Service, Concert or Brainwashing deluxe? – source: wikipedia

The hall was pitch black when suddenly the lights and a projector with lyrics went on and 12 people came on stage and sang for about 20 minutes. They sang songs like “Arms Open Wide“, with passages like: “My whole life is Yours, I give it all, surrendered to Your name and forever I will pray. “It was more like a concert than a service, and everybody stood up and cheered. You get the idea if you have a look at the image above. Until this point I was shocked because of the whole topic and the message which the lyrics transported but it was OK. The real shock awaited me after that.

Hillsong Church service in London 2009 – Source: my cell phone

Some guy who looked a bit like a plump version of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs entered the stage and told the thrilled audience of his visions and that everything positive that happened in their lives was the will of God. It was rhetorically impressive because he used the word “imagine” at the beginning of every sentence he spoke and a piano and an electric guitar were playing silently in the background to give his speech even more power. “Imagine we could fill the O2 arena next year. Imagine every one of us (Hillsong members) could get five more people into Hillsong. Imagine we would visit the schools and talk to the children…” At that moment I really became angry. They want to go to the schools and to teach their opinions to helpless children? I hope this is not permitted by the law and hopefully I will have the chance to send my children to a school where they only have education in ethics and philosophy rather than religion.

It was a hard time for me up this point because every time the audience was urged to stand up and pray, I sat down. This sounds easier than it actually is because if hundreds of people are standing and you are the only one in the crowd who doesn’t follow the rest of the group, it is an unpleasant feeling to say the least. Then after a prayer the collection bags were handed out. I even saw some people who gave away their credit card number and the permission for a certain amount of money to be withdrawn from the bank.

A regular weekly Hillsong Church service in Sydney – source: harmelings.com

After that, I started to take pictures and a video in order to have proof of what I had seen and experienced. After the “service”, many people asked me what I thought about the event. At first I tried to avoid unpleasant questions with answers like “It was interesting but I don’t believe in things like that.” Later we went to a pub where we were met up with some guys from the Hillsong Church and some people who only were visitors like myself. After a few glasses of Guinness I had to ask: “Where is the difference between Hillsong, Jehovas Witnesses and Scientology and Christianity in general? Haven’t you watched movies about indoctrination? ” The answer was that “Hillsong does help the poor in the third world and that the money is used to make services like the one I saw possible and to get more and more people even closer to the love of Jesus and God”. In my opinion this is also true for the Jehovas Witnesses. They claim to support the third world with their money and everyone knows that they collect money from their members to make their church bigger and even more powerful in order to “save” people. In fact, there is no real difference when it comes to the concept of a sect or cult. This Hillsong Church is a huge empire with over 21.000 members worldwide and is criticized from many different directions including the media and politicians. Their methods are similar and other groups like TEN SING are even more popular here in Germany and may be considered equally dangerous. As far as I know at least they do not try to collect money.

Famous Hill$ong Church Parody on YouTube

I am an atheist and believe in nothing but the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge which is, in my opinion, the task of science. For me, religion is the cessation of thinking. I wrote a quite complete article in german language called Forschen VS Glauben (engl. research vs. faith) and made the “steep thesis” (ger. steile These ;-) ) that everyone who visited a university should be clever enough to not believe in mystic tales like the creation myth or the concept of god. Before I went to the Hillsong service, I thought that things like that exist only in music videos like Genesis – Jesus he knows me. What bothers me the most is that I had not founded a cult by myself. I mean, it should be easy to get some followers and to make people believe in something like the Flying Spaghetti Monster with simple answers to the complex questions of life. Everything good that is happing to my church members would be because of healthly living and everything bad comes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Piece of cake. But to be honest I would be satisfied if busses like this would be driving around more often.

related links

• theAustralian.news.com.au – Hillsong success no miracle
• The Truth Can Be Confronting – Blog about money-driven churches
• podblack.com – Hillsong’s ‘Shine’ Has Dark Side For Girls
• rickross.com – More Information about Hillsong Church
• hillsong.com – official website
• Glauben VS. Forschen – marctv.de (german language)

Last but not least I would like to thank Liron. She was so kind to help me out with grammar and spellchecking!

