Christoph Niemann: Illustration Maestro

One of the world’s most coveted illustrators recently made a stopover in Basel.

A pair of socks, with a few ink lines transformed to a hungry dinosaur; a cyclist sketched on a taxi window filmed on his ride through the big apple, a portrait made of beard stubbles.

Add to that normal illustrations and vivid aquarelles from various destinations around the world.

To define Christoph Niemann, who has made more than 20 covers for The New Yorker, is not an easy feat.

His richness in methods is a conscious decision in order to be as wide as possible, using the methods and materials demanded by the feeling he wants to transmit.

However they all have something in common. Whether using a pen, cookie dough or potato print, the illustrations are about reduction to the max, like when he is able to use only one or two Lego blocks to illustrate either a taxi, a piece of sushi or the Flatiron building. And they all contain the absurdity of life, love and Niemann’s self-confessed agony of creation.

In May Christoph Niemann held the opening speech for the on-going exhibition »Living in a Box: Design and Comics« running until 20 October 2019 at the Vitra Schaudepot.

In this exhibition the Vitra Design Museum together with its curator Erika Pinner explores the world of comics and their relationship to design. As you might know, Berlin-based Niemann is no stranger to the Basel audience.

In 2017, he exhibited at the Cartoon Museum in St. Alban-Vorstadt and illustrated the cover for Vitra’s coveted Hello Robot exhibition.

During Niemann’s presentation, enriched by a slideshow, I am completely floored by his imagination. How he combines everyday objects with seemingly simple lines, and then photographing them for the final illustration.

A couple of bananas become a horse’s arse, a poppy seed bun becomes a stubbled cheek, an espresso cup a sleepy head.

He is equally comfortable with aptly depicting morning fatigue as well as heavier subjects like Guantanamo, Donald Trump and war. If you can sense an American theme here, that is correct.

Niemann used to live in New York, which gave him several American clients, including Herman Miller, Google, The New Yorker and MoMA.

While using classical techniques, Niemann is also embracing new technologies, thus dissolving the borders between digital and analogue.

One example is the black and yellow The New Yorker cover of the New York subway. The iPad version makes it possible to turn it around in all directions, enabling you to follow the city from a subterranean rush hour towards the lofty peaks of the skyscrapers piercing the sky. Another one, custom made for VR-headsets, is a politically charged reportage-like story from the border between South and North Korea.

Last but not least, the dinosaur sock can also be read as a subconscious (?) flirt with his childhood, since one of his earliest drawings still adorning the wall at his mom’s place depicts an Indian riding a dinosaur.

Do you want to know more about Christoph Niemann? We highly recommend the Netflix documentary, where an episode of Abstract – the Art of Design is dedicated to him.

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

He has been editor in chief of seven magazines and books, including the current annual design magazine True Design by Rado, and his company also organises events for clients like TAG Heuer, Zenith and Patek Philippe.

Illustration Credits: Christoph Niemann

Allgemein, Art, Culture, Lifestyle

Don’t miss these at Art Basel

Art Basel is over us again. The cold rain in the beginning of the week did not deter the world’s most exquisite galleries, collectors, curators and art lovers from congregating in the world’s most important art (af)fair. Here comes a list of my favourites from Art Basel Unlimited – and the two winners of the Baloise Art Prize.

TIME AFTER TIME – Pharmacie (2019) by Francisco Tropa

By shining a light on a symbol for geology, a clepsydra (an early water clock), an hourglass and a mechanical clock movement, Francisco Tropa’s Pharmacie (2019) offers a mesmerising live depiction of running time.

The geological time is ever present as a nostalgically sepia-toned background, and the light moves between the other three ways of measuring time, which creates a stunning projection.

Add lights and mirrors – some of the first effects used in suggestive movie making – and you have a somewhat gothic art installation filling a room in which you, paradoxically, forget about time.

LIGHT ME UP – Split Second (2018) by Anthony McCall

I had no idea that light could appear with such an intense feeling of materiality and physical volume.

