BENBUSCH

Berlin Textures

2010-06-16T20:17:00.003-06:00

Warschauer Tor, Berlin

2009-10-21T10:16:00.008-06:00

Warschauer Tor is a gate to Berlin. Elevated above an expanse of railroad tracks, it connects to Warschauer Straße, a street that here bridges two distinct parts of Friedrichshain, a former district of East Berlin. The nearby S+U-Bahnhof (train station) serves both local and regional transportation and hosts an array of public activity around the clock. The immediate surroundings of the site presently include a collection of abandoned and repurposed industrial buildings, a few nightclubs, and the newly completed O2 arena, which draws a considerable amount of visitors to the vicinity. An intensive urban plan for the area surrounding Warschauer Tor projects dense development and a redesigned train station.

Warschauer Tor is a figural and cultural gate to Berlin. In its greater context, the building is an inviting threshold between the active and newly redeveloped Mitte (downtown) and the neglected and less developed eastern districts. The name references its eastern location within the city, suggesting that the path through the gate may lead to Warschau (Warsaw). Hallways are located on every other floor and hotel rooms span one to two stories, allowing for transparency through the building and views in both directions from within.

Warschauer Tor offers its guests and visitors the opportunity to ground themselves in the city by engaging in positive social interaction. A diverse arrangement of hotel rooms accommodates a multitude of guests. Room types vary based on the number of guests in a unit and their particular space requirements and are intermixed throughout the building. Newcomers and community members alike utilize common spaces (bar, lounge, restaurant, computer lab, seminar rooms) in the “sky lobby” which spans the four towers. Rooms are available on a weekly basis in order to attract migrants rather than visitors, and the maisonette room section foreshadows a more permanent residence.

"Warschauer Tor, Berlin" © 2009 Benjamin Busch. All rights reserved.

MELT!

2009-08-05T05:38:00.003-06:00

Unterwegs

2009-07-30T15:53:00.015-06:00

Ten months ago, I found myself in the sleeping compartment of a train en route from Vienna to Berlin, pen in hand and wine nearby. At the current moment in the spectrum time, I’m floating above the Atlantic somewhere between Berlin and Detroit, a computer in front of me and a coffee to sip on at fingers reach. My mode while traveling, or rather relocating, may give some insight into the transformation I have endured since my arrival in Berlin.

Since the last textual iteration, my life’s contrast dial has been screwed to full blast. During the weeks, days and hours precluding my design course end presentation, I did little more than draw, digitize, and build. It may be a condition particularly chronic to our generation—waiting until the last minute to complete a work—but it always seems to be the best way to go. With a deadline ominously approaching, my only option was to work. I believe that I made some of my smartest and most influential decisions under the wire, or in other words decisions that I’m proud of. The review went well, and I freely accepted constructive criticism from my professor Manfred Ortner and the guest critic Jasper Jochimsen.

“Hühnchen oder vegetarische Nudeln?”
“Hühnchen, bitte.”
“Und was zu trinken?”
“Was haben sie für Bier?”
“Heineken oder Miller Light.”
“Heineken, bitte.”

Not too long before my end presentation, I made a trip to Paris to visit my uncle David while he was living in Drancy, a northern banlieue. Not only did he offer a comfy place to live; he took me around the city that he loves and conferred on me his established perspective. It was, of course, a dream to approach the Eiffel Tower and see exactly what I expected. Versailles bestowed on me a new concept of scale and a better understanding of the failures of Baroque planning. Fête de la Musique, an annual street music festival that originated in Paris, was going on while I was there, and I rendezvoused with Kansas friends Jenn, Hannah and Hilary at Batofar, a DJ boat playing electro and techno on the Seine near the new BnF Bibliothèque. The solstice sunset was phenomenally complimented by French champagne.

The Kansas girls followed me to Berlin after leaving Paris and stayed for a few days. On Christopher Street Day, we went to the Pergamon and gorged on the historic relics of civilizations passed. Afterward, we took the train to Potsdamer Platz and emerged into a sea of people celebrating the holiday, complete with unusual regalia or rather lack thereof. There were semi trucks blasting techno with colorful characters spilling out of the truck beds. It was an overwhelming sight to say the least, but if I took anything from the event it was a sense of pride that my community can show solidarity in such a welcoming context. Later that night, the girls and I went to Watergate, which lies on the Spree near Oberbaumbrücke, for the release party of Konrad Black’s WATERGATE03 mix. With Sascha Funke spinning on the lower floor, it was the highest quality nightlife experience that I’ve had in Berlin’s aboveground scene—except maybe the SUB:STANCE dubstep parties at Berghain.

The Fourth of July came and went without much gravity. It was my third Independence Day outside of the country, following Montréal and Wien the years respectively preceding. While I was hard at work chipping away the metaphysical stone enshrouding my final design solution, I came to the conclusion that I’ve chosen to celebrate Independence Day by exercising my freedom of movement.

Uncomfortably close before my end presentation, two exhibits at Fachhochschule Potsdam opened showing my work: three mounted 40x50 cm large format photographs in year end presentation at the Design Fachbereich curated by Wiebke Loeper and a selection of photographs displayed in a group exhibition of documentary photographs taken in Naples in the Hauptgebaude curated by Claus Baldus. That same July 9th, I took an hour long break from my work to party at the Casino—the one-time officers mess hall on the campus of military buildings in which FHP has been established—where I had the bittersweet opportunity to see many friends for the last time.

After the end presentation on 13 July, my extreme anxiety and sleeplessness was completely reversed—the high tones began to cut through the darkness. Lena Nalbach invited Pete and I to a wonderful and astounding exhibition opening at the Universität der Künste, which consisted of work produced by the students at the art school displayed in their studios.

