ARTISTS TALKING

# 106 [29 October 2007]

How can I sum up my experience? It was huge and with so many intense layers. I am going to have to think about it.

The work. A lot of serious work got done and deeply explored. I was completely immersed in the paintings. It was exhilarating to be able to live with the works the whole time. It was such a rich stupendous, privilege to see and experience so much, such marvels. The people, the culture, the museums were amazingly stimulating. And so kind to me.

The fact that I was there for a finite time, four months, meant that each day, each person and experience was precious, to be grasped. For me and also for the people I met. So it was made the most of and valued.

There was also the tremendous experience of isolation, examining myself, loneliness, questioning, not always easy at all. An image of this could be that I was put into a black dark empty box. At first I could see nothing at all. Gradually I could sense something, and then I got some matches and was able to see glimpses. With the glimmerings I felt more at ease. Then I got a lighter, could see more, and began to make adjustments. With the help of the lighter I found a large bright candle that shone steadily lighting up much more and I began to settle in making a kind of nest. When I was then lent a halogen white light it illuminated brilliantly into many corners that had been unknown before. I became exhilarated and astonishingly happy. I felt I was at home. An exciting fertile interlude unfolded. Then the halogen light's plug was switched off, the candle blown out; I had to leave. My box, that ‘home' is still there, as is the candle and the electricity, but I am not.

I am here in London with the Berlin experience inside me, a high light vision. My perceptions, knowledge and prejudices altered, my vision enlarged. How precisely this will affect my future work I don't know but I shall continue to observe and cherish.

# 105 [19 October 2007]

Everyone asks me, ‘what did I think about Berlin?' Everyone is interested. It is the buzz city now. Especially now, I should add, because Berlin, the city, the word, conjures up a charged frisson and always has. In all those different worlds and situations. What I think is that Berlin now is like Paris was in the early twentieth century, when writers, painters, thinkers went to live in Paris. It was cheap, sympathetic, and easy for artists to know each other. They learnt the language, lived a bohemian life style, it was the place to be. That is what Berlin with all its energy and forward hopes is today. The place to be. Cheap, friendly, fun. Not the place to make big bucks or get international fame. New York or London has money. Berlin is broke. At this moment though, for lifestyle and for adding to one's contemporary cachet it has got to be Berlin. That's why there are so many English, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Portuguese, Siberian, Ukrainian, Brazilian, and French, you name it, artists, writers, film-makers, celebrities there in little tight knit, mutually encouraging expatriate groups. Many artists now have as their addresses, ‘lives in Berlin and London', or ‘spends his time between Berlin and New York', and so on. It is wonderful to be special and part of the hot thing. Jessica Rankin, Sydney, New York, now resident in Berlin, showing at White Cube Hoxton Square, film director Stephen Frears, in Berlin after The Queen, Brad Pitt has just bought a penthouse near where I was, Tor Strasse, as examples. Very exciting. Go there. Join in.

(Tip: If you are going to be there longer than six months, learning German will make every thing easier.)

# 104 [5 October 2007]

come and see MY BERLIN WALL At the OPEN STUDIOS, PV 6 to 9pm Saturday Oct 6th, Open 6th & 7th October 12 noon to 6pm. C. Morey de Morand ACAVA Blechynden Street Studios , 54 Blechynden Street W10 6RJ, Next to LATIMER ROAD UNDERGROUND STATION Hammersmith & City Line, Bus 295

# 103 [3 October 2007]

Rough, reduced, poetic, essential, contemporary and real, Berlin. The equality, accepting friendliness of people, low cost of living, ease of getting about at all times of the day or night, the safety and lack of harassment, means it is an easy place to live. Going anywhere alone is normal, acceptable, and safe. In these trendy eastern districts of Prenzlauerberg, and Kreuzberg, you can go out without feeling self-conscious or that you have to conform to a prescribed sense of style. They may be spectacularly way out or dress in jeans every day, anything goes and people don't judge each other on how they look.