The main reason for our short trip to London had nothing to do with a vacation: my girlfriend Olga is looking out for a room in the main capital city of the UK. But then we met the nice hotel manager of our Woodville Guest House who personally helped us with the organization of the difficult task to find a cheap place to stay for approximately 4 months. And last but not least he introduced us to the nightlife of this beautiful city.

Easteregg-shaped Building in London with the Tower Bridge in the foreground

The first thing I realized about  London was the many different cultures. Many more different nationalities than I have ever seen here in Hamburg. The interesting side-effect is that I heard only a few times a real english accent without grammar mistakes. I did not talk lots of english in the past months and so this circumstance was quite pleasing for me. We met a lot of very kind people on our short trip with only a  few exceptions. But on top of these nice people was the manager our hotel: Usman Sunny B. He made our exiting trip much easier and made the big city feel a lot more like home. This wasn’t for sure the last time met each other, my friend.

A fresh guinness beer in a pub in Ilford/ London

Why is the currency still measured in Pound £ and not in Euro €? This makes a trip like this more difficult than it has to be. And if you ever plan a trip to London please consider the following: The Stansted Airport is far away from the center of the city. This means that you have to travel by train or by bus. In this case you will reach Liverpool Street Mainstation within 45 minutes. The problem is: normally your hotel will not be in the central of London but somewhere at the outer border. This means you have to travel by bus or train again. This will cost you a good amount of money and time. Especially at 2 o’clock in the morning in the rainy mist of the city. So please take my advice: use a cab. You spent only £30 for the distance between Stansted Airport and Ilford and this ride only takes 30 minutes of your time. This means more time for you to enjoy a Guinness with Fish & Chips in one the pubs. And for stupid short videos like this one here.

Fabio Magnifico and me were again invited to participate in the International Autumn Academy this year in Oerlinghausen in the position of leaders of the video workshop for one week. We also had a meeting room which suited our needs very well – the chapel.

Poland and Germany became a huge step closer to each other after this week.

This was my third participation in the International Academy in a row. The topic was “Mood Indigo” after the famous jazz song »Mood Indigo« of Duke Ellington. But in our videogroup we had the topic “game over”. The workshop-groups consists of mostly students from poland, austria and germany. For more information about the academy in general and the specific workshops please refer to my former articles about the International Autumn Academy 2005 and International Spring Academy 2006.

Pictures of the production of one of the short movies called »Blind Date«.

This time everything was different in the video workshop. Instead of only one approx. 5 minutes movie we had two short movies and one making of video in the end. What has been also new was the participation of some students from my bachelor studies called »media informatics and design«. This fitted extremely well into the group of mainly students from the »department of fine arts and music« at the university of Bielefeld.

Most parts of the music for the two short movie was done by Felipe Vila São Marcos.

Last but not least we present the the making of Mood Indigo 2006 for everybody to enjoy. The final movies “Blind Date” and “The Last Supper” will be shown at the UniVideoMagazin 2007 on February the 9th at the Ringlokschuppen. I want to add that I am very sorry that I left a day earlier because I got ill. Because of my health condition I forgot to say good bye to all the nice people. I enjoyed my stay with you all and it was great fun. I hope we will meet again in Scheersberg?!

… however only one leads to you. Now our journey to Italy is over and only the memories remain. Memories, photos, and videos of course.

Thomas Huber and Fabio Magnifico in a small restaurant in Viterbo

We were allowed to stay in a penthouse apartment in Rome near the subway station Battistini. This was possible because my friend Fabio Magnifico had asked a friend of his,Thomas Huber, if my friend Lukas and I could stay in his apartment in Rome for two weeks. To our surprise it worked out fine without any complications.

We read several books in the sunshine on the huge balcony of our appartment.

