Where am I?

What day is it?

The fog seems to have settled permanently into my mind...

No amount of caffeine will make it lift.

Although we're challenged by lack of coffee making facilities - luckily Johana brought an excellent one cup stove top device (with accompanying milk frother) but she's away somewhere on the road to Kleipeda. The colony fit-out is underway and very comfortable I must add, but the fancy coffee machine is still a few weeks away. Luxury problems, I know. Otherwise it's a walk or cycle into town and the bakery which has a damn fine and strong cup for 3.54 LTS (Lithuanian Litas) about a euro.

Looking out onto bare twisted branches along the rusty diamond fence line, a yellow-orange brick building with wavy tin roof that seems to be some kind of warehouse - workers in blue overalls striding back and forth earlier between the piles of crooked pallets and another smaller neater white brick building. Baltic pine forest uniform height waving slightly in the wind, reddish branches to some of the birch perhaps? Loose grey gravel on the strip of denuded nature beside the new Nida building, slats of vertical beams that form some kind of ventilation or prison (the original meaning of the word 'colony') a light wooden walkway along the rooms and then floor to ceiling windows x 3.

Anyway, that's the physical world. Bizarre isolation and sociability mix. Wandering artists in the halls.

More connected to various people in far away places via skype, which I don't usually do everyday.

Gave Justin his short video documentation from the gigantic domino performance last night.

Arranged with Tamara to show 'F is for FAKE' 1974, Orson Welles, which I happen to have on my hard drive. Working up to Zizek! think I should wait until Jurij gets back here for that one.

Started reading Lucy Lippard - The Lure of the Local - fantastic contextualisation of thoughts about place. According to her, the fascination with everyday life is 'a feminist' thing. There you go. Not out building skyscrapers or conquering the world, I guess, although women do it all these days, it still amazes me how gender bias and expectation underlies and informs practically every aspect of life... She's great for weaving the personal experience into wider context, poetic and philosophical.

Let's not go there today. Maybe discussion for another time. I also noticed that almost all the artists here doing the residency have migrated from their homeland to somewhere else. Except the 'local' Lithuanian and Latvian, both living and working in their hometowns. Something to explore, perhaps.

I think (from inexact memory) we have USA to Berlin, Finland to Paris, Sydney to Berlin, USA to Tallinn, Russia to Berlin, I'll have to go check the details on the artist posters for the missing links.

Have to dive in to the booki css and fix the font size and random blank pages, found help page at last. Then try to fix the formatting of articles in traces and my own website, so they're a little easier to navigate and perhaps more appealing to read. Collecting material from Mons and Via Festival. Opening another Edition for Nida - Inter-format, and one also on Education, Cooking/Food/Art, Migration & Resistance. That about covers all our topics. So much information to try and condense.

That's never my strong point. As you may have noticed when it comes to words, I'm a maximalist.

***

Midnight visit to the rooftop terrace to watch the lighthouse sending out mysterious signals and look at the stars. Keeps all the endless politics and ongoing negotiation with background administrative palaver in perspective.

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Today's mixed bag of inspiration courtesy of Tommy and various friends through fb and email:

Yukon Suspension Bridge and Interpretive Centre in British Columbia, Canada

(what a strange concurrence of names that is!)

Sad stuff on the street, reminds me of a friend who used to photograph 'lost' things, when she was feeling lost herself - interesting narratives and poetic resonance to place and abandonment

Nathalie Fougeras exhibition opening in Marseille, in nomadic gallery Safir "an innovative art gallery whose artists questions the contemporary world unceasingly.Gallery nomad from its operating process : based in Marseille France but active in various location, real or virtual...

Synapse: The International Curators Workshop at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, open call May 31 focus on art and science. Host of the Berlin Laughter Project, an invitation to laugh nice trace of connections - we talked about making a 'laughing workshop' yesterday apparently the thing to do!

Sound Effects: Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience

Interference Journal: Biannual online forum on the role of sound in cultural practices. A transdisciplinary platform for the presentation of research and practice in acoustic ecology, sensory anthropology, sonic arts, musicology, technology studies and philosophy. Interference's first issue An Ear Alone is Not a Being: Embodied Mediations in Audio Culture go online in April of 2011.

Issue 2 Call for Papers May 15th 2011: A Sonic Geography: Rethinking Auditory Spatial Practice

Institute for Distributed Creativity: an international network with a participatory and flexible institutional structure that combines advanced creative production, research, events, and documentation.

New Media Education: Share, share widely!