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Frankster

@franksterino

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United states of calamity.
Fall in love an' fall in bed.
Ich dachte so wird's kommen, und es kam anders.

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Farewell haiku

In Paris I learned they cannot cancel the spring – cheers, smoking genius!

In memory of David Hockney. #DavidHockney

Perhaps a day in February in the botanical garden of Funchal was the most beautiful day of my life. Madeira, the island of eternal spring. How fitting that one of my contenders for second place is also connected with spring.
When I emerged from the Bois de Boulogne in April last year, an illuminated slogan adorned the glass façade of the Fondation Louis Vuitton @fondationlv, designed by Frank Gehry, as pink as the chestnut blossoms in Paris’s urban forest: “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring.”
The largest solo exhibition I had ever seen in my life was breathtaking. Hockney’s attitude to space and time, reflected in his paintings, seemed to breathe nothing but beauty. No living painter, it seemed to me, could capture the elasticity of time so magnificently. No one could smoke quite like he did.
Everything is ridiculous when one thinks of death, as Thomas Bernhard knew, and in the face of the great master’s death, all words seem to turn into clichés. Yet his own words on the exhibition poster still bring a smile to my face. There he stands, grinning, the passionate smoker from Yorkshire in his checked corduroy jacket, a pen in his right hand and a cigarette in his left. The subtitle reads:
“Play within a play within a play and me with a cigarette, so up yours, up yours, up yours.”
After the FLV exhibition I had a chat about the show with my much-admired friend @gen.bonieux.art — she aksked me which my favourite work had been. I sent her a self-portrait with cigartette on a swivel armchair, my comment: “Maybe not my favourite, but it made me smile how content and at ease with himself and the world he looks in this self portrait.” She replied: “Yes, he is a happy sensualist, and not a tormented intellectual. Lifts up our spirits.” He does indeed and will continue to do so with his works. And with his words: “Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long.” by @franksterino

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4 months ago

I was about to post a love poem to keep the furies busy when the new single “You You You” by @arabstrapband was flushed into my timeline. The pointing finger of a blood-red hand reached out toward me; the next slide revealed menacing black-and-white images from @lukebovill ’s video: a bulky Aidan Moffat stretching himself out and a somewhat more limber Malcolm Middleton wearing a bicycle helmet & sunglasses. I streamed the song. Moffat spat out couplets and within a minute the repetitive melody, the harsh saw-like guitars, and the sheer ennui had me captivated. I couldn’t escape the song’s pull anymore. I briefly tried to free myself by emailing x friends with the subject line “What! A! Belter!” pasting into the message the darkest & most powerful lines. Difficult, because every single line drips with force & darkness. Lichtenberg once wrote that the metaphor is cleverer than its author. “You You You” radiates intelligence, yet it contains almost no metaphors, apart from the “fiery frog in my throat from all that singing: Bella ciao!” Despite the singing, fascism never went away. Instead of metaphors, the song delivers brutally direct images hitting you square in the face. Especially in the opening verses, with their succession of broken-body imagery. This is no longer the romantic indie-pop body, but an ageing, exhausted, medicated human being. Almost anti-poetically concrete. “Time is never spent, it’s only killed”: depression in a nutshell. Everything in the song is complicated, ugly, political, contradictory, or physically unpleasant. The simple refrain “But I’ve got you you you...” is the only clear & warm thing in it. A love song? Not one of the “love heals everything” variety. More like: “Everything is terrible. But at least we are not alone.” It’s about AI, Spotify, criminalised activists and about how our consumption of art finances systems we fundamentally reject. The world & the body remain broken. Politics remains corrupt. Yet we can hold on to one another. A magnificent manifesto of rage, alienation & despair, hovering on the edge of nihilism, yet carried by a posture of defiant humanism. What a belter! Maybe I’ll post the love poem another time. by @franksterino

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5 months ago

»I’ve been out walking
I don’t do too much talking these days«
No-Man’s Hill, 2026-01-30 by @franksterino

