Zihua and I set off at 9 in the morning to pick up supplies. The top of my list was an AC cable to replace the adapter. We first stopped at Hellweg, a domestic hardware store. While there were electronics, I didn't find the cable. I had stopped in several computer stores around the city, including Hartlauer, and home supply stores, like XXX Lutz and Möbelix, and even Libro. No success. All had some amount of techno-trash but none offered the low-level trash I needed. In fact, the tech they had was too sophisticated. We gave up and went to Boesners for art supplies.
In preparation for the Triple V Trip – Vienna, Venice & Vanesa – I picked up a second T Mobile data card for her. What I didn't know was that the network response and speed was functional only in Austria, not Italy, nor Germany, nor Spain. This is very strange since even the US TMobile card has some concurrence in Europe, albeit slower.
In the evening I went to a performance of European Working Title, which was 99% in German and I understood about 0.5% of the dialogue. The visual scenario included an artist who was be creating an artwork using string wrapped around a bookcase and other junk while a woman was soliciting something to/from him. Adjacent was woman dressed as a rabbit sitting at a writing desk. In the middle of the floor was a big blue plastic tarp that was later used for three of the characters to change costume. Two actors drank gallons of water. A man climbed a set of stairs and exposed his anus to both side of the audience, and later that same man interjected with the performance and started to engage the crowd, including asking me if I understood any of the performance. I denied knowing anything, which was 99% true, and he demanded that the entire play be translated into English for me. He then led me around the stage, which had been mostly demolished by performers prior to this segment and said I could do literally anything I wanted to do. It’s amazing how few desires one has when the mind is preoccupied with misdirection.
Later Iris told me that the crying during the performance pertained to someone learning about what happened in a television show and being deeply disturbed by what she had learned. It sounded interesting. Allegedly later performances adjusted to the audience’s reaction and walkouts and toned down some of the aggressiveness and intimidation on behalf of the Slovak, whose anus most spectators could likely identify in a police lineup. That is unfortunate because I saw this as a dramatic, PG-13 version of a Viennese Actionist performance and thought they should have gone in the other direction – even more extreme. I don't think the Actionists even reached the level of necrophilia, network hacking or national debt lending. What I mean to say is that there is room to grow.