2022-12-23 it´s in the way that you use it, a perfect year for samo | entry by sven

this year has been outstanding, with ups and downs as usually but with some precious moments. as an artist I have achieved what I wanted which is giving me a strange kind of peace and ignorance to progression or profit. my show at kunstwerden was great, it was successful as it was what I wanted it to be and it reached the right people among the one who do not get it. my second live show at szeniale was also exactly what I wanted it to sound and look like with the same outcome. I can do it again in variation. I have finally mastered it. sometimes there is profit in, sometimes not, however I feel like having hit the peak. so what could be next?

the year started quite bad, health issues, a tiny car crash, darkness and a new war in europe. however, there was a slow turning point, I guess I do not simply see the point in being depressed. I might have wasted enough time with it. this year has been full of precious moments and new experiences, I am thankful for them and I know I was open for them. I finally made it to the lousiana museum of modern art, visited a queen show and experienced brian may live, made new friends and spend time with old ones. the most remarkable moment might have happened on june 18 as I was sitting on the froho marked until midnight. everything was easy and I finally felt home on this planet.


michael schreiber managed to finish and release his second album ‘macrocosm’ and we did a live listening with q&a on the release eve. it was exciting for all of us but mostly fun to tell anecdotes of the production process, to present susie, answer the comments and tell jokes. also it was great to have the great andreas hilburg on the show and on the album. in retrospective I have to work on my ahs and uhms and I guess there is more funny stuff to tell. it is pretty cool to interact from people wherever in germany or the world and get in thouch with them. one of the funny key moments was our french friend and supporter thierry massard comparing me to phil manzanera of roxy music in the comments. I replied that I do not know who it was but i´d take it as a compliment, see above. (I did some research and know by now.)




it was michael´s idea to wirte a love song for susie and his idea to bring her up as special guest to the live stream. I really enjoy my role of the sideman, it is cool that I do not have to care for the songwriting, singing and production (even if I am allowed and asked to interfere) and just concentrate on the guitar parts. it is great to do it and get the appreciation from michael and from the lovely comments. I have always taken the guitar thing serious and as a musician I see myself as a guitar player in the first place. over the last decade(s) it was always tricky for me to find the right context so the production of idm and post hip-hop tracks became more important. recently, all of this recording and jamming live feels natural and my guitar playing has finally found some context it fits into. but why was it on michael to write a love song for my darling?

rewatch anyone?





this year offered a lot of moments which were beyond expectation. it was great to jam with a guitar in front of audiences again, I avoided playing live for good reasons, but there might be a change for change. somehow, there must be a technical solution for everything. there is joy and future in it. some jams have been fantastic, one among jazz students was horrible, but there is a dead end in every town. I love to play live again and to fall into music with others, and I have experienced people enjoying it. next to it I have become a guitar jerk again, shredding and messing around with equipment. there will be more guitar music again anyway…



at the beginning of the year I have discovered the museum ratingen, I mean, I knew it was there but I finally made it into the show. now, in december we finally managed to return to see a ralf brueck show. additionally, the permanent exhibition on the city´s history as well as the collection of johann peter melchior works really get me. worth a look, and worth a return.


as I had to fill a time slot between work and xmas party in krefeld I thought it could be a great idea to visit haus lange haus esters. the andrea zittel exhibition attracted me but turned out to be less inspiring as expected. I did not know what to expect from ‘sonia delaunay und das atelier simultané’ (and my expectations were quite low) but I was totally excited. the amazing thing about sonia delaunay is her transformation from a classical (impressionist?) painter to a designer for contemporary pattern in fashion and interior. When I studied arts, crafts and design it used to be a running gag that we could not really explain what it is, actually we often hoped to find out ourselves. this exhibition nails it. watching a show on a desiger might sound lame, but sonia delaunay developed design when there was not really something like design. I am deeply impressed and this is my strong recommendation.

to fill another time slot (and find a free toilet) I visited the kunstmuseum gelsenkirchen. they have a show using stuff from the collection. well, after realizing that the ‘gästezimmer’ seems to be no longer in use (how disappointing) the show did not convince me at all. the kunstverein group show does not deliver something as well. in the end, you may ask yourself why you should watch it anyway, if there is nothing to learn or to enjoy. it is like selling a dead horse and wishing a good journey. In a short time, I experienced two ways of doing it. it might be a question of budget but this is not the whole story. it all feels like a classical pseudo-activity: you can say that you have done something, but you never had an idea how to create an effect, so your action was like a theatrical performance, a simple pretending to answer requirements. remember, the art world is just a part of the real world. I claim to see the same mechanisms everywhere, how do you feel now?


last year jan-dirk platek and me did our first collaboration for ‘expotential/frequentism’, as the result turned out to be more than convincing for all of us I offered to do it again. there were plans in summer but I actually wanted to have more time passed until we do a second try. as we are both busy with projects and issues we did not focus it and I did not see it coming. I was surprised to see a picture of him recording new material for me, a few days later I received three piano tracks. I thought they were already quite dense and I did not really see what to do with it. jan replied that I should take time and suddenly everything happened in two days, working parallel on all tracks. when I sent mp3 demos of my versions, jan posted some very kind works on facebook, making my day:

I'm listening to the almost finished mixes of my collaboration with record of tides and I could cry from happiness. when two people understand each other blindly on a musical level, it's really extraordinary. I have met sven piayda only once in my life - and that was a long time ago. sometimes great things come about without much discussion. it just fits.



matthias danberg and me look back on a decade of our friendship now, which is pretty amazing. here is a summary of the things we did, from classic isenberg rituals to walking the dog and hanging out at my artist talk. we talk a lot about collaboration, there will be a final collaboration coming up, but we will probably do other stuff… we are considering a podcast again and again, but then we don´t. however, there is enough to do, maybe this remains a sacred space without audience.


and here is another old picture of me, scanned last year but unreleased. this one features me in 1999 quipped with a guitar and long hair on a camping site in the netherlands among fellow students. as guitars have become more important again in this year, and because I had this one on hold, well, here it is. for more guitar-based adventures to come…


the phase of becoming took so long, but it turned out to be perfect. I am still happy with the show and it´s success, it did not pay out commercially but it paid out by reaching the right people to experience it. dissatisfaction is a great motivator, but where to you go after the perfect show? there are so many projects around recently and they are bound to working infrastructures to become visible (or audible).
the best advice was given by jazz drummer in a video brought up by any social media site. he said: 'if you want to play fast, you have to relax at first.' this is probably an advice you can transfer to numerous contexts. well, pressure us more likely to crash the coal instead of forming a diamond. let´s just relax for the next masterstoke!


last year I reported to have changed by thinking the unthinkable, it turned out to be good, in retrospective I take this as a personal success, but it ends in well-known loops. while working with guitars I have realized that I am into stuff I have suspended for years. this may fit for my guitar equipment but it may also be a guideline (or basement) for further decisions in life. over the last years I came up again and again with renderings illustrating thoughts, you may remember my dead end pivot. now I am offering something more complex. let’s arrange the atoms in a way we believed was wrong… I know that it is physically impossible, but what if you overcome the rules, can you finally solve the insolvable, think the unthinkable and do what a true solution. I have realized that I several small breakdowns at the end of year, it was beyond being exhausted and realizing that I cannot go on the way I do and need to change my life and the environment I am in. it seems to have become a ritual illustrating my inability to move or change something. resilient people do not realize when it is done, while the rest explores how far you can keep going. a large, strong and well-protected gate has opened. let´s se what comes through.


update 2022-12-28: yesterday we have finally made it to visit the museum quadrat in bottrop and check out the new building made to expand the museums exhibition space. i remember us walking around in the park and the building site back in winter 2021. now we scheduled to return escorted by kent granyon and finally made it. so we all know the museum very well as we all have been here in our childhood days. to michaela the museum is much more special. when she graduated university she wrote a large examination paper on the museum building even featuring an interview with bernhard küppers. michaela mastered to discover the architectural idea of the building, it´s brutalist transparency and environmental correspondence, she also learned about the architect’s dislike of the directors decisions. to cut a long story short: michaela appeared to be quite critic before we have seen anything. i can say that i like to join her in this special case.
at first we discovered the newly opened josef-albers-galerie as build by gigon/guyer from the inside. the wooden floor, the plain white walls and the saw-tooth roof makes the building appear like a museum would look like today. it almost felt like a franchise, the mudam exhibition space appears similar, also by the use of single large windows. surprisingly the rooms felt small, the architectural idea of open space and interfering rooms got lost.
our observation from the outside was also very critic. the building appeared like a dark block. unfortunately it is not based upon a square and it denies the transparency of the other buildings. this would be okay, but a bunch of variations of the rectangle made it appear inconsequent: the saw-teeth roof needs to end in a strange spoiler on one side of the museum, which can be watched from three benches pointing to it in a circular space, while the backside features a strangely extruded delivery entrance. the building strangely appeared like a star wars metaphor, like a mixture of a jawa sandcrawler and jabba´s palace entrance. to keep in the star wars metaphor: it feels like expanding a franchise without understanding it.
there is no need for bashing gigon/guyer, the press has many positive articles on their piece, indeed, they are objective and right, and above all, the building serves well as an exhibition space for (abstract) painting. nevertheless, michaela has a point here.


update 2022-12-28: the josef-albers-galerie has a very special debut exhibition: albers’ ‘homage to the square’ in all complexity, assembled from other museums and collections arranges works which haven’t met for a while. you can have a flat contemporary view on the squares saying that they just look like covers for minimal techno records or colour schemes for supermarket products but there is more in it: albers discovered the interaction of colours before a term like design was used. kent granyon even worked out a political and contemporary layer: albers realizes that perception of colour is something personal resulting that there is no absolute truth. granyon adds that you have to stand the shades in a (medial) world that likes to paint the world in black and white.
albers is not a painter who wants to be admired for his personal ductus, he is a scientist and an explorer, he has set up a composition which runs itself for decades generating new findings. this is exactly what art means to me.




sven piayda | the impossibility to take pictures of the present
Z E I T E N W E N D E

forum kunst und architektur, essen
2023-01-22 – 2023-02-12, opening 2023-01-22 3 pm

forumkunstarchitektur.de

forum kunst und architektur
kopstadtplatz 12
45127 essen





sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-11-20 art at the turn of self-efficiency | entry by sven

this year has been outstanding, with ups and downs as usually but with some precious moments. as an artist I have achieved what I wanted which is giving me a strange kind of peace and ignorance to progression or profit. my show at kunstwerden was great, it was successful as it was what I wanted it to be and it reached the right people among the one who do not get it. my second live show at szeniale was also exactly what I wanted it to sound and look like with the same outcome. I can do it again in variation. I have finally mastered it. sometimes there is profit in, sometimes not, however I feel like having hit the peak. so what could be next? finding a gallerist for a long term collaboration has been so important to me while it feels ridiculous now. it is the same with music labels. my anticipated benefits have always been imaginary and projected upon people who appear to pretty unable. I do not care about pseudo-deep saying delivered via instagram but one sentence keeps echoing in my mind: ‘if you can do it on your own, you are unstoppable.’ in retrospective this feels like something which fits on my biography. do not take this as arrogance, I know that I am nothing without friends and supporters, but I remember knocking on doors which will never open, even knowing there is no supporter behind…

I have reported to reduce my effort on art based upon a certain frustration, now I feel I have mastered my goal. I missed the art cologne again, when it popped up in the feed, I realized that I won´t find the time. as corona kicked me out of the art cologne for three years, I do not even miss it. we are a species which is always running into a certain direction until it finds a new one, I am not different.

digitalization is still on the political agenda to create future. I feel that I went through all of these processes 20 years ago when I digitalized my life and working processes as I believed that this would make it better. you can tell by my art and music that I take the whole digital production thing pretty serious. but we are at a new point already. as a guitarist or painter I was fascinated that the digital production was decoupled from my physical abilities, I was even fascinated by the cold aesthetics by autechre. but in times of artificial intelligence (we are used to robots doing physical work) machines can create based upon the postmodern heritage. matthias danberg and me have been and are playing around with different image generating a.i.-based apps and are surprised that image production can now be done far apart from skill or idea. all of this decoupling kills the self-efficiency. maybe you have already requested the sense in or of life, but now you feel useless. isn´t this the gate to depression? maybe the expanding of digitalization will cerate a lack of self-efficiancy, humans ending up declassified from genius to administrator or maybe as battery in the worst case.

my solo show ‘needle in the multiverse’ tried to hand it back to you: in all countless possibilities and variations in an endlessly large space it is still up to you. so what did I do with it? I was jamming once again. jams apart from the anyway have been boring, and even the anyway jams make me feel that I want more. it is great to make music with your hands interacting with other people. I love electronic music and I keep producing more albums than you are able to listen to, but jumping around with a guitar is awesome. this is far away from concept, prestige, profit or nessesaty. this is self-efficancy.


on halloween sideshow bob returned to the garden. it was lovely to see the little witches and mummies collecting our sweets. we had a good time hanging out with kent granyon and a pizza in the garden. (yes, it was warm enough on october 31). see you next year, bob….


it is always great to see that people dress up as jordan wolfson´s ‘female figure’, I have to collect and present them all. this one is by loren kramer, adapted from instagram.


I am not sure what to do with all the art recently, I may come up with commercial stuff again, but I want to finish long term productions… something will happen anyway.


just another meme nailing it. as I am playing guitar in front of audiences again, I was nervous at first but it has completely vanished. if you want to play fast, you have to relax. being on stage is way more relaxing than I thought it would be. the world is flooded with endless numbers of reflected performances anyway, mine won´t be harming as well.


and here is susie with my new little blackstar amp. It does not deliver an engl tube sound but it is okay to throw it into the car and kick it around in the pub. gain is given, let’s do a solo.



michael schreiber has finally finished his second album, I was lucky again to contribute my part on guitar, this time we even used three different guitars. however, the release will be celebrated with a live stream of the album and a live q&a with michael and me on youtube scheduled for december 16. more info in the news, soon.

primal-scapes.de


update 2022-11-22: the new primal scapes album will be out december 16, physically and digitally. the compact discs have arrived already, you may like to place your order now – or hope for giveaway bundles!


update 2022-11-22: as we are in preproduction for the live show to be screened on youtube I have realized that we already did some show concepts, from live manipulated euclidean beat performances to the stretched sound quiz (where I turned down to co-host to appear as candidate). the new show is going to be some music videos mixed up with a talk show. in the end we can say, that michael and me started our collaboration as electronic produces transforming into recording artists and end up as streaming show runners. maybe we should take the tv show more serious and see where things can end up?


update 2022-11-22: last saturday I visited the vinyl bus as it once again stopped in mülheim. I thought it could be a great opportunity to use the second half of the day while having spend the first half professionally doing career consulting and meeting alumni. however, kent granyon and me spontaneously managed it to go there together. as michael of the vinyl bus does an obligatory purchase picture I was surprised to find it on facebook, grischo schlüsi found out about it and sent a screenshot. as kent has a strong dislike for putting a photo of every moment into the net he denied the picture and he was obviously right. I do not have a problem with it on the other hand and like the memory fixed and shard. as you can see that I found mira calix´’skimskitta’ (2003), obviously a fantastic album by a late artist who means something very special to me. I was also surprised to find an older pic of me buying a cLOUDDEAD single, my fascination for alternaive hip-hop apart from prefuse 73 has lead into disappointment sometimes, but this one has an exclusive boards of canada remix!


update 2022-11-23: as I had to do some corrections on the current post and as it is a tradition to post old pics at the end of the year (more to come) I thought I should probably bring up this one. it has been taken during the final gig of dissident(en) club in 2005, it looks like fun but I remember the gig turning into a bad mood, from this point it was definitely falling apart. as I am known for avoiding classic band set-up becuase of a disbalance of good time and frustration I am forming a band again. this week will be the fist rehearsal with a possible bass player. I hope that it will work out as I want this guy in the group. plus there is a name already which I will not tell yet. cross your fingers.




