but first as i mentioned jim i mean you know as my guest in just a minute is a painter straighter who is possibly the most prolific painter in the world his start is very recognizable and i was a lot of street art. and his influence in my humble opinion biasses from picasso to keith haring and beyond that sea is very individual are. big bryants and fun fun fun jim avignon paintings grab your attention but he's entertaining our creations also deal with serious topics capitalism and gentrification avignon averages about for work spurt i think in some of the way and others he simply tazz out. avignon is self-taught and his art career began in the early nine hundred ninety s. when he built stage sense for raves in twenty third saying he was asked to store

his own painting at the eastside gallery a remnant of the berlin wall that's now a designated historic monument he created a completely new work instead destroying the original and causing quite a scandal. avignon has been making the art world bright for almost thirty years he's lost none of his spirit of adventure and still has that streak. and. george thanks very much you've been called the fastest painter in the world do you consider that a compliment. i think i like being the first spend in the world in fact it was me it was my myself we invented that phrase at a time when speed had nothing to do in art and i had a feeling i want to become a cartoon correct or not so i thought what could be the most absurd and i invented

the fast paint and i thought it was a venture by the press now where do you get the ideas from you i mean you're very prolific the paintings of full of political statements sometimes societal whatever it is when it's your head buzzing constant well i think you can collect ideas just like food from the tree you have to just walk around with your eyes open. way instead of the taxi watch the people read in their faces what's going on in their minds to me don't you see the internet go out talk to people i think you have a big cocktail of input and then you remake the ideas are but there is also another idea behind it and that you want to keep prices down you want your art to be available for everybody done on it not to cost thousands of euros i think that's very admirable absolutely i think for me everybody who buys a painting should want to buy it because he likes the painting and not as an

investment and unfortunately most of that gets bought these days gets bought as an investment and therefore as an example how to make it different i try to keep the prices small but you're getting more and more popular. actually goes up and. you could ranking see rankings on internet and i've been more popular ten years ago and say so. now let me ask you i want to ask you about the east side gallery which was mentioned very briefly in the report first i should explain to our viewers that this is an open air gallery here in berlin which consists of thirteen hundred meters what remains of the former in woolwich divided east and west over thirty years ago painters revised its appointed parts of the world one of those invited and which he did and then a few years back it was a pretty sorry state for various reasons which we won't go into and you just cited

to repaint the picture we didn't repaint it you painted a brand new picture but you got into trouble what happened well first of all i wasn't invited to paint it but. not many people interested in painting the wall and then like. everybody could do it i don't i didn't even have to show a sketch it was like that for twenty years it got more and more trashed and you grow as a painter and it feels kind of like renovate your painting that you've done twenty years ago and my paintings many years ago was about like how i see bill and i thought it would be nice to have an update and just do a new version of how i see bill and now twenty three years later. i did that but in the meantime the secondary had become a monument and therefore everybody who touches the monument gets risky to get into prison for that and suddenly i was in the situation that in the newspapers and

. the public up public opinion was that i should get punished for having painted a new painting on my own but you didn't get punished what i was actually it was a big buzz in the media it was in a couple of pages from the from the newspapers in the end nothing happened nothing howards jim good luck with all your work in the future we haven't even mentioned your music i know you're a great musician as well we'll have to do that another time. you know thanks very much for being next having me. now artists have been involved with our next topic not just designing an ice hotel right up in the freezing cold arctic circle a village in swedish is home to the oldest ice hotel in the world. has to be rebuilt every year but they'll be doing it for nearly thirty years now and it's made from thirty thousand tons of snow ice that's

a mixture of packed snow and ice. the best way to get to this destination is to speed along sweden's frozen tony river it feels like minus fifty degrees celsius on our way to a spectacular. built from ice and snow. every year some sixty thousand visitors from across the globe come here to spend the night in the world's largest ice hotel. is the hotel's creative director he says the structure has to be rebuilt. this is actually a big art exposed the ice hotel and every year is unique when pete. we don't even. has a different thing. from. the

