finally! we are happy that the ‘Art of Participation’ opens today! and we feel in best conceptual and artistic company!

thanks a lot Rudolf Frieling and his team (Melissa, Tammy, Frederic, Steven, andandand..) to have enabled us this experience! as (almost) always we miss the link to the outside space, the participation of the local and the locals – but we understand that this was not easy to create in this context, and hope that this is only a first collaboration-step for c a l c and San Francisco.

we have some good projects in the drawer..and want to send Rudolf the project outlines. all four project want to be realized in collaboration with this city and with people we would like to find here! artists. activists. scientists.

why here and not in Seville or elsewhere? because we think that we can find these partners here.. the four projects are in the drawer because we gave up finding them there..

soon we’l let you know!

have a look at FILES to see and read more about how we presented communimage here!

n o v e m b e r 2 0 0 8 and the BOOC IS BACK again! ..but we’re still translating the old booc – our pre-blog for so many years – and have so many other things rolling!

omi and malex (with Pam and Salome!) are in San Francisco to install and to present communimage, Teresa works on different jobs and over all in editing THIS new site, Dani is between flying between the three groups he’s playing in: Los The Shapiros, Las Buenas Noches y c a l c . . .

so this little note is just for letting you know that we’re back on the track – but that we’ll need a bit more time to finish editing the old booc (there are just links and images missing). and some more days to tell you then about the last weeks! communimage went to the MOMA, Obama straight foward to the white house and you are going well, we

H O P E.

..it seems everybody does..hOpes.. we are living in Haight Ashbury, the legendary corner on which the hippies were laying so many eggs! the house were we’re living is called the “Herbn Inn – Psycodelical museum of History”. owned by Pam Brennan, a hippy from the first hour of history, it is a real bonanza of posters, books, documents of these days of the summer of love and its progress. all around this house there are all these legendary places: this is the house where Janis Joplin lived, and this is the house where the Greatful Dead lived.. and this is where Jimi Hendrix played for free.. and this is the Fillmore east, where all of them, really all all all of them were playing!! it feels like dyving in childhood parallel world, where our heros were real! ..and there is also this huge record shop in Haight street, where they all are still alive!

Bruce Brennan is Pam Brennans brother.. he lives downstairs and just showed us some episodes of the HIPPY GOURMET, a cook show he does on TV.. see some on YOUTUBE!

..Today is Helloween! the day of the sweet horror! or what day is that? what are we celebrating here? if we would have know that – that EVERYBODY takes the day to play on life and death / love and lough – we also would have ironed the skeleton!

“wow – now! we are really leaving” – Pam and omi fly to the USA. first to Philadelphia, the to San Francisco. we’ll install and inaugurate communimage there (in the S.F.MOMA) and explore the city and the Bay Area.

only some weeks and the MOMA will open a show called “The Art of Participation – 1950 to Now” for which c a l c was invited (again) to show a huge print of communimage. already a year or more ago Rudolf Frieling, MOMAs curator for media arts, was asking us.. yesterday he sent the official press release

just a day before The Art of Participation opens on the 5th of november – there is the O-day! Obama-day! we hOpe.

we still can’t believe it! you feel it every step you make.. that times they are CHANGEing.. in front of the garage they were hanging the first results of the ballots counted so far:

..we all knew that this neighbourhood will vOte like this, no surprise. actually the whole result was not suprising.. looking back at our perceptions and feelings.. but there was also the feeling of fear – that people don’t go vote.. that some O-man turn out being Mc-C-man when they are all alone in the cabin.. but nO! the O was rounded this night, welcome to the new era! gOd knows how Obama and his team can face and solve the mountain of problems Bush leaves them. nothing won’t be as we wish it to be: straight, fast, better.. but everything will be on its way towards something more human anyway.. how strange: we just said that it is the first time that we have the honest feeling of trusting a politician.

but today is not only the day after, its also the day before: before tomorrow the show in the MOMA will be opened to the public.. malex and omi are going downtown to join the press- conference and -preview this morning. Rudolf Frieling does a nice speach.. mentioning how much he was hOping that the election result would be what it is, so the “Art of Participation” would also throw some light on (t)his show!

bellow, where they installed the polling place yesterday we see people waiting in a line when we’re waking up at 7 in the morning!

the whole day is O-day, just O! we are invited by Pam and Peg and Bruce Brennan to join the election night at the Westin St.Francis Hotel, Grand Ballroom, where the democratic party invites to celebrate a democratic party!

