Blog de Katrine Knauer
vienna
It's been ten years since I lived in this city. I almost forgot what it feels like to exist in a place that carries so much history but also manages to intertwine the modern almost seamlessly.
I sit in cafes where Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schnitzler scribbled, sketched, sipped and chewed; sending each other letters filled with ideas on love and lust and sex. When my gaze turns up, I can see the work of my contemporaries, a century later, sprayed and painted across the walls of the Danube. They brighten the long grey winter with waves of color.
I walk in neighborhoods, through mazes of Hundertwasser's imagination, buildings that are mathmatical complexities doing numbers in my mind. I feel tired when I arrive home at night. A good tired from a full mind, processing the day. The stones whisper when the wind whistles past, sending me into quick dreams floating in this warm duvet.
visual beethoven
the energy of a city emerges from many cracks in the landscape, much of it from the architecture. the stones that hold history. walking through a city's structures is kindof like drifting through a song. it can be uplifting, inspiring, dull, unnerving... when i arrived in los angeles a year ago, it evoked none of those emotions. it was just overwhelming. impossible to get a grasp of. i could not make out the tune, no matter in venice, los feliz or downtown. i could not feel the beat.
i was lost. no rythym to carry me through the city. nothing to guide me to the juicy spots. my eyes bored by the long stretches of bland architecture and strip malls, feasting occasionally on buildings from the 1920s or 1950s that broke up the monotonous tune. no visual beethoven here.for my own sanity, i decided that i needed to pick one thing that i liked about los angeles each day.
it was easier than i thought. day one, there were mountains. i can see the mountains. they are a crescent holding part of the city tight to the ocean. the mountain tops peeking out above the city. it is beautiful.
day two, this is the land of eternal spring.
and then, the murals! the murals made me happy. i even did a little dance. they gave me ground. gave me a beat to the city. to the history.
below i share what i found to be the rhythm of this city and the voices of the many different types of people that live here...
Vhils + JR
Ethos
Retna
Artist unknown