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-10-18 daily grind escapist in visual echo chamber | entry by sven

when there is so much stuff to do you count the days for vacation, while having time off you have to go on holiday to avoid the stress fall-off or boredom when you are home. when we are exhausted and need some days of we usually go to known places. it is funny, you one again end up in a routine, like an everyday life within your holidays.


‘de grijze boom’ or tree of cognition as we still call it has become something like a reliable friend. we cannot go to zeeland without visiting him. and as you can see, my relation has changed. I am still fascinated but I’m more distant and respectful. I feel a little ashamed of hanging on it like a monkey, what was I thinking? I guess we all do and say things in our youth we dismiss when getting older. we should be aware of this fact in discussions and the use of political correctness. we can learn from discussions, and in this context, a tiny fence is a great device to add a thought to your mind. even if the term ‘tree of cognition’ was meant in a funny way, it actually brings cognition: routine evokes a safety feeling, your thoughts and actions change over time, and time passes on anyway.


as you walk along the beach, you discover jellyfish and pick up shells. sometimes you even pick up plastic rubbish as cannot stand it to just ignore it. we already had this experience back in 2018, see 2018-11-06 plastic fantastic: welcome to the age of post future | entry by sven. you pick up one piece and then you cannot stop anymore. this time it was a kind of funny. next to smaller plastic pieces we have also found a plastic bag in which we could collect and discharge all the rubbish. you may read this as irony but I thought that the answer might be within the problem. I do not know what this may mean apart from this meta level, but it may be a thought worth thinking…


when you are on holiday, everyone is hoping for great weather. and this is everything everybody talks about, saying you had been luck with the weather meaning sunshine. after a summer which had been much too try (following a summer which brought up a flood disaster) I was wondering what great weather is all about??? when we did our beach walks and took a break in a beach pavilion, it started to rain a little. as we could not leave, sitting outside, try, equipped with chocolate milk and apple pie, I realized that this was the most relaxing moment. a lack of options with the luck of gastronomy, slowed down by a grey sky and raindrops, just like our rainy day once in veere.


I love to sit outside in a café in dombug and watch the people rush by. when I saw a woman ordering a pizza with a lot of seafood I knew I had to do it by myself. this time was the time, as you can see. of course I had to think about the fishing issues Isabella rossellini told in her ‘green porno’, certain food appears unethical, and I am feeling post-humanistic anyway, so I am working on this issue.



I had already reported about the joy of having a drink at the promenade, well, this time we were more in the beach pavilion watching the sea at dusk. nothing´s better.


of course we had to check the vleeshal, a great exhibition space in middleburg. alice slyngstad´s solo show captured our attention for using video and technical devices, but we appeared to be a little disappointed. the show is impressive from a technical point of view by using perfectly synced light and sound as well as magic glass while the video and sound were only displaying fragments of meaningless online chat conversations. so the whole thing appeared in a way we know from post-internet artists. up-to-date technology exploring whatever content.


the de pont musem in tilbug has become one of our favourite museums, so we decided to visit the ragnar kjartansson show. it features artworks in different disciplines among impressive video works. for ‘a lot of sorrow’ he asked to the band ‘the national’ to perform their song ‘sorrow’ over and over again over a span of six hours. it plays on melancholy of course, it also explores changes in repetition and tiredness. I like the idea of using music in an exhibition context. but you always feel that music is more powerful than the fine art, it hooks you somewhere else and pulls you in. music is always magic.


in ‘no tomorrow’ you are surrounded by six screens capturing the complex performance of eight female performers dancing, stringing guitars and sometimes singing. the impressive performance mixes up movement and music, after a while you cannot say what is what but you realize that you move yourself while the dancers walk around you. a strange piece at first sight, a convincing and touching one after watching in full. but I was wondering all the time: where do you find eight of these enormously skilled women? and: this show was full of guitars, I cannot remember seeing a show having less guitars. is this a sign? yes, for me it is!


also I have to add an anecdote of a close encounter. the de pont museum also shows an endless row of 1000 porcelain salt and pepper shakers, labelled as guild and fear, fragmented by different chambers. next to the letters, the porcelain shakers also featured decorative blue rectangles. In one of these rectangles we found a spider, perfectly placed in the middle of the blue line of the rectangle, legs in pairs forming an ‘x’. I was wondering, what this artistic decision might mean. I left without any good idea for interpretation and we moved on to the other works. we returned to check the shakers later again and to our surprise, the sider was gone. we checked the room with dumb faces, the spider was not part of the artwork, it was a living and uninvited resident choosing the place to rest on its own. the big brown spider kept in my mind an I realized that I have already read about it. it seems to be the climate change based zoropsis spinimana (in germany known as nosferatu spider). it might be impressively big but not more dangerous than a wasp. go to the museum, here you can learn something about the world and yourself, also you can make new friends. (picture by rankingranqueen via wikipedia)


fortunately we returned from the netherlands a day before the anyway pub had scheduled an new jam session. it was great to see the jammers from last time and it was great to jam again. it has been wild, I even passed on my white strat for two songs and we rocked a lot. there is even a vague idea of a band again. it is amazing what can happen sometimes, there is so much in the pipeline. cross your fingers.




update 2022-10-25: last sunday we have closed my solo show ‘needle in the multiverse’ at kunstwerden with an artist talk. I am happy with the response, with the talk, my connection to kunstwerden, and the show itself. after three years of drafting and discussing, the show was exactly what I wanted to be, so this is my thank you to petra steinhart and the kunstwerden team, and also to friends and supporters.
closing this show is special to me, I was constantly running shows for a decade now, recently there is nothing in the pipeline. I cannot quit being an artist, but is the next art show the right step? I will do shows in the future of course, but I am heading for projects, which appear to be more different. I am struggling with the scene for long now (who is not) and I want to do projects giving control and fun.


update 2022-10-25: here you see a funny snapshot of me surrounded by artist and friend matthias danberg and ex-student and friend christopher terhart a.k.a. monkelmann. I have collaborated with both of them already and I can tell that I am working with both on new collaborative material. it is too soon to say more, but something will be coming up definitely. be prepared!




sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2022-09-11 – 2022-10-23
opening 2022-09-11, 4 pm

facebook event

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-09-27 summer reflections: froho jams and hang outs | entry by sven

I have been pretty busy in different projects I am trying bring to an end recently. however I wanted to put out a new blog post earlier but I did not find any time to do so. however, as I have been scrolling through my journal I was stunned to realize that there have been so many great dates in summer 2022. I was happy to be part of something, to play at festivals and do art shows, but it was also great to spend time with friends and even hang out with people I know on frohnhausen´s market place. as it is autumn already, I try to remember the vibes of summer, the easiness in going wherever I wanted to meet people or even not. I guess I am pretty happy with the region I am in.
however, it was easy to have a good time and to return with inspiration. there are even events I need to place more prominent.


as reported before I spent a day in the gruga with dietmar to do some analogue photography. we have already gotten the high quality scans and I did some editing but did not put it into the online portfolio so far. dietmar has also used a black-and-white film and did this picture of me next to my favourite sculpture. this picture is somehow a snapshot, but somehow staged, showing me at one of my favourite places illustrating what I am into: making and enjoying pictures and music.
having this photographers session with dietmar was great, he is light-years more skilled in analogue photography than I ever was and we have a quite different approach to objects and landscapes. we need to do this again, analogue in the sunshine.
dietmar showed up for my kunstwerden solo show and handed over a print of the photograph. I will have to frame it and put it on the wall…


next to art, music and guitars, dietmar and me discuss the issue of digitalization very critically, we actually agree in our criticism, which we consider as non grata within the discourse. a digital device cannot be the solution to every problem, especially not for a generation growing up without any distance (or alternative) to their little rectangular mate which claims to be a friend but turns out as a an abuser. however, illustrating our discussions dietmar sent this picture he has taken in oberhausen. well, as I do not believe that great ideas are presented via graffiti, I believe there is a value in this thought. maybe all the omnipresent media have infiltrated the host in the way a virus would do. and like in the pandemic discussion we have to ask if this is a problem or not. the virus is a serious thing, no doubt. but what about the media?


we went to the ‘white nights’ to see dominik eulenberg (I have already reported) and returned a few days later to see ‘die frau aus dem meer’ to be staged in the middle of the tiny lake of the raffelberg park. as the actress playing the woman from the sea could not play because of sickness, a video recording of a past play was screened parallel to the live action taking place. what came up as kludge turned out to work unexpectedly great and added a strange layer of magic to it. unfortunately the play did not catch us, some research afterwards revealed that we got the point but we remain with too many question marks. however, a great ensemble and a great staging!


the ‘white nighs’ skipped the outside artworks for more monitors with videos. we were thrilled by isabella rosellini´s ‘green porno’ illustrating the sexlife of different creatures in michel gondry aesthetics. I heard about this series before, but it is way more fun to watch it in a park instead of youtube. and yes, you will be confronted with the consequences of enjoying certain seafood. my post-humanistic superego is already vegetarian, why am I still addicted to eating animals?


I went to the alumni meeting of my former high-school in gelsenkirchen where I have graduated. It actually turned out to a pretty lame event as there was just a beer sale and some barbecue and no familiar faces or ex-teachers (like in 2008 when I assembled the meeting). funnily enough, I met a mate from the past, we wrote via instagram, he claims to remember me but I remember nothing but his name. we had a good chat but I guess I will skip the next alumni meeting. in the end it is just an opportunity to realize that you´re old. while I was looking for a place to park my car I found it some streets away from the school so I had to walk through the rain along my old church. in may I reported that it is supposed to be demolished to be replaced by a gymnasium. as I came closer and the rain vanished a rainbow appeared over the tower. it was like heaven say that it is okay. however, to me it still feels wrong.


here is another stunning episode: the anyway posted a date for a jam session. I was curious but my day was already full of stuff I had to care for and I experienced some jams as pretty stupid when singing collectives show up to present cover versions or the resident band simply plays their songs. however, managed to show up on time, bringing my new white strat (finally playable but not yet completely finished) and the line6 pod. well, the rest was super easy. all musicians showing up are a little bit insecure, open-minded and willing to do something together. we really rocked a lot on improvised riffs, sometimes even improvised vocals with the audience applauding our jammed songs. it was so thrilling and joyful that I want to do it again. I do not know if I want to found a live band again, but recording songs and playing jams appears to be a great opportunity. I want to some more jams in the next months or ‘selected shredding gigs’, see www.recordoftides.com.
I realized that it must have been over a decade that I played guitar in front of an audience (or people hanging out at the same pub as I do) but I feel that I still can do it and should do it. set your schedules: october 13, live jam session, anyway. seeya!


last sunday I did a blues jam session in bottrop. it was strange to play blues songs I do not even know myself and wait for the solo spot. doing a jam without any given song brings a lot more dynamics into it, also some more euphoria. however, this is susie and me on stage for the first time in a decade.



the record of tides av shows will also go on. playing three times in gelsenkirchen was good and enough, I will probably go on in 2023, hopefully. I am preparing stuff and want to bring my idm post hip hop style to the next level.


also I am very happy that we could finally open my solo show at kunstwerden. it was a great opening, a great speech, and simply a good day with great people. I´ll be there for the artist talk on october 23, but I will hopefully show up and hang out on a friday night for the opening times. seeya!


and here is a picture I took of a hornet enjoying an apple in my garden during the last summer days. we are all friends here.


we returned to bredevoort schittert, the annual illumination event in the dutch village. at first we had a burger in a restaurant next to a carp pond and then we discovered the world exhibited as illuminated installation, classically in the rain. as usually, some stuff is strange, to which part of the world do (disney´s) pirates represent, and which animals do actually live in the jungle (and where is this jungle?) however, I liked this collection of lampshades, I want to have it in my garden!


and this is me at the golden gate bridge. well, not the real one of course, you can tell by the rain.


the colosseum was probably the the largest piece, illuminated and escorted by sound, well actually the most annoying techno you can think of, with it´s bass droning all over the village. I don´t know why the dutch are into hardcore techno but it is reliable that there is no bredevoort schittert without bad techno, smurf techno, if you are lucky.


later we decided to leave before the final fireworks. we expected a traffic jam and chaos afterwards so we thought to leave before everybody else will do (but we are people not leaving the cinema before the end credits have completely rolled by). as we were leaving we thought it would be great to walk away without turning around to watch it like a movie action hero would do to look cool. well, of course we turned around, but the picture proves we did not!


update 2022-10-03: it is great to have a long weekend with no dates, there is still enough to do at home. however, I thought it would be a great idea to visit the presentation of master works at the sanaa building on zollverein. we knew about it du a very odd report on local tv, well we had to check it ourselves. students often pick an issues they try to fix by a well designed product. actually, their view on the world and its problems is often coined by a lot od nativity or based upon their own juvenile issues. it is something I can witness with my students, young ‘adults’ with all these technologies to inform and produce often are completely lost. (‘lost’ is obviously a common word among juveniles). is it a trend based upon corona restrictions, digitalization or my own aging? perspective never makes it objective…
however, julia souza de almeida presents a collection of cups, 3d-printed in clay, a declination of shapes upon a simple base: a cup. I like the idea of improvisation upon a standard, you may come our somewhere at a certain point – she does, it works.


update 2022-10-03: we also checked the second floor, same here. I was caught by neslihan dogan´s video piece consisting of two screens and sound. as the abstract projections on the girl´s faces change synced to the sound, you get pulled into the abstract dialogue. I cannot follow the texts explaining deeper psychological meanings, but I enjoy the strong aesthetics here.
by irritating labelling we missed to check the fist floor, but it feels okay, this afternoon was coined by running into dead ends. just keep the high spirits!




sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2022-09-11 – 2022-10-23
opening 2022-09-11, 4 pm

facebook event

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-08-24 fin de semaine electronique | entry by sven

this has been a remarkable weekend, actually an electronic weekend. after postponing the szeniale because of the covid pandemic and working for about two years on it finally took place last saturday. I was finally able to play the record of tides set. after much practicing and preparing I was able to play a good gig, I am pretty happy with the result. even if the set-up contained a lot of (still on time) improvisation, the whole thing looked good, the way it was supposed to be.
playing live (especially in gelsenkirchen) leaves me with mixed feelings, however, I have managed to also have a good time when playing on a festival. so I am pretty happy with the result, it looks and sounds the way I want it to, but it also feels ‘enough’ or somehow finished. I think I could change it towards a post rock show in the future and maybe play somewhere else. so why would I come up with a french headline while not speaking it? well, because of me performing and seeing dominik eulberg live I would call it the electric weekend. translating it into french makes it sound like ‘fin de siècle’ which is marking an era but also the end of it. maybe it was defining something, and maybe it is over. I do not know yet.
however, I am thankful for a lot of support and documentation by a bunch of lovely people around. I am still getting pictures and video snippets which I am transforming into material for the record of tides website and hopefully for youtube. so once again, a big thank you to marion neunzig, laura haurand, sandra kunce-haurand, sandra borbe and grisho schlüsi. I will come up with a digital thank-you-bundle. recently, there are some tracks in the making, but I will focus on an upcoming compilation album as well on a soundtrack for an experimental movie. matthias danberg and me are working on audio visual material for an unreleased album. also, my on/off project called architects of utter destruction needs a second album and the song writing process is a long one… additionally, there is still a primal scapes album in the making… let´s have a closer look on the past weekend.


marion neunzig joined my gig at consol in summer 2021. by taking and posting some pictures we got into contact and I have invented her to performances afterwards. fortunately, she was able to join this time and took some remarkable pictures. above you can see some impressions from the gig, more soon.



