Panna Cotta oder Harry Potter

The snow keeps falling, the time keep ticking by... We've had a few busy days, a meeting on Wednesday all together in the Villa with the head honchos - just to be welcomed to the project by the city council etc and meet a few of the behind-the-scenes people. There was a great moment when all the organisers had to have an important discussion in German and all the artists went outside and sledded down the (fairly steep) garden on plastic bags - definitely my highlight so far. 48 year old Edgar was brilliant, adopting a luge-style pose and almost ending up in the street beyond the fence...



Yesterday we met Judith and had a meeting at a space where we will have some events together with a project called 'PonyBar' (as in Pony and Bar...). Following the meeting we went out to a Bavarian/Japanese restaurant for Sushi/Weisbeir which was good - if a little low on portion size. El, Thomas and I all had a green-tea panna cotta, and when we came to pay Thomas brilliantly referred to it as 'Harry Potter' to the waitress - brilliant in a Czeck accent (try it!).




It's hard to find good working time - everyone works differently - Edgar made the amazing comment 'for me, every meeting is a party', which Eva looked very concerned about. I've been doing lots of writing and reading, trying to work my ideas back to the bare bones to find out where it could go - I've always had a deep interest in where we are going, in new things, how we will learn and relearn to relate to other people as society moves forwards and grows. The German chancellor has spoken at a global business summit in Davos this week saying globalisation needs to be made more attractive to voters, but being with all these people and talking at length about movement and diversity even in Europe makes globalisation look a lot like an opportunity for economic growth in business but not much like an opportunity to bring people closer together in a dynamic cultural way, or to develop ways of integrating over greater distances.

I found a brilliant life-size plastic crow in a shop today - I think I will go back and get it. I want to make work about migrating animals and nature encroaching and receding around us, historically around people, leading people across early migratory routes and giving settlement and travel one of its first purposes. People also migrate mainly, always, I think, with the hope or knowledge of finding better places (inside and outside?).