Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Phantasy



Where on earth, please is that prince in shining armor on his shitty stallion.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Twenty Years Reunification-Congratulations Germany



Thank you Consul Rothen and Mrs. Rothen and your family as well as your wonderful Consulate staff for last nights festivities. Thank you Matti and Sebastian and all singers in the ensemble for your amazing voices as well.

Also,I would like to extent an incredibly deep felt "Thank You" to the GSEB German School of the East Bay to all the present and past presidents as well as board members, teachers, and parents with all their children willing to learn German and keep in touch with our culture. You are the reason that our nine year old daughter, Ms DylanGrace Voorhees, spends every Friday night doing her German homework. She is not a procrastinator but that is the only free night. Yes, she too has figured out that others do not go to school on Saturday mornings, even to learn German.

Michael Willis, I want to thank you for your diligent service as president of the Excelsior German Center Oakland and all it's board members.

Thanks to Iris Alberts for a twenty-nine year long true German friendship, mostly on American soil.

My accolades go to the recent graduate of Stanford, my god-daughter Sophia Isolde Alberts-Willis, who at this moment is, an active participant in the current play "IPH..." at the Brava Theatre S.F. Ms. Sophia Isolde Alberts-Willis and Matti Specht are alums of the German School of the East Bay.

Nochmals herzlichen Dank fuer ein rauschendes Fest.
Martina Konietzny

Friday, September 3, 2010

Which Vending Machine is that?


Returned from the land of milk and honey: "wo, --wer jammert und klagt, an die Klagemauer nach Jerusalem verkauft wird", roughly translated by my sister-in-law, do not complain or whine, or you be sold to the Whaling wall in Jerusalem, there they need people like you."

More than two months I bathed in its heavenly delights.Please guess what you can buy in that vending machine? Yes, -they are-- "bicycle hoses". We stayed in an ecological village which is called Vauban in Freiburg. Everything is under seven minutes walk away. I mean everything. The school, the bank, two grocery stores,one co-op with amazing local produce, and the newest of all organic, ecologically, sustainable foods. The restaurant, the cloister, the bordello, one adventure - seven regular playgrounds, die Eisdiele, the Icecream store, a horse stable, a trailhead into the Black Forest. You never need to leave there. If you want to get away, just hop onto the number THREE streetcar, get off at the Hauptbahnhof, the main station, and take a train to Paris, Rom or Moscau. Wherever your heart desires.
Thanks to my brother and his wife who helped develop this futuristic paradise, now world famous, children rich, car poor,-- neighborhood.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Traveling as a UM Oversees (or how language acquisition and cultural immersion manifests as Independent Study)



The lone egret we watched in the marshes below the highway had disappeared as the Bart train rushed past the extremely thin birding habitat. I was on my way back from the International Airport Terminal, having entrusted my nine year old into the arms of a winged metal bird with enough power to fly her over the pond to the other side, where roots, culture, and thought originated, and where she will have a chance to fully blossom into her next milestone self. The country is a mystical land, full of poesy and poetry, full of endless thought and innovation--the origin of DNA dating back to the Neanderthaler took place a bike ride away from my parents' balcony, where my cradle had captured every ray of sunlight.
I peer into the bright, forget-me-not blue sky, to follow the plane. Did she actually go? I was with her at the counter, where she received her UM “Unattendant Minor”, a red and white pouch on a string around her neck, and while she was greeted by the pilot and co-pilot. The crew was checking in. Soon a flight attendant with a bright smile looked at her, teeth gleaming white, and asked: "Would you like a strict or a not strict flight attendant?” Astonished, my daughter asked “Are there really “strict” flight attendants?” We all laughed, took photos, and finally came to the passport zone; the zone of no return. Here my little girl vanished between the hassle and buzzle of conveyer belts filled with grey plastic tubs to carry jewelry, belts, coins and other small belongings through large x-ray machines. Jackets and boots were flying to the rhythm of magic wands. She passed spread-eagled men trying to find the unfindable. I stood alone. At the bottom of my feet, a colorful array of all kinds of relinquished bottles and their liquids. I waved frantically, glimpsing at her pink-magenta colors and a small white hand....waving. Occasionally a girl’s voice elevated to a perfect pitch:” Ich liebe Dich, Mama”!