I voted stickers everywhere.. Ben and Jerry gives icecream, Starbucks gives coffee, the bakery around the corner gives a Waffel..

as you all already know we made it, the whole democratic world made it! Barack Obama is the elected president of the United States of America!

this is much more a millenium new year party! a mega-hug-event as none of use ever experienced. omi + Pam had the same feeling: the feeling that they wanted to cry from joy…as so many others in the St. Francis this night! so many tears, so many loughs, so many african-american faces just full up to tears with joy and confidence. thanks US, we do love you as well! lets see what will happen nOw! we are looking forward to the exposition preview tomorrow!

after the democratic milleniums new years eve we’re going to meet the technicians from the MOMA at the election party in the Hierba Buena Center for the Arts.. but they all left already.. so, last dance with oPAMa!

tomorrow is O-day! we are in that OBAMARAMA since we arrived! its in every mouth, on every sticker, in almost all the windows..at least in the neighbourhood we live: Obama – Biden 08. ..amd still no Bush who showed up to help his party. but this afternoon we say Cheney saying some “helpfull” words on a republican meeting. what happens to this party, why they do they do their best to loose?

..but we pass by the MOMA again.. there were some problems with some tiles so they had to be reprinted, lets see if things are going well:

yes! much better now! tomorrow we vote (we spiritually do..) and the day after thers the press-preview for the show.. we hOpe that everything goes well and we can celebrate the two dates as one Art of Particiation!

only three days until c-day and only two until the O-day! communimage opens at the 5th in the MOMA (public pre-view) and Obama starts his winning speach the night on the 4th – we hOpe..

it is very strange: since we arrived in the US and since we see almost every night CNN and other channels on which we can get an idea how this pre-election time is communicated, we NEVER saw mister Bush or any of his comrade-in-arms in public. on no channel, on no news paper, nowhere! everybody, even John Mc Caine speaks about . its like the republican party doesn’t exist any-more.. or doesn’t know anymore which ideology they represent.

the only image we saw so far, really the only one far and wide, was this t-shirt in this shop around the corner on Haigh Ashbury:

..and today is the day of the death – goodbye death, hello live! we all are going downtown to Mission street.. to the latino neighbourhood which we wanted to visit anyway because of its graffity tradition.

photo by: t-bet

if we look and listen around ALL indicates that Obama wins..straight and with a mayoiruty which allows changes, poco a poco, bus although it seems to be so obvious we all doubt at the same time. Larry King, the calcies, everybody we ask. aren’t they more racist when they are alone in the voting cabin then? what ugly joker may carry this republicans of change? late this night we see Obama talking in Florida…”Florida, I have two words for you: three days!”

by the way – did you see that the Obama-CHANGE uses the same typograpghy than CHANEL? do think thats a coincidence? when omi and Pam recognized that the first time, they were sure it isn’t, even the distance between the letters are the same! it makes a subconscious link to what we are associating with elegance, beauty, “smells good”.. come on CHANGE #5! Pam and omi want to do a graphic work with this observation..

..fist of november and mali and Sali (his girfriend) arrive late in the evening. after a long trip from Zurich via NYC they feel tired and happy to be here and jump to bed right after a dinner at Magnolias.

the next day omi and mali are going downtown to the MOMA to meet Rudolf Frieling, the curator of “The Art of Participation” and to see how the insallation of the big print of communimage goes.

goes quite well… allthough we wouldn’t agree again on printing the image on Sintra (a kind of plastic), because it is nearly impossible to mount the single tiles precisely and because the print became a bit blurry by using this technic. next time we’d do it on paper again; also because that makes clearer that the project is not about this fixed image, but about how this image is growing..