PIPI DE FRECHE in Berlin

Dear friends,

My dearest friend Olivier is in town and as promised, here is the location, time and date you can see him dj:

Monday,  March 31st, 2008

“Barbie Deinhoffs” – Schlesische Strasse 16 – 10997 – Berlin

There will be several performances and djs. The evening will get going at 22:00.

BE THERE!!!

Kiss to everybody.

Ivan and Olivier aka “pipi de freche”.

arty-farty updates :)

Hello everybody,

I thought it might be interesting to update what exactly is happening here in Berlin in these days…

The city is getting ready for the Berlin Biennale and I will be there… hope to see some great stuff, and hope is the last to die, right?! But more about the Biennale in detail starting from April 4th 2008.

Another great thing is that one of my dearest friends is coming to town tomorrow all the way from Paris. He will be staying with me and will be the Dj of the week in Berlin! I will post the place, time and event name tomorrow! He kicks ass and I hope whoever is in Berlin will go to see him at his best!

“Today she is not alone” is still in the works, but I have finished a first version which could make it to be the final version too. I will screen it this week for the people who worked with me on the project so that I can get their feedback and see if some more things have to be changed before I wrap it up for good. And then I will go into the poster process and other packaging for the video.

So, I gotta run to do some sports. Time vanishes so fast and there is too much to do.

a blog… expression of interest or just exhibitionism?!

Dear friends, I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine today. We were talking about the meaning and importance of blogs in general. She said she doesn’t like blogs that much because most of them are made by people who just want to show off publicly. “Who wants to see some total stranger’s holiday pictures or stories on the net anyway?!” was her comment.

It made me think. I guess there is a thin line between expression of interest and just pure exhibitionism. I asked myself, before even starting this blog, what I really wanted to say with it. You know?! I mean, I really tried to focus on what sort of output I was going to give to total strangers. People who I have never seen in my life and probably never will. The thought of opening up

This artist is starving!

Dear friends, just a note on all the fuss about a certain installation in south America… the one featuring the inflicted slow death by hunger and thurst of a living creature. Now, I will not even give the person who did the installation a name, cause he/she doesn’t deserve it. This is the way I see it… once upon a time, in a poor country in south America, there lived a poor person who always dreamed of a better life… this person grew up wanting to be an artist. This person might have witnessed harassment, violence or other bad experiences.(For all I know he/she could have come from a rich family too… but that’s besides the point).

Once this person was big enough to start having his/her own opinion about things, he/she thought it wise to use art as a “ticket out of hell”… and become internationally famous… the problem was obvious: “How the hell am I going to stick out from other millions of artists and make the world focus on me?” We all know the easy way to success is a

Today she is not alone – update

Hello everybody. Today she is not alone is still in the making. I took a short period of not even two days to distance myself from the project. I think it’s important to do so because it gives you the right focus to go on editing. After some time of not working on your project, you can actually see it from a different perspective. You manage to observe in a more critical way what you have done and you can see better where the mistakes lay and you get a better feeling about how to improve things. So after a break you are replenished, fresh and ready to confront yourself with your own work in a much more productive manner. Here is the second teaser…

Today she is not alone – the editing

Hello everybody. I have had another intense day of editing and Frank was there to help me. He’s a genius when it comes to harmony in video, editing, motion and sound. So I got me the best so to say. We were basically working on several edits and cuts between scenes. I had a rough cut version that is slowly taking shape and is becoming more soft. Frank went home promising he will think about the entire project and we will meet again soon when it is in a more advanced state. Right now the big question is

Today she is not alone – behind the scenes

Dear friends, I am so thrilled with the response the teaser has had! It hasn’t been on the net for even 24 hours yet and it has already had over 430 views on youtube only! It is more than I could hope for! Thank you all! Plus, since yesterday I have received so many mails from friends and they were all positive. I really hope that “Today she is not alone” will fulfill your expectations! Here is another still from behind the scenes of the shoot. Viola had to walk a lot on high heels in the entire movie. It was very difficult when your heel is 17 centimeters high!

An interesting info about the movie is that we filmed it in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in Marina Abramovic’s house. Unfortunately, Marina moved out of that beautiful building some time ago. This means that this video will be the last official shoot from her home before she moved away. Marina was very

Today she is not alone – a movie by Ivan Civic

Dear family and friends, I am happy to be able to say that yet another week of over 14 hours of work a day have begun to pay off. I am in the middle of the process of editing my new video and it is difficult. I am pushing the capacities of my computer to the limit! It can’t really keep up with the high expectations I have and demand. So I will probably have to finish the editing on another, stronger computer. All I want to say about the movie right now is that it will be made in three different versions.

Civic makes an Ivan movie

Dear everybody. I started editing a long awaited project of mine… this picture shows how the behind the scenes looked like at the time… a lot of confusion and props. I am doing my best to edit the project properly. It has all just begun so I can’t say anything about the plot, or about music, excetera… but I am excited! Hitting the editing room is always a drag in the beginning but after some time you really get into it and pretty soon time starts flying so quickly, you don’t even notice its passing. I went to bed at 9:30pm last night (or should I say evening?!) and I woke up at 6:30 this morning… I awoke with the first rays of light! It is really sublime having a rhythm like this one. I hope I’ll keep up with it after the weekend passes and my night job kills me… oh well… so much for my good intentions.

Curate me? Pay me!

O.K. This artist is pissed! I’m writing to all you curators, collectors, dealers, directors, critics… whoever the fuck you think you are! Being an artist and being invited to a venue, exhibition or other doesn’t mean that the artist has to be so forever grateful that they… meaning we… doesn’t want any money for his or her, at times, very well done job! So all you parasites out there, get used to discussing artist fees and get used to paying them cause we do not live of air only! We got rents to pay, insurances to pay and families to