High Street: North Cross Road, SE22

Since my cousin has moved to East Dulwhich, I have become a real fan of this little bohemian enclave for two other reasons: Lordship Lane and North Cross Road for:
Shopping on the Saturday market and in the numerous bric-a-brac, interieur design and flower shops. My favorite is www.designsix.co.uk where I bought a glorious chest of drawer hand-made in Indonesia from mango wood. 10% of the profits also go to a Tsunami relief fund.2) After the shopping spree go for great dining and wining in idiosyncratic and fair-prized bars and restaurants such as...well, I am not recommending any restaurants as there are too many little starlets, just put your nose in the wind and follow your favorite smell. Have a closing drink at Liqorish!

Movie: Wal Mart - The high cost of low price

When I studied international marketing at business school, Wal Mart was invading the German Market in a "make em or break em" style. Deep inside, we all knew that this strategy was going to fail, but back then nobody was listening to us new economy kids in Cologne. So, we write the year 2006 and the behemoth has surrendered and is marching home - and we were right, he he.

That prompted me to finally see that movie about what's wrong with the Wal Mart business model. A lot! But the bigger picture is that of the corporation. Don't complain about fat cats, immorale values (e.g. to subsidise a profit machine like this with tax payer's money to only name one) and killing the little guy (independent local traders), unless you want to un-corporate Corporate America. The flaw is in the law.

Speaking of the devil, the movie "The Corporation" had the potential to make history, but unfortunately only the first 45 minutes are conceptually revolution calling followed by almost two hours of cineastic how-to-do-it enangelising.

However, the Wal Mart movie delivers what it promises and should become compulsary curriculum for all business and economy students. Definetively eye-opening and a milestone in critical documentary.

For those who are interested, the website www.truecosteconomics.org has an interesting call to action: to change the economic paradigm itself rather than fire-fighting the effects of the pre-vailing and harzarduous neo-liberal one. Or go back to the last remaining corner shop in your neighbourhood instead of Tesco Local.

Art Show: Surprise, Surprise

There is this magic triangle in the art market between artist, collector and gallerist/dealer. In the spheres of not-for-sale exhibitions it respectively is artist-viewer-and-this odd thing called curator. Beuys gave birth to the famous mission statement of "everyone is an artist" but who on earth transplanted this motto into curation?

Contemporary, the magazine has recently published a special issue on 'Curators' and there are now even university diplomas to be obtained. Where the point my generic rant? To be frank, creative curating on the edge of contemporary taste and discourse incurs some risk, and the ICA had a couple of hit-and-miss attempts too much to my liking. The only outstanding shows in the last two years were by Tino Sehgal, and coincidently (or not) there was no involvement of a curator putting together random stuff, because there was simply nothing to hang, place or install.

Also, a curator can only be as good as the material at hand, and maby here lies the problem: this exhibition shows pieces from very well-known artists, but not the usual stuff and that iss supposed to be the trick here. In general, the show dissapoints, as it is only an assembly of mostly mediocre stuff of big names. It feels a bit like detecting that your favorite art house actress has commited some sitcom-sins or worse, advertising sell-outs back in the 80ies.

However, there are some pieces that charmingly stand out, even though the critical question remains how much 'unusual' these are.

This very cleverly engineered optical-effect sculpture does have some essential Matthew Barney features (think prosthetic plastic), while my favourite piece, a perpetual-through-the-wall & red-coloured-water installation of Anish Kapoor somehow instinctively reminded me to the Marsyas commision in Tate Modern before I checked the name in the leaflet provided.

Perhaps the best 'positive' surprise in terms of unusual+good was Jenny Holzer's "Lustmord": 312 animal bones arranged on a table with engraved silver rings that made me think how archaic this world still is, despite human accomplishments like culture and creative curating.

Until 10 September at the ICA

Art Show: Thomas Demand

I guess it needs a fellow German to NOT photograph mind-boring stuff like empty town hall stairways, photocopiers and office desks, but to re-create these artefacts and places 1-2-1 from cardboard and paper - of course with the notorious meticulous attention to detail and perfectionist engineering - AND THEN to photograph THAT.

And it goes without saying that you fall into his trap at first encounter, until you are wondering about the dorky beauty of these random objects and spaces instead of the expected eerie emptiness that stuff like that would create if the photographs were capturing real things.

You are then asking yourself: But why? All this effort...what's the point? Well, it makes you better really see how boring and sense-numbing much our daily world is and how odd such a thing like a p-h-o-t-o-c-o-p-i-e-r is. Yes, say this word ten times while looking at the picture and you'll get start thinking about the bug in the matrix or check the glass table in your home is really that or.


I left with the notion that maybe we humans, that apparently inhibit all these spaces, might be only "paper-tigers" ourselves.

Until 20 August at the Serpentine Gallery

Artistic Theatre: Fuerza Bruta

I finished work. Hot home. Picked-up my fiance. Drove to Chalk Farm. Met friends. Had no idea what to expect apart from "this is not your normal theatre experience. How so? Well, there is no stage a start and things will be moving around you.


What followed then was 60 minutes of audio-visual + kinaesthetic magic. Yes, I felt like Alice in wonderland. Might a lot of people discredit its sensationalism as been there done that or well it was more circus than theatre. What the hell, I felt purely entertained for every single second and my jaw was dropping lower and lower with every change of scene.


Phantasmagic!

Until 31 August at the Roundhouse

Art Show: Bill Viola

Love/Death - The Tristan Project: Usually I become bored by the "more of the same" approach as this often thins out artist's creativity.

However, there are magic cooks of aesthetic ware of which you just cannot get enough of their spice, and in case of Bill Viola it is this monumental, ultra-slow motion video art that illuminates the 4 elements earth, water, fire and air as well as the usual suspect facial expression of people, projected at a pace that you assume to be better than sleeping pills.

Yet all the pieces at numerous Bill Viola exhibitions I have seen - and this includes a city-wide one-man show back in the 90ies in Frankfurt - make people seemingly stick to the wall to watch a whole loop even if that takes 50 minutes.

This is the opposite of 'what the hell' video art where you enter a dark room and leave after 7 to 60 seconds saying to your own high-brow that is screaming it wants to be a floor lower: "I know this might be an important piece of art, but hell I cannot be bothered to digest this here and now"

This stuff is just beautiful, erotic, deep, captivating and just excellent. And for the high-brows who need to grasp the intellectual decomposition of the leitmotif, go and see Wagner's opera.

Until 2 Sep at Haunch of Venison and St. Olaf College on the Southbank. The latter has the more opulent pieces in my opinion.