Postcards from the near Future Pt. I 'The Hague'

POSTCARDS FROM THE NEAR FUTURE Pt.I:
The Hague

Introduction

I wrote most of the following text in one week of October 2008 in The Hague, Netherlands. We were invited to the Gallery ‘Andergrond’ for one week during the arts festival ‘Ground3’ which took place at the time. The festival was held in all the ‘off-locations’ of the Hague eg. the ‘Andergrond’ in order to (re)present them. The Festival was subtitled ‘for sale?!’. It was financially supported by the city of the Hague. The people who invited us were allowed to use the small house in which ‘Anderground’ is located for a limited time with permission from the city of the Hague- they had been squatting numerous spacesin the last couple of years to use them culturally. They use their space to launch an exhibition every month, invite musicians to play and they also use the gallery as a shop for books, clothes and records during some hours of the week. Anyways- we decided to follow their invitation to produce a film which we were going to screen in the gallery at the end of the festival. During our week there we slept in the gallery and opened it every day for a couple of hours to allow visitors to see our work in progress. Apart from this we had set up some other conceptual rules for ourselves to stick to: - to only use what we found in the space to make the movie. - to ask the curators of ‘Andergrond’ to make music with us- as about the only thing we knew about them was that they were also musicians and that they were living together with a hen and a couple of cats in the tiny tiny three-storey house above their gallery. - one part of the film should therefore show the four of us trying to play music together which should take place in their house. Luckily they were into this idea and it turned out that we had a really good time. The parts of the film where we play music now somehow represent an utopian moment, an utopian place. You see us playing but you do not hear anything. Another part shows us four setting up the musical instruments in different rooms of the house, carrying them around and commmunicating about that- and only the sound from the camera is heard. The third part of the film consists of giant clapping hands and digitally altered clapping sounds. The rest of the film consists of my voice consistently speaking in english over stills- images of everyday stuff lying around everywhere: on the floor, on the table we used for working, on chairs: Piles of books, lightbulbs, tape, paperscraps etc. Anyways- I started writing this text shortly before leaving to the Hague and already having made some conceptual decisions for the film and wrote the rest in the Hague. Most of my texts are written like that- I imagine something and later mix it up with the real experience. It is a kind of diary fiction. Of course your real experience always differs from your imgination beforehand, but I think it is interesting to compare the two. I also think I somewhat focus on what I have imagined before while later experiencing the real and this kind of shapes my perception. It is a task to act and be very open to new experiences while at the same time try to really perceive them which in itself might involve analysis. That’s what I like so much about performing- that you take action at the same time while something else happens (audience, mistakes, unexpected) and at some stage, after many years of experience, you might from time to time, on rare and special occasions, be able to act and see and analyse all at once. You could then act appropriately and alter your actions on stage very fast. This is very hard to achieve. In the meantime I make mistakes. I like making them. I learn. This booklet is about mistakes, too: In The Hague it turned out that my writing in English is very different from my writing in German both in tone and use of language. My speech/spoken performance is also completely different. For example I sound quite ‘dry’ in German but in English everything sounds somehow quite ‘romantic’ or even sad. Completely different poles. After noticing this we added an introductionary part to the film- spoken German with English subtitles on black screen. They are not synchronized- neither in translation nor language. They are now part of this text, part of this booklet. You have to make assertions. And mistakes. Misunderstandings. Différance. You might cause and form some cracks by using the differences. The misunderstandings. If you are able to perceive the cracks they might turn into hopeful moments. In the meantime carrying instruments and playing music are the moments of hope a little more easy to create. No language needed there. Language is a crack in itself. This booklet is another translation. A journal. A journey. From language to sign and image.

