Over the last year, one of the things I’m most proud of  is having stayed put. I didn’t move to a new country*, I barely took any planes and apart from regularly visiting the bearded maths captain [BMC] in Linz, Austria, I was VERY stable. For me at least.

Even though I fell head first, properly and oh so significantly into love with the aforementioned BMC, I didn’t suddenly drop everything and move to Linz. Considering the catalysts for the last two moves to Sheffield and Berlin, this is incredibly surprising.  But maybe, despite having no regrets and being rather grateful for those experiences in their own odd ways, it appears that I’ve learnt something.

Or perhaps I feel at home.

And when considering learning from my experiences or finding a home, I should add in finally. I mean, to move countries on the spur of the moment for a man is romantic, but to do it twice (in one year, and for different men) is not just careless, but also incredibly foolish. I don’t know what Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell would say about a third time, but considering how she felt about the loss of a parent, I can’t imagine she’d be very kind. So maybe I should focus more on the fact that I feel at home in Berlin, and one of the things that has helped that has been that I’ve been very happy in my apartment.

I’m in a great position in Kreuzberg, my room is south-facing and full of light AND has nice floors, and the bathroom and kitchen, while not perfect – do satisfy my requirements by having a good, hot shower and a stove and oven that don’t suck.  I’m friends with several of my neighbours and know almost everyone in the building by name and have babysit half the kids and shared cake with their parents. And until recently, I had managed to maintain a relatively good relationship with my flatmate, only to have it sour from some hideously poor communication on their behalf in the last couple of weeks.  Myeh. I could go on for hours. But I won’t.

Anyway, I might be looking for a new place to live and that honestly petrifies me.  Of course there are the general considerations of whether there’s enough light to keep my happily provided with Vitamin D,  and building repair and cost which are tempered somewhat by the bright sides of maybe finally having a native German speaker for a flatmate. But then there are some more Berlin specific challenges to deal with, like whether I would end up with coal heating and what discount supermarkets are nearby.

I’m unlikely to move away from Kreuzberg, and from all reports coal heating is rarely in use in the former West German parts of Berlin, but I’m wary.  I spent a month in a coal heated sublet when I first moved to Berlin and despite the coziness of having an actual fire in your bedroom, the novelty of hauling fuel and old ash up and down stairs and waiting 3 hours for your room to defrost is over in about a week.

More realistically I’m worried about what stores might be nearby. I’m pretty sure that besides the weather and the state of the S-Bahn, discount supermarkets are one of the most frequent topics of conversation amongst people living in Berlin. Unlike weather and public transport which are more universally recognised, the matter of Berlin grocery shopping is very localised and has its own language: Is Netto or LIDL better? Does your Penny Markt actually carry any stock? Is visiting ALDI a soul destroying experience for everyone? Which place has the best range of organic goods? Why did PLUS close? Why is Edeka easy to forget about? Do you find visiting the Karlstadt basement (a ‘proper’ supermarket) akin to a religious experience for you?

Of course, there are proper supermarkets which have everything you’d expect in a store – but due to both cost and convenience, most people end up shopping at their nearest discount store only to find that it doesn’t carry certain products. Then, because they have a favourite type of cheese or coffee they end up schlepping to the store that does stock it anyway.  In the end you develop favourites, and even though it’s a little further away than a couple of other supermarkets, Netto seems to have won me over, they’ve got a good  range of organic food that I can actually afford, stock Spreelinge pickled cucumbers and have a proper section devoted to baking goods.  So that’s another reason why I love my apartment and am hesitant to leave it, I might end up far from a Netto store.  And what would happen if there was only an Aldi nearby? I’d be liable to turn suicidal.

* Unlike 2008 in which I started in Adelaide, re-visited Helsinki for 4 months and would have stayed if I’d been able to find a job I loved, moved to Sheffield in the UK temporarily and then, after making a temporary stop for a couple of weeks in Hong Kong and Hanoi, went back to Adelaide to properly pack up before moving to Berlin. Eek.

Amazing Kunstdinge, originally uploaded by Fighting Tiger.

Back at the start of April I bought this for €1 from some kids running a stall outside the front of their building.

They had a box on a piece of string acting as a cargo elevator from the floors above, and a range of things made out of bits of old wood, computers and hot-glue-gun glue.

I think my favourite thing about this is that the “Bild” (picture) key points at a tiny painting on a stamp. That’s so clever.

• an electric can opener
• an old vacuum cleaner
• a blender

Maybe it’s just because there was a bunch of smoke, but I actually enjoyed tonight’s interpretation of John Cage’s Variations VII.  Apart from the smell of some really hideous perfume on a woman standing nearby, the room smelt like melting plastic and burnt out motors.  It was a bit like guitar strings breaking, but still not quite rock and roll.

I’m probably still suffering the negative associations of a past relationship, but my back gets incredibly tense at the thought of much noise related art practice.  Then again, don’t even get me started on the terrible things that can be done with visualisations.

It would be easier to say that I just don’t get some types of media art , but something must fascinate me about it, because I keep on thinking about it and what I want to do as a practice within the greater new media field.   Nothing elaborate, but damn it, if I am to do anything I at least want to do it well.

Maybe one day I’ll actually work on one of my ideas.

“On the ground” in Austria from battlecat on Vimeo.

California by FBZ, originally uploaded by Fighting Tiger.

Fabienne (aka FBZ) of fabienne.us and HardHack (May 28, 29, @ C-Base) drew a map of California for the nottoscale project.  The first Berlin Geek Picnic was rained out as you can see by the water stains on the map FBZ drew.

FBZ draws California from battlecat on Vimeo.

