PROJECT SANDDUNE
A PLAYFUL attempt at exploring the human condition through
RADIANT (MUSIC-) PERFORMANCES
INVIGORATING WINES
EXQUISITE DISHES
COLLATERAL EXCHANGES
Both thoughtful and emotional in nature.
Perhaps, an antidote to the digital age..?
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Up to 12 Guests
5 Truly Singular Wines
1 Collaborating Artist
1 Mesmerizing Location
1 Overarching Leitmotiv
& An Equilibrium of Food
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Imagine tasking five scientists to pin-point, map and determine a sand dune across space and time .. Complicated …
Sand dunes embody a sense of process — a process of constant and inherent change — resisting closure.
So do these events. A process-oriented way of feeling and experiencing. An ode to becoming. An antidote to the digital age?
Each event will unravel and conclude on its own accord.
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An exploration of ‘Lightness’ with magnificent synthesist and sound designer Jan Nemeček
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You are about to experience an intimate & immersive experience by one of Berlin’s most brilliant artist, while losing yourself in a jaw-dropping surrounding — location undisclosed until the happening.
Each event sports a line-up of five idiosyncratic wines: pretty much like unicorns: magic and tricky to trace.
VOLUME 6 LIGHTNESS
“E bianca neve scender senza venti”
And white snow falls without wind
Guido Cavalcanti - 1290
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This spring, induced by Jan Nemeček's masterful probing into the nature of harmony and distortion, as well as Chef & Huntress Nina Marisa's culinary highlights, we explored the notion of Lightness from various vantage points.
Yep, Lightless is readily conceived as the subtraction of weight.While persuasive, how about something radical — Lightness as a game of seduction. Al final, the overcoming of gravity?
Lightness in wine, music, artworks, life, hell even in a Pavlova, hints at a wonderful underlying duality: a suspension between dissonance and resolve, fluctuation and stability, the stillness of the turning world and reality's messy ambiguity.
Lightness does not negate gravity, it seduces it. Lightness fosters vitality. Lightness lived is akin to a dance. Not Waltz exactly, but maybe freestyle?
IN BOCACCIO’S DECAMERONThe poet Guido Cavalcanti is strolling meditatively through a graveyard. Suddenly he is charged by a group of Noble Florentines on their horses. They are resentful towards him for not joining their Clique, despite his wealthy family background, so they start a quarrel.
Guido, seeing himself surrounded by them, responds to their provocations quickly:“Gentlemen, you may say anything you wish to me in your own home.”
Then, while resting his hand on one of the great marble tombs and being very nimble, he leaps over it.
Landing on the other side, he makes off and rids himself of them.
LIGHTNESS — The sudden agile leap of the poet philosopher, who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity, he has the secret of Lightness and that what many consider to be the vitality of our times: noise, aggression, and assertion, belong to the realm of the dead, like a cemetery for old corked wines.
Location by courtesy of Friends Space - an aesthetic experience by itself - hidden away in the heart of Kreuzberg.
Georges Laval - Garennes - L13-21
Gratallops - Partida Bellvisos Blanc - 2018
By Farr - Sangreal - 2020
Gran Enemigo - Gualtallary - 2014
Roc des Anges - Rivesaltes - 1975
VOLUME 5 TEMPERAMENT
Hölderin - 1803
Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch.-
But where the danger is, there grows what saves as well.
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The notion of Temperament has many facets, somehow oscillating between excitement and distress.
To Bruno Bez, the collaborating partner and infamous Brazilian Visual Artist, a healthy dose of Temperament is implicitly woven into the fabric of his art installations. Endlessly increasing fractions of Fibonacci are juxtaposed to a paradoxically incalculable rift: an autonomous computer glitch randomly induced by the Artist.
So how about thinking Temperament as a tilting catalyst toward disruption – a genuine disruption – one that is utterly blind to consequences?
Fair enough, I get that, but what’s the damn connection to wine, you wonder?
Arguably, the difference between earth-shattering wines and ‘good’ wines, is their soft spot for an embrace of error and accident. For Lino Maga, from whom we had the honor to savour the 2000 Montebuono, it’s crystal clear: “All great wines need to be problematic”, temperamental in nature and thereby, not be flawlessly balanced, I’d add.