Anthony McCall, whom I would happily compare with James Turell and Olafur Eliasson, started experimenting with the hypothetical concept of solid lights already back in the seventies.

And for the edition of Art Unlimited 2019 the curating committee chose Split Second (2018), his most recent piece on this theme.

With two projectors and slowly rotating elliptical shapes, the light creates boundaries and shapes that aren’t there, to me creating a reminder that walls and borders are only invented illusions; figments of our imagination.

#METOO – Open Secret (2018) by Andrea Bowers

200 rollup banners, around the breadth of a wallpaper roll, with some of the most publicized cases of sexual misconduct.

The white text on top is the defence, or the excuse of the defendant.

The black text consists of the accusations, the legal actions or any other resulting actions.

Oftentimes these accusations have been proven in a court of law, or have been settled with hush money.

To me, the mere physicality of the massive work Open Secret (2018) by Andrea Bowers just brings another level of understanding of the daily atrocities that way too many women have to suffer.

The five-metre height of the installation is often not enough, with the last lines rolling onto the floor, which I see as a symbol of that no matter how much space you give this problem, there is never enough.

Open Secret is juxtapositioned with a work of mannequins clad with automatic blow-up dresses –clothing protective from grabbing and other (presidential) misdemeanours, which reminds us where the real problem is.

Sorry guys, the problem is not men feeling lost in their masculinity post #metoo, a moment that has triggered an evolution in how we behave towards each other.

GAME ON – Nirvana (2019) by artist XU ZHEN®

Baccarat and roulette tables are set on a casino carpet. But the tabletops are blank, until being coloured in by a collective of artisans before your very eyes, using the same technique used for sand mandalas.

Nirvana (2019) by artist XU ZHEN® who funnels sand in various colours onto the table tops by tapping a grooved brass instruments at various frequency and intensity – a painstakingly slow and completely unforgiving process which requires a steady hand and wide-eyed concentration.

This act of “painting” also becomes vaguely musical, as the tapping evokes sounds of muted cymbals and gurkas, resulting in a multisensorial, intricate, forever changing work, which marries ancient ceremonial, extremely slow activities with our contemporary desire for quick money.

And come to think of it, investing in contemporary fine art has always been a gamble, hasn’t it?

2x Balois Winners – to be seen in the Statement section

Territory by Giulia Cenci

With the improbable mix of car parts, cast animals, resin, silicon and polyurethane, Territory by 21-year-old Italian Giulia Cenci has created a layered installation that the public can enter and become part of.

To me reminiscent of an archaeological, post-apocalyptic dugout, but Cenci refuses to “close the interpretation of her work with words,” but referring to a viral, fluid entity.

She is very happy about the Prize, which for means the possibility to work more. “I am super addicted to work,” she said.

It is hard to stop by Xinyi Cheng

Naked, violet, near-transparent bodies painted with oil on canvas.

Xinyi Cheng, who lives in Paris, has created a voyeuristic insight into a post-coital(?) world full of power and meaty pleasure.

The subjects are vulnerable, caught off guard, some even appear stunned.

Based on photos she has taken, these at times homoerotic images become sensitive depiction of the real person behind the game.

Xinyi Cheng, Incroyable (Monroe), 2019.

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Culture, Music

Time for music and a cellist as fast as Usain Bolt

On a trip to Germany, I explored the connection between music and time in a recently renovated concert space.

Had I seen the grey, fluffy curly mane head-banging on an open air, I would not have raised my eyebrow for a second.

But here, in the sold-out, newly renovated Kulturpalast Dresden, cellist Steven Isserli’s bouncing curls make for an exotic performance.

I am one of 1 800 in the audience getting goosebumps from his world premiere.

He plays Prokovjews concert for Violoncello and Orchestra e-Moll op. 58, performed together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

After a slow intro his left hand starts sprinting back and forth along the neck of his cello faster than Usain Bolt on speed, only to suddenly stop, trembling in a breath-holding vibrato reverberating through the hall. Time stopped. Along with everything else.

Musical precision is different from the one we know in Swiss Made watches.

