A part of an ongoing attempt at chronicling, re-assessing and conveying to others this mission in life called art during a profoundly unstable point in which "home" has transitioned into "residency."
Michael and Sedenka took us out Saturday night to Café 88.They are our contacts in this town and with Milkwood.It was a very good evening and we hope to repeat it again soon.We don’t want to spend too much money “socializing” but we also want to take advantage of meeting and getting to know people.It is a fine line to balance- work and social, but more so when “social” intersects with work.
Along time ago people used to talk about networking and how necessary it was for “getting ahead.”Back then I think I only ever heard that phrase in regard to business, and other sorts of professional practices that didn’t refer to art.But then again they never teach artist business now do they.Consequently I always had this sort of disdain for networking and business socializing.It seemed like a bunch of sharks circling a table with a drink in one hand and another on their testicles.It never occurred to me- nor did it ever occur that I could go out and socialize within my “professional circles” trying to get jobs, glean new info and meet new colleges until much much later in life when it just started to happen.Now the idea of networking is by definition meeting new friends, exchanging ideas and information and helping one another find and get work.Funny how that works.And its fun!
After the electronic dam had been released then things began to flow normally.We needed to finish some commercial projects first so that we could begin to catch up with the fact that we are in the Czech Republic.There is a small balcony that looks over the river that runs along the backside of the building.Across the river are more houses and building that stack up a very larger hill that is topped by what looks like a church.The sun must also climb this hill in order to rise for the rest of us to see.
We have done very little outside our little outpost so far, mostly working and researching just to come up to speed.We eat breakfast?We eat meat, cheese and bread for breakfast.
I am having a little trouble breathing as the pillows and comforters are filled with down feathers.I am allergic to down.It gives me asthma.So far so good though, only a mild reaction thus far.My last epic bout left me sleeping on a bare mattress in the stairwell of a hotel in Rothenberg o.t. with only a sheet to cover me.Trying to avoid that this time around.As long as the down stays on the other bed I think I have a chance.
The apartment is a small two bedroom dwelling with a kitchen off to the side and a semi-private bathroom conveniently just outside the door. There is a washer and dryer on premises that is free. The washer takes 2hours to complete its cycle and the dryer takes probably just as long. Just another thing to get used to in this new land of ours.
Technical snafu #1- We brought two octa-power/surge protectors and two voltage transformers for two laptops, five external hard drives, five LCD/DVD players, one set of speakers and two camera battery chargers. Through my research I have found that surge protectors of the extension cord variety are not advised (read fire hazard) to plug into a voltage transformer as the surge elements conflict. The same goes for multi-voltage power cords like those of the laptop variety. For the first couple of days our apartment smelled of burning ozone as the laptops routinely flipped the breakers of the transformers after over-heating. In order to run one of the hard drives one laptop would have to be fully charged and running down in order to finish the work we had started on before our trip. Talk about a cluster fuck. Our mission became to find out as much info about our options and then solve our power conundrum. Incidentally using a normal extension cord or power strip would have been fine had we brought one. The first few days will be spent ultimately looking for plug adapters for all of our travel worth electronics. Could drawing be in our futures? Until this problem is solved the electronic surge has been effectively halted.
In the meantime we are adjusting to life such as it is. There is no Wi-Fi and there is one Cat5e cable to share. Oh to share the Internet! It is funny how a new instance changes the way we think of things as a possession versus universally accessible.
Wednesday comes and after a series of disheartening journeys out into the Krumlovian suburbia we return to the heart of our castle town victorious. In a very small electronics shop called “Electro” we found three plug adapters and quickly bought them up.
Its worth considering that somehow, even along the most obvious path to tourism we have firmly confabulated this possibility in seeking to stabilize our practice in art making which required us to forgo the prolonged indulging of the sights and temptings of the main thoroughfare and venture out into the most unassuming places following the paths of “local” people. But at the same time facing the frustrations of not knowing the language enough to avoid the traps the might normally be avoided by fluency, having to combat the eventuality of feeling demoralized by remembering the sheer fact that we are in another country, experiencing a new landscape, new sights and sounds and this is good. This opportunity even in the face of tribulation not be forgotten as anything other than special.