This may lead you to think that Lukas and I spent the whole day lying about on the balcony with our PlayStation Portable, ignoring the many cultural sites in the biggest city of Italy. But if you think again, you will notice that there is a big problem with this image: We couldn’t play with our PlayStation Portable, because of the sun shining directly onto the display and preventing us from seeing anything. So we switched back to another media: books!

Man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra

This means something like: “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” This is what my philosophy teacher at school, Herr Wolff, told me just after I completed my final exams. I then found this sentence after so many years in Friedrich Nietsche’s book »Thus Spake Zarathustra«. The interesting thing about the book is that one of my most beloved videogames on the playstation 2 called Xenosaga is named after this book – in German. Not only the English version of the game contains the three books of Nietzsche as a subtitle, but also the Japanese one. Well, I know that people from Japan have a faible for all things that come from Germany. Just if you’re curious, here are the three Xenosaga covers: Xenosaga I, Xenosaga II and Xenosaga III

Lukas and me at different locations all over Rome.

Besides having finally finished GrandTheft Auto: Liberty City Stories, we also visited several interesting places all over Rome. The main destinations of our tour were the Vatican city of course and several ancient buildings. But thanks to Giovanni Ferruta we also had the chance to live like real roman citizens, as he showed us the places where tourists normally would not hang around like the Campo di Fiori at night or special places in the party quarter of the city, for example Trastevere.

Lago di Bolsena by boat is a great experience.

Also Fabio, Thomas and Giovanni invited us on a boat tour across the Lago di Bolsena. This was the most joyful day of our trip, since the water of this really huge lake was so warm and clear that we could jump from the boat directly into the water. The lake was so big that it took one hour to cross it by boat.

Gallery of some of the nice people we met during our visit in Rome.

We met so many nice people in Italy. First I want to introduce the probably best ice cream parlour of the world! The name is il mio gelato naturale and one small portion costs about 3.50 EUR, but it’s worth every single cent. The owner of the parlour does not use any artificial ingredients but only pure organic ingredients. It tasted just great!

We finally found Ivo A Trastevere.

I hope that I am able to return to Italy soon. I miss the nice people, the food, and of course the warm weather. But at least we brought a new drink to Italy and especially Giovanni Ferruta: Das Stammgetränk. Thanks again to Thomas and Fabio who made this trip possible! And thanks to Sita Lange for correcting my spelling errors!

/me listens to Fettes Brot – 6 Million ways to Rome, choose one

Right now I am near Flensburg in Quern in my role as the assistant of Fabio Magnifico at the International Summer Academy RIVERS AND TIDES in Scheersberg. It is the same academy I participated in as I did International Autumn Academy in Oerlinghausen. Students from Germany and Poland are working together in workshops with different topics like land art, painting, photography, cabaret and video. The german students mainly consists of the Fine Arts & Music department of the University of Bielefeld. Because I work as a assistant for Fabio Magnifco at the University of Bielefeld for »Vorsicht Dreharbeiten!« I was asked to join the team of the video group like I did last year.

The baltic sea is only a few minutes by car away from Quern.

I have to write this article in English because we will use this blog as a live media for communication in the group. The students in the film group will answer the questions through the comment feature of this blog. If my visitors would like to participate with interesting comments feel free to do so. But in english please.

Preproduction

1. If it would be the task to start with the film now, what would be your idea for the story?
2. What locations do we need for our film?
3. How many workgroups do we require?
4. What role do you want to play?
5. What equipment is necessary?

Production

There is an actor- and a backstage group. We traveled to many different locations to record the beautiful pictures we needed to fullfil our visions of the film.

We used very unusal ways to move the camera.

Sometimes this was a even a dangerous job because of the lights we had in this room. We used over 2400 Watts to light up the scenes properly and because of that we had a little accident.

This is the result of to many power on a power plug. The left metal stick is missing!

1. In which production group did you participate?
2. What has been your work today?

Postproduction

1. What has to be done before we are able to edit the film?
2. How did the workflow changed during this procedure?

The answers will be written down in the comments by the students from Germany and Poland. The next questions and information will follow shortly.

