Cross Club

On my first trip to Prague in 2007, I landed into this coolest ever club called "Cross Club". It was an eerie and maze-like experience.

Then, some years later we were driving a truck with Mitch from Vienna to Berlin and decided to make a little detour through Prague. Without a map. This didn't turn out so good and we ended up in Holesovicé, on a gas station near the train station. We didn't have any local currency and Mitch didn't feel like going hovering in a city he doesn't know when we don't know where to go. So we just drove on...

Cross Club - entrance

But I had told him about this great club and I was ever so anxious to go there again. Didn't happen on that trip. Now when I went back, I realized that we actually were some 200 meters away from this club with the truck. Only thing we should have done, would have been to go through one tunnel and we would have made it. Had I known that!!!

Anyhow, this club is great! I guess that the people who set it up had inherited loads of old industrial gear. Like a junk yard or something. They decided to use that material as decor for the club and the result is this three-storey labyrith of all kinds of mechanical gadgets and sculptures amongst which there is disco, bars, fast food grill and restaurant. They also have lovely garden in same design.

Some interior

Their program is pretty wide. There is lots of concerts and happenings. During the weekdays the entry is free, on the weekends you need to cough up some korunas if you want to go clubbing downstairs. For the upper floor restaurant there is no fee. The club is open daily from 18:00 onwards until at least 02:00, on weekends open end.

More interior

In my opinion the club is really nicely designed. they use a whole lotta little LED-diodes intergated to the objects so that they are not very prominent. It's very colorful, but not in a distasteful way. Most of the installed "sculptures" are somehow slowly spinning and moving.

If you ever go to Prague, this place is definately worth visiting. And their pizzas are not half that bad either. You'll find it pretty easily just next to the Holesovicé metro station. On the south exit, just take left and walk about hundred meters, you cannot miss it!

The Cross Club Strawberry Daiquiri is also worth tasting!

Prague Quadrenniale

Time flies when having fun... This summer was again time for Prague Quadrenniale. PQ is a humonguous exhibition for performance design and space which goes on for two last weeks in June once in every four years.

I went there last time at 2007 and definately wanted to renew my visit this year, because I knew that most of my Finnish friends and colleagues will also attend. So it was sort of big powwow for all the Finns to meet =).

Some mindflow of and about the week that I spent in Prague follows...

Main Exhibition
The main exhibition was this time arranged into the National Gallery and housed more than 60 countries, in both national and student sections.

Mainly the smörgasbord was somewhat overwhelming and in the end bit dull, because it was just too full and colorful to comprehend. But there was some pearls hidden among them too. Or at least, something that made me wonder. And it's is also curious how strongly the geographical and cultural identity shows in the exhibits. One can clearly tell apart the Latin-American countries from Scandinavian, and so on.

One of the national sections, namely Iceland, had a very strong impact on me. Icelandic space was set up as a white room with white decorative furniture and white china tea session. Among this hovered a white dressed, pale faced ice queen in a very slow motioned, regal way. In the frames on the wall were running some video clips of performances. Very calming and inviting to observe whereas many other were more off-putting with their abundance. Nicely curated altogether, and what made me really lift my hat to these people was that it was all an effort of one woman. She didn't get any support from Iceland's government, so she just put it together on her own. Way to go, girl!!!

Ice queen in her regime

Some others for comparison.

Brazil: the winner of "Best realisation of section."

 

Abundant USA

I was hovering for quite some time on the USA space. There was very friendly and talkative guy to assist the visitors. He came up to me while I was examining one of the models there, telling me that the designer would be there the following day to answer all the question and tell about the project. I had to confess to him, that it was all interesting and cool, but tht I was actually more interested in tiny video projectors they had placed into the model. The guy was not offended, but told me ever so eagerly where I could buy them, what they cost and what are the technical specifications. Good service, indeed there =)

Little Samsung projector in the size of a cigarette box. Want one!

Some of the sections I somewhat didn't get at all. Like Switzerland here below. The finest presentation of the country's most presentable performance design?  

Switzerland

I collected below some images of curious stuff that was also exhibited in the Main Exposition. First two of them are from the Russian space. There was some acoustic sculpture kind of installations and then these plates that presented funny optical illusions created by circular scratches on the metallic surface. 

