WALLY'S BLOG 2009
November 20
TO SQUAT OR NOT TO SQUAT
PLAN A
"Art = money"
Collect 6000 Euros through projects and sponsors to pay the December costs. Put on enough action to regenerate this money. Develope and continue the monthly programme until the beginning of renovation.
PLAN B
"Art = vocation"
Cecile and I need access to the ex-Wallywoods rooms in order to finish our wall paintings. We need December only. No heating required. Electricity essential. Water would be a marvellous advantage.
PLAN C
"Art = the solution to all problems"
1 December 10am
If diplomacy and reason and all else fails. Keep the keys. Display them lit under glass on a substantial pedestal at the center of the empty gallery. Cost of this artwork: 6000 Euros. As curator and self-appointed protector of Weissensee's cold and empty Culture Center, I lock myself in until January 1. One key remains in my pocket (until I am comfortable passing it on.)
October 1
"DEAR FRIENDS
Below are details of our events for October 2009, the LAST MONTH of the Gallery Wallywoods project..(*)
Regarding the current location in the 'Kulturhaus Weissensee', things are still very much up in the air. No fixed date for leaving has yet been agreed upon, although the landlords (Besirksamt Pankow) appear to want the keys back on 19 October. Then they wish to close down the building, turn off the heating and water and leave the historic (and perfectly functioning!) place to rot until developers finally begin reconstruction. That may happen some time next year. Or the year after; no-one knows. The long awaited 'signing of the contract' between various partners has been bogged down in beurocracy for years. And it may well continue so.
To clear some confusion, my position is now simple. Wallywoods apparently quit the Kulturhaus earlier this year with the intention to move on, as we knew time was running out in any case. Later, for various reasons, I changed my mind. Now I believe - and quietly demand - that at least the ex-Wallywoods rooms should be available for use by locally organised projects and workshops, UNTIL THE START OF RECONSTRUCTION. I am persuing various channels to find support for this principle, but cannot do everything alone. So ALL IDEAS & SUPPORT WELCOME..!"
(*It wasn't. We held out another thirteen months.)
August 10
MICHEL SAYS
the bees are wasps. He picked one off the window sill from a dozen dead. I used to hate wasps. But, like the huge spiders we get in this building, they hardly bother me now. It's an intellectual thing. Mind Over Beatles. So far I've avoided a sting. Not that I'm more intellectual than before; the plain fact is, I've never been stung. It made no difference when I was terrified as it makes no difference now I don't give a damn...
Stop avoiding the point.
I jumped for the first time on the eve of the 'Spirit' group exhibition ("Art from the Invisible"), inspired by and starring Stefan Sachs (aka Incal), the German astrological healer and artist. I mean, the exhibition was inspired by Stefan, who knew nothing of the Jump which had been in the works since that eighteen-month incubation period on the Island. Like then, only here and now, on the south shore of the Weissensee Lake, have things been remote enough, has the atmosphere been right enough, has the spirit been free enough...
Stick to the facts.
On 23 August 2007 I took the plunge and made use of the Gift which I finally possessed. I may have assembled the thing myself, but I see it still as a Gift. However, (predictably! predictably! predictably!) I made the mistake I had often and clearly foreseen. I jumped in the wrong direction. Unable to explain my sudden incapacity - not least to myself - I blamed the broken rib on Cecile. After all, she had indeed broken my rib.
The second Jump I scheduled for the eve of the 'Apocalypse' exhibition (subtitled "When will the World end, and Why?"), inspired by and starring Damien Cox, the Australian astrological artist, now based down the road in the laughably named 'European Creative Center' run by that foolish Herr Pete. Again, Damien knew nothing of the thing he had helped put in motion. This time I went out in the right direction. And behold.. I landed. This time, not in a bad place.
"You could have knocked me down with a feather", Mum might say.
The third Jump was the smoothest. On the Sunday afternoon, the day after the Apocalypse closing party (The Ugly Americans staggeringly supported by that eternal idiot, Graham Clayton from the Other Side) the procedure was successfully reversed, setting an important record straight; to my mind at least. Yes, both directions work.
Top secrecy was critical around then. But I've learned since, I could have yelled out my guts to the world. Which was what in fact I was doing. According to plan, no-one listened. Boy was crying wolf.
The Utopia era, upon which I stood on the threshold, was short.