As part of my 100 Things I Want To Learn list I’ve made my first video blog post. I learnt how to export from iMovie and how to wait patiently while videos compress, get uploaded and then converted by Vimeo. So I guess I did learn more about 64. Video recording and editing to the level required for good vodcasting

the first battlecat vlog post… from battlecat on Vimeo.

Self-centered personal blogging ahoy!

I’m playing with my gifted video camera and the idea of different levels of honesty, intimacy and immediacy afforded by edited text and unedited video.

Also, I’m in the middle of trying to work out what happens next in my crazy life. Writing hasn’t worked so far. Maybe talking to an inanimate object will help?

So anyway the challenge is to know (with more certainty) by August, what I do next in my life. I’m not sure if I make much sense in the video.

I am having a marvellous time.

This week I’m overwhelmed with visits by half a dozen lovely people primarily from Adelaide band Brillig. It’s an absolute pleasure to be showing the first arrivals, Matt and Elizabeth around my new city.

I’m almost shaking with excitement for Thursday when some of my most absolute favourite people in the entire world come to visit. I think I’ll need to visit some more fotoautomats so that I can record their visits too!

Altogether I’ve spent about 3 years in Europe since 2002, but I’ve never been in one place to watch the whole transition from deep winter to spring before.

It’s been a lovely couple of weeks here in Berlin. From the first day of April the sun started shining and people started smiling. Then the most amazing thing happened, the horse chestnut tree (Rosskastaniene) in the courtyard (hof) began to change from branches with buds to a tree with leaves. Sure, trees get leaves every spring, but from my regular typing place by the kitchen window I finally could pay attention to the process.

Let me tell you something fascinating, trees burst into leaf from the bottom up.  Over three days I could effectively see the sap flowing up the trunk and along the branches.  From hour to hour different leaves had opened and I kinda forgot to take photos of the process because I kept on saying to my flatmate “Can you see that? It’s like a switch has been turned on or something!”

It was pretty exciting.

Here’s a photo from today, two weeks after the leaves unfurled:

The season actually appeared to burst from tree branch, bulb, seed and sun. I guess that’s why it’s called spring?

I needed to live in Europe before I understood that in my part of Australia, the seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are Euro-centric ideas laid on top of a vastly different climate.  Even though it would make more sense to acknowledge traditional indigenous seasons, we persist in describing Australian weather with concepts that don’t adequately describe the actual seasonal patterns. I feel that one of the reasons discussions about climate change fail to influence people, is because a large part of the developed (and emitting) world’s population is semantically isolated from what is normal for their region.

Because of the ways in which language and culture are transmitted, the experience of being an Austrlian in Europe (and more specifically Britain) is that of normality: birds whistle familiar sounding melodies, trees are the shape of picture book trees and some houses are actually shaped like childrens’ generic house drawings. It may be ‘normal’ here, but however lovely Berlin in Spring may be, thinking about the contrasts makes me miss and desire the strange shapes, sounds and smells of South Australia, the experiences that I grew up in.

I think the black and white local magpies (Eltern) with their kleptomanic tendencies and dark blue flash of wing are quite beautiful, but there’s something about the sound of Australian magpies which makes up for their more violent tendency to swoop and attack while nesting [mp3].

by Dave – aka Emptybelly

The thing I most heartwrenchingly miss has always been the rainbow lorikeet, its swooping flash of colour as it flies through my favourite park and the chatter a flock of them make around dusk [the latter third of this mp3]. When I lived in Finland and made my garden wall, I painted a lorikeet to live in the plants.  If I could be reborn as an animal I’d be a lorikeet.

I had intended this to be more of a post about how marvellous the weather has been, rather than a meditation on climate, language, postcolonialism and the strange experience of being a European (Australian) “other” in Europe. Inevitably though, the feelings associated with new locations, travel and identity lead to a specific feeling of missing what is first known and familiar.

As part of the greater DIY Masters / self-organised learning project I’m attending LIWOLI 09 in Linz, Austria.

LIWOLI is an event exploring the crossovers between art and the FLOSS community.  I’ll be recording a series of interviews with participants about self-organised education and how DIY / autodidactism intersects with university education. As many people in both fields have self taught skills I’m looking forward to the responses.

I’ll be asking my interviewees to explore ideas like these:

• Does one have to attend a formal institution to become an Artist or Technologist?
• How important is a sense of community (mentors, teachers and peers) to a learning experience?
• How important is it for learners to hack and remix their knowledge?
• How can “free” learning work alongside formal institutions such as art schools and universities?
• What elements of the FLOSS movement are most relevant to the idea of DIY / self-organised / “free” learning communities?
• What are the most valuable experiences we take from formal learning?
• Can we create similar experiences outside of formal institutions?
• How can we enable more people to have valuable learning experiences using readily available resources?
• How can people share their experience of learning as well as the knowledge that they are acquiring?
• Autodidacts and self-learning have always existed, but how can society make this learning journey easier?

Get in touch if you’re heading along to LIWOLI or if you have any suggestions of what I should check out in Linz.

DIYMasters talk for Bank of Common Knowledge

During January I recorded a video about starting a DIYMasters degree which has recently been uploaded to the Bank of Common Knowledge.

I met Olivier and Ninon from Barcelona based cultural co-operative system Platoniq while they were running a Free Knowledge Market at Club Transmediale. Their project, Bank of Common Knowledge, was active in one of the display rooms at Kunsthaus Bethanien.

Bank of Common Knowledge operates both as a website and real time skill and knowledge sharing environment. That’s just the type of service that works really well with the concept of DIYMasters, not just as a way of receiving information, but as a way of sharing what you’ve learnt.