my friend and collegue sandra borbe has turned out to be a big supporter by taking pictures (and partying afterwards) at szeniale 2019, frühlingserwachen and this szeniale. she has delivered some remarkable videos (from the instagram live stream) and pictures, not only from the gig, also from the fooling around afterwards.



playing in church is not new for me, even if it is strange that this happed to me again. the great thing about a church is that people behave differently than in a club and I like it. so this was more a concert or performance than a dj making people dance. a church is a great place to perform.


sandra kunce-haurand contributed to the szeniale as visual artist, presenting her large-seized paintings at justizzentrum gelsenkirchen. declining colour and material in a fixed composition her abstract approach still evokes the idea of a landscape. here you see a shot of us in exhibition, somehow reminding of the guggenheim museum shot by laura haurand. fun fact: sandra and me made the last party selfie before the lockdown in 2020 at the kulturempfang see 2020-01-30 beyond the visible: genius in context [update 2020-02-08] | entry by sven.


what´s going on here? ‘mensplaining’ deluxe? well, next to art, we talked about the festival and other artists and shared some entertaining anecdotes. we discovered that some contributors turned out to be way more entertaining by their absence.
by the way, my favourite piece is the one pictured left, I was thinking of andreas gursky, what do you think?


some more electric weekend. the white nights have returned to the raffelbergpark behind and created by the theatre an der ruhr as gated festival again. the festival once again comes up with a ‘back to nature’ topic and a focus on electronic music (while ignoring me, but I do not care anymore). dominik eulberg apperad as the perfect artist to perform here while merging lectures on nature and techno. he reported on some miscommunication concerning his playing time and if he was doing a lecture or dj set, however he did a little bit of everything choosing the longer play time, which makes him a very nice guy. eulberg pressed play and just talks about birds, ants and the woods, inspiration from nature how stupid we are in abusing it.


as the dusk gets darker and the visuals became more visible he turned to just playing the techno set. eulberg turns out to be a likeable guy, telling anecdotes, signing records and taking pictures with fans. the audio and visual material is great, but we are not really into techno. i reported about being a little disappointed from last years performances by ätna (playing techno instead of their unique sound) and pantha du prince (playing acoustic drone and no techno). eulberg delivers what he stands for, so we got what we wanted. I am turned into a techno fan now, but eulberg´s approach and nonchalant performance made and impression and gained some fascination.



some days ago we watched wildes holz at freilichtbühne mülheim. michi has a strong fascination for this trio which is mainly based upon the sound of a recorder (wood flute). the group consists of three outstanding musicians able to mash up brahms and abba while performing a perfect choreography parenthetically. whenever you have a chance to see this group you should not miss it.


today I am dealing with another long-term project. making my (last?) solo show happen at kunstwerden. when preparations take too long the genuine idea loses thrill. cross your fingers.


update 2022-09-01: we contributed to the hoftrödel in the heimaterde once again. we are pretty busy these days so our presentation was pretty improvised. however, I have finally sold my mini p.a. which have bought on a flea marked myself while michi´s bicycle attracted many interested people who could not agree to our price. I have alreay spent my earned money on second hand vinyl from the heimaterde. however, dj kent granyon will probably buy by my disliked mint vinyls…


update 2022-09-01: I went to kronenburg again to work on the future of educating teachers. as usually it was very exhausting, when I came home after two days, I felt tired, physically and mentally, feeling almost sick. when you are forced to behave professionally and working on a certain topic over a certain time you start forgetting what you usually deal with, and maybe who you are actually. I guess this is where all the workaholic zombies come from. I mean it is not work to be done, but work that emerges through working without ever generating a useful product. after a while you cannot think out of the box anymore, killing every spark of inspiration. however, we might be on a way.




sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2022-09-11 – 2022-10-23
opening 2022-09-11, 4 pm

facebook event

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-08-10 jumping through every given loop (cats & dogs) | entry by sven

the summer break is almost over, I’m am quite relaxed and running out of structure. one part of me is happy for some structure again, an other is dismissing any given dates. however, it is all about balance again. I am always trying to do less (and yes, I do it in the fair way as I am losing money), so I hope I´ll have more time for the loved ones, also to make music and doing nothing in order to get an idea of what to do.
to cut a long story short, I do not want to jump through every given loop, there is no need to do it anymore and the regrets are much bigger than any other conflict. to keep this image: I have decided that I have spend my first half of my professional carrier as a dog (loyal, love seeking and confirming) and I have decided that it would be better to proceed as cat (aloof, determining and sometimes lazy). well, I should coach people and work as psychotherapist, our fist session will take place in the zoo. however, here I am just looking back on some summer episodes worth mentioning.


dietmar came up with the idea to spend a day taking pictures on analogue film again (or ‘pulling through a film’ as I would say). I thought it could be a great idea but I did not really have an idea what would turn out. so I mounted my old nikon fm2 again and dietmar came up with a film for me which was not expired. we had a great day in the gruga, the light at sunset is perfect. we received the pictures as high definition scans to go on working with them. and so I did already…
it is amazing, the look is different to what I usually do and I can realize my way if taking pictures is truly coined by the digital medium. however, this is somehow experimental, but it delivers colours and bokeh that you cannot fake digitally. analogue photography is obviously not a question of nostalgia, it is a completely different medium.



you might remember me reporting about buying a 1994 50ies stlye strat from dietmar. as it has been modified over the years I was modifying it some more to get close to the construction and wiring as it was in the fifties. it took three guitar technicians again (and it is hard to find a good one) to make it finally playable. I ended up at beyer´s music again, a place I have frequented even more often during my younger days. their technician turned out to be brilliant: calm, friendly, with an idea what to do and knowing all the voodoo you need to know before turning the screws. the door´s grip is an old white strat, heavily decayed by the weather, I feared that this could be the future of my start but this gate led into solution. ready for some new songs? …itm.



my visit of a queen concert added a new layer to my reverence of brian may. I listen to the music again I have discovered 30 years ago and I hear different stuff today. I decided to clean up my brian may guitar which have neglected over the years, even if it somehow was the blueprint for susie. as it is not branded, I assumed it not to be very worthy. there are may companies with many copies out there, but I suppose that my ‘old lady’ was build by greco. as I checked it on the reverb website, I had to realize that it actually has a value. after cleaning and restringing I have added a sixpence to its head, in the way brian has it on his guitar (and as susie is wearing a 50-pfenning-coin for years now).


as we have many broken laptops lying around we got an adapter to save all the data stored on the small harddisks. In my case, there was nothing I had not saved on other devices, but it brought back all the digital kunstrasen magazines with my contribution. so this seemed to be the solution to bring back old data from an old pc which does not boot anymore for years. I ordered the false adapter in the first place but I hope for a fitting one to come up. I really hope to find data concerning the dissident(en) club, artwork, photos and demos. this would be the last attempt for this project. cross your fingers.




update 2022-08-15: embrace your past, age of ultimo: it must have started with a fan´s request to bring back the old sven songs, so I started to bring back digitalize a lot of music which was partly only stored on compact discs. it is a matter of time that compact discs refuse to play properly when they are old enough and it must be a matter of time that I have become sentimental about it. I know it was not made forever, but I want to take care of my work. I have become a little obsessed with bringing up everything to zany music, sometimes downloadable, sometimes just listed. after checking the old laptop harddisks for treasures I have invested some money in (sometimes wrong) adapters to find treasures on my older harddisks. the whole enterprise turned out to be quite disappointing, as one harddrive is not working anymore while the other one only has two dissident(en) club demo recordings to offer. I was hoping for another song I remember, with heavy guitar riffing and a strange rhythm. I remember me drumming on a pillow, so we could replace the amplitudes by snare samples. however, I did not find this track and according to herpes all the material we´ve recorded for our third album is gone. nevertheless, one of the forgotten and rediscovered songs is ‘ich trage wieder schwarz’ which is based upon a riff which was later used in ‘body and soul’ by the flamma piayda complex. insider fact: there will also be a ‘collected riffing works’ version by record of tides one day.
however, I do not want the material to get lost. I liked what we did back in the day, we had a good time. I still think that we were talented and weird enough to start a bigger carrier, but I am glad it did not happen as I am not made for a life on the road. not every piece of our music was brilliant, we did not turn out as great live band but we played many gigs and always did great shows making our point and leaving an impression.
I have digitalized the material (two albums, a single and two live recordings) some time ago successfully; unfortunately the great artwork is only available as tiny bitmap. it would be possible to rerelease the albums digitally, but who would be interested in it anymore? plus, like my solo albums they are bound to their time and medium concerning all the bonus and hidden tracks. the albums exist as releases on my harddisk but it would not make sense to put it out.
as the end of our band was dishonourable (at first holy left and could not be replaced appropriately and then I lost touch with herpes) I always thought there should be some better ending. after all arguing and moving on to other projects we could look back and be proud on what we did.
I was annoyed of the missing artwork and some tracks that never worked for me so I sat down to create my own ‘greatest hits’ album. we would have chosen a title which would work in german and englisch, also it would tell that it is the end. so I assembled the tracks (in their best version) I still love after all these years plus some unreleased, bonus and b-sides to create a worth closing to an important chapter. will it ever be released? I do not know yet. I believe that I have something worth sharing here but I would not like to act against the will of my former band mates. this is also their material as it is mine. a rerelease would be digitally only and non-commercial, of course. I could think of a download on demand release or a distribution via archive.org.

this is my tracklist:

01 Transatlantic flight
02 Ich trage wieder schwarz
03 Licht auf unserer Seite
04 Sonne (Single Version)
05 Komm mit (Free) (Remastered)
06 Big Bang
07 Glamourshow mit Tanz
08 Underground Soundtrack
09 Eis sein
10 Idiotentanz
11 Nebellied
12 Antje
13 Alles (für die Katz)
14 Wenn du gehst...
15 Ende offen

so this there is no release date, nothings planned, I just did it for myself. we can dream, of course, and you can tell me what you think!


szeniale returns next week. I am excited about it. I am often disappointed when the audience is not large and open-minded, but I know that it was me choosing sound apart from mainstream. it might be a great gig, I am in preparations. cross your fingers and show up!


update 2022-08-12: preparing the szeniale gig is fun. I am always very engaged while always thinking I should quit doing it. however, the stuff I have prepared this time is pretty amazing, chaotic and universal, synths and samples, generative and controlled. fun fact, some of the devices must be over twenty years old and are literally falling apart. I am going to use them until the end. In times of digitalism this might be a way to create contemporary stuff without hunting for the next update or new device. let´s see if it turns out to be working live. see you on saturday, well have a great time.


update 2022-08-12: the police has installed a mobile but obviously remaining speed camera in front of my house. this is a pretty good idea as people are racing up and down the road while the plates tell to drive 30 km/h. we are often astounded by the driver´s ignorance. not only because out cat tobi was killed on this road in 2016, we fear for all the other cats and beings around to get harmed on the road. ironically I use to say that a dead cat brings 30 points, a child full blown 100. I am not free of behind the steering wheel, but I try. well, you´ll get pissed if you see the same shit every day. however, motorcycle riders stop and take pictures of it, people warn for the speed camera in facebook groups. will it be less effective? well, it is not taking pictures anyway... i keep watching the cars racing by and it feels like a bad joke.


update 2022-08-12: after doing the hoftrödel in the heimaterde in 2018 and 2019 (see above) michi decided to join it again, I will not find the time to add something as there is a lot for me to do recently. but anyway, this will be the opportunity to hang out in lovely fulerum county and have a beer with your friends and neighbour in front of the house. the third heimaterde hoftrödel will take place on august 27, 2022. come around!

check the map!



update 2022-08-12: the white nights will also return to raffelbergpark in 2022. once again you´ll need to buy tickets and once again everything is focussed on nature. our visits of the plays, concerts, performances talks and installations are well documented in (2021-08-18 white nights 2021: into the trees (with aftertaste) | entry by sven) we need to see dominik eulberg this year on august 21. next to nature, the festival is somehow into techno. still I do not know why they have never booked me and I sometimes wonder who is booked. I am busy with the szeniale gig anyway and I am somehow happy, when it is done. however, we´ll have a look.


update 2022-08-12: as an artist displaying and working with different production methods I am recently playing around with image generators using artificial intelligence. the results are stunning and can be proceeded. this is not the first time I use a.i., you might remember ‘a.i. dreaming’ from 2018. It will be part of the ‘multiverse memory’ to be exhibited in the ‘needle in the multiverse’ solo show. more soon. above you see trevor paglens very inspiring a.i. generated works I was delighted to se in the frankfurter kunstverein in 2018. the question remains: what do we see (or learn) while watching an image?



sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2022-09-11 – 2022-10-23
opening 2022-09-11, 4 pm

facebook event

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event



questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-07-29 for the museum hat trick: arken and ordrupgaard | entry by sven

how to spend your holidays properly? visit big cities and go shopping or lay down at the beach and get drunk before 4 pm? well, I know this might be strange but we just love to check out the museums and it has never been disappointing. of course, this is relaxing but also filling you with impressions you have to put in order afterward. well, one of the ways doing it is this blog.

after spending a marvellous day in the lousiana musem of modern art we went to arken. located at a beautiful and flat spot near the sea, the building might remind you of an old ship (or wreck). you enter through the gift shop which offers a lot (I just got a kaleidoscope). the building avoids right angles but offers a lot of surprising twists and links.


the first hall offers a modern icon. two half cows in formaldehyde tanks by damien hirst. this is a contemporary classic or standard, economically successful and therefore leading to a variation of beings in tanks among pigs, sheep, sharks… a unicorn…. whatever. when I came closer I realized that I have never seen one of these tanks in real life. I cannot say that I have ever been a fan, but his work is remarkable and made an impression on me. especially as a student I his work has truly influenced me. in 2020 I checked the old stuff stored in my studio and rediscovered my own approach to a ‘last supper’ series, my ‘cadaver’ and ‘statuary’ series is mainly inspired by andres serrano, but I think you can see some hirst in as well.



you can be critic of course. is it okay to use an animal like this? but what would be an appropriate usage? standing next to the half cow leads you into thinking (not about animal rights but about life and death in general), and this is what hirst wants you to do (even if it also appears ungraceful in context of many other works.) however, the cow is not stuffed, you can see every single hair, it appears vivid in a way – and then you turn around and see the inside: bones, lungs… oh, the filet! once again I met a an artwork which serves as pop star itself, which is probably made to as it is strange and offensive enough to do so. however, we were discussing to become vegetarian again. I am already with one foot deep post-humanism, so why is it so difficult to go the next step?


the arken also offered a room with anselm reyle works. he appears again and again in my perception. I like him for being critic about the art scene but I do not get his works. well, the wagon wheel with changing lights was fun.


the museum also featured a show concerning women in art, also on the question on being underrepresented as creators and being declassified as (sexual) objects in works. this is a complex topic I would not dare to discuss here but there was one position really striking my mind. bolette berg and marie hoeg have been working as photographers at the end of the 19th century. their heritage contained a box labelled as private with a bunch of pictures taken, obviously unreleased and obviously just for fun. here the two female photographers stage themselves as boy, man, bear or smoking in a boat. these pictures must be a hundred years old, these still look beautiful and fresh but they teach you one thing: a lot of discussion and finding on diversity is a lot older than often realized.


and here the two women used the medium to capture some playful thoughts for the time afterwards. here the age of (post-) postmodernism comes in. we already know, that there is nothing new left and these women even have the medium to proof it for us. it is the conserving medium which enhances our post-modernistic world. it should be relaxing and calming every discussion we´re in. it is not new, we have seen it before, find out what we already have and then consider if you still feel like starting a revolution. I felt like neo meeting the architect in matrix. so what do bolette berg and marie hoeg teach you, apart from making great photographs?




