One for my friends...

who have escaped Ljubljana, however miss it every now and then.

Openings

are about art, but not only that, they are also about having fun and enjoying yourself. No matter whether you are the artist, his friend, the gallery owner or just an unsuspecting art lover or even merely a passer-by. So do you thing anyone had fun at this opening?

Boys with new toys

Just messing around with an application on my new phone... Don't worry I am not really prone to using my phone camera a lot... but you know... new toy needs to be taken for a test drive...

Michelangelo

ok... not quite :)

Stand-up Paddy

In stand-up comedy it is important to use your facial expressions and your entire body. Otherwise you can tell the jokes until the cows come home and nobody will know when the fat lady has sung. I only stress this because I have noticed that a lot of Slovenian stand-up comedians fail to use anything else but their wit and vocal chords. So... try something new (well when I say new, I actually mean well tried out recipes).

505

For a long time this Arctic Monkeys' song was my absolutely favourite bike riding song. So, here is a sort of hommage to the song and this fact. Enjoy :) (I hope you don't get sea sick) And even though I have nothing to do with the music (except that I am a great fan), the visuals are as usually all mine...

Where do adverts go

once the town has been billboarded up? And every house has huge adverts instead of facades. And the buses are all funded by one gangster or another (and yet the fares are no cheaper, nor has the service improved). And we think we have seen it all. Every little nook & crany of our consumer lives have been filled with adds... and then suddenly... we reach for the sky...

Let there be dragons

Who would not go to an evening full of fire? It seems that we have been fascinated by it ever since the first caveman stumbled out of his cave with a burning stick and said to his mates 'Look what I've found... It's an instant eyebrow removal tool, but I am sure it could be used for something else... The problem is I have no idea what ... But one day somebody will figure it out, and he will be awarded the Noble prize.' (By the way this was the same caveman, who one day came from his cave wheeling a round thing and saying 'Look what I just made. Anyone has any idea what we could use it for?')
p.s. I thought dragons spat fire, not that they are on fire)

Action poetry reading

For those who were not aware. You can laugh with poetry. Poetry can be action packed. It can have its own superheroes (and they fly overhead - well Superman yes, Clayderman no).

Tricky

I know I am often (maybe even too often) a man of portraits at concerts. And even though I am fully aware of this I will give you another portrait... this time from a different perspective.

Don't jinx it

Sometimes it is just fun to go to a happy concert, where you know you will listen to some happy pop songs (even if they try to make the lyrics to some of them not so bright and happy, the rhythm and melody remains happy). You do not need to think, you do not need to pay attention to the meaning of every little note, you do not wonder what did the text writer think here, what is that note doing there... you just relax and enjoy (well and take photos if you are me)... I suppose this is the closest I get to a Hollywood film... but hey.. don't jinx it...

Opera?

No, not really. Operetta certainly (well as regards the singing sort of entry level operetta). Heavy metal? No, not really. But all the darkness that goes with it – certainly. And the story is all about something evil. Well, at least that is what they try to look like. They are all hard, dark, Goth, and on and on I could go about the red colours of hell and the cold blue colours… but in reality they smiled… and they enjoyed the evening. Can’t quite decide whether I spent an evening in the theatre or at a concert… but in the end – does it really matter?

Too many words

There were so many things I wanted to write on today's blog that all the words got mixed up in one huge chaotic mess and in the end I decided to say nothing. So here is a photo from yesterday's concert. And t-t-t-t-t-that's all folks!

Recession

You know your country has been hit badly when you go for your Saturday walk and find that your former head of state is cooking his lunch al fresco (need I remind you that it is November?).

Newcomers

Out of the newcomers I saw last night, this duet was my favourite (but I did not stay to the end of the marathon, as I was still tired from the party the night before). The guy seems to be the leader of the two, but the girl sitting on his shoulder also has her bright moments.

Modern Gallery

A strange combination of a mess, art pieces, music bordering on noise, people having fun, and a very homelely feeling... and a zenit camera of course.

Jazz

A strange combination of jazz songs. Some were so predicatble and standard one almost thought he was in the 1930s... some were good and original... and one even bordered on experimental... to me it sounded a bit undecisive as to what they want to play, but I guess they could be trying out various things as the band has been playing over the last four decades...

Ghosts

between people. Is the title of the performance. So I thought I should show you some ghosts. Here is one that one of the dancers and myself were watching. But you can find so more... you know where.

All Saints

This is just me saying goodbye in my own little way...

No photo

But I had a little look on my blog statistics that suddenly appeared and noticed that since July (when it started measuring) these have been the countries my blog has been viewed from most frequently:

Slovenia
United States of America
United Kingdom
Canada
Germany
Finland
Belgium
Australia
France
India

Just seemed like another fact I can find on the internet and even though I have no use for it, it seemed interesting for a moment...

Hundstage

And indeed they were... I was just sorry to have missed the dress rehearsal, so I took a few (few even in the days of film) photos during the performance when the music was really loud. Here is one of them... I wonder if they will come back to have another dress rehearsal?

Busy evening

First off all I went to see a performance at Rog... Bizarre and that is why I liked it... It was called Clay Road and it obviously lead all the way to China (all roads lead to China and not Rome)... But on the way I saw plenty of things... some good, some seemed like just a last minute idea... I suppose it is just like when you travel with a train and look through the window... At the end I got some Pu-Erh tea, so the trip was certainly worthwhile (well I also got a few good photos on the way)
Then I went to see a concert of DeseirDeeler, who is a sort of Lydia Lunch sort of type who is not trying to emasculate all men... A bit of a punk-rocker, a bit electro-synth, a splash of poetry and well... the evening is going fine...
After that I whizzed to a party thingy... one has to unwind a bit doesn’t one... took a few photos there, but as I hardly ever take flash photographs I need a bit of practice and someone to tell me a few secrets... I know a few tricks, but I am getting bored with them... and I know there is more out there to be learned...

