tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85699997412016810382011-09-11T06:43:24.951-07:00Select topics from the world of culture and politics, for a non-select audience, compiled and written by Victor KommerellVictor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.comBlogger371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-29288191314055223312011-08-15T04:18:00.000-07:002011-08-15T04:18:06.296-07:00

Frank Schirrmacher, Mitherausgeber der FAZ, kotzt sich aus (pardon, scheint mir treffend) und es liest sich gut: "Die CDU hat ihre an die Finanzmärkte ausgeliehenen immateriellen Werte ... niemals zurückgefordert. Sie ... hat sich noch nicht einmal über die Verhunzung und Zertrümmerung ihrer Ideale beklagt. Entstanden ist so eine Welt des Doppel-Standards, in der aus ökonomischen Problemen

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-61078477798486623692011-08-01T11:31:00.000-07:002011-08-09T02:27:51.962-07:00

After four weeks of hanging in - well, on there, Vivian and I finissaged with a number of guests. T'was time to pack up our collages and paintings and hand the walls back to the Nova Vita Care Residence in Berlin (Thank You!). Both of us look forward to the next exhibition event. Where will it take us? As far as New York maybe? - PS: Please note: link to a musically divergent YouTube vid

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-51272168197117414602011-07-06T10:09:00.000-07:002011-07-06T10:09:50.095-07:00

Because our world is made up of unimaginably many bits and pieces, which often don't match, causing friction; because our world is so complex, with many causes intertwining, many drivers pushing and pulling; because one should always look (at least) twice, behind - or below the surface; because there is so much creativity bustling on our planet; much visual, aural and other-sensical stimulation,

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-52539914179338041792011-06-06T03:16:00.000-07:002011-06-06T03:16:41.791-07:00

It's all in the bag - or in Berlin. For our ViVi ArtProjects exhibition (starting 18th June), we've made a video wandering through Berlin, featuring a red bag. Watch our dada video and let me know what you think!

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-80745156462032807672011-05-23T08:27:00.000-07:002011-06-06T04:13:38.506-07:00

Want to check out some paintings (Vivian) and collages (Victor)? Join us at the Nova Vita senior citizen residence in Berlin's West End. The link provides you with directions to get there. ViVi's works will be exhibited until 17th July. The vernissage will take place on Saturday, 18th June 2011, starting 17:00. You're most welcome!!

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-28952194790078031752011-04-05T13:39:00.000-07:002011-04-05T13:47:18.029-07:00

My third trip to Abu Dhabi took me across the stirrings in Bahrain to an island of apparent social and economic stability - a movie set, it seemed to me. The future cultural island next to the city centre, which will host Guggenheim and Louvre outposts and a Zaha Hadid concert hall amongst others, is the topic of a fancy permanent exhibition in a new museum venue on an otherwise still

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-56746984443614460262011-03-15T14:13:00.000-07:002011-03-15T14:15:31.060-07:00

Huge tableaux of manipulated photos envelop the visitor of the current Gilbert and George exhibition in Hamburg: Jack Freak Pictures, which were created in 2008, on the basis of literally tens of thousand photos. Some work titles titilate with puns: 'Metal Jack' for example - Full Metal Jacket, what remains of the Empire and Military in today's Britain, the British Jack on a biscuit tin ..., some

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-10631387218974146662011-01-16T15:05:00.000-08:002011-01-16T15:05:14.367-08:00

Seit Dezember 2010 bin ich Mitglied der Grünen (GAL Hamburg, Bezirk Eimsbüttel, Wahlkreis 5). Grüner Wähler bin ich seit Mitte der 90er Jahre (1982 hätte ich das erste Mal wählen können, befand ich mich allerdings in London, um Internationales Abitur zu machen; danach studierte ich in den U.S.A.). Seit vielen Jahren mache ich mir Sorgen über wachsende Politikverdrossenheit, Nichtwählerwachstum

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-33197701789791880092010-12-14T16:17:00.000-08:002010-12-14T16:17:16.436-08:00

"Io sono l'amore", "I am love": This evening, I saw the movie, with Tilda Swinton among others, for the 2nd time. A breakthrough, I find. A very grand household in Milano is run, pristinely. Wealth written all over it. A grandfather announces who shall succeed him in running the company. Almost aristocratic, the atmosphere, but the firm only exists since the last World War (II) and is not a '

