Sunday, 28 February 2010

More traces!... Still around?

Just in front of my house...




Modern times!

I heard the Holy Grail will be found on Thursday!....

Parzifal on Katendrecht (R'dam)

Parzifal in Hordaland.... but on my walk this very Sunday morning also identified on Katendrecht/Rotterdam!

This sign put me on his trace...

I just followed the signs...


and it became more and more obvious....

certainly unimpeachable true...

that the Men of the Round Table where very near...

but...
 it was raining!

This was most probably how they left, heading for Hordaland / Norway...

where my friend Ron found many traces of the Knights... even evidence...

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Love is....




Poles and Jews: Nostalgia...

Yes, sensitive topic. I found this on the web as a reaction on a You-Tube video from VICTORHRZ in search after his family roots in Lodz.

"Really nice footage, even if i did not understand a word ;) Have to say as a modern citizien of Lodz that i am really sorry that curently our city misses so much of it's past. In 1939 one of four Lodz citizens was Jewish, there also was a lots of Russians and Germans. Poles as me were only in about 30%. During the war Germans destroyed almost all sinagogues.Some of them were really unique architecture.I hope Jews will come back sometime to Lodz, and someday we will be able to live together again"

That's strange enough what I feel in Lodz which is obviously so much a Jewish city... still... but without really having a Jewish community who matter...

Something is missing...

They say the Poles where indifferent about the fate of the Jews in WW II, and even hostile... If so, tragic choice at the wrong moment. But if not, what will had been able to do them against the absolute brutality and virulent aggression of the Nazis?


The Polish left wing activist and politician Sierakowski has formulated this feelings in a compelling monologue in an empty stadion in Warsaw. There he is an actor in a performance, so in an art piece, called 'Mary Koszmary'  (Nightmares) by Yeal Bartana. (I mentioned this already earlier, see Mir i Wieza (Wall and Tower) for a description and more details)

The nice thing is that Stawomir Sierakowski, although being an actor at that very moment, exactly says what he actually means and stands for...

Yeal Bartana expresses the mutual bond from Polish society and the Jews also in another symbol...


a combination of the Polish eagle with the star of David....


but.... BUT!....  Love is...

First this! Or, how to connect snowdrops with Shopenhauer...

A nasty virus caught me. And I am not the only victim. But... But I saw the first flowers in Rotterdam today! Does this mean Spring?... You may say it. In our Calvinist conservative country one will say: "No! One flower doesn't make Spring yet!" Pessimists and melancholiacs want more proof to believe...


I think it's a wonder and absolutely a sign of eternal return and renewal of everything ... seen of course (I am also not free from any pessimism) in the context of our short personal human existence...

So?... Yes! It means Spring!

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Nostalgia

One week at home and nearly three weeks to go before I travel to Lodz again. But I feel already nostalgia now... After one week in my hometown Rotterdam! Why?

What has Poland and Lodz in particular that it causes nostalgia?...

Night at Piotrkowska street... 

or the streets around.... 

going home after dinner
 (very often 'kebab" or "something traditional"...)


going through Zielona sneaking around in one of the courtyards....

or the Wielka Synagogue... as a fatamorgana... 
which appears as on a film screen in the night...

or the displaced rickshaws on Piotrkowska...

or the extreme cold?

and the small (empty!) bottles Vodka everywhere in the snow...



or the speaking graffity...

and the beautiful structures on the walls, like modern art...

or... the Lodz people?
here in the Park Staro Miejska

here "on ice" just in the outskirts of Lodz

or.... has a Baluty virus caught me?...

view on Lutomierska...

I don't know... I really don't know. 

But... I found two in my opinion very beautiful videos on YouTube.

All about "Nostalgia".

The first one is from VICTORHRZ in search for the roots of his family in the city of Lodz . It's is totally spoken in Hebrew. So if you don't understand Hebrew (like me) just listen to the music of the voice and enjoy this with the images. This is nostalgia in his most pure form!






Friday, 12 February 2010

How we solve...

Still a white world in Rotterdam.

