The original archive looked a bit different, you can get a glimpse here: From green to blue
The concept of #60pages was to invite people to post once a day for sixty days. And this is what happened between September 2, 2013 and April 14, 2014.
The webserver moved afterwards to a different design and (I think) is no longer maintained see: #60pages.com.
Holger Friese, 2025
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Paris takes well to sunlight. I first arrived on a day similar to this one in the summer of 2005. It was the end of the baccalauréat exams and that night, students filled the streets. We kissed strangers, ate pie with our fingers, and watching dawn slip away above [more]
I got a job today. To treat myself, I did one of my favorite things, which is to buy a garbage bag full of slut clothes from Guerrisol. It cost all of 10€.
Il a attrapé le bouquet de mariée! réception sous la boule
It rained on their wedding day. What did the bride wear? What did the groom wear? Only the bride can tell. What did the guests wear? Four pichets of rosé. We downed them, our throats slick with gimlets and beer. Before the bride and the groom stood the [more]
Today is my first day in Prato, and I am forced to consider some conflicting facts. Here now is Stefano, arriving to pick me up at the Bologna airport with my name scribbled on an A4 sheet. He confirms some suspicions about Italy—that he lost his previous job [more]
Spent some time with the muskrat population of Prato today
Georg did you read the face-off between Obama and Putin in the New York Times?
#vfno went on hiatus in New York, but was apparently going strong in Paris. Hasn’t anyone written a more excoriating critique of it?
The guys at Passport Control always have some joke for me when I tell them I studied architecture. This time, it was about Seinfeld.
Breakfast: “I can’t imagine you working for someone…at least not for very long.” Lunch: “He asked me to wear a butt plug and text him throughout the day.” Dinner: “Can I have broccoli rabe, shrimp ceviche, and can you make an iced decaf coffee?”
I first arrived a few weeks shy of my twelfth birthday. I can still recall a great number of details. There was no lake, no breeze, no bats circling the air at dusk. No eight-lane highway, whose shoulder was lined with wildflowers, no cars, in fact, and nobody [more]
http://hypergeography.tumblr.com/ http://thejogging.tumblr.com/ http://cloaque.org/
Shameless but important: on the government shutdown
Chinese Factory Workers and the Toys They Make
Mother Teresa and Princess Diana? Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson? Add to that Arthur C. Danto and Lou Reed.
so many texts about to be written with friends. for example the manifesto with stefan on how we need to think (and write, and do art, and politics) in times of big data. stefan thinks wir sind alle freunde. we’re all friends because even our enemies are friends [more]
off to düsseldorf for an event with ann and monika. gotta ask them about how they imagine ein gutes Buch blockiert also den Literaturbetrieb. reminds me of my fetishistic idea of seizing philosophy via literary theory. or writing something that might affect others in the way two or [more]
METANOIA INTRODUCTION………………………………………………….. 3 I POETICS Principles of lingual poiesis……………………. 11 The poetic function of language (Jakobson)…………….. 11 The potentializing function of language (Guillaume)….. 13 Poietic linguistics………………………………………………….. 20 The myth of the arbitrariness of the sign………………….. 24 Experimental Poetics…………………………………………….. 27 II ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE The lingual creation of [more]
bernd is by far the most amazing editor i know. i’ve known him for some years now and he’s so far saved quite a number of my books from being totally incomprehensible. when i first met him he announced that at some point he always knows a book [more]
Criticism – Crisis – Acceleration Armen Avanessian Monetarization indexes a becoming-abstract of matter, parallel to the plasticization of productive force, with prices encoding distributed SF narratives. Tomorrow is already on sale, with post-modernity a soft-commodity, subverting the modernist subordination into continuous crisis (prolonged critically). —Nick Land No one [more]
(…) As Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello have shown, aesthetic critique will at the same time ultimately be used (by the neoliberal discourse of crisis) purely for the provision of catchwords for an ever new and seemingly faster “liberalization,” which is called upon from the other side as [more]
we have to think about accelerating. quickly. the future is already here. and the past is unforeseeable. we’re living in anastrophic times.