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-12634412884663634402010-11-08T05:11:00.000-08:002010-11-08T05:20:11.871-08:00

A half-empty Lufthansa plane took me to Paris mid-October. Anti-pension-at-62-legislation protests were affecting French public life. Public transport was severely slowed down. But the new driverless shuttle from Terminal 1 to the train station ran swiftly. And an RER rolled into the station about 10 minutes after I arrived. Lucky devil! It was crowded already, full of people who work at the

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-60030022788051582422010-10-30T14:41:00.000-07:002010-11-08T05:20:22.374-08:00

Around August Vivian and I developed an idea. Why not exhibit our amateur works of art in supertrendyarty Berlin, invite all our friends and their friends and see what happens? ViVi! Get known, get some art appreciation and have fun all the while. ViVi! Because our Berlin connections weren't that good, we ended up doing the one-evening-vernissage-exhibition-finissage in Hamburg; simply because I

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-12063994359235632672010-09-13T15:23:00.000-07:002010-09-14T03:13:28.657-07:00

Do please !!! have a look at this website: Storyofstuff.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been said before, written about before, filmed before (remember the movie Koyaanisqatsi?). We in the 'West' remain, majority-wise, a comfy crowd, not wanting to deal, one a regular basis, with where "the stuff" comes from that we buy and use. Still, many of us have a lingering sense of the absurd, the insane, the 'it

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-10776031322796674062010-09-13T14:21:00.000-07:002010-09-14T03:25:56.420-07:00

There's so much I'd like to tell you about Aleppo in August; though I hardly saw anything of this Syrian city, one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban settlements on our planet (e.g unlike struck-down-by-the-Lord-Babylon or Mesopotamian Ur). The backache did not help (disk problem) and my focus was on facilitating the multi-issues, multi-stakeholder and multi-participant workshop

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-4235241222872034052010-09-13T13:22:00.000-07:002010-09-14T03:16:37.921-07:00

... on a curious and rather particular subject - Some of you will remember how I came to transform my personal interest in the grotesques (grottesche, Grottesken), that weird form of Renaissance ornament, into a somewhat scholarly book. Thanks to an open-minded publisher (and an investment on my part, called "print subsidy"), Metamorphosed Margins was published in 2008 and has since entered many

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-57277213249081516482010-09-13T13:04:00.000-07:002010-09-14T03:20:20.726-07:00

Number Two. Another non-fiction book. In German. I have published. 'Twas to be a project with a Berlin-based art historic publisher that came to naught. No other publisher I contacted was interested, nor the literary agent I work with. So there it lay in a cupboard (digital, computer, these days). When a friend of mine recently published a thriller, partly set in China, via books-on-demand, I

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-10376754919245492662010-03-01T14:56:00.000-08:002010-11-08T05:22:25.638-08:00

A few days ago I went for lunch at Kwint, a newish fashionable restaurant in Brussels, opened in October 2009 by Caviar Kaspia and Maison de la Truffe, two French companies situated on Place de la Madeleine, in Paris, whom I have never head of before (all I know is Fauchon; must take a luxury label 101 course soon). I was struck by the lunchtime busy-ness and the tres 'artiste contemporain'

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-37633908743074912852009-10-16T10:03:00.000-07:002009-10-16T16:04:32.062-07:00

45 years of confinement to the Western world (does that include Istanbul and Abu Dhabi?) have finally been surmounted. On a Tuesday I learnt that I shall be on a plane to Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, Sunday next. Was I excited? Yes! though knowing, I would not see much of this continent, country and city, which I had never set foot on. I would be attending a workshop in a hotel all week. So what! A 6

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-67826547779759128832009-06-30T01:02:00.000-07:002010-11-08T05:21:40.571-08:00

Is our sense of history confined to our limited ability to imagine times past - any kind of history - beyond the lifespan of a two, three or four generations? How scientists do it, who research with millennia in mind, I certainly cannot imagine. There is time and there is cause and effect. Many people are concerned with the extinction of all manner of species, to which our human way of life

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-39750779670786774622009-05-14T05:30:00.000-07:002010-11-08T05:22:58.221-08:00

What an exhiliarating and strange feeling to read the first review of one's first book. 'Tis done. A Mrs. Carla Lord of Kean University (USA) read my book on the grotesques and published a review of it in the Renaissance Quartely that's just come out, which I'd like to share with you (excerpts). There is room for improvement, were I to take on the grotesques again ... .Victor Kommerell.