Berliners have a very practical approach to everyday living, which makes life easier. Because of the honour system, public transport works efficiently, as well as being much cheaper than in London. There are no queues nor bottlenecks getting on and off the trams and underground; cars are much less used. It's either bicycles, or trams, U-Bahn or S-Bahn, or buses. Traffic flows and also one almost always gets a seat so it all is very much easier and pleasanter travelling around. Good bike lanes make a difference, as enormously, does tolerance of bicycles by pedestrians, bus drivers and cars. They don't try to kill cyclists, nor do they steal bicycles. In fact honesty and everyone obeying the rules is the norm. All of which is most striking and makes life much easier just like the low rents. Which of course may well have changed in ten years.

People are very health-conscious here, especially about food. There are big Bio health food supermarkets, as well as weekly organic markets. Organic food is not as expensive compared to non-organic as it is in the UK. In the Health food shops and chemists there are not shelves of vitamin or supplements, except for pregnancy, although funnily enough, there are shelves of alternative herbal remedies and tisanes to cure various health ills. That's what they do instead of putting extracts into capsules; they make a brew.

Recycling is very easy and is an everyday part of life. The Kaiser Supermarkets give money back on plastic water bottles and the glass beer bottles and crates. Mostly beer in bottles, is what they drink, even young girls as well as boys carry open bottles of beer and drink from them on the U-Bahn or walking down the road. Like all alcohol here it is very cheap. From 0.30 to 0.5 euros per bottle and then a refund back. A good wine may cost from 3.99 to 6.99 euros and cheaper, drinkable wines start at about 2 euros in the supermarkets. The best German champagne, Sekt, (like a prosecco), was 3.99 euros special offer at Christmas and now is 6.99. It must be because Germany doesn't tax alcohol as much as the UK does.

Berlin is the only city I know where people leave furniture, shoes, clothing, books, anything they don't need any more, on the street for whoever can make use of it. This is not rubbish or junk but things that they don't need any more and someone else can use. It is also not considered fly tipping and against the law with heavy fines, but rather a sharing decency. On the U-Bahn on a bench there may be a pair of pink trainers or on a street corner there may be a pair of green shoes standing there. I got all the furniture for the studio from heaps of furniture in the snow.

It is probably one of the best cities in the world to be poor and depressed in. Or just to enjoy. There is space and the energy of expectancy that they're on the up. Berlin. My Berlin. Berlin for Artists. Berlin for Life.

# 102 [5 September 2007]

Frauen die malen, drücken sich vor der arbeit. (Women who are artists don't want to do housework). Instead of a couple of hours of cleaning and then a pleasant lunch, maybe even a last visit to a museum, it was clean, clean, all day. Once one starts to look for dirt marks they are everywhere and have to be cleaned in a systematic way or else one just treads marks back in. The refrigerator and the stove to be cleaned, drawers to be emptied, everything off the walls, packing to be done. Well it couldn't all get in to those ridiculously small cases. How did it all get here? What I couldn't take back I left behind, giving some to Cathy, in the studio upstairs and the rest I put at the top of the entrance foyer stairs in that wonderful Berliner way: CDs, marking pens, tapes, films, new socks not the right colour, tinned foods, masonry nails, bottles of beer, plastic basins, paper plates, extra cups, etc. All useful stuff but I had to fly back.

Leave when you love a place, means it will always stay with you. So Berlin is part of me now.

Au revoir. Remember me.

# 101 [2 September 2007]

Louisa Hutton the architect travels so much on projects around Germany and back and forth to the UK. That she hadn't been able to come to the two receptions or my exhibition, but wanted to see my paintings. She wonderfully came over, bearing chocolate, and we hunched over my laptop looking at the images I had taken with my not very good digital camera and not a proper set-up. I took a close-up photo of her so that I could include her in My Berlin Wall (Faces), even though she doesn't like photographs of herself. What a superbly good sport she is. We discussed the use of reds and particularly with metallic gold and silver. Later she emailed me an image of a vermilion Japanese temple.