According to Isserlis, you cannot really compare mechanical exactitude with musical exactitude.

“Of course you have the play the notes in due time. But real notes allow you to shape a frame and that is not the same as just playing the right notes. That is real technique, and real technique is one that allows you the freedom to listen,” he explains after the concert.

“And musical exactitude is about spontaneity, you have to look at exactly what the composer wrote and try to understand why he or she wrote that.

You must understand the form of a piece, every little marking; you have to enter a dialogue with the composer.

And when you do, you can change the timing.”

One could also argue that hearing music is the most direct sensory experience – without any delay, one is subject to the whole of a piece.

I would even go as far as saying that no other cultural expression lives in the present like music.

Back to the concert hall.

During this vibrato micro break, Isserlis seeks eye contact with the audience, flashes his teeth in a quick smile, before again closing his eyes, letting the bow caress the strings.

Again he dissolves time with Russian melancholy notes from his 1740s Montagnana cello.

Ten minutes later, a long note fades to silence, relayed by never-ending applause.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the Kulturpalast Dresden is newly renovated.

The Sinfonieorchester Basel, one of eyeloveyou’s culture clients, will be on tour for another year until renovations of the Musiksaal, carried out by Herzog and deMeuron, are completed.

But by the end of August 2020, the orchestra will also be back at its home turf in the Musiksaal.

Finally, Basel will have a world-class arena for classical music again.

I know a concert hall is not like a jukebox. But can you please invite Stephen Isserlis?

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Digital Life, Social Media, Stop-Motion

Why I love stop motion

Stop motion never goes out of style. I will be taking a trip down memory lane of stop motion, and link my contemporary favourites. Make some popcorn, you might be here for a while.

When I was a kid in Sweden in the 1970s there were 2 channels on the fat, bulging TV – which in my family only showed black and white imagery until I was 4 years old.

Ah, to lie down on the orange, longhaired, itchy carpet under the smoky glass coffee table; to hear the distinct click when you pulled out the switch to turn the telly on, followed by that high pitch sound reminiscent of rubbing metal and porcelain very fast against each other.

The sound of the grey-green glass tube warming up for a few seconds before it, magically, started transmitting moving pictures from around the world.

My favourite moving pictures on the modern fireplace were the stop motion and cartoon animations.

I have vague memories of Sandmännchen and other doll creations – interestingly several of them were, like Sandmännchen, made behind the Iron Curtain.

Around 09.00 on Saturday morning – the only day of the week with morning television back then – there was five minutes of true magic: cartoon animations, among them Woody Woodpecker.

I think I was six years old when our Montessori-inspired teacher let us play around with a camera – I remember some classmates making a race – perhaps it was the Olympic year of 1980? – between two pink, rhomboidcut erasers, the staple Swedish school rubber.

At the age of 13 I visited a cartoon animation studio, and was thoroughly amazed by the amount of drawings that need to be done.

Albeit on the various layers on see through plastics, meaning that you didn’t have to repaint the whole background 6 or 8 times per seconds.

A couple of years later, in the late 1980s, Wallace and Gromit first appeared.

It just took the combination of child-friendly animations packed with references for an older audience to the next level.

This came out eight decades after the first stop motion clay movies were made. One of the pioneers back then was a woman named Helena Smith Dayton.

But the first stop motion ever is credited to the The Humpty Dumpty (1897), made by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton.

In this short film, unfortunately forever lost, a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life.

Among the early creations that made a breakthrough I must also mention Disney’s 1928 Steamboat Willie with Mickey Mouse, which was also the first animation with synchronised sound, which was a must for the story of Mickey using a steamboat as a musical instrument.

The 21^st century has taken the craft of stop motion even further.

And of course we have a new immensely popular way of creating mini-films frame by frame: GIFs. However the technology which has been around a lot longer than you would think – in June, 2019 the GIF celebrates its 32^nd birthday.

We all know the GIF from funny shorts, but the technology can really be used for more advanced projects.

In my personal meaning they however don’t compare to real artistic, artisanally created stop motion films.

