The people you meet along the way:
For several years, an organiser from Dresden has run this rally, which is not about speed. Participants find their own vehicle, load it with useful items for Africa, and set off in several stages for Banjul in The Gambia. Everything is auctioned there for charity.
More information from the organiser will follow shortly.
The trip to Morocco came about somewhat unexpectedly.
The German Water Foundation had planned and designed a new fog-harvesting system, revised in many details. A test installation in the mountains of southern Morocco was to prove its suitability and yield, and photographs and video were needed. For me, the assignment was a welcome opportunity to test the truck and life in it under real conditions. It also meant finishing the conversion as quickly as possible.
The electrical work in particular took much longer than expected. We wanted several 220-volt sockets for the microwave, air conditioning and, most importantly, charging computer and camera batteries. So we screwed, hammered, drilled and sawed late into the night.
“Serengeti Shall Not Die” was the title of Professor Bernhard Grzimek’s Oscar-winning 1959 film. The Frankfurt Zoological Society still helps keep it alive today and works to prevent roads from cutting through the heart of this paradise. For the second time, I photographed its project in the Serengeti, Tanzania. Here is a first impression of the landscape and wildlife.
A very big thank-you to Maria-Anna Alp and Paul Grosse for this wonderful and successful evening.
The opening of this co_works exhibition took place on 5 September 2013. If you are interested, there is a video of the event here on the blog.
After my first visit to his studio (see the blog post from 13 July 2013), I promised to return to Chemnitz and film him at work. Voilà, here is the result:
The first co_works exhibition opened at ALP Galleries in Frankfurt am Main on 5 September 2013.
co_works is my collaboration with other artists. It is also the reason for our planned journey around the world, during which I want to visit other artists and perhaps persuade them to work with me.
Thank you to Anna-Maria Alp and Paul Grosse for the wonderful opening, and of course to the co_workers Christian M. Knecht, Matthias Bolz, Günter Ludwig and Alcis Szabo-Reiss for the great collaboration. Our special guest that evening was saxophonist Christof Lauer, and it was a great pleasure to hear him play.
Willy has died, but the gathering he founded has grown into Europe’s largest meeting for overland travellers. From 30 August to 1 September, between six and seven hundred travel vehicles assembled near Bad Kreuznach. The huge grounds resembled an open-air museum devoted to expedition vehicles.
Seventy-year-old converted veterans stood next to brand-new 18-tonne trucks, but the real subject was travelling the world and sharing experience – even if some vehicles give their owners more oil-stained hours with a spanner than carefree adventures on the road.