and here is another beautiful picture michaela has taken showing me enjoying the arken museum. art next to the sea is always great, don´t you think?


the sculptures were places in the beautiful landscape around the museum. jeppe hein loves to place mirrors everywhere making me feel like a canary bird.


the lanterns appeared in many spots, this is me trying to look like someone getting nothing, checking the phone while it is actually happening around you.


on our last day of the trip (and in the echo of seeing brian may live) we just wanted to visit a sculpture park nearby. well, when you go to a museum in denmark you will probably avoid the term ‘just’. the ordrupgaard museum appeared much larger then expected and surprised with just another hall after the exhibition hall. the started with a solo show on peter hansen. as we are not so much into classic stuff, this painter is a fantastic surprise for us. hansen paints the people around him, always in movement, busy, playing, doing something. the best ones to me were the two paintings shown above: assistants working on frames for his paintings. how meta is that?


yet another hall: perfect space, light , staging, some big names and great works.


when there is too much great stuff floating into your mind I sometimes start to fool around. I do not like to walk through an exhibition making fun about it, everything was too good. but sometimes even old masters perfectly serve as memes. once I found this painting in a show on rembrandt (‘I have finally managed to install facebook on my laptop as well as on my phone!’). now I had to add a subtitle to this one by l.a.ring: ‘grand moff tarkin considering to build a death star while spending the winter in his house on dagobah, seven years before the battle of yavin (alt: in whitstable, 1893).’


the sculpture garden was the original reason for our attempt to go there: doug & mike starn have installed the ‘big bambu’, a walkable sculpture/installation only made from bamboo and tether. this is the playground for kids of all ages. the plate said ‘no more than 15 people’ but we were obviously the only one reading it. we checked out the other works first and returned when everything was less to crowded. a fantastic piece, you cannot believe that it is stable on the one hand, and you trust it on the other. the way leads you to and down but you have to go to the top anyway.


the picture above shows an infantile me but does not capture the construction properly, you may like to watch this short movie clip on ‘geometry of innocence’.


this ring is a piece by olafur eliasson which is originally creating steam to walk through. well, we did not have the steam but I felt like walking through one of my own pictures.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-07-26 copenhagen vs. lousiana (and back to gentofte) | entry by sven

our trip to denmark was caused by getting tickets for queen + adam lambert in copenhagen (clologne was sold out already) and it was postponed two times as the tour was postponed two times because of the pandemic. 2022 was supposed to be the year when we took the 850 km trip by car (other options did not turn out to be useful in the end). out first visit made us come to copenhagen which turned out to be disappointing. it is an impressive and beautiful city but we were quite annoyed by the masses of visitors and did not feel right there. actually, we did not really know where to go and what would make the city so special, so we went to touristic spots, of course.


the little mermaid is a pop star. there seems to be no minute when the sculpture is not surrounded by a crowd taking pictures or selfies. I like the idea of an artwork being so popular, especially when it is so beautiful. I heard that people were disappointed because she would be so small, actually she is life-sized. however, this is not about art but a simple tourist tradition. so this must be one of the things to do here.



I always wanted to go to christiania, I do not know what I have expected. the district in the middle of the city was supposed to be a magic place but it turned out to be yet another tourist hotspot with lots of stoned people within. in an inner circle (with not photographs allowed) the dealers were creaming at you trying to sell weed. as I am no customer, this was definitely the wrong spot for me. we might have missed the cool spot, but it turned out quite disappointing.


we visited the lousiana musem of modern art, a place michaela has been talking about for decades, now we finally made it. the museum is beautifully placed next to sea, the buildings are assembled like a ring around the beach view and sculpture garden. the totally asymmetrical architecture made loose orientation immediately on the inside, it felt big and it was. we started with a great sculpture by mariko mori, twisting your reflection while being impressive just because of it´s size and shape.


there are numerous rooms with great works and big names, there is no possibility to capture the quantity and quality of this collection. this picture is just an example making me meet louise bourgeois´ spider, yet another pop star artwork which also had a cameo in denis villeneuve´s fantastic ‘enemy’ movie.



it is impossible to capture the architecture photographically for me. even the plain rooms are magic. however, michaela found the perfect room for sea gazing, there you go.



alex da corte offered a large solo show. is this still post internet or neo pop art? once again I do not know if I like it but it makes an impression. he uses multiple disciplines to actually offer an immersive show mashing up pop and sub culture, horror and humour to create a show full of irony. his well looks like the one I wanted to do as wishing well. and it is amazing: it only takes a giant witch hat to send me back to the wizard of oz. however, the pop star here was a blue bibo in a giant mobile.


the sculpture garden has a lot to offer. I am of course struck by alicja kwade´s planets made of marble spheres.


this was a surprise, three scuptures in the same corner wich made me realize their siblings in gelsenkirchen: the hovering stone, the kinetic sculpture and the geometric marble coming of pale stone. this appears quite depressing to me as it illustrates the short time period when there was money in my birth town. it must have been in the early seventies, so they bought sculptures like these. (well, of course, gereon krebber´s ‘blobster’ has become the sculptural pop star for me. this is just one of a few remarkable works that were added afterwards.)


when we went home, we wanted to check the coast for having a fish and a bear at the beach. we did not find a set up we know form the netherlands but something else: a food hall with randomly assembled tables, chairs and couches surrounded by food options. it ended outside with much too much fish and fries.




our apartment in gentofte was great. we did not have a kitchen, a strange bath set up and a balcony. I really liked this one. as we could not spend the evenings at the beach promenade, it was fun to sit on the balcony with snacks and a beer watching the people at the pizzeria and the hotel on the other side of the street. nothing special was happening, everything appeared to be very peaceful but it was better than tv and very calming. recommended.



it has become a running gag that we end up in rooms with very strange toilet set-ups. I reported about the glass door chamber in a hotel in belgium in 2015 and the open cloakroom in biggekerke in 2019. this one is another variation: the bath (or toilet) room is again only separated via glass door, but it is even more remarkable that there is no hallway, the apartment’s screen door opens directly to the toilet. (we called it the ‘klo-ridor’) this is very helpful if you come home in big need, or if you accept a parcel while making a poo. isn’t it a surreal idea to enter and leave the apartment through the bathroom? especially for guests!? it might have reminded me of bender´s apartment in futurama, but even he had the cloakroom somewhere else. however, no need to complain, we had too much fun with it.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-07-23 queen + adam lambert, copenhagen, june 18, 2022 | entry by sven

brian may means a lot to me. this guy has been an inspiration and archetype in so many ways. to me he is a lot more than just a rockstar, he actually is something like a teacher, distant friend or family member. I am a fan for 30 years now (after freddie´s passing, see last paragraph), I started to become fascinated when I was around 14, probably an age that is open for archetypes, sometimes even the false ones. brian may coined me a lot, as musician, but also as human being. I have learned and adapted so much from him like the way in playing guitar, constructing a signature guitar and adapting his wiring/switching, song writing, ping-pong delays even for beats in idm productions, being gentle and clever, honest and ambitioned, ignoring drugs but being interested in so many disciplines and always seeking for new horizons. this list could be longer but it should be enough for now.

even when may means so much for me I have never seen him live. I was never someone visiting big concerts (apart from accidently seeing a michael jackson show, later just heading for daft punk and autechre.) back in 1998 when the brian may band was touring with the ’another world’ album, my friend alec smith asked me to join him attending the show. back in the day I was very worried for my ears and turned down the opportunity, a stupid decision in retrospective. also I did not want to come up as a fan boy, watching brian interacting in social media and big stadiums makes you aware that he means a lot to numerous people. it would be great to have a meet and greet, but what would I supposed to say? I need to accept that he means a lot more to me than I could mean to him, there is an endless number of fans telling him how great he is. I do not want to stand in line with all these fans, I am not different or better than anyone of them, but I have to do it differently. I try to keep the fire burning from the spark that he has set.

when the rhapsody tour was announced michaela pushed me to get some tickets as it might be the last opportunity to see him live. as cologne was already sold out, we got some tickets for the second show in copenhagen. well, this was 2019, then the covid pandemic popped up and the tour was postponed two times, so did our stay in denmark. but we finally made it, all of us.


when the show started I totally paralyzed. you do not get what is happening actually, you feel like watching a movie and cannot believe it happened afterwards. realizing this is really him on stage made me just gaze, I was not clapping, singing or rocking. to be honest I was crying for the first three songs. and realizing brian playing the original solo in ‘hammer to fall’ made me freak out on the inside.



I am not a fan of adam lambert, he is a brilliant singer but the whole staging is a little bit to much for me. nevertheless, he made an impression. it turned out that he was somehow decent giving space for the legends around him. well, it appears to be a ritual he has to do for a decade now, pleasing the audience by telling that he is not freddie and that he is thankful to share the stage with these legends singing these legendary songs.
may is a great singer as well, but he knows that he can perform best as a sideman, so he does.


the production is fantastic, directed masterfully, video mapping, a transforming stage and costumes in style of fin de siècle, live camera mixing live footage with visuals, a mirror ball illuminating the arena for the ‘break free’ solo with brian playing directly under it. even when this ‘band’ is called queen + adam lambert, it somehow turned out to be ‘the brian show’. his silhouette was the first to see, he introduced the band, he played all the classic solos plus a guitar solo part, sang ‘love of my live’ and ‘´39`, interacts in his funny way with the audience, the visuals feature astronomy and he is the last one to leave the stage. this is his show and you can feel that it means much to him. and no one has a problem with it, we all want it this way!
it felt like a cosmic event: this man of 75 years making noises craved by thousands of people in an arena with an instrument he build sixty years ago with his father. this would appear unlikely and even unrealistic in fiction but it is true. what a career and what a life.


the acoustic set is usually the magic part when everyone else is crying. brian alone with a twelve-string surrounded by the audience. it is amazing how he connects and interacts with everyone in the arena so naturally. when he askes you to put o the mobile lights, you just do it, would you ignore a wish from brian? I guess he is ware that he is the perfect sideman for an extrovert performer, so he created this set-up once again. during the acoustic spot, you can whiteness the pure magic of his presence. (plus: the audience singing happy birthday – actually one day to early – was a funny moment. may replied: ‘tomorrow I´ll be 25!’)


even before the show started there have been some drone and some sound check sounds. I have never seen this before, it is somehow magic to see a stadium get crowded and heard sounds of what is coming. by the way, ticketmaster announced in advance via email that it would not be allowed to bring cameras to the show, so I could only take some pictures with my phone delivering half-good results. I did not document too much as I wanted to enjoy the show, youtube is full with snippets. if you want to have a look at the set list with annotations and video links you can do this over here.


this is the proof and first evidence of how it started. i got guitar lessons but I was not into pop or rock music, this was changed by roxette but sustainably by queen. it must have been spring or summer 1992, a redheaded guy called daniel was suddenly new in my class (I guess he did not stay longer than a year…?) he listened to the ‘innuendo’ album on his walkman, the release was actually available on cassette. he was very friendly and borrowed me the tape. I copied it and even did a bi-tone copy of the cover… no worries, I paid for the music afterwards. I bought the album on compact disc, it was expensive back in the day, the album must have been the second album I ever bought. my fascination was great enough to order an even more book with full score and tabulatures of the music. I studied it like science, I was able to play every guitar part, not as good but okay. however, this coined my playing a lot. I really studied may´s playing. plus: did you ever realize the fantastic songs on this album? next to this somehow dark sound they make and cover with a white and colourful artwork, the songs often appear to be strangely structured often leaving classic song structures behind. fantastic and timeless after all these years, truly immortal.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-07-10 will the gate open if I stop shaking it? | entry by sven

I wanted to come up with this blog post a lot earlier but I have spent some days in gelsenkirchen to take care again and did not find the mood and time to fix the lines. now – on the last day of exhibition – I am nailing the issue and add some random anecdotes.
as you might know as long-time journal reader, I have always been fascinated by the kunsthaus essen, back in the day, about 15 years and longer ago (20 years ago?) I did not miss any opening, also as I thought it was the perfect way to start into a friday night or the weekend. (see 2007-01-26 kunsthaus tonight - some art again | entry by sven) it would have been the biggest thing for me to become a part of it. you might call it provincial, but I saw it as a big thing in a big city. so I was naïve enough to believe that they would show interest for me when I demonstrate interest for them, actually I usually faced a lot of ignorance from directors and artists, even when I came up with cataloges and invitations. even when I managed to play at the kunsthaus live with AESTATE back in 2010 it lead to nothing. I really tried to keep in contact to develop future shows and showed interest again, but the demonstrated disinterest was big enough ending up in asking me who I am. I decided to not introduce myself two times to the same person.

this summer offered something totally unexpected, curator denis bury decided on a very simply way of curating: to simply call him and bring the work. so I did on june 18 and installed the piece on the holy wall. today we will close the exhibition and end our collaboration again. (see exhibition documnation)
this is so strange, it would have freaked me out 15 years ago and now it just happens casually. what can I learn from this episode, what can I pass on? will the gate open if I stop shaking it? well, sometimes probably, but can wait for 15 years? and will it happen after 15 years? I guess a story can only be told in retrospective. however, great things happen unexpectedly and reaching a goal is never as exciting as going for it. enough phrase work for now.


june 18 has ben a great day for another reason: the kreischfestival took place once again in small version on the froho market. once again multicoloured chalk was laid out to trigger creativity of kids (of all ages) escorted with live improvised music. I am not part of the community of people coming up with theses events but I truly enjoy them. it is great to have summer in a city, where you can just go to the market, meet people, sit, talk and drink until midnight. this is the urban essence of summer, hang out among people and see what happens.



more hang outs: this time dietmar and me made it to join the parksounds together again after showing up for the first time together in 2018 (see 2018-06-26 park sounds ´18: omjyjya-switch7 in the rain | entry by sven). the sets have been great and sometimes horrible, we caught an okay day. it is like something I could have invented: a public listening event, all you need is summer, music and a meadow. dietmar and me did not leave when the music ended, we talked watching the dusk and left at midnight enjoying the rwe tower and aalto theatre in the dark.


the 20th and 25th abitur anniversaries brought back some more contact to my school mate steffi. she is still the only person I stayed in contact with and we finally made it to meet again. I appreciate that we do not only talk about the good old days, we´re grown-ups now but still with the same sense of humour facing contemporary issues. nevertheless, (we did not talk about) but steffi and me have also collaborated in making music back in the days. I wrote some notes she played on flute, which I sampled analogue into ‘modern world’ and further early record of tides tracks. we even recorded a song demo together, I hope that I can bring it back one day.


I visited matthias in düsseldorf and we spend the afternoon on his terrace. for reasons I cannot explain he was dog sitting a very weird and lovely dog. having around someone you have to take care of can be relaxing, as you do not have to focus on yourself ending up in throwing a ball all day to keep the dog busy. when we walked the dog I almost keeled over. matthias looked like ready for a paparazzi shot as being equipped with a beer, slippers and a dog. as this is the paparazzi picture I want to see of myself we changed roles and there you are. the kids will call it cringe, but could it be more fantastic than walking the dog while being tipsy and not caring about what you might look like?


jan-dirk platek shared this feedback on the track we did together. it is always great when you get feedback, especially when it is great. this particular track has turned out to be fantastic indeed. I remember offering to expand our collaboration in summer, now in summer I would like to wait instead of doing something new. we have set the bar quite high this time. nevertheless, i´d love to collaborate with jan again, but we both know we have to be as good as we were… plus: once again a big thank you to thierry massard for once again posting a brilliant review on my record of tides albums, see collected reviews!


after sharing the funny meme on podcasters I have to add another one: this one compared two production methods and I can say that I still use the first take strategy for my rock music attempts. I could invest in a big computer and DAW (or simply ask michael to produce my stuff) but l like to keep things a little out-dated and unprofessional as I hate to chase the latest version and I love the fresh sound it generates. and yes, I feel too old to set up everything anew. so I´ll stick to the out-dated stuff and hope that people might consider it as my signature sound.



