day 162

as we were driving next to her, ophelia told us that she got this gorgeous bike for her 8th birthday. she was on her way to open her downtown boutique where she specialises in sunglasses for every occasion...

day 161

I'm in portland for the TBA Festival and it seems very different from houtson. of course, everything is so different from paris that I'm not sure how to interact with it.

I miss places that are old: places where age isn't noticed.

but here, it's new. super new, like us - we are essentially new. even with very old cultures that influence us, our architecture and cities, they are new, and it's apparent everywhere from the building materials, to the width of the streets...

day 160

reflecting in the reflections of downtown houston...

day 159

I spent the day at Diverseworks, a multi-discipline arts space in houston where I will be working next year. this place feels right: like art is meant to be made here. it's housed in a re-claimed warehouse with a series of commissioned art works hanging outside. this work 'mickey' was made by joyce pensato...


I'm not sure I will have time to really look at this city properly, but my first impressions are that although paris is now like a beloved old coat, houston is so shiny and new that it reminds me of australia: empty spaces, strips of reflective buildings, large concrete roads and no one on the streets...

day 155

mum arrived yesterday and so we went to L'Institut du Monde Arabe and went up on the roof to take tea and look at the people below.

it's our last day in cité today and it's a bit sad. three more days in paris...

day 148

another rainy night near gare de l'est...

day 132

arun, an australian choreographer, arrived today for a few days and so I took him down to paris plages to see the strangeness in person. this 'beach' has been built on voie georges pompidou, which is a major street and tunnel complex next to the seine. it's now open to walk through - and so we did...


arun in front of the emergency alarm inside the tunnel.

I was quite sure we were going to be run over but it was, instead, a ghost tunnel full of smog, perspex lighting and mosaic tiles: a bizarre insight into a forbidden world!

day 131

look, I'm not doing this for myself: it's for the art...

day 128

near our studio, one of the roads next to the seine has been turned into paris plages: the paris beach...


as you enter this beach wonderland there are mist makers and everyone and their dog is is cooling down and having fun.

should you get bored with the mist however, there are bands, pétanque areas, bars, sun lounges, a swimming pool, change areas and, of course, 3m sq of real sand for you to sunbake on.
trés important when a parisian bikini may only get a few weeks a year to be seen...

day 120 - london

digging your mother in east london...

day 119 - london

wired for sound in hackney, east london...

day 110 - berlin

there is a 'wall memorial' on Bernauer Straße in mitte that has re-constructed a section of the wall, the death strip and its installations and barriers.

on the left you can see how the wall looked and behind it, you can see one of the many cemeteries that was decimated to make way for the death strip. the 'no man's land' photos I took on the first day come from this area. on the right you can see the renovated wall from the western side which would have been convered in graffiti...


this is one of the electrical control boxes situated in the death strip. in the 4th incarnation of the wall (it kept getting improved) there were automatic weapons triggered by trip wires in addition to the numerous guards in the watch towers and flood lights...

the memorial information talks about this section of the wall: "Bernauer Straße became especially symbolic of the inhumanity of the Berlin Wall: Because of the way the border was drawn in this area - the houses on the southern side of the street were in the Soviet sector, while the sidewalks in front of them belonged to the French sector - the Wall had an especially dramatic impact here. When the border troops started walling up the windows on the ground floor of these houses in August 1961, people attempted to escape to the western part of the city through the windows on the upper floors. Pictures of these escape attempts were seen around the world. Later the tenants living on this side of the street were evicted, and the houses were torn down in 1965. Only the ground floor façades remained; these were used as part of the border wall until 1979."

day 106 - berlin

this watch tower (click to enlarge), now surrounded by pink apartments, is one of the few left in berlin. the official GDR name for the wall, these watch towers and the 'death strip' that had automatic weapons triggered by trip wires, was the anti-facist-protection wall.

the remains of the jagged wall that was part of this anti-facist defense system is about 300 metres from this rare remaining watch tower...


this watch tower is now a memorial and is called after Gunter Litfin, the first person shot on the anti-facist-protection wall on the 24th of august 1962 – 11 days after the wall was erected...

day 105 - berlin

this building has been left untouched since WWII and still has bullet holes everywhere...


when I first visited this city ten years ago, there were bullet holes in buildings everywhere. it's not so common now, but the front of this building on oberberger str. in fashionable mitte, reveals a trace of the unrest that was here for so long. the buildings either side have rendered these traces away, but three doors up, a renovated building has left two large bullet-riddled sections of their facade as a reminder...

day 104 - berlin

this small ten day project is about berlin scars. so an obvious place to start is with the death strip and the berlin wall. in mitte, the geographic centre of berlin, and part of the old east, the wall took a leap into the west to annex this old centre.
after reunification, this part of town became super-hip. brad pitt has an apartment here. but right in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in town is part of the old no man's land between the walls, which has still not been re-claimed... (click on images to enlarge)







lest we forget: there is no forgetting here. when the wall was erected, all the buildings in this grassy area were removed to make the 'death strip' and the buildings that were left (including these) had their windows blocked up to stop 'escape' - people were even forced to start entering their houses from the back door.

wherever the wall was, the foundations have, where possible, been preserved. this is another angle of the same area on bernauer str. with the edge of the wall scarring across the street as a permanent reminder. this area was one of the most famous streets during the divided city as the walls were so close you could see into the gardens across the 'street'...

day 102

everyone loves a cliché. if only there had been a béret...

day 100

what does this city mean to us? the visitors, the flâneurs...

10 artists who have been here for a while, came to share their experiences of what it's been like to live and work as an artist in paris. what has it been like for these foreigners, living here and making art? sometimes for months, sometimes for an entire year?
after the initial shock of beauty has gone, what has paris left these strangers?


click here to see the photographs we took today reflecting on our time in paris...

day 98

the bastille markets on a pouring wet morning - nothing stops the french from shopping...

the boys hanging outside the market, watching and smoking and chatting...

day 95

young jewish boys playing in their school yard (the school is in the background) around the corner...

day 91

finally in berlin for a few days of inspiration...






I just love this city - it's so comforting. while it's large and unwieldy, it's also like a small town.
it's a city of contrasts and contradictions and scarring. and somehow it's captured my heart...

day 90

during a 12 hour transit in london en route to berlin...

day 89

an australian-looking building on rue des roisers in saint-ouen - just on the northern border of 'paris city'...

day 87

on rue des couronnes in belleville. the gates in front of the enormous apartment blocks here are quite specific - almost viciously beautiful...



walking along rue de belleville...

day 84

it's midsummer's night and fête de la musique when the city transforms into a carnival: every hole in the wall and cave underground has music playing. this is at L'Institut du Monde Arabe where everyone was getting down to the funky arabic tunes beneath the hovering cranes from next door...



french-arabic-style kebabs en route home...

day 82

rue du rosiers, just after visiting mains d'Œuvres - a multi arts performance venue in the north of paris...

day 78

threatening to rain is a parisian habit this summer...

day 59

when it rains here paris makes sense: the city is washed clean, the grey roofs become bold statements against the grey sky and the light reveals subtle shades of the buildings that before just looked dirty.
in the wet, this city is transformed...

day 50

reflecting on rue de rivoli