Day number 2 - Pancakes is possible

Dear Johnny,

I will make some pancakes for you. I got milk, I got flour, I got eggs. My room is number 230 in the Mozart Haus, named after the composer guy who never was an Austrian. The pan in the kitchen is tiny though as the kitchen is itself. My apartment has one fork, one spoon, one knife. It is a space for the lonely life of upcoming violin virtuosos.

When I woke up this morning I already felt at home here because of a sound.

It went "Härrhhhhääääääääääääääääääämmmmmmmhhhhäääääähähähähä!!!"

And then "Täkkkkhhätttääkkätäkätäkätäkätäkätäkätäkätäkäätäääääääähhhhh!"

Next to the Mozart Haus is a construction site that sounds just like the one next to where I live in Vienna. The nerve wrecking noise starts at seven in the morning. In between the drilling and hammering I heard sparrows this morning that I don´t hear in Vienna. Since the carriage horses in Vienna are obliged to wear diapers their excrements are no longer soiling the streets and the sparrows can´t do what they fancy so much: picking the oat grains out of the horse dung. In Salzburg you have horse droppings on the streets and the sparrows twitter about everywhere.

I go to this thing, the, well, I went to the - yes! - the Summer Academy of Fine Arts of course. That is why I am here. Today is day number 2 and Gabi Winter invites me to join the daily staff meeting in the director´s office. I am told that everything that is being said during the staff meeting remains confidential and shall not be reported on the blog.

So what can I report?

I am slowly realizing what this whole Summer Academy actually is. Honestly, it is a megalomanic enterprise. In the year when Joseph Stalin´s heart stopped beating and two guys from Nepal and New Zealand were the first to climb the top of Mount Everest a 50 year old art dealer who got big selling art stolen by Nazis and a 67 year old painter who had volunteered for World War 1 after his girlfriend broke off - she had already survived her husband, a composer and opera director and she left the painter for an architekt who himself was a founder of the most revolutionary art school of the century and she left our painter so deeply heart broken that 3 years after the break up he had for himself produced a body size puppet of his ex-girlfriend to overcome the loss - well, the painter and the dubious art dealer started a school to learn how to look properly at the world from the almost 1000 year old castle of Salzburg. In a nut shell.

Since 1953 every summer artists climb this castle. I will soon tell you more about the strange life up here.

Before the staff meeting I am browsing through the local newspaper. An article tells people to call a certain telephone number if they wish to find out about their grandparents time as prisoners of war in russia because the archive in Moscow is now accesible. Bärbel Hartje from Hamburg is sitting next to me and tells me that she recently found her grandfather´s brother´s grandson, must be her grand cousin who is russian and lives in Moscow, through a website for global family reconnection. She has visited her new found grand cousin with her mother and he will visit them in return soon.

During the staff meeting Anna Jermolaewa is giving a radio interview in the next room. It is in german →here and touches some of the current russian political "reality".

Norbert Bisky gives a talk where he says that your auntie or your sister might not be the best people from whom you should seek recognition or feedback when you do art. Establish yourself a stable circle of friends he recommends and be aware that any book any of them reads, any film any of them watches subtly influences you.

In the afternoon a group of artists go on a bus trip to germany. Why? They need colours, pens, paper, canvas and stuff and a shop across the border gives it for free to some artists because the shop wants to profit from their future fame.

Returning to the rainwashed city of Salzburg we try weather magic. The bus drops us at the station where we wait until the rain reduces indeed. Then we climb the castle dragging huge shopping bags filled with painting and drawing equipment. Why did the 50 year old dealer and the 67 year old painter have to found the Summer Academy up on this mountain above Salzburg? The muscles of the schlepping artists ache and thick rain washes us, washes the stuff that we bought. Suffering for art, well. Finally we store the stuff from germany up in the castle and we go down to the Stiftskeller. Norbert Bisky invites us for drinks and we talk about how we imagine to be treated after this life is over. Burial? Cremation? Refrigeration?

The other evening we talked about this picture. ↑ It actually does not show what people thought it would show.

Birth, Death, Art, Life, get ready for some existencial shit when you come to Salzburg, Johnny!

23/07/14 01:45 Summer Academy 2014