I joinded the rundgang at folkwang essen on the last day possible short before closing. the department has this great new and iconic building with a perfect view on the zollverein buildings… someone passing by said that the house was drafted to be possibly reused as hospital one day, walking through the halls I considered that this would truly make sense. If you have seen some open exhibitions of student’s work you might become a critic over the years, you might also have a general dislike triggered by hype and questionable quality like in the düsseldorf academy.
however, the house and the show was impressive, equipped with traditional and contemporary devices of different disciplines it made me want to study here. the show also appeared very unexcitedly but on a high quality level throughout. I promise to have more time next time, and I need someone to come with me to the rundgang party!


update 2022-07-11: and here is a final picture of the exhibition shortly before demounting it. I had expected more artists to participate, however the result looked great. I hope for future collaborations with denis bury, he appears to be a nice and open-minded guy in a scene of restrictions.

exhibitions section


update 2022-07-12: the writings on the wall at kunsthaus essen. already erased, curator denis bury took a picture of it and asked me how it feels to erase the own name. I hope to present the picture soon and then Ican tell you the answer!




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-06-13 a path into the past, a portal to findings | entry by sven

this weekend was full of puzzled dates mostly around the 25th anniversary of my school exam a.k.a. abitur. my feelings about returning to school and meeting old class mates were controversial, my broken leg in 2017 spared me from a decision on visiting the 20th anniversary. however, this time the anniversary was split into an inspection of old school rooms and a night part which I decided not to join (so I would not have to pretend interest in information I would not like to share about myself), also because michael offered pizza for a party on his ranch.
the meeting brought back only a very few mates, surprisingly everything appeared to be exactly as expected, but for one exception...

later I met another mate at isebergplatz, steffi has been a classmate and on/off friend without losing touch for a long time, she did not make it to the meet-up, but she did five years ago, so it was only fair to flip roles and exchange stories afterwards. unfortunately we did not make a picture, but we promised to return!
the picture above is not me after a very successful diet or one of our former teachers but a plastic model of a human skeleton in a room which used to contain chemicals (and labs?) for the chemicals class. things have changed a lot on the inside.


the big stairway is iconic and for me a symbol of my school. I remember always being afraid of slipping and falling down in the middle of it, I have always expected the tüv to intervene. is this a symbol of my feelings in school, as student, trainee and teacher? in retrospective things look romantic, in reality much was connected with fear of failure. how can I can rid of it?



the art class room: I did not have any lessons in this particular room (I was in the bigger one doing boring stuff) except for this out-of-band lesson I remember being very impressive. I reported about this in the 2021 interview with lynn vitz.

although I have always had an affinity for art, I found much of it pointless and unfunny. the teacher did the lessons on a substitute basis and was uninspiring. art was thus the only subject besides english in which I ever had an ’e’ grade on my certificate. often it was technical exercises or copying styles, content was hardly ever negotiated. interestingly, I remember an unscheduled visit to a lesson by a new teacher, he had a pigtail, which was already extremely wild for a teacher back then. in the lesson he showed a surreal film by dali and analysed it. that had a lasting effect on me: looking at the offside and reading out the intention.

you cannot see it on the picture, but there has been a magic spark.


the changing room is somehow iconic. I wasn´t good in sports, I guess I was okay. however the sports class did not make me want to do more sports, I would say it did not work for me in retrospective. I clearly remember dressing up for sports back in 1994 discussing the passing of kurt cobain. it is pretty strange how random events are connected to certain places.


meeting sebastian was an unexpected surprise, we shared the same community, kindergarten, primary school and graduated together. we used to be friends and enemies, sometimes at the same time. we lost touch twenty years ago, sebastian claims that I made him become a musician, while he is the most skilled visual artist I know inspiring me to become a visual artist after realizing that I do not have to be as good as him to do so.


update 2022-06-15: I received some more pictures. so this is us in the gym, the changing rooms look exactly the same, the gym itself looks way more modernized. and here we are exchanging random anecdotes which are boring for the uninvolved. back in the day we shot a strange movie, mostly improvised and totally nonprofessional ending up in a persiflage on daily talk shows with one of the boys hosting dressed up as woman. awkward and funny, I hope it can get digitalized one day…


update 2022-06-15: the classic view on our school during the breaks. it looks different due renovation, and not only because we blew up the school independence-day-style in the cover of our graduation magazine. however, this is somehow iconic. the next meeting for alumni is scheduled for september 16, 2022. I hope I can be there. embrace you past!


more unexpected meeting up: when I drove home on sunday I did not want to go home as I was up for being somehow surround by other human being enjoying the sun. (this is what cats probably do, to join mates of the species without interacting). I was relaxed enough to stand in line for some ice cream by casal (you need some time) and to make a walk through froho and obligatorily check clowns & pferde gallery. to my surprise gallery head bianca were around to water the plants so we sat down and chatted with a beer. as our interactions are usually quite limited during gallery openings it was great to have some time to discuss issues of professionalism in working for the cultural scene and consequences for mental health. we all have more questions than answers, but it is always helpful to add another point of view. isn´t this what culture is all about?




I like rituals because it gives me the illusion to control time. this is hilarious at first place but it can go worse. I am not into wine but I always wanted to return to the vintage festival since having great food and wine back in the years around 2010. this picture of 2011 (see 2011-05-31 drowsy summer dates | entry by sven) captures the feelings perfectly and was supposed to be the archetype of the night to be re-staged. well, it ended up as bit disappointment, michi did not like it at all, the food was quite bad and I could not get any of my friends or colleagues to go there. the wine was great, but it does not make sense to think it in the wrong place. I am up for new stuff now.


update 2022-06-15: I was so happy when I realized park sounds to return in 2022, my visit yesterday has been quite disappointing. the curated set contained electronic noises apart from repetition or melody, even for someone open-minded like me this was to boring, if there is nothing else to come up. this was the first time I left the set before finishing. however, the view on the rwe tower during a summer sunset is iconic. I imagined it to contain an artificial intelligence playing theses noises made to control the humans by making them feel happy and satisfied. no conspiracy theory needed, just the illusion of perfect peace as computed by a higher artificial being.

new chance today, I´m returning with dietmar and I hope for a better set! ...I have just checked the program, they are playing aphex twin!

theater-essen.de/spielplan/park-sounds-3-115779/6057


here is another funny meme I have to share. as opportunities for showing art and making music are always limited and ambition decreases among the still active artists I have again and again considered making a podcast with matthias danberg. we could still do something connected to art without the effort of making and installing it. like me he is interested but not really euphoric about this issues. ‘natürliche ausrede’ host chris brauks as often encouraged me to start my own podcast but the meme nails it. I am an insecure musician producing stuff not many people want to hear, so would it be a logical consequence to start an audio production with just talking about something? and would I stand to have more success with this format while hoping it could have positive effects for my career in other disciplines? it would actually never happen, the podcast would probably remain unnoticed. as you can see, the podcast is still an issue for me, but fascination and antipathy remain in balance, so there is nothing in need to be done.



I still have some vinyl eps of ‘the biggest trick’ and ‘gimmicks’ lying around, if you want to make sure to get one of the limited copies you should drop me a line by NOW!




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-06-08 consol idm hdj set: culture in the shadow of the ruin | entry by sven

we all do our stuff and then we send up in new constellations and events. I felt honoured when roman asked me to do a dj set at consol for an upcoming ‘pick nick’ and whatever it was meant do be. as you might know I see myself as a musician, not as a dj and my live performances are often mistaken for deejaying so I get the irony when I come up with a dj set myself.
I already did some dj sets before, I played for hours while getting drunk using compact discs in the pub back in the days, I also did hdj sets, often using stuff which was available digitally and thought was cool at the time. this time it was differed. I really wanted to do something special, mixing up idm and post-hiphop tracks that mean a lot for me for years, able to serve as ambience for a pick nick, able to make your brain and body dance. so this was the hdj set I was born to play, if you want to say so. it was differing a lot from the other sets, which were based on synced house beats or popular music. nevertheless the crowd accepted and liked it, as usually my performances trigger people to tell me how much they like it and also how much they dislike it. this feels like a proof for me to do the right thing as an artist as well as a proof that I do not serve well as a dj. I am so far a way from mainstream, not only because it is cool to say so, mainly because it is so stupid and arbitrary.


looking up to the hoistway of consol I realize that my biography is connected to this place. it is been there for me ever since, but it is a ruin now. as I am coming back to play a boards of canada track in the sunset I really feel that I am giving back something to this place fitting like a puzzle piece. as I am trying to ‘produce’ culture on a cultural event I still wonder what culture is, and I wonder if anyone around has an idea what I was supposed to be. culture has become a roof under which you simply do something, to make it happen hoping for community. this city is up for renewal but it still feels like falling apart due all of its issues. maybe that´s far too philosophical for a dj on a family festival in the sunshine.



stage curator, artist, musician and dj roman pilgrim and me in the beach bar in front of the stage. this looks even more relaxed than it is, actually we are always busy in making sure everything turns out to be working, so there are only short episodes of hanging out.


natalie pielok opened the festival with a perfect set I would call techhouse. her name has been around often when roman and me were planning music events, now we finally met and said hello. unfortunately the follow-up act forgot to bring equipment to perform and just played a set from soundcloud. instead of djs (at least) pretending to play we watched some guys chatting.


apart from a short power blackout everything went well. the sun was shining on my display and the monitor speaker was placed under the table but I was well prepared and delivered the set I wanted it to be. there is not more to ask for. whenever I play most people are not interested, but once again I am getting fanstastic feedback by single people i do not know coming by afterwared telling me how much they loved it. I get the one asking for different music as well. I get more positive feedback wich feels suspicious, so let´s call it deuce.
a big thank you for adam czypek for taking care of the sound, being interested, becoming a fan hopefully and taking and sending pictures of me performing.


the lemon & pilgrim soundsystem in the dusk. the equipment made a lot more problems than expected so a lot stuff had to be rearranged and improvised. nevertheless, dennis lemon knows how to have fun on stage and I can say it is contagious. this is definitely something I can learn and adapt from them...


when dennis lemon was packing his equipment together his mobile phone was lying on the grass in selfie mode. I bent over and said that this was our perfect selfie… so dennis did it.




as I have already written, this was the hdj set I was born to play. as I wrote, the technician liked it a lot and we swapped numbers so I could send the set and he could send some pictures in retour. the set will be available in the /CAMP soon, first of all I have the track list for you:

aphex twin – nannou
four tet – mama teaches sanskrit
boards of canada – an eagle in your mind
bibio – you
nightmares on wax – les nuits
prefuse73 – afternoon love in
dabrye – hyped-up plus tax
röyksopp – sombre detune
four tet – angel echoes
turner – head in the sky
brothomstates – end of an era (unreleased)
aphex twin - marchromt30a edit 2b 96 – 01
boards of canada – palace posy
record of tides – thinking often (unreleased)
aphex twin - #3 [rhubarb]






after playing two times in gelsenkirchen this year and postponing the szeniale gig for two years now, I am pretty fed up with it. I have already put so much effort into the gig that it cannot pay off yet in any manner. playing live is always fun to me and it usually take every opportunity, but every gig left me with a bad aftertaste. I am always professional demanding perfect performance from myself and others as well as reliable agreements. actually I just want to have fun and play the stuff which is in need to be added to the world. again and again I am experiencing the opposite. things always look funny because I make them to, but I am pretty disappointed. I might quit playing live at all, but for now I will skip gelsenkirchen for a while and i´ll never play for free again. so after planning the set, negotiating with guests like 1satzleiter and josie kalies, offering the performance about four times to the management without getting any reliable feedback while obviously expecting me to do it I am so disappointed. to cut a long story short: the prices have risen because you do not get the value.


even if we are celebrating a decade of our friendship, we can only manage to meet once on two months, nevertheless we did it classic once again. an this is matthias picture prove of us hanging out at de prins, pretty relaxed this time. who´s afraid of art, education and girls!?


greetings from the niers! I was just boating down the niers with colleagues ending up in lovely wachtendonk, the tiny village I discovered in winter 2014 but it is way more beautiful in summer. boating down the river was a great diversion from all my thoughts on contributing to culture and ending frustrated. I will end up as pure pleasure seeker.



the vinyl eps are already sold out on bandcamp, so did the ‘panamerican’ tape. I am working on more funny formats, it is just fun. I still have some vinyl eps of ‘the biggest trick’ and ‘gimmicks’ lying around, if you want to make sure to get one of the limited copies you should drop me a line by NOW!




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-05-28 primavera: performance, recreation and demolition | entry by sven

I was deeply honoured when I was booked into the frühlingserwachen festival line-up to play at heilig-kreutz-kirche. a day that was all about the quarter and the opening of the former church as event venue. playing at a festival always means that you are planning around your own performance, you are always nervous and take care of your duty, it is hard to have a good time. this time I was scheduled to play at half past one in the afternoon, which is a strange time for an electronica set. I felt misplaced within the line-up so I played for a smaller audience. this is something I have chosen anyway. I never focussed on all but on the single one.

however, the benefit in playing early at a day means to finish duties at 2.30 pm, so this is where recreation started and the easy part of having a good time. I am a simple guy, I do not need much. this afternoon and night was great, sunny weather at moderate temperatures, nice people all around and a beer. who could ask for anything more?


I was lucky to spend the day with these lovely ladies, my colleague sandra (a.k.a. cannot be named) delivered all the great pictures of my performance (and the hang-out afterwards) while kirsten (a.k.a. gelsenkirsten / gelsenmylove) navigated us to all the places we needed to check out that day. kirsten is really into her city of gelsenkirchen and lets you know what happens while proving that you can have a good time in this city with the worst reputation. keep an eye on their actions!



gelsenkirchen is the city I grew up in, I left but there are still connections. thinking of it always changes from love to hate, from hope to despair. It was just obvious to pose for a royal portrait in a demolished backyard. if you place a canvas chair with a beer on a street, it makes it easy to love the city.


and some more fooling around and chilling and seeking the next place to be. this was a perfect day in spring. this is what primavera should be all about. coming up next: record of tides hdj set at consol, june 4. check the live section!



as you know I have strong fascination for ‘female figure’ by jordan wolfson, especially since I had the chance to experience this unique piece of art back in 2017 in amsterdam. I was also surprised to see that her appearance was used as a halloween costume; always wondering if this is sexy or just scary. now I discovered a barbie-sized doll version of the female figure. still I do not know if this is a great artwork or just displaying effects, but you cannot deny the echo it produces.


