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Onkel Toms Hütte

The U-Bahn trip to Haus am Waldsee has the viewer travelling to the end of the U3 line. The second-to-last stop on that line is Onkel Toms Hütte, a modernist housing estate named after Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel, but also a series of rain shelters placed in a beer garden in 1885 by a local landlord.

These estates were started in 1926 by architects Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring, et al., and completed the year before the Nazi's took power in 1933. Had I more time I would have liked to visit these estates, but as I was rushed, I set it aside for a later visit.

Haus am Waldsee

At the press conference Juan tells us that the ideal order in which to experience the exhibition is to begin at Haus am Waldsee, followed by the Ethnological Museum at Dahlem (four U-Bahn stops to the north), then the biennale's ancestral home -- KW -- at Mitte.

The day before the press conference, Juan allowed me to follow him as he supervised the Haus am Waldsee installation. Although I hope to write a larger profile elsewhere, what follows took place within the first five minutes of our arrival.

Juan helps Angela Bulloch and her assistant load in her sculpture.

The bleed from Carla Zaccagnini's installation is interfering with the sound of Slavs and Tatars' installation at the end of the grounds.

Juan discusses the problem with Slavs and Tatars' Kasia.

The Slavs and Tatars installation: two massive sound speakers.

As we return to the haus, Juan is on the phone to the preparators, whom he asks to turn Carla's speakers towards the visual elements of her piece inside.

Berlin Biennale Press Conference

The Berlin Biennale kicked off Wednesday with an 11am press conference at the Ethnological Museum in Dahlem. KW founding director Klaus Biesenbach (far right) gave the biennale his blessings, though for some reason felt the need to tell us that "not all the work in this exhibition is great." How Klaus knew this (what is "greatness" anyway?), I am not sure, because very few people had seen the exhibition in its entirety, and Klaus was not one of them.

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Dorothy Iannone (b.1933)

Tomorrow is the Berlin Biennale press preview. If I have time, I will visit Dorothy Iannone This Sweetness Outside of Time: Paintings, Objects, Books, 1959-2014 at the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art on my way back.

Olaf Nicolai

East German born Olaf Nicolai is among the 53 artists taking part in the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. He is also among curator Juan A. Gaitán's six member "Artistic Team".

Atop this post is an image of Nicolai's sculpture Portrait of the Artist as a Weeping Narcissus (2000), as exhibited at the 2002 Biennale of Sydney. Inside the Berlin Biennale catalogue (still under wraps) is a fiction Nicolai wrote through the eyes of scholar Péter Szondi.

A couple days ago Nicolai sent me his text, which begins with Szondi and an aerial photo of a failed post-1989 (East) German shopping mall.

Szondi has studied the aerial photograph closely -- the access road to the site is not easy to find. he is supposed to be meeting the site manager, Herr Falkner, at the mall's rear entrance. he also has his mobile number.  but he is reluctant to phone to get directions. his conceit makes him smile.

Recall how early in Chapter 1 of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Stephen "turned to the flyleaf of his geography and read what he had written there; himself, his name and where he was.

Stephan Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe"