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.

Day 16- June 3rd: Dramagalore

The day starts around 5 am just 3 hours after I had gone to bed. My suitemate got sick from the paint thinners I left in the living room. It was overlooked mistake anyone could have made and is solved by communication instead I got slamming doors at 5am, a note in the bathroom at 9am, and dirty looks at 10am.

We did talk about the situation and came up with some sort of solution but I do not know if it will work because she constantly victimized herself in every situation. She wants to be heard so she talks about her life for hours to us and other strangers in the city. I think this entices her and makes her feels alive.

I understand and am sorry that she got sick from the paint fumes and it is my fault but she plays the victim's card so well it's a bit disturbing to me.

Maybe I should also leave her nasty note in the bathroom one day as means of “good communication”.

• Please turn down your terrible music at night.
  
• Please keep the windows closed so there are not 1000 bugs in the room.
  
• Please check the toilet after you have done shitting so the next person doesn't see your dinner from last night floating in the toilet (this happened twice).
  
• When you ask someone to turn the water faucets tightly make sure you do it too.
  
• Please keep your “group therapy, sob stories, personal experiences, and family drama” conversation to a min of 5 mins per day instead of wasting hours of other people's valuable time. (countless hours wasted; I have stood and listened to her talking about her life for 1 hour more than a couple of times and now I just make up excuses and leave but still I give her at least 10 mins to speak to about herself, daily).
  
• Please be respectful of other members in the group when doing a group activity.

I know I am just being mean now but I feel that she takes advantage of people's sympathy for her disability and use it for her constant self reinforcement of “being the victim” is simply unacceptable.
Of course I won't write her the note above and in many ways I still feel for her physical and psychological sufferings and I do hope she is able to get something out of this Residency by interacting with others in a social and urban environment before returning to her seclusions in South Dakota.

Good to get it out of my system and I do hope her a peaceful life.

oh, we also took a very wonderful roadtrip to a little artist village and visited a few art galleries with Beata.