Earth Museum among other inspirational Arts of ‘48 Stunde Neuköln’ Art Studio Open Houses

https://48-stunden-neukoelln.de/de/festival

It was fun to see some super quirky art and performances and inspiring to see some really great talent and conversations with artists.

This Earth Museum, full of dirt; glass jars of various colors and textures, labeled from the location the earth is sourced. FASCINATING to see the variety and truly inspiring. The woman who started this has folders with photos of the people who send her the dirt from their region. She offered an interactive intuitive play, in which one randomly chooses one jar of earth, and answers questions about it.

I chose this black dirt, from Iceland it turned out, where I ‘ve not yet been. She said it’s magnetic ~ ironically i chose this when i’m already fascinated with magnetism. Another woman pointed out and handed me a jar from New Mexico, one of only a few samples from the USA. That’s the desert color on the side of the paper. 

And when I asked this artist, what is the black material you’re using……records, vinyl….his sculptures and ‘paintings’ made from the various colors of crushed vinyl.

The artist seated, a very talkative and absorbed (in the moment) guy.

The theme for all the artists was ‘play’

I went out and bought a small sketch book the following day, i was so inspired with this woman’s drawings of places she’s visited.

I decided to quickly grab some pencils and paper at this kids art center.

The man with the blue striped shirt assisted in supplying kids and adults, with pens, pencils, paper and taped them onto the mushroom pillar, while Turkish kids playing ball behind in a court screamed as they played.

I stayed for a while looking at the art of one curator’s gallery. One of the beautifully done but disturbing paintings in his gallery was a black canvas, looked like black velvet, with a black woman laying sideways, her eyes barely open, with drug paraphernalia all around the floor in front of her and white powder on her face. I said it’s scary. Another woman later said it’s sad. The curator said, hey, people need to see the reality. I said it should be hung at bus and train stations, where addicts often hang out. I mentioned that I ‘only’ smoke weed, as if justifying that this is ok. It was later that the gallery curator started talking about the fact that even marijuana can be an addiction in which a person doesn’t realize what energy they may be stealing from their own body and consciousness. That’s how the topic and awareness of addictions in general came up.

The curator mentioned that one doesn’t need anything. That pure, unadulterated awareness is a beautiful and fabulous way to greet the day. It was during this time that I contemplated the extent to which I was altering my reality, even if I felt that it was relatively harmless. I have seen for myself an acquaintance who was a very handsome guy in his youth, who flew around the world for his modeling gigs. I saw him decades later, and would have not recognized the seemingly homeless guy who slowly walked towards me emerging from the shadows, had he not said hello. The shocker was when he open his mouth, saying and displaying ‘I’ve lost my teeth’. Wow, what one can lose in their life to an addiction; health, energy, clarity, spirit. The curator also mentioned the distinction between being alone, in one’s head, cerebrally thinking that everything is fine, saying that the big difference and challenge, is when one interacts with other human beings. The social factor, he said, is what really exposes a person to one’s heart and emotional reality. 

I was telling the Romanian curator that when a person smokes weed, they dream less – probably because they’re in that mode during their waking time. I told him that I’ve had some very powerful dreams in my life, and in fact actually choose being able to dream and recall them, to smoking. Ironically, the following morning I had a dream. I was up in a small plane with my sister and she forced me to ‘take the wheel’ and fly the plane. I was on my own, had never flown a plane and really didn’t know how to operate the controls. It was scary, various things whizzed by me that I just barely negotiated around to avoid hitting. Yeah, but I managed. It is so symbolic! Take the reins of your life and fly. Only one life.

I just had a flat fixed on my bicycle, lubed the chain earlier and wore my tutu for the event, the first day! The bicycle was clearly the best way to discover all the different hidden spots.