Oh yes, the new data-enhanced Rapha Pro collection looks like a crooked mono.kultur logo in motion. And in case you don’t care about riding, you can also sit, of course. Or take the train, tonight.

Just in case you’re feeling that Berlin winter blues already: go out at night, and go underground.

Aphex Twin’s unreleased album ‘Caustic Window‘ can be now fully streamed on Youtube! The album had reached the test pressing phase in 1994, but was aborted as a full release. True Aphex Twin passionates can still get their hands on the original, which can be purchased on ebay (the current bid is $10,750!).

The films of Peter Tscherkassky (1958-) hearken back to golden period of experimental cinema.  Despite the capabilities of today’s film editing software, they engender not the uneasy multiple exposures, the interruptions of sprocket holes, and eruptions of grinding sounds populating Tscherkassky’s films.  Since his introduction to the everyman’s Super 8 in 1979, his works, frenetic and phantasmagoric, have sprung from his unyielding dedication to the often unfruitful and always painstaking analog processes undertaken by the explorers of film’s frontier before the advent of software.

Since the 1980s, the Austrian steadily created an unique aesthetic counter to the romantic, one could say Instagram, visuals of much independent filmmaking today.  Reaching for comparisons: in look, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures come to mind; in sheer dedication to process, Tacita Dean.  Perhaps his closest relative stylistically and chronologically is the American filmmaker Guy Maddin (of Brand Upon the Brain!, Heart of the World, and My Winnipeg fame), a producer of rambunctious, theatrical pieces, sly in his impeccable imitation of silent cinema.  However, Tscherkassky’s retro aesthetic denies nostalgia for atavism, painting grinding scenes of emotional tumult and psychological confusion.

Indeed the most seductive aspects of the films undeniably trace back to cinema’s roots–the aftermath of the vision, the remaining question: How did he do that?

If you’re not interested in skateboarding, go read some Bill Murray (no joke) – but if you are, even remotely, don’t watch (okay, do watch), but more importantly: LISTEN to this.

There is always this moment of expectation when the subway train arrives at the station – beautifully captured by Adam Magyar from the other side, slowing down the footage of passengers on the platform to almost standstill and what’s more, to startling effect.

It’s one of the interesting details about Brian Eno that even though he works mostly in the shadows, most people will be much more familiar with his work than they realise – having an album by U2 or Coldplay on their iPod, or almost by default if they used a PC in the 90s, since Eno was famously asked to compose the 3.25 second start-up sound for Windows 95. (Refresh your memory above, or enjoy a 5 minute remix below…) A lot was made of the fact that he composed the sound on a Macintosh, saying at some point that he didn’t even like PCs. But much more interesting are, of course, his observations on what it was like to cram a briefing of 150 adjectives into less than 4 seconds of sound:

‘The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, “Here’s a specific problem — solve it.” The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.” I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.’

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Strasse 68
10997 Berlin

William Forsythe, whose work we’ve mentioned before, is now featuring the installation White Bouncy Castle at the Berliner Festspiele / Foreign Affairs. White Bouncy Castle is part of his Choreographic Objects and ‘an examination of choreography in everyday life’. The best thing is you really get to bounce in it.

“I always thought that it deserved better than lousy sports journalism; I thought it deserved to be sung about.” It’s Sunday, and hell is around the corner (it hit us northern hemisphere people yesterday, ready to take over the next couple of months), so do yourself a favor and support some goodness (it’s still possible, they say), some more goodness that is.