Ich sage dem Freund du bist der Feind. I tell my friend you are the enemy. Man weiß ja nicht mehr, wer der Feind ist, heutzutage. It has become uncertain who the enemy is, nowadays. Man kann sich aber was hindrehen, damit man sich überhaupt noch bewegen kann. Also mauern hochziehen, Grenzen ziehen, Fehler machen, Behauptungen aufstellen. You can construct something though in order to still have a sense of agility. Put up walls, draw frontiers, make mistakes and assertions. Du bist der Feind. You are the enemy. Da hast du recht, sagt er, nimmt meine Hand, wir laufen weiter, den Parkettfußboden entlang, passieren die Chinesische Große Vase, den Perser und den Van Gogh and der Wand, letzterer eine Nachbildung, alle drei aber abgestaubt auf Kosten der Brandversicherung, laufen raus aus dem Haus, das groß, hübsch und malerisch dasteht, laufen hinein in den Garten, der groß, grün und gepflegt, aber nicht zu sehr, sich entfaltet vor unseren Augen und unter unseren nackten Füßen. Es gibt darin keine Kugelbäume, sondern ungespritzte Apfelbäume und verwilderte Ecken, langgezogene sanfte grüne Hügel, die bis zum Strand hinunter nach Lavendel duften und auch nach Pinien, der Sand hell, fein und weiß. Schließlich stehen wir da, unter dem klarem Nachthimmel mit seinen funkelnden Sternen und betrachten die aufgestapelten Container am anderen Ufer der Bucht. Right you are, he said and took my hand. We continued walking down the hallway, out through the front door of the large georgian building into the beautiful garden with its grassy slopes that brought us to the shore. There we stood quietly beneath the clear nightsky and its twinkling stars and looked at the stacked up shipping containers on the other side of the bay. Hübsches Bild: Nice picture: Ich sage zum Freund du bist der Feind. Man weiß ja nicht mehr, wer der Feind ist, heutzutage. I tell my friend you are the enemy. It has become uncertain who the enemy is, nowadays. Man kann sich aber was hindrehen, damit man sich überhaupt noch bewegen kann. Weiterlaufen tut man eh, darüber braucht man sich keine Gedanken machen. Zum Bewegen aber muß man Mauern hochziehen, Grenzen ziehen, Fehler machen und sie nicht immer gleich, wie es Manager und Künstler tun, zur Optimierung der eigenen Arbeit nutzen, sondern Behauptungen aufstellen. You can construct something for yourself though in order to still have a sense of agility. Keep on going is what you will do anyways. Something you do not have to worry about. In order to remain moveable though you have to put up walls, draw frontiers and make mistakes. Do not use them instantly, as artists and managers do, to optimize your work. Use them to make assertions. Unruhe, Unversöhntheiten und Brüche. Keine Container. Die sind nämlich auch nicht der Feind, nein, die sehen einfach gut aus. Disturbances, trouble, irreconciliability and breaks. Do not put up containers- they neither are the enemy- they just look good. Ohne Container wäre das Bild zwar hübsch, idyllisch, aber auch langweilig. Container in grün mit weißem Schriftzug 'Evergreen' entsprechen den Tomatensuppendosen mit weißem Schriftzug 'Cambells', die man als Kalenderblatt im Museumshop kaufen kann. Without the containers the picture would be nice and idyllic but also boring. The containers in green with white inscription 'Evergreen' correspond to the tomatosoup tins with white inscription 'Cambell's' you can buy in the museumshop. Behauptung Eins. Assertion No.1. Ich habe das hübsche langweilige Bild durch das Hereinmalen der Container am anderen Ufer optimiert. I have optimized the nice but boring picture by adding some containers to it. Besser bewegen kann ich mich dadurch nicht. Doesn't mean I am more agile now. Vielleicht hab ich mehr Geld, das Bild verkauft sich schließlich besser, hat den Aufstieg vollzogen vom Kunsthandwerk zur Kunst, mehr Feind drin, auch mehr Freund, denn nun kann ich mich schneller bewegen, nämlich mit dem Flugzeug und die Familie besuchen, da am anderen Ende der Welt, in Sydney oder Angola. I might have more money, the picture sells better, has moved from the craft to the art section, contains more enemy, contains more friend, too because I am now able to move faster. I can now take the plane to visit my family in Sydney, in Angola. Das ist aber alles uninteressant eigentlich, weil der Kunstmarkt enspricht ja nicht der Kunst. That's it. The artmarket does not correspond to art. Behauptung Zwei. Assertion No. 2 Ich glaube an die Kunst. Als Möglichkeit der Desorientierung. Damit ich mich bewegen kann, ohne anzukommen. Am Strand. Im Container. Als Riese, der tot am Strand rumliegt You don't believe- I won't attempt to make ye: You are asleep- I won't attempt to wake ye. Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams Of Reason you may drink of Life's clear streams. oder als einer, der den Eindruck vermittelt eines ständig balancierenden Artisten, eines Schauspielers, der in einem Augenblick das gesamte Geschehen auf der Bühne beherrscht und sich dann leise wieder davonstiehlt, eines geschickten Händlers, der seine Verträge in jeder Hinsicht absichert und dann doch alles auf eine Karte setzt, ja eines Scharlatans, der sich mit seinen vieldeutigen Äußerungen auf nichts festlegen lässt. Reason and Newton, they are quite two things; For so the swallow and the sparrow sings. Es geht darum, sich im Realen als eine dieses Reale überschreitende Realität aufzurichten, angesichts der realen Gegebenheiten neue Hoffnungen zu riskieren. Reason says 'Miracle': Newton says 'Doubt'. Aye! that's the way to make all Nature out. 'Doubt, doubt and don't believe without experiment': That is the very thing that Jesus meant, When He said 'Only believe! believe and try! Try, try, and never mind the reason why!' Behauptung Drei Assertion No.3 Ich will an den Strand. Ich brauche auch schöne Bilder, mit oder ohne Container. Aber den Container brauche ich nicht im oder als Bild, sondern höchstens als Container. Der heißt Weltwirtschaft oder Kokslinie als Grenzlinie oder Raum für Kunst. Kunst bereitet einen ständig auf Ungewissheiten vor, macht also überlebenstüchtig, sagt die Managerphilosophie. Art constantly exposes you to the uncertain, the unexpected. It therefore makes you fit for survival. Manager interessieren mich nur als Jobalternative. Künstler sind Manager. Artists are managers. Ich will eigentlich Musik machen. I’d rather make music. Behauptung Vier Assertion No.4 Im Film ist das Musikmachen ein noch besseres Bild für einen Ort, ein Etwas, wo man nicht ankommt und auch nicht ankommen will, als der Strand. Deshalb hört man auch nichts von der Musik, man sieht nur das Spielen. Im Film wirkt das, als wären die Menschen, die Musik machen und aussehen wie Piraten am Strand, eine bessere Kulisse für den Text, der alles bestimmt. Nur die Zeit nicht, in der man nicht Musik macht, sondern Sachen trägt und miteinander spricht. Abgehackt, desynchronisiert, aber miteinander verkabelt und ohne Muttersprache, dafür aber international verständlich läuft der Film dann als Loop, Teil eines Raumes in einer Stadt, die sich nicht in Deutschland befindet. Du fragst, warum ich dich um Himmels willen denn immer korrigiere, Sprache beruhe doch sowieso auf Mißverständnissen. Oder Ungenauigkeiten. Oder Durchlässigkeiten. I am alienated from my mother tongue. Not unexpected. Decision and necessity produce uncertainty. Maybe inaccuracy, maybe permeability. Ich sage dem Freund du bist der Feind und lege ihm Handschellen statt Manschetten an. Zivilisation statt Kultur. You are the enemy I tell the friend and put him into handcuffs instead of offering him cufflinks. Civilization instead of culture. I sit with my toes in the brook, And if anyone asks my why I give him a tap with my crook, Necissity drives me, say I. Behauptung Fünf (Film startet) Assertion No.5 (movie starts) I told my friend last nite that he is the enemy. He answered: I probably am. Considering one knows who the enemy is (nowadays). I took his hand and we continued walking down the hallway, out through the front door of the large georgian building into the beautiful garden with its grassy slopes that brought us to the shore. We stood quietly beneath the clear nightsky and its twinkling stars and looked at the stacked up shipping containers on the other side of the bay. The temporary exhibition architecture for the festival will be created from more than 300 shipping containers. The containers will not be used conventionally, as receptacles. Instead, paths and spaces for art will be opened up using the appropriate setting of the huge container warehouses in the harbour. As a symbol of the constant global exchange of wares and goods, the shipping containers also stand for the international focus of the festival, its concentrated duration and its transistory character. Sounds pretty brutal, don't you think? It was first suggested that we take our own image and examine how it could be made more portable. We found that simple binary coding system were enough to contain the entire image- however they required a large amount of storage space until it was found that the binary information could be written at the molecular level, and our entire image could be contained within a grain of sand. I grabbed the headphones I had found on the pavement in front of our house