remote cards

There is a couple at a table in the outside part of the café, it’s a warm day, we’re sitting out there. He is sprawled. Brown trainers kicked off on to the ground. His legs across a neighbouring chair. Black socks, blue jeans, a t-shirt. He has long hair, straggly, tied back. A beard to match, a dusky, sandy kind of colour. His arms are covered in tattoos, long ones, extending all the way across his hands, right up to the knuckles. He smokes and drawls in conversation, utterly relaxed. She looks a little more “proper” in her manner. A black dress, casual, a red cardigan. Her hair is bobbed, jaw length, straight – like a librarian slash dominatrix. She has a stud in her nose and no apparent tattoos. She leans on the tables, her elbows, seemingly hanging on his every word. She smiles, and laughs when it seems appropriate. They are there for a good while, just hanging out. Till eventually they leave, he cycles by 2 minutes later, that blue vinyl courier bag over his shoulder, absent minded making his way to wherever.

Labels: ars electronica, girl, guy, linz, tattoo

In the main square there are a number of installations and temporary venues as part of the Ars Electronica. The Japanese Media Festival is touring Europe, part of its contribution to Linz is a game dome here, a constant draw for people to pop in and play games. Then there is the shiny surfaced block of the 80+1 building, which has a handful of interfaces, video displays, and an information desk. Between these two structures there is a fountain and a virtual taxi round Tel Aviv and a sound installation with recordings from a Swiss tunnel. Staff flit between the pieces, with their orange shirts, with the Ars logo on the breast pocket. We pass this at various times through the weekend, every time we do there is a blonde girl loitering around. Short hair, trimmed at the back and sides, floppy on top and at front. She is always wearing a t-shirt, something sleeveless, and baggy jeans. Sometimes she has her hands in her pocket, sometimes she is standing smoking. The last time during the festival she is sat on the tunnel simulator, one arm resting on the side, the other with a cigarette in hand. She has curled tribal spiral earrings through her ears. And at another point I see her and a guy with dreads cycling the street close to the 80+1. After the festival is winding down we are still wandering round the city as it gets quieter, as they already have that shiny surface stripped down to the wooden interior. We sit in the upstairs of the kebab shop, eating a duran for lunch; I glance outside at that wooden building, a security fence round it, components on the ground. And there she is again, that blonde girl, part of the crew taking the building apart – at last, after all that waiting, she gets to demolish.

Labels: 80+1, ars electronica, blonde, girl, japanese, linz, tel aviv

We are sitting in a bar when a girl comes in, a friend of a friend, so she comes over and chats to us. How are you liking Austria? She asks me. I’ve only been here a day, it’s rained most of that time, we spent the afternoon in a museum. What can I say? She has come in with two shady looking guys, who don’t come over to join us. They sit at the bar, watching everyone, talking to each other. We leave about then, so she goes back to join them. Later, we are in a packed club, a crush of bodies, and I see her in the crowd, amongst the cloud of smoke and flashing lights, the pounding music. We don’t stay long, having wandered in long enough to get a flavour of the place, before wandering on to the next place. We manage to get a table in Cubus, in the corner, with the lights of the AEC’s façade still going through their colour spectrum beside us. We’ve been there a few minutes when the two shady guys appear at the next table, no sign of the girl this time, just the two of them at a table, looking shifty. A waitress appears almost immediately. I swear I hear her say – so this is the bag? To which they nod. And she grabs a bag from the floor by their feet, where I hadn’t seen it. And she is off with it, returning a minute later with a beer for each of them. Five minutes later a waiter comes along, stands and chats to them, he is grinning, pleased about something. The two guys sit a while, the beers barely touched, instead nursing soft drinks, smoking, looking shiftily around.

