The Professor Is Out

My Poster

2011-10-17T23:35:00.000-05:00

Empty Summer

2011-06-17T14:19:00.000-05:00

Paris 4

2011-01-16T04:35:00.000-06:00

Paris 3

2011-01-15T12:05:00.000-06:00

Paris 2

2011-01-15T11:52:00.000-06:00

Paris 1

2011-01-15T08:03:00.001-06:00

My Buddy at Alexanderplatz

2011-01-10T11:57:00.007-06:00

Back to the Eastern Bloc

2011-01-07T09:33:00.000-06:00

Here is my new home on Alexanderplatz. The Fersehturm spikes up in the background.

A view from my window.

Silvester

2011-01-02T01:47:00.002-06:00

The overcast weather on New Year's Eve was not conductive to picture-taking. Only a single one merits posting. SO36 is one of my favorite clubs in Berlin, but I went elsewhere, later in the evening.

Barcelona 4

2010-12-29T07:11:00.000-06:00

We'll start with a picture Carlo took of Marvin and me. I hope to see Marvin again.

Barcelona 3

2010-12-28T12:49:00.005-06:00

Barcelona 2

2010-12-23T16:49:00.001-06:00

Christmas restaurant lights.

Barcelona 1

2010-12-23T10:59:00.001-06:00

Here are the first good photos from my vacation with my mother in Barcelona. I arrived late last night.

Museum für Gegenwart

2010-12-18T14:23:00.003-06:00

Museum for the Present. All I can say: reindeer piss makes soma, and this is art.

NachtundNebel

2010-11-07T08:52:00.009-06:00

Last night, a walked through Neukölln to see fourty or so of the more than 100 events at the neighborhood-wide art exhibit, NachtundNebel, or NightandFog. My friend Matteo joined me for the later part of my five-hour experience.

Although I found no art with a strong visual appeal, much of it was intellectually stimulating. In particular, I had an epiphany with the artwork to the left. The artist made wire sculptures of phrases in German, in which the letters are truly difficult to read. Very friendly, she helped me though several of them, but this one I managed to decipher by myself. Rein? Rote? Rose? It suddenly flashed upon me that the words spelled out, in simple German, Gertrude Stein's "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." So the Berlin artist managed to make new again what Stein herself made new, one of the most timeworn symbols in poetry, the rose. Again alive.

More photos below.

Spandau

2010-09-23T02:59:00.000-05:00

My friend Uwe took me on a walking tour of Spandau the day before yesterday. While most of the photos turned out to be dull, I find this one of two children examining a monument to Jewish victim of the Holocaust to be particularly compelling. Before I took the shot, they were running their fingers along the Hebrew text at the top of the inscription. Uwe asked if they could understand, but of course, they could not.

Back in Berlin

2010-09-06T08:46:00.000-05:00

This photo combines the famous TV tower at Alexanderplatz with a church steeple and a lampost advertising a "Thai Massage" in English. Somehow, these three pointy things together symbolize something about Berlin for me.

I find that I cannot look at the city the same way that I did two years ago. Then, I could at least half assume the eye of the tourist. I have been here five days, yet this is my first attempt to reinaugurate the blog. It will be a challenge, to think through and to execute what it will become. In this regard, feedback is always welcome.

2010-02-06T10:44:00.001-06:00

Iranian Protesters

2009-07-09T11:30:00.013-05:00

I have followed the rigged Iranian election very closely and worked to help protesters by posting helpful information on Twitter and setting up a Tor bridge to help them reach the web anonymously. To help with access, see http://is.gd/156yT.

I would still like for the following front page to appear one day on Google:

Please go to http://geotypografika.com/2009/06/18/iran-google-petition/. Anyone who wishes to help the protesters in the ongoing struggles should also follow #iranelection on Twitter to figure out what to do.

Below is a photo I took two days ago at the Chattanooga Aquarium.

My Review of Essentials Contour Pouch Brief

2009-04-22T08:24:00.007-05:00

Freshpair

100% Super-soft ringspun combed cotton

Body-conscious cut

Double-layer contour pouch

Subdued 2xist logos along waistband

An essential everyday style with an updated fit

Not Exactly a Professional Pic, but, Oh Well

2xist Contour Pouch Brief technical details:

The Standard Stuff

Taozer Macomb, IL 4/22/2009

Waist: Feels true to size

Pros: Breathable, Comfortable, Soft, Good Fit/Support

Best Uses: Formal Wear, Everyday, Casual

Describe Yourself: Comfort Driven

This is what I can wear every day, if not at the gym.

Chicago in Defrost

2009-02-12T09:57:00.003-06:00

Visiting my friend Klaus in Hyde Park last weekend, I managed to snap a few pics on the Loop.

Brief Glimpse of San Francisco

2009-01-15T18:19:00.003-06:00

This is the most interesting picture I took of San Francisco, during Erika's and my brief business trip there.

The Night after the Night of the Ice Storm

2008-12-20T11:28:00.003-06:00

Ice Storm in Macomb

2008-12-19T14:36:00.016-06:00

For those of you who live in warm places like Brazil (that means you, Jorge!), all of this is probably beautiful. The charm wears thin, however, after you spend 20 minutes knocking the ice off your car.

On a cold day like today, the radiator is a kitty's best friend. Here are Taozer and Chou-Chou enjoying the warmth.

Blue America

2008-11-06T10:52:00.003-06:00

Map of shift toward the Democrats from the NYT.

Electoral Map Prediction

2008-11-04T10:55:00.002-06:00

Saarbrücken

2008-07-31T19:08:00.035-05:00

I stayed in Saarbrücken with Doris Hambuch, a former professor at Western Illinois University. She did not have an internet connection at home, so this post has to be compiled in Macomb. Below are images of Saarbrücken's Christopher Street Day parade, followed by images of the city, including a picture of Doris' son, Yann, at the Deutsch-Französische Garten.

Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin!

2008-07-25T18:48:00.006-05:00

I will post again from Saarbrücken, but I wanted to use this last Berlin post for my Friends. Two pictures of René, my very best friend here; and two of Inka and Abdul, the wonderful couple in whose apartment I was so lucky to spend a month. I am so very sad to leave.

In the last two weeks, I have been so enthralled with Gayromeo that I have neglected this blog.

Evening

2008-07-13T08:32:00.006-05:00

The party at Nacktemännerberlin was held on the 19th floor of an apartment building, very close to the Zentrum für transdisziplinäre Geschlecterstudien [Center for Transdisciplinary Sexuality Studies], where I am a "Gast-Professor." The party proved more an opportunity for me to improve my German than anything else, though I did make contact with a professor from Chicago who could become a friend and big-city contact. I shot another picture of Gendarmenplatz at night:

2008-07-07T13:35:00.008-05:00

It's impossible to tell that this is a picture of a very tall statue, albeit one made of mirrors, but I found this angle the most interesting to photograph. The next image, Night Porter (2001), I did not need to photograph, as it appears on the Deutsche Guggenheim website, as part of an exhibit on the American artist, Collier Schorr:

Later in the afternoon, I had a more sobering experience at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin. It is designed in such a way as to shun the usual perpendiculars of modern architecture. Thus my picture of the Garten des Exils was not taken at a slant; I was at pains to stand up straight. Though it looks like the much larger Holocaust Memorial, the tilt is real.

Particularly affecting, for me at least, is the Leerstelle des Gedenkens [Blank Space of Remembrance]. I photographed a section of the floor, on which one can tread:

I hope I can be forgiven for using one of the interactive exhibitions for taking a kind of self-portrait.

City of Anita, City of Bikes

2008-07-05T06:43:00.012-05:00

Although Paris has gotten all the press for its bicycle transportation policy, bikes are everywhere in Berlin. Those in the foreground are labeled "DB": Deutsche Bahn. The public transportation system, which includes the bikes, is excellent here; and the cars one sees on the streets are often tiny by American standards. Pleasantly, there are few SUVs.