pressed play and turned up the volume to maximum. Uptown top rankin'. That's what it was. See me in my heels and bling They say we're hip and thing True they don't know a thing We got no style we're strictly roots We got no style we're strictly fools A question popped up in my mind: would the use of a walkman always lead me directly to the gates of my school, my workplace or whatever was there to keep me from strolling? or was i rather put to a stand-by state inbetween arriving at the gates and skipping school? And which hope do you put to the act of skipping school first place, may I ask? Stand-by Definition: A zombie is a living dead. A thing forever caught inbetween life and death. She reads too many books she’s got movies inside her head. Lately I've gotten a lot more wild than I used to. It's like I've gotten into this thing where it really releases something for me. I like to overdo it to get dramatic. I love people who just go wild just jumping up and down, hyperventilating and going crazy. Go nuts! Thesis: As a child you live in your own time, it is your own relation to time. You have no duties, no commitments are yet made and you are ruled by emotions and desires. A state you cannot be left in as you would not be able to live amongst others. Therefore you have to be educated. Education means desynchronising you from your own time and synchronizing you with the world. Only then you will be able to communicate with and in the world in which everybodies time is the same. Different devices shall help you. Watches, measurements, timetables: algebra and the alpabeth. You start to develop a new kind of desire: you long to go back to your own time, back to your private intimate world. The desire to flee from all the rules. In school you have learned a word for the place desire will bring you to: It is called freedom. You only have a vague idea about this word. And anyways: ideas, especially these kind of ideas, are not meant to become real- something else you have learned in school as that there is two sides to everything- binary: good and bad, black and white. No freedom without restrictment. Pity would be no more If we did not make somebody poor; And mercy no more could be If all were as happy as we In kindergarten you wear your purple Mickeymaus wristwatch, at home you pull it off. You learn the proper use of all these devices that from now on will stick to you like glue throughout your life; they will help you to stay tuned, to synchronise and will set the boundaries to your little world; all those jojos, skateboards, gameboys, hooded sweaters, them bling bling chains, cars and beautiful sneakers, those books and lps, the mp3 players, cellphones and walkman. They synchronize you and at the same time they desynchronize you, just a litte, just enough to remind you of those childhood days and how good you felt, no worries back in the days- endlessly spent in the water, in muddy fields, with your nose stuck in a book or simply dreaming, your eyes wide open, about all the things you would do when you would finally be grown up, all the freedom you would have and all the power. Everytime you turn on your walkman you open up a span of time- just long enough to refresh those memories, just long enough to keep your fire burning. and them devices surely are real bestsellers, no mistake about that, right? The Subliminal Kid moved in and took over bars cafés and juke boxes of the world cities and installed radio transmitters and microphones in each bar so that the music and talk of any bar could be heard in all his bars and he hade tape recorders in each bar that played and recorded at arbitrary intervals and his gang moved back and forth with portable tape recorders and brought back street sound and talk and music and poured it into his recorder array so he set waves and eddies and tornados of sound down all your streets and by the river of all language- word dust drifted streets of broken music car horns and air hammers. Grown-ups do stuff for money. There is no other reason. In 1979 or 1999 I went freelance as an artist. Back then had the feeling that nothing could stop me. I was loaded with ideas. I was constantly searching for new sensations, stagnation left me totally malcontent. At the time I could enjoy life. In the morning I woke up to classical music and at the nights I spent strolling around and going out. I felt free and I still knew happiness. It all looked totally different though in the beginning of 1988, shortly before my 35th birthyday. The average artist in hamburg is 35 years old, an academic with an additional profession, unmarried, without kids and has been for