Filastine Frequency

The vacation from being Filastine is about to come to an end. What have I been doing this last month? Mostly looking for an apartment, nothing could be more mundane and un-blogworthy. It’s been a month nearly free of generating anything, leaving time to indulge in the hedonistic pleasure of being a culture consumer. A rare opportunity to read, watch movies, and listen to music than it is to write, edit video, and compose audio. Also more time for local adventures.

I went walking with friends in Cap de Creu where we found some lost hunting dogs, after managing to reunite them with the owner we were invited to their lodge. It was exactly as you’d expect a rural spanish hunting lodge. A long rustic room with a burning hearth consuming half of one entire wall, animal heads, boar tusks, and antler mounted on every vertical surface, bearded men playing cards while smoking and drinking. Hunters are obliged to wear read when in the field, so they were all clothed head to toe in red, with a few fresh animal corpses laying around, well, it was just fucking weird.

I finally explored the water mines of Can Mas Deu, the sprawling eco-squat in the hills above Barcelona. The building dates from the 14th century, but the mines could be older. They consist of narrow tunnels that shoot horizontally into the hill, barely big enough for a human body to squeeze through. Groundwater collects in the tunnel then flows towards the building. Deepest inside, past many strange insects and some calf-deep water pools is a round vertical shaft, basically it’s like being at the bottom of a well, but sealed on the top, and raining underground. Here it was possible to shimmy up the sides ascend to another level of horizontal shafts. It’s a good place for the antisocial.

Urban Barcelona has begun to reveal her charms again, with the return of The Influencers. This year featuring a delegation from New York’s Black Label Bike club, which was a good excuse to trot out the sound swarm equipment. See video.

The big surprise of this year’s festival was definitely James Acord. He’s spent the better part of his 75 years working to make art that includes nuclear material. It’s a story almost too incredible for re-telling.

After the presentation he was told me that, although now he is now marginally surviving via art sales, for many years he worked night shift stacking tater-tots for a burger chain. I consider myself lucky to have escaped so young from the cum cleanup, animal corpse disposal, and taxi driving jobs that have kept me afloat until I moved to europe.

Let’s blame the sultan, because Jogya is a special zone of shared power between a arts-sympathetic sultan and the Indonesian government. 

Staring with coincidences: Banzai put me in touch with Maya, I went to Maya’s house on arrival. It turns out Nova’s dad’s ex-wife is Maya’s roomate Raquel’s sister, making one of my hosts Nova’s ex-aunt. Another of the housemates is Piero, who is part of the Cyclowns Circus and rode his tall bike to Indonesia from europe, traveling with Rafe & Christine with whom I shared an apartment in Berlin last June. The other resident is Tim, an australian who knows just about every australian I know. One of their other guests went to grade school in New Orleans with Subzero Permafrost.

Below is a little video interview with Piero, because his story is borders on the impossible.

Interview with Piero from Grey Filastine on Vimeo.

December 21st was winter solstice, something they’ve never heard of here straddling the equator, but still have significance for me. I played at the ten-year anniversary party of Taring Padi, a radical art collective that occupied a massive complex in central Jogya. They’ve since moved to a compound outside the city and their ex-squat is now a national museum. The party was held in a pavilion outside the museum. Most people arrived in a bicycle parade. Heaps of tall bikes, choppers, and costumes. Sumu and Nova played, then me, with Nova guesting on Autology, which is adapted from a famous old song everybody knows here. Things got mad, lot’s of screaming, people rushing the stage, including one person who jumped up and grabbed my table to headbang over my equipment for a full ten minutes. After the music everyone stuck around laughing and getting tanked on cheap fortified wine. Definitely in my list of top gigs ever. No doubt I’ll be back.

some pics i took during these days unrelated to the stories above: