the end of a year means looking back for everyone. however, you feel that a certain periode of your live is over, which is true, actually. 2010 was an important year to me becuase it was full of great moments and phantastic experiences, of art and success. to sum it up, i am thankful.

i have accepted myself as a questioneer, being in struggle with myself of questioning everything and never being satisfied with whatever, i have finally accepted this lack of personality and turned into something productive, concerning art or even lecturing. in this year i have finally found my own position in the cultural set-up, getting aware that i am more visual artist that musician now. this is not sad, it is not about getting older, it is about finding out and defining who you are and what to do.

all these things are of cause connected to my teaching activities: in digital design and even in optimizing textual work i have discovered the high aim of finding the right question — not the right answer. (who would be able to tell the absolute (true) answer?)

well, you name it, you´ll have it: art is not about colour, lecturing is not about facts, a position in conceptual art leads to a certain teaching position, which will lead to responsible human beings. and this is what i have learned. and, well, to have a little fun with whatever you do...


even in the beginning of the year it was clear to me that all this splitting into projects does not work for me anymore. my idea was to bring everything together: video work, photography, cgi, rock music and electronica, maybe like chris cunningham live, but somewhere during the work the concept presented it´s weakness, i have forced to much together, the TRANSFORMANCE project was over. above you see a demo version for the cover, i wanted to do a CD/DVD bundle, mixing up all the stuff i was working on.
well, here is another shift: AESTATE will be the home of my audio work in the future, a lot of music from the TRANSFORMANCE sessions was and will be re-edited and is scheduled to come out an an ep on digital kunstrasen and later on another album. nothing got lost, just recomposed. even the cover is still in use. be exited for the upcoming stuff, i am doing music i want to listen to myself!


the river in the sky, ms best encouraged me to go on with the concept, so do i. i am working on it, it is a big production, let´s see what happens...
(she as also finished the work an a great piece, i´ll show you in 2011)


the bad weather an the endless snow delayed everything, but we have finally installed the works for the hammes collection yesterday. a small number of my work in private collection for private viewing. the collection also brought up an older work of mine which was already in the collection. a magic surprise, even for me! more in 2011!

hope to see you in 2011!
best wishes, muchos besos!






questions? complaints?
click here

wow that was quick! having just posted my last chritmas card approach i have imideately recieved complains, not because of missing personal seasonal greetings, but because of the mistake in the spelling. i know, it is not "softmas"... as you see, i do not take this thing to serious. this was more a kind of joke i was creating in the digital studio turning out like this...

well here is my try number two, a little more serious one, somehow more epic and teasing.
once again, you can download a larger version by clicking the images above (german on the left, english version on the right) and you can pass them on. don´t forget to add my greetings!!!

well, we are on the home stretch, just do not loose speed...
i have closed my work on photographs and cgi for this year, i´m done with teaching tomorrow, i´m organizing and looking forward to upcoming exhibitions in spring. i cannot wait to show the new works to you, some outstanding pieces from 2010 and some unreleased stuff.


i was working on a concept of a river floating in the sky, not on the ground as a symbol for hope and the future of it´s regeneratimg in shape and being. the idea is only quite good, the result is not convincing...time is running out, so this may probably end in this demo stadium.


i just wanted to add an image i had forgot so far, the kartoffelkiste. i was there only once so far, the last attempt to visit it made me face close doors. i need to go there tomororw: nearby a golden dragon wants to be brought home for christmas.


as i came up with photographs of my chritmas tree in the last years, i decided not to have a tree this year, except the coneesque one on my digital christmas card. fellow artist guntram walter celebrates (with) his pink plastic tree again, this time he serves even two of them. have a look on his blog and his picture over here
photograph (c) by guntram walter.

and finally, merry christmas to all of you and
frohe weihnachten!






questions? complaints?
click here

now that x-mas is coming up, i can heard many of you complaining taht the year was short. for my perception, it was not. i will have some thoughts about this next week. anyway it is time for some x-mas wishes.

i have sheduled to send out some greetings even before x-mas, my timing is sometimes a little strage, even in this case. so i will send out some wishes with a text i will have to sketch tomorrow.
the picture above is what comes out if have to much time in studio, maybe i´ll do a snow version tomorrow...maybe even a version with proper writing...
if you like to download it (click the image for bigger version) and pass it on to your friends, you can do so, please attach some nice wishes from me!

i really hope to get through the x-mas days without any circumstances, my tree will be just a digital one and we all agreed on the no present policy. thank god, that is my biggest present. it might sound odd, but i only wish for things i cannot buy.

you can expect an more personal x-mas greeting, if you do not recieve one, i must have forget you for the one or other reason. this is shameful for both of us, just tell me, web 2.0 was made for communication.



a very beautiful scene from yesterday. it looks like a still from a russian fairytail movie, but i was acually in it. after being pissed off from the snow, i get used to it. feels like hollidays in scandinavia. without the holliday, recently. (one of my former students told me to be reminded of inception, i haven´t seen it so far, do have to...?)


remembering summer, the memory remains. my memory card of one of my cameras must be large enough to spare me the erasing: a beautiful evening in biggekerke, netherlands. before and after, i was working on insomnia, the mirror twin of dormancy, two corresponding works from 2010, they will make their relevance in 2011...


one (intersections) is like a visual poem to me. i hope for screenings in 2011, it is on its way in different directions. a beautiful piece, anyway, it came a long way, to be added to the 2011 video works, soon...






questions? complaints?
click here

this is witnessing a strange process which is complex enough to appear as magic. being a young musician you want to do the one song which makes you famous, the artist wants a work to strike the scene like a bomb, leaving a mark worth to be remembered. the funny thing about it is: you have no control on the chosen work, for the one or the other reason, one picture is chosen twice, than others must think it is more important and take it, too. the others cannot be wrong, the single one checks the common preference and due circumstance a certain work draws more attention than the others. remember: this has nothing to do with quality or effort, from this point of view, the transformation from an image into an icon seems to follow the rules of a butterfly effect.