the last ten years ambitiously and full time trying to live off his art. He gets by with an average 248 euro a month, earned through a sidejob or through backup by his family, lives in a rented space of 38qm with an additional workspace of average 42qm which costs 470euro and has production costs of 446euro. additional private provision for the future is not possible. an efficient / economic education and briefing is said to be insufficient- the contemporary art market and the marketing of art is deficient and the social acceptance of artists and their work is bad. Der Mund ist mir die liebste Öffnung im Körper. (a sentence so poetic I cannot translate) I saw 10.000 talkers with tongues that are broken. Radio transmitters from 1955 cost only 15 euro in the shop across the street. I dream of spaces where the bodies recover their ability of gesture which all those metropolitan devices- computers, cars, schools, cameras, cell-phones, gyms, hospitals, televisions, cinemas etc. - have stolen from them. By recognizing them. By controlling them. By making them work. I don't know. But for me this sounds pretty oldschool. Bad-humored culture-criticism. The dried-out manipulation thesis. What makes me work is... What? What makes me work is work. In capitalism everything is work. Maybe it's not important what makes me work but what the work is. A product that can be sold. In capitalism everything is a product. And if I don't sell it? Depends on why you don't sell it. Makes a difference if you don't want to or if you're not able to because noone wants to buy it. It stays a product. Art not for sale?! A sentence I can translate: Maybe you have asked the wrong question. 'Anybody got any money?' he suggested, turning around from the front seat. There was an emphatic negative chorus. 'That makes it interesting.' 'Money. What's money? We can sell the car.' 'How we're going to get food?' 'Honestly, do you doubt our ability for three short days? Some people have lived on nothing for years at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly.' 'Let's get lunch now.' 'We'll try the best hotel first,' he went on, 'and thence and so forth.' They strolled along the boardwalk to the most imposing hostelry in sight, and, entering the dining-room, scattered about a table. When luncheon was over they sat and smoked quietly. 'What's the bill?' 'Eight twenty-five.' 'Rotten overcharge. We'll give them two dollars and one for the waiter. kerry, colect the small change.' The waiter approached and Kerry gravely handed him a dollar, tossed two dollars on the check, and turned away. They sauntered leisurely toward the door, pursued in a moment by the suspicious Ganymede. 'Some mistake, sir.' Kerry took the bill and examined it critically. 'No mistake!' he said, shaking his head gravely, and, tearing it into four pieces, he handed the scraps to the waiter, who was so dumbfounded that he stood motionless and expressionless while they walked out. 'Won't he send after us?' 'No, for a minute he'll think we're the proprietor's sons or something; then he'll look at the check again and call the manager and in the meantime-' We do it cheap hide our money in a heap Send it home and make em study Fixing teeth, I got family, a friend in need A hand to throw the gasoline A mobile phone hooked up to the scene Hello my frind yes it's me Dont be scared there's somethin going on Im gettin money since I grown Could be dash go out and hussel em But I hate money coz it makes me numb Hussel hussel hussel Grind grind grind Why has everyone got hussel on their mind? I will need a voice, well screamed and with classy english accent for the following text: the so-called streetart, once arrived out of the minds of restless people, with a diffuse will to communicate, to participate, to move out, to tell, is nowadys corrupted for so called urban art in fealthy art galleries, trendy marketstocks for loosy vector grafic designers, wannabe skateboard wankers and hip culture advertisment. perverted to just be style without saying something, cute characters without minds, meaningless structures for the blind. fuck that, move your bad ass punk or shut the fuck up. streetart is dead. Thou shall not use music or poetry to get into girls pants. It sucks, how you tell everbody your wife's a hotel maid. Yeah, maybe two years ago she used to be a maid. Now she happens to be the assistant supervisor of the dining room servers. She's 'Employee of the month'. She's your wife, mother of your child. She almost, just about, nearly has an undergraduate degree in fine art. 