This is me biting into some spicy Indian food at the beginning of the New Year. At the end of 2024, I found something out that changed my outlook for 2025.  Ecco:  AAAAAPPPPP · LesQuatreCoins

A new Erik Satie piece, in a 1919 arrangement by Hans Ourdine. Listen to an excerpt of Parade, a collaboration by Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Erik Satie. Find out what Truman Capote and André Gide hav…

Arte is streaming the Agatha Christie film Appointment with Death of 1988 with Peter Ustinov. Ustinov is my favourite Poirot so I watched it once more. Especially the endings are always so jolly with Ust…

On Friday night I went to the opening of Kimsooja at Kewenig Gallery. It was very hot and I had a dog. Also, Kewenig is kind of in the middle of nowhere. When I arrived, there was a small paper on the c…

When the pandemic started in 2020, I bought a Solidarity Poster from Südblock. There were many posters to choose from but the choice was easily made. I have always wanted an Isa Genzken. Her unconventio…

A beautiful gift founds its way to my home: the fourth volume of Roman Signer's catalogue raisonné , 2002-2018. It is big and heavy as any catalogue raisonné should be. On its cover, a photo shows …

I try to be a good host for my guests. This summer guest is Otto. Months before Otto arrived, I started to study a piano piece that I could play for him upon arrival. When I finally performed it, I still …

Disclaimer: I didn't make it inside Hans Sharoun's atelier. But I was admiring it from the outside, looking up to the studio on the eight floor of an apartment block, built in the 1950s in  Char…

Marcel Broodthaers was born and died on January 28 (1924-1976), and since a few years the Broodthaers scholar Michal B. Ron has been organising memorial birthday parties. In January, I published her Wha…

For a while now, I have been wanting to do something with papier-maché, and a visit of a friend, who is at art school, finally made it happen. People at art school are up for anything. There are two ways …

Who likes the feeling of sand in their sneakers? Nobody does, and it is definitely the downside of having a beach holiday as I recently had in Lignano, a beach town at the Adriatic Sea. Lignano is known f…

In the local coffee shop Pausini I have a chat with the barista. Turns out she was born in Alt-Tempelhof, went to school here, left the neighbourhood only shortly for a stay in Pankow and some work in Pre…

There are five gates to hell in the world and one of them is in my neighbourhood. This information I have from my neighbour C. who studies bioinformatics and knows about those things. After New Year we we…

Where can you find this portable island? By breathing in and out, so Plum Village in the retreat I did this week, you can find the island inside of you. If not, let me know, I might consider merchandis…

In the afternoon, going out for my daily cappuccino, I have been observing the neighbourhood's pigeons sitting in one and the same tree every day. Why do they always pick the same tree? I was wonder…

I tried to make a lamp shade, which was a mistake. It cost a lot of money to buy the materials at Modulor and I totally messed it up. The fine Japanese paper just stuck to the glue and it looked horrible.…

You might already know about my favourite writing exercise to loosen up the sound of the hand: the Coffee Cup Exercise. You can do it preferably in the morning, also preferably at the bakery, and you need…

Arte is showing a new documentary by Teresa Griffiths on Lee Miller. I'm a fan of Lee Miller's work but the documentary is feminist in that awful kind of way, reducing everything Lee Miller did t…

During my online class with the art students in Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, we have a conversation with artist Wolfgang Müller about post-punk. Wolfgang says that appearances play in our society a mu…

There are a few Misses I take a particular interest in. Like for instance Ms. Swan on MADtv ( my favourite scene is when she dresses up in Björk's iconic swan dress) or Miss Lemon in the Poirot-TV …