as journal readers you might know my connection to the eichbaumoper and the collaborations we did in 2009. and as one of a hundred photographers, i photographed every bit of it, every angle, a hundred times. next to the random images of the "hütte" i´m proud to have done the transformation series:
taking 12 pictures over 14 months from the same point of view creating similar compositions. the series was published via my photography site and was free to be used if the author is credited, actually I did never expect that someone could use one of these images, because there must have been a thousand others around.

as i´m quite active on the internet, I try to keep an eye on my presence (and representation) on the internet, so I found one of my opernbauhütte transformation photographs in different articles. OBH_trans#6 (taken on may 21, 2009 on the night after the AESTATE live performance) seemed to be the highest rated work from the series (next: my theory of the struggle within a series) so it came up in some publications, the other works did not.
in short: the picture somehow became an icon of the eichbaum bauhütte, not because of my own effort or genius, but definitely by the magic of how an image becomes an icon.

research:
www.stadtbaukultur-nrw.de (pdf)
www.dbz.de
www.ruhrgebiet-fuer-lau.de


get the full series as download:
raumlabor berlin´s opernbauhuette documentary
like thousand other photographers, sven piayda visited the location a hundred times, like all the other photograhers he left no corner, no screw unphotographed. after six months of attempting, a series of photographs was produced which illustrate the transfomation of the opernbauhütte by daylight, season, residents and artists. giving a very formal and static view on the building, you can witness it´s changes over the months. we hope you enjoy these pictures, you can see the full series of 12 (starting back in cold january, ending in march 2010) over at the photography site.

you can download the bundle of printable photography for free. you can use them for free by telling the artist sven piayda.

svenpiayda.com/photography



more images with potential: after getting the partizipia art award (thank you once again) we found some traces in the snow. the intellectuals among us believed it was a bird, the others did also see the possibility of man-made traces as art or fooling us. can you help?


a snapshot from yesterday afternoon: it looks like a hurricane aftermath but it is just the daily decay of my hometown. as I told you to be happy to have found the KPR there (and I hope I can support them in the future) I could once again witness the going down of economy and quality. this is from a restaurant i was a few times only, always with different friends. some are still close friends - others are not. anyway, there is no turning back, as you see...

update 2010-12-17

sliding in a winter wonderland: driving sucks these days, sometimes it is fun to get your car into drifting, but actually it is dangerous outside and i hate getting late in spite of whenever i start off. even now, winter sucks.

facebook and all the other web 2.0 hoax made some of you forget how we exchanged stuff before, or how we communicated. here is a funny invention: sharing offline! next to it they occasionally create usb sticks as big as houses, impressive but hard to handle...






questions? complaints?
click here

being a born in gelsenkirchen, I seemed to have lost relation to my home city, the city became a symbol for decay. people were moving way, our favourite pub closed, even the other pub we liked closed. everything seemed to fall apart, i lost contact to many people i was in loose contact with. the internet and it's communicative web 2.0 possibilities brought back some well known people and surprisingly they were trying to bring art and culture (sometimes even irish beer) back to gelsenkirchen.

they started the "galerie auf zeit", a gallery project changing locations, and the "kunst peripherie ruhrstadt". actually, the approach to art and usage of unused space reminds me a lot of the kunst-cluster thing in wuppertal. i really tried hard to find out what the kunst-cluster is doing now, but it is impossible to keep it professional or productive.

the GAZ and the KPR seem to take over the concept and put things in their hometown into action. fortunately, they have a very open curating approach, trying to find and show very different positions in contemporary and sometimes local art. therefore the disciplines and even quality show a wide range of variety. next to the visual exhibitions, dj sets and live performances are escorting the days during running projects.

kunst-peripherie-ruhrstadt2010.de
facebook.com/kunstperipherieruhrstadt



above you have an impression on friday night, it was believed to be just the start before the party starts, so everything was nice and calm. above you see photographer dennis zetlitz presenting his portfolio via iphone. It's is like an artists ritual, I remember showing him proofs of my work when we met at the first time in the "galerie auf zeit". (photograph by nadine heckner)



these days are extremely stressful, when i´m home i just fall asleep, actually i´m not home that much, it feels like spending days on the highway, it is too much driving around. (this year I not over yet, there will be more to come up) when i was driving last week i discovered a strange thing, i usually do only take pictures from rainbows or beautiful skies (via mobile phone during driving), but this really forced me to document the witnessing. it looks like nessie, what do you think it is?



sven piayda at neuwohner/barabas/schreiner
exhibition is over, once again: thank you!






questions? complaints?
click here

sometimes you have the opportunity even before you have the with to do it. i had the chance to get to cologne on saturday morning, without any effort, so i thought i could spend the morning and/or early afternoon like i did as a teenager: in a guitar store trying to touch at least every guitar hanging around, testing some and finally finding out that none of them would actually fit to my needs. without doing to much advertising i can say that i was visiting music store in cologne, i was not the only one this morning. christmas seems to be coming closer, a lot of kids with their parents around were explaining their sponsors the magic of a certain guitar. half europe seemed to have come to the store i made out english, french and even italian customers.
in the end (after testing only three guitars and two amps) i was convinced to have my perfectly fitting equipment already at home.

after this short trip into the guitar world (and a short visit to museum ludwig´s book shop) we agreed to leave cologne as fast as possible. originally we had planned to discover the city a little more, but it turned out to be a giant traffic jam. getting back we failed to get some late lunch, it became later and the structure of the day (which was planned by opportunity and not by needs) cracked down. it ended up as just diving from one end to the other, one traffic jam to the next, one closed restaurant to the next, and finally getting somewhere, exhausted.