'I bet if you painted what was in your heart, it could hang in a museum.' What was in her heart, she said, was pretty much just silly crap. What she loved, would never sell. People wouldn't buy it. This was his theory of self-expression. The paradox of being a professional artist. How we spend our lives trying to express ourselves well, but we have nothing to tell. We want creativity to be a system of cause and effect. Results. Marketable product. We want dedication and discipline to equal recognition and reward. We get on our art school treadmill, our graduate program for a master's in fine arts, and practise, practise, practise. With all our excellent skills, we have nothing special to document. Nothing pisses us off more than when some strung-out drug addict, a lazy bum, a slobbering pervert creates a masterpiece. As if by accident. Some idiot who's not afraid to say what they really love. And what could that be. Sailorboys. Big assed girls. Images of Superman jumping off a hightop, hitting the pavement somewhere in Brooklyn, New York, eventually dying. Monochrome colours, brown, browner, grey, greyer, almost black. Suicidal. Problems, difficulties, trouble, alienation, lonliness. Fantasy houses and cobblestone streets. Seagulls circling above oyster boats. Waves. More seagulls. The smell of freshcut grass. Roaring wind. A salty breeze. A beautiful garden with grassy slopes that lead to the stony shore. Sea smooth as green glass- off Jersey Coast- an air-conditioned voice floats from microphones and ventilators: 'Keep your seats everyone everyone. There is no cause for alarm. There has been a little accident but everything is fine now'. Explosion splits the boat. Hysterical waves. Of laughter. Applause. What a comedian. Nah pop no style, a strictly roots Nah pop no style, a strictly roots Can I ask you a question? says the fan to the singer songwriter. Yes, dear? Where are you from? From Portland, Oregon, she answeres with a broad smile on her face. We like fishing there. Thank you. She took the piss, I think. Zombiism as strategy against the need for constant innovation. If you mean to please everbody you will set to work both ignorance and skill. For great multitude are ignorant, and skill to them seams raving and rant. Like putting oil and water in a lamp, 'Twill make a great splutter with smoke and damp. For there is no use as it seems to me Of lighting a lamp, when you don't wish to see. I hope that the art school enjoys your big drawing of ruin. I will I will I will enjoy. Dear god, please make me able to enjoy. Everything feels so much like work nowadays. I can work for everybody. Even for myself. Everything feels so much like work nowadays. Not that I totally oppose the idea of work. Dear god, we will have to talk more about this. All being concepts, structures, ideas, man made like yourself and also my humble self. I guess I connect to the idea of work as being a construction where one is alienated from our desires. Or as a kind of replacement. Desire lies underneath, we work, but what really drives us might be desire. For whatever we enjoy doing. Desire in capitalism is replaced by work. The german word I would use is 'unterfüttern'. Alienation. Do you think one can could compare it with zombiism? The english language confuses me as not being my mother tongue. Recently I said 'handcuffs' when I meant to speak about cufflinks. My friend corrected me, I laughed, he said: 'I should not have corrected you' but of course he should have! I would have missed a good laugh there! I am alienated from my mother tongue. I am alienated from my mother. My mother acts in Zombiiism towards me. As in all -isms...As in all -isms socialism appeared historical in multiple forms. Please make me able to enjoy. Enjoy. Like cocksucking like doing the washing up like running like hell like being in trouble like being a rolling stone All those things I really DO enjoy. We all have good things to do and it's good when we do them. Does 'good' mean the same as 'important'? Important in a sense of need? A.'s speech was really awesome, it made the whole trip worthwhile for me. His was also the speech I understood best, maybe because his english (as mine) is limited or maybe because he actually had something to say. I learned that form is very important, even decisive, crucial, and that you need discipline to keep, to save the form, to prove it and to impose it. This is not about escapism into wrong hopes, into religion or the obscure. This is not about selling the subject to society, to history, to the art market and so on. The subject flees into reality, into a new reality. It insists not to stay imprisoned in its so-called contemporary reality. That doesn't mean it is