village means coming together by the river meeting place used to be the song the people that came together here in this village and now it's an international meeting place. every year thousand tons of ice from the nearby river turned into beds and sculptures beginning we had this eagle we just mauled bar and we made some small beds sold so inside there. and then people stayed inside our cottage is here. to stay overnight in saigon and they were so annoyed of that. that the projects kept gaining momentum on. the first ice

so tell me our role here is. minus five degrees even if it's up to degrees so warm outside. today however the temperature and you can be is closer to minus thirty but that won't keep our reporter from heading off with joel sachs pick in search of the famous northern lights. after about forty five minutes they reach the destination and sure enough they spot the amazing northern lights. it's time to get back to the ice for a good night's sleep. the moment of truth has arrived.

and after a good night's sleep their trip to the frozen north comes to an end time to pack up and head back to warmer climes. cold but very beautiful now every week our resident david leavitt's has a look at a classic german book in our series one hundred must reads this week a book called runaway horses by the controversial author martin virus he started his life very left of center politically but meanwhile has sometimes veered very right of center so he's definitely caused controversy down the years with his controversial views. having a midlife crisis isn't as easy as it looks and if your friend is having one ten zero you better hold on tight. runaway horse by much is about two middle aged men who still don't have

a clue about life there's has a well paid teacher because that exists here in germany i moved and his wife are in their mid forties and they're spending their summer at the same lake they've been coming to for eleven years it's calm and quiet i don't know boring exactly how i move likes it or so he thinks enter his old classmate klaus a journalist who sees life as an adventure and turns up with his new wife eighteen years his junior how moot can't stand the guy and yet. i moved felt a burning envy he had virtually never lived there was nothing left over behind him there was practically nothing if he tried to remember he saw motionless images of street squares rooms no action his memory images were pervaded by a lifelessness as if in the wake of a disaster he felt that in him adventure had once and for all come to an end. of

course the brave adventurer klaus is an even bigger mess who's just as terrified of getting older as everyone else author might invite i just turned fifty himself when he came out with this book clearly he did a little personal research visor was one of post-war germany's top authors but since the one nine hundred ninety s. a lot of readers have avoided him because of some controversial comments he made about holocaust remembrance consider yourself warned runaway horse isn't about that though it's about getting older and about the lies we choose to believe about ourselves and others. i'm there's a lot small on our website about one hundred must reads including the whole list compiled here at the w. so you can take a choice if you want to get into some of the best literature d.w. dot com slash culture lots of websites where everything interesting in the world

about some culture is to be found. but that's all for now thanks so much watching thank you for the crew here in berlin with i have who makes the truck join us again at the same time some more if you count. the.

fear of war in ukraine. pushing a button from actually catching the fish shipyard workers feeling for their jobs an interior stream faction. people are scared to fathom russian aggression. power their lives affected as the battle continues over the syrian. news of the thirty minutes on w. sure there are people who will hold for information they provide the opinions they want to express d.w. like facebook and twitter up to date and in touch.

from people make fun about their own social economic and political problems. in mozambique we say that you have to laugh so you don't write it's all people because we think a little. as it owes us to talk about these folks in the bag by a political genius. i like to start my day by checking all the old us jokes finding out what people are talking about what is moving that. my father told me how to ask uncomfortable questions about my country and about bush that is what is i keep doing to this day my name is fadi stuff and i work at. home what's the connection between bread flour and the european union so he knows guild not a w correspondent at the baker can stretch those can line with the words sex

by me you've seen a lot cuts. sniffing recipes for success strategies that make a difference. baking bread on the d.w. . israeli military jets carried out retaliate three strikes against targets in gaza israel says it was targeting infrastructure of the militant islamist group hamas which holds power in gaza that's in response to a palestinian rocket attack that hit a town north of tel aviv but i.