music

Art takeaways

Berlin has a strong set of art institutions that are well-funded and staffed. It also attracts legions of fresh art school graduates from around the world. There is a good variety of art in the middle as well.

NFTs were very popular when I arrived and had multiple galleries dedicated to only that kind of work. By the end of Summer, many of them were gone or in decline. The legacy of that is screen based art is everywhere. Even if they don’t show NFTs, many galleries went all-in with video screens. Whole rooms with nothing but screens.

Nostalgia for 1992 is still popular, from the re-unification of East and West Berlin. There were a lot of middle-aged artists doing work that first began then. It was hit and miss though. All nostalgia is like that. It’s an optimized memory and not a real connection. Art needs something more real to survive.

Diaspora art was prominent. There were shows dedicated to the Global South, the Middle East, and Ukraine. It felt like every other independent show had the word “de-colonize” in a curatorial statement. In Kassel, east of Berlin, the spectacular failure of Documenta 15 (organized by a Jakarta art collective) was in all the art media.

Projects

Laser

Finding a useful workspace in Berlin turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Most of art spaces take connections to get in or lots of money. There aren’t as many maker spaces, either. I could only find 3 that were public.

I settled on a smaller lab in north Berlin that was close to a subway stop and hardware store. It’s called Happylab and is focused on hobbyists and some electronic makers. It has a small storage space that ended up being really useful for someone getting around by subway all the time.

Typical of modern maker spaces, they have a laser cutter. I never used one for art and wasn’t sure what I would do with it. But, I ended up exploring a few different directions for lighting and as a drawing tool.

10X

Using a technique I stumbled onto during my cross-country drive, I’ve continued to make layered abstract photographs. These were made at the Botanischer Garten, Museum für Naturkunde, and Park am Gleisdreieck.

Geist

Germany has a difficult history and has gone to great lengths to incorporate its past into the present, using lessons learned from decades of accountability and scholarship. The Zitadelle is a museum in West Berlin that houses a unique exhibit for this purpose. Throughout the region monuments to problematic past leaders were built from 1849 to 1986. Many of the men they memorialize that had terrible legacies. It includes religious leaders, Prussian military leaders, businessmen, and mythical representations of men in power at the time.

These memorials were getting destroyed and vandalized after re-unification. Archivists and historians were left with a dilemma, how to preserve these artifacts without perpetuating the cultural impact they were intended for. They decided to move them all to a central location at a side gallery at the Zitadelle. There they are presented without pedestals or plaques, living on in anonymity and stripped of iconography.

Due to the political upheavals in the 20th century, monuments that represented problematic or even threatening reminders or appreciation of the old ways were removed from public spaces by the new governments. The museum offers an opportunity to come to terms with the great symbols of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the GDR, which were supposed to be buried and forgotten – and now serve a new function as testimonies to German history. Instead of commanding reverence, they make historical events tangible in the truest sense of the word.

Unveiled – Zitadelle Museum
“Unveiled. Berlin and its monuments” – Zitadelle Museum

I think that’s a fascinating and powerful solution that can be explored in the United States for our monumental legacy throughout the South.

I photographed the faces and decided to re-contextualize their appearances. In the past decade social media has resurrected some of the worst ideologies in history. They were dying out until anonymous politics became a thing and rekindled their popularity. My idea is to use these statues to build illustrations of these old dying ideas that are empowered by online culture.

Different steps to create a vector mask

Video

I brought an archive of multimedia files I have created over the years. I thought it would be useful, in the absence of a proper fabrication space, to have some computer based art projects to work on. I also shot some new video footage and got certified to fly my drone in the E.U.

Here is a piece I made using time-lapse footage at a famous subway stop called Alexanderplatz:

This abstract video is made from drone footage over Nevada salt flats:

The most recent work combines drone footage from a decommissioned airport with a generative computer art tool called Primitive:

NachtBox

Finished assembly connected to recorder

Back in the U.S. I go to thrift stores fairly regularly. I look for small obsolete electronics I can repurpose and dated hardware to build sculptures around. I tried the same here, but most of the thrift stores are focused on clothing. Buying 2nd hand clothing in Europe and reselling it online is a huge underground business.

I did find a place run buy the recycling agency, called NochMall. It’s grossly overpriced but is a source of occasional treasure for electronic art making.

There I found a micro cassette recorder that a German man had used to record himself playing guitar with TV shows in the background. That tape was the real gold. I decided to use it as the core of a music machine that played the tape through a variety of effects. It turned out to be a long-term complex project.

I chose a Teensy 4.1 micro-controller as the main engine for processing the audio. Besides being fast and having decent memory, the manufacturer has an excellent audio library to make use of. It allowed me to prototype very quickly and get to the noise making steps fast. I’m pretty stoked on how this turned out and look forward to performing with it soon.

Next year

I plan on staying in Berlin for at least another 2 years. I have been paying rent on my San Jose art studio, hoping to return to it when I finish my experience here. Unfortunately, problems with the landlord are forcing me to let go of that work space and move everything into storage. It has been a difficult and expensive conclusion to that place.

However, I feel like I am just getting to know this city. This first year has been interesting, but it feels like I’ve just seen the surface. I’m looking forward to getting to know more artists and gallery folks, as well as the creative coding community. After all, it’s the people that define a community, not just the place.