Here are my favourites when it comes to stop motion:

Overall masterpiece: MUTO – a wall painted animation by BLU

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg: This artist duo takes clay stop motion to the institutional level with their hilarious, dark creations.

Favourite music video: Joy’s Apartment.

In this context I must also of course mention Basel’s proud contemporary stop motion producer: eyeloveyou.

Among the work they have made in the last few years is a Chalk-Board-Stop-Motion for vinigma/velogourmet:

A Pixelstick-Stop-Motion for colourkey:

And a Clay-Stop-Motion for themselves, which was shown at the Outdoor Allianz Cinema on Münsterplatz in Basel:

Stop your motion. Enjoy.

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Typography

Lest We Forget

What is a memory? Can you remember things that haven’t happened to you? And how on earth are you going to remember what you are reading in this blogpost?

In October 2018, RMIT University of Melbourne introduced Sans Forgetica, a new typeface, which is said to increase your memory of what you just read.

This is far from another déjà vu with Helvetica, has nothing to do with that cheesy 80s hit sung by Barbra Streisand, and I doubt that it will improve my ability to memorise the name of the person I just introduced myself to.

It has been proven to improve memory retention when tested by 400 students.

We live in an era where communication tends to be straightforwardly presented, smoothly designed, and easy on the eye.

The findings of RMIT however show the advantages of having to put a bit of effort into something.

When you are slightly challenged, you enter the ultimate state for the brain and body to learn and remember.

So, what are the main ingredients of this revolutionary font – available as a free download – developed by the School of Design together with the Business Lab, both faculties of Victoria’s proudest university?

The first and foremost ingredient is to combine psychology and design principles in order to challenge the norm of understanding typography.

Enter the gaps. The gaps are not about saving taxpayers’ money on using less ink, but about hitting the sweet spot of breaking design principles without becoming too illegible.

The second key element of Sans Forgetica is the backslant, normally only used graphically for very specific mathematical expressions.

Together these ingredients create what the inventors refer to as desirable difficulty, which, by the way, sounds like something that belongs in the cruel jokes of package design than typography.

Has anyone ever understood how to properly open half of the food packaging in a civilised way without eventually resorting to butchering the carton with your sharpest knife? I am sorry, I digress.

The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.

This is also a very clear example of how we comprehend fonts – not letter by letter, but by outline. Which also explains how you can read jsut abuot antyhnig as lnog as the frist and lsat lteters are crorect.

Sans Forgetica is a true cross-pollination of different research fields.

The leading trio behind the project are practising typographers and typography teachers.

Mr. Stephen Banham, Dr Jo Peryman, and Dr Janneke Blijlevens from the RMIT Behavioural Business Lab are working on a scientific report, which will show exactly how efficient Sans Forgetica is.

In the meantime I am thinking that maybe my lousy name memory could be improved if nametags at the next event could please be printed in Sans Forgetica?

And last but not least – since physical movement and multisensory experiences also have been proven to reinforce memory, I have an idea for the next timeyou really want to memorise a text.

Walk barefoot on sand, blast that cheesy 80s hit on your sound system, burn your favourite incense, and, of course, read it in Sans Forgetica.

Lest we forget.

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Allgemein

Piece of cake

The white chocolate marzipan cake balances precariously; defies equilibrium. Her mouth is seemingly on repeat – he cannot hear her any more.

It doesn’t matter; he’s heard it all before. Maybe it was another ailment, maybe it was another doctor, maybe it was somebody else that had done her wrong.

He cannot hear her; he can only see the fine network of wrinkles that have conquered the area from her smile pits to her temples. It has grown since the last time, hasn’t it? Deep engravings criss-crossing a skin grown thick, a skin grown … soft?

He would like to grab her chin to feel what life has made to her face.

Despite the fine canyons, despite the matt lustre her skin also looks soft like a baby’s, as if it had gone full circle, starting all over again.

But such is life. He cannot feel her cheek like she once did his while marvelling over the miracle of life. Because surely she did, didn’t she?

