Merry Christmas!

by Ruth Barker, 23 Dec 2009

Hello,

So, I’m back from Berlin, and feel like I’m stepping straight into the holiday season.

Berlin was amazing, and proved to be a really interesting trip. I met with curator Christine Nippe, who’s currently concluding her PhD, which has touched on the fascinating languages of cities and urban spaces. Christine is hoping to pursue an upcoming project in Scotland, as well as publishing her research, so expect to hear more from her very soon. I’ll certainly be looking out for her next project after catching her most recent curated exhibition Hardly Anything in the gallery Upstairs Berlin. Investigating how to represent the notion of ‘the void’, the show was thoughtful, layered, and provided much to discuss.
I also met with Mark Sander and his partner Elín Jakobsdóttir who treated me to a great conversation that ranged around language, meaning, and Elin’s sister’s home-made apple pie! All in all a very pleasant afternoon. Mark has been working on a project that I hope to be able to follow on PAR+RS in which he’s been using his skills as a portrait painter to ‘barter’ language lessons in Cairo, via the mechanism of a street cart. It’s a fascinating project, which may extend to a Glasgow evolution in 2010, so I do hope to be able to share it with you.

I met many other fabulous people besides – special Hellos to Catherine, and Anna and Alex (of course) but also to Catriona and Fred, and the remarkable Lady Gaby. My own performance (my reason for being in Berlin in the first place) went well, I think, due in no small part to Lady Gaby’s expertise. My only regret was that unfortunately I was unable to meet with Harry Sachs from the Sculpture park, but as I hear on the grapevine that he may be Scotland-bound in the not-too-distant future, hopefully I may be able to catch up with him at some other point.

For now though, it remains only for me to kick off my work-weary shoes and raise a glass of sherry to the good times promised by 2010. Roll on Christmas – have a great one, everybody!

More in the New Year, with very best festive wishes to you and yours,

xR