Yesterday, I took a Metrotram to the Spinnboden Lesbian Archive to view Rosa von Praunheim's Anita - Tänze des Lasters. In this fantasy- documentary, an aging woman imagines herself Anita Berber and relives Anita's decadent Weimar career in an insane asylum. I have to catch the end of the movie on Monday, so I can't yet say with certainty that within the fiction of the film, the woman is supposed to be Anita (the historical Berber did not survive the Twenties). Below are the actors playing (the younger) Anita and Sebastian Droste. There is a tendency among scholars to dismiss Droste as a secondary talent. While von Praunheim does justice to Droste's seedy side--there's a scene in which Droste steals Berber's jewels and attempts to sell them--he also points out the neat symmetry of their short-lived marriage--"Ich liebe Frauen!" and "Ich liebe Männer!"--she loves women, and he loves men. Yet they express their eroticism in dance together. While, historically speaking, Berber was sometimes and famously fully nude on stage, with Droste sporting at least a loincloth (so as not to suggest homosexuality), von Prauheim allows the buff actor playing Droste, who was actually skinny (see second shot below), to dance fully unclothed.

Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo

Photo by Jósef Pécsi at Foto Tapeta

I have joined a gay men's nudist society (Nacktemännerberlin), and am invited to my first Nachtparty next Saturday.

Wunderschön!

2008-07-02T11:17:00.010-05:00

"Wunderschön," which means both "wonderful" and "incredibly beautiful," has become my favorite German word. It also well describes the weather today.

The lady to the left is my favorite sight on Proskauer Straße, the street where I reside.

Below, an image of the Pegasus that juts off the top of the Konzerthaus Berlin.

Berliner CSD

2008-06-29T10:00:00.018-05:00

The pictures below concern Berlin's Christopher Street Day, the city's gay pride. I spent most of the march yesterday dancing with, or on, the float for the Hafen Bar, which I unfortunately never took the opportunity to photograph. The slogan on the tour bus is the CSD theme: "Hass du was dagegen? Einfach Liebe." Or, "You hate what? Simply Love."

Berlin Angst

2008-06-27T16:28:00.005-05:00

all angels swung right-side down
now trumpets but emptied cups
mouths ajar that should not sing

sharp nails on a shadow's hands
blood tick-tocks don't tell the time
self-laceration no hygiene

liberation's dirty blackmail
this one has another's eyes
that seem also to beg approval

how to anoint without oil
no apotheosis in the vanishing point
body become a coffin that burns

2008-06-25T12:46:00.003-05:00

It has been a rainy, quiet Wednesday for me today. Yesterday, I took this picture in front of the antiquities museum, purely enjoying the juxtaposition of the blue faces and flowers. I do not feel any desire to explore the ancient worlds of Egypt, Greece, and Rome while here: Berlin history is enough for me. However, the combination of Latin and German scripts is also interesting.

Lesbisches-Schwules Stadfest

2008-06-22T12:20:00.006-05:00

Saturday was the opening of the Lesbian-Gay City Festival at Nollensdorfplatz. The image above shows the entry point, replete with gay-friendly advertising from a beer company (sometimes Berlin is too much like an American city). I especially liked the display for gay teachers. Each balloon says, "Cool. My teacher is gay."

As far as I can tell, "donut" does not mean "pretzel" in German. This interesting display was surprisingly found in the women's section of the festival.

As in America, homophobia exists in Germany. I have posted below a picture of a poster dealing with homophobic violence in Berlin. The first image is poster from the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands. It reads, "Normal, not gay!" The second image shows the damage done to a man who was called a "faggot bitch" (that's one translation) and had a beer bottle thrown at his face. In the third, a man was assaulted on a bus. The last image shows the damage done to the apartment door of a gay couple.

2008-06-18T09:26:00.005-05:00

Earlier this afternoon it was overcast, so I decided to do a little sightseeing. One of the places I visited is the German Bundestag, which I didn't photograph very well (today's pictures of the Brandenburg Gate were also disappointing). The image to the right is one of the many figures attached to the state building. The isolation of one figure is aesthetically best, as the combined effect of all the reliefs and statues is one of overcrowding. Um, yes, another naked man with a sword.