Russian illusions 1.

Russian illusions 2.

Norwegians had built up this quite fascinating and elaborate mechanical landscape where objects moved in an eerie choreography combined with distorted video imagery.

Norwegian landscape.

These are only to mention few things that moved me, but I won't bore you with all of the things that made me scratch my head. Enough is enough. Let's move on...

Students

Student sections were as, or more, controversial as the national sections. I was admiring mostly the fact that the eastern European students are ever so skilled in good old fashioned painting, drawing and sketching. Makes me jealous... But some stuff that was exhibited was quite witty. I have to mention few, and not because I'm also a Finn.

The Finnish students had created this great big egg that contained a soundscape. They would perform a test before letting you enter, to determine that you're not too intoxicated (for one reason or other) to take the trip. All very proper and scientific =)

The Egg.

Instructions how to use the egg.

Me following the instructions =) Photo by Julia Stone

Another cool one was Belgium. They had used the famous Belgian mussels as their theme which dominated the whole space. Some miniature models, selection of costumes and protfolios had all been nestled inside the mussels. Cool idea.

Visitor looking into the costume exhibit.

The program of the Quadrenniale was immense. All over the city there was something going on. Directly related to the PQ or off-PQ. I didn't attend to so many of the lectures or workshops that were offered throughout the duration. My main reason to go to Prague in the first place was to meet my friends and just do some exploring in a very relaxed way.

I got caugth on attending one of the lectures nonetheless =) Photo by Julia Stone.

What I found refreshing was to get off the main track, which applies both the exhibition and the city environment. One of the cool presentations I saw was this pyro-show performed in one old squatted industrial building somewhere well east from city centre. It was very relaxing to get away from this well polished and groomed way of putting things on display at National gallery.

Fire on Trafacka by Amanitas.

I think this is already lengthy enough for now. Other postings will follow covering other aspects of my visit in Prague =). Until then, bye!!!

The artistic afterlife of pine cones

After the visit of my friends Eija and Jari I got a peculiar request. Could I send couple of swiss pine cones to Eija in Scotland?

Yeah, sure? "-But why?" would one easily ask. The explanation followed. She wanted to use them as material for her Robert Walser related art work. And then, for sure, not just any cone would do =).

No worries, can do. So I shuffled to the nearest park and collected a plastic bag full of cones. Big ands small, fat and slim, all the varieties.

Later I finally saw what they turned out to be. Eija had an exhibition in a local gallery in Oulu which I had chance to visit. Here are the results:

Some of them turned into prints.

And one managed the throne =)

Somehow cute =)

Bears in Helsinki

142 colorful bears have showed up in Helsinki! These United Buddy Bears arrived couple of weeks ago from Kazakstan and collect money for Unicef and other charities. Two-meter-tall statues promote tolerance between the nations and reflect the member countries of UN by standing paw in paw. Each of them is designed by local artist.

Colorful line-up at Senaatintori

Behind the idea stands an artist couple Klaus and Eva Herlitz, from Berlin, Germany, The collection of bears have been put together in 2002 and has been touring the world for past seven years. Exhibition in Helsinki is the 20th. This collection has already managed to raise 1 600 000 euros for child welfare, even though there is no admission. Money is collected out of auctions, that sell the national bear in the end of each exhibition.

Big bears

I think this is a very, very cute and cool idea. All the bears are very different from each other and one can easily spend a long time checking them out. Some of them are somewhat obvious, some really strange, but nonetheless all of them are very interesting. So colorful. And joyful.

Swiss and Finnish bear side by side, what a coincidence =)

Curiosities of Figueres

Figueres, app. 40 km's north from Girona, is one of the three most important landmarks of Salvador Dali. He is by any no means one of my favorite artists, but when in proximity, I just had to go to check out the Dalí Theatre Museum in this nearby town.

La Rambla, the main plaza of Figueres sleeping through siesta.

The museum looks very much "Dalían" in and out. Who else would have thought of this weird egg-shape design for a building and little knots covering all of the red walls. Surreal, literally. I spent good three hours there exploring the exhibits. I have to admit that my opinion and knowledge of the guy evolved a great deal. I hand't had any idea how important his muse-lover-wife, Gala, actually was for him. Such dedication... love of a lifetime... amazing.