Not that he can ever remember her being physical. And wasn’t it he who reintroduced hugs in the family in his teenage years once he’d learnt to appreciate them again?

He always liked to be physically close.

Absence has caused sorrow, but nevertheless hugs between friends for a short moment in time felt silly. Not for real. Shallow. Not so any more.

The wrinkles pulsate in rhythmical sync with her unstoppable verbiage and deep breathing.

Sun-scorched earth. Tree trunk broken off by a storm. Labyrinth corridors of an uprooted ants nest. Sound waves through a freshly crackled brûlée.

Finally the stoic piece of cake gives in to gravity’s relentless quest and falls over.

In Sweden a symbol of love gone awry. Standing cake – you will get married. Fallen cake, welcome to Tinder

The cake falls just like he has fallen. And stood up. Fallen and stood up. Fallen again and stood up again only to fall over again.

Only one of those times there were witnesses and signatures.

OK, two if you also count the loan agreement for the duplex apartment. Is perhaps a mortgage a bigger sign of love than a marriage certificate?

The white chocolate marzipan clings to the gold-rimmed china like an unseen, sticky spider web caught on your face during a summer stroll through a leafy forest.

The fall from grace is oh so slow – isn’t it always?

The force of gravity is however strong enough to refurbish the inner creams; the office-brown chocolate mousse erupts in over the bleak-yellow vanilla cream like a volcano’s last sigh of molten lava.

She has gone silent. The wrinkles collapse. She takes her spoon to her mouth, chews quickly, and chases the sweet fix down with a sip of coffee gone cold.

The wrinkles gather momentum again, like a sprinter coming out of the blocks, albeit in slow motion. She hesitates. As she often does when she wants to say something that matters. Is it his fault?

Has he been too hard on her over the years?

Or is it simply her own life-long insecurity that she has always had to mask with over-compensation and narcissistic self-affirmation?

Her tongue eventually joins what, from judging from the breath will be less of a moan. Could it – lo and behold – be a conversation looming at the horizon?

He takes his eyes off the fallen cake, meets his mother’s gaze. Curious.

“Would you like another piece of cake?”

“Yes, please.”

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Allgemein

HALO Shines Under Art Basel

In 2018, the immediate wow effect of Art Basel Unlimited’s entry is somewhat muted – because the entry itself it is not that immediate anymore.

As of 2018 you have to take two escalators to reach it – but this structural change, due to several of Baselworld’s mega stands remaining erected the whole year, is actually a positive thing.

Now the entry to Design Miami/Basel and the entry to Art Basel Unlimited are next to each other.

Design Miami/Basel, often overlooked by the visitors is a place where you can discover several of the world’s most prestigious galleries for collectable modern and contemporary design – and I would be very surprised if this new entrance would not dramatically increase its visitor numbers.

The Messeplatz level of Design Miami/Basel is home to the curated exhibition Design at Large, where Zhoujie Zhang shows a futuristic take on what a chair could be.

A 60-point sensor chair is hooked up to a computer, which in real time on a screen in front of you creates the design of the ultimate chair; shaped by your own unique human interactions.

At Large-space is also dedicated to furniture by late Lina Bo-Bardi. In the last decade Italian-born, Brazilian Bo Bardi has risen from dusty annals of architecture to become the architecture and design superstar she always deserved to be.

Unfortunately this is happening decades after her death in 1992, but it is great to see that her work finally gets mainstream recognition above and beyond the inner circles of architecture.

Despite the fair having just started I have been back at HALO twice, located in the basement of Hall 4 (next to Swissôtel’s entry). I have probably spent more than four hours in there, and not only because of the lavish vernissage which included an inverted fondue, where orange salmon cubes coated in yellow mango cream was dipped into smoking cold liquid nitrogen.

No, I keep returning because the fourth Audemars Piguet’s Art Comission is a really interesting collaboration by the British art duo Superconductor, CERN, and the white-bearded theoretical physicist rock star John Ellis.

In a lowly lit hall, an eight-metre-diameter circular sound and light installation projects series of golf ball-sized light dots throughout the room.

Meanwhile, hammers hit low-pitched piano strings that vertically line the installation.

Both light and sound – remember that all matter is made of particle and wave – is a reanimation of 60 real collision measurements; universe-deciphering data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel, which circles 27 kilometres of subterranean Geneva.

When the LHC is operating, more than a billion of these subatomic particle collisions occur every second at near speed of light – utterly beyond human perception.

Therefore Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt of Superconductor have reanimated the raw data by seriously enlarging the light and sound waves from each measured particle collision, resulting in the dotted light patterns and the somewhat doomsday ringing piano strings.

It is also extended in time: at LHC the pattern of each collision lasts 25 nanoseconds, at HALO up to 40 seconds. Said theoretical physicist John Ellis during Wednesday’s panel discussion:

“What we are trying to do at CERN is to understand the most fundamental structures of matter and the universe, where we come from and where we are going. I like to mention the famous painting of Paul Gauguin, the people on the South Sea island asking ‘What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’ That is exactly the questions that we physicists are trying to answer … by trying to understand what matter the universe is made of. I had a copy of Gauguin’s picture in my office, just to remind me why I came to work every day, and that is still why I come to work every day.”

HALO contains the three levels that is my very personal opinion for what makes great art experiences:

Immediate sensory stimulation or friction, that draws you into the artwork, regardless of your prior knowledge of it.
The more you know about the artist, the history, the context, the more the work grows.
If the artwork also dares to shamelessly ask the biggest questions – all the better.

And puh-lease! Don’t expect answers. Asking questions is what keeps humanity moving forward, not answers.

So, by all means – when you visit Art Basel 2018 go to Unlimited. It is still … well, unlimited.

Do go to the gallery sections to see the Warhols and the Bacons and the Dubuffets and the contemporary artists. And really make sure you don’t miss HALO. And why not this time around also pay a visit to Miami Design?

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Beitragsbild: ©Lina Bo Bardi Giancarlo Palanti Studio d’Arte Palma 1948–1951Presented by Nilufar Gallery Photo Courtesy of James Harris

Allgemein, Culture

Split seconds

When you least expect it, a split second becomes years. Anders Modig sits down for a coffee and makes an imaginary and takes a plunge into the ephemeral construction called time.

He looks down on me as he walks past my café table on Gerbergasse, holding hands with a beautiful woman. She is taller than him, and he is wearing pressed shiny dark pants, a blue shirt with pecacocky details like coloured buttonhole and a chequered muster on the inside of his collar. A junior banker, a salesman? His face has not quite smoothened out the pimply stage, and he parading his new girlfriend in an obvious way.

His head slightly tilted backward, in a fascinating way. Is he trying to be as tall as her? Is he trying to hide his post-adolescent insecurity, or is it just to physically balance his long-strided, rather ridiculous bouncy gait with overly outwardly pointing feet? Within a split second he will tilt it back even more. But not just yet.

Within a split second he will tilt it back even more. But not just yet.

Her white tee and blue jeans with a rip over the right knee, the large, brown soft leather bag nonchalantly slung over her left shoulder and a face with no make-up, tells a story of a different, more relaxed, more individual path.

Look closer, and you will find that a split second can can contain an overwhelming amount of information. Photo: Anders Modig

At the moment he is trying to convince the world about feeling bees knees, but his insecurities shine through. He doesn’t know it yet, but she will leave him in a few weeks. When she will look back she will know that it was because he was disrespectful to her. It happened a few times in private, which made her a bit insecure. But it was not until it happened in public, when he made a really crude joke on her expense in her favourite bar, that she had had enough. Some years and boyfriends later she will remember the feeling, but not what the joke was all about. She will remember that nobody laughed at it, and that she without a word simply walked out from the bar and never looked back. He didn’t even try to follow her. Nor did her so-called friends. It will however take her another few years to realise that his behaviour was due to the same insecurities that give him the stupid wide gait she mocked him for from time to time. Not that her realisation will change anything though – understanding doesn’t necessarily equal forgiveness.

He doesn’t know it yet, but she will leave him in a few weeks.

