Friday, 6 July 2007

"Hello, this is Jan Christensen, I'm concerned about the toilet."




Just trying to catch up on bloggable tidbits that have hithereto gone unblogged.

Above, for example, is Lina’s explanation of Jan’s attempt to get the staff at the Marriot to fix an unsatisfying non-flushing situation when they were staying there last week.

Last night, unfortunately, there was no swimmingpool as the pool and fitness centre closed at 22. What kind of 5-star is this? Instead spent the night drowning in insane amounts of sheets, after a pretty good late night dinner consisting of tomato and mozarella salad and a red thai vegetable curry delivered to the room. This morning I talked Bjørn and Power out of ordering anything from the, in my opinion, overpriced Marriot breakfast.

In completely unrelated news, I've been very excited that this is finally out and doing its way around your favourite sites and networks of acquring or seeking for music illegally. It's a single by dynamic duo Jay Haze and Ricardo Villalobos and it's absolutely brilliant and easily my favourite release this year. Perhaps only equalled by Âme's "Fiori" from the Berghain/ Staatsballet thing. Up there with earlier Villalobos classics like "Morphunk" etc. Wondering whether I should go to the bootleg opening of Documenta or Ibiza.

Brief skype-chat with Leif Magne Tangen last night. He had just made a big sale at Pierogi, but was still trying to outsource his actual work there by trying to get me to underwrite his next press release for him. Jan entertained throughout the chat by amazing us all with his remarkable skype formations.

The "experimental factory/ flexible space" bit from my former post is a teaser from what should hopefully be the most thorough piece of theoretical reflection from me on this whole process, which should be written at some point soon hopefully, and which might take as its starting point a few ideas from Liam Gillick's five-day seminar at United Nations Plaza in May. It's connected to the ideal/ myth of hyperflexibility that surrounds those involved in the artworld and its relation to non-material labour and similar such fascinating ideas.

Also somewhat related to this, while enjoying a cab ride to Itaewon the other night, Bjørn and I passed what looked like the workers taking control of the means of production. There is a big construction site where people are constantly protesting against what looks like new, fancy apartment buildings in an otherwise lowbuilt and oldfashioned area. This day three people had climbed ontop of a big crane and were pumping their fists in sync with their comrades down on the ground. This made me very happy, but also ashamed to be non-flat structuring my way across town within the bourgeois comforts of the much too cheap cab.

Possibly that same day, on the way from Itaewon so that Bjørn could buy som fresh clothes, we met a very friendly cab driver who spoke very good English and told us about his son who was in the navy, showed us his saved boarding pass from a fjord-cruise he had done in New Zealand.

Right now some people are arguing outside our gallery, at the bus stop, we don't know about what, but now the cops arrived too. Jan tells us that the other day he witnessed a fight between the paint shop guy and his pizza place neighbour. Finally some action.

Also, the Hyuindai dept store in Apgujeong apparently openend a new Marc by Marc Jacobs store yesterday, so I'm off there later as I need some jeans, and maybe a jacket or something.

1 comment:

Jooyoung Lee said...

is this future jan or current jan by liam?