In that vein, a wine with Temperament and transformed by the hands of a winegrower who’s guided by intuition, naturally mirrors earthly existence as it is: Ecstatically uprooted, uncertain, exposed, and incalculable.
While this kind of Temperament – a holy-yes to errors and accidents - can be an excellent servant, it also allows for a dangerous ruler to join the game. A slight touch of Brett, CO2, VA or other ‘faults’ goes a long way – a beautiful harmony forming out of an emerging disequilibrium.
The fashionable identification with disruption alone, however, is excluding the openness born of intuition in the first place. Instead, the wine and its vintner, induce a forgone conclusion, an inversion of possibilities into absolute closure.
A suffocation in trivialities.
Maybe it’s exactly due to our uprooted earthly existence that temperament can take on two very opposite courses. Yet I believe, that every boundary that encloses, generates in turn an interface that exposes.
Truly wonderous.
An exploration of Temperament, taking place at the strinkingly monochromatic Studio5a located at the Spree’s eastern offshoot.
Every guest received a bespoke perfum, unraveling its distinctly personal composition over and beyond the evening, a temperamental undertaking..
Fattoria San Lorenzo, Il San Lorenzo Bianco, 2008
Markus Ruch, Hallau Buck, 2018 en Magnum
Lino Maga, Vigna Montebuono, 2000
Castell D’Encus, Quest 2016 + 3% ‘Experimental’ Syrah 2018
De La Riva, Pedro Ximénez San José, 110y.o. Solera
VOLUME 4 BRIDGES
Giuseppe Ungaretti - Nostalgia (1916)
Quando la notte è a svanire
poco prima di primavera
e di rado
qualcuno passa
Su Parigi s’addensa
un oscuro colore
di pianto
In un canto
di ponte
contemplo
l’illimitato silenzio
di una ragazza
tenue
Le nostre
malattie
si fondono
E come portati via
si rimane.
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Together with the luminous Natalia Escobar, magician behind both the decks and projectors, we were encircling the multifaceted notions of ‘Bridges’.
Now, why on earth would one be interested in Bridges, you may ask.
It’s crystal clear, I’d reply… anything valuable in life, necessitates bridging, don’t you think?
From continuously bridging the gap between the visible and the invisible, the terrestrial and celestial, the past to future relationships, the mystery of birth and inscrutability of death, the fragile continuity between justice and mercy, and most important of all: the concoction of lactic and malic acid.
Maybe even human existence finds itself on a bridge…moving across…from…to and beyond. Who knows?
Man is literally a metaphor, from Latin: ‘to carry over; to transfer’.
We don’t seem to be stable and fixed in place, but quite on the contrary, at the core of our being, endlessly connected, hopelessly unable to operate in isolation.
For Natalia, the face of our age - an abyss created by an absence of meaning - can be bridged through many forms: falling in love, tenderness, collective creation, hallucination, and movement itself.
Bridges allude to our desire to connect, and soar across divides. Yet as agents of bridge-existence, we are condemned to endlessly recreate a stable vantage point, going right above and beyond moving ground.
It’s time to rethink the archaic notion of Pontifex Maximus!
The exploration of Bridges, taking place at Berlin’s Uferhallen in Wedding, a former BVG Bus-Shunting Station.
The Sadie Family, Palladius 2019 en Magnum
Schloss Gobelsburg, Tradition 10 Jahre NV
Lopez de Heredia, Viña Tondonia Rosado 2012
Chateau Lafleur, Pensées des Lafleur 2004 en Magnum
Petrolo, Galatrona 2003 en Magnum
VOLUME 3 DECAY
Everything passes away,
so everything deserves to pass away.
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Decay is innate.
Carried by the ingenious sounds composed by Konrad Black, we took a deep dive into the world of decay at the aptly named venue ’21 Gramm’ inside the St. Thomas Chapel in Neukölln.
‘Really Max? ‘Decay’? What a great pick! And so joyful.
‘Well, everything passes, so everything deserves to pass, n’est-ce pas?’
So let me ask you, what is your immediate association with the notion of decay? Yep, Bingo! “Heisenberg” Me too.