The following weekend, I met Jenn at Melt! Festival in Ferropolis, a “city of steel” near Dessau, where we indulged in the best European festival of contemporary popular music and slept under the stars. The first day was unbelievable until and still after it began to rain. Klaxons, Röyksopp, Crystal Castles and Aphex Twin preceded the weather; we watched Simian Mobile Disco under a tent packed full of people while it rained cats and dogs in the wee hours of the morning. The second day began with Whitest Boy Alive, followed by Animal Collective, Phoenix, Fever Ray, Diplo, Digitalism and a set from Erol Alkan and Boys Noize. Ellen Allien cranked out spooky Berliner Techno lakeside from a pedestal grasping onto a gigantic machine once used to mine coal. We danced to Sascha Funke’s selection at the sleepless dance floor before laying down lakeside, soaking in the first rays of sun that landed on the festival since its launch the day before.

In the last days of my term in Berlin, I found myself once again observing and respecting the traditions that I had personally fostered. I spent a few nights digging the scene at Club der Visionäre and savoring the little time I had with my friends: the likes of Daniel B. and Swen, z.B. I went to Green Rice and had another bowl of the best food near Kottbuser Tor, and pigged out at Rissani on the cheapest and freshest Lebanese food in Kreuzberg. I went to Morena for a beer and hopped over to Luzia for another. On my last Saturday night, I went out with Peter, Pete and Frido for one last night at The Villa in Friedrichshain, and that time the music was spot on. The only way to end a night in Berlin is to gaze at the sunrise’s reflection in the TV tower on the walk home.

It would have been a dream to go to the Heiliger See with the fabulous International Office crew—Anika, Frido, Franzi, Pete, Daniel H., Sebastian, et al.—for the rest of the summer, absorbing the oxygen from the trees and swimming in the icy hot evening-lit water. There are as many places and things that I wanted to experience before my definite return to the States as one- and two-cent pennies in the change jar that I left with Pete. There are so many people that I wish I could have gotten to know better, especially now that I’ve reached a point that I can comfortably communicate in the native language.

Peter and I decided to throw a going away party at the Casino on our last Friday in Germany. I expected too many people to come based on the amount of invitations that we sent out, but I was pleasantly surprised by a turnout built exclusively of people who truly value us as friends. It was sublime to share one evening with the most important people that I had the pleasure to meet throughout my residence in Berlin. At the end of the night, I had an empowering feeling about my future and the people in it with me.

Milk, The Reader, Benjamin Button, The Wrestler… I would much rather watch Synechdoche again, but my personal viewing screen isn’t equipped.

I feel that I’ve reached a point in my life where every action and subsequent reaction builds upon my ethos in a way that divorces me from my physical context and invites me to imagine. I fear the end of this flight, because it won’t be complete without a big squeeze back through the cultural bottleneck into the critically devoid American Midwest. On the other hand, I remain optimistic that I will be able to apply myself in endeavors that will enrich my perception of existence and understanding of the human condition independent of my location. Further, I believe that I will see my former and present home with new eyes, be they European or experienced or tired or critical, and I look forward to documenting my foreign perspective of it.

If asked where I see myself in a year, I would probably say, “I don’t know, I’m not sure yet what I want to do after Kansas. New York or San Francisco if I dig the States, Berlin if I can find work. I might stay in school if the market is still down, but I have to find a way to pay for it.” I’m confident that my opinion of Berlin won’t shift after returning to Kansas, but that my long time home will have lost its gemütlichkeit. I’ve spent the last fourteen months shedding moss and polishing my psyche. I will embrace my last year in Kansas as an opportunity to make a local impact on a failing culture. A time of observation has ended; a time of sharing commences.

Die Letzte Zeit

2009-06-13T11:45:00.013-06:00

Twelve months. Fifty-four weeks. Three hundred seventy-nine days. I’ve been on this continent so long, but I’ve been on this planet even longer. Recently, I’ve developed the habit of ignoring the conventional sense of time and living in the moment, the here and now. After all, wouldn’t it be more interesting to measure time in Dönner consumed, concerts attended, films seen, places visited, people met, commutes made, or beers drunk?

The break between semesters wrapped itself up rather nicely. Vacuous winter days were seasoned with cultural and social events; the period of hibernation was bearable. The opening party for the Pictopia exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt was a blast, complete with bumper cars, flashing lights, and character-based art. Regular visits to the Sport-Klause, where upwards of twenty people play one game of ping-pong while simultaneously drinking cheap beers, were of course welcomed. Patrick invited me to a Jay Retard show at Festsaal Kreuzberg, and David Byrne blew the top off the Tempodrom, naturally astounding Peter, Pat and me.

At the end of March, Karmanoia, an art house in Neukölln, was forced to shut its doors and decided to throw a week long going out party. It was sad to see the creative and inspiring home of the Peristal labrynth—Peristal coming from Peristaltik, meaning contraction of the intestines—be erased from history.

Then spring came. Just like that. One day, the sky cleared and the sun shone once again on Berlin, thawing the ground and the people on it. It didn’t stop shining, either—at least until very recently. One spring day, Patrick brought me to Treptower Park where we had beer and bratwurst by the Spree, scoped an abandoned GDR amusement park, and hung out at a Soviet WWII memorial. The wind still bit, but the sun’s rays healed.

It was in this same time of rebirth that I made a trip to Poznań, Poland to visit my friend Natalia, who I met the previous summer in Vienna. She gave me a thoughtful glimpse into her life as a student in the city and into her nearby childhood home of Puszczykowo, including a trip to the cutest and most delicious ice cream joint I’ve ever been to in my life.

When I returned to Berlin, I began spending a good deal of time with Anja, a girl I met in my winter semester Modern Photography course. Something clicked; we seem to have a greater understanding of each other’s condition than we can express through either of our two common languages.

In mid April, Jenn, a friend from Lawrence, and Kim, a new one, came to visit not too long after their arrival in Trier, where they are both studying. We got to take advantage of the beautiful weather, spending time in Treptow, at Club der Visionäre, along the Landwehrkanal, and of course, by Kotti.