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6 months ago

Nursing a cold, I went up No-Man’s Hill every day for a week one November last year. I took these photographs there. by @franksterino

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7 months ago

by @franksterino

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10 months ago

»[Die See] belebt unsere Einbildungskraft, denn sie zieht uns vom Leben der Menschen ab, aber sie hebt uns freudig empor, denn sie ist wie die Seele ein unbegrenztes, wenn auch unzulängliches Streben nach oben, ein Elan, unaufhörlich gehemmt von Sturz, eine Klage, sanft und ohne Anfang noch Ende. Zauberhaft ist sie wie die Musik, die nicht wie die Sprache vom rauhen Atemhauche der Dinge umgeben bleibt, sie schweigt von Menschen, aber sie folgt den Regungen unserer Seele nach. Unser Herz strebt feurig empor mit ihren Wellen, es sinkt mit ihnen zurück, so vergißt es sein eigenes Versagen. Was sie tröstet, ist eine innere Harmonie zwischen der Seelentraurigkeit und der Meerestraurigkeit, und eins wird ihr Geschick mit dem der Welt.«
–Marcel Proust, Trauer und Träume in allen Regenbogenfarben

1 Mermaid Quay, #Cardiff (2024-12-30)
2 #Cascais (2025-04-18)
3 Câmara de Lobos, #Madeira (2025-02-27)
4 San Ferdinando, #Napoli (2023-08-10)
5 #Chania, Crete (2023-04-02)

#Meer #MarcelProust @eckenetkanten @aimeedubrule @flearidingachameleon by @franksterino

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a year ago

I love cities I don’t understand. Luxembourg City is one of them – and I don’t think I’ll ever truly grasp it, even though I’ve been there dozens of times. This week, for the first time, I spent several days and nights in the city, and it grew even closer to my heart.
I think it’s the smallest global city on Earth – and it truly deserves that title.
One of my best friends once wrote a short biography of himself in which he simply described his German birthplace as ‚near Luxembourg‘.
Back then, with my former band, we turned that bio into a song called ‚Europe 1973‘.
That’s what came to my mind now, as I was looking through the black-and-white photos I took this week.
The lyrics went like this:

i was born in the middle of europe
in 1973 near luxemburg
the first 20 years of my life i spent
running around in the woods
and watching tv
and developing a passion for cars
some day i discovered music and then the internet
once i went to norway to see wittgenstein’s house
i walk to work

I TRAIN THE TRAINER
CONTROL THE CONTROLLER
DIRECT THE DIRECTOR

time is the most important and the most crucial thing in life
and working with relationships
i own two classic cars:
- a 1984 subaru 1800 hatchback
- a 1984 talbot solara

#LuxembourgCity #BlackAndWhitePhotography #CityInMonochrome #BnW_StreetPhotography #VisitLuxembourg #schwarzweiß #Luxemburg #Europe #EU #monochrome by @franksterino

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a year ago

#Berlin wrap-up #schwarzweiß by @franksterino

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a year ago

#Berlin #schwarzweiß Teil zwei by @franksterino

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a year ago

#Berlin #schwarzweiß by @franksterino

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a year ago

On a Thursday morning, well past noon, or so I thought, still no breakfast, I was lying in my hotel bed in Arroios, Lisboa, opposite a derelict brewery, playing “Desolation Row” by Bob Dylan. During the lines “Praise be to Nero’s Neptune / The Titanic sails at dawn / And everybody’s shouting / ‘Which side are you on?’ / And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot / Fighting in the captain’s tower,” the ever-present sound of police or ambulance sirens from outside had mixed with the song so seamlessly that I was absolutely sure they were part of it. #Lisbon #Arroios #Lisboa #BobDylan #DesolationRow by @franksterino

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a year ago

Unmade bed
#Polaroid #PolaroidsAusAmnesia by @franksterino

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2 years ago