Sunday, June 15, 2008

Day 1, 2& 3 in Vienna June 13, 14 and 15th- Reflections


















If there is such thing as a perfect world Vienna would be one; cultural, clean, beautiful, historic, and wonderful art scenes. everything thing that people dream about.
I really love Vienna as a tourist just like how I love San Francisco as a tourist; at the first glance both cities are picturesque but the perfection of Vienna scares me a bit. Like many Americans dream of having that perfect white picked fenced yard, 2.5 kids, a dog and 2 mini vans. It might be someone else's reality but it's all too unreal to me. My first 2 days here have been wonderful!


Unlike in Budapest I no longer have to allocate time to schedule for peeing before being in public for a prolong period of time, public toilets are free and the Austrians are obsessed with cleaning. There are people and street washing trucks constantly cleaning washing the street all hours of the day. It seem like it's a impossible task but the city looks amazingly clean the cleanest metropolitan cities I have visited. People are so orderly here and I feel completely safe and there is no such thing as over charging here. It feels like i am in mega Mulberry st... that's what's so fake about it.
Can people be so perfect? can perfection exist?

I like Los Angeles and New York because it feels real but here not so much, this feels like Disneyland.
I spent 5 hours at the Ludwig museum one day and viewed a wonderful special exhibition called "bad painting, good art" I really enjoyed it, i found it very humorist and understood the artists messages or the lack of.

It's a 9 story museum the architecture itself its ok and the interior was lacking other than the connecting catwalks. First floor was my last stop (entry level is on 5th floor) and now I really understand where the term "basement art" came from, Shocking!!!!!

I have never seen art like this in a major institution, photos of killing dogs and use its body parts as art and bodies on people's private parts.... ewww. videos of people eating, peeing and pooping at the same time (with zoom on the pooping part)... videos of self cutting and bleeding allover the place... photo of pretend death with animal body parts. All done in the 50-60's vienna no special effects, all real.

I don't think I have this much pressure and negative emotions viewing art. It's faces of death video! I did get the underlining message from the art works. It showed a tremendous amount of anger, social unjust, confusion and a strong desire and hopelessness to move away from the tradition and classical art form Vienna is known for.
It's a painful message for the world to see but I am glad its documented.


I think this is why the perfection of Vienna scares me... The museum visit was symbolic: everything is nearly perfect until you reach the besement and for now I want Vienna to stay perfect in my memory so this time I won't venture down the basement.

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