Labels: ars electronica, bar, girl, guys, linz

We’ve gone round to a bar, wear a friend of the people I am with works. Winding through streets which are unfamiliar to me, and teeming with people. The wine festival coincides with Ars Electronica, so every bar has a stand outside, people are wandering from place to place carrying large glasses, and we wove our way through this mass. While we wait for the friend to appear we are served by a plain looking girl with long dark hair tied back, wearing the shirt with the bar’s name like the other staff. When she is done serving us she goes back to the bar, where she is tearing mint. She has bushels of the stuff, and is tearing it into manageable chunks for cocktails. She pops a bit in her mouth and chews, the air full of the smell of fresh mint. Beside her one of the other waitresses is on pineapple – she approaches it with a knife, trying to decide the best way to get it to do what she wants it to do. Whatever she does, it doesn’t work, and is soon taking a cloth to her shirt to soak up the spray of juice. Beside her there is a guy, making pink cocktails for the couple at the end of the bar. The girl has very short hair, bright and blonde, wearing a striking shoulderless dress, while he looks much plainer in his basic smart shirt and jumper. The bar man slices a strawberry just so, and perches it on the rim of the glass, smiling content with his work.. Before taking the two pink drinks and delivering them to the couple. The friend arrives, we chatter, we get more drinks, and laugh, then we leave, heading to the AEC once again.

Labels: ars electronica, bar, cocktail, drinks, linz, waiter, waiting

FM4 have a group of people performing on a small stage in the square at the back of the Ars Electronica building. People are milling around the square, leaning against the tables, smoking and drinking. There is a flight of steps at the back, which could double as seating – which some people are doing, others are standing. The building flickers and shifts, the façade going through a range of colours, though not quite as well sequenced and timed with the music as has been suggested. We watch for a while, before wandering round the back of the stairs, which act as a roof for another part of the building, so the sides here are also flickering with colour. Round the back there is a path, lined with concrete bollards. Here there is a man by himself, an older man, with a heavy jacket. He is crouching by one of the bollards, where a laptop is balanced. On the screen we can see various windows open, including a live video of a woman talking to him. He sits and chatters, talking to this woman who knows where, with this spectacle going through its rainbow motions behind him, unnoticed. Oh yeah, C says, they have free WiFi all round the AEC, and we wander back to listen to more of the music.

Labels: ars electronica, laptop, linz, man, wifi

Saturday is the busiest day of the Ars Electronica weekend. We wandered through the OK centre during the day. In each room there was a member of staff, most likely a 20-something girl, in a blue OK t-shirt, with a picture of the Ferris wheel from the roof on it. In the second last room, the one with the lamp shade, the video about the pillars which have been written on, before the vortex, there is a girl with long red hair, the blue t-shirt, casual black trousers, and floppy boots, with little heels, which look a little out of place with the rest of the outfit. Back at the OK about 10-11pm, and the place is mobbed. There is a club in the top floor, the walls covered with binary projections, and blipping glitching electronic music, we’ve been up there, but come back to the lobby. There is a bar on this level, another down stairs, and a video store, we’ve caught up with friends here, loitering around, and waiting for other people. And I spot her again, the red head, shoulders curled, slouching, looking bored, standing by herself amongst the crowd of people. R is hitting on girls, smiling as he steps into their path and says something clever. Mostly they ignore him and keep going. He is a dedicated ladies man, but for all that he misses the red head, who might just be bored enough to humour him. She finishes her drink, looks around and seems to shrug; she wanders behind the counter of the reception/video store desk and retrieves her jacket which has obviously been shoved down there out the way. Pulls it on, a black jacket, tugs at the zip, and slinks out into the night.

Labels: ars electronica, girl, linz, ok, red head

We are watching Shrink for the 1st time. Three human beings becoming shrink wrapped for an audience. A girl appears, kneeling at the front to take pictures. She has dusky skin, suggesting an Indian heritage. She is slight, bobbed fashionable dark hair, a short black dress, tights, flat shoes. Round her neck she wears...a scarf? It is some kind of three dimentional fashion art object, one almost suspects she fabricated it herself in one of the labs in the Ars Electronica basement. Its streaked with orange chunks, hanging off a black net frame. Its kind of intriguing.

The next day, we are back in the Brucknerhaus, this time for the gig by Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. And there she is again, with her boyfriend. He looks stylish too, that pimped out hipster gangster kind of style - shirt, tie, waistcoat kind of deal. She is wearing a full length skirt, but its kind of a double skirt. The top part, which comes down to mid thigh is solid and black, from there down to the ground it is sheer, black and pretty much transparent, stick legs, and flat sold sandshoes are visible.

After the gig we head to Cubus, the bar at the top of the Ars Electronica, various parties meeting up at the end of the night. One to hit the road, and all that. And there they are, the same couple, sat at the next table from us. I guess thats the nature of events like these, seeing the same people over and over, especially when you have a style as eye catching as hers.

Labels: ars electronica, austria, fashion, gig, girl, guy, holiday, ikeda, linz, noto