mirroring the structure of day, our visit in the gerda schlembach exhibition at galerie schütte brought back following needs into our day. schlembach´s photographs, sculptures and digital prints play around with the material of glass, the look, the colour, the fragility and the broken pieces… in short: the complete range of this material. i was surprised by the range of disciplines coming up in the show, all linked by material and shape. her most common and fascinating works a probably sculptures made of glass layers forming a cube, while different silicon "drawings" between the glass layers form a kind of virtual sculpture, which actually does not exist. however, the sculptures seemed to illustrate my odyssey between a bunch of places that day. do i always have to deal with art to find out what my actions are all about?



me in the testing chamber: a hot metal axe plugged into a vox ac-15, like a porsche on bicycle tires. i entered the wrong chamber, the others were in use. while i was testing the next one was waiting outside checking if someone was in. it somehow reminded me of using a public toilet…



a new perspective for the cologne cathedral: a traffic jam gives you a lot time to take pictures. and to discover the advantages of pedestrians…



sven piayda´s works will be exhibited until november 26.
sven piayda at neuwohner/barabas/schreiner
Kalk-Mülheimer Straße 60
51103 Köln






questions? complaints?
click here

my tv is cracking up, now that I can not fall asleep during simpsons I miss my electric entertainer. for the first time I watched "fight club" on my macbook, like only hip students would do. the screen is magic to me, moving images which look even more like reality like photographs (or sometimes even reality itself) can be banal and stupid as in talk shows or beautiful as in video installations or fincher movies.

david fincher films a always worth a second look, "fight club" reveals surprised even after the hundredth time. i had the opportunity to watch "the social network" in cinema (yeah for free and legally) and the unique way of composing scenes and images is a magic archetype. the music was fitting and calm, electronic and spherical and composed by trent reznor, well-known nine inch nails mastermind. I thought you should know, have a look at their previous work together:



one (intersections) will not be screened or exhibited before 2011, just to let you know. the video stuff for this year is over, this peace is the bridge into the new year.

plus: more updates on the documentaries:
SICHTWERK02 (2001) exhibition documentary
AESTATEvisual2.0 (2010) exhibition documentary
watch out over here



sven piayda´s works will be exhibited until november 26.
sven piayda at neuwohner/barabas/schreiner
Kalk-Mülheimer Straße 60
51103 Köln






questions? complaints?
click here

the 'panamera' tableau (recently in the stiftung kalkgestalten exhibition) is one of the works getting much attention, maybe more than the others, probably because of the car which is the protagonist of the work. it was executed in june 2010, next to the photograph, a video was done (filmed in june, edited in september), actually we wanted to do a video installtion showing the car abandoned in the woods, maybe moving slowly.
after driving around in the balck forest we did not find a satisfying location, driving down the into the "hexenloch" (which hole) we finally found a place wich was acceptable, but which did not look like the scene i had in my head.
we started to shoot anyway, michaela best did a documetation of my work.
this making of illustrates the setting up of the scene, the first scenes of the unfinished video work. after accepting that i would not devellop i wanted it to turn more abstract and beautiful, drifting into exploring the surface of the car, but this didi also not look like the best approach. finally i did shots to be composed afterwards which lead to the well-known photograph.


"panamera" (2010) is one of the most discussed works of the stiftung kalkgestalten exhibition. it is the only work i did with a documentary, actually it shows my approach failing two times...
it reminds me of a bright david lynch scene, what happened to the driver?

check out the new DOCUMENTARY section on the VIDEO site.
or click here to watch the documentaries.
to be updated.

the submarine dwarf by atelier van lieshout in the rotterdamm habour was like a retrospective of AVL, i am glad to have seen it. the sculptures are not only aesthetic and beatiful, funny and ironic, the also question our demanding of green living and reducing emissions an recycling. 'cradle to cradle' or more simple: waste is food. the consequence leaves to slave city, an envirionmentaly freindly concentration camp with unbelievable high profit. is cannibalism the next step in solving todays (economic) problems of overpopulation or are we already cannibalizing ourselves???

some more on the habour and the installation of the exhibition. i was in the barrectum (2010-08-25 deja vu redux, or: once again) watching the documentary that you can watch above.


update 2010-10-09: getting home in the dawn is funny and scary at the same time, it reminds you of the time being younger and creates the short illusion of being younger, actually. waking up after some hours reminds you of being not.


the long home stretch: the kalkgestalten thing is still in the making... catalogue the catalogue is my crux! the works are recently at ArtCamp (no exhibition) and they look awesome!!! do not miss the opening on october 29, 2010.

AESTATEvisual2.0 2010-09-11 - 2010-10-22
at stoffwechsel, hedwigstr. 5, essen, germany
new digitally generated prints, embroidery pieces and video works from the collective. this is version 2.0!

2010-10-22 AEv2 artist meet and greet at stoffwechsel with anna dannert, michaela best, chris huff and sven piayda

2010-10-06 AEv2 artist meet and greet at stoffwechsel with michaela best (announce participation via contact[at]aestate-online.com)






questions? complaints?
click here

the boxing event was one of the greatest challenges and one of the biggest projects of the eichbaum team. I was asked to support the event, I agreed and did not have to in the end, so I could visit it like a part of the ordinary audience. the eichbaum station changed a lot, the architects of urbikon have installed some figures and wooden landscapes in the tunnel leading from the field into the subway, see some pictures by guntram walter over here.

for the boxing, a boxing ring was installed between the subway tracks, turning the architecture into a big arena. after bringing pop and electronica to the eichbaum, this time it was about rap and hip hop. actually too loud for my ears, being just a second degree hip hop fan, I could not stand it for long. even the show boxing was escorted by loud music instead of commenting the moves.

