disappear (3-2-1)

Leaving London for the first time after starting to feel at home. 

Christmas holidays in Offenbach-Eppstein-Hetzhof. Good bye.

christmas decoration

This tree was one of the first christmas decorations I noticed (in Camberwell). 

I like the way, the house looks–as if it decorated itself as well, although 

it's just the normal lights glowing together with the christmas bulbs. 

a british colony in peckham

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In Peckham, you see mostly caribbean and african food stores or chicken and fries

take-aways. One day, a friend suggested me to eat at M. Manze, a place for 

original pie and mash. I always passed by this place but never recognized it! It is delicious. And an interesting cultural experience. It feels like being in an 

english colony in multicultural Peckham. A sign in the shop says: Founded 1902. 

Opened here 1927. The home of pie and mash. It's so nice to have both: the 

choice to have food from all over the world and a place to feel traditional, 

nostalgic and very british (whereas the minced soya-pie is quite contemporary).

They also sell this amazing Peckham postcard. 

M. Manze The Home of Pie 'n' Mash

on the corner of Peckham High Street and Peckham Hill Street


Mon 11am–2pm


Tue-Thurs 10.30am–2pm

Fri 10am–2.30pm

Sat 10am–2.45pm.

letterpress 01 / 99

Finally, I started working in the letterpress workshop. It is AMAZING.
And addictive. Unfortunately, I have to wait till January to go on.
I started with setting the weather forecasts - just with the aim to get
into working there. James, who runs the studio asked me if this is an
on-going project and if I will make many of them. I did not think about
it before, but: YES, I will! (this one is set in Bembo, 60 point and Bembo
italic, 12 point. Unfortunately I just recognized that there was is a
wrong o in the case. >>Try to find it)

this print comes in an edition of 12.

and on light blue paper in an edition of 14.

the perfect light

Burgess Park, Saturday 8 Dec. 2012, 3 pm

Around 3 pm, before it gets dark, the London sky has the perfect light 

in the last weeks. Pastel colours in many shades. The sea feels very close. 

Or as Adam said: You are entering a Turner painting now. 

everyday life

Every morning when I go to College, I walk the same way from Peckham to Camberwell. 
I like these repetitions, it is like a meditation. The first part of the way is a 
small park. The second part is Peckham High Street. During this part I pass many interesting things. I always think: One day, I have to make pictures of all of 
this. On saturday I made some. It felt strange getting out of my daily routine which
is being a passenger outside the windows. But on the other hand I got a closer imagination of all these other daily routines which take part behind the windows. 

mono.klub #40 / Robert Montgomery

Last week, mono.kultur newsletter said:

Dear Friends, 
since Robert Montgomery came all the way from London to join us for the release
of our shared publication Echoes of Voices in the High Towers a few weeks ago, 
it seemed only fair to return the favour and make our way over to the grand isles
to present our book in person to our English friends. So if you happen to be 
in London next week, please join us for an evening of conversation with Robert Montgomery and publisher Kai von Rabenau, on the lovely premises of Ti Pi Tin bookstore. We promise to be on our best behaviour and Robert might even be 
persuaded to sign copies in the most unexpected ways.

 

We look forward to seeing you there,
 mono.kultur

I said: YES. I am in London. And I went there and it was good to be there. 
It was a familiar talk between publisher and artist and many nice people around them. 
What I keep in mind: Robert Montgomery said, that poetry is the genre of literature
of our times. It is short. You can even read a few poems during sitting on the toilet
or standing in the bus. Sometimes people criticize him to be too romantic, his work 
to be close to kitsch. He says: I like romantic and I think that we desire it. This is
my language. And a woman in the audience said: Maybe people criticize it because they are afraid of it. Or because they desire it even more. Furthermore, he said that his work speaks the language of life in the big cities: this similar feeling that you 
can find in London, New York, Berlin, Madrid, Paris and so on. For me, this life is defined both in being very poetic and having a big lack of poetry as well. So, let's read poems. A good place to start, here in London, is the Poetry Library. A library at lovely Southbank Centre. For poetry only.

"ROBERT MONTGOMERY WORKS IN A POETIC AND MELANCHOLIC POST-SITUATIONIST TRADITION"

offenbach house

If Offenbach is a house, how does it look like?

