blog

hi kees,

good to hear from you! So the mysterious swimming pool…I hope you and the clients still like the project. I am jobbing for Michael Maltzan (MoMA Queens). And I am moving soon, to Hollywood (yessssssss, I made it!!!), changing my 1hr commute to a 10min bike ride. So is LA. I feel close to the guy in ‚Down in The Valley‘, allthough the Valley relates to the devastation seperated by the Hollywood Hills from the part of LA I call my home. It’s a devastation too, it is all LA, it’s all the same, or not? Sometimes I can’t believe I spent already more than one year with this unbearable mess. It’s disturbing, but on the other hand I think at the same time it’s so intruiging, there must be something. I think that’s the main reason why people are here who are not related to the industry (people related to the industry are simply here because they have to). There is a great documetary reflecting this bizzare relationship, it’s called ‚Los Angeles plays itself‘ by Thom Andersen. Should you ever have the chance: Urbanism at its best! But I am loosing track and I am probably annoying you with this whatever they call it. Should you still be curious, you’re always welcome to visit! How about an extended version with a road trip? I am not sure about you’re relation to San Francisco in the meantime, but I thought to travel finally to this City (I am also very curious to see the DeYoung-Museum by H&dM!) with a stop over at the Monterey Jazz Festival. The Jazz Festival will be 15-17 September. So that’s the timeframe, no other plans until then.
In any case I really do hope you find the courage to take another plane to LAX, I’ll pick you up. Just call me when you’re there.

Christoph

PS. I have plans to visit New York sometimes in October, just in case, so you don’t arrive at LAX to hear from me that I am in New York…

The day before the manager of the apartment I preferred called that my application was accepted – just after I signed a lease for another one. Why didn’t he call a day before?? Now I have to figure out how to resolve this within two weeks. There is no question of preferences. I don’t think I will force myself to live in an apartment with the other, preferred option on the table…

I went downtown to pick up my bike I left there the night before. Walking on the sidewalk you can spot a group of people focused on something, as if they were all looking at a storefront window of a shop. It’s blocks away so you can’t recognize exactly what’s going on. If you don’t know. If you know, you don’t need to recognize in detail, because it’s world cup. And that’s what happened. The security guy of an office building had to watch the game, Argentina – Ivory Coast. He or someone else organized a tv and put it on the sidewalk in front of the building, and immediately there’s a group of people standing around it for the game. The way it should be celebrated.

With all this I almost forgot world cup staring tomorrow. Argentina? Interesting that people here actually talk about it…New York 4 years ago was quiet silence. Except when USA played Germany in the quarter-finals there was a line at ESPN Sports Center at Times Square. Other than that it was hard to find a TV channel beside the Mexican who broadcasted the games. And beside some freaks who met at 7am in the morning in a Pub downtown to see the game before going to work, there was not much. This year seems to be different. There is actual talking before it even started and there is ESPN and ABC showing all games live!!!

So now that I finally found a new apartment I am completely frustrated. More and more I enjoy this peaceful, quiet, really spacious studio on regent st and I ask myself every night lying in bed awake how I can possibly give this up. Just for the commute…It will be 15min in future. That’s the actual mood…I knew how hard it is to find something comparable to my actual apartment. Of course, the new place is smaller – at the same price. But in Hollywood, also a price effect. I will miss the area here in Palms and Culver City. Although most of the people would prefer Hollywood rather than Palms. Palms is totally unspectacular. Makes it interesting.

Maybe all this has also to do with the fact that I still feel like living like a student, nothing is affordable. I have almost the impression Los Angeles is without concessions too expensive for a simple architect. I still work for little money to make another architect famous. I can’t do that for all my live. I have one too.

This week-end is Pentecost. But Monday is a regular working day, even for the banks or public institutions. Last week-end, Monday was an official holiday, even for architects. Memorial Day. I don’t know exactly what Memorial Day stands for. I think it is in memory of all the soldiers killed in wars. At least it’s a patriotic reason. So is the next holiday, 4^th July, in honor of the declaration of independence. I think religious holidays are seriously only celebrated by either the Catholics from Latin America or the Jews. At least in Los Angeles or New York. I don’t think many Americans know what Pentecost is about…on the other hand someone mentioned recently that the president is closing his speech with ‘god bless America’, on every dollar bill it says ‘in god we trust’. A typical example of the tremendous gap between attitudes or habits and the reality. It’s schizophrenic in a way. Religious has a certain innocence which is used as legitimacy. It’s the absence of argument, questions, criticism. It’s believing and trust. The conflict of separation between politics and religion, state and church. We should ask more questions.

My (almost) all mechanical old fashioned Nikon F3 fails to advance the film properly. Facing major service charges I am in consideration of buying a replacement. But whatever you think about cameras these days: As with anything else you end up digital. I really love this F3, it is exactly doing what it should do for good pictures, it’s like teaching you a lesson in photography. And I think that’s where my concerns for digital equipment are coming from. Digital means first of all consumer friendly: Press a button to take the picture, press a button to preview it right away, and press another button to print it out – directly through your printer. Digital means your picture is resolved in a set of data, and this set can be easily transformed and processed with almost no restriction. Whereas when you deal with a traditional 35mm film a lot of experience and knowledge with this material is necessary in order to do so. Digital is consumer friendly, 35mm not, from this point of view. This aspect doesn’t interest me too much. I remember my first camera, a Minolta 7000. One of the first auto focus cameras on the market. I was interested in learning more about film and photography soon to realize that in this respect you are very limited with a camera doing everything automatically. I hardly used any program features of the Minolta. I preferred the manual settings. It was only a logical step that I changed the equipment to a Nikon F3. And I was very happy about it. Now, should I change to digital equipment, I am facing a new challenge: what is possible with digital imaging. The last thing I would try is to do the same pictures with a digital camera as with a 35mm film camera. But that is probably what most people are doing. They can skip the film part and be there own printers and publishers. That’s the main achievement. But what does that mean? How does this change the perception of a picture? Never in the history of human culture so many pictures were taken and published as today. Just think of mobile phones with integrated camera and wireless transmission to a webpage. I am intrigued by the idea of challenging the image by digital process’ rather than just be served by the digital process.

‚It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.‘ Upton Sinclair

It is really impressing how Al Gore tries to popularize the issue of global warming. And if I am looking at the present government: what an outstanding chance was wasted in November 2001. Who was this judge in Florida?