Epics begin to follow epics. Pat and Peter and I had the pleasure of hearing an Efdemin DJ set at Rechenzentrum, a discrete club on the Spree near Ostkreuz. Mi Ami and Black dice played a fantastic show at Festsaal, an overwhelmingly affective experience that Pat, Anja and I shared. And on Pat’s last day in Berlin—he decided to move back home to look for another job—all four of us went to Berghain for a Flying Lotus set. It was sad to see Pat go, but at least we’ll always have our time Berlin.

Schoolwork once again began to weigh me down—I did a photo series in Neukölln and Marzahn involving interviews and portraits—but I couldn’t kill the spring seed that was planted in me. The first of May rolled around and my Kiez—roughly “neighborhood” in English—turned into Berlin’s biggest street party. Early in the day, I met up with a gang of friends including some of Pete Rickert’s who were visiting from New York. We spent the day lounging in the sun with a mass of Berliners doing the same thing, until it got crazy at Kotti, that is.

Shortly before I left for Italy, Christian Freytag, a friend from school, celebrated his birthday night at the Villa in Friedrichshain, and had a picknick the next day at Falkplatz in Prenzlauerberg. I spent the following hours putting myself together, preparing for my solo trip to Italy. Anja spent some time with me the night before I flew to Venice; she helped me remain positive about my virginal solo traveling experience.

When I landed in Venice, the sky was blue and hardly change hue until I left Naples two weeks later. My anxiety about traveling alone completely dissolved the instant I stepped off the plane and was replaced by excitement and curiosity. I don’t know if I’ve ever walked so much in my life as I did in Italy. I walked around Venice for two days and two nights, I walked around Florence for a day and a night, I walked around Rome for three days and two nights, and I didn’t stop walking when I arrived in Naples, where I met up with an excursion group from FH Potsdam, led by a particularly quick-walking Prof. Claus Baldus.

Venice was of course a tourist hotspot, but it’s hard to diminish the charm of the city. A spriz—an unbeatable sparkling wine drink with Campari—at Café Rosso was a great way to end the first day of exploration. On the second day, I met Bill, an American student traveling in Italy, at Piazza San Marco. We had a great conversation while hanging out on a bridge near Campo Santa Margherita at sunset, complete with pizza and spriz.

The first thing I did in Florence after stepping off the train and unloading my junk at the hostel was to climb to the top of the Duomo, the cathedral in Florence. From there I was able to locate several of the architectural landmarks that I had hoped to see while I was there. Back on the ground, I saw David at the Accademia and countless works of Renaissance art at the Uffizi after a day exploring the architectural wonders of the city, my top being Basilica di San Lorenzo.

I left Rome wishing I had more time to explore; walking through the streets is like walking through an architecture history textbook, complete with scratch-and-sniff. Of all of the landmarks, the one that affected me the most was the Pantheon. It was hard to leave such a divine space. Hadrian’s Villa blew me away, and the Vatican was unbeatably grandiose. Back at the hostel, I ran into a great group of travelers from all over the world; I began to get into the rhythm of personal appreciation and exploration followed by intercultural social interaction.

And the odyssey culminated in Naples, where I was once again in the company of familiar friends. Baldus’ three-day walking tour of the city was unbelievably thorough and diverse. The objective for our excursion was to document the city in a mode drawing from Italian neorealism. On our last night together, we all met on a rooftop terrace above the apartment where a few students were staying and spent the evening reflecting on our experiences and indulging in a bounty of flavor-bursting Italian eatables—and drinkables. On my last complete day in Italy, I took an early ferry to the nearby island of Procida with a few students from Potsdam; the black sand beach paradise was just the exclamation point with which I was hoping to end my voyage.

Shortly after my return to a chronically cloud-covered Berlin, my mom, aunt Sharon, and uncle David came to visit. It was wonderful to see my mom after such a long time—just under a year—and to explore the city with my aunt and uncle, who are perhaps equally as curious as I am. We had the overwhelming opportunity to attend a performance of the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, and I had a great time showing the fam my digs. It was sad to see them go—I got used to always having good company at home at the end of the day.

During the same time my family came to visit, Luke Jordan brought a group of students from Kansas to see the city. It was great to catch up with my professor and friend from Kansas, and it was refreshing to take the kids to Cookies and to show them how we party in Berlin.

Anja recently threw a birthday come going away party at a bar in Neukölln—she’s leaving Berlin for a year in Perth, Australia not too long from now. It was lovely to spend an evening in her company and the company of her closest friends, including Christian Metzner, who's birthday brunch I was happy to be invited to a few weeks earlier.

Vivian Girls played an energetic show at the sweltering West Germany venue in Kreuzberg, which Matt and I caught. Peter and I saw The Limits of Control at Odeon in Schöneberg last week. And my friends living in Potsdam have given me plenty of reason to spend time here outside of school—a few days ago, I threw a glowing frisbee for hours at Brandenburger Tor with Pete, Anika and Franzi. And yesterday, I went to the opening event for the OH!-Ton radio feature festival in Potsdam, which Anja has been helping organize for the last year and a half. There were lectures and discussions and the opportunity to hear some of the best radio features ever broadcasted in Germany while floating on a tiny boat in the middle of a lake. Last night, Anja, Josephine, and a few other new friends and I listened to a radio feature from Jens Jarisch titled “Die K – Szenen eines Drogenstrichs” while floating on a glimmering moonlit waterscape.

In a week, I’m leaving Berlin once more—this time to visit my uncle in Paris. When I return, Anja will be in Australia. I’m dreading her departure after getting to know her so well, but I can only imagine how much it’s going to hurt all of my friends in Berlin when I leave the country for good in six weeks. I’m just now gaining perspective of what these last twelve months have really meant for me and for the people who are important to me. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Semesterferien

2009-03-13T08:34:00.005-06:00

There’s nothing like sopping up the milky time of school vacation. I’ve finally had time to participate in all of the daytime and nighttime activities that I’ve been hankering to do in Berlin. And I was able to spend a restful week in Copenhagen with Katie, absorbing the undeniably rich lifestyle of Nordic culture.