August 9
DEAR DIARY
Long time no words. Seven months and eight days no words. Been in Weissensee so long. No, wait.. stretch of memory.. I assembled numerous words on the Island in January and February, from letters and school books and family tales. For PP's increasingly complicated but possibly resolvable novel in which fantasy overrules all realities previously expressed within these ordinary notes. Ending abruptly upon the successful construction of a self-made Black Hole and the instantaneous publishing of The Book. Today's Mensch now knows the make up of a Black Hole; all the ingredients. A few are working on the recipe. Valid men, beneath valid words of research to benefit the world, shall continue us all to the brink.
It will soon be illegal to trawl for Black Hole fanatical comrades online. Right now it is not. The end of The Book* is nearer than I have long dreamed.
*The Book is the new working title of this online preparation in most time zones.
"And Thou Shall't Disappear Within Thine Own Vacuous Pocket Of The Universe!"
There are presently two variations of the Time Trip. There is the Dream Trip and there is the Event Trip. In the Event Trip, one can interact with the past, and achieve relative influence to within a two earth-hours' degree. Travel in Anti-time is thus proven practicable and all such disputes are laid aside. In the Dream Trip, one may accomplish future goals targeted previously within the current X-Moment. So called 'Future Power' has a role to play. This is not under discussion.
In 'real life' modus, I touched base for the first time in four (or five?) years, drank tea with Russell a couple of times, but survived three weeks almost without drugs. The Island does not change, nor the folks, nor Mike - the only brother to come down for a game of pub pool. They just get older. Mike gets impossibly bigger. From what I hear, James has new problems, sinisterly paradying my own handicap of the ten years previous to the Wallywoods Cure.*
*Marie-Cecile has taken the Wallywoods Cure. Wonders have been accomplished for others too; too many to recall. Angel, on the other hand, relapsed, and still boasts I tried to strangle her at the stupid Art Pub.
Remarkable how differently we began, Jim and I, and how mirrored our stories later became. Mum has been quite sick. Very sick – the reason for absconding, plus guilt – but she was jollier than the Pankow Job Centre on my return. They quickly secured reimbursement of a month's money and I quickly got used to starving again; at least between Cecile's painting bouts in the studio and yelling bouts in the gallery, in which she's been working for over a year. God, nearly two. Wallywoods has been her second home for so long, it seems odd we haven't slept together since (finally!) splitting after our fall-out at the Babel Embassy 'Bye Bye Weissensee' show. Well done Wally.
Since then I have TWO occasionally dislocated arms.
It is peaceful now, under almost no schedule. Time to think. I'll be going away for a while, at times. Testing the Time Machines. In Cafe 'Oderquelle' with Norbert at Peter Woelck's photos opening, we watched under the fullish moon a card-playing hustler, an apparently casual professional. He didn't like my remarks, or advice to the impressed lady to watch better his other hand. Wherever I put my eyes even seemed to bug him. After this thousand-times spontaneous show ("I'm new in town") he handed everyone a card and a smile, but me. I didn't mind. I was the most impressed of all.
Later. Hard to believe, but still here in Weissensee. Last soul in the deserted 'Kulturhaus', almost forgotten by now as any kind of venue in the area, at least for those blind to Wallywoods - Weissensee's weirdest secret. After giving notice and announcing the seamless moveover to a huge and wonderful industrial space behind the Magnet Club in Prenzlauerberg, I reapplied to stay a bit longer, and was granted the favour. The other place has a floor poisoned with Phenol (used in Auschwitz as murderous injection cheaper than gassing) which I would have sealed with paint and plastic. There was also zero heating, but it was high Summer, and Wally was high on the idea. Then the man – an Englishman, Goddammit - impressed by our meeting at the current pad, suddenly wanted a two grand deposit which I didn't have, don't have and will never have under the current Time Influence. So I decided to stay at White Lake City, which is pretty after all. Inside like outside. I'm slowly seeing to that: the renovation will be complete on the glorious day I depart.
