Emma: an adventurous day 12

10th March.

This morning we went to see Warwick Freeman do a talk at the Pinakothek der Moderne which was quite a lively interesting talk about how 'Kiwi' he is. I really enjoyed it for 3 different points he made right at the beginning and kind of referred to throughout his speech.
1. He quoted F Scott Fitzgerald who said the following in 1922:
"I want to make something new -- something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned"
I really liked it because Freeman paused for a moment and then said "and then he wrote The Great Gatsby soon after," almost as if by saying this he would create something grand after he read it and/or shared it (well thats my interpretation!)

2. The next thing Freeman quoted was a Maori proverb 'Kaore te kumara e whaakii ana tana reka' which translated roughly to: 'The kumara (sweet potatoe) does not say how sweet he is' (http://www.maori.cl/Proverbs.htm). He talked about how the title of his presentation was 'all about me' but that boasting was "not very Kiwi" and that Kiwi's almost have too much modesty. I think i really liked this because he was quite modest about his success and quite laid back about it compared to people who take their success for granted.

3. The other thing that I loved was Freeman's questioning of the term 'Kiwi'. He was basically talking about why New Zealanders would want to be named after small flightless birds that don't like to socialise. Instead, he said that he would rather be named after a Weka - and intelligent bird that is naturally inquisitive and likes shiny things. I liked this discussion at the beginning because he kept refering to himself as a weka or saying 'the weka in me' etc. and went on to explain his work in reference to being an inquistive bird and more generally, a 'Kiwi' (with a captial 'K'!).

I'm not sure if any of this will help me with my final work but it was something that I found really interesting and wanted to record here after i wrote really quick notes in the lecture.


So you may be wondering, why did i say we had an adventurous day? Well, the lecture brought me home because Warwick Freeman is a Kiwi and reminded me of Australia, so that was more of a personal adventure in my head. After we left the lecture we ventured to a total of 6 more galleries that took us right across the city.

We went to 3 really close to the Pinakothek. My favourite one of these that i'll quickly talk about was one by the Dialogue Collective. In the description it says "Thought provoking environments are fundamental to the group, and this exhibition is meant to bring people together through interactive events." and in 'Home and Away' [secret Australian reference there! 2nd time i thought of home :)] this was definitely tree. I think it was partially successful in how interactive it was: we had to decode a little quote to open the secret chest with a necklace inside and we got to write a prediction for ourselves and put it in a box for next year (we just kept and swapped ours so that we wouldn't be tempted to open them before next year!) It was probably the most interactive that i've been in an exhibition so i found it quite fun. Steph and i bought 'home' and 'away' necklaces - mine broke already :( but i'm a jeweller so i will fix it when i get home!

The coded entry box!

our new necklaces!

In front of Schloss Nymphenburg (L-R: Peter, Steph, Me, Jenny, David. Chris was taking the photo!)

The gold trimmings

Our adventurous day then took us to 'Flora eats Fauna' at Schloss Nymphenburg which was in a castle! i was way to excited... but rightly so, it was beautiful! and so huge! It was understated but had intricate, gold decoration on the windows and the main centre building. It really was just spectacular - i wish we could come back in Spring, it's probably even more beautiful when the hedges aren't just branches...

'Flora eats Fauna' exhibition space

We rushed across the city to get to the last 15 minutes of an exhibition that somehow involved coffee but it was sadly they had mostly packed up (serves us right for trying to get there for the last 10mins of a show...). There was, however, something really cool about getting trams from the east of the city to the west. We recognised cool doors, beautiful churches, squares, parks, statues, laneways, galleries, streets as we passed them by. We really have come to know this city! To me thats the amazing thing because despite being flooded with information and so many beautiful objects, we recognised lots of places that we passed by for a minute or two as we made our way from gallery to gallery.