I was warmly welcomed on my first day in Copenhagen by rare sunrays and American hospitality. Katie invited a few new friends from school over for an evening of pizza crafting and beer drinking, which we chased with a truly American house party—complete with all of the expected festivities—being thrown by another student from her school.

In the days that proceeded, I spent a good amount of time feeling the city with my feet. Coincidentally, two architecture friends from Potsdam, Magdelena and Johan, were staying in Malmö at the time and decided to make a day trip to Copenhagen. One day, we met up at BIG’s recently opened YES IS MORE exhibit at the Danish Architecture Center—which was as cleverly designed as their architecture—and spent a few hours thereafter doing some Danish architecture sight-seeing.

Since Katie and most of my new friends from Copenhagen were working on school projects, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Stefan, a student visiting from Maastricht. We ran our eyes over the extensive collection at the National Gallery and the gallery of Impressionist artwork in the Glyptotek and discussed relativism over coffee. We also attended an excellent exhibition of sketchbooks curated by Robtert Wilson at the Black Diamond, “Everything you can think of is true."

On a typically cloudy and cool Copenhagen afternoon, Allie and Katie and I took a train to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and spent a rapturous afternoon wandering through its hallowed hallways. The Max Ernst ouvre was delightfully thorough, the fresh salad with beets came complete with a view of Øresund, and the sculpture collection lay like celestial figures in the landscape.

When I arrived at Copenhagen’s train station on another busy school day, the sky was unsurprisingly cloudy. I took a train over the Øresund Bridge to Malmö, Sweden, where I wore down my soles for a few hours. After a walk through the old town, including a visit to the David Goldblatt and Sune Jonsson photography exhibitions at the Malmö Konsthall, and a memorable lunch at an affordable and Indian restaurant on Södra Förstadsgaten called Ganesha, I trekked to the newly developed area surrounding Calatrava’s awkwardly placed tower as the sky transitioned to blue. Taken in by the vast—yet manmade—landscape near the sound, I sat for a moment at the waters edge to watch the horizon.

On my last day in Copenhagen, I took a walk through Christiania, where earlier that week a few of us paid a visit to draw portraits of each other in a local bar with a resident of the free state. Dirt paths traverse a landscape of self-built houses and surprisingly wild nature within the center of the city, a dreamscape that very few people are privileged to call home.

Since my return to Berlin, I’ve been taking it easy, seeing films and going to galleries and museums that have been on my list of things to do. It’s nice having nothing to do, and I have a feeling it will be hard to go back to the grind even though I’m itching to do something productive. Staying up late and sleeping until noon every day of week is a luxury that I’m not looking forward to giving up.

Artificial Horizons in the Urban Landscape

2009-03-05T13:41:00.004-06:00

When placed in the natural landscape, one thing persists: the horizon. It provides context, a constant reminder of the ground and a reference to time and place. However, in the urban landscape the natural horizon is almost always invisible; artificial horizons take its place. No longer is the difference between ground and sky so clear, nor is the sense of time and place. What defines the urban landscape is exactly that which is created by humans, where time has a freezing effect and place means only the people.

These images were created in Berlin between 2008 and 2009. Artificial Horizons in the Urban Landscape is an ongoing photography project from Benjamin Busch.

Take Time

2009-02-19T12:09:00.008-06:00

The shortest day of the year was preceded by silver-gray skies and communal anticipation. It left us with hope for the coming spring. The birds began their song once again, and the earth released its pungent odor of thawing. Today, the season’s efforts are cloaked under a fine shroud of snow, yet to be revealed again.

November began with a propulsive experiment. The fifteenth Internationale Herbstakadamie (Fall Academy) in Neukloster began with ambiguity and ended with self-found surety. Architecture and design students from schools in the States and Germany hunkered down to find solutions to a precarious assignment: Prora, a 4.5 km long Nazi-planned resort for the working class which was never completed nor used for its original intended purpose. I had the opportunity to work with five students from Kentucky, Dortmund, and Wismar. After a long week of drinking, discussing, traveling, and tearing ourselves apart, we came to our solution: Prora will be converted into a cliffscape with the rubble of its own buildings—the architecture will return to the earth.

A few weeks later in Berlin, Jillian came from Vienna to pay a visit. It was wonderful to see her once again shortly before her return to the States. We spent some time walking around, partaking in Glühwein consumption at the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas market) at Potsdamer Platz. We visited some of my favorite bars and restaurants in Berlin at the time, including Morena and the falafel joint around the corner, and delved into Berlin’s trendy nightlife at Weekend Club, located on the top floor of a tower at Alexanderplatz.

I began spending a good amount of time with my two new friends from Kentucky, Eric and Patrick. We shared some of our favorite spots in Berlin. One cold and blurry afternoon while Jillian was in town, Eric led us to Teufelsberg (Devil’s mountain) near Grunewald. Through the clouds, the disappearing sun cast its most sumptuous rays on the abandoned listening station as we explored for hours.

My time here has been decorated by a colorful sprinkling of musical performances. While Jillian was visitng, we had the great opportunity to see !!! perform at Festsaal Kreuzberg, which was nothing short of show-stopping and complete with an encore. And shortly before the month wrapped up, I saw Peaches, Hercules and Love Affair, and Santogold perform together at Postbahnhof, a former train station in Berlin.

The last week of November brought with it the deadline for my Modern Photography course with Claus Baldus, a group presentation on two photographers: Helen Levitt and Jeff Wall. Working as a group with a Latvian student and two German girls, we put together a presentation and discussed the two very different ways the photographers represent reality and truth.

Following November’s lead, December began with a weeklong architectural excursion. Attending a seminar lead by Prof. Edward Dolk, I had the opportunity to spend a week in Le Corbusier’s French monastery, La Tourette. The week was spent analyzing, drawing, watching, and exploring its esoteric spaces. It was an unbelievable privilege to inhabit a building designed by such an architect, and I can see the experience's effect on my current design. The excursion was peppered with short trips within the region, including visits to to Firminy and La Chaux-de-Fonds, where we explored more of Le Corbusier’s work, and Lyon, Bern and Genf. I found Bern particularly inspirational, where in the old town all of the buildings have street-side arcades that engage the city's inhabitants.

