The world is sick, but we are the doctors. The basic plot is that the Nazi government has been hiding on the dark side of the moon for the past 70 years and is now ready to take over the world. It’s been described as Sin City meets Inglorious Basterds plus, I don’t know, some measure of insanity and a healthy dose of sci-fi Philip K. Dick extravagance, and I can’t wait for Iron Sky to be released in the Zurich area.

Viewing the teaser material triggers in my mind the pioneering work of Metropolis, a silent masterpiece that blends well with techno remixes and stands the test of time. I get that awesome visual feeling of a black and white silent masterpiece, but beautifully interpreted for the current century. Personally I’m looking forward to this new emergence, resurgence of the European-Germanic cinema, and hope some of the abandoned factories around Berlin get converted to studios instead of posh apartments (Fuck Media Spree).

Iron Sky isn’t a German film, but it sort of invokes the analogy in my mind, that Germanic cinema has had an interesting history, pioneering film production and then withdrawing into a troubled post-world war purgatory where it wasn’t possible to make movies because of politics, resources, money, or probably everything in between. Getting quality movies made in Europe seems to be generally difficult (near impossible to get funding in Switzerland), and what I love is that the funding model of Iron Sky is showing how movies should be made. This film couldn’t be produced in a Hollywood studio, it just wouldn’t have been given a greenlight. It’s not from one studio or country, it’s a total collaboration with funding also coming from crowdsourcing and individual support.  The film is a collaboration-production including Blind Spot Pictures & Energia Productions from Finland, 27 Films from Germany and New Holland Pictures from Australia, with filming in Germany and Australia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I get a sense that the humor here is a sort of part of an evolution, it reminds me of TRaumschiff Surprise, an excellent mockery of Star Wars meets Star Trek meets the German form of the Love Boat (Traumschiff)...and the teaser for Iron Sky reminds me of that type of humor, but mixed with visuals beyond Aliens and violence beyond Inglorious Basterds. No doubt, countless youtube remixes of Der Untergang and Iron Sky will hit the internet when Iron Sky is released on DVD (actually they’ve already started).

Iron Sky is a cult success before the release, the trailer teaser stands on it’s own as the most unique and absurd plot I’ve ever heard of, and come next Halloween I foresee an pleathura of politically compromising Nazi space-trooper costumes heading to Berlin dance parties and filling in the dark shadows of the Cathedral (my favorite Goth club). The visuals of Iron Sky are almost more amazing than the plot. The released images of Nazi space ships, giant space Zeppelins rival the work seen in Aliens and in my mind near surpasses the cinematic visuals of HR Giger. If you’d like to learn more, buy war bonds or invest in the film, check out the main website, http://www.ironsky.net/.

Dancing with Water & Urban Affairs, a show by Zurich photographer Ethan Oelman at *Galerie 16b. I’m planning to visit the Vernissage. I’ve assisted Ethan on one of his water shoots and made a companion video with the material called Birth-Kraft (http://vimeo.com/18276591) and also an interview where Ethan explains the background of his Dancing with Water project (http://vimeo.com/20802817), so I’m looking forward to seeing the images in a gallery setting.

*Galerie 16b
Ausstellungsstrasse 16
8005 Zürich

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Back from Berlin, recovered from the flu, dreaming and scheming of something new, new, new.The But first, I worked on some images from the Bärenquell Brauerei, an abandoned brewery in former East Berlin. I found out about the place from Abandoned Berlin, a blog devoted to urbex in this fabulous European city. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the place is like an urbex mecca, fabulous graffiti, old but not so old that it has fallen apart. I had a wonderful time there running around with my Cinevate Atlat FLT slider shooting video with my VG10 for the video poetry project with Bobby Cuevas.

The next 1 Day of Art event from (t)here Magazine is going to be in London on Oct. 28th-29th. If you’re an artist around London I highly recommend contacting them to see if you can participate (How to Participate). I was at 1 Day of Art Copenhagen last fall and it was an amazing experience (Thank you talenthouse!). The format is simple. You get together with the magazine crew on Friday night, draw a topic to work on, and then you have 24 hours to produce your work within the city limits. For my part I did three paintings in the bathroom of the Diamonds room at HotelFox, based partially on my experiences walking around Copenhagen late Friday night. Before the 24 hours kicked off we were all interviewed, and the camera crew and editors came around during the day to see how the work was progressing.

The whole thing has the nonlinear feeling of a hackathon or startup weekend, naturally without any coding, laptops and API’s replaced by canvas, paint, cameras, whatever you use to put your vision into the real world. Once the spark goes off you get the materials you need together and then create. The work from the other artists at Copenhagen is going to be revealed with the next issue of the magazine, but the cover is already on the web. Believe in the energy of the night and inspiration of the process and great things will come to those who decide to create. I’m looking forward to see what comes out of London.

VOLUME 13 – COPENHAGEN – COMING SOON…

Various events in life now make it necessary to find a new renter for my current apartment, my wohnung is now free zu mieten. It’s at Arnistrasse 16, CH-8908 Hedingen in the Zurich countryside. In order to promote the project, I decided to make a website for it. It was a great time to apply my knowledge of SEO, and first I picked up the domain www.hedingen-wohnung.ch and then starting putting together some photography for the site. I needed some proper pictures for the apartment  – well, technically it’s more of a house, anyways, it was the ideal time to start playing with HDR photography. I played with the HDR option in Photoshop (CS3) and it resulted in some amazingly horrible results. So, I decided to get a proper program HDR tone-mapping program. After a little searching I decided on Photomatix Pro, a fine piece of software that makes high dynamic range imaging painless and the results are fantastic.

The apartment is fabulous combination of an old 200 year farm house rebuilt from the inside, but retaining much of the original wood and structure. A steel stair case connects the floors and the whole place is like a warm hug. On the top floor there’s a gallery and I put my photo studio up there. The ceiling is high enough for a small trampoline, but I just have a background setup.

Getting the place ready to shoot also entailed clearing things away to make it all minimalist and show off the design (as opposed to views of my camera equipment cluttering up the floor space). When you get that far you might as well wash the floors too, so I did that and then setup my Sony A900 with a 20mm Minolta lens to shoot my first interior images. I’ve seen amazing house photography before, but was mainly just hoping to produce some nice images. Happily, Photomatix is an excellent software program and you can easily produce natural looking images with minimal time input. I supplemented the natural light in one image with an Elinchrom strobe, but otherwise it was all just natural light. Photomatix gives you different tone mapping options which range from that horrible gaudy-over-saturation look to the very natural, almost like you’re standing there, but with a little pop so it feels just a tad like the image is from Wonderland look.

Arnistrasse 16 is easily the best designed place I’ve ever lived in, and I feel like I’m walking through a magazine some days. It includes such funky amenities as an induction oven and internet connection in every room. It’s a certified Minergie place, which means it uses the minimal energy for heating and cooling. It technically has four floors, with an open gallery on the top level where you can setup a studio, or an office if you like. More information on the wohnung is on the main site, www.hedingen-wohnung.ch and if you’re interested in visiting the place I would be happy to show you around.