summing it up: even if I seem to have lost my vision and position in the team, even if i miss culture and transforming, I have to admit that the eichbaum team as well as the architects did a great job in making the place more colourful, nice, illustrative and somehow less abandoned. in the end the station cannot deny its fate: the audience appeared mostly quite young, drunk and only slightly interested. (even the rap mc´s could not connect to the youth)

i don´t know the future of it, looking back I seem to have already forgotten what I was expecting…


spending these warm days outside is great, i returned to the westruper heide again. always great, allways different, today i developed another photograph from the material taken yesterday. i had to think about my project the long wait, a long video work using images of the westruper heide, actually, you should not exoect it in 2010. but i hope to finish one (intersections) video very soon...

meeting friends returning from new york was great, i just got to antwerp this year, an i guess it was more cool. an this is how i look like meeting people in bochum, i could not resist to this baroque mirror.


the long home stretch: the kalkgestalten thing is still in the making... catalogue the catalogue is my crux! the works are recently at ArtCamp (no exhibition) and they look awesome!!! do not miss the opening on october 29, 2010.

spike jonze is one of my favourit edirectors and big influence on my way of develloping sets. ADAPTATION is still my favourite movie of all time, now he comes up with the vodka brand produced movie I´M HERE. you only wantch it online, i have seen it right now, maybe you like it, i just love the way he uses the light...
so let´s go to cinema together, digitally this time, real life next time?
www.imheremovie.com

AESTATEvisual2.0 2010-09-11 - 2010-10-22
at stoffwechsel, hedwigstr. 5, essen, germany
new digitally generated prints, embroidery pieces and video works from the collective. this is version 2.0!

2010-10-22 AEv2 artist meet and greet at stoffwechsel with anna dannert, michaela best, chris huff and sven piayda

2010-10-06 AEv2 artist meet and greet at stoffwechsel with michaela best (announce participation via contact[at]aestate-online.com)






questions? complaints?
click here

hacking the city is barely over. i´m stll a critic of the new mueum folkwang, but the hacking the city program was a blast, a masterpiece and the art of the 21. century. disturbing, questioning and re-defining reality and everyday life is the challenge for everyday life. and art, finally.

the screening yesterday was good, not that much connected with what the museum had defined as hacking before, but a chance to see video works which you usually would not see (unfortunately nothing from the projects like our CCTV video). sometimes a little boring (ms best said she´d prefer my video works!!!), sometimes not that good escorded with infromation, sometimes funny. improv everywhere are less art maybe, but entertaining city hackers and a great discovery. see video below, taken from yesterday´s screening.

later we heard strange noises from a church, we stepped in and found ourselves in a community celebration between a big band live performance and an exhibition on the coal history of the region...
on the picture above you see me in a fake coal layer mounted into the church. i am not holding a tight spot to hang myself but a pit lamp to get through the darkness.


there was no chance not to think of gregor schneider´s END in museum abteiberg in mönchengladbach.
if you haven´t been in the coffee room, you should do it. and we´ll talk about it later...


the funiest way of hacking: improv everywhere´s 'grocery store musical'
who sais that art can´t be funny?

going back to my darkness experience:
after these dark weeks of questioning, i have to come up with the most flat, simple and embarrassingly true thought: darkness helps you to find the light.

tonight:
more light from the dark:
bredevoort schittert
bredevoortschittert.nl



the long home stretch: the kalkgestalten thing is still in the making...recently i´m getting happier, catalogue coming up!

AESTATEvisual2.0 2010-09-11 - 2010-10-22
at stoffwechsel, hedwigstr. 5, essen, germany
new digitally generated prints, embroidery pieces and video works from the collective. this is version 2.0!

trivia: the local hero exhibition was a desaster, see comment in the news section. i wanted to quote somebody whho was able to chose friendly words.






questions? complaints?
click here

i´m still in a bad mood, i was for weeks now, even ending up in a dilemma that made me somewhere between a depression and and an endless lament. actually, i cannot stand myself telling the same boring story over and over again, i have found out for myself a third way of solution: if you cannot solve the problem and if you cannot accept the problem, keep calm, go on and trust in your own abilities to find a solution later. but most important: hack the system, make it weaker from the inside like an invited virus which was invented for manipulative reasons from the organism.

my personal battle of emancipation from the system is a complex and personal one, more entertaining is the museum folkwang show/project schedule hacking the city dealing with the same struggle of disturbing.

hacking the city made me meet the !mediengruppe bitnik (bitnik.org) and collaborating with them for CCTV (6 min, 2010). starting as a workshop, we used the bitnik constructed "devices" (see picture on top) to fish for observation camera signals. ms best and me turned our film into a video work, see above. (stills from our work next to others can be seen over here)

today, september 24, 2010 the museum folkwang in essen will do a screening coming up with videos concerning the idea of hacking the city.
i´ll be there, hope to see you there.



willi dorner´s body trail (2008, 8 min) will be screened there also. i have reported about the performance in summer, you might remember (2010-07-11 dancing architecture — urbandrifting, yesterday | entry by sven). it was a blast. the video may help to get back to that.

however, all info over here:
hacking-the-city.org/calendar-and-events/24-09-2010-19-uhr-video-folkwang-screening-iv-hacking-the-city.html



there are so many beautiful works in the making, i guess i cannot comment all of them. the production of neuschwanstein pins is a metaphor for me to trust the twists in life and see how one thing leads to a compleatly unexpected other...for you once again a chance to question reality and to spend money on my art!


the long home stretch: the kalkgestalten thing is still in the making...recently i´m not compleatly happy...