Before we left the train station that next day I starred out into the promenade and tried to conjure the specter of the station from twenty years prior. When I was last here there were may more youth hostel kiosks peppered throughout the station vying to help travelers find lodging. In 2010 there is only one lounge off to the side filled with brochures for tours and museums. One lonely woman sits at her desk, her ear to the phone as she waits on hold while confirming reservations at a local hotel. I am neither here nor then at this moment. Stuck somewhere between searching for the comfort in nostalgia and seeking the resolution of the future. Every so often a lady with a coffee cart passes our train cabin offering a small cup of pre-made coffee to the passengers for a small price. It is a slow trip traveling along the countryside. The train passes through many small towns and villages. Some stops are no larger than a bus stop. This is the Europe I remember. Eventually we make it to Cesky Krumlov, the end of the line so to speak. We are met by Michael and Dagmar at the station. Being that we are the first media based artist to join Milkwood and a duo to boot the following equation ensues: four people plus six pieces of luggage does not equal getting into this compact car. We split the trip to town into two trips, luggage first and then passengers (Michael and myself) with Jennida accompanying Dagmar to the apartment. By this point all I wanted to do was put the bags somewhere and be done with them- to be free, to be able to look around and feel at ease not having to look after these stationary children. As we drove along the sleepy town streets everything looked calm and normal until we rounded a bend and own a hill revealing the castle town of Cesky Krumlov. It was like a movie sequence as reality melted away- or rather revealed itself to be an imposter. I know that I had read web pages and looked at travel guides, but nothing prepared me for what I was looking at now. We crossed over a small bridge and through a stone gateway moving at a rabbits pace avoiding tourists and other pedestrians as we whisked by. In the background loomed the castle and all the old world orange topped roofs that complete the scene. I had to laugh at my own expectations- foiled! It’s a great day. We spent our first night in Cesky Krumlov we spent in total disorientation. With our internal clocks not quite aligning, the light receding earlier and being in unfamiliar territory, it quickly passed 11 and 12pm (now known as 23 and 24hr) and we hadn’t eaten anything at all- and no groceries!
Our experience of Københavns Lufthavne was rather brief as we arrived very early in the morning and were herded though a second set of security checkpoints that required a thorough unpacking of our carry on luggage due to the densely packed electronics contained therein. And then on through to the customs point where we were stamped on by easy as pie.
My ears were on alert trying to absorb and decipher the Danish/German mixtures wafting all around us. There was an awareness from inside my being that was stirring from a long cozy slumber. I am not sure if I can adequately describe the feeling of slowly remembering sights and sounds rediscovered in a new yet familiar setting.
We arrived in Berlin in an almost anti-climatic rush through the gates and into the terminal that resembled a small strip mall. I guess we flew into a smaller airport in Berlin because it seemed to lack the sheer size and scale of the Frankfurt Flughaffen. But this is also from having a rather monocular perspective at that moment. I think Jennida was starting to slip into culture shock, as she seemed to be overwhelmed by the lessening amount of familiar things and words about. I think for this exact reason pictographs were invented. So that when people who are not native speakers can follow the “i” to the information counter where someone can help them. We secured a bus ticket to the Haupt Bahnhoff and after some missteps made it safely to the train station where we bought a train ticket to Prague and had an early lunch comprised of dunkleweisse and wurstchen.
The biggest thing I was awaiting on the trip to the Czech Republic was the train travel. We shared a car with two young men, one from the US and one from Finland. We pulled out of Berlin and out toward the countryside and for the next four hours I spent falling in and out of sleep. The one thing I was awaiting the most I missed almost entirely. The possibility for staying awake being utterly nonnegotiable. One highlight of the trip was the deep blood red sunset we witnessed. It was the most beautifully striking and unique thing that apparently our fellow passenger from Finland was already very accustomed to. Due to our being so far east in thee world the day dims more quickly here and by the time we arrived in Praha it was dark. We spent the next few hours in the train station trying to figure out our next move, it will be another three to four hour train ride to Cesky Krumlov. Even if we had been able to contact anyone at that time we would not have made it in until at least 9pm. At 5pm it was already very dark and felt much later so we found one of the local youth hostels and stayed the night in Praha. It was interesting to run around….rephrase: it was quite inconvenient to run around with our three bags each, while well under the 70lbs. weight limit of SAS, together each bag together was tough to wrangle all at once.
Once again we had arrived in a new place full of new icons, pictographs, sounds and smells. The words spoken by most people at this point sounding much more foreign to my ears. In these situations my tendency is to slow down and try and rationally cut through it all and make some sense. Jennida is the opposite and there in led to some friction as to how to proceed at times but things worked themselves out well in the end.