Something incredible happend to me. Yesterday I started watching flats again,
cause in January I maybe need a new home. My plan is, to move to the east
to get another impression of living in a different part of London. The flat
was in Roman Road, Bethnal Green. When I arrived there, I felt like: Okay,
this area is a bit strange, but in general I like strange things. Honestly:
I thought of Offenbach, the city where I lived in Germany before I came here.
Offenbach is known as the bad suburb of Frankfurt/Main (although its not bad
at all) and it has a genuine style. When I came closer to that area, which
is dominated by council blocks (social housing), I saw a sign: Offenbach House.
I could hardly believe what I saw. It is one of the really big houses
(the one in the middle of the picture).

Later, when I left the flat, which was in another block, I passed this wall,
where they put all the emblems of the cities and I got the proof:
IT IS OUR OFFENBACH!

Additional information: The girl, who was showing me the flat, is french.
When she visited this flat the first time, she was a bit shocked of the area
and the name of one of the other buildings, which is Puteaux House.
Puteaux is one of Paris' rough suburbs. Offenbach, they found the right
neighborhood for you.

green / november

Although most of the trees have finally lost their leaves 

(later than at home), november is a lot more green here. 

This is the view out of the window of our living room. 

(I still can't believe that it will be december tomorrow.)

weather forecast

There is a lot of poetry in english weather forecasts
(and the chance to read them like a horoscope).
quotes taken from METRO newspaper, Friday, November 23, 2012

christmas decoration

This beautiful thing came in a letter from Germany (above). It fits to the decoration in our living room (below). I like, that Jo calls it christmas decoration. Its not stars, nor silver or gold or red or something like this. But: It makes happy, for sure. By the way, it always seems to be a wonder for me to get a real personal letter or a parcel by mail from my friends and family. Something real is transported all the way from them to my place. Its really strange that this normal process seems to be 

a wonder now and all these thousand emails etc. from here to there became normal.

the queen of the day

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This is Jo. I am happy to live with her for a while. Yesterday we decorated
ourselves with different things e.g: our new coloured kitchen sponges,
the domestic pigeon and some of the many plants. Jo is an artist, a market
stall holder at Old Spitalfields Market, a professional car boot sale shopper,
author of this wonderful blog: toot as in foot. And a lot more.

pink

When I moved in here, again I realised, 

that I own a higher-than-average amount

of pink things. The plate was the only pink

 thing in this flat before. It is presented in the

 way my flatmate Jo is selling things. 

Although you will find nothing pink there, 

you should visit her shop.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheTootShop

circle studies

Nazareno Crea used a nice analogy to explain how to develop creative ideas. We move in circles. Up and down, back and forth, including failure and mistakes. Having this returned to my mind, I am obsessed by circles. I remember these coloured spiral plastic toys. It seems to be a symbol for my life at the moment. Or maybe, for life in general. I also remember an exhibition in Berlin, titled 

"Every circle makes sense". Yes. Circles, everywhere.

OZZYS KEBAB

... is the next place for fast food to my house. Today, I bought some fries. 
The 1. Man: You are new here. -- Yes, quite new. The 1. Man: Where are you from?
-- From Germany. The 1. Man: Ah, Germany there are many turkish people. 
The 2. Man: Ah, you are new here-- welcome  to London! (...) In this moment, 
I felt so equal to them -as immigrants in this city- although our 
lifestyles must be very different. In between, people came in and out, ordered 
Kebab, Pizza and Chicken, talked loud on the phone, watched TV. Everybody 
seemed to kind of know each other. Good to be a part of their neighborhood.

St Bride Library

The World’s foremost printing and graphic arts library

http://www.stbride.org/

camberwell cookbook / cover

The second assignment: a collective cookbook. 

Everybody designs his/her own recipes and makes a proposal for the cover. 

For my cover, I made a typeface out of prints from vegetable pieces. 

(Try to identify leek, potato, pepper, onion, celery and carrot.)

new look for books / cover versions project

Go to the library. Chose a book with a bad cover and an interesting content. 

Design a new dust jacket for your chosen book. My choice: PAOLO FREIRE

Education for critical consciousness. The original jacket shows fish (on the left). 

My new jacket is a simple and striking typographic solution (Helvetica bold).
The changing position of the "O" is a symbol for the head and the change of
consciousness. Printed on sugar plant paper, which is rough and has a nice colour.

New Dresses.

  _____________________________

While the trees are loosing their leaves, I found some new dresses. 

(And followed the advice to take pictures of things outdoors. 

Again, it was a good test of courage to do unusual things in public.)

stationeries #2

I just couldn't resist them. How they are meant to be equal and
how different they are. The paper. The colour. The type.
And finally I know where the name of this website comes from:
http://pleasedonotbend.co.uk/