I turned 21 on December 9th during Ratatat’s encore at Maria, and I couldn’t be happier. The following day, I attended a Glass Candy performance at Kreuzberg’s hotspot Live at Dot, which didn’t let me down. My birthday party the following weekend was graced by the attendance Katie, Alyssa and Elizabeth, who were visiting from Copenhagen, as well as my new Kentucky friends, including Joyce, some French girls from school, Peter, and Kathi, a friend from Neukloster living in Wismar, with some of her friends. There was plenty of music, beer and hygge to go around. While the girls from Copenhagen were in town, we spent an evening at Vor Wien, a bar in Kreuzberg near Wienerstraße, and saw Veyun perform in the gritty cellar.

Christmas came before I knew it, and thankfully two new friends from school whom I met in La Tourette invited me to spend the glowing time with their families. I joined Lilli on Christmas Eve at her grandmother’s apartment in Berlin. We ate a wonderful feast of pumpkin soup, roasted goose, red cabbage and dumplings, and we milked the cheer by the Christmas tree, which was complete with burning candles in the German tradition. I woke up early on Christmas Day to find the balmy winter sun shining through the bedroom window in my apartment—a rare occurrence at this time of year in Berlin—and immediately grabbed my camera and took advantage of the light. At noontime, I hopped a regional to Michendorf, where I met Dona and her family for Christmas Day’s festivities. We had a repeat dinner—and of course I’m not complaining—of roasted goose and the fixings, and spent the rest of the day bumming around the house and relaxing, finishing off the night gathered around to watch a movie. War es richtig gemütlich.

My flight to Barcelona departed early in the morning on December 28th. I arrived in town and met up with a bunch of students from Kansas who have been studying in Europe, including Duncan, Kaitlin and, happily as always, Katie, who brought her Ithacan friend Allie from Copenhagen. New Years Eve and the days preceding are a blur of beer, tapas, architecture, narrow streets, the sea and champagne. And the cherry on top was Gaudi’s legacy—he was a true master. Sagrada Família was astounding; the detail is impossible to purvey through two-dimensional photographs, and neither is the experience of the space.

On the first day of the year, Katie, Allie, and I departed for Berlin, where we kept it chill in Kreuzberg. During the days, we spent some time on the street and ended up at the Avedon exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau that I had been meaning to visit to for ages—it was spectacular. When the sun declined in the early evening, we cooked lots of scrumptious goodies and spent hours around the table drinking and playing cards with a delightful soundtrack of who else but The Beatles. On the last night, I took Katie to my favorite bar in my neighborhood, Luzia; jumbled old furniture lies where it needs to be, a candle stands on every table, early-comers peek down from their miniature tables on the guardless balcony, and a charming young man who spends more time on his hair than any girl Katie or I know serves drinks behind the bar.

The weeks that came were filled with work to complete for my self-defined assignment in Prof. Wiebke Loeper’s photography thesis course and for my studio project with Prof. Manfred Ortner. I carried a large format camera around Kreuzberg for a few days capturing artificial horizons, and then produced prints on campus after having the film developed in Berlin. This was also about the time that I turned in my portfolio for the figure-drawing course I had been doing since September. I did take a few breaks, though, to party with Matt and Casey at Icon in Prenzlauer Berg, where Tepr was doing a DJ set, and at Berghain, where The Bug did a live set that was followed by DJ sets from Kode 9, Martyn and a few others. The end of January also held the tenth annual Club Transmediale festival in Berlin, and I had the glorious opportunity to see The Emperor Machine, Black Devil Disco Club, Elitechnique, Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, Micachu & The Shapes, Tim Exile Jon Hopkins, Fuck Buttons, Bass Clef, Skream, and Benga sharing the stages at Maria.

February started fantastically with a lecture given by Rem Koolhaas at the Renaissance-theater on the first day. Though it was short, it was potent and I was able to sharpen my critical perspective of architecture because of it. Katie came once again later in the week on an excursion, but because my design project was due for completion by the tenth we didn’t have much time to spend together. We did, however, make a return visit to Vor Wien with some of her new friends for a gin fizz and some hygge.

I spent several nights sleeping on the mattress in my studio in Potsdam in order to finish a model that took an eternity to build. But it was worth it when I finished; the critique went well and I am happy with my solution. The project, which I defined with the only stipulation that it be a living bridge, is a superhostel located along Warschauer Brücke that joins the currently separate U-Bahn and S-Bahn train lines and incorporates an elevated space for community and guest functions. I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the week without Frido, who was finishing his Bachelor thesis, and Pete Rickert, who’s in my same design course, to keep me company.

After the tenth, the days that ensued starkly contrasted the consistently challenging days of work in studio. While I was getting my life back in order, I indulged in cinematic lust at the Berlinale film festival and spent some time out in the night with friends from school. Peter and I saw a collection of short films one afternoon and later met Patrick to see Soul Power directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte—the screening was followed by a question and answer session with the director. On the Friday night that followed, I met up with Peter, Pete, his girlfriend Marica, and Daniel to go out on the town after having dinner and a few drinks with Frido and his friend from Munich. The following Saturday, Peter and I met David, a friend of Peter’s from Kansas who is now living in Berlin, and saw Virgin Tongues play a show at White Trash, a burger joint/club in Mitte. Later that night, Peter and I met up with Swen, a student from our design course, and his girlfriend Michelle to delve into Berlin’s seedy underbelly. We left the formerly abandoned house turned raging party and walked home along the Spree watching the rising sun's reflection in the TV tower. When it was dark again, I met up with Frido and Daniel to see a film staring Dennis Hopper, White Star, in a Kreuzberg cellar arranged with a comfortable assortment of sofas and guests.

