CONIECTO

Back home, reflecting upon my trip to Vienna while trying to kill some time on the Dublin airport (thanks eircom! only if your prices weren't that high!).

I think it was my 6th time in Vienna, and I got to know the city much better now. I guess you can't ever get bored there, there are always so many things going on!

What surprised me was the whole obsession ( or marketing campaign?!) around Klimt and Schiele. I was asking myself: was I completely blind the other times I went there, and the talk I had with a friend recently made me more receptive to Klimt's work and personality - or there's something special about Klimt right now?!

I heard about the new Klimt movie, there were posters all over the place - could the launch of the movie be the cause?! That took me to IMDb, in an attempt to find out the release date - it's already out - but only in Austria for the moment. Doing some more reading around, I found out it was a nice chance to become an extra if you were in Vienna at the right time - and that reminded me of the IDC survey - no, I've never been an extra!

We went to visit the Hundertwasser House and Village - there were reproductions of Klimt's paintings for sale in every imaginable shape - posters, scarfs, T-shirts, calendars, tin boxes.

We heard that recently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie came to Vienna to see the Schiele exhibition at Albertina. No wonder - the selection was fabulous, totally focused on the erotic facet of Schiele and on the anthroposophic influences on his work. I've never seen so many people in an exhibition before - a huge crowd (speaking Hungarian, German, Italian, English and Japanese and god knows what other languages) was wandering around...

I thought a lot about the ways the context can influence the "knowing" process. We build on previous experience, on both likes and dislikes... But the capacity to absorb new knowledge is influenced by so many factors! Weather, mood, company...

I'll probably be obsessed with Klimt and Schiele for a while... Anyhow, I have to see the movie!

Why did I miss it in Vienna?! Well, because of my missy who couldn't understand a word because it was doubled in German! And for the same reason, we skipped the Farun Harocki retrospective at the Film Museum.