AESTATEvisual2.0 2010-09-11 - 2010-10-22
at stoffwechsel, hedwigstr. 5, essen, germany
new digitally generated prints, embroidery pieces and video works from the collective. this is version 2.0!

trivia: the local hero exhibition was a desaster, see comment in the news section. i wanted to quote somebody whho was able to chose friendly words.






questions? complaints?
click here

after returning from the lectures there is a laughing and a crying eye remaining. my idea of media criticism is not new, the idea of mistrusting media appears to be accepted but not causing an effect. i am asking myself if it is actually able to teach someone something or is the key to evolution the realisation of oneself, the others and the different intentions of these two parts. advertising tries to make people want something, to behave in a certain way, teaching means also to influence behaviour, feeding a black box for a certain result. maybe we can take away control and let people find out who they are and what they want. limiting the own existence to a small number of directions may help to find the right way.
all you need is mistrust.

from this dark valley of despairing about out chances in society, i accidentally entered the opening of the new galerie schütte exhibition on books, editions and works published by peter foolen. graphic works usually do not draw my interest, but thomas a. clark was a great discovery. he is not only the inventor of one-word-poems, he did also design the invitation card, featuring the work "one blue moment". the schütte gallery started a funny project around it, taking pictures of the card to be published on the gallery website. mr schütte asked me to contribute...

after thinking about certain ideas and discussing with ms best i thought the blue moment contains a limitation in time, so it would be necessary to shred it. actually, the shredding was just a digital process. well, here it is, lets get melancholy: the blue moment slips away like the last day of summer.
2010-09-08 update:
galerie schütte has added the work to the other new interpretations of one blue moment. go straight to the growing collection on the features site over at the schütte galerie by clicking here.


the past: when i was swimming in the sea i realized that going away from all the every day problems and hitting the point mostly far away means also to return. like reaching the zenith means going down in the future.
maybe i cannot relax because i will always have to think about the end of a story without going through the start...


2010-09-08 update (2):
the production of AESTATEvisual2.0 is still going on and very expensive and intensive. we hope to get everything together. above you see a new work entitled "model1" form the model series. once again it is a crossover between photography and cgi, it is a spin off or left over or side product from the AEv2 production.
have a look at the svenpiayda.com/photography site ovet at projects. you will find the new series model there (next to the new commissions section)


so much work, the art show for kalkgestalten exhibition will be great. still in the making...

AESTATEvisual2.0 2010-09-11 - 2010-10-22
at stoffwechsel, hedwigstr. 5, essen, germany
opening 8 pm, i hope to see you there! new digitally generated prints, embroidery pieces and video works from the collective. this is version 2.0! still a lot to do, still in the making... we will be there, will you?

trivia: still no info on the local hero exhibition. we expect the worst… tell you here






questions? complaints?
click here

i have alredy mentioned it before, i went to the smak museum in gent, beguim, just to see a single video installation by david claerbout. my pleasure was even greater when i got to know that there were four very different works of his oeuvre on exhibition, the disappointment was even bigger, when we directly found out, that the installation did not work. we decide to go through the exhibition, but we were diappinted and bored, and even more irritated when we found ourselves in between mostly boring installations and more non-working video installations, see picture above.

i´m disappointed and sad, but i know that making art which is based on contemporary (digital) technology always has a crux inside. next friday, the kunsthaus jesteburg will open the art week on "energy" screening my "windmill water pump". spd politician sigmar gabriel will be there to open the exhibition, i won´t be there, i´m sorry, i´m stuck with my lectures in via stenden. all i can do is hoping that the work will be shown in a way which is appropriate, and i hope to have an installation view on this soon.

the brookhoff location posted
im zweijährigen rythmus sind auch künstler auf dem brookhoff zu gast. wir begrüßen "unsere" künstler julia wally wagner und sven piayda ganz herzlich!

once again, i would love to join the exhibition, but i can´t, you will have to do this without me. and i hope you won't find yourself in front of a blank screen like i did on the picture above.

a picture from yesterday: the south of my hometown has some places i have neglected so far… but why?

above: making the kalkgestalten exhibition is a big thing: a tiny view in my atelier: "blown away" is in the making and soon ready to be hanged.


2010-08-30: an update from today´s morning. this much too cold weather and a sublime bad mood produced an epiphanic moment in the early hours of today. shortly after sunrise saw a rainbow, the bow a lot later, the ray hitting the gound much earlier — like a killer ray from an ailien spaceship. or a love ray, it depends on the mood...

still a lot to do.






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this is really strange: it feels like i am at the same time at the same position as last year, same stuff behind and same stuff ahead. usually you yould expect things to be more comfortable when they seem familiar, but this is different.

i took some weeks off to work on some photography in the netherlands and belgium and to relax, of couse. we had some disappointing and great times at the sea and in different exhibitions. above you can see me in the atelier van lieshout´s BarRectum, a strange return, as it was my favourite place to be in 2008, check the journal. i feel home in antwerp somehow, and now i return and order the visual material and the upcoming dates. i feel like drowning in work.

next week i will do the media competence lecture at via stenden, i was originally supposed to do that last year, but a bad virus forced me to stay at home.
here we go again: media competence!


above you see dormancy (2010), a work which actually was highly appreciated du its perfect techique and poetic approch. it will be exhibited in the art show which i will do with the kalkgestalten foundation in october. within the last weeks i was in a big production concerning an answer to this image called insomnia. as you can imaging it is vusibly a reverse approch to dormancy. the work will be up soon.

this autumn is full of events, join me.

finally: we returned to rest de polderkamer!!! photographs will be coming soon!

once again we had to restructure svennet, i hope you like it. it is minimal. let´s focus on the content and the real world.