There are bees now. They live in the planks painted white (recently Eddinged by Cecile on more finishing instructions) above the newly painted white side door. I like that door, it's pretty too. It got broke, recently, trying to keep her out and the noise of the UK punk bands in. She screamed for half and hour, stripped, and turned all the tables over on the terrace. Ronnie still has the bite ring ten days later. He took an injection for it against rabies and whatever. I do need to curtain the windows and doors sometimes, at night, for various reasons. So I banged into that nice door a nail, around midnight; and they swarmed out. Not out, IN! Into the room! I pondered taking a Trip, but retreated depressed to Jack's old shoe-box instead, the remotest corner, which smells like it did before I kicked him out. Almost no-one misses Jack, by the way. Back there in the dark, to the sound of sleep-flying bees (I had woken them up) I hunched on that decrepit couch till morning light, which I never saw, 'cos it was very dark. The decrepit bed is the one I cut out of Miriam's film. She asked too many questions. Imagine asking Jack questions and sticking the thing on YouTube! At least the rats disappeared after I kicked Klausie out. Another bonus: the drain in the floor of that littlest room doesn't stink anymore, since the rest of the house isn't used. But yes indeed, it is 'nice' here. People admire the place, backstage and front, or are jealous. Those who despise me for creating this palace of trash, despise anything they envy and cannot influence through, among various advances, aggression and meaningful violence. But they are not myriad.
...And then I decided to end the adventure. The whole Wallywoods thing; on October 31 this year (midnight, November 1). On the five-years anniversary of its birth in that Kreuzberg corner shop, when a chick with a flute nobody saw before or since, joined Nikki do a couple of sets in his purple suit. Bob was there. And Paul Hester, Chris Russell, and Sir Thomas.
...Because I've had enough of this Doing For Others What I Can't Get Done For Myself; and getting so little back, outside compliments and punch-ups. What am I, a fucking philanthropist? Piss off. From 1 November, I'm no-one again, just another conceptual artist, some kind of conceptual writer; homeless, penniless, womanless, gone...
It has to be said, though; that WAS fun. "Five Years Fucking Wallywoods!"
But if I launch the 'Wally Lounge' events thing (idea formalised on a rare visit from Gaby's Teo last night), taking place around town from November, then it's back to square one to the square root of a Big Chair. Not at all certain if that would be a good move or a terribly bad. Shall attempt Forward Projection tonight and hope for more than a fraction of a return.
On the theme of Travelling, the side-effects are wrecking. May have been overdoing it. Gotta cut down the partying too, on all sides of the Fence.
(Starts taking shape but need more Time.)
TO SQUAT OR NOT TO SQUAT
PLAN A
"Art = money"
Collect 6000 Euros through projects and sponsors to pay the December costs. Put on enough action to regenerate this money. Develope and continue the monthly programme until the beginning of renovation.
PLAN B
"Art = vocation"
Cecile and I need access to the ex-Wallywoods rooms in order to finish our wall paintings. We need December only. No heating required. Electricity essential. Water would be a marvellous advantage.
PLAN C
"Art = the solution to all problems"
1 December 10am
If diplomacy and reason and all else fails. Keep the keys. Display them lit under glass on a substantial pedestal at the center of the empty gallery. Cost of this artwork: 6000 Euros. As curator and self-appointed protector of Weissensee's cold and empty Culture Center, I lock myself in until January 1. One key remains in my pocket (until I am comfortable passing it on.)
October 1
"DEAR FRIENDS
Below are details of our events for October 2009, the LAST MONTH of the Gallery Wallywoods project..(*)
Regarding the current location in the 'Kulturhaus Weissensee', things are still very much up in the air. No fixed date for leaving has yet been agreed upon, although the landlords (Besirksamt Pankow) appear to want the keys back on 19 October. Then they wish to close down the building, turn off the heating and water and leave the historic (and perfectly functioning!) place to rot until developers finally begin reconstruction. That may happen some time next year. Or the year after; no-one knows. The long awaited 'signing of the contract' between various partners has been bogged down in beurocracy for years. And it may well continue so.
To clear some confusion, my position is now simple. Wallywoods apparently quit the Kulturhaus earlier this year with the intention to move on, as we knew time was running out in any case. Later, for various reasons, I changed my mind. Now I believe - and quietly demand - that at least the ex-Wallywoods rooms should be available for use by locally organised projects and workshops, UNTIL THE START OF RECONSTRUCTION. I am persuing various channels to find support for this principle, but cannot do everything alone. So ALL IDEAS & SUPPORT WELCOME..!"
(*It wasn't. We held out another thirteen months.)