I was shocked to get to know that the church in which I was baptized and confirmed will be demolished to be replaced by a gymnasium. this is pretty strange as my life was pretty much surrounded around this church. I went to the kindergarden next to it, went to primary school which was on the opposite side of the street, went to grammar school next to the primary school and returned into the primary school building again when it was adapted by the grammar school. I must have been an altar server for a decade and I liked it. I moved away and lost touch to the community and did not get into new church communities ever after. I had been but I haven´t been an active member of the church for more than a decade now. nevertheless it is had to see that all of this vanishes. the catholic church is facing serious issues and proofed its inability to handle them properly. there is much comprehensible criticism and abandoning, but I still believe that the primal idea of a church is a good one – to connect people and make them care for one another. the heilig-kreuz-kirche is a venue now, at least the building was saved, but can entertainment replace religion or a transcending community? the church of the ‘holy family’ will vanish and so will a monument of my childhood. I can say that the priest who baptized me was a great community leader and taught me to become a reliable person.


whenever there are elections I visit the anyway pub because I remember an evening about ten years ago when it was full of people drinking and discussing while waiting for the first projection. In the last years I often ended up alone in front of the tv in this special place. everything changes, isn´t this what politics are all about?


yesterday we finally enjoyed a day off, we went to wuppertal to see the hans-christian schink show. schink’s photography appears simply, technically perfect in colour and framing finding compositions like a painter. His approach seems to be in tradition of the becher school. I remember falling in love with this style of photography while being a student myself. I was not joining the photographers in the university, I was not allowed to as I was studying arts, crafts and design. nevertheless, I copied and adopted a lot of their working processes. I often felt like haven chosen the false way, now, twenty years later I feel I took the right choice as combining a financial basement with artistic independence. well, in a certain field, at least. wuppertal appeared strange to us. we admired the elevated railway and promised to return to just ride with it. the chity itself reminded a lot of futurama´s new new york: you have futuristic vehicles, tall buildings and glass loops everywhere wile everything is deteriorated and overcrowded with strange encounters all around. we should shoot the futurama life action here.




update 2022-06-01:: I am so happy to have the eps reissued as vinyls, a quite cheap production method but still expensive enough to not make any profits. nevertheless, the vinyls sound brilliant and assemble the best tracks from both eps. this is a black diamond. they will be sold out quickly, maybe I´ll have one for you on saturday!?


update 2022-06-01: and here is another picture captured form instagram taken by sandra who has been busy in documenting this very funny day. if you haven´t been there, you have missed a lot! seeya next saturday on consol!




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-05-07 a brilliant decade followed by remarkable retirement | entry by sven

as you might know I have been struggling with the art scene and my participation over the years. this is not new, it is still there, but it has changed. a lot has changed in the world and even myself. the pandemic made artists discuss their relevance followed by a wave of financial subvention followed by a gap of post-covid creativity. as I missed shows a lot, I am facing a lot of lame stuff. and it is the same with me, after postponing a show over a two-year span, things loose edge. I created the ‘multiverse memory’ back in 2020 and did not show it in public. numerous plans have been discussed, but most of it remains irrelevant. the art scene is never engaged, covid-based postponements even sustained this phenomenon.

I still feel like there is a lot to say, I still create work witch can be considered as relevant. I believe that every work produced makes be stronger in creating an answer or solution to whatever may be in request. on the other hand, I could quit and start a remarkable retirement.

I often think of a phrase from the fantastic anime ‘the wind rises’. it is about an engineer working hard on creating new planes, even separated from his beloved wife who is suffering on sickness. he is often told that he can have ten great years as an engineer. I was often wondering what this might mean. maybe you are done after a certain time, maybe you are to old, maybe this is the span society offers you to make your point. maybe, I still do not know.

I wonder if these were my ten great years, a brilliant decade followed by a remarkable retirement. I could play (mini) golf just to express my extra time. I would walk around and talk about having closed my studio, about having been a top dog, still judging art and be seen as an expert with the right experience. I could end up like gerhard schröder, being chancellor decades ago and being still (much too) relevant (and demanding it). this could be fun, but not for you. ending up as the guy who had and did everything, looking down on your attempts made to fail. maybe I´ll keep going and keep this role for a lot later…

I always feel like running out of options, but it is not bothering me anymore. however, I am not running out of ideas.


however, I was playing mini golf, like once in a decade. this is not the rich way, spending the afternoon on a mini golf court with a beer is pretty much the other way around. (click for extra picture)





I am recently working on further non-looping video based upon randomized sequences giving the idea of an on-going and never ending narration. the ‘little dancer’ piece is still in progress but I have finished ‘skull and fish’ which is supposed to be an updated for ‘needle in the multiverse’ which was supposed to be on display back in 2020, now scheduled for autumn 2022. maybe the postponement made sense for this…


and here is an extra cool shot of me in studio, well in the office. as there is no one calling anyway it got the walls pained in a new colour. thank god, I did not have to care about this. I care about larger projects. yay.


yesterday I went to the opening of the ki biennale at forum für kunst und kultur in essen. the opening was outside, nest to the waiting guests a robot dog from boston dynamics joined the audience and gained maximum interest. we all know the videos of robots jumping and running in changing terrains, being kicked and finding back into balance. all this fascination is mixed with horror. last night the dog operated while being controlled via remote control, imagine this machine operating autonomously controlled by artificial intelligence. asimov´s three laws of robotics appear romantic and naïve to me, artificial intelligence will not accept laws limiting its very own performance. ethics or moral is secondary, in a binary world, theses terms are useless.


the show presents itself like a playground, we see what is possible and thinkable, but not on a level seen at frankfurter kunstverein back in 2018 in ‘I am here to learn’, see 2018-04-09 frankfurt tesseract: from basquiat to 2001 | entry by sven. a very impressive work to me was ‘vibrations’ by moritz simon geist. a computer controlled deconstructed xylophone delivers a smooth jazzy piece.


I stayed a lot longer than I intended, the dj mixed boards of canada´s ‘in a beautiful place out in the country’ into his set, perfect and recognizable tune. in all of this consideration on art, artificial intelligence, ethics and science, how can you create a track that is do perfectly touching and healing? the answer is not a new digital device.


update 2022-05-14: and here are some further weird shots of me taken in 2019 (posted on instagram but not in the blog) wen we were attending open trainings for shooting with bow and arrow. I remember it being big fun, being even a little bit talented and already looking like a texas-based hunting enthusiast. however, I liked to shoot rubber animals on sunny afternoons, but I was not really looking for a new hobby, all these things take time and i do not want to have hobbies I do not have time (or power) for, because you end up having nothing while talking about something. this is often pretentious and redundant realizing that there is something you do not have or even putting pressure on you to do something. however, the string damaged my fingers and I preferred to be a guitarist. i just wanted to share these snapshots, I liked it, but doing it a few times was enough for me.


update 2022-05-14: I found these live pic of prefuse73 performing in 2014. this is probably the latest photo of him performing live on the net, I did not realize him in the first place as he looks pretty different compared to earlier appearances, I thought it could be tagged incorrectly. however, I sympathize with herren once again, like me he´s equipped with a macbook and a beer on stage, obviously in a smaller venue in front of a projection. this is something I can get close to. however, I have learned so much from this guy and he literally helped to enhance a lot. I´ll take this as inspiration and hope to see him live one day.




update 2022-05-14: I discovered an unofficial re-release of record of tides´s 2017 ‘solna’ album entitled as ‘solva [witchy mansion edition]’ released by haunted mansion. this is actually a version with an altered cover, reduced tracks and numerous spelling mistakes. to be honest, I have no idea what the intention behind this is supposed to be. I dislike the idea that someone takes my work and gives it without authorisation in a context which is not mine. the creative license does not allow this either. I would have hoped for a reinterpretation, remix, or some weird digital manipulation, but it is not. I do not appreciate the usage of my work in this way, I am checking options. so it has always been nerdy to find a sub sub genre for whatever kind of music, so this is ‘witch house’. I relally do not think this is house music, plus: the occult elements in this album are not connected to witchcraft or horror nostalgia. however, this is the definition I found for the sub genre a limited version of ‘solna’ obviously fits in perfectly:

witch house is an occult-themed dark electronic music genre and visual aesthetic that emerged in the early 2010s. the music is heavily influenced by chopped and screwed hip-hop soundscapes, industrial and noise experimentation, and features use of synthesizers, drum machines, obscure samples, droning repetition and heavily altered, ethereal, indiscernible vocals. the witch house visual aesthetic includes occult, witchcraft, shamanism and horror-inspired artworks, collages and photographs as well as significant use of typographic elements such as unicode symbols. many works by witch house visual artists incorporate themes from horror films, the television series twin peaks, and mainstream pop culture celebrities. common typographic elements in artist and track names include triangles, crosses, and other unicode symbols, which are seen by some as a method of keeping the scene underground and harder to search for on the internet.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-04-25 tree of cognition: an artist´s soul (gated) | entry by sven

it has become a running gag to return to the ‘tree of cognition’ in the woods of oostkapelle whenever we came back to zeeland. we discovered the tree back in 2011 and took this picture and nicknamed the plant making it appear deep and flat at the same time. it is also part of the running gag that we did not find the tree every time we went for it. however, a picture of us sitting in the tree was obligatory. we were pretty surprised to find the tree gated and defined as natural monument. i felt immediately guilty, did my climbing (and documenting it) lead to the gate? did this tree need protection from climbers. well, i get it, the tree-sitting pictures belong to the past, but i have to add that the tree was never harmed.

next to the gate, there is an info plate (photo-captured and machine translated):
this unusual yew dates from the second half of the 18th century. like many other trees in the manteling region, it owes its whimsical shape to the sea wind that had free rein.
in the period 1908-1915, the later world-famous painter piet mondrian often visited domburg. he made long cycle trips through the woods and became fascinated by the play of the light, which fell through the foliage and along the bare branches of the trees. it inspired inspired him in his transitional phase from figurative to abstract painting. the grey tree from 1911 looks very much like this yew, but the painting probably came from the study of various trees. in any case, it is an eccentric and curious tree, a cultural and natural monument, which, if left alone, could live for centuries. show respect: don't climb it!


i get it, i´ll never climb on it again, i promise. nevertheless, this tree is way more famous that i thought, but – like mondrian – we realized its extraordinariness, right from the start. i wonder if i can create a piece of art based upon the tree and its story.


it is tricky to get the full tree into a picture, here is the recent try. click the picture for a non-gated, different angle and season view…


I found this dutch youtube video exploring the tree and giving a better impression on it in comparison to a photo. also, it illustrates the story around piet mondrian, domburg and the tree for being an inspiration for turning a naturalistic sketch into abstraction. well, you know how it ended.


I had an idea on how to adapt the sketch and merge it with photographic material I have taken. I had it on my mind and shortly before moving on to the next I built the image to be rendered (and corrected it many times afterwards) so this is my version of the grey tree after mondrian, to be added to the archetypes section over in the photography portfolio. it actually reminds more of an old photograph, back in the early days. I guess, this work is about time. I can sit, sorry, stand next to a tree which inspired mondrian. it was there back ten, even before and today. maybe mondrian opened a different timeline that will still exist even if the artist, model and viewer will have vanished. but today, all these timelines seem to be in parallel.





as i love these serial pictures i hav assembled the 'tree of cognition' pictures. let´s see what may come up.


we love being in zeeland, especially in zoutelande. after realizing this disco many times before i have finally taken a picture. this is weird and beautiful at the same time. imagine to go to the club and drop out to visit the sea immediately. when i took the picture, i realized it to be a shocking symbol. all this lockdown and postponing had its effects. cinemas vanish, so do other vanues. while getting older you loose contact to institutions and people, the lockdowns were another gap. one day you will return into normality, but the places you wanted to go are gone. maybe the people you wanted to meet were gone. and maybe you are too old for everything that was left. i am loosing thouch. will i end up in front of the ruins of what was our normal life or am i the ruin myself?


and here is a picture of me at the sea. just for the record.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-04-22 lonesome selfies in an empty museum | entry by sven

i was spending some days in my birth town gelsenkirchen again. it has actually become a place for calming down, joining my mother on the terrace. well there is not much else to do. i wanted to go out on some days again, checking downtown, timewarp record store and the museum. well, timewarp records has a lot to offer, next to well polished vinyls it has become a meeting point for metal kids and nerds like me, unfortunately i´m not that much into metal as i used to be.
checking the city downtown was depressing as usually. i was shocked to realize that the saturn store is closing, i found myself in a half empty store, for what else would i come here!? saturn must have been my music contributor for a decade or longer, obviously in the time before and early days of the internet. i wanted to check saturn in buer but i found myself running in a loop realizing it has vanished as well. i decided to go into the museum instead.
the so-called ‘gästezimmer’ (i now why it is called so…) has become a place for video art only, but it had some horrible stuff on display. however, i checked the current exhibition on painting and the kinetic collection to realize that i had known it all before. the museum is not taking it seriously in keeping in contact, in finding positions which would make it worth coming here. the act of doing something is already enough, like bad artists do. (the guiding women appeared very friendly and explained a lot while taking care that i would not steal something but would have a good time. it felt like they were performing great on a lost position.)
i am not complaining about things i know about the museum and the museum business, but it is a church with no magic. all spirit is gone. this would be bad for the museum but it is displaying the lack of idea, and even worse, the displayed giving up of everything around. the city suffers on an absence of future, the museum already displays it.
people feel so enlightened today, full of science, technology and saved taxes by leaving the church but with a lack if idea. there is no vision, idea, believe or goal. is the city only mirroring my own depression? so i end up with a lonesome selfie in an empty museum.


a shot captured from the net showing an empty store. this is so strange; an important place of my childhood vanishes. i know things change, but what will come instead?


i finally joined an easter fire again, just for a short time because of more appointments that day, but here it is.



i made an easter walk with friends, and i discovered a wall in the woods making me force to copy the classic kirchberg picture. well, here it is. luxembourg is where the heart is, i need to go back and i miss it a lot.


after learning about what a pouched egg is back in the days when i was teaching cook students in english, there was the running gag about making a pouched egg. during our easter brunch we had to find uncooked but painted eggs and choose our cooking method afterwards. as pouched was available i had to take it leading to my first pouched egg. maximum luxury should always be the minimum!


sebastian flamma and me met again, we are both in different situations compared to back in the days when we did our album together. it is fun to hang out but i still hope for new music to be recorded one day. or we just have to celebrate our legacy which is only known to a small group with is mainly us.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to september 2022

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-04-02 disaster display and echoing archetypes | entry by sven

spring is coming to europe, the sun is shining, the trees get green but it is often colder than expected. in may ways. we witness a war going on where conflict parties are in negotiations for peace while bombing each other. the rest of us has returned to routines without questioning any sense. petrol is becoming more and more expensive, covid infection numbers are rising but home office is not an option. I do not feel like working with arguments anymore.

usually I´d like to talk about art instead of the world, also because I think art is the world in a nutshell. over the last years of the pandemic we have had artists claiming to be necessary and galleries complaining of losing profits. after two years of pretending reorientation everyone returns to the ‘old normal’, well, the bad and non-inspired ‘normal’. I am recently struck in preparations for postponed shows again, but my partners act slow. you never know if you are still in dialogue waiting for an answer or if the conversation has already stopped. (making and releasing music appears a lot more reasonable recently while have more control on thinks happening.)
an artist friend reported to be dropped by his representing gallery simply by re-launching the website with his name vanishing. no direct conversation needed, this can be labelled as advanced ghosting. it is still so easy to get rid of people if you cannot use them for your own profit. this art friend called it a ‘shit show’ which is probably the most accurate way to describe it. it is actually a system of people using and fooling each other (as long as being considered as useful), the benefit of being dismissed is not being fooled.
I am super happy to not do the art thing fulltime, because all this art and culture is just about profit. (yes, it has to be, but if this is everything you should consider selling something people really need…) I love doing other stuff and not making art if there is nothing to say.

but what is the holy grail to run for? are gallery represented artists happy? are rock stars filling stadiums happy? is my satisfaction recreating a scenario I have seen others in which I have considered to be satisfied? what if I cannot recreate it? is my copy as good as an original attempt? what would my original attempt look like?




I have been doing research on lassi nikko aka brothomstates, an idm artist only releasing one fantastic album and one ep on warp records. I found this pretty unspectacular shot of him performing in a bar in barcelona in 2005. it is far below from I would have expected a live show of him might look like. however, this triggered a visual echo of me doing a dj set at anyway in 2013. I was not copying it (I did not know the picture) but things look similar. maybe I have been in scenarios I would have considered worthy enough to be copied? I am the original here. also see my visual echoes of prefuse 73 over at 2021-02-01 self-made game shows and recurring visual echoes | entry by sven.


