research /rɪˈsəːtʃ,ˈriːsəːtʃ/

The Petroleum Manga by Marina Zurkow. I have been looking for this reference for so long and I spent some time this morning going through all the links to Heather Davis' lectures to trace back at it, 'cause I'm sure I had found it through one of her lectures, but somehow that one lecture is gone from YouTube.

I specifically recall how the room in that lecture looked like and that there was noise from another room stressing Davis out a bit.

"Originally, the Japanese word manga was used to refer to “whimsical drawings” or picture books. The Petroleum Manga, a “picture book” about oil, is inspired by Hokusai’s thirteen volume set of manga. It depicts everything from trees to demons, squirrels to shingles. [The] Petroleum Manga represents items organized by a specific petrochemical: PET, PVC, HDPE, PMMA, polystyrene, polyurethane, ammonia, nylon, paraffin and more. [Here one sees] images of oil-derived products such as garbage bags, water guns, rubber chickens, taxidermy forms, food containers, credit cards, medical supplies, and flip flops."

I came across this work during my Master's, through Peter's class, and now I realise how, kind of unconsciously, I worked with these ideas for a project of another class during my Masters, called Samples from the Edge of Time, as seen here:

Accompanied by the sound from the minaret's speaker in the old town of Lefkosia; the sound of the Hodja calling Muslims to prayers, these pictures document objects found in the streets around the Ethnological Museum – House of Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, in a formal style that resembles the way archaeological specimens have been historically documented. Beyond the fictional memories and narratives these objects may carry, their artificial materiality frames them as archaeological records of our contemporary everydayness at the edge of time.

“Everyone’s in the same room” by Ellen Akimoto at Galerie Judin, 2 mins from my house, down Bülowstraße. Found out about it out of some newsletter and decided to go straight after my cafe job, on a Sunday.

Galerie Judin used to be Das Kleines Grosz Museum up until a few months ago, and we didn’t go in it before out of some anxiety that it looks too posh for us but it’s actually just a beautiful place with koi ponds and stuff, so zen.

I don’t like being that person that out of overthinking and self doubt I don’t end up doing things, as simple as going two doors down the road.

I feel curious again.

Last day of June, 2025.

It was a Monday and the sun was shining. There was a fire on a building in the distance opposite ours, North West.

We were both having a day off and it was the deadline day for the design of our 10th book, Exocapitalism, and we finished it on time.

We were planning to go to the Bode Museum to see the exhibition The Angel of History, but we found out just before we were gonna leave the house that the museum is closed on Mondays.

Mood swing, just for a bit, then we went out. We love walking without a destination in mind and we ended up at Gropius Bau. We walked around it the first days we landed in Berlin, in September 2023, but until today we didn't really connect the dots as to where about it's located.

We decided to give it a go and saw the shows by Vaginal Davis and Yoko Ono.