August 10
MICHEL SAYS
the bees are wasps. He picked one off the window sill from a dozen dead. I used to hate wasps. But, like the huge spiders we get in this building, they hardly bother me now. It's an intellectual thing. Mind Over Beatles. So far I've avoided a sting. Not that I'm more intellectual than before; the plain fact is, I've never been stung. It made no difference when I was terrified as it makes no difference now I don't give a damn...
Stop avoiding the point.
I jumped for the first time on the eve of the 'Spirit' group exhibition ("Art from the Invisible"), inspired by and starring Stefan Sachs (aka Incal), the German astrological healer and artist. I mean, the exhibition was inspired by Stefan, who knew nothing of the Jump which had been in the works since that eighteen-month incubation period on the Island. Like then, only here and now, on the south shore of the Weissensee Lake, have things been remote enough, has the atmosphere been right enough, has the spirit been free enough...
Stick to the facts.
On 23 August 2007 I took the plunge and made use of the Gift which I finally possessed. I may have assembled the thing myself, but I see it still as a Gift. However, (predictably! predictably! predictably!) I made the mistake I had often and clearly foreseen. I jumped in the wrong direction. Unable to explain my sudden incapacity - not least to myself - I blamed the broken rib on Cecile. After all, she had indeed broken my rib.
The second Jump I scheduled for the eve of the 'Apocalypse' exhibition (subtitled "When will the World end, and Why?"), inspired by and starring Damien Cox, the Australian astrological artist, now based down the road in the laughably named 'European Creative Center' run by that foolish Herr Pete. Again, Damien knew nothing of the thing he had helped put in motion. This time I went out in the right direction. And behold.. I landed. This time, not in a bad place.
"You could have knocked me down with a feather", Mum might say.
The third Jump was the smoothest. On the Sunday afternoon, the day after the Apocalypse closing party (The Ugly Americans staggeringly supported by that eternal idiot, Graham Clayton from the Other Side) the procedure was successfully reversed, setting an important record straight; to my mind at least. Yes, both directions work.
Top secrecy was critical around then. But I've learned since, I could have yelled out my guts to the world. Which was what in fact I was doing. According to plan, no-one listened. Boy was crying wolf.
The Utopia era, upon which I stood on the threshold, was short.
August 9
DEAR DIARY
Long time no words. Seven months and eight days no words. Been in Weissensee so long. No, wait.. stretch of memory.. I assembled numerous words on the Island in January and February, from letters and school books and family tales. For PP's increasingly complicated but possibly resolvable novel in which fantasy overrules all realities previously expressed within these ordinary notes. Ending abruptly upon the successful construction of a self-made Black Hole and the instantaneous publishing of The Book. Today's Mensch now knows the make up of a Black Hole; all the ingredients. A few are working on the recipe. Valid men, beneath valid words of research to benefit the world, shall continue us all to the brink.
It will soon be illegal to trawl for Black Hole fanatical comrades online. Right now it is not. The end of The Book* is nearer than I have long dreamed.
*The Book is the new working title of this online preparation in most time zones.
"And Thou Shall't Disappear Within Thine Own Vacuous Pocket Of The Universe!"
There are presently two variations of the Time Trip. There is the Dream Trip and there is the Event Trip. In the Event Trip, one can interact with the past, and achieve relative influence to within a two earth-hours' degree. Travel in Anti-time is thus proven practicable and all such disputes are laid aside. In the Dream Trip, one may accomplish future goals targeted previously within the current X-Moment. So called 'Future Power' has a role to play. This is not under discussion.
In 'real life' modus, I touched base for the first time in four (or five?) years, drank tea with Russell a couple of times, but survived three weeks almost without drugs. The Island does not change, nor the folks, nor Mike - the only brother to come down for a game of pub pool. They just get older. Mike gets impossibly bigger. From what I hear, James has new problems, sinisterly paradying my own handicap of the ten years previous to the Wallywoods Cure.*
*Marie-Cecile has taken the Wallywoods Cure. Wonders have been accomplished for others too; too many to recall. Angel, on the other hand, relapsed, and still boasts I tried to strangle her at the stupid Art Pub.
Remarkable how differently we began, Jim and I, and how mirrored our stories later became. Mum has been quite sick. Very sick – the reason for absconding, plus guilt – but she was jollier than the Pankow Job Centre on my return. They quickly secured reimbursement of a month's money and I quickly got used to starving again; at least between Cecile's painting bouts in the studio and yelling bouts in the gallery, in which she's been working for over a year. God, nearly two. Wallywoods has been her second home for so long, it seems odd we haven't slept together since (finally!) splitting after our fall-out at the Babel Embassy 'Bye Bye Weissensee' show. Well done Wally.