But at the moment everything is still fine. As I look up from my book I first see their hands lovingly clenched together, before I see her. Her beauty momentarily stuns me; I must come across like an old elephant being hit by a tranquilizer dart the moment before it realizes what just happened. The young banker sees my reaction in the corner of his eye, and he tilts his head a couple more degrees and looks down on me. His eyes glaze over with aggression, as were his pupils entering a gladiator arena, they shout out ‘fuck off, she’s mine!’.

They shout out ‘fuck off, she’s mine!’.

But I am no threat; I am not even remotely interested in her. And he has no idea how wrong his possessive behaviour towards her is, even though he will soon find out. And he will learn. Not immediately, thanks to his predominantly male peer group, which will go on to keep reinforcing bullshit values and sexist jokes for another few years. But as they eventually grow up they will, at least, cut down on it. And once the young banker will realise what he actually did to her, how he fucked it up, then he will regret it. Regret and learn from it. Regret and learn – that’s what we do; I don’t care about what Édith Piaf says.

Regret and learn – that’s what we do.

The Triple Split Second Chronograph from A- Lange & Söhne. (press images)

Of course there are different kind of regrets, but there is at least one that belong in the good books. The one that you feel with a pang of bad consciousness just as you experience the enlightening ‘oh no moment’ about your mistake. The one that makes you think: “I regret that I acted that way, and I will try not to do it again”. You store that lesson in your brain’s limbic system and you do your best to move on, but you don’t flog yourself over what you just did –you honestly try to see clearly beyond yourself, and learn from it. We all want to see more clearly from our mistakes, but oftentimes once is not enough. Blinded by blood trickling into our eyes from banging our head into a brick wall, we will try ever harder, before we realise that it is more comfortable and clever to use the door. Or simply walk around that brick wall.

You honestly try to see clearly beyond yourself, and learn from it.

But today, at this very moment, in time, during the split seconds that the young couple passes my table, he is completely oblivious about what is soon to come. Today he is on top of the world. Today he is the one walking towards Barfüsserplatz holding the hand of a beautiful woman taller than him.

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Allgemein, blog, Fashion, Lifestyle

Viennese Walls

Is it because time is such an ephemeral illusion that we are obsessed with watches?

The glamorous jazz singer may be well past her due date, but the décolletage removes the attention from her crooked back, and her lips are redder than a blood moon. Accompanied by a Filipino band in bright red ties and purple too-large suit jackets, the voice has echoed between these Viennese walls of Eden Bar for 28 years, a voice that prior to that shared a stage with no one and everybody, including Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Swedish jazz legend Monica Zetterlund. And, as if untouched by time, the voice of Vera Love can still carry a tune from a bottomless well of sorrow straight to a bleeding heart.

Despite the fin-de-siècle luxury men’s club appearance of Eden Bar having remained more or less the same for 100 years, it would be a cliché to say that time in here has stood still – or at least to say only that. As I get older I realise that every moment in time is both forever frozen and a mere step towards the next moment and the next. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, like a relentless, never-ending and at the same time eternally pausing Viennese waltz.

Perhaps that is why we are obsessed with watches: they try to make sense of the unfathomable illusion we call time. Counting time makes it possible to look back, experience the now and predict the future – all at a glance! Thus the watch becomes an impossible paradox: a safe harbour in the middle of a furious ocean.

“Time has no undo button,” says Viennese industrial designer Rainer Mutsch, who calls Eden a “classic, to be experienced at least once.”

Time has no undo button

At the end of September he presents the Rado True Stratum, the first watch he has designed. With archaic materials and case and band made of ceramics, the dial shaped as an amphitheatre, the sweeping circular movement of a yellow second hand and a light-reflecting and shadowing black circle attached to the inside of the sapphire glass through vapour deposition, this product is very much a reminder that the new is always only a combination of old past efforts. A more or less scratch-free, without a doubt contemporary minimalist creation, it is nevertheless flirting not only with the boundaries of humanly possible industrial processes, but also with Greek architectural ideas of public spaces as well as 3,000-year-old Mesopotamian methods of measuring the movement of the sun, not forgetting the yellow handshake with 1960s designs by Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs for Braun.

