Kaiserslautern's Kunstautomat

About two years ago, I saw a Kunstautomat in Nuremberg. It's a former cigarette vending machine that's been converted to vend art. How cool is that? I wrote about it here and here.

I recently returned from a vacation in the US and found out that Kaiserslautern will not have only one, but two, Kunstautomaten, installed this month. Of course I was curious and had to go find them.

The first one is on the southeast corner of Stiftskirche, somewhere near the free-standing Imbiss. Each piece of art costs four euros; the machine accepts one and two Euro coins, and artists are both local and regional.

I shoved my coins in and pulled out one of the locally labeled drawers. In the packet, designed to look similar to a cigarette box, there was a small white piece of paper with an embossed relief in it. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's interesting, and I was glad to satisfy my curiosity.

It hadn't opened yet when I stopped by, but by now the other Automat at the Union Studio will be open too. I stalked it (on the west side of the building) and took a picture of it before its unveiling. If you're in Kaiserslautern, take a look!

My week: April 3 ed.

German learning: there were two tandem partner meetings but there was no class because of the holidays.

I invited a newer friend, A, over for dinner. Well, actually, she asked if I had any of the rajmah masala left over (she's the one who had taught me how to make it). I think that meant that she wanted to be invited over so I suggested she come over to eat some then. Funny, huh? I enjoy inviting friends. She's the newest Moo Fan Club Member and lavished some attention on him. He enjoyed that too.

On Saturday, A and I drove to Stuttgart for the Lange Nacht der Museen, or Long Night of Museums, in which cultural institutions keep their doors open late (even until 0200!) and offer special exhibitions, lectures, and events. For 18 euros, which grants one entrance to dozens of institutions and use of local public transport, it's a good value for a taste of the museums.

I stayed with a friend whom I had previously stayed with several years ago when I was taking a class in the Stuttgart area. It was a pleasant reunion, and interesting to meet his new wife, who is quite an interesting person herself.

We got in at about 0200 on Sunday morning from the museums and woke up at 0700 so I could drop off my friend at the train station and attend the baptism of my coworker's baby. Although I was sleep-deprived, it was great to celebrate with coworkers. As expats, it can be difficult to be away from family, especially for special events. However, it's also great to have a strong rapport with your colleagues; we support one another and have formed a work family of sorts. I feel very lucky to be in such an office.

Budapest: Church figures holding buildings

I'm a bit obsessed with taking strange pictures of things as souvenirs. I can say that it's a cheap hobby as the pictures cost nothing.

My new(er) obsession is taking pictures of church figures holding buildings. I know it's supposed to be metaphorical but it's so over the top. Yeah, I get it; the person founded something or made the building happen.

Either way, I saw this relief in Budapest in the Buda castle area.

I imagine this exchange:

"Hey guys! Look at his! He's holding a building. Whoa, I wonder if it's heavy. Hey dude, cool building."

In love

Graffiti in Paris

In the wall

in love 

am I with thee

for thou remind me

of my favorite sculpture by Brancusi

Source

You know it's been a bad day when...

...as depicted in in the painting, after just minding your business, all of a sudden you have seventeen people hanging off your tail...

there's random nudity, a person (dead?) on the ground, and even worse,

part of your tail has fallen off.

Seriously, you're just being a devil, walking around with a weird, non-effective pitchfork that is missing the middle tine and the villagers get all snotty and start pulling on you. How rude.

This is the painting "Les Parisiens tirant le diable par le queue" by Jean Veber and it's housed in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. It's worth a visit, especially since it is free and has many entertaining oddities such as this painting.

The problem with such a painting is that it awakens a bad case of what I call "teh* curiosity." Who can't look at this and think, what the heck is the back story on this? Did the devil kill the naked person on the ground? Why did the villagers think it was a good idea to hang onto his tail? Is this some literary reference or was the painter just whacked out on paint fumes? Is it even possible for a devil's tail to be pulled off? Darn you, painting! You have awoken a deluge of questions.

*"the" is intentionally misspelled.

Dear weird statues:

Dear weird church statues:

I know from Art History class that for a very long period of time, the only acceptable subject of art of was religious themes. I also know that almost every object in the piece was meant to be symbolic. For example, the Virgin Mary's innocence and purity was often depicted by a white lily. During a visit to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I was assaulted by the full force of religious symbolism in art.

So, weird church statues on the church's facade, with this in mind, I would like to ask you: what on earth (or the sky, for that matter) is going on with you? Why is there a nude dude on a horse stuck between some buildings and a guy sitting on top of more buildings? That's not beginning to take into account the pile o' demons to the left of him. Even the sculpted men below are really confused about what's happening.