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long time no read - well, for some good and some bad reasons, it was not nessessary to comment or tell something. the bad mood after the loveparade and some more personal dark clouds made it it hard to go outside, i was thankful for änna´s poetic reports from the big apple.
actually, the first weeks of this summer were coined by the two AESTATE gigs at kunsthaus essen, our way of presentation was perfect and recieved great feedback. even the reken harvest ep is running well.
originally i wanted to produce more this summer, i had a new set up with my hard- and software, it may take some time until i feel comfortable in it again.
in the next months we will probably bring the next AESTATE album to an end and will come up with in in 2011. AESTATE will transform even more.

in the meantime i´m concentrating of doing photographs, i´m using facebook (hell yeah, i finally logged into it) as a sketch book, collectiong works to add thgem to my photography site.
the future will be more about exhibitions, lecturing and producing stuff and coming up live in unexpected ways. (yesterday we planned something mixing up rock with video art, tba in december...)
tomorrow i´ll we are going to organize an exhibition which will be coming up in the end of october in cologne, you will like it.
yeah, and the windmill water pump at kunstwoche jesteburg...
why do i feel like nothing has happened?

plus: no idea what to do on a monday eveing?
evening sonx at kunsthaus essen is publishing their schedule via facebook now, but you do not have to be logged in, click here to have a look at their public calendar.

extra plus:

REST DE POLDERKAMER [...] and is a must see. the fish was great, the service outstanding, the atmosphere somewhere between kitsch and strange. it felt like we had found something which was somewhere outside, far out, near the edge of the world... (from 2009-08-15 the fish restaurant at the edge of the world | entry by sven)

i will return to it and after last year´s experience i hope top be not disappointed.

triple plus:
svenpiayda.com and /svennet recieved a makeover, it is never easy if you want to avoid wordpress systems and if you have to present a lot of text. anyway, this is our best way of doing it. i hope you like it, it hape it helps you to follow us!







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...ich wohne in einem reinen Frauen-Apartment Haus und Männer sind hier zwar gern gesehen, aber scheinbar nur von den Bewohnerinnen: Männer dürfen nicht in die oberen Etagen, in denen die Zimmer sind - nur in Begleitung von einer Mitarbeiterin, die die ganze Zeit die Zimmer-Besichtigung bewacht...///...für den Besuch gibt es kleine, offene Kabinen im Erdgeschoss, zwar nett eingerichtet, aber eben kleine, offene Kabinen ...///...dafür gibt es interessanterweise viele männliche Hilfskräfte im Haus, die auch über die Flure schleichen, durch die man im Handtuch eingehüllt von der Dusche in sein Zimmer eilen muss...///...Apropos Dusche: Martha (Foto unten; aus Dortmund) hat sich bei der Hausverwaltung beschwert, dass jemand in die Duschen gekackt hätte und dass das seit Tagen nicht weggewischt werden würde...es stellte sich letzten Endes als Zementhaufen raus...///...wieso in zwei Duschen ein Zementhaufen festklebt, der nach Kacke aussieht konnte bis heute nicht geklärt werden...///...vielleicht mal zu was erfreulichem: überall wo wir hinkommen werden wir als Deutsche freudig empfangen und für die wahnsinnige Leistung unserer Nationalmannschaft beglückwünscht - und so wieso so scheint Deutschland bei Amis und allen anderen überaus beliebt zu sein - gute Wirtschaft, tolle Städte, interessante Geschichte...///...in dieser Metropole für Trends und Mode habe ich doch tatsächlich eine neue Frisur für mich entdeckt...vom Seitenscheitel aus zwei Haarwürste eindrehen und am Hinterkopf mit einem kleinen Kamm feststecken; ich bin begeistert und laufe nur noch mit dieser Kreation rum; der Aufenthalt hat sich also schon in mehrfacher Hinsicht gelohnt...///...bisher wurden weder die Wasserknappheit noch Stromausfälle zur Gefahr für unser alltägliches Leben...allerdings berichten hier alle von dem heißesten Juli seit 20 Jahren...gut, dass der nun vorbei ist; allerdings wird der August in der Regel noch heißer...///...der Großteil der Mädels ist der Hitze erlegen und hat sich für 250 Dollar eine Klimaanlage ins Fenster einbauen lassen...(das Fenster kann man dann übrigens nicht mehr öffnen)...///...unter 21 kommt man ab 21 Uhr in keine Bar mehr rein- diese bittere Erfahrung habe ich nun mehrmals [...] machen müssen ... bei Bierpreisen von mindestens 6 Dollar und Cocktailpreisen ab 12 Dollar aufwärts, plus Steuer und Trinkgeld, jetzt aber auch nicht das schlimmste von der Welt ...///...dafür gibt es hier wahnsinnig viel kostenlos und draußen zu erkunden: Open Air Kino (French Connection, Ghostbusters, Die Ritter der Kokosnuss und kommenden Freitag Indiana Jones auf einem Flugzeugträger), Konzerte ( Oper, Folk pop...), Salsa Open Air Disco auf einer kleinen Verkehrsinsel und und und ...







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…eine Frau wird von Sanitätern auf einer Liege in Richtung Krankenwagen geschoben. Sie hat eine Sauerstoff- Maske über dem Mund und tippt mit ihren Händen wild auf ihr blackberry ein…///…viele haben an ihrem Gürtel so kleine Taschen, wie für eine Pistole, in denen das iPhone (hier hat wirklich jeder zweite ein iPhone) steckt, damit man die Hände und Taschen frei hat, es aber jeder Zeit griffbereit ist…///…meine Arbeitskollegin zahlt für ihre 45 Quadratmeter kleine Wohnung in Queens 1200 Dollar pro Monat – sie muss jeden Tag ungefähr eine Stunde mit der Subway nach Manhattan rein fahren…///…im Winter sollen angeblich viele Firmen gegen zu hohe Hitze durch die Heizung wie folgt vorgehen: sie drehen die Klimaanlage auf …///…in den Büros aller meiner Mädels hier gibt es weder Gläser, noch Tassen oder gar Besteck oder Geschirr – dafür alles in tausendfacher Ausführung in Plastik…///…weil hier alles weggeschmissen wird, und eben nicht gespült, haben wir wohl auch keinen Wasseranschluss in unserer Büroküche – wir müssen zum Spülen immer auf die Toilette gehen…







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essen´s citizens are alreday familiar with culture everywhere and ongoing (sometimes parallely) performed events. the single white night openened the theater der welt series (see 2010-06-23 a tiny sensation: one white night in 2010 | entry by sven) but it could not convince me at all, the combination of long speeches, baroque music and public soccer watching combined with a lack of park illumination left me disappointed. fortunately, i joined the urbandrifting by choreographer willi dorner yesterday. the wheather is incredibly hot these days anyway, so why not go out...