Marcus, and Wiebke dropped in with a photograph of Marcus's Superman being ‘Birdie', and a catalogue of Wiebke's installations. They are both such fine artists. She had filled an enormous white helium balloon with a light inside so that it glowed and had moon markings on it, so that for one night she had her own moon flying over Berlin. Inside a display board outside the Goëthe Institute in New York she had made a lit window with German curtains to put a bit of Berlin there. At an abandoned factory on the river she had made an aquarium of water as a ‘window' with the water coming by pipe from the river Spree so that it was moving as well as artificially lit. Fabulous.

In the evening the Architect and I went to visit the documentary filmmakers, Mathilde and Dirk in their spacious apartment on the roof. Chloe the nervous, intense Mexican writer was there too. These are such brilliant, intellectual people, yet I feel as if we are old friends. There was much to talk about; not least that Mathilde and Dirk are in the throes of arranging to get married in Paris, after ten years together. They are wonderfully suited, and look very happy together. What a astonishing last few weeks I've had, with the pressure off and these marvellously intelligent people to discuss things with. Date: 2007-

# 100 [20 August 2007]

One of the things I had to do before leaving Berlin was to get a haircut by the same stylist as the elegant blonde from Café Kakao, that specialist hot chocolate place. This was "Herr Hasel", Harald, on Kopenhagener Strasse, off Schonhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg, what a cool ambience. Chic, laid-back, friendly and run-down. Very Berlin. There were print-out city images blue-tacked to the walls, a white piano, commodious tobacco coloured settee, and a wonderfully understated relaxed feeling encompassing everyone from camp handsome guys to a young mother with her children. The haircut was exactly right. I felt very good afterwards.

An ex-Chelsea artist was having an exhibition at the Kollaboratif Galerie of a light-hearted measurement of the distance between London and Berlin. For example: how many yawns on the journey over, or pages of ‘War and Peace' read if she had been reading it at say 9.6 pages an hour, the number of bridges a bird would cross as the crow flies. This was illustrated with a large Joseph Beuys type blackboard mathematical diagram, as well as photographs and maps. It was again typically Berlin, being supportive to artists, giving them a chance to exhibit. There are economic restraints but the opportunities foster bubbling creativity. Rents are comparatively so cheap that many artists set up their own galleries to show their work and those of their friends, like this one with such a friendly atmosphere.

# 99 [12 August 2007]

Walking around the streets here I marvel at what a very different city it is now compared to four months ago. Instead of looking at places for a last time, I keep saying oh look I never saw that place before. Some places do only open after the winter is over, but others were just closed in on themselves so that one wasn't aware of their existence.

# 98 [9 August 2007]

As people had come into the opening viewing of the exhibition I had taken an up close quick photo of everybody's face as if for I.D. security and also did the same for the Finissage. I had two sets of these images printed out, One set of prints were white- tacked onto the wall of the anteroom studio making My Berlin Wall (Faces), that I'll reproduce later in London. All those different faces in more or less the same format were very intriguing. Those individuals so varied yet making up a community of interests make a good set all together. Today I went around the Milchhof giving the artists that had come, their copy of the Berlin Wall Face photo. I still can't register that all this is coming to an end, just as it is getting better and better. When people ask me questions like "when are you coming back to Berlin?" or "Will you come to live in Berlin?" or "What will you do when you return to London?" My mind goes blank. I'm in Berlin that is the reality of the moment and somehow I can't project any further forward, not yet. Or don't want to cut the time shorter by projection.

# 97 [6 August 2007]

All day people were dropping by and being really friendly discussing my paintings. There is such a good feeling here because they are serious artists who work hard, and that makes us understand each other.

Through working and visiting each other's studios, we gradually got to know each other in spite of the language barrier. Now I shall miss them all very much when I go, but it has been so great to make friends and have this fellow artist bond with them.