the interview meme

i just discovered charlotte’s web, where i found this interesting meme. i “applied” to be interviewed by her, she sent me five questions and i post my answers below. whoever feels they want to be interviewed by me can comment on this post and i will come up with five interview questions.

Here’s the interview:

1. You love cooking. If you had a whole day to yourself to cook a meal for six people, what would you cook?

probably nothing very extragavant.
in autumn or wintertime i would go for a creamy soup as a first course, such as my pureed carrot and ginger soup or cream of pumpkin soup with grated swiss cheese and croutons. but since it’s summer now i would choose a colourful summer salad with an element of fruit in it, like apples or grapes. french bread with either soup or salad.
next course would probably be something italian like vegetable lasagna or – since i have a whole day to cook – a french lamb stew, provencal style.
i like to spend a lot of time on desserts. depending on if i chose french or italian at that crossroads i would go for either caramelized mango flan or panna cotta with a fresh strawberry sauce.
i’m not sure if the cooking would take me all day, but if i include the shopping into my schedule this sounds like a reasonable plan for a dinner for six.

2. Music is very important to you. Would you rather listen to a band in a club, or be alone on a beach with an iPOD?

i think that would very much depend on my temper on that day. i enjoy both, but it has to fit my mood. i don’t always feel up to going out to a club, but if the band is very exciting it might get me into the mood. i prefer the ipod if i’m overworked and need to relax, or have been seeing lots of people lately and need to withdraw a little.

3. Cologne is one of Germany’s hippest cities. What are the good things/bad things about living there? Are there any other cities in Germany where you could live?

i’m not sure if a city always looks hipper seen from the outside than if you actually live in it. there’s a lot of stuff going on here, but not all of it is interesting to me. i haven’t attended one of the countless house and techno parties going on every weekend and i don’t think i ever will.
the incumbent mayor and his conservative party have pretty much taken care that cologne’s cultural diversity and vibrant art scene are becoming history. due to cuts on the cities cultural budget many of the museums, galleries and theatres had to close and the cultural scene is now much poorer. several trade shows and events moved away, mostly to berlin. there is still a lot happening here, but i think cologne lives a lot on its reputation as a cultural capital earned during the seventies. plus there is this strange self-contentedness of the colognians, who seem to love their city with an unquestioning cheerfulness that can be hard to bear. for many of them the cologne cathedral, their beer and the cologne carnival are all the cultural diversity they need.
on the other hand they are very open-minded, friendly and easy to get along with. twenty percent of colognes inhabitants are not german, about half of those are turks. i’ve never seen a city where foreigners are accepted as easily as here. there’s a big gay scene here and i often get the impression that the heterosexual part of the population is more accepting of the gay community than vice versa. it’s quite hard to put people out here, except maybe by telling them you don’t like their beer.
i’m pretty sure i could imagine living in other cities in germany, but since i just moved to cologne a year ago i don’t really dwell on that thought. hamburg would be a city i could imagine feeling quite comfortable in. because of the two rivers branching into the city you feel like you are closer to the sea than you actually are. there seems to be a constant fresh breeze, quite the contrary to cologne, which can become quite stuffy and smoggy. there are also interesting subcultures in hamburg, the media and art scene seem quite fresh to me, too. but that brings me back to the first statement of this answer – maybe a city always seems hipper if you don’t live there on a regular basis.

4. If I could guarantee you a no strings attached, fully paid for, holiday for a month on your OWN, where would you go and what would you do?

as much as i enjoy a holiday in the sun, i think a month at the cote d’azur would bore me senseless. if i had a month anywhere fully paid for i would choose something i couldn’t afford to do otherwise, like living in london for a couple of weeks, for exactly the reason mentioned above. i’m sure i won’t stay in cologne for the rest of my life, i don’t even think i want to stay in germany for the rest of my life. but a foreign city you visit for just a few days as a tourist always seems very exciting and you think “wow, i could imagine living here”. i think if you stay somewhere for a month you get a much clearer picture of how it is to live there. i would check out how chances for working there were, which part of the city appeals to me most, if living there constantly might be affordable, stuff like that.

5. What does a VJ do? Tell us more about your job/industry.

generally speaking, a vj is a person who provides visual support to a certain kind of music in a club or at concerts. how that looks depends a lot on the vj and the music and has changed a lot over the past four decades with the changes in the music and the available devices. i just saw a documentary last night that featured the early oil bubble projections and analog film clip distortions that accompanied the psychedelic music of the grateful dead and pink floyd, among others, in the sixties. that’s about the earliest vj work i can think of.
many vjs do pretty much the same today, producing abstract patterns and flickering colors to boost the effect of dance music like techno, only the techniques have changed a lot. today you don’t really need much more than a laptop, although using old devices from the eighties produces a more unique look and is not all uncommon. other vjs sample picures and videos that fit the music to some degree and rearrange and time them to the music. an example – my first experiences (as an audience) with vj work were at drum’n’bass parties, where the visuals were heavy on city lights, subway rush hour and trains, very fast and choppily cut and mixed with dancers to match the beats per minute. i was amazed how pictures and music reinforced each other.
what motivated me and my partner to start in this business was a quite un-hip thing in comparison. the music we enjoy, reggae and dub music, has a very deep cultural and religious background. we thought it would be nice to provide visuals for this music that would support its messages, give some additional information to those who are not at home in that culture and a welcome enhancement to the music for those who were more familiar with it. we sample and remix movies and documentaries that deal with reggae-related subjects, other pictures just seem to fit in there by association or athmosphere, like a couple of sufi dancers that found their way into our set, or a clan of massai. so far the reactions of our audience were all positive, although veejaying is quite uncommon with this kind of music.
sometimes it’s hard to convince people who organize a reggae or dub event that booking someone for accompanying visuals might actually profit their show. after paying for bands or djs people are usually reluctant to agree to additional expenses, while in other genres of music hiring a vj is generally implied. i couldn’t quite imagine doing this thing for any other kind of music though, because, as i said, what motivated us was illustrating the messages of reggae music.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

~ by bine on July 4, 2007.