today i am celebrating the 6th anniversary of my bionic hip! the plan was to have a day at the therme – but once again i have been thwarted! this time by a stomach bug at the weekend, which has left me quite exhausted & having to have frequent nana-naps. so for the second time, my therme indulgence has been postponed … hopefully this time only until friday …

meanwhile, we are having an altweibersommer in münchen – that’s deutsch for indian summer (literally translated as old woman’s summer, which i like) – and it’s my favourite kind of weather: clear blue skies, no wind, trees turning all sorts of lovely colours and not too hot; great for cycling or (in my recouperative state) just sitting in a sunny spot & thinking about nothing in particular. which is what i really need to do at the moment, as i recuperate not just from the stomach bug but also from 2 very full-on months. i’ve already blogged about my big august, but september has turned out to be almost as big, since i had so much to catch-up on after august but many other things happening in september as well.

the main event was a trip to istanbul for ISEA, which is one of the (perhaps the?) largest digital art conferences; i presented on two panels, and also gave an “off-ISEA” performance of make-shift, from the apartment of my magdalena friend and feminist theatre director, jale karabekir. the ISEA programme was huge, and naturally most of the presentations i wanted to attend were programmed at the same time, so there was a constant feeling of missing out. with more than a thousand people attending, it simply wasn’t possible to meet and network with everyone that i hoped to see, but i did manage quite a few good meetings, including with roger mills who i’ve collaborated with remotely but not previously met, and a passing encounter with andrew burrell who earlier had endowed me with my gorgeous tail in second life. i had arranged an apartment which i shared with ruth catlow, tamiko thiel and annie abrahams, which meant we all got to have some hang-out time together; i’d never met annie before, but have collaborated and had a lot of communication with her, so it was great to have late-night conversations with her.

and, i was joined in istanbul and in the apartment by my dear friend louise, who had been in berlin for a conference and managed to come to istanbul to see me (& istanbul, of course); so as well as the busy-ness of the conference and performance, i was able to enjoy some lazy lunches, a relaxing hammam visit and late night conversations with louise. we visited the ISEA art exhibition together and she met many of my colleagues at dinners, and was able to do a day of touristing with one of them while i was rehearsing make-shift.

i was going to write more, but i’m being overcome with weariness again so you will have to wait for more details of istanbul and other adventures yet to be documented …