Since then I have TWO occasionally dislocated arms.
It is peaceful now, under almost no schedule. Time to think. I'll be going away for a while, at times. Testing the Time Machines. In Cafe 'Oderquelle' with Norbert at Peter Woelck's photos opening, we watched under the fullish moon a card-playing hustler, an apparently casual professional. He didn't like my remarks, or advice to the impressed lady to watch better his other hand. Wherever I put my eyes even seemed to bug him. After this thousand-times spontaneous show ("I'm new in town") he handed everyone a card and a smile, but me. I didn't mind. I was the most impressed of all.
Later. Hard to believe, but still here in Weissensee. Last soul in the deserted 'Kulturhaus', almost forgotten by now as any kind of venue in the area, at least for those blind to Wallywoods - Weissensee's weirdest secret. After giving notice and announcing the seamless moveover to a huge and wonderful industrial space behind the Magnet Club in Prenzlauerberg, I reapplied to stay a bit longer, and was granted the favour. The other place has a floor poisoned with Phenol (used in Auschwitz as murderous injection cheaper than gassing) which I would have sealed with paint and plastic. There was also zero heating, but it was high Summer, and Wally was high on the idea. Then the man – an Englishman, Goddammit - impressed by our meeting at the current pad, suddenly wanted a two grand deposit which I didn't have, don't have and will never have under the current Time Influence. So I decided to stay at White Lake City, which is pretty after all. Inside like outside. I'm slowly seeing to that: the renovation will be complete on the glorious day I depart.
There are bees now. They live in the planks painted white (recently Eddinged by Cecile on more finishing instructions) above the newly painted white side door. I like that door, it's pretty too. It got broke, recently, trying to keep her out and the noise of the UK punk bands in. She screamed for half and hour, stripped, and turned all the tables over on the terrace. Ronnie still has the bite ring ten days later. He took an injection for it against rabies and whatever. I do need to curtain the windows and doors sometimes, at night, for various reasons. So I banged into that nice door a nail, around midnight; and they swarmed out. Not out, IN! Into the room! I pondered taking a Trip, but retreated depressed to Jack's old shoe-box instead, the remotest corner, which smells like it did before I kicked him out. Almost no-one misses Jack, by the way. Back there in the dark, to the sound of sleep-flying bees (I had woken them up) I hunched on that decrepit couch till morning light, which I never saw, 'cos it was very dark. The decrepit bed is the one I cut out of Miriam's film. She asked too many questions. Imagine asking Jack questions and sticking the thing on YouTube! At least the rats disappeared after I kicked Klausie out. Another bonus: the drain in the floor of that littlest room doesn't stink anymore, since the rest of the house isn't used. But yes indeed, it is 'nice' here. People admire the place, backstage and front, or are jealous. Those who despise me for creating this palace of trash, despise anything they envy and cannot influence through, among various advances, aggression and meaningful violence. But they are not myriad.
...And then I decided to end the adventure. The whole Wallywoods thing; on October 31 this year (midnight, November 1). On the five-years anniversary of its birth in that Kreuzberg corner shop, when a chick with a flute nobody saw before or since, joined Nikki do a couple of sets in his purple suit. Bob was there. And Paul Hester, Chris Russell, and Sir Thomas.
...Because I've had enough of this Doing For Others What I Can't Get Done For Myself; and getting so little back, outside compliments and punch-ups. What am I, a fucking philanthropist? Piss off. From 1 November, I'm no-one again, just another conceptual artist, some kind of conceptual writer; homeless, penniless, womanless, gone...
It has to be said, though; that WAS fun. "Five Years Fucking Wallywoods!"
But if I launch the 'Wally Lounge' events thing (idea formalised on a rare visit from Gaby's Teo last night), taking place around town from November, then it's back to square one to the square root of a Big Chair. Not at all certain if that would be a good move or a terribly bad. Shall attempt Forward Projection tonight and hope for more than a fraction of a return.
On the theme of Travelling, the side-effects are wrecking. May have been overdoing it. Gotta cut down the partying too, on all sides of the Fence.
(Starts taking shape but need more Time.)