the perfomance started at söllingstraße, essen:
the dancers started to use their own bodies to define space and combine their own shapes together to use the given minimal space fighting against static and gravity. sometimes funny at first sight, the perfomance turned into a concentraded variation on the same topic, the own nature given space combined with others and surroundings, isn´t it what archetecture is all about?

phase two: after playing with the own bodies, more and more furniture came in to be combined with the dancers to explore more shapes, shifting over to modern archetecture and their exiting ideas of static and aesthetic fascination.
the forming of human sculptures, one after the other, became more an ongoing movement like dancing, falling from one position into the other.

finally, the audience had to follow the performers downtown to essen an the grillo theater. on the guided way the performers positioned themselves "into" the given archetecture. being dressed in colourful clothing, the sometimes strange positioned bodies appeard poetic and funny (reminding me strongly of the work of erwin wurm) and sometimes irritating and scary (reminding me of gregor schneider).

to sum it up, i´m into abstraction and futurism and this way of theatrecal (dance) performance really hit the core for me.

i took some pictures of the performance (not processed or edited),
i thought you might like to have a look:
click here to download the zip-file. (no longer valid)
please use the photograps with permission only.
the link will be valid seven days only.

plus:
that was a great soccer world championship.
as we are disappointed on the one hand because of really having a chance, i am thankful for third place, no one expected us to go this far, congratulations!
as usually, more to come...?!







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svennet journal reades may remember the madame new generation sculpture by fellow artist gian-carlo chiarenza.
we know each other due my teaching activities, i konw about his work and his conceptual approach, actually conceptional, contemporary and fashion addicted.
while the exhibition of my work roses (after richter) is recently still going on, the conception and the production of the piece took more than six months. i was convinced by the my concept all the way, so was mr chiarenza who followed the progress and fell in love with the work at first sight.
he declared it to his vavourite image of the year - what an honor!!!

while i´m more into photography and video, he is more into sculpture and fashion, so he transformed the work into an "art shirt", turning the still of my video into an icon.

the photograph shows us on a stressful day in a calm minute, gian-carlo chiarenza is wearing the shirt, me on the right feeling honored.

well, chiarenza did not just explain his fanatism about the work, like a metallica fan running around with a black metallica t-shirt. he has a big understanding of the work and he takes it to carry it further: the image of the roses originally decays due a decaying video tape, chiarenza takes the still of already high quality loss and prints it upun a shirt - once again to decay after everytime getting washed. he cuts out richter´s idea of blur and pushed my idea of decay.

i don´t know about the edition, if you are interested in getting an "art shirt" please mail us and we will see what we can do for you. click here

so have a look at our exhibitions:


gian-carlo chiarenza
madame new generation
04 jun 2010 - 27 jun 2010
Turbinenhalle Bochum, Gahlensche Straße 15, 44793 Bochum



SVEN PIAYDA
ROSES (AFTER RICHTER)
26 jun 2010 - 04 jul 2010
museum burg horn, horn bad meinberg

click the images above for info and features:
roses (after richter) web feature and the catalogue as pdf file.

AESTATE
LIVE AT BAUHÜTTE AM EICHBAUM
03 jul 2010 | 9 pm
Opernbauhütte, Südlicher Vorplatz, Haltestelle Eichbaum, U18
Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany 45472


AESTATE will come up with new sounds and visuals:
this is the first date for 2010, more to follow, see live dates.
hope to see you!







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allthough i´m not so much in theatre and acting in general (an as i´m focussed on my own exhibition, of course) the white nights in the raffelbergpark by the theater an der ruhr have become highlights of my summer days in the last years, i have always reported about it, starting in the journal back in 2006 and the following years!

last year i was shocked by the bad news that the theatre will not do white nights in 2010 — what a mess in the year of the capital of culture!
now there seems to be a compromise: no acting, no weekend but soccer world champinonship and music.

there will be one white night on tuesday, june 29, 2010, starting around 6.30 pm.
have a look at the program over here.

this seems to be a reduced version, but it is better than nothing and a an empty slot on my expectations for summer.
i won´t miss it, what about you?

don´t forget to visit my current exhibition:

SVEN PIAYDA
ROSES (AFTER RICHTER)

click the images above for info and features:
from left to right: R(AR) web feature, catle festival flyer and exhibition catalogue.







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yesterday was a drowsy day, the german soccer team lost the match, the wheather was not useful und i was hanging around very tired. in the evening, just to get out somehow, we decided to visit the MOTEL BOCHUM, an installation piece by atelier van lieshout on commission on the A40B1 art project.
in their typical style of art and design, architecture and utopism, pragmatism and black humor, the group installed a motel featuring rooms, space for animals, a stage, toilets and some equipment to use for sexual games (in case of liking it the harder way...).
keep in mind, the motel is set next to a parking space which is the homebase for all the car tuners presenting their pimped out cars wondering what this is all about. watch worlds collide...



AVL have always been impressive, you might remember 2008 and all the svennet features on the museum folkwang exhibition SLAVE CITY and it´s BarRectum (or "arschbar" as it was called in german).
having strong interest in places like these (placing a habitat somewhere to start culture and party) i would like to remind you of the eichbaum re-opening on july 3, 2010!

the motel set-up also featured a wagon functioning as a stage or transformative spce for different things wich was originally part of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1998, tp once again bring art to the people.
on the pic above you can see malte struck and mark wehrmann doing a 20 minute death metal performance, fascinating and then scaring the tuners.
before there are rumors coming up, it may look like us, but the band above is not the flamma piayda complex.
the death metal perfomance is not sketched as a live gig in the first place, it s an art performance, it usually looks like this.
this makes me think about my dress code for AESTATE...


i´m so excited: the ROSES exhibition is escorded by a large program and festival, have a look at the flyer:

we will set up the installation on monday, svennet and i will report as soon as possible, i promise to coeme up with pictures. i hope you enjoy the features and visit the exhibition and the festival.
this is so exciting!!!