Until classes resume at the end of March, I will be completely free of responsibility possibly for the last time in my life. Throughout the months prior, I laboriously searched for an architecture firm in Berlin where I could do an internship, but had no luck thanks to the ailing economy. But it may have turned out for the better—I’ll be spending a week in Copenhagen with Katie and potentially traveling further throughout Europe and Germany in the following weeks. I’ve passed the critical half-point datum for my time on this wonderful continent, and I’m trying not to remind myself of that fact.

Donaukanal in Wien

2008-11-14T08:28:00.002-06:00

Berlin from the ground

2008-11-11T15:48:00.016-06:00

Forty-four midnights have passed since I arrived in Berlin, and I've been awake for all of them. The contrast between Vienna and Berlin—or any city that I've been to, for that matter—is starker than I could have imagined, and I dig it.

When Peter and I first got here, we were homeless. At first, we searched for a flat to rent out together, but we quickly discovered that it would be impossible to get a good spot without an address of our own first. We decided to search independently for rooms available in shared flats—all of this was happening while we were starting classes and trying to figure out the German education system—and Peter immediately landed a flat with a DJ in Friedrichshain, a hip and young artist's neighborhood in old East Berlin, just across the Oberbaumbrücke from east Kreuzberg.

I, on the other hand, had a good amount of trouble finding a place. I went to several roommate casting appointments and got turned down for all of them. I called upon friends with connections in Berlin but had no luck. When our short-term stay at a flat in Mitte expired at the beginning of October, Peter moved to Friedrichshain and I crashed with a new friend Pete Ritter in Potsdam, the quiet town where my school is located.

At this point, I felt pretty hopeless about finding a place to live—especially because the dorms, my last resort, were all full—and about my decision to live in Berlin. But thank goodness I hit a stroke of luck and snatched up a room near Oranienstraße in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood in old West Berlin with a large immigrant population and lots of great places to hang out and eat. My roommate is an architecture student at the Technische Universität in Berlin, and he only stays here a few nights of the month. I practically live alone, and I'm cool with that.

Where do I begin to describe my situation? I haven't been able to take time to collect my thoughts for so long, between all the schoolwork and urban exploring. Right now, I'm drinking a 1,50 EUR Beck's at Morena, a sweet cafe on Wienerstraße not too far from my flat. And I just got a plate full of falafel and hummus at a Turkish restaurant around the corner for a grand total of 3,50 EUR. One thing's for sure: Berlin is cheap. And better than any other place that I have ever lived. In short, I'm very happy here now that I'm settled.

There's something going on in this city at every hour of the short-lit day. Any food you want, you got it—on every block. I've already found some of the most delicious food that I've ever tasted—Thai, Vietnamese, Turkish and Indian—just by walking the streets of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The night streets are lit by a new bar with every footstep. And the music here is unbelievably good. I've already seen Animal Collective at Berghain, which was a holy experience. Junior Boys and Mr. Oizo also plazed here at Maria, a club in Friedrichshain, in the last few weeks. I plan on going to !!! this Sunday at an old Kreuzberg punk venue and to Peaches with Hercules and Love Affair and Santogold at Postbahnhof next week.

And school is going really well, too. I just have to make the comfy 1:15 commute to Fachhochschule Potsdam three or four times a week because I only have classes on Monday, Tuesday and every other Thursday. I'm taking a language course, an architecture theory course, a figure drawing course, and a history of modern photography course in addition to photography and architecture studios. My personal thesis for the photography studio is "Artificial horizons in the urban landscape", and the title of the project for my architecture studio is "Living Bridge"—and both use Berlin as the subject. I couldn't be happier with my studies, even though the language gets to be a problem sometimes.

Not so long ago, a few friends from Kansas who are studying in Copenhagen—Katie, Lane and Chris—came to visit me. We stomped through town, and for the first time I visited some of the places that I have been craving to experience, like the Jewish Museum and the Nordic Embassies. It was refreshing and heartwarming to see old friends so far from home.

After almost two months, I'm just starting to scratch the surface of this city. I don't think that I'll ever be able to quench my curiosity in Berlin.

Karlsplatz

2008-10-09T15:47:00.003-06:00

Goodbye Vienna

2008-09-21T02:36:00.011-06:00

As I sit on the bed in my sleeper car, I honestly have no idea what to expect when I arrive in Berlin. Of course, I have somewhere to stay, a temporary flat through the end of the month, but I feel peculiar having all of my most precious and essential belongings stuffed away in three bags. Perhaps this is just a “no thank you taste” of what it feels like to be “on the road.”

Vienna is—was my home. The city itself isn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but the people there made it. When I arrived in June not speaking a lick of German, needless to say I was under stress. But I couldn’t have felt more welcomed by the people that I met during that first month. Everybody at IKI from the students to the teachers created together a truly wonderful mood for the summer. I think I will miss that feeling the most.

As I take a drink of my wine, I can’t even begin to recount all the events of the summer. I think it’s the traditions I formed that will really stick with me. I fondly remember swimming through delicious plumes of hookah smoke and blowing spectacular smoke rings at Sagya with my new friends from Seattle. I will miss having long conversations with Sofie in the most delightful Viennese coffeehouses—especially Café Pruckel. And the colorful lights sparking and undulating on the reflective night surface of the Donaukanal will always be in my memory—along with the cuvée.

The Donau really was an essential element of the summer. I think that it was about more than drinking and swimming and talking; it was about reconciliation with nature, something that is completely repressed by the bourgeois façades of Vienna. There really is nothing like grabbing a 2 EUR bottle of wine at Billa and going to the Donau to spend some time beside the water with a bunch of friends.

And I can’t forget the countless nights spent in the kitchens of Haus Salzburg, my residence for the summer. Although most of the time I felt like I had something to complain about, it really was a nice place to live—but there is no excuse for the intolerably uncomfortable box spring beds. However, the people I met at Haus Salzburg are some of the nicest people I’ve encountered to this date. We all knew that we were there to learn German and we were happy to have elementary conversations in it. Well, at least the ones who wouldn’t rather speak English. I’ll miss cooking green curry, something that I got better and better at while the summer progressed. The night that made my summer may just be the night that we all devoured our bounty of food from Bratislava. Grilled chicken wings, mashed potatos, veggie skewers, fresh salad, chips and Czech beer—I can’t remember everything we ate. Breaking bread is more important to me now than it ever has been.

