Viele Grüße aus dem Schlafzimmer

 

This is the female part of alternating male and female figures that used to decorate my bedroom walls at my former dwelling...

Archäologie zu "Sie bluten komplementär"

Sie bluten

Originalutensil heute zufällig wieder entdeckt

Wie und warum entblößt man sein Innerstes?

Ach du meine Güte

1988 - während neben mir eines der wenigen männlichen Mitglieder meines Sowi-Kurses strickte, zerrissen sich die Frauen, ProtagonistInnen des phallischen Binnen-I*s, das Maul darüber, was das vorherrschende weibliche Prinzip in der Postmoderne zu besagen hat. Meine aufklärerische Haltung, sich nicht um das Äußere zu kümmern, sondern nach inneren Werten zu schauen, stieß auf keine Gegenliebe bei ihnen.

2011- Die Postmoderne liegt wohl hinter uns und die Ausstellung Heroinas in Madrid wird bei ARTE angepriesen, weil sie unterstreicht, daß Frauen auch HeldInnen sein können und gerade die Eigenschaft der Güte wird in der Anmoderation als eine der weiblichen Eigenschaften hervorgehoben, die man nun gar nicht mehr zeigen will.

Wo bleibt in alle dem eine Gestalt wie Wera Semjonowna aus Anton Tschechows Kurzgeschichte Gute Menschen?!

* Mit vielem Dank an Thomas Kapielski für diesen äußerst treffenden Ausdruck, den ich immer wieder gerne benutze!!!

PS: Erst letztens las ich im Internet, daß man von Shakespeare (mit-)verfaßte Texte an der Häufung des Begriffs "gentleness" oder "gentle" (eine Übersetzung ist "Güte", bzw "Sanftmut") erkennt!

PPS: Was hat eigentlich der Begriff Mut in Wörtern wie De-Mut und Sanft-Mut zu besagen, ihr HeldInnen?!

Antlitz

... in der Liebe, die alles umfängt...

"Sie bluten komplementär"

"You are bleeding complementarily" was a wonderful remark I once earned at the academy's Rundgang. For indeed I was...

As I was reading some of Edmund Husserl's writings, a Polish cinematographer had some completely different recollections, as he commented that he had known people who after reading Husserl would look the same. Then he took some shots, I wonder if it was ever shown on Polish TV :-)

Another man, who was apparently a little bit too much under the impression of this strange happening, commented rather nervously and seemingly ill at ease that at least  nobody was doing anything with real blood. Well I regretfully had to unsettle him  a little bit more by informing him that during the previous summer I had taken part in a project called Outpost, where small cards could be collected at various locations within the city of Münster and the matching cards could be purchased. My contribution  had been to  pass on cards that actually contained some tiny drops of my own blood preserved in some iodine and the matching card would read "Sanguis"...Nay, let her languish a drop of blood a day; and being aged, die of this folly!

Michael Pennington on Richard Strauss

Just listen on Thursday 21st of April at 11:30 WEST  and hopefully on BBC iplayer for a week afterwards.

Life is competition

Hätte Richie doch nur nicht in allem, auch in der Beziehung  zu seinen Freunden, nach der Prämisse "Life is competition" gehandelt, dann wäre es vielleicht nicht so weit gekommen. Manchmal muß man auch gerade seine Schwächen zeigen und kommunizieren können...Immerhin eine starke Reflektion des Status Quo in der (post-) modernen Leistungsgesellschaft

Körperwelten or at which point does a good idea turn into an indubitable dogma

This has been a question troubling me a lot and I'm infinitely grateful to Edmund Husserl for providing me with an answer, which will follow later...
First a short diversion via Husserl : There is a consequence in the fact that Husserl's writings were saved from the Nazis by the Belgian Franciscan priest Herman van Breda, when learning about it it did not surprise me, it felt absolutely right. Maybe it is just because I come from a very blessed place, where the local Dutch Roman Catholic priest and the local German Protestant Communist physician used to meet regularly to drink some red wine and play a game of chess ;-)

Cuius regio eius religio!!

...Back to dogmatism: If  I do understand Husserl correctly, any system, in which  denial  is categorically and systematically ruled out, is dogmatic and in consequence deceptive, i e a lie and untrue. Thus if you come across somebody who does not allow you to question his motives and who considers any argument against his concept as heretic, calling you even ignorant for not seeing the world like him or her, beware for whatever this is certainly a falsehood. Just like the infamous Gunther von Hagens , who would reply that any of his critics or people, who believe his exhibition to be disgusting, have a deranged relation to their own body. Just beware!!!

