Public Secrets by Sharon Daniels

Public Secrets is a truly engaging work for the digital screen. It treats issues like inside/out, utopian vision, and the secret dehumanisation that goes on within areas of “dark play” in Western society. Highly recommended. Make your own mind up about it.

Stoke collaboration

We have just submitted our first paper. Fingers crossed!

Annika & me

I am looking a little worrisome even before the show.

The Swede in Berlin

It went really well! Annika was very happy, the opening was very well attended, and the feedback was great. Phew. Gerhardsen Gerner is a really nice space, just by the river. You can see the grey waters from the windows along the back wall.

Berlin was pretty cold, much colder than here. And as we spent most of the time in East Berlin, there was a nice, grey DDR ambience in the drizzle and driving wind. Some class brutalist architecture around Alexanderplatz.

After the opening, we piled into various cars and went to Kosmetiksalon Babette, which was a showcase for DDR glamour – on Karl-Marx-Allee, the ultimate communist boulevard statement (if there is such a thing).

I was completely drained the day after, and spent hours in the hotel with my laptop. Annika had a really frightening encounter with a psychotic taxi driver as she headed back the night before, and just hearing about it shook me. Luckily, she was OK.

Some photos below…

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Berlin

I arrived lateish, and joined Annika and Maurice at Susan & Owen’s place in Schöneberg. Very lovely – sooo spacious, c 1910. Marvellous internal dimensions. The company was lovely, too – and the food and everything else. I just arrived at my hotel in Mitte, by way of sharing a cab with Nat, who has been curating a show at the Guggenheim here in Berlin.

Tomorrow will bring preparations. Right now, I will prepare by going to bed.

Applications, cocktails, good company & more

Dinner and some serious application of thought to the forthcoming application with Jamie. Quite productive, though constructive output didn’t kick in until the day after. But that’s fine, I got some things down.

A lovely weekend ensued.

I couldn’t resist putting this in here:

Moonlit singing – just for me

A moment of sheer delight: three young women singing spine-tinglingly beautiful, complex three-part harmonies (strangely modern sounding, but I think it was mediaeval), in the alleyway just outside my window, as the moon peeked up above the roofline of the taller buildings on the other side. I was their secret audience of one. Absolutely gorgeous.

The Swede – in Berlin, 20 January

Little Brighton is fairly quiet

Right now, anyway. That won’t last. It is actually quite nice. Sweet place, in its own quirky way.

Sleep has been disturbed the past couple of nights, and I can feel sanity slip away. That has to stop. I need to be able to think clearly and act resolutely – neither of which benefits from sleep deprivation.

We had an idea about how to test for engagement with music this morning, along the lines of how infants are tested, but for adults. For now, directional sounds seems the way to go, but could be emphasized by using a single source, and slightly too low volume. Worth trying.

The Artist – and the week that has been

We went to see The Artist on Saturday just gone. Very cleverly made, and an utterly charming film. Quirky, funny, endearing, and absolutely packed with silver screen references – it is a virtual summary of iconic 1930s and 1940s Hollywood movies, rearranged for contemporary cinema. And I loved the dog…

The past week seems a lot longer – because it contained so much. A lot of which was making up for lost time together. Delightful, and longed for.

I almost forgot: I went to a British Sea Power gig at The Heist with Julianne and Mark (from NYE). The best thing for me was the warm up band, Savages. They were an all-girl group of four, with a strong, full-bodied (the music, that is) drummer-bassist combo and somewhat eerie vocals and guitar. They created a really full sound and had good songs. And it was their very first gig. They must have been very ambitious in the rehearsals. And if that wasn’t enough, they were only booked to do that gig the same day (as the original band that was booked for that slot split up)! Impressive. They are even invisible to Google (so far)…