escaping its contemporary reality. This is about becoming and rising up in real as a reality that transgresses the real. This is about risking new hopes while facing these real constitutions. I know that hope sound a little idealistic or naive. But this is about non-naive hopes, about a real desire for the real. People that attend rockshows want to see people on stage who believe in themselves. (Abstract) What are the conditions for art? Under what preconditions does something resembling art exist? How is an art work possible? Obviously, for an art work, for its appearance and existence, like any event, there are its conditions. It never happens or eventuates in a space free of meanings and multiple codification. An art work has to assert its reality in the midst of an existing reality. It asserts itself through its form, its appearing and its duration (no matter how ephemeral or precarious it seems to be in certain cases) in the over-codified space of established facts and laws. Everyone knows that the art work is not an entity in itself, not an architecture without windows. Doubtless it necessarily includes persistence in the here-and-now of the one constituted reality which is our world. The existence and persistence and appearance of the art work comprises 1) an opening to the world of facts, 2) self-assertion within it, 3) affirmative resistance in the here-and-now universe which has to remain its situational reality. Art not for sale I am for sale Society is a hole it makes me lie to my friends What do you sell in your shop? Close to seventy artists, collectives, and filmmakers, and eight record labels and publishers. I say: 'This is not for sale. I like it too much.' (so far nothing strange here exept some people- old comictype nasty ladies (mom and daughter, one clad in white, one in red) that run the most obscure 'pic'N' pac store with lovely ceramics and toys from the 50's, all in a mess, smelling of cat piss and piled and tangled up to the ceiling- whenever u are interested in an item they bark at you: not for sale! Or the price is very inappropriate- nothing under forty bucks) Society is a hole it makes me lie to my friends I insist: I want to be able still to treat my friends not as friends but as critics, as buyers, as gallerists- because that's what they are. I told my friend that he probably is the enemy. Considering one knows who the enemy is nowadays. Enemies do not exists anymore. Just shifting concepts. I wish I knew the enemy. Everything would be a lot more easy. I could fight, I could win. Now I constantly fight and I constantly win. I live and I am dead. I am a zombie. Everything I do feels like an reenactment. I wish actually I would feel anything at all. All this talk about art. I feel like I am sleepwalking. Under what preconditions does something resembling art exist? You told me you don't understand the beaches. The waterfront. Are they important for this text? At least they are what I love. I want them included because I love them. As picture. As symbol. Very beautiful. They represent borders. They are borders. They are violent. This text is about violence. Everyday violence. Everday violence is ugly. The image of a giant cheeseburger on a rooftop, an illuminated neon glow. I notice it while riding the bus to the rehearsal room. The rehearsal room is within a former second world war bunker, a cold and damp giant concrete building situated in the middle of a park. This area of the city is mainly inhabited by young and- due to their new-economic jobs- wealthy and environmently friendly families. They vote, buy and fuck each other politically correct. It makes me sick. I open a can of beer and stare out of the window. Outside it's raining. Inside does not exist. You told me I am intolerant. My heart is cold and stony. A grey and windy beach on the west coast. Not many people go there. The place is too uncomfortable. You now feel uncomfortable spending time with me. I now feel uncomfortable spending time with you. Western civilization is not about criticizing each other out of interest. It's about talking to hear the own voice. I like my opinions. My point of view. Doesn't mean I mean it. It is my fun, my game, my brainthrill to argue from a certain point of view. Not necessarily my opinion. After my speech you ask:...so...where do you stand? I answer, or maybe I should have answered: I speak. That's where I stand. Words come out of my mouth into the world. They take up space. They change something. I may simply be a mirror. You tell me everything you do reflects back to you. You paid for my bus ride. I had got lost and took the wrong bus. I had to