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Holger Friese
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We asked Holger if he could write some tec-picks. If he can show #60 from the other side. What is behind a website, behind a blog system or a WordPress page? In his lectures in Canada in 1980, “Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma,” Jean-Luc Godard said that he always wanted to film a landscape from behind. That’s nice.
Holger didn’t want to report from the other side, from the back-end. From this wonderful poetic world full of codes and tools and widgets and a bookmarklet called “Press This“, ––a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web. And also: “Use Press This to clip text, images and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more straight from Press This before you save or publish it in a post on your site.” Got it? You can also drag-and-drop and right-click and shortcut or you just call Holger and ask him to make it easier. And nicer. Get it out of the way.
Holger is a fan of codes and, like an adventurer, he wants to be alone with them. Not long ago there were much more codes floating around. Now it’s buttons and tools and Press This, consumer-friendly it is, but much less beauty to it. Holger once said that we could go back to the old Internet when everybody moved on to the social networks. That is a nice vision. Like Chris Marker stayed with his cat Monsieur Guillame on Second Life long after it had turned into a deserted and abandoned realm. Guillaume’s first life ended many years earlier anyhow.
Holger is also a graphic designer. We made books together. Nice books. And websites. Great websites. He came up with this beautiful archive. Holger is also a visual artist. He showed an Internet piece and an edition on a floppy disk (remember those?) at the documenta X. Nevertheless, graphic design and art and all these things are kind of solved (if there was any problem). They are okay, doing well, making money, sleep tight. But codes are pure and raw and problematic and alive. Holger, tell us more about the other side. Please.

Annika von Taube
People

I’m forced to write this text. The various headquarters of 60pages inform me on a regular basis that this text is missing. But it’s hard to write about a person that you have known more than 15 years but you lost track of several years ago – the last meeting in person was in 2010. That’s a clear view on me and my hermit behaviour, but doesn’t say anything about Annika. So I think she joined the big trail to Berlin in the nineties, first stop was Schipper & Krome (that’s where we met) and then according to some sentences she sent me she worked as a “gabelstaplerfahrerin, klavierlehrerin und chefredakteurin”. The gabelstapler experience might be the oldest one (pre Berlin?), the position as “chefredakteurin” was at sleek for several years and at the moment she is working as head of community at Die Zeit – online. She runs her own blog called Blitzkunst and if you follow her in images she seems to like to post her various working desks. Writing primarily in german is neither in relation to the name of her blog nor to the part-time autistic behaviour (she claims that in another sentence) it’s strictly based on her “pedanterie” which I mostly like but sometimes, really hate.

People
Holger Friese