Clutching the short straw

I am pleased to announce that the next issue of “Böse Geschichten” will feature a full-page spread of one of my shots. “Böse Geschichten” is published by Charon Verlag, whose main product, “Schlagzeilen”, is Germany’s best selling BDSM magazine and is partnered with Sklavenzentrale, the largest “alternative lifestyle” community in DACH with almost 145.000 registered users.

On another note, I just realized there’s a project I’ve never plugged here and it’s a damned shame, so let’s fix that…

Since some three years ago I’ve been working on an automated radio station using Last.fm, painstakingly adding tracks to it one by one in order to create something like the online equivalent of my live DJ sessions: a moody, atmospheric, slow and/or melancholic mixture of dark ambient, jazz, torch songs, oldies, trip hop, french chanson, southern gothic, soundtracks and any other stuff that conveys those moods for me regardless of genre.

Now, the thing is that you have control over the contents of the library but not over the order in which they are played, which has the advantage of giving the listener a different selection every time instead of making them listen to the same playlist over and over, but also has the risk of making everything sound like an inconsistent mess. To avoid this I’ve been fine tuning the song database constantly during all this time, not only by adding new tracks regularly (there are around 1000 at this time) but also by removing the ones that I believed didn’t fit so well on second thought.

Of course, there will always be times that the very randomness of the station’s nature makes for some weird transitions (say, like Bobby Vinton following Atrium Carceri or Massive Attack playing right after a Johnny Cash track; those things can happen!), but all in all I believe I’ve really managed to create a very fluid listening experience, with no nasty surprises or runs for the “skip” button.

The bad news is you’ll only be able to listen to it if you’re in Germany, the UK or the USA, as Last.fm decided to make listening to radio stations a “subscriber only” feature in the rest of the world. They really screwed my homies back over in Spain with this one.

If you want to try it out, dim the lights, grab yourself a pack of smokes, fill a glass with ice and your poison of choice, click the link below, sit back and enjoy:

Seeing as everyone and their mother has a Facebook page for their stuff, I figured it was about time to create one for mine. Support the cause, become a fan and please suggest it to those people in your contacts whom you think might be interested!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaospiral-Studios/109367249090103

A couple of weeks ago we made a photo trip to the famous Beelitz-Heilstätten complex, in the outskirts of Potsdam. I didn’t bring any cameras along because I didn’t intend to shoot anything, but a good opportunity showed up and I decided to take a stab at a couple of shots just for the sake of it using my darlin’s awesome Olympus OM-2. I must say that I’m pretty happy with this one, light leak and all!

Hope you enjoy it after all these months without any updates, but you’d be well advised not to sit around waiting for more for the moment. I’m still not exactly feeling the urge to resume my photographic activity just yet :)

On the other hand, I’m happy to share that I’ve been working on some tracks for the last weeks and it’s quite possible that they’ll end up amounting to a full album in the near future. Now, if I could only find a good name for this project… “Morpheus” just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

So, yeah… As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve decided to put my all photographic activity on an indefinite hold. I have aborted the “Wunderkammer” series because I don’t think I’m achieving the results I wanted, but that’s only the symptom of a deeper problem. Or rather two:

One, I feel exhausted. Jaded. Dried up. I feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to say when I started doing collages, shooting and striving to communicate something, and that right now I’m only going through the motions. I’m not exploring anymore, but at the same time I don’t really know if there’s anything else I want to express. It’s as if all this was only the prelude, the learning stages for something else. During all this time I’ve been shooting I’ve moved towards something, creating a kind of a personal style in the way, something hinted at but still too inconsistent. I now look at all my work and, with few exceptions, see it as steps towards that, but with no actual achievements; as if I was defining the elements, but not creating the works themselves yet. Maybe it’s time to just let it steep, to assimilate everything I’ve done all these years and see what comes out of it after some time.

Two, money. I simply can’t afford it anymore, not for now. It’s bleeding me to death because doing what I do implies spending money in every stage, from buying film to printing a photo, from purchasing wallpaper and atrezzo to lights, paper or chemicals. I’ve managed to turn some weaknesses into strengths (I don’t need “proper” lighting for what I do, for example; neither do I require a space-age tripod; and so on), but right now I’m so broke I can’t even have prints of my own shots. The most I can do with my crap scanner is order a 20x30cm print at some digital lab, which to someone who got into this because he loved to do everything using his own hands, simply does not cut it. No money for prints leads to no possibility of exhibitions, which leads to no exposure, which leads to no money for prints. Vicious circle.

So that’s it. I’m hanging my hat for now. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, if I do something, or when I will start shooting again, or if I even will. If I do, I don’t know if I will show it. I don’t know anything and that’s what it’s all about: starting anew, with no intention and the least expectations possible… but not a tabula rasa, as I intend to carry everything I’ve learnt and that has made me what I am now with me.

Thanks to all who cared and helped, and hope to find you all somewhere along the way.

Cheers!

This will be the last shot of the “Wunderkammer” series, as I’ve decided to abort all my current projects and take a loooong break from photography. Since I don’t have too much time to write right now, I will offer a detailed account of my reasons for this in an upcoming post.

Heartfelt thanks to all the people who’ve helped out and contributed with their time and effort to the project: Aude, Daisy, Domino, Gregor, Gunnar, Irene and Iván. Working with so many different people in such a small amount of time has been a whole new experience for me!

Keep safe, my friends. Get back to you soon.

This Sunday, November 9, I will be present at the Duncker Club‘s monthly Dark Market, selling photo prints, books, framed photos, postcards and other fancy stuff. If you’re in Berlin, drop by, say hi and take a look!