Curiosity 1: Exterior of the museum.

I also do have to admit that I quite liked some of the stuff in the museum, like the drawings on the "Rue Trajan" collection on the third floor. The finesse of the touch and detail is overwhelming.

Don Q.

The other thing that probably never seases to amaze me is the complexity of the names of the artworks =) I guess Dalí never heard (or cared) about the idea of "keeping it simple st*****" or he just wanted to make sure you won't get it wrong =) =) Example below...

Curiosity 2: Explanation.

The Artwork. I can find the tiger and one of the Lenins, can I?

After visiting the museum the siesta got the better of me again. therefore I had to come up an idea that doesn't require necessarily opening-hours. So, I walked around a bit and saw the signs pointing to the direction of a fortress. This could be something accessible even during the siesta. I trekked up to the hill and entered the Castell Sant Ferran, supposedly the biggest fortress built during the era of Enlightment in whole Europe. Whoooa, sooooo cool. I just went there for the views =)

There was nobody else there, but it was open, yeah. The guy in ticket-office was bit strange but I managed to get past him eventually. He just was so determined to tell me that they will close the place up after three hours, but that I was allowed to stay only one hour. Then he gave me a map and pointed out the spots where there would be information about the place. So off I go....

And reach the first information point. Yes, there is a big number one painted on a plate and a sign of audio. I turn the little map over and see the instructions that at this point I should listen to the first entry in my audio-guide, which I obviously didn't have, because the strange guy didn't give me one. Tja, I can't be bothered to go back to the office to ask for one, so I just continue, in silence. It would probably have been boring anyway...

Curiosity 3: A silent audio-guided point at Castell Sant Ferran.

All in all, the fortress was mostly just a big wreck. Views over the region were naturally pretty cool, as they usually are from tactically important military establishments. The thing I liked the most about it, was the interesting filtration of light inside the buildings.

Stables.

Beautiful light in a small chamber,
purpose left in the dark forever.

After my stroll around the fortress I was standing by the trench observing the deer residing down there. And guess who comes up to me? The guy from the ticket-office and says "vamos, vamos...". Ok, I'll go, don't sweat, although there was still five minutes to go of my given hour. Some people just have tight asses....

Since the siesta was still setting obstacles on my route, I decided to just have a nice lunch back in downtown adn then visit a church or something.

There is a cathedral just next to the Dalí Museum, which I went to see. I have this habit of lighting a memorial candle for my grandparents when I have that chance, so I looked for such opportunity here also. At first I tought that, strangely enough, there is no such thing in this church. The I spotted out these little panels in from of the side altar and a crusifix. Couldn't figure it out in the first place - a control board, but for what??? So, I went to have a closer look and then it dawned to me.

It was not a control board although the little blinking lights would easily indicate so. -This was the candles I'd been looking for. So I had to come to a conclusion that they had moved to the next technical level in this church. One just need to drop some coins into a slot and set of led-lights will lit up for you. In my opinion, and forgive if somebody's religious views are hurt by me saying this, they kinda lost the idea there. There is absolutely nothing living or organic in these leds. To me the whole idea of remembering your family-members and friends no longer there, sort of concentrates to the living flame. But perhaps this is only a matter of taste.

Curiosity 4: A memorial candle slot-machine.

After an inspiring day of many kinds of curiosities in Figueres I took the train back to Girona and there I met the very last curiosity. The train ticket for this 40km's costs only 2,75€!! So unfair, in Finland you'd have to ad one digit in front of the comma, approximately ten euros to it.

Runoja raiteilla - Poetry on tracks

This August Helsinki public transportation took part to Helsinki Juhlaviikot already for the third time. Company had placed again little yellow posters with poems on the trams and metros. This is something that I find amusing and sometimes really uplifting when homebound after a long working day.

The campaing is called "Runoja raiteilla" aka "Poetry on tracks". From these little posters one can read small glimpses on everyday life and writers' dreams.

Here are couple of my personal favorites, unfortunately only in Finnish.

=).