dis-orientation: January 2006

tuesday 31th January. Berlin

I decide to work alone.
12:00 I tell it to Loira. I´m in the university at Ernst Router platz
14:30 I meet Grek, he is also from our course( demontage block). I ask him if we could talk, we make an appointment for an hour later. In Hardenberg cafe.
15:30 Grek comes punctual. I ask for a coffee without cafeine, he will have a sort of soup.
I tell him the idea and the problems to make them true. They wil not be true and also the people will not notice.
16:30 The decision is made. I needed someone to push me to my border. I rememberd that sentence from Valie Export: "sometimes you must jump into a border, and there you will find another border, so do what you can do and not what you think"
everybody that I know will recieve this e-mail:

go to eberswalder on friday and take a picture with your camera of what happens there. write down a name for the picture. and send it to me please.

now I´m working alone so the pictures will be taken in both directions, from me to them and from them to me.

16:35 I recharge my handy. I take the u2 to ewersbalder.I have a friend who lives there, I think he could help me.
16:55 Mohrenstraße. I speak to Giorgio by phone, he is in the uni( well done!) .I go out and take the U-bahn in the opposite direction, I said to him; wait me please, don´t go.
17:10 arrive at ernst Router Platz. He will help me but now we have to work for Sim City. I´ve no scape.
20:00 Alexander Platz.I come back from Eberswalder. I went there with Giorgio, we saw the place, he can left me some things, and anyway I will let mines in his house.
I´m going to the cinema in Warshauer, with some friends, I ned to meet them to help me, the most I need is Graciela, my future flattmate.We will see Dogville, really appropriate.
20:25 I take the S-bahn.
20:40 I meet her she agree. I give thjs blog adress to few people.

monday 30th January.Berlin

10:00 a.m. I go for a walk.
11:30I arrive in the sociology building where the computer pool is.
12:15 Loira came, she has arrived from Gèneve. We we'll work together.
15:00 we go to postdamer platz. In the way(u2) we stop in wittemberg.(bauhaus)
16:30 we left Postdamer, we have measured some elements, we continue in the same line (u2) to Ewersbalder, we noticed that we can take out the rubish box in Postdamer( or borrow it).

In the U-bahn somebody tries to speak english with us. she is young, short, blond...she ask if we study here, what do we study, and later if we make new buildings or old buildings. She tell us about her life, that we difficult understand. She makes copyes and gives pencils to the people, her boss was a minister of the green party.

17:30 Ewersbalder we have talk to paint the blue lights that are in Postdamer, paint them with graffity in the street, conquering each corner day by day. Paint also with metallic gray some electric boxes...bring postdamer to here...we go to Wittemberg again to the bauhaus.

when we finish buying the things we need, we go to Rumelsburg, because Cristina the girl who came to work and live in berlin, who dresses in black, total black, the friend of Graciella( who will be my flatmatte next month), she goes to australia, we will say to Cristina goodbay. As I return from Rumelsburg I have to change the train in every stop until Ostbanhof, that means three changes , I made four because I didn´t understand what was happening. They are repairing.

sunday 29th January.Berlin

10:30 a.m. I took the U-bahn from Sophie-Charlotte-Platz. Since Nollendorf until Postdamer Platz the travel is outside. Before Zoologister Garten I’m accompanied with two nuns ( I never thought they could exist here in Berlin). The train is almost empty.
When I went out of the residence Ketru and Dany where searching in internet how to go to a restaurant. They wanted to have a “brunch”, they heard about this place the night before in the TV channel of Berlin.
11:20 a.m. I arrived at Ewersbalder. I continue taking pictures on the direction to Mauer Park.

The way is really dangerous because of the ice, I’m not used to it, where I come from is more like desert. I walk slowly.
I see an old book with pictures from the Second World War times, almost all of them are about plains, but also there is a man’s life in pictures, he was a soldier. I see also carpets, chairs, mirrors...I eat a Rostwurst…lots of things that nobody uses anymore, so they sell them. My feet are freezing.

12:45 p.m. I stop for a coffee, in a kiosk, 1.30 euros.
Almost all the things that I’ve seen (or noticed) are not practical, are remembers. Ella Fitzgerald sings (“my heart belongs to daddy”) and I realise that possibly the people who lives around here are use to this objects, I’ will not find nothing strange in all these strange, personal, life objects. I´m really cold.

13:00 p.m. I decide to leave the market. I ask a woman where to catch the U-bahn and she answer that she doesn’t know.
13:47 p.m I arrive at Postdamer Platz.
I choose it because it’s in the same U-bahn line, because it has also a very different appearance, different uses, “language” ... and almost everybody could recognise it.
The scene is completely changed. I take pictures again. I go to the Sony Centre.
There is a wireless net. There are fewer things in the street here; the image seems to be care… by the company, by the local government? I see a man cleaning dressed with a orange uniform. I also see a big signal showing where Prenzlauerberg was.

14: 30p.m. I took the U-bahn back to the residence.

18:00 p.m. I meet Andrej, from Check Republic; he goes to Spain and wants to know about Andalucía. I explained to him how to get to Alfalfa and Alameda, I tell him to go on Tuesday to eat in that barbecue in the place where once my mother saw Camarón, he say that he will search in internet for Camarón.

saturday 28th january. Berlin

18:00 p.m Back at the residence, I go the kitchen to prepare a coffe, with my papers a picture can be seen. Oleg (from Latvia)came, saw the picture and asked what was it, who was him, and for what was.

"this dis-orientation will cook a doubt in the people´s mind: localization doubt, situation doubt."was I writting
-he is nobody, it´s just a picture, I´ll try to disorientate people, it´s a work.
-By changing some parts of the streets I will try to make people disorientate, make them feel in another place, or just loosing for a moment the knowledge of the position- I explained.
es ist fur ein fächer?-ja-welche?-...entwurf
he looked at me and said something in german that I couldn´t understand really, but it seemed something like I was a freak.
"The problem is how would I know if somebody is doubting ?-continued I writting-
the most obvious thing seems to be asking the people ...another posibilty is following few persons and study their reactions, select some ones and study their routes"
Now came Dani who had founded a solution in internet for her plant, she would mix water and oil to fumigate it.
It worked the white insects went out inmediatly!

"tomorrow I should go to Mauer Park´s Flohmarkt"

20.00 p.m. I came to the internet cafe wich is in my street (at the moment), Danckelmannstrasse. During the travel in metro from ewersbalder to sophie charlotte platz ( one hour more or less) I thought about creating a blog to tell the process and also to make the blog become part of it. Now it´s 22:23.

saturday 28th january. Berlin.

15:00 p.m. I arrived at Eberswalder Straße .I try to make an inventory of the scene, the places there, but it´s so cold that I decide to have a coffee http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/EDDB/2006/1/28/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

The place is really crowded. I try to seem native but it doesn´t work, when I ask:
-es ist Jemand hier?
-a couple of teenagers answer -we don´t know .
the place is full of objects, personal objects that nobody seem to notice: a stuffed fox with a plate looking to a lamp, spanish shoes hanging...the waitress came and shouted: -Barbara!

17:00 p.m the cold level that my feet are suffering and the low light level makes me to retire, it´s not enough for pictures.I´ll come back tomorrow morning.

As I still think some way of dis-orientation I have made pictures of every object that
a) is every day at every hour in the street, no matter if it changes.
b)is seen or touched by the most of the people.
I´ve photographed things that are located more or less in the eyes level, but no higher, and something been touched is just the pavement(for now).