Rainer Mutsch wearing the Rado True Stratum

The black True Stratum plays with the symbolic, but watches can also be explicit beyond our realm. Take a perpetual calendar, which is mechanically aware of leap years and thus shows you the right date for hundreds of years. There are many versions of these, but my favourite would be the Ochs and Junior Perpetual Calendar by Ludwig Oechslin in Lucerne. A lifelong experience with watches opened his doors of mechanical perception; a horological equivalence of Aldous Huxley or Archimedes, Oechslin around a decade ago realised that it would be enough to add only nine parts to a normal calendar movement to transform it into a perpetual calendar. But as he is Swiss and not Greek, he didn’t run naked through the streets screaming “Eureka!” Nor did he drop chemical substances to develop his work.

No, he just quietly placed the loupe over his right eye and kept on perfecting the idea. And in doing so he also multiplied the value of his simple-looking steel watches – mechanical alchemy, if you ask me. Watches’ ability to predict the future comes not only by showing the date.

Watches’ ability to predict the future comes not only by showing the date.

The Urwerk Zeit Device has a 1,000-year counter moving 22 millimetres in one millennium, and there are moon phases that show the exact position of this silvery celestial for thousands of years – which, by the way, is quite a feat given that a moon cycle lasts on average 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.8016 seconds. Andreas Strehler in Sirnach, canton Thurgau, has taken it even further – his strictly mechanical Sauterelle à Lune Perpétuelle 2M shows the right position of the moon for 2 million years.

The little snippets of information from our watches give us a frame for what was then, what is now and what is yet to come. And perhaps having a solid frame clarifies the illusion of time, thus increasing the possibilities for us to truly enjoy the canvas, perhaps even remove the notion of due dates?

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

Allgemein, blog, Culture, Digital Life, Fashion, Lifestyle

How could I not?

“What inspires you, something that is also related to what you do, something time-related?”

Stevie’s question came out of the blue just after we let out a couple of discreet post-lunch bagel burps. It set the wheels spinning in my brain, which has been very occupied, perhaps too occupied, with writing about watches for more than a dozen years.

It took me a while to realise that it is actually the foundation itself that inspires me: time. It is the only thing we have, and agreeing on what time is and should be is the only way it is possible to keep a society together. Initially experimental sundials and water clocks were few and far between, but since the 1300s keeping time has been very social. From the church clocks ringing to get the congregation together to the infamous countdown for New Year’s Eve under the big clock at Times Square, time is absolutely everywhere. From when you are at work to the exact meeting time to the trains to the start of your favourite TV show to the minutes you cook an egg to your liking – time is absolutely everywhere, and nothing in our civilised society would have been possible if it weren’t for the relentless studies of men and women like the Mesopotamians who raised a pole, measuring the movement of the sun, John Harrison cracking the mystery to perfect sea navigation thanks to the accuracy of his clocks, Abraham-Louis Breguet for not only putting timekeepers on the wrist, but also mitigating the adversarial effects of gravity on the movement of pocket watches, and present-day geniuses like Rémi Maillat of Krayon who just made the first mechanical watch that shows you sunrise and sunset wherever you are. They all work with the same foundation: how to mimic and symbolise the celestial movements, because that’s what time and clocks and watches are all about: astronomy. And like the Austrian designer Rainer Mutsch put it:

“Time has no undo button.”

What baffles me is that despite the fact that time is the only thing that we have, the only commodity that is distributed to each and every living creature on this planet, people ask me why I write about watches, thus in an extended perspective asking why I write about time. I hadn’t thought about it in that sense before this article, but for the next time somebody puts this question to me I now have the perfect answer: “How could I not?”

– Anders Modig

Anders Modig, based in Basel since 2013, has been a journalist for 15 years. He writes about watches and design for titles like Vanity Fair on Time, Hodinkee, Café and South China Morning Post.

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Inspiration ist überall.

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How could I not?