go back. I couldn't pay for the second bus because I had no small change left. Small change was obligatory. You paid for my ticket to buy yourself into heaven. Your religion might not call it heaven. Your religion might call it other human beings, animals, plants, the world. Your concept of god. The world will come back to you and do you good. My carma is bad from here to Sydney. Quite far away. I steal. I lie. I sleep too much, too long, totally unneccessary. I cannot even acknowledge your kindness. I have to turn it into something selfish and ugly. Not at all like a sleeping beauty. The sleeping beauty might be a zombie. The town of Kassel. Every four years she awakes and shits out art. Please notice: Unnecessary swearwords generate minus-points. Childish. Cynic. Jealous. Like the bad stepmother. You tell me my sense of history sucks. Why be ashamed. Why not be proud. You live in a country and you are proud of it. Simple as that. As simple as football is about having fun. Not about nationalism and money, nothing to do with politics. No no, simple fun, pure as whitewashed. Snowhite. Like sand on a beach. Pure. The beach is a sandy slope. On the morning after the storm the bodies of handsome young spanish men were washed ashore on the beach. There they lay- outstreched limbs, muscles, long black hair- all quite exquisite, quite beautiful even but all very exhausted and painfully dehydrated. The inhabitants of the land gathered around them, carrying axes and water. God has washed some enemies upon our shore. Then they went and killed one half of the strangers. To the other half they made love. I will tell you the history of this country I was born in. 'On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned giant was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the north-west of the city'. It had the size of a highrise or of one of those containerships we had been watching so often from the other side of the river, holding hands and singing pop songs. An organic containership. Children played in his hair and elder people used him for hill walking. When he started to smell of decay the city had him cut to pieces and transported to the tropical institute for research or conservation. Once, just as people were transporting him on the back of a truck to the tropical institute to research upon his cause of death, a giant whale exploded in some Japanese city center. It was a mighty mess. It smelled of fish. Of seaweed. The seaweed I eat when I get the munchies. I quit eating. I tried really hard to eat. I said yes to everthing that was served to me on my plate and swallowed really hard but then I couldn't force it down my throat. Finally I stood up, brushed some breadcrumbs off my shirt and left the table. I went to the market and did some shopping. Got some food for free, apples, cinnamon and a can of diet coke, chased and killed the chicken I was living with and cooked my own soup. It was quite tasty and good, I could't sell it though. Everbody had left me, I felt as if I was a hundredandsixty years old. There was noone left to sell it to. I didn't even wan't to sell to anybody. That was the worst part. It was just about being pleasant. Nice. Harmless. If I would have wanted to make money I would be out there washing cars. Mending radios. Whithewashing walls. Putting up other peoples exhibitions. Walking other peoples dogs. Instead I paint nice little paintings and hang them onto the walls of nice little shops of nice and friendly people for other nice and friendly people to look at them. While I hang them onto the not quite white walls I sing to myself: don't let the record label take you out to lunch. And don't bite the hand that feeds you. Well, I guess that is excactly what I am trying to do. My own hand. To speak clearly once in a while: All these cute nice pleasant things just make me sick. They do not make me sick because I think they are ugly or not good enough but simply because I am quite sure they are the wrong answer. Answer to whom, to what which question has been posed? Art not for sale?! We are all part of the system. We are the system. And still why do we happily choose not to have any impact, no power, nothing to say except that we want to please somebody something somehow. It makes me sick. My head feels like exploding. I notice I cannot easily criticise something I am part of and will be forever because it is me. I fail. I believe in art. Art as something that is not but can be a shop, a wall a car. This is not about escapism into wrong hopes, into religion or the obscure. This is about becoming and rising up in real as a reality that transgresses the