Finally I strolled back past the bookshops, passed the newspapers full of the Gulf Coast’s oil spill headlines. Next to the rising and falling financial markets and into the “Reflection Room”, a quiet zone for all religions or none, where the mosaic at the entrance’s floor showed the “True North”. Inside it was quiet except the imagined call of a distant muezzin, calling for evening prayer.
I sat down next to two carpets facing East. Two grown men went up and down whispering exotic versus while I quietly cried into my German soul on American soil.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

MOTHERS IN MOTHER NATURE


The wonders of nature are all applicable to me. I have the chance to metamorph on a daily basis just like other creatures of nature.
A newt is an amphibian of the salamander family metamorphosis from aquatic larva to terrestrial juvenile to adult lizards. Newts produce toxins in their skin as a defense mechanism against predators particular the rough skinned ones of the Pacific NorthWest have more than enough tetrodotoxin to kill an adult human.

Monday, May 3, 2010

DRILL BABY SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL AND SPILL...


Please call your local representative (Honorable Barbara Lee) and demand a comprehensive petroleum reform plan, to decrease oil consumption.

Monday, April 26, 2010

The Marsh April 21, 7:30 PM San Francisco, Mission District


Isabel Reichert & Sean Fletscher wrote an experimental theatre piece called:
"Performance Art In Front of an Audience Ought to be Entertaining".

One night, one time only, called a "Rising".

I had the pleasure and the leisure and the interest to take part and entice several others around me to join.
Susie, Steffi, Sarah it was great to see you all there.

We sat in the aisles of "Press" and took part in the envisioned and imagined LAST ARGUMENT of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta.

Or shall I say FIGHT
or shall I say CONVERSATION
or shall I say MISUNDERSTANDING
or shall I say JUDGEMENT
or shall I say TIT FOR TAT
or shall I say NEGATIVE THOUGHT EXCHANGE

or what ever the hell you call the
TALK, the "opening of your mouth
and resemblance of words pour out of it",
between two beloveds,
six months after they were married.

If you ask me, what I know, is that at the end
when everything
was said and done,
the night over,
the new dawn rising,
the MAN, Carl Andre ALIVE
and still is today
and his much younger WIFE
was DEAD.

Ana Mendieta was found at the bottom
of the couple's apartment.

Apparently
Ana Mendieta
fell,
was thrown,
was pushed,
jumped from fear,
(suicide is out of the question)
from the couple's 34th apartment window
on September 8, 1985.

Mr. Carl Andre was acquitted of second degree murder 1988.

Both Phillipe Coquet and Carla Pauli had moments of brilliant acting.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Dharma in the Desert



One with Nature:
with awe I look upon thee.
Simplicity. No culture conflict,
no language needed.
How does nature look at me?
She says," I chew you up and spit you out as plumes of ash!"
Love you
Martina

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ode To Sultan


MLK Day last week marked the Memorial Service for the late Larry Sultan at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Outstanding speakers, i.e. Jim Goldberg and SFMOMA's curator of Photography Sandra Phillips, as well as many colleagues of the California College of the Arts. Vivid words illuminated the life and work of an artist whose world we shall now only know through his fantastic photography. A communal bottle of Wild Turkey booze was passed to the mourners.
I graduated from the S.F. Art Institute in 1987 and Mr. Sultan was one of the most instrumental and influential photography teachers I witnessed.
Kelly, his beloved, wrote what he said shortly before he died. I will paraphrase it here. “I am happy that I have touched “CULTURE” ever so featherly.”



Here are my musings

About this great loss to the art world:



Ode to Sultan



Myself, a star

Of the expanding

Constellation in the

Sultan Orbit.



The eloquence of a mind

Reflects in luminous images.



Flirting with the edge to

Endure the inferno - life.

Capture the quality,

Absurdity.



A sweet and sour

Wicked sense of humor

Holding the Key to the Kingdom.



Above all

Anxiety;-

Provoking

Art

Conceptual,

Yet

So, so personal. Martina Konietzny M.F.A. 1/23/2010