Ostend, Panamarenko and Stormy Seas

Tourism Light (i.e. getting on a train to somewhere else in the country to waste the day away eating, drinking and wandering around the occasional museum) is a wonderful way to pass time better spent studying Arabic. So, although I strongly favour trains above turbo-speeding, airconditioned cars, it was with some delight I found myself racing towards Ostend yesterday morning. After lunch in a café that can only be described as seedy-with-a-hint-of-glorious-past with a 90 degrees turn (you know the kind: carpets on the walls, but stone floors, Corinthian columns, old waitresses on slippers and a hells-angels-look-a-like doing the washing up), we went to see some Panamarenko-installations in de PMMK, which also boasts a few works from Jan Fabre, including an extremely wonderful duo of blue drawings, of which I have forgotten the title. So sue me.

Panamarenko kind of rules. Whether or not his installations, like those of Fabre, can really labelled 'art', is an entirely different question. I will not enter into this here, since I don't feel like it, and since I haven't made up my mind about it myself. Together with surrealists like Magritte, Dali and Delvaux, Panamarenko and Fabre are two of my favourite artists (although I must admit to secretly liking impressionism as well, don't tell anyone). In this brand of art (or unart, whatever) fantasy ultimately overrules both the eye and the rationale, bursts out, and manifests itself as a new, independent, reality. I believe everyone should look at installations like that at least once a year, as a kind of therapy for putting reality into perspective.

That said, there was one thing missing yesterday: It didn't storm... It didn't even really rain. I was in Ostend, and it didn't storm... This added to the sense of surrealism built up by Fabre and Panamarenko at the museum. I have honestly never been in Ostend for longer than an hour or two, without rain, thunder and storm winds messing up my hair. The hair-messing aside, I love storms, especially by the sea, and Ostend happens to be one of the prime places to experience one. For more practical information about storm-watching in Ostend, read the inset on the right. Standing by a stormy sea, watching the sheer force of it, hearing nothing but howling wind and feeling raindrops and salt water hit your face is also one of those things everyone should do at least once a year, as therapy. I do not recommend people getting themselves killed, however. So do NOT take your umbrella storm-watching, and if there are half-naked singing ladies in the water you might want to ignore them. (If the previous remark causes the death of Celine Dion, Britney Spears,... it was unintentional (but quite funny anyway)). So on this lighter note of drowning celebrities, I leave you all, for now...