"Fire-Poi, Or: How To Spend A Tuesday Night In Town"

That's how it SHOULD to look like.

That's how it LOOKS like: I just started last summer, still in the process of training my shoulder muscles, getting bruises all over my body, frequently enchaining my arms - and increasing my capability to think by hitting the back of my head with the balls. It is probably the best sport I have encountered in my entire life.

And quite likely there is no better one to come ... .

"What is Human Communication?"

Human communication is an artifice against loneliness until death.
(Vilém Flusser)

I am attending a close-reading seminar on Flusser this term. Humanities' codes and symbolic interactions are his major focus of research and thought. Among other topics, he wrote a great deal on how the invention of the "technical image", photography, changed our view of the world.
His philosophical writing is complimented for a provocative and lucid journalistic style, something I will probably appreciate as well as I am starting to read his "Kommunikologie".

If you are interested and able to understand German - the German Research Society published his lectures in Bochum, 1991, as audiostream HERE. Flusser is referring to work he started to put together at the university of Sao Paolo, in which he seeks to describe how we perceive the reality and regularities and systems surrounding us.

And now I recommend reading and return to my favourite pastime myself, starting with chapter one ... .

"Mona Mur - The Man On The Satellite"

Men made God, to rule the world and all its creatures/ Under their mighty glance He blew nature and replaced it with Art Déco and Laissez-Faire les hommes/ He invented a lot of things/ For instance: women/ For His daily rib-eye steak/ Bien cuit/ Then God sussed out, that He was a man himself/ Now in seedy dressing-rooms/ He's every rotten body's darling/ On behalf of the Financial Times/ O smiling damned villain/ O smiling damned villain/ Oh! In your bed/ He's practicing the salvation of America/ He's practicing the salvation of America/ And afterwards He's washing his hands in nonsense/

Oh! He's not man enough to take me/
Oh! He's not wild enough to love me as I need it/
Oh! He's not dead enough to please me like an Egypt/
He's the man on the satellite/
Far from earth and untouchable, God knows/
He's the man on the satellite/
Shoot him down, if you can, baby
Shoot him down, if you can, slit
Shoot him down, that challenger

Centurywise/ These gentle giants/ Use young lovely history as their girl next door/ Servants of art/ Science redwhiteblackchinese blooddeathsexrocks rockets bulls balls van Gogh landscapes/
Peu à peu they run out of colours/
Peu à peu they run out of colours/

Oh! He's not mad enough to paint my hall of hatred/
Oh! He's not God enough to teach me/ As the jews teach their sons-in-law/ Oh! He's gone to the Home of the Brave/
Oh Lord - have mercy/ Never make him my slave/
Let him live on his satellite/
Won't you do him any harm tonight/ Bless you/ Won't you go on sacrificing all the charms of yours/ Oh Lord/
I don't believe in you anymore/
Let me live on my satellite/ I'll shoot you everywhere I can/ Baby/ Everywhere I can

Amen.

"FreeSpace Dancing in Germany - Vacancies Of 21st Century Consumer Society"

They proclaim a need for free space and they have music, food and fire. A little different from the old squatting phenomena, the new FreeSpace Movements don't necessarily intend to live in a house that belongs to someone else without paying for it, right now they just occupy teardown houses for gathering and dancing.
With this, many people take part in the International Free Space Days. According to them, there is an urgent need for spaces which are not completely taken by the permanent pressure to consume or utilize. Apparently, it is not only those who are poor and living on the edge of society anymore, many others seem to share the feeling of being fed up with ever increasing input of guerilla advertising and branding of just about every aspect of people's everyday lives.


And can you really blame them?

"Beneath The Surface ..."

... someone is waking up.

"Easter Egg 2008: Polish Impressionism, Szczecin (2)"

1. Picturesque (-ish) old town.

2. Polish tag-culture: Converse century? Apparently not for them ...

3. Applause!

4. Rats leaving the sinking ship?

"Easter Egg 2008: Polish Impressionism, Szczecin (1)"

1. Kościół Piotra i Pawła (translates Cathedral of Peter and Paul).

2. Holocaust Memorial.


Szczecin-Facts:

- Pommeranian capital in western Poland, founded at the turn of the 8th century, since then inhabited by Slavonic tribes, Christian missionaires, Polish sovereigns, Danish gentry, German merchants and clergy, Prussian military, Sovjet soldiers, American tourists and Polish web designers

- 12 000 unemployed women, 10 000 unemployed men

- criminal violence is retreating constantly since 1999

- work force: 153 000 people, around 75 % market and non-market service jobs, 25 % industrial work and building sector, less than 1 % agriculture


3. View from the south side of the Castle.

4. Baltic Sea.