Contemporary capitalism is an object of high abstraction. The symposium is an invitation to discuss and disclose the anonymous and inner tendencies of capitalism, to study its monetary, algorithmic and energetic viscera. How can one grasp the living drives of financial markets and technological innovation? And more importantly: [more]
all i can say is: there is worse, trust me on that. or at least: there is always something far more absurd to come. actually quite soon. to be precise: already next sunday. where? in austria of course. i am convinced having the austrian elections one week from [more]
i’m an academic. no one is supposed to be eager to read my texts. and then THIS: dear people out there, i am asking you: do you really want to read my posts? i mean ok, obviously my mid-atlantic english is much better than bobby’s. but there is [more]
i will leave the house. i will travel. i will go to kassel. i will see a show and meet many people. i will take pictures. actually i will take so many pictures so that i’ll have enough for 60pages (i mean for ’60 pages’)
so speculation has now conquered the german museum nina told me that of course i can blog pictures, but should try to take good ones. which was of course enough to scare me off. so instead [more]
What if, one day, there are no more humans? Doesn’t this scenario become more likely with every day that passes? But how would we think something like the irrevocable end of thinking? What access do we have to our own non-being? How do we know that our distinction [more]
i love 60pages. it should be 120pages or 180pages. so many new people, ideas and styles (of writing) to read every day. and more and more things grow together while the horizon broadens. also since last week i have my favorite authors on 60pages and now after reading [more]
28degrees. 28degrees was yesterday’s temperature in new york. 28. this morning, making a cup of tea and changing the order of things in my cupboard (most glasses now behind the tea cups and mugs) the message finally arrived (while yesterday i just made some jokes how obscene and [more]
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according to reliable sources, people high up in the 60pages hierarchy have been overheard saying that ‘das leben ist ein ponyhof’ (thereby deliberately showing off their good mood in close proximity to a very stressed writer claiming the opposite). these rumors have been adamantly denied. the CEO of [more]
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on my way to vilnius to talk about this in the series “New Realism in Contemporary Art”: Adopting a semiotic model, one could differentiate between three regimes of realism. Firstly a realism of the signified (predominant in 19th century literature and art), trying to depict reality, understand it [more]
i can only recommend visiting lithuania. apart from having wifi in their taxis here (what else do you want after arriving in a foreign country?), there is also an such an amount of really interesting shows, performances, screenings, talks, that i sometimes thought i am still in berlin…especially the talks [more]
as some of you readers of 60pages were surely wondering: is he a professor or is he just damned smart? well my answer is: yes and no. or no and yes. or partly yes but otherwise not. or sometimes. both. basically i just received my contract by post [more]
Where is your entry for today? I am waiting! Desperately!! I was checking 60pages already several times today and even got tempted to write about you. But then I don’t know you at all. Also people might compare my blogs to yours (and that would be a huge [more]
“let us work; work has the advantage, among others, of shortening our days and lengthening our lives”. definetely my days are too short. but let’s hope he’s right about the rest too. actually diderot was seventy when he died. not too bad for his time i guess.
as i/armen is/am teaching all day, today we/the students have to write his entry: johanna: Armen isst nicht. Dennis: Can god change the last week? Veljko: jedva cekam da sunce sine Cornelia: I`m able to think the death in the sun. Maja: Trotzdem scheint die Sonne. Martina: You [more]
“(…) neurohypophyseal peptides oxytocin and vasopressin in the central mediation of complex social behaviours, including affiliation, parental care and territorial aggression. Research on a monogamous rodent, the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) suggests that these neuropeptides also involved in the control of several behaviours associated with monogamy, including pair bonding, [more]
This today from one of the MoL’s curators: I don’t know if you remember this 1970s vogue – started by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos, for souped-up versions of the Classics? Other week I found an as-new copy of “Symphonies For The Seventies” by Waldo de Los Rios. Vaguely familiar. What I didn’t know [more]
Four years to write a book that will probably end up about the same length as The Great Gatsby (short). No commission. No publisher. Complete madness. An exercise in deep topography: digging up what is probably best left buried. The first version heroically unreadable. The next version too [more]
Museum of Loneliness believes in call waiting. Museum of Loneliness believes in junk mail. Museum of Loneliness believes daytime TV is the final frontier (more of which later). MoL hasn’t had one of these for a while, received this morning under title Awful Trip!!! Good morning, I hope [more]
YESTERDAY’S POST (missed because of Celebrity Master Chef – beyond the final frontier) Controlled space, dark and mysterious, a maze. Corridors like crime scenes, dead ends, doors that say: Do not enter. The anxiety of the threshold. Screens like jewelled shrines. Sometimes whole banks of monitors. From movie [more]
Most things can be shown to connect up. Ade Edmondson won Celebrity Master Chef last night. Cooking has been the new porno for some time. Nigella did what might be called blow-job cooking, full of suggestive burlesque. But Celebrity Master Chef shows how the process has become standard. [more]
The scene has been shot – as in filmed – to death and still no one can agree what happened. The image analysts working over the weekend reckoned eight shots. That would never do. And as to who did it, the shooters, forget it, they were faceless technicians, [more]
MoL functions as an anti-institution dedicated to post-cinema, the lost, the deleted, the censored and the obscure. Its inaugural project was an experiment of watching daytime TV: uncharted white space, an Arctic electronic wilderness to be traversed. What follows are random lines taken from the experiment – In [more]
Most of MoL’s life these days is spend dealing with the human equivalent to call waiting. MoL believes in boredom. MoL rather likes boring football matches and dull pundits. Ukraine versus England was almost perfect in this respect. Nothing happened and afterwards three quite boring men had to [more]
MoL is reading Nadal’s biography. Interesting how a gawky, clumsy kid afraid of sleeping in the dark (still) transforms himself into a court warrior hell-bent on winning, knowing his game is not as good as the best of his rivals (he is not a natural player). The obvious [more]
We don’t know anything anymore. Linear and vertical are irrelevant. Change is the central dynamic. Where the television set was once the electronic hearth it is now the empty fireplace. MoL aspires to the lowest YouTube ratings. The cultural state is conditioned by shrinking margins. Modern life is [more]
Yesterday MoL while on an archeological dig unearthed the following cache of old 45 singles. (MoL dedicates itself to the deleted, the forgotten and the reforgotten: the anti-pantheon.) 1. Ain’t Got a Clue by The Lurkers 2. Coloured Music by The Pirhanas 3. Girls, Girls, Girls by Sailor [more]
Last night on television we had Simon Schama’s History of the Jews, leisurely, quite interesting in a travelogue way, but not very, with