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-39636005057176929172009-05-09T03:29:00.000-07:002009-05-09T04:15:21.702-07:00

Current financial and economic news are no laughing matter, though the crisis we're living through does not seem to hit one in the face, but rather peter around. For how long? Diversion by amusement is a good avoidance technique. French and Saunders recently got a British TV award. Those of you who have appreciated their 'Absolutely Fabulous' comedy series will surely understand why. Though my

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-87268879855132347722009-03-05T00:02:00.000-08:002009-03-05T00:38:15.788-08:00

Presidente del Consiglio, or Premier Silvio Berlusconi will turn 73 this September. With his Popolo della Liberta platform - think of the retinue, which incessantly surrounds Jennifer Lopez or Michael Jackson (used to) - Silvio won the election early 2008 to triumph over Prodi-successor Veltroni. The secessionist Northern League (keep Italy's South off, away) and right-wing National Alliance form

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-30297572216477010702009-02-23T09:42:00.000-08:002009-02-23T09:59:37.359-08:00

and bring your wellies, if you intend to visit this most wonderful of laguna cities. Jan and I did not, which is just as well, as it gave me the perfect excuse of purchasing stivali pescatori (fishermen's rubber boots) to splash through the high tide. We bought our wellies in a charming household goods store in the San Polo quarter. This involved walking to the store's little warehouse rooms,

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-53498378633821209082009-02-23T08:46:00.000-08:002009-02-23T10:23:00.269-08:00

Since 2009 began, for some reason or other, I have visited a quite extraodinary number of exhibitions. It seems as if curators and artists are only now digesting the last 10 years of post-9/11 securitisation of our living environment (airport security, anti-terrorism legislation etc.) and what it is doing to us, or with us. Let's start with "Embedded Art" at Berlin's Academy of the Arts, which

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-76060423427771119602009-02-23T08:27:00.000-08:002009-02-23T10:05:07.424-08:00

Starting on a light note; this make-shift water capturing device at Frankfurt airport struck me as quite contemporary art-sort-of-thing. Most amazingly, the airport company Fraport clearly considers it essential to document its ownership of the plastic sheating, itself surely the physical expression of a German norm (industrial standard). I just wonder why? (50,000 people work at the airport and

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-26860936209286996032008-10-26T15:18:00.000-07:002008-10-26T15:48:02.152-07:00

What might the tourist see and hear when walking from Trastevere across the Trilussa Bridge to Feroci, the butcher-traiteur just behind the Pantheon?For one, he might come across an elderly lady with a husky voice, talking to a negozio, a shop owner, chatting and saluting - and find her talking to another negozio up the street, doing the same, as he walks back. She must be doing her Saturday

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-26431787744077512662008-10-14T14:32:00.000-07:002008-10-14T15:04:29.381-07:00

Remember "Rebecca", the Hitchcock movie based on the Du Maurier story, where a world-weary Lawrence Olivier asks innocent and naive Joan Fontaine (what a name) at some spot along the Cote d'Azur: 'So what did your father paint?' - after she'd told him that's what her father had been (doing). 'He painted trees'. 'Trees?' 'Well, yes, one particular tree. He made paintings of the same tree. All his

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-55708617377921332712008-10-14T13:50:00.000-07:002008-10-14T14:21:10.694-07:00

Those high notes, jingles, beepy jumps up the scale, they get me every time - be it a disco song or a symphony (listening to Bruckner's 3rd just now). Is this genetic, Pavlovian conditioning perhaps? Whatever.MGMT, or Management, a band of two young men plus entourage have touched upon my high note g-spot with their song "Electric Feel".  It's a psychedelic tune, with some depth (you know, not

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-18766591110630172452008-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:002008-10-14T14:21:36.330-07:00