Kunst und Philosophie

Der Künstler kann nur das vertreten, was auf seinem eigenen Mist gewachsen ist, aber in der Philosophie sucht er gerne Bestätigung:

Aber...die haben ja gar kein Gewissen!!!

But...they do not have any conscience!!! This exclamation regarding business economists made me smile a lot at the time, though of course it bore then and still bears today a wonderful truthfulness.

Yet I was beyond this being too openly and often confronted with these economists in my daily life and their principal premises were and are:
I  A person can never own enough money.
II Life is competition.

Yet again those competitors, our elite, get puzzled at the mere idea that somebody could be offering them mozzarella made from buffalo milk, implying that there cannot be any such thing as buffalo milk. And come to think of it, Mahatma Ghandi never ever lived in South Africa. Right?!
Well, I'm not blaming anybody for his or her lack of knowledge, nobody can know everything, yet why not follow this simple Latin advice: Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

De mop van mijn leven - Capitalists make me lol!

Während sie von neuen Absatzmärkten in China träumen, setzen sie Arbeitnehmer frei.

Zuneigung - Be my horizon

As you lean forward and slightly bend down your neck, this becomes the perfect horizon, under whose kind light all my doings need to reflect...

Zip* or the rest matters

Metaphors are translucent veils, that permit the things they disguise to be seen, or fancy dresses, under which the person, who is masked, is perceivable.   Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780)

Oh this veil, this veil this wonderful veil, hiding and showing at once. This slight breath, this almost nothing!!


* cf Barnett Newman and American/Canadian informal, colloquial: nothing, zero

Venice?!

 Venice?! With her Titian red hair, yes indeed!!!

Oh, if I could only tell how fond I am of this new adaption of "Das Blaue Licht"/ "The Blue Light" !!!

The Human Scale - In Memoriam Franz Meyer

This is a labour of love and also of penance for not having been courageous enough to speak out loud and defend Franz Meyer the one and regretfully only time I've attended one of his lectures.
It was on the 29th of June 1997 at a symposium accompanying the retrospective of Barnett Newman at the Kunstsammlung in Düsseldorf. I only just had returned from the Biennale in Venice and had spent the night with a German couple, a Dutch student, and two Roman Catholic priests, one from Italy, the other from Nigeria, on the nighttrain from Milan. And there he was, Franz Meyer, a sincere, open-minded and frank art historian, who had been lucky enough to have been acquainted with Barnett Newman. His words were like a beacon and he surely gave a lot away of his own beliefs and foundations as an individual, as I've myself have noticed would happen to people once they are faced with Newman's ouvre. Regretfully this frankness and liberty left him also with no defences against anybody out to scorn him for exactly these beliefs. And regretfully as well, there was Beat Wyss, who had taken a lot of his students on an outing to this symposium. Once given the opportunity they started relentlessly attacking Franz Meyer, the poor man was left absolutely nacked against their forces. Even Wyss, who had not been very kind and critical in his own lecture, felt the urge to quieten them a little, but the damage had already been done. The woman next to me had done the only decent thing possible and left the event murmuring words of protest, yet I stayed because there was one final lecture I desperately wanted to hear...
My conclusion after all these years is that firstly I hope that those students would never have to face anything that threatens their very existence, for from the look of it they wouldn't have zip to fall back on, and secondly I would very much recommend Franz Meyer's monography on Barnett Newman entitled Lema Sabachthani - The Stations of the Cross (despite its title it's in German!!)

Elusiveness II

 

A feature very important to any artist is freedom, something that has been acknowledged in Germany to that extent that if somebody chose to study fine arts at an academy of art, his subject would be entitled "Freie Kunst"/free, ie uncommited art, especially as opposed to purposeful art, eg any kind of design, fashion design etc...

An aspect of freedom mostly not much considered is to remain elusive in relation to your output, meaning that your person, your private person though it is the author of all your works, won't too easily be found within those, for to tie whatever down to your own biography would tie down your imagination - and the imagination of beholder - , this wonderful flow/ dream of all things possible and impossible. Probably if you've reached this point, where only the work matters, you couldn't care less about people trying to copy, imitate or even counterfeit you. Anyway if the counterfeit is good and it enables yourself to leave this part of your own passage to somebody else and you to move freely on to something even further beyond, why not do it?! Let there be counterfeits!!

BTW another good reason for remaining elusive is that there may come a time where one feels ashamed for one's daring. It is not always simple or easy.

Eventually I must admit that I am a hopeless romantic about these matters, ever since I've read Hermann Hesse's short story about a painter, who moves around, stays for some time at one place, produces some paintings and as soon as he gets acknowledged by his fellow inhabitants would vanish leaving just his paintings behind...