Through the lens of the Copenhagen Interpretation, it’s impossible to predict when a radioactive atom, that is, a decaying nucleus, will spit out a particle. In this vein, the process of decay is unpredictable.
In principle, scientific advances are continuously readjusting its predictions when access to new information emerges. Yet in this unusual case, it is not a lack of knowledge but a fact of life, that there is an unbridgeable uncertainty at the heart of quantum space.
In other words, at life’s core, the very fabric of life, lies an unpredictable flow.
We are so deeply immersed within the subjectivity of life, any observation, or attempts at reassuring objectivity, alters life’s course in turn. Unpredictable decay entangled by tension, is part of the drama itself.
The world really is mysterious, not just mysterious by lack of comprehension.
What the hell, Max, you do confuse me, what’s the upshot to this fiercely imprecise portrayal of quantum physics?Decay implicitly celebrates a reality of possibility! Possibility becomes a real thing. Beings must become what they are, not in isolation but within the midst of life. Perspectives won't remain. Decay transmutes into a force of life.
Congrats, Max. Now you’ve completely lost your mind...
Well, everything passes, so everything deserves to pass... The change we experience is an imperishable change, one that renovates the world over and over again. The cosmos as a harmony of tension – a process of becoming.A liminal experience.
Sounds reasonable, afterall eh? If not, to hell with ‘reasonable’…
Location courtesy by 21 Gramm at St. Thomas Cemetery Neukölln
Hidalgo, Palo Cortado Scully (90y.o.+)
Sadiefamiliewyne, Mev. Kirsten 2018
Rostaing, La Landonne 2007
Mariano Garcia, Cristina Iglesias 2007
Legras & Haas, LTS 2008
VOLUME 2 SILENCE
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Pascal observes that all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Omikron approves.
Silence seems to be ‘un mot glissant’, taking on multiple cloaks. It can be inviting or confronting, unifying or isolating, allowing for freedom or repression. Silence can be a form of resistance or submission, punishment or reward. The silence of autumn is not the same as the silence of spring. The silence of youth is not the same as the silence of age, and the silence of midday is not the same as the silence of midnight, while the silence in the monk’s cell couldn’t be more different that the one in the prison’s cell.
To me, the beautiful transition from a great to a loving friendship, is revealed in the magnitude of intimate silence shared together. An utter silence giving birth to a deeply inexpressible connection.
Quintessentially, ‘all profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and amended by Silence. Silence is the general consecration of the universe.” Well put, Melville! Nothing to add here.
Oh wait .. maybe a quick Heideggerian take on the encircled nature between Being and Silence?
‘Being can never be possessed. Being is always a gift, a temporary gift. Since it is not forever, the gift of life is at the same time the gift of death, and the gift of death is simultaneously the gift of life.
By gift I mean that fleeting grace, that occurs in each unrepeatable instant, even in times of darkness...
Silence is the opening to the wonder of this grace.’
Location: Oldtimer Vaporetto ‘Ino’ - the oldest watertaxi outside Venice - peacefully floating around Berlin Spreepark
Plentitude of Silences..
Roses de Jeanne, Val Vilaine 2019
Ziereisen, Gutedel Jaspis 2018
Gaja, Barbaresco Infernot 1970
Castell D’Encus, Saktih Petit Verdot 2013
Marco De Bartoli, Marsala Superiore 1987
VOLUME 1 LUMIÈRE
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Essentially, Life itself is a refraction of the sun, either through photosynthesis or photoreceptors.
As such, humans are both – solar and terrestrial in nature, as pointed out beautifully by Robert Harrison.And - as Zarathustra reminds us - we not only absorb the sun’s generous rays into us, but also shine its light back to her.
“You great star, what would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine?”
A remarkable question, which illuminated and hopefully transcends all future Sand-Dune projects.
Location: Bar Kink, Pfefferberg. The mesmerizing ‘Space Knot’ by Kerim Seiler looming above.
Bodega Chacra, Chardonnay 2019
Niepoort, Turris 2014
Vouette et Sorbée, Extrait 2008
Chave, Hermitage Blanc 2012
Castell D’Encus, Majjan 2012