Tiergarten Again

2008-06-17T11:34:00.006-05:00

Today was the first warm and sunny day in about a week, so I decided to revisit the Tiergarten. Would the gay boys be out in the nude on a weekday? Indeed, they would. I shot the image above on my way to the center of the park. This is the most pleasant view of the Spree I've seen. Below is the Schloß Bellevue, once the residence of the Kaiser, but now housing the German President.

What can I say about the bathetic Tiergarten statue of Bismarck, below?

Bad Propaganda

2008-06-15T09:02:00.006-05:00

Pictured right is the Goya Club (from Jens Arnold), which hosts the gay party, Propaganda, every second Saturday of the month (three parties this month for pride). I’ve had a lot of fun going to nightclubs and bars in Berlin, but Propaganda at the Goya on Nollensdorfplatz last night was just not fun enough. I should have gotten a premonition at the door: I had registered with the club online and received an access code for a 2-Euro discount. The doormen, however, insisted they needed a print-out—of a plain-text email! It would have been easier to print a fake code than to make up a valid one.

Everything was too expensive. The mixed drinks were the costliest I’ve seen in Berlin; and weak, to boot. Propaganda was packed with thirty-something queers still playing attitude games that should have tired them by the end of their teens, and puffy young things usually not as hot as they carried themselves to be. The atmosphere was prickly and impersonal, and the music only occasionally helped: the DJs had the obnoxious habit of riffing off a good dance song, only to halt it in a musical coitus interruptus that more annoyed than teased. The go-go boys, sadly, were straight out of the Roxy in the 90s: bulky, macho guys with spastic dance moves.

The one thing the Goya has going for it its setting, which is lavish. However, I found the Berghain, pictured below, which is a converted DDR factory building, more architecturally interesting. At least the expensive drinks at the Berghain had some punch!

Techno CZ

2008-06-14T12:57:00.005-05:00

I visited the Schwules Museum [Gay Museum] this afternoon, and I am sure to go back for archival research. Today, I just enjoyed seeing the exhibits. The two images I've posted today are on the website at www.schwulesmuseum.de/. To the left is Junger Mann auf der Straße (1953) [Young Man on the Street] by J. Hass. Below is Freundschaft [Friendship] by Don Whitman, dated in the 1950s.

2008-06-13T08:47:00.003-05:00

This is a statue that gyrates outside the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) that I saw on my way back from the Museum für Gegenwart (Museum for the Present Day). I found it more interesting than anything I saw in the museum, and it seems to comment obliquely on the use of trains.

2008-06-12T06:48:00.004-05:00

Today, there is an enormous contrast between image and text. The image is the statue inside the Berlin memorial to all victims of W. W. II, which is located in the proximity of Humboldt U. A very conventional representation, with overtones of pietà. I received word today that both my Modernist Studies Association panel and the panel on which I will present "Lust Murder Sex Dolls and Other Weimar Monstrosities" have been approved. So, in a sense, my summer project has been legitimized.

2008-06-09T07:38:00.001-05:00

This is likely a communist-era DDR monument, slightly east of Alexanderplatz. There is no commemorative plaque, but the statues stand close to a more self-explanatory, if less interesting, monument to Marx and Lenin. I'm not altogether sure what these naked men are supposed to symbolize, but they remind me of cruising in a bathhouse.

Last night, my friend, Nils, took me to the a small gay bar that was the first in East Germany, at Alexanderplatz. The music was festive, but the crowd, drunk and sad. We had a little wine and left after the drunks began to circle ever closer.

2008-06-07T11:06:00.001-05:00

In the United States, one is hard-pressed to find a park in which to sunbathe in the nude. In Berlin, however, this is no problem. Two quick train rides this Saturday afternoon, and I was in the Tiergarten, an “animal garden” that doesn’t seem to boast any animals besides birds and people, but that is a lovely park even so. The image to the right is the golden statue on top of the Siegessäule, or victory tower, in the very epicenter of the park. I caught her above the trees. She looks off to France, which Germany had defeated, I suppose in the Franco-Prussian War. Quelle tristesse! There is an area of the Tiergarten called Tunten-weise, or “Queen’s Meadow,” where gay men go to get some sun. I thought it would be awfully tacky to take a picture there.

