Czech Republic and Austria, 9 July 2011
[These notes are copied from the July update at the end of Biography, long version]
My Great Adventure to the Czech Republic and Austria started early Saturday morning, 9 July 2011, when Molly Radecki met me at the Prague airport and, with Petra, as driver, we three sped south through hours and hours of beautiful Czech countryside.
We finally crossed the border into Austria, now a simple unmanned control point, and within a short time found ourselves in the hidden beauty of Primmersdorf, where Jonathon Roberts and Vesna Elfriede Michi preside over a most special environment. There’s an inner courtyard with a studio for Vesna’s Haut Couture designs and a clock tower and various houses, but the real accent is the Schüttkasten. I’m placing in here a photo taken from a Wiki entry. Consequently it is very small. The snow somehow accentuates its baroque lines. And my summer-time photo shows the entrance. It was built in 1706 and the architect is Jacob Prandtauer. He is famous for the Benedictine – Melk Abbey. And so the Schüttkasten is original baroque.
Inside, the feeling of the building hits straight to the heart, partly design, partly warmth of spirit. The bar lounge area is where I met Jon. He enfolded me in a friendly hug and offered me a drink from the bar. He warned me in his charming way that, as it happened, there weren’t going to be many people at the vernissage that night, but that it was going to be a very good party. And he was absolutely right.
It was a wonderful party. Good wine, good entertainment, good food. And above all fascinating people. At Vesna’s atelier there was one especially striking couple. Erika Ebner, dressed in red with red flower petals attached by honey to her forehead. She is in the Haut Couture business. Her partner, Pekka Janhunen, is an architect and lectures in Vienna at the University. But look at his outfit – green trim on his black jacket and – green shoes. Erika organised this apparently. My photograph shows him writing out his address for me. These two photos also show something of Vesna’s atelier.
When the opening party for this two-person show happened upstairs in the Schüttkasten I didn’t take any pictures because I was, well, focused on the party atmosphere.. But oh yes, a little before, I nabbed a picture of Ida von Szigethy as she was posing for a friend in front of one of her paintings. I like Ida. I hope we will keep in touch.
Here, by the way, is the exhibition information with its title in German:
Kunst der Frauen
Fantastishe Malerei
Ida von Szigethy und Judith Clute
In Partnerschaft mit “Centre for the Future” Slavonice.
Die Ausstellung ist vom 9. Juli bis zum 31. August 2011
And the contact details:
Schüttkasten Primmersdorf
2095 Drosendorf
tel: 02846 464
Mobile: 0650 8713727
www.schuettkastenprimmersdorf.at
Vesna had asked me to say some words. I thought about it beforehand. Although some of the people speak English very well, it of course was a German-speaking audience, so I made my speech very simple and short.
The photos here of our exhibition space were taken the following day with natural light. The salient feature is the beauty of the venue. Just look at its depth. And the thickness of the wall as shown by the window niches.
Then Alexander Stipsits – “Dearest Sascha” – will make a video of the hanging when he returns from Colorado, and it will go onto my site under Real Media. There is plenty of time, because the exhibition will last until the end of September.
Entertainment downstairs in the bar lounge area was quite extraordinary. I’ve included here two pictures of Taurinta, the Lithuanian jazz singer. One at rehearsal in the afternoon: the other performing in her bright green dress. Note that she holds a handset from a gaming module. This is her gizmo to click in certain electronic procedures. The keyboard player of the band, Gert Kapo, from Albania, is an avant garde composer. He combines various 21st century elements and, along with David Rival’s computerized remixing, transforms traditional Lithuanian folk music into something surprising and wonderful – a striking new jazz form, fresh and immediate. Completing the combo is Palestinian bassist Ahmed Eid, in the background of the green dress picture. More information on this band at Taurinta.info.
And so the festivities stretched beautifully into the deep night and then we were presented with a delicious buffet dinner. I wish we could live this way back home in London.
But the Schüttkasten ambience has its own special story. Several decades ago Jon and Vesna were able to buy this complex set of properties very cheaply. How? The answer has to do with iron curtain politics: all along the border were aggressive gun installations. Whatever inherent beauty there was in these historic buildings was negated by the bad atmosphere. Jon and Vesna had the foresight, however, to know that the buildings had great potential and that soon the politics of the time might change, and they could be transformed into something beautiful.
And here we are in 2011, and the world created by Jon and Vesna and their friends enfolds all newcomers. Theirs is a place I would want to return to. Certainly most of the guests, many of whom stayed over, are “Friends” of the Schüttkasten. They do return again and again.