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when i read that porsche planned to come up with a car having four doors like a limousine i was curious, when i saw the first picture i was convinced. however they really managed it to get the typical and elaborated trademark design onto the long vehicle. a long story short: i fell in love with the 2009 porsche panamera, right from the start. and sometimes life is great. due my unstoppable enthusiasm, ms best's perfect management, a very kind book publisher and some luck, of course, the rendezvous became real last weekend. i found myself in the dark brown leather interior of the most outstanding car i can think of. porsche invited us to spend three days with a silver panamera s and to visit the porsche museum in zuffenhausen, stuttgart.

we received the keys by the very friendly and cool porsche associates. we put our stuff into the car and parked it first of all to have a look at the porsche museum. the staff did not expect us and was not informed about our arrival as planned, but they let us in. the museum is a strange futuristic building showing milestones of progressing models of this company. it was a great museum of witnessing development of outstanding design and craftsmanship. as i have reported back in 2009 (2009-03-12 imagine you're driving fast, rolling sculptures | entry by sven) i have a strong interest to automobiles, because e i consider them as sculptures, in this museum they were actually presented as sculptures.

on the picture above you can see a picture from the inside of the museum, on the upper right corner you see a special unique model once build for ferry porsche, a four door version of a 928 model, actually the first idea of a sportscar limousine which actually led to the panamera model.

having a fast car for three days makes you think about travelling, where to go? we planned to go to luxemburg at first but that was probably to far way from stuttgart. the first day we just drove around a bit, had dinner in ludwigsburg and checked into our hotel in stuttgart. after breakfast we decided to test the acceleration and speed of our car on the way to konstanz, germany and finally kreutzlingen, switzerland. well, this car really can do both, act like a family limousine and be aggressive like a rocket. the first time testing the acceleration power made my pulse go up and my hands shake. i did never before drive so fast before, and actually never travelled so fast and comfortable. switzerland is really expensive, we found out by having some ice-cream. after exploring the city we drove back to germany and checked into a tiny hotel in the black forest. we accidentally found the hochfirstschanze, later we went down into the hexenloch ("witch hole") a deep valley deep don in the black forest where we originally wanted to spend the night, but it was overbooked. so we had dinner instead, check out "gasthaus felsenstüble", recommended!

i spend the evening scanning the panorama with video camera, the video project focussing on the panamera did not turn out to be valid, so i abandoned the idea, was doing some outstanding photographs instead… the night had some clear view on the stars i haven't seen for years.

the next and final day had not time to waste, after early breakfast, ms best was in control and we set the on board navigation system to france and drove to strasbourg. ms best did everything to not park in a car-park (for the right reasons) but we had no other chance. so we drove onto a fucking small and ugly car-park with and extremely beautiful and long car. discovering strasbourg was great it took some time until we entered the downtown tourism quarters. after a tarte flambee we decide to go back, getting the panamery out of the car-park was my job, and well, it was stressful, looking back i still have no idea how we managed it to get the car out of the car-park.

after a very expensive gas station stop we were back in zuffenhausen to hand it back again. these three days are memory now, the car remains a dream which were real for some days. next to diving really fast and experiencing the acceleration i love to remember the faces of everyone watching us in the car, of watching us dreamy guys stepping out of the expensive luxury rocket. i am more into cars than every before, so let's take it to the next level…

some photographic works as taken during the journey, processed afterwards, last two dasy, actually:

these are some works which will come up on the photography site soon, this is just a preview: "fountain" as shot in ludwigsburg, "dusk" in stuttgart. "villa" was a straight street shot in switzerland and the work "panamera", originally planned as video work which did not turn out to be working, so i did it as a photograph, photographed in the hexenloch. "dormancy" combined the vally at midnight and the other morning, combining the two points in time before and after my night sleep, a surreal piece actually. finally "strasbourg" giving the romnatic idea of it. there are more works around and in the making, they will come up soon over at svenpiayda.com/photography


setting up the site for roses (after richter), incl. a big feature. coming up within the next days, please check back soon.

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when i watch the devellopment of my own work, i can witness a shift to the visual department, no doubt the music is still there, even more ambitioned.
when i considered an conceptual approach in creating art, i was in photography at first, later the idea of processing and manipulating became stronger. now, 2010, there is a new layer, technically and conceptually: next to digital composing and processing the modus operandi of generating parts or whole images (like a painter) is one of my favourite working methods these days.
conceptually, i am recently analyzing the ability and surface of the artwork, here: a photograph (more or less):
this surface (what it is, actually, is another approach, not to be determined now) is functioning as mirror (showing what the spectator is able to see because of his experience) and a portal (leaving the "real" world, entering the artwork and the concept of itself, transporting the message or the "idea" of an image)
however you want to see it, the photograph promises documenting the truth, but it remains just an image with the same irrelevant connetion to the real world than anything else.
ENTRANCE (see work above on the left) shows the image as an image. the motive and the lines in it seem to seduce the spectator to get in (the physical shape reminds you of a door), on the other hand it still claims to be just an image, and therefore nothing but a mirror showing the well-known.

to take this idea to the extremes, you can actually step inside and grap the photograph which is shown on the photograph. if you enter the /CAMP, you can download the photograph called "LOCK" (unlimited and unsigned), which is shown in the artwork called "ENTRANCE" (signed, dated, edition of three).

so, can you use portal and enter the entrance?

some more work: the AESTATEvisual video installation "islanders" was finished, it was based upon prints generated on comission. the other video work "vessel" did also come up with extra output, the morphing body was set in studio for some tender black and white shots. the vessel series looks quite different from the stuff i usually do, but once again, they are not showing something, they are triggering something...

have a look at them and other new works over at
svenpiayda.com/photography

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