But the more I recall, as I now lie in my bed having polished off a bottle of wine—with the help of Peter—I begin to imagine the traditions that I would have formed had I stayed in Vienna. The few times that Jillian, my fellow lactose intolerant friend, and me went to grab coffee or tea or breakfast were sweet. She told me that places like Welt Café and Breakfast Club, where they happily serve soymilk espresso drinks, reminded her of Seattle—and I can’t wait to visit that city! The few times that we all went to the Pakistani buffet, Der Wiener Deewan, were fantastic. The place reminded me of home, of Veggie Lunch at the ECM in Lawrence. The buffet has some of the most delicious carnivorous and herbivorous curry and non-curry dishes that my body has ever incorporated into itself. All at the price of whatever you want to pay. I wonder what other places I would have discovered and whom else I would have met in Vienna.

But that’s all in the past. Right? Even though my summer has passed, it will always have a fundamental influence on my future. I’ve learned how to live, how to maintain balance. How to be happy. If this is where I am now, hopefully I will only go further in Berlin. In this world, any path is possible to get from A to B. The road is always there to take, but I plan on laying one of my own.

Ars Electronica 2008

2008-09-15T14:45:00.029-06:00

Appeel by TheGreenEyl

A week ago, I had the great opportunity to attend the 2008 Ars Electronica festival for art, technology and society in Linz, Austria.

From the Ars Electronica website:

Under the banner of “A NEW CULTURAL ECONOMY – The Limits of Intellectual Property” the 2008 Ars Electronica Festival aims to co-author the preamble to a new knowledge-based society. What’s at stake: the interplay of freedom of information and copyright protection, big profit-making opportunities and the vision of an open knowledge-based society. And this is also a matter of practical, workable regulations governing this new reality, rules whose formulation ought not to be left up to lawyers and MBAs alone.

The symposium was centered around the central topic of the limits of intellectual property, encompassing many subtopics including open knowledge and creativity, copyright, the pursuit of truth, and collective action in a modern open society.

The most prevalent theme of the symposium was openness. Joichi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons, opened the symposium observing contemporary culture: "The new culture would rather share, blog, remix, than sit on a couch and consume."

One recurring example of openness that was mentioned frequently during the symposium is Wikipedia, winner of the 2004 Golden Nica for Digital Communities. Yochai Benkter, the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, asked the question, "Why do we trust Britannica over Wikipedia?" He continued to describe the old industry of publishing and that it is no longer relevant today. According to Benkler, we are led to believe that Britannica has better content only because they have enough money to produce physical books and sell them. On the other hand, Wikipedia is open to everybody to contribute, without requirements for distinction or economical status, and allows for richer content.

The discussion lead to a greater conversation on access to knowledge—who should have it. Tim Pritlove, past organizer of the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC), used hacking as an example of a desire for openness. Hacking, as he defined it, is not by definition a criminal activity—it is simply a method of instating a free-flow of information. He used an interactive CCC installation, Blinkenlights, to illustrate the possibilities of the free-flow of information on a larger scale. The project consists of a vacant building that has been transformed into a digital interactive display where overwhelming creativity comes in the process rather than from the concept.

According to Leonhard Dobusch, Christian Forsterleitner, society has become a danger to large firms and governments, the very institutions that restrict peer production in open systems. In order to openly share knowledge, it is necessary to be able to do so legally—but the people presenting their knowledge and those who seek it are not the ones who make the laws controlling it.

James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School, believes that people generally don't understand openness; they understand the virtues of closed systems but not the faults. Essentially, people see an unjustified risk of falsehood in open systems, while closed systems are themselves exclusionary and thus far from the greater truth. An application of tangible property laws to intellectual "property" is inappropriate. David Weinberger, technologist and writer, discussed information theory in relation to open systems. Rather than excluding "noise" from the equation, it should be included and integrated. He defines noise as the world, including every single voice. Considering the knowledge and opinions of every person without discrimination is the only way to share knowledge.

But how has any of this been applied to this date, except for Wikipedia? The web site Global Voices, winner of a prize in the Digital Communities category, allows for people all around the world to blog about their daily life. The founders of the nonprofit organization believe that the web site allows readers to get to know the people behind their ethnicity and media stereotypes by reading about their personal experiences. The blog posts are translated to the reader's preferred language—not just into English, but many more.

Ronaldo Lemos, director of the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas School of Law, brought a fresh perspective to the discussion. He used the Brazilian tecno brega music movement as an example of an open system that doesn't depend primarily on the computer. Using an open business model, Brazilian musicians are able to release their own work and maintain their full copyright and distribution rights. By refusing submission to corporate contract offers, the musicians bring economic relevence to the open system, which incorporates a gift economy and a market economy. Copies of CD releases are given free to street vendors to move the music fast through the community, while larger "soundsystem parties" sponsor performances and allow the artists to sell higher quality CD releases. The culture has taken control of the popular music distribution in Brazil. An open system has replaced a closed system.

reactable by Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

In addition to the symposium, several great works of art were on display throughout Linz. One of the most impressive was reactable, which was on display and available for manipulation to festival-goers. The instrument is essentially a tangible interface for digital music produciton. The table responds to the placement of specific blocks upon it and projects images from below signifying waveforms and connections between note producers, sound makers, and modulators. It was the winner of the Golden Nica in the Digital Musics category.

Image Fulgurator by Julius von Bismarck

The Image Fulgurator, designed by Julius von Bismarck, took the Golden Nica in the Interactive Art category. The modified camera uses a flash unit to essentially project a light-image onto any setting for a short moment in time. The image can be used to manipulate, in the case of Julius von Bismarck's application, tourist photos by superimposing an unexpected image upon a target iconic building. The invention provokes the question, do people trust a moment in their memory or what they see in a photograph?