If you could just explain yourself, that'd be great. I'm sure that you have quite the backstory.

Sincerely, Around the Wherever

Detail of statues, Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

"Yeah, even we're not so sure what's happening!"

Roadside Candy Machines: this one gets artistic

Today's entry for my Roadside Candy Machines obsession revisits a Kaiserslautern candy machine that I've photographed before.

The presentation in the machine has changed slightly. This time around, it added a metal mesh grid to corral the keychain animals that one squeezes, and, um, "stuff" comes out their backsides. I start thinking about that time I was studying Animal Science at university, which makes me worry for the health of the keychain animals.

With this particular RCM, I'm getting a vibe that plays out as Modern Art Exhibit. I'd call it Prolapsed Animals with Juxtaposition of Cheap Tiny Bottle of Liquor That Turns Out to be Way More Expensive Than Just Buying a Big Bottle and Calling it Good.

I feel as if the metal mesh thing from which they hang is a metaphor for commercial farming and the horrors that await animals as they are hung from machinery to be processed from animal/sentient being into food products. If I took this crunchiness even further, I could mention something about how the tiny bottle of liquor is a metaphor for the meat industry. Maybe meat isn't as expensive as we think it might be in the short term, but the environmental consequences of it will cost us all dearly in the end.

Or maybe it's just a bunch of squeezy animal keychains.

Düsseldorf trip, day 2

We wanted to fill our our second day in Düsseldorf with art. We started with a visit to the K20 Art Museum, which houses works by 20th century masters, including Picasso, members of the Munich Secession, the Blaue Reiter, and so on. Admission was a bit steep at 12 euros but we thoroughly enjoyed the art. 

Following the K20 visit, we had every intention of attending a really cool art market with djs. Unfortunately, we didn't note which district housed the address and the two places we visited were nowhere near where we needed to be. We ended up at the far edge of the local trains and then gave up.

We decided that it was time to head back to get the car, eat some lunch, then head home with a slight detour to Cologne. For lunch, we made a stop to Jade Vegatarische Küche, a vegan and vegetarian Chinese restaurant near the hotel. We enjoyed an inexpensive, filling, and vegan lunch.

After lunch we hopped into the car and made a quick journey to Cologne. I visited the city last year with my cousins and we enjoyed ourselves. However, we only saw about three of the seven Christmas markets. One market was especially curious; it was the gay and lesbian market. Though I'm not part of that community, I was extremely nosy and wanted to know what it would be like. Would there be naughty ornaments? Strangely shaped foods? Lots of sparkly things? I honestly had no idea what to expect so of course I had to find out.

C. and I wandered over after driving around the block several frustrating times while trying to enter the parking garage. The market was similar to most other Christmas markets but there were indeed shiny/sparkly decorations and some naughty chocolates and lebkuchen with very saucy things written on them. There was a booth of men's underoos and a booth with some mermen ornaments, which I thought were pretty cool; if I had a Christmas tree, I probably would have bought one.

The underwear booth! See the shiny decorations to the right?

We were delighted to learn that we were in time for a men's talent show hosted by drag queens. The show was fantastic and we thought that the guys were adorable. The whole show had such a local feeling to it; I wondered if the guys had been talked into competing by their friends. They had to showcase their talents. One guy made snowmen as a fundraiser and another guy did yoga. That totally cracked me up because it's not what I would think of as traditional talent show offerings. See where it felt like they were talked into competing by their friends? The winner lip synced and danced to Beyonce with one of the drag queens as his dance partner, which the crowd enthusiastically received. The whole thing was fantastic! C. and I decided that it was totally worth the trip.

As we headed home, we reflected on our trip and our impressions on Düsseldorf. Though we enjoyed ourselves and were glad that we checked out a new city, we weren't super impressed with Düsseldorf. It just felt kind of...soulless, perhaps. It had been bombed heavily during the war and it seemed to have a lot of ugly post-war buildings. The whole city is great for those who want to shop, but...well, it feels a bit like Mannheim in a very commercial sense (without Mannheim's great music scene). Most cities have some sort of pulse and we just couldn't connect with Düsseldorf's.

Kunst Automat - it all makes sense now!

When I was in Nuremberg, I saw an art vending machine (Kunst automat) and thought it was quite cool. I have since found a mini documentary about the machines and the man who developed them. You can watch it here.

Tunde Olaniran: mesmirizing music

A few years ago, I learned of Tunde Olaniran's music and I'm glad that I did. He's a Flint artist who's not only a good singer, but he's also gives a great stage show too.

It's hard to for me to describe his music, which does include rap, but many other genres too. I think that's what I like Olaniran so much; his music skips around different genres and even singing styles within the same song and it's not a boring listen. His music videos have an art/film school vibe to them, with a possible visit from the school of dance; Olaniran is mesmerizing. It's always cool to see some of my old stomping grounds in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, too.