It's been a while. And this movie hit the spot, my spot, anyway. Lemon Tree. Few words spoken and all of them convincing, essential; like a biblical story, if you see what I mean. Israel, West Bank, that's where the plot unfolds. Lemon trees have surely never been more symbolic, but there is no heavy-handedness to this film - well, very little. Three female Supreme Court judges hear the case of

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-28553261323373060242008-09-20T05:00:00.000-07:002008-09-20T05:27:23.021-07:00

T'is not an title easily translated. Joseph Reichholf wrote "The Dance around the Golden Calf" - more like "The Brouhaha ..." in 2006, subtitled "Europe's eco-colonialism". Unfortunately, an english translation has not yet been published, though of course other authors have dealt with the same subject-matter. Reading this book has changed my 'regard' of countryside panoramas, such as my favoured

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-72695615369536319552008-09-13T03:04:00.000-07:002009-10-16T16:09:41.742-07:00

Persian women recently immigrated into the United States often go the doctor to complain about knee aches. A doctor, familiar with such cases and the patients' culture, gives them an anti-depressant. After about 4 weeks the patients are perfectly fine. To the bewildered German colleague this doctor explained that the women don't feel ready to stand on their own two feet in their new environment;

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-18364668836940975212008-08-29T04:15:00.000-07:002008-09-20T04:55:51.866-07:00

Did I meet a Corsican whilst visiting the Mediterranean island for the first time? I'm not sure. The taxi driver at Bastia airport came from the French mainland, as did all the friends at the pied-a-l'eau house in Ajaccio, from which I so seldom ventured away. Maybe reading that comic strip about these apparently slightly off islanders is some form of getting to know. In comic exaggeration, they

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-77759728347453805802008-08-29T03:31:00.000-07:002008-09-20T04:56:16.231-07:00

We humans are creatures of habit; driving the same way to work everyday, say. Because we do so many things repetitiously, without thinking about them (mostly), we need contrast, opposites and paradoxes. They act as wake-up calls, as mirrors, if we will to, or have to look into one. 'I'm stressed out by my daily life, look at me all worn out, I want to disappear to a quiet, sunny beach' for

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-14435100338970782822008-08-11T11:43:00.001-07:002008-09-20T04:57:44.402-07:00

Have you heard about the new universes, which scientists have discovered - and the earth-like planets within them? The dimensions and distances may be somewhat difficult to comprehend, but basically, what we humans are discovering are divine experimentations - or do you believe that God created a functioning Earth from the get-go?Of course not. First, there was the acquatic planet, with an

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-65866415349459420992008-08-05T12:09:00.000-07:002008-09-20T04:57:56.646-07:00

Did you know that the state of Bhopal, with mainly Hindi inhabitants, was governed by 4 generations of women Begums of islamic faith? All through the British empire (whose viceroys were not amused, but ...), until the nobility was abolished with Indian independence? One of the female rulers was brought up by her grandmother, which involved Koran readings at 4 am in the morning (the child was not

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-60894575206339015212008-07-25T05:37:00.000-07:002009-10-16T16:26:53.674-07:00

Talking about where we would live in future, what to go see on our planet; those were favourite topics of discussion with Brussels-based friends of mine. A move was in the works, but when they called me in August to say it would be Abu Dhabi, rather than London or the Netherlands, I was genuinely surprised, and grabbed the occasion to confirm a visit in December.  I have never been this far

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-27664726931327228732008-07-25T04:31:00.000-07:002008-07-25T05:08:57.413-07:00

In the photo above, you see me participating in a grape harvest, picking or vintage (Weinlese, vendange) for the first time (in the Moselle region, thanks to Erwin). Appropriately enough, the 2nd item in these Metamorphosed Margins should be about wine. Many an engaging, challenging and entertaining documentaries have been produced. Thanks to specialised festivals, they sometimes find a larger

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8569999741201681038.post-20112815218540616692008-07-24T15:36:00.000-07:002008-09-20T04:58:18.656-07:00

May I draw your attention to the first book I've ever written and gotten published (www.olms.de). It's an argument about the meaning of the Renaissance grotesques, a style of ornament you may very well have come across, because the style, or certain motifs, had been put on exterior walls, painting frames and many other places, which we can still see today. The grotesques' particularity is their

Victor Kommerellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05295218246844513683noreply@blogger.com0