View more photographs of the festival at my flickr.

Summer reflections

2008-09-03T15:41:00.050-06:00

I have been living in Vienna for more than three months, and I'm leaving for Berlin in less than three weeks. It's quite possible that I've spent as many weekends in Vienna as I have spent in other cities across central Europe, but I've still managed to make new friends and to enjoy the slow, relaxed pace of this city. One of my favorite pastimes is swimming in the Danube on a sunny afternoon with a bunch of friends and a bunch of wine.

So how's my German coming? Very well. Considering the fact that I could count on my fingers the number of German words that I knew then, I've come a long way. The program that I am attending at the Internationales Kulturinstitut is one of the most engaging and holistic education experiences that I have ever endured. When I leave this city, I will officially have the comprehension level of a middle schooler.

But the fun part is, I've been able to travel all over with little money. Without a doubt, the most attractive attribute of Vienna is its supreme location. In the last three months, I've been to—in chronological order—Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, Innsbruck, Budapest, Bratislava and Salzburg. Each city has a different soul, a different mood and a different landscape—both terrestrially and architecturally.

I began my first trip in Europe with the company of Brandon, Otto and Duncan. Our first stop—Prague. It's a tired, old city—a lot has happened there in the last hundred years—but it's currently thriving thanks to an economy of tourism. The culture of the city is a culture of tourism, materialism and western fetishization—which is unfortunate. But if you scratch the shiny surface, you can find legitimate places like Vinárna U Sudo, an extensive underground beer hall. I regret leaving it to have a peek at the infamous Karlovy Lázně. All in all, Prague was a beautiful and historically rich city, but it was also the most expensive one that I've visited.

Then we took a night train to Warsaw, where we spent two days and one night. We were fortunate enough to be given a guided tour by a former KU architecture professor, Zuzanna Karcewska. She offered insight into Polish culture and told stories from her childhood while walking with us throughout the city. In order to set our bearings, we started at the top of a building that Stalin graciously built for the Polish people.

We walked alongside buildings and people wounded by WWII violence and Soviet neglect. Unlike Prague, most of historic Warsaw had been destroyed. A mood of persistence penetrates the city—new buildings arise next to ones in need of repair, and creative culture is alive.

Next stop, Krakow—also in Poland. The town is much smaller than either Prague or Warsaw. But it was a beautiful place to spend a few days. The town is very small and walkable, and there's plenty of grass and trees to keep it cool in every sense of the word. One of the best castles that I've ever been to is in Krakow—the Wavel—and the town definitely has the most active nightlife that I've seen east of Vienna while maintaining a comfortable and calm mood, not a touristic one. A restaurant called Pod Baranem Restauracja serves liter mugs of Żywiec, the best beer in Poland.

And I won't neglect to mention that we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, which lies an hour outside of Krakow. I had a hard time conjuring emotions because it is impossible to entirely comprehend the events that took place there. A guide at the camp left me with one unforgettable statement: Auschwitz is the biggest cemetery in the world.

About a month after visiting the Czech Republic and Poland, I got on a train to Innsbruck, a small city in the Austrian Alps, to meet Kayla, Brandon, Peter, Otto and Duncan. Upon arrival, we met two great Canadian kids, Mark and Rob, and spent a lot of time with them. Before visiting the city, had I never been to a place with such a humbling and inspiring landscape. The town, nestled in a valley below several peaks, is small but has a strangely urban feel. And the surrounding land is host for innumerable outdoor activities. A funicular train connects the towns of Innsbruck and Hungerburg, and the latter provides a cable connection to the nearest peak.

Innsbruck is the most beautiful place that I have been on Earth. There are few experiences in life that truly give the sense that humans aren't as important as we're led to believe—one of those is reaching the summit of a mountain.

Shortly after visiting Innsbruck, I hopped on a train headed to Budapest where I spent a weekend with Jon Hermes. We took it easy the whole time and just dug the city. We ate a well-priced dinner at a gourmet restaurant called Menza before having desert at the fabulous New York Cafe. We also spent several hours at Széchenyi, the best and biggest Turkish bath in the city which is mostly attended by locals. And even though we weren't really in the mood to rage, we spent some time at a huge outdoor beer joint called Szimpla. The Buda Castle which sits atop a tall hill is enormous—I regret not going inside to see a Moholy-Nagy exhibition. All-in-all, Budapest is killer.

Shortly after going to Budapest, I went to Bratislava for the first time with Kayla and Jon while he was staying in Vienna. The capital city is only an hour away from Vienna by bus or train, so I made it there a second time a few weeks after with Jillian, Natalia and Zach. Bratislava is without a doubt a charming city, but it's very small and very quiet. However, groceries are much cheaper there, and there's a great place called Schokocafe Maximilian in the old town that serves drinking chocolate, or: melted chocolate in a cup. There's also a pretty cool castle, but it's currently closed to the public for renovation.

Last weekend, I made a trip to Salzburg with Jillian. We spent two days and a night there taking in the cute town amidst a beautiful landscape of meadows and mountains. A mood of tourism saturates the city, but it's there for good reason. The Festung Hohensalzburg, a fortress on a mountain over the city, is phenomenal—if only because of its realization. And there are catacombs within the shear face of the rock mountain, accessible from a beautiful cemetery where flowers are planted over the graves. While we were there, we went to this place called Augustiner Bräustübl, which serves beer brewed by local monks to a huge crowd of locals daily.

Oh yeah, and we went to a ton of churches! From Gothic to Baroque to Rococo.

I've had a lot of kicks traveling, but I've learned a lot too—about different cultures and about self reliance. I feel that after this summer I have embarked on a new phase of my life, and I'm totally ready for it. School in Berlin is going to be challenging to say the least. But nonetheless it's going to be the best time of my life—just like each passing year.

For more photographs, check out my flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/benbusch