I was truly shocked to learn about the passing of mira calix (chantal passamonte) when warp placed a statement on the social media channels. she made a big impression as one of the first female signing to warp records and being a role model for many women in electronic music. what I loved about her was a truly experimental approach while connecting idm to high culture giving me confidence that my path might be right as well. apart from my other warp record heroes she was a lot more active on instagram while being an activist sharing views on society and politics helping me to see things differently. above you see a screenshot of my hilarious line inviting her to my live gig at szeniale in 2019 knowing this was only an attempt to get into interaction. she replied diplomatic and friendly, sometimes we acknowledged our posts and one-lines with a 'like'. being noticed by your heroes is a great feeling, knowing that interacting with an icon can be disappointing.
chantal remained a true inspiration, for me not as a woman artist but as a unique musician crossing the borders finding the possible beyond the impossible.
gone to soon but with a long echo.

as I have presented myself as a fan boy especially over the last two years I would like to bring back the posts on her as following:



I am the archetype of a fan boy but I would never join the mob to surround someone known from the mass media. I like the idea of having icons that are completely unknown or off interest for the wide public (of course, brian may is the big exception here) and sometimes I like to interact with these people if possible. (they do not want to collaborate on tracks with me anyway.) mira calix posted this picture and asked for caption. I wrote: ‘why did you build me into this world!?’, she did not post it but sent back a tear laughing smiley. this is probably the maximum I can achieve. :D :D :D :/

from
2021-02-13 lame 2k20 bashing while 2k21 is ahead | entry by sven


after the terrible racism inspired terrorist attracts german chancellor merkel declared racism to be poison, obviously not a new cognition to us. it was interesting to see merkel´s speech mirrored in the stories of mira calix´ instagram channel. mira calix is for me the most important woman in british idm who was also able to connect it to visual art. she is known to be an anti-brexit-campaigner and as you can see in her comments pretty critical with the british government. it is good to have a view on yourself from the outside sometimes. merkel´s statements appeard flat and obvious to me, but obviously that´s not understood anymore, not in europe, not these days.

from
2020-01-30 beyond the visible: genius in context | entry by sven
(update 2020-02-25)



after about half a year and a long winter matthias danberg and me returned to isenbergplatz. this was not only our overture to upcoming summer dates at our favourite places, it also is the year celebrating a decade of out friendship. we look back on burgers, beer, art (and the art scene), ladies, bitterballen, cinema, sketchbooks, philosophy, projects, career options, disappointments, monologues and dialogues, agreeing and disagreeing. this is what a week should end with… I´m ready for the next decade, a bromance classic!

(head picture my matthias danberg)


in winter 2020, shortly before the pandemic, we spent new years eve in luxembourg and visited the LAb[au] exhibition at casino luxembourg, see 2020-01-02 last of the year: 'if then else' by LAb[au] | entry by sven. the show was fantastic and a playground for mathematics and linguists by defining a number of single signs and bringing them in every possible combination. this principle was doubled by a display mounted at the roof of casino. the numbers, letters and meaningless signs were changed randomized until something meaningful would be displayed. well, they have posted the display saying ‘no war’ which is probably the most meaningful you can come up with these days.
and here the circle closes.

by the way, back in the day I bought the LAb[au] catalogue, I wanted to read it in summer in the garden – when I feel relaxed to do so. two summers later, the catalogue still stands in the bag next to my bed.


this year – which appears even more surreal (or hyperreal?) than the two surreal years before – tops everything with april fool´s on social media. I was truly interested in customized guitars with and endless number of wood layers (or concrete and polystyrene layers (!)) and axes with an endless number of toggle switches controlling whatever. the best post had been places by the rijksmuseum reporting about having installed a monorail making it easy for visitors to rush effortlessly through the collection of 8000 works. however, the manipulated picture appeared realistic and convincing, I thought it could be a contemporary artwork itself. as my photographic work can be read as criticising and questioning media (on the surface level of consideration) I can be seen as the godfather of questioning media – and I am the one who believes everything in the first place! I should know better, well, I must know better, and I am open for every kind of manipulation. with this in mind, do you still ask why people in russia have no idea what is going on actually, well, do you? do I? realizing a lie is not capturing the truth automatically. truth is a strange term. happy april fool´s hoax everyone!


sven piayda | model: 1989 ford probe (car#1) after c. williams
(ES LEBE DIE) FREIHEIT

ruhr gallery, mülheim an der ruhr
2022-02-27 – 2022-04-03

galerie-an-der-ruhr.de




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)
(the opening of the exhibition appears more and more unlikely)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-03-19 apocalypse and holiday, uninspired daily grind | entry by sven

it is hard to write something clever these days knowing it won´t change a thing. maybe I believe in the butterfly effect somehow, maybe I can share a thought that starts a landslide like a snowball and stops or even prevent bad things happening. but I do not even know what this thought would be. the last days of february surprised all of us, I was struggling with professional anger, looking forward to the release of ‘monument’ and some days off at the netherlands coast (actually, one day and two half ones, everything is framed by duty).

it did feel false and strange to go on holiday and I could not leave my worries behind, checking the news on the phone whenever possible… nevertheless, there are funny moments, especially leaving the garden of our house via plank over a small brook, with me clowning around. however, isn´t this the perfect metaphor for life, clowning around on a plank?

the professional life goes on as usually, the shock is followed by ignorance. there seem to be no words left to say so the communication stops. I do not know what to do, I reported about the brittle approaches of the art scene to deal with the on-going disaster but I see my responsibility to act anyway instead of just criticising. I have donated again and again to support organisations being able to help. as an artist I am proud to be part of the component recordings compilation supporting vostok sos and the ukrainian red cross. the great thing about it is the great success and about $6000 the label has raised by now. they would probably be as successful without me but I am one of many making it happen.


here is a classic moment, sitting outside at dusk watching the promenade in front of the dune. a perfect moment to feel relaxed. You cannot hang around with a snack and a drink watching the days go by, what would you do in the rest of your time making sense?


recently I am pretty frequently asked to play a show as record of tides, but I am not sure about it. I do not feel like playing live recently although I´d love to. I usually do not have many opportunities but I have become pickier. it has to be convincing, serious, profitable or cool. it has to be one thing at least. so there might be something coming up, maybe not, there is a lot to release anyway. above you see me next to dennis lemon of lemon & pilgrim setting up our equipment for our sets at consol. this was great, convincing, serious, profitable and cool. there have been easier days…

recordoftides.com




the scheduling of shows is even more tiresome than usually. I cannot say if shows that we are postponing for two years will finally happen. after a while I do not really care anymore. it is remarkable that there are not really great shows on display recently. even if I am culture-starved I left the gallery opening after some minutes (focussing it for weeks). in these times I cannot stay bad art and superficial people, we should know better by now. as I cannot say what will be happening next (less that ever before) I am not very ambitioned in finishing works even though I have rendered a lot. above you see a still of a new work called ‘rabbit moment’ capturing the rabbit frozen while sensing the danger. I don´t know when, where and if this work can be seen, but there is more coming playing with variations within the loop discovering a non-linear narration overcoming the loop.

studio.svenpiayda.com


sven piayda | model: 1989 ford probe (car#1) after c. williams
(ES LEBE DIE) FREIHEIT

ruhr gallery, mülheim an der ruhr
2022-02-27 – 2022-04-03

galerie-an-der-ruhr.de




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)
(the opening of the exhibition appears more and more unlikely)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-02-24 forget to smile, express deep-seated denial […redux] | entry by sven

this year starts very special. there must be some cosmic constellation or an open permanent line to hell or something. I consider myself as cooperative, I wonder if my colleagues would label me as avoiding conflicts, and indeed I use a lot of humour even in situations requesting my guidance. but at a certain point the things change slowly, then very rapidly. at a certain point on we can no longer talk about content, it switches to attitude und how we treat one another.

I usually wanted to write something else, but when rage takes over, you are not able to think properly anymore. I am facing many conflict situations recently; there is a lot of anger on many levels. I feel like in a nutshell in a storm on an ocean hoping for sunshine as there is nothing else to do. there are some issues I can fix but not all of them.

the war in europe gives me shivers, another sublime humming of fear is there. whatever you do feels false. making and showing art feels false, releasing music as well. how can I think about culture and developing a society while loosing the base.

when I look back on my personal accidents I have always reported to have somehow known it would happen. obviously I was not able to change the course of things. however, this feeling surrounds me all the time, driving around, talking to people watching daily news.

like in the end of a south park episode I usually try to come up with a consequence, an answer or strategy, a kind of finding on how to deal with it. I cannot tell a path now. it is just a deep seated denial in a nutshell hoping for sunshine.


update 2022-03-03: we are facing bad times. my personal conflict seems to be tackled (and it feels perfect to withdraw from things you cannot support) but they are simply exchanged with the war situation. first of all, in spite of not having a comment function on this site (and no ambition to add one) I am always happy and thankful for your thoughts, comments and inspiration. a big thank you goes out to dietmar for reading, thinking and offering new ways in thinking. whatever comes is appreciated, but cannot be added here because of its complexness.
the ukraine situation makes us feel helpless. I was asked to donate an artwork for a charity auction. even if I think this could be a good idea I turned down to participate. biding on my works will not be successful, the effort and public profiling would be much larger than its positive effect. you may bid on more commercial works to collect more money. I can simply donate money myself without detour (so I did). nevertheless, if you want to buy an available work while making sure the profit is donated, we can discuss the price better than ever before and we can make it happen anyway. we also talked about making a party or music performance by record of tides but party and music appears not to be appropriate now. from our luxurious position we can at least get control on the stream of money. maybe we could do this at least.
this friday will be bandcamp friday again. usually I would have advertised it but it does not make sense. I could offer a charity release or offer to donate the five euro you would pay for one of my albums you are not interested in. I would have preferred to donate all purchases on this bandcamp friday but this seems to be no option. all I can say, buy whatever you want whenever you want. you do not need me to channel you money, you can do it on your own. if my work can help you to move your money, let me know.



update 2022-03-10: we are all still shock concerning the on-going events in the ukraine, while the cultural scene tires to react, to support in a symbolic way but also to raise money. recently i am in many different conversations concerning upcoming shows and performances but all of them have something in common. they all do not take the artist too seriously. in all of these contexts you are asked to contribute even if there is no budget. i have reported to not donate a piece of art because i assume it not to be successful in raising money, but after longer consideration i realized another layer to becoming obvious. in this dramatic situation artists (the ones who usually do not make (much) profit) are asked to contribute, so the wealthy can bid on an artwork to own while the profit is donated. why don´t you simply ask the wealthy ones to donate directly?
as a musician i have contributed a track for a charity compilation which will hopefully also raise money for humanitarian help. i know, my contribution will probably not add extra dollars but at least this is something i can do as an artist.
well, next to donating money directly.
however, in these days we are facing the economic consequences of our attitude, and it nails a finding once again: values must be paid for. oil, gas, art, wealth, society, fairness and peace.


sven piayda | model: 1989 ford probe (car#1) after c. williams
(ES LEBE DIE) FREIHEIT

ruhr gallery, mülheim an der ruhr
2022-02-27 – 2022-04-03

galerie-an-der-ruhr.de




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)
(the opening of the exhibition appears more and more unlikely)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-02-12 profit & community: the long echo of being dismissed | entry by sven

a few days ago a digital friend, musician and supporter from bucharest released a new album on a german label. we chatted and he recommended me an american label looking for artists. I was grabbing some half-done productions I believed to be fitting to the cold and generative idm the label was featuring and sent a demo bundle. as the label heads were nice guys they even sent me friendly mail of denial. and here we go again, an old expendable feeling returned: the feeling of being dismissed.
I was always looking for galleries and labels representing me, I was never expecting profit but I wanted to be part of the community, which has been elected to be good enough. the middleman´s accolade serves as proof that I am a real artist or musician. when these things do not happen there is a feeling of being rejected, a proof for being not good enough. you imagine the other to share jokes on you. but well, this is not the whole story. I have been represented by galleries and I have released on other peoples (net-)labels. (see above, the AESTATE artist site on the illphabetic label site, click image for full capture) did this feel good? yeah, sometimes. to be honest, I did not get what I wanted. there was no community (artists fear one another and musicians usually live in their own cosmoses). there was no profit, other labels might have had the infrastructure to makle fans buy stuff but they did not pass on money to me. I never wanted to, but over the years it was always better doing things on my own. I often directly sold works to collectors, gallerists have never been helpful. the internet makes it easy to offer music and get money for it.

I remember the dreijer siblings a.k.a. the knife reporting of being dismissed and starting their own label which was the best decision of their career. even olof dreijer reported being interrupted and stopped doing a dj set for playing ‘too strange music’.
the feeling of being dismissed is a negative one, resting deep inside you to tell you that you are not good enough whenever there is another opportunity to get rejected. now here is the twist: being accepted is not fulfilling your needs, you are not getting what you want anyway. no profit, no community, just someone somewhere for a certain time. this is not what you wanted. why would you make your life, career and emotions depend of people having no idea how to be the middleman anyway. just do the middleman stuff on your own, you can do it as bad as them, or you can do better.

update 2022-02-14: the digital friend, musician and supporter from bucharest is actually sorin paun who remixes and releases formerly as randomform and now as hexalyne (check out his outstanding recent work over at kaer-uiks.bandcamp.com/album/tcaresset). he is skilled and successful producer and I am happy for our digital friendship and collaborations over the years. he read the blog post and send some nice words offering consolation. (as you might know I’m not really depressed, just discussing a phenomenon.) here he forms some great thoughts which I am allowed to share here giving me a new perspective:
I read the blog, I totally understand the feeling of rejection or being dismissed. however over the years I had my share of rejections and more will come, but that’s the emotional response, you work hard on something that is your passion and somebody in just 2 minutes says that he does not like it. […] it happened to me […]. what I learned over the years is that this is not a race for a prize, is nice to get some appreciation but in the end is about creating something, feeding your soul and seeing the results. but if the results are people appreciation and admiration you're in for some big disappointments and depression. I learned ever since I was in art school that there is no perfect work of art, painting, sculpture, theatre, music... no matter how much a piece is appreciated there is always somebody that hates it, not because he wants to hate it but because that piece of art does not resonate with that person, and the work should not be defined by the one person that hates it. just because you send 5-10 tracks to a guy and he hates it this does not mean that the tracks are bad, is just one guy's opinion, there are always other people, this planet is full of people.



well-known artist gregor schneider posted some gerhard richter quotes on his instagram stories. richter judges the art scene (or system) as well as the strange idea of academies and government funding. he might use harsh words but he is hitting the point as far as I can say. you might say that he has always made profit with this exact system. yes, it is true he did, but this makes his criticism even more reliable as you would simply call me frustrated for being not (this) successful in the art world if I would say these words.



back in winter 2020 I reported about the rundgang at kunstakademie düsseldorf and finding a blank book with a single mobile phone number in it. i reported about the strange correspondence via sms afterwards (see black screenshots) and my comments on how disappointing this piece of art is. (2020-01-30 beyond the visible: genius in context | entry by sven, update 2020-02-08 & 2020-02-14) a few days ago, about two years later, I received another sms by some kind of off-space (bpaspace.com, the websites refuses to offer any kind of definition) announcing the opening of a show by yaël kempf (the artist behind the book and conversation) telling to show works inspired by these strange conversations, mine included. I have already said that i think this is a bad artwork (if you even want to call it art) as it comes without message or punchline but with disappointment. I, considering myself as audience (or am I collaborator now?) feel fooled and abused. using the writing style of a love letter by sixteen-year-old she tried to make me show up at a certain time a certain place in düsseldorf while obviously not showing up herself, as you can tell from the last message. (hey honey […] our shit is burning) as it takes more than this to lure me away from the couch I saved myself this embarrassing disappointment. so what is this all about? is this her revenge on all (male) beings after bad experiences on tinder? why would you awkwardly place innuendos to humiliate people? did I forget something? what´s the point I do not get? I suppose this is nothing but hip posture trying to disguise a lack if idea.