2008-06-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

Above are the plaque for the bookburning monument and the monument itself. Here is my translation of the inscription. Right side: “On May 10, 1933, in the middle of this square, Nazi students burned the works of hundreds of writers, journalists, philosophers, and scientists. Left side, an 1820 quote from the Jewish-German poet, Heinrich Heine: “This was only a prelude: There where they burn books, in the end, they will also burn people.” Micha Ullman’s profoundly understated monument is seen through a plexiglass square, on the ground, in the middle of Opernplatz. Beneath the smudged glass, one sees only empty bookcases.

Later, I visited Das Deutsche Historische Museum, nearby the bookburning monument and the main building of Humboldt Universität. The first floor is organized in a large semi-circle that takes one through German history from the beginning of the Weimar Republic to the current day. A third of the way through, as I stepped into the Nazi period, I began to feel overwhelmed. I don’t know precisely why, but something broke inside of me the moment my eyes fell on two Hitlerjugend posters. I had to stop, go outside, and smoke a cigarette, before I could brave the exhibit again.

One of the works on display in the Nazi period concerns a naked, dying soldier in another soldier’s arms, which is extremely close thematically to the allegorical statues of the dying soldier on outside display, one of which I photographed below. Yes, a naked dying soldier in another soldier’s arm is state-approved propaganda. Doubtless these are Arian soldiers and subtle homoeroticism serving the manly, morbid cause. More examples of the enduring cultural connections between male homoeroticism and death, this time without the softening touch of St. Sebastian’s halo.

2008-06-05T12:36:00.009-05:00

One of the few remaining bits of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz. There was a man dressed as an East German guard who stamped passes--I think for a fee.

Below is one in an allegorical series of statues standing over a bridge in the center of Berlin. They concern a warrior who dies in battle.

2008-06-04T15:25:00.003-05:00

This evening, I attended my first lecture at Humboldt University, pictured above, with the founder's statue. The subject was male (homo)sexuality and misogyny in turn of the century Germany--focused especially on the Wandervogel, a very popular youth movement with hectic homoerotic undertones, as well as hardcore antisemitism. The professor spoke very rapidly, and I could understand her only in snatches. Yet, I think this is good way to improve my German comprehension.

I knew Alexander von Humboldt was a famous early Nineteenth-Century figure in the humanities, but a little research turned up that he was a world-adventurer and almost definitely queer. This suits me well.

I received news today that the Modernist Studies Association is accepting my panel, "Expatriate American Women Modernists Revisited," as expected. The real question is whether the panel on which I hope to present my summer research will also be accepted.

Wandervogel painting below.

Delftboys.com

2008-06-04T05:22:00.002-05:00

This is the Konzerthaus Berlin, which I saw on my way to the Zentrum für trasdisziplinäre Geschlecterstudien [Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies] at Humbolt U. I particulary liked the little guy riding the lion who graced the stairway (see below). Also here is an image from inside the U-Bahn station at Kottsbusser Tor: On the left, the Berlin Subway map. On the right, through the window, graffiti that says, "But this is art!"

Ambivalent Signs

2008-05-28T10:03:00.002-05:00

I visited the Berlinische Galerie this afternoon, and then went on to Nollensdorf Platz, the queer center of the city. On the right, a memorial plaque to queer victims of the Holocaust; below, "Fuck USA" graffiti. At the art museum, I saw a very interesting exhibit of the German photographer, Herbert Tobais. Scroll down for a characteristic image.

Berlinische Gallerie

Photographs like Manfred, Berlin um 1956 make me both hot and sad. This beautiful young man is now in his retirement years, if still alive; yet in the photo, he's far younger than I. One can find saucier images, as well as the full scope of the artist, online, but posting most without written permission is forbidden.

I will have to find elsewhere the Hannah Höch photomontages around my project turns.

2008-05-26T05:03:00.000-05:00

At the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, from any angle, you can see a way out.

dazzling, abstract, incoherent
the kaleidoscope won't cease
to spin
what otherwise to see: colored glass cuts both ways
neither present nor past