Resumé

The problem about being away with so many nice people is the emptiness that remains after returning home. We worked and had fun together nearly 24 hours a day for a whole week and suddenly the former filled rooms are all empty and everything is calm. The next problem is that it is had to tell your friends about the week. I think nobody can understand the special atmosphere without being acctually there. The experience can not be discribed with words and at least for me I can tell that Oerlinghausen and Scheersberg an impact to my life. This is because of the different point of view to the creative work or perhaps life itself that I received there.

Landart – This photo is obviously a fake. =)

I will need at least another week to get back to normal life again. I met so many nice people there and had very interesting conversations about unexpected topics. And I think as well as Prof. Dr. Klaus-Ove Kahrmann himself that this workshop is by far the best medcine against racism and fascism. And for me this was a great oportunity to get rid of being prejudiced against people I formaly misjudged. And I would like to thank the cabaret group for their great show. I was really touching and reminded me slightly to the movie »Moulin Rouge«.
The week had to say the least a huge impact on my life.

This time I have to write this weblog article in English because I think that some people from the academy may find this text through google and because of that it wouldn’t be a good idea to exclude these people just by sticking to german language. Fabio Magnifico and me in position of his assistant went for one week to the »Internationale Herbstakademie 2005«. It took place in the St. Hedwigshaus in Oerlinghausen/Germany which is being organized by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Ove Kahrmann from the »Kunst und Musik«-department of the University in Bielefeld. Many students from the university of bielefeld, all around germany and poland came there to work together in the workshops.

The presentation of the »wood engraving« workshop.

The task of fabio and me was to give an introduction into producing a digital short movie on a dvd with the correct positioning of light, use of stylistic elements and camera angles and perspectives using dv cameras and the whole adobe suite with Premiere, After Effects, Encore and Photoshop.

I hope everyone learned something from this week – I also did.

But this workshop was only one of many that took place in that week as there were also a ›wood engraving‹, a ›photography‹ and ›experimental sound‹ group. Each group had really interesting and inspiring results. For me this was a completely new application of creative power and especially the experimental sound was something I had never experienced in the past.

The final product including a making of and a dia photoshow of the film shooting.

Beside the really hard work which was necessary to keep track of the time limit of one week it was a wonderfull time I will sure miss. Due to the fact that nearly everyone at the »Kunst und Musik«-department is able to play an instrument like piano or guitar and is able to sing much better than myself we had always some music in the evening. I normally don’t get in touch with live music and so it was marvelous to hear songs like Alan Silvestri’s »Forrest Gump – Feather Theme« which was also used for the Du bist Deutschland-Campaign, »Hit The Road Jack« and many other songs performed by people who are extremely talented singers.

Professionals at work at 3 o’clock at night.

Even the movie we made was entirely produced without using commercial music. All vocals and melodies has been sung by the students and played on a midi-keyboard. That was amazing and totally new way for me to listen to music. And I liked the funny games we played. Special greetings fly out to Don Juan. =)

Fabio con Castore e Polluce

Apart from party in the evening and at night after the job was done I really enjoyed the time there. At first I was a bit afraid because of the language barrier and how different we will try to solve the problems together. I expected a totally different way of thinking – and it was true. But in my opinion it worked like a charm and we can be proud of what we have produced together. I enjoyed every minute of this great time we spend together and I would do it again anytime as soon as possible.

Trailer: Emilia

The food was delicious. I loved the kitchen.

Perhaps we all meet again next time of Mr. Kahrmann and in the end Fabio let me help. I hope to meet you in February in the Ringlokschuppen when the film will shown to a wide audience. Perhaps we have a chance to… Anyway, as I promised I uploaded all the pictures I took to flickr. I someone does not want to appear here please let me know. Till next time. Hope to see you soon.

Something that is different from videogames. =)

And last but not least I would like to thank Christian that he brought along the beer, vine and berentzen with a preparation time of only one hour. We had fun until 4 o’clock in the morning.

Emilia