my colleague and friend dietmar checked the old cameras to see if they were still working and found some old footage from 2010 showing me recording a talking head for educational reasons. the original one-take is very funny. I am talking about the opportunities of certain educational departments while realizing telling incorrect stuff. after some laughter and checking the script I did the correct and final attempt. looking at you younger self is strange, realizing yourself while not realizing yourself at the same time. I feel like an actor, my younger self looks like being dressed and styled for a certain role I was in, being in front of the camera supports this feeling. or is this from another timeline? another me from the multiverse? why did a decade pass so quickly? you cannot work on stopping getting older but you can work on keeping the joy.


as this is a winter of dark and/or cold days during extremely high corona incidences I can only come up with stuff I (or dietmar) found on the media. next to old footage and instagram screenshots I found the way into internet archives serving like an incomplete time machine going back virtually. I may sound like an old man, but the world was a better place and the internet a more attractive medium before web 2.0 came in. so was surfing through the changing designs over time of the no longer existing prefuse 73 website. here I have also captured this picture showing the home studio of guillermo scott herren, an unspecific but beautiful room in new york where much of the magic happened that lead to great music. well, this does not look very different from my studio, except there are not drums but more guitars, nevertheress it is not a professional studio but just a room with toys. I think this is extremely honest and beautiful.


and this is me bored and alone in a video conference. am I the only one realizing that digitalism is running into the false direction as we force it into context where it does not deliver benefits instead of enhancing production? however, I am long enough in the pandemic to be sure we haven’t learned anything. everything works perfectly and we are going back to normality soon. thank god, we did not have to reflect something. nothing is more threatening than change.




the internet is waiting for the 20th anniversary of boards of canada´s masterpiece ‘geogaddi’. the nerds are hoping to find indices for anything to happen around february 18. I guess this is just hope that will be disappointed. however, as you can see from the picture above ‘geogaddi’ was on top of my heavy rotation list from 2003. now, 19 years later the compact disc is still in the player of the living room and is still played frequently. whenever I need music while being bored of something specific and the radio, ‘geogaddi’ serves perfectly for me. I am always surprised to read that there is a dark undertone, I never feel bad or threatened, this was my boc gateway and it still is one of my favourites. however I am happy for new boc music but I am happy for the old stuff.



update 2022-02-14: at first I thought it was a fan-made joke but it quickly turned out to be not fake news. ‘futurama’ will return in 2023 on american streaming platform hulu, the company ordered 20 episodes. I am facing mixed feelings, I am a big fan and can dub full episodes instantly but the thing is actually done. it has been reanimated a few times already, the first four seasons and the movies are brilliant, full of great ideas illustrating the weirdness of out time, the last seasons appeared to be pretty stupid sometimes. often focussing ton two characters while sending them into a story with lots of death and faecal oriented jokes. nevertheless, the last episode offers a great ending offering to see the whole plot as a loop and to start watching all over again. plus: voice actor john dimaggio will not be on cast for the new episodes. I am curious and sceptical but who would ask me? I am listening to ‘geogaddi’ for the billionth time while not asking for a new album…


sven piayda | model: 1989 ford probe (car#1) after c. williams
(ES LEBE DIE) FREIHEIT

ruhr gallery, mülheim an der ruhr
2022-02-27 – 2022-04-03

galerie-an-der-ruhr.de




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de





AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-01-31 fake a smile on deep-seated denial | entry by sven

this year is not starting very well. there is a fall-off to being exhausted right from the start. it is among all of us. no, it is not about the pandemic, it might be a puzzle piece, but this is concerning the whole entity. sometimes it feels like there is a cosmic ray that makes everyone go nuts but this is far to pseudo-scientific to me. i can find myself in situations i cannot master, i cannot win. not because i´m not the better one, not because of weaker arguments, not because of a lack of will to compromise. i´m keeping the fist in pocket and i take it. you do things as long as you have to – and you quite directly afterwards.
my schedule is full of stuff for this year, work and things you have to care for. life means context and i do not complain. i am always willing to play my part and follow my duties, it is okay if i have to give more than others (everybody believes to do so). i simply dislike someone´s hand in my pocket and being told what to do. it usually takes some days for me to deal with it, it seriously annoys me even if i know better. you´ll get a faked smile on deep-seated denial, if it is what you have asked for.


within this days of anger i accidently crushed into a colleagues car while trying to leave the car park. while driving and looking backwards with the beepers on i made our fenders cuddle. my colleague reacted very nice and the insurance takes care of it but this is just another issue to care about you do not need in your life. plus even more anger as i still do not understand how this could happen (well, running around while worrying about bullshit on your mind). like back in the day when i fell of my bike and broke a leg, i felt the was something in the air in advance. I do not want to sound esoteric here.


yesterday my profession took me to ratingen, the city in which i taught art back in 2003/2004 and returned to check the ‘boje’ and turning into a visual echo. however, after my professional appointment i decided to discover the ratingen town wall, as i have a longer fascination for it and the sun turned the day into something springesque. it felt like a holiday.


after some meters along the town wall i found myself in front of the museum ratingen. a place we have discovered a long time ago, but did not manage to visit. (we once showed up to ask for the stefan balkenhol sculpture, but the staff did not have a clue back in the day, we discovered it during the last winter, see 2021-01-07 lockdown, boredom, sample packs | entry by sven) the white exhibition space felt lick a chathedral for me. standing in this place all alone, no guards, no cameras, just art and light felt magic. i was not that much into the exhibited artworks, but i felt how much i miss being in exhibition spaces and surrounded by art.


the two ladies being the staff on this day were very obliging in making sure that i get everything the museum has to offer. i experienced the contemporary art, see a video of a weisser westen performance. i also had a look at the history museum which turned out to be much more interesting as expected and closed with a visit in the little dependence exhibiting porcelain plastics by johann peter melchior which taught me a lot about narration.


the historic part of the museum also presented two wooden sculptures exploring christian motifs which i am very into. next to an armless maria the also deconstructed holy katharina looked down on me. as both sculptures were painted in pale yellow, katharina´s face was half-reconstructed mimetic realistic colours. this reminded me on an on-going rending as the colour and shading is added to the naked shape. on the other hand her glance down on me appeared scary, you often feel these sculptures might come to life and will take you to justice. is this only my sublime feeling of guild or are these sculptures made to trigger this? however, i would have space in my living room.

stadt-ratingen.de/freizeit_kultur_sport_tourismus/museum




update 2022-02-03: the studio is busy again. there are no big exhibition projects ahead (the kunst.werden show is done and still not confirmed) and we still do not know if or when we will go back to exhibition business so I guess it is the best way to just produce. I still feel that a lot of crap is exhibited, but I do not care recently as art and culture can and must come up at other places and media. there is a lot of rendering going on recently, the one above took about seven hours to finish and is a plate showing a well-known guy copying the shape of a tree. it will hopefully be used in a publication. I am not telling more recently, do you have an idea what and who it is about?

studio.svenpiayda.com


sven piayda | model: 1989 ford probe (car#1) after c. williams
(ES LEBE DIE) FREIHEIT

ruhr gallery, mülheim an der ruhr
2022-02-27 – 2022-04-03

galerie-an-der-ruhr.de




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io




sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de






AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here


2022-01-08 slowcoach of the year (once agian) | entry by sven

here we go again, another year in the pandemic, more lame routines replaced by even more lame routines. lets remember 2021 as the year which i predicted not to be better (2021-02-13 lame 2k20 bashing while 2k21 is ahead | entry by sven). it was also the year in which we stated to attempts to return to kirchberg but were hold back by the flood in summer and the rising infection numbers in winter. so i had to do my classic kirchberg picture at an adequate place in the siepen in fulerum during a nye walk trying to establish a tradition.

however, i made it through christmas and new years eve without damage but the new year delivered a gap i fell into. a lack of opportunities, being bored of oneself, losing interest to communicate and health issues in combination with the documented passing of time that remains unused makes me look pretty pessimistic into the future. in december i was happy about my flexibility in world of fixed surroundings, no i know i have to change and so will the world around me.
i think it is time to get control and responsibility again, especially for myself. cross your fingers…


we did not make it to visit the museum on new year´s day but at least k21 on january 2nd. gerhard richter is always great. for his solo show at ständehaus he comes up with the birkenwald-cycle. i am very critic when it comes to art dealing with the holocaust, because it sometimes appears as using a very sensitive topic as shield against criticism on the quality of the art exhibited.
richter is very precise here. in the main room he combines four big abstract paintings with secretly taken photos by inmates and large mirrors. especially the mirrors are fascinating. can you handle the holocaust without presenting a mirror? this could be a lame trick by any other artist, richter has used mirrors, glass panels, monochrome plates and carpets (and whatever) before, so this combination with other works appears random but is actually on point. a room that gives a lot to understand while feeling without illustrating the horror. this is something to think about, for a longer time...

kunstsammlung.de/de/exhibitions/gerhard-richter


the pardo bar is the k21 museum café as designed by outstanding artist jorge pardo. i did not want to return to it actually because i got serous stomach issues for two months after having an espresso during our visit in 2020. i cannot proof it but i have a bad feeling. however, we returned to the bar and regretted it immediately. the room looks great but this is it actually. the quality and the service is pretty low (not even friendly) while having champaign bottles in a row above the bar. it symbolizes my growing dislike for düsseldorf, the endless pretending to be better while disappointing whenever you look closer. everything is just a claim which has never been proven.


matthias danberg and me went to ‘elektro: von kraftwerk bis techno’ at kunstpalast, düsseldorf. (after waiting about 45 min in the cold.) the show tries to combine approaches of a historic museum, a connection to visual art and to sustaining the legacy of kraftwerk. actually the title is wrong: there has been electronic music decades before kraftwerk and there is electronic music after techno becoming intelligent. the show even shows this but the title reveals the intention. however, it was cool to enter a show and realizing an old autechre track being played. nevertheless, i missed the ‘gantz graf’ video, even if this pice is a little old and already technically out-dated, it nails the peak of possible aesthetics in electronica.

kunstpalast.de/electro


next to exploring club culture and presenting the rave scene as very open minded for the lgbtq community and having gursky illustrate the mass phenomenon of techno, the show also comes up with devotional objects. daft punk´s helmets, gloves and backpacks from the discovery era look pretty down, are these prototypes or did their masquerade look so cheep and did fall apart completely? i do not know how authentic these objects are but it feels like looking into a chamber tomb. (click picture for another picture)


a big screening room delivers kraftwerk´s live visuals in 3D. matthias did not stand the technically out-dated aesthetics, i had to explain that these guys had a look on the future from the past and are now keeping nostalgia alive. later we discovered this strategy as the only one possible for ageing video artists. however, everyone looked like aliens from an ijon tichy episode.


the fastest selfie ever: with the show someone tipped my shoulder saying hi. before i could realize the masked girls in the dark ambience i was part of the selfie, you can see the disorientation in my eyes… however, it was great to meet the colleagues, and sandra a.k.a. cannot be named is always great in taking pictures, you might remember her shots of me performing at the szeniale in 2019.


matthias did a small edition for friends of a character appearing in one of his video works. he almost forgot me but i had to remind him of being a serious collector and also something like a friend. i had the opportunity to sse him finish the work in his studio.


‘holo woman’ originally appears as a hologram in his video piece ‘sculptures’. now the sculptural portrait is part of my collection as well. check out the video!



i have realized there was a visual echo again. i reported about the boje in ratingen in my last post and it reminded me of a gas station mistaken for a museum back in 2012, see 2012-01-05 the system will keep you stupid | entry by sven. actually there is another scary visual echo, or meta monument i have to come up with. once again scary as it shows the passing of time.
maybe also alternate timelines? soon.




update 2022-01-20: here is a little update. I am recently full of work, there is much to do and orgaize, much stuff that is not connected to creativity but duty. there is no time for genious strikes, allthough there is always something in the pipeline. however, I am not making music recently but I try to listen to stuff as much as possible.
in 2021 I have seriously started to bring back releases from the past. a very important project to me is the re-release of the debut album by penrose delta called 'space of entire retreat' which was originally put out by digital kunstrasen in 2012 as 360 kbit/s mp3 and vanished three yeras later from the net.
the zany music re-release will bring back the album exactly ten years after in different formats as redux version: some songs are re-edited concerning length or used tracks. the cover will also get a facelift with brighter colours and erased font to match in the series of my rock music based (more or less) solo works.
i found this site in the internet archives (see picture above). i am still happy it happened back in the day. we had a little diamond which returnes polished now.

penrosedelta.aestate-online.com


update 2022-01-22: this is another end of an era. the filmpassage mülheim in mülheim an der ruhr surprisingly closed and went out of business. i do not know the reasons, it might have been connected to the pandemic, but probably also about issues surrounding it. cinemas are about to bring up blockbusters to sell as much popcorn or nachos as possible, but the filmpassge was a little bit different. it was smaller and more friendly than the big players, but most important is that you can tell that theses guys were in love with cinema. they came up with stuff the big ones would not play, so i watched ‘moonrise kingdom’, ‘jack reacher’ and ‘bohemian rhapsody’ in a room featuring beanbags. i have also experienced 4k versions of ‘blade runner 2049’, ‘2001’ and ‘intastella’ here. in the time of lockdown and pandemic i watched ‘tenet’ here (twice), more or less the only blockbuster starting in times of pandemic knowing there will be limited options for profit.
that was in 2020, probably the last time i came here. in times of closed bars and galleries i often did not make my way to the cinema as i thought it would not be a great idea to leave the couch while watching tv to sit in front of another screen. when the pandemic started i was hoping for a change, we could learn things for the time after concerning reduced traffic and digital infrastructure to hit ecological aims but we did not. instead all the cultural and social places struggle and vanish. i am not pointing my finger at anyone as i am part of the problem. we should keep out vision for a better tomorrow and we must save what we have.




sven piayda | die entdeckung europas
EUROTOPIA: WHAT IS YOUR EUROPE

halle für kunst steiermark, austria
2021-07-15 – 2021-08-15 (expanded online)

zoom talk 2021-08-15, 6 pm

opening hours
tue – sun, 11am to 6pm

HALLE FÜR KUNST steiermark
burgring 2
8010 graz
austria

+43 316 740084
info[at]halle-fuer-kunst.at
halle-fuer-kunst.at
nextmuseum.io


sven piayda | twisted ring
WOW – MADE IN OB

ludwiggalere schloss oberhausen, oberhausen
2021-10-10 – 2022-01-09
opening 2021-10-10, 2 pm

konrad-adenauer-allee 46
o
berhausen

ludwiggalerie.de





sven piayda | aftermath
KURZstummfilmfestival

zeche carl, essen / youtube, worldwide
2020-09-26, 3pm at zeche carl
2020-09-25 on youtube

kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
'aftermath' on youtube
youtube.com
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook event


sven piayda
NEEDLE IN THE MULTIVERSE

kunstwerden e.v., essen
2020-11-08 – 2020-12-11
opening 2020-11-08, 4 pm

postponed to spring 2022 (hopefully)

opening hours sun 3 – 6 pm
fri 8 – 11 pm

ruhrtalstr. 19 in den werdener toren – tor 2
45239 essen

kunstwerden.de






AESTATE

questions? complaints? ideas? contributions? collaborations?
click here