The beginning never ended. Here we stand now and from here we move on. History has shattered. I was brooding on this, when together with other ISU students, I went on a tour of the Berlin Museum of German History—a journey spanning over two thousand years of history, the living ashes of the Phoenix of
Spray Paint Workshop
On June 11, ECLA organized a spray paint workshop in which a group of students got together under the leadership of student Josefina Capelle and the professional artist Guillaume Cayrac, whose work can be found throughout Europe, to learn how to create a stencil template and employ useful methods for cutting it out, as well
Frank Fehrenbach on Leonardo’s Art
If a painting is presented to two people, each of them would probably see something different in it. They might even disagree about what they see to the point of drawing daggers. Art involves the viewer in a very unique way and the experience of looking at something and feeling something is individual. As we
“Autobiographiction”: Month of Performance Art in Berlin
If someone had told me a year ago that I could participate in a performance art event, I would have been at least skeptical. I had always looked at avant-garde phenomena with a strange fascination, but this very feeling set boundaries. After having recently attended some of the events of the Month of Performance Art
Two Loves
We spent the whole of last term talking about love and the many different ways it strikes us. Coming from the East, I was introduced to a whole different set of values associated with love and its manifestations. A very basic observation is that in Eastern cultures when people fall in love, they avoid public
Eurovision Song Contest 2011 (Or what does Europe want?)
Although I promise myself, each and every year, that I will stop watching the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), this annual moment of laughable grief (meaning that the initial enthusiasm that accompanies some of the songs is ultimately destroyed by the final results), I always end up doing the opposite. 2011 couldn’t have been the year
Welcoming Stefan The Chef (Or Culinary Tales and Theories My Mother Taught Me)
“You better learn how to cook or your life will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” was what my mother’s advice sounded like four years ago before I left home for college. Despite being a big fan of Thomas Hobbes, my mother prepares the most delicious food known to man. Her food is not
Postcard From New York
Dear ECLA, This is to proudly share I graduated from Columbia this weekend. The ceremony was outstanding, with an inspiring speech by Kofi Annan. The speech is here. I would like to thank you for my time at ECLA before Columbia. While I have undoubtedly learned a lot this year, it all fell in place