And in Amsterdam...

Still some snow fall in Lodz to I suppose... Sunny and warm only in Greece. But there they have other problems. Heavy financial snow fall... Different worlds but also connected.
Anyhow, we can learn from the Greeks how to solve problems... or anything.

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

About Baluty Baluty (3)

Today I wrote a mail to Ludmila form the 'Fotofestiwal'. Thinking about the presentation in the end made things more clear. That's how it works!


Here is the mail.

Hi Ludmila,

About our thinking about the gallery and exhibition in the end of the Baluty Baluty project.

Just this, what came into my head...

Exhibition is part of the event also. For the spectator not something to look at but to walk in. He or she is going to be a part of the exhibition, hearing voices, seeing faces, "smelling" the neighboorhood....

(Very - very! - conceptual! hahaha!)

But I mean, I am not so interested in showing off with beautiful pictures (everybody does and it's very often boring) but I am looking for offering an experience by using photography; it's more an event then an "exhibition". (In my view)

Very conceptual indeed!

Cheers!

Rob


(It could be that we behind every shop-window display a picture too.... or.... make a map with the different places/houses participants live and put also a (small) picture there.... I want everything make alive, tangible)

These are just brainwaves which came up and which I want to keep in mind. But this is the reason that I want the exhibition close as possible in Baluty. The old market place/Stary Rynek could be the perfect fit.

Ludmila, what do you think?

R



Stary Rynek (the Old Marketplace) in the center of Baluty; 
Thursday, 4 February 2010

Monday, 8 February 2010

The Kutno-experience

On my way to Rotterdam... Two and a half hour waiting in... Kutno.
So hiding in the station restoration.

Couldn't not read the menu and choose by chance Vlaki which turns out to be soup from paunch. (cow flatulence) It smells like what it is and the taste brings me the remembrance back of boiling old and dirty socks. (yes, in the old days)
But it was nevertheless nutritive. So, don't understand me wrong: nothing incorrect!

These pictures are the result of "me being bored".

"Fresh fruit", my table

the restoration

my 'Vlaki' soup

somebody had eaten there already...

Poles, having a meal, have been concentrated and silent

my other neighbour

"Greenery", the table of my neighbour (when he has left)

everybody has left

And then I didn't tell you about the young man, open, friendly face, who began to talk to me just at the moment I started to read my book...
Don't know, seemed to me more or less drunk... asked me about six times what was my name... had been in the Netherlands, 35 years old, two daughters at home... broken window in the house, couldn't effort to repair it... finally asking some money...
I am dead, he ended his monologue. Yes, I am dead...

Intermezzo


Sunday the 7th I went back to Holland, Rotterdam for preparing the project further; arranging all necessary things and supplies and so on.
March 8 I will travel back to Lodz again and then we will start effectively the Baluty - Baluty project. On the move!

In between I will continue this blog. Quite something to tell about the progress we made and the people we met, which is not on the blog yet.

For now just a few impressions from my journey yesterday.

Lodz Kaliska





L'heure bleue ... Ah, the old  Érich Rohmer... 

Can you understand that I start to love Poland?

And then I didn't tell you from the tiny stiff hare, who obviously didn't very well these winter and who was hiding in the thicket along the rail and started running in the open field because of the train and then the fox I saw waiting for this events to happen running after him with his long thick beautiful tail waving behind him...
Couldn't watch the catch but it was a dinner for sure...  But!... probably more bones then something else!

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Mahlzeit!...


With thanks to Daniel Spoerri ...

Amen!

Litzmannstadt-Getto

Today I bought the book "Traces of the Litzmannstadt-Getto" A Guide to the Past, written by Joanna Podolska.


I can say one thing: it's horrifying...

It gives all, really ALL, the details - facts - about streets, houses and so on and the events which took place there. Don't read it, unless you have a strong stomach.

But from now on we can identify every single place in the former getto.

If you are stubborn person, like to learn things the hard way, here is the website after the book.

But... we will inform you anyway, our discoveries, day by day, your daily meal...

So stay in touch!