What goes up

must come down. And in the same way our exhibition went up, it had to come down...
And at the same time this is quest appearance No. 4: This time the photo is by Monika Jankovic, who was a part of the exhibition (not with this photo obviously)

Air Ballet

No, I do not have a lot of grand jetés, changements, sissonnes and assemblés in mind. In fact no ballerinas whatsoever - well not what you and I would call ballerinas anyway... But for somebody who is Eiffel tower deep in technology... now that is an entirely different kettle of fish (whatever they are doing in a kettle). I suppose for him it was ballerinas all round.. well ok.. as long as it was in the air.

Caution: a drunk on your left!

I decided for a photo from this play, because just an evening before, while sitting with a friend in my regular, the two of us got approached by a certain drunk professor (that is once he had managed to scare all the girls away from the room - systematically, table by table). The story told by him was not the same as the one in the play, but the feeling was pretty much the same as in the play... a story I guess all of us have (well, all of us who go out at least once in a while)... you know a drunk rambling incoherently, with a really important story...

RIP

Grandpa.

Marathon

I found it quite mind-boggling how many people ran the Ljubljana marathon this year. But then again, it was also the first time I positioned myself just about 1 km from the start, where there are all still together, but they are also all already running... And it took about 20 minutes for the entire group to go past - and yet this was the only rabbit in the race...

Guest appearance No. 3

As I was returning from Saturday coffee, my friend Saso Puppis saw this and wanted to photograph it... So he asked me for my camera and made this photo. I have no idea if it came out as he wanted it to, but as he thought it was good enough to stop and ask me for the camera, I have to at least give him the opportunity to appear on my blog :)

A piece

from the exhibition opening. Always something going on it this sleepy little town.

Jaap

Blonk. A Dutch guy who dabbles in sound poetry. The first impression was that here is somebody who was a single child and was left alone at home a lot and was bored, because there were no playstations or facebook at the time, so he started toying around with what he could find... and what he could find was his vocal cords and other ways of making sounds and noises with his body... But then as the performance continues you really get into it and discover that it is not just randomly thrown together sounds... thumbs up, says I.

Following

yesterday's lost in space, today it is in your face.
Ah, the rhymes...

One of those

evenings, during which I was indecisive as to what do I want to do... I felt a bit down, so I was toying with the idea that I could stay at home and just be lazy... but then again I was feeling a bit down and I have spent the whole day at home trying to do some work... so I decided to go and see the opening of Sonica because a couple performances were announced (and you know me - I am a sucker for live performances)… so in the end I decided to go out, but could not stay out for too long… wasn’t in the absolutely right mood, even though the distractions were welcome.. So after the first performance I waited for the second one to start and I soon decided that I am not in the mood for it so I went back home…
ah yes, I think I chose this photo because it sort of depicts how lost in this vast universe I felt yesterday...

No comment

Industrial

Sunday night has to be industrial. And when I say industrial I do not mean merely the music. I also mean the fog (which by the way does not create the best possible conditions for photographing). It was worse than in the golden age of the industrial revolution. It was even worse that London in the times of Sherlock Holmes... Heck, it was even worse than Ljubljana in the 1970s (and trust me nothing was darker and foggier than that).

Dreamy

Jazzy.

Event - ours this time

This time my friends and I had a joint event. And what can I say - if you were not there it is your loss :) I think we should organise more and as times go by we might even sort this organisation thingy out... but otherwise it was fun (albeit exhausting)... well, see you at the next one...

Party

Any concert that ends with a bunch of people from the audience on stage has to be a good one... After all is it not all about the contact between the performers and the fans (or audience)? This photo is not from one of those moments, but the evening sure ended up like that...

What's wrong with this photo?

The photo itself is OK. It is what it depicts that is wrong... I know that most of my photos are, you know, what I would call 'nice' photos - photos from concerts, plays, dance performances, art shows, nature... things that are in reality in the reach of a selected few... but the truth is that there are millions of people out there who will probably never go to a dance performance, or to whom the theatre is merely a distant memory of their childhood, or who turn up at an exhibition opening just to get a bite to eat...
Now I don’t know where you live. But in the country I live things are certainly turning for the worse. Faced with the global recession the government of this little country decided to do what it does best. Put pressure on the little people, which usually means people like you and me. But some are not as good at jumping over the obstacles that life throws at them, some have just plainly ran out of luck, some decided this is the easier option, some escaped into alcohol or drugs, while some of us have no idea that this is waiting for us somewhere down the line … It is often much too easy to look away and say: ‘It is their own fault.’ ‘They should not have got drunk every day.’ ‘Their life, their choice, their problem.’ And yes, sometimes this is the case. Sometimes it is their decision. But sometimes it is not. And don’t punish all…
I will stop here because I do not wish to bore you all with my ramblings that could go on for another few lines, pages, blogs… who knows… All I want you to do is to next time imagine that this person is your child, parent, brother, best friend from primary school, or maybe even you… think for a moment before you walk on…

Ruins of our time

is the title of the exhibition. But I have no idea what he is trying to fend off... Art? Ruins? Photographs? The invisible evil forces? The whiteness?
The idea behind it reminds me of the exhibition I had in March 2009...

Deadlines

imminent. No time for pleasure. No time for fun. No time for photography. This is just me being totally serious & dull. No fun. No games. Just survival.