1999
next stop Biella. Michelangelo is awaiting us because he wants us to analyze the structure of his website. we like to do it, although it hurts to analyze what italian "professional designers" sold him.
we do the redesign-concept online with Luks, who is back in Casqueiro with the animals. we have to work with the navigation metaphor, there's is not enough time to start from zero...
we make all the decisions in an intense, short week. its always a pleasure to be and work with the Pistis!
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after a week we drive slowly back to L.A. we take a new route, France is huge, but in all corners the same strange sensation of no people. hundreds of kilometers where we see no children, although it was sunny and the trees inviting. Michelangelo calls
he came up with another idea for the redesign...
since we wrote our URL fat on our car, we get a lot of questioning looks. the web still is mostly a white sheet for projection from people who never been there. we want to work with the car's URL. see C later...
we get home, the dogs almost eat us, Luks looks great, morer relaxed than Teresa and omi, who need some days of sleep and visiting friends. our professor friends from Navias highschool, Yoli and Rata got a fine idea to do a kind of transborder childrens project. they made contacts with schools in all the world, specially with unknown or poorly developed regions. now children draw their daily life and home. they will exchange all these drawings. a visual-childrens-perception-bank is growing slowly. we want to think about how to bring it onto the net... we work like moody robots in http://www.cittadellarte.it not easy to do it all in one week, but it's really necessary, because Hans_extrem, the net callboy and ex etoy.com former wants to do the web launching for UNIDEE. realize your idea! add your proposal to it, UNIDEE is the university we waited for!
UNIDEE opens up in the beginning of July 2000!
we made it, its online! now the informations are at least not boring and the structure should be clearer...
Israel! we are coming, on the 15th of december Luks brings Teresa and omi to the airport of Oviedo. Luks wants to have some quiet days on the coast with Susi, Marco and their friends. Teresa and omi too, but on another coast. in the airplane, after a long interview with an israeli security man, we realize that its a crazy moment to go to Israel...the half world is expected...but they remember Tal, when he said he wants to go with them to the desert, away from all which is important and heavy. they touchdown at Tel Aviv airport late at night. Tal wrote in his last e-mail: don't miss to see Tel Aviv when you fly in from the sea, its a great view. o yeah, surprise surprise, this looks like the future, not like the past.
we stay some days in Tel Aviv before Tal comes picking us up. Tel Aviv means spring hill. and spring hill is full of great architecture! although we don't see any hill, except the hill Jaffa is built on and the enormous junk hill on the way to Jerusalem... (they invited artists to think about how to transform this hill into life, because it stinks like hell and an aeroplane almost crashed because of the amount of seagulls..) Tel Aviv is like a mediterean Gijon, we love it, we want to buy a house, we want to stay a few years. Shankin street is like little Berlin-mitte... but better for us, more calclike, more time here and people who look into your eyes, like they want to scan your soul and like we saw it only from the egyptians before. calc loves Tel Aviv!
we meet Tal in a weird cowboy-pub, hola amigo, we were looking so forward to see you! we have a beer and then a good ride to Tal's Moshaf (little village), which lays on a hill over Jerusalem. we can see Tel Aviv from here! Israel is small, and so huge in worlds history and actuality... we would give the Golan back...although the syrians attacked years ago on Yom Kippur and although its strategically so important. also the water, yes, but there could be good contracts and there could be UN... but can the world trust mister Assad? at least majority still trusts Barak...
this trip opens our eyes and Tal is the best Israeli guide in the whole universe! Ronny (Tals partner in Shimon & Shimon series, see their last poster half meter down...) shows us the center of the world, Tal once defined ironically.
it's downtown Jerusalem where these strange diagonal Zebra stripes make the border between the orthodox and the modern neighbourhood. we walk through an ultra orthodox quarter. Jesus! where did the last five hundred years go? we also see the arab street in the old town which leads directly to the dome of the rock. an incredible crowded and beautiful street with a roof, one good or strange smelling little shop after an other. a wonder that people seem not to touch each other while walking through it without changing speed. when we want to enter the dome of the rock (Tal is now also an european tourist...) a israeli policeman stops us: too late, we're closed now!
we can only see inside. there are trees and calmness, no market at all, the opposite. since Jesus threw the money changers out it seems to be respected in there that "moneypower" has no home where "heartpower" rules.
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walking in Jerusalems old town, we remember again the last poster Tal made with Ronny, Shimon & Shimon Nr.:?:
I love Lebanon. below its written: garanteed promotion in case of death. when we got their mail in Casqueiro we asked ourselves:
so we need to glue beards on when we walk with Shimon & Shimon in the streets? no, said Ronny, as long as you don't kill the prime minister nobody cares. they really didn't get one reaction from it! in europe, specially in the official art-scene this kind of political, ironic, symbol-playing poster would be a political incorrect hype!