His profile on Sound Cloud describes him as "combining a magnetic presence, lyrical dexterity, genre-devouring style, and a glam-rock, DIY performance aesthetic..." Also, his profile notes,"...the fictional lovechild of Prince, Kanye, and Robyn, Tunde Olaniran crafts hyper-modern pop music that will make you laugh, cry, and flail about like nobody's business."

Cherub, cut that out!

Several years ago, we took a trip to Prague. We saw a statue with a cherub who looked as if he were teething on someone's foot. I'm curious if there's some significance to that, or if the sculptor just had a warped sense of humor. Maybe the cherub is kissing someone's foot.

Even better than roadside candy machines: Nuremberg

While we were visiting Nuremberg, I saw something really cool: a vending machine for art! One could buy what looked like small prints. The machine was labeled "art for all." Indeed.

We partied like rock stars at the Deidesheim Wine Fest

**Note: the Deidesheimer Weinkerwe (wine festival) is continuing next weekend,  15-17 August. More information is available here.**

Some friends and I took a jaunt over to the Deidesheim wine festival. We ended up partying like rock stars, but more like if one thinks about geriatric rock stars ;) It's been a busy time for each of us and after about a glass of wine each, we were all ready for a nap! This is what happens when one gets old. However, I'm not sure if that's entirely true and we didn't have any excuse because I saw a lot of adorable elderly German couples who were partying and didn't seem sleepy.

We took a 40-minute train ride to the picturesque town that is situated on the German wine street. Once there, we disembarked the train and examined booth after booth of wine and food. I settled on drinking a Hugo, which is a mix of sparkling wine, soda water, elderberry syrup, and a mint garnish. It was fantastic! Of course, I do love elderberry syrup (which I only recently learned about, and only knew about elderberries before that because of Monty Python). My friends chose wine and we also grabbed some food.

The band that seemed to play 30 second clips.

We sat near the stage, under the trees, which was quite lovely. Eventually, the band came in, dressed in tracht (i.e. lederhosen). It was the strangest thing, though: they did a few warm-ups, then left. They came back, played about 30 seconds of a song, then left again. Then they came back and played some other songs, too, but it felt as if they didn't play the entire song. It was really strange!

In addition to listening to music clips, we also took a walk around town. Deidesheim is really quite lovely, with many Weinstuben and restaurants tucked along the streets. There is also this lovely Gasthaus zur Kanne, from the 12th century. The whole time we were walking around, I was imagining what my dad's response to this town would be. I could hear him in my head saying, "Oh! This is so gezellig!" The amusing thing about that statement is that gezellig is a Dutch word and my dad isn't remotely Dutch. However, my mom's family is and for some reason, he loves that word. It does fit the town well though: it cozy, cute, and quaint. When my family comes to visit, I have to take him to this village or a similar one.

During our wanderings, we also came across another fountain with Gernot Rumpf's sculptures. He has created other fountains and sculptures throughout the Pfalz and I love his whimsical creatures. They also have some naughty jokes within them. At this fountain, visitors can stick their heads into the statue and look like an old fashioned man and woman. However, the woman is a bit different, though I'm not going to say how. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

The fountain is filled with goats. It turns out that Deidesheim has a traditional festival near Pentecost in which a goat is auctioned off. Actually, the festival seems more invested with drinking and partying, but it's traditional, eh?

Rumpf really has quite the sense of humor. He includes goat "pellets."

Rumpf's signature mouse.

That is one jacked-up looking sheep

I love art and visiting art museums so it's no surprise that I made sure to visit a museum during my trip to Bruges in February. I chose the Groeningemuseum Brugge Museum as I especially wanted to see the crazy Hieronymus Bosch painting, The Last Judgment.

That wasn't the only interesting painting in the museum's collection. Flemish painter Lancelot Blondeel's Legende van de heilige Joris (Legend of St. George) caught my eye. This wasn't because of St. George's heroic deed of slaying the dragon (which looks like some sort of weird rat-dog-lion-man-bat). I was more interested in the super awkward supporting cast. I was so taken by them that I forgot to even take a picture of the main action in the painting!

 I would dub this part "Woman with Horribly Awkward Sheep."

"Derp!" says Mr. Sheep.

Man on an equally awkward (but for different reasons) horse. Um, Lancelot? Horses don't have legs like that* and unfortunately the foreshadowing didn't work for his stubby outside leg. Even the horse looks ticked off about this.

*Okay, I guess I have seen some horses with incredibly upright legs and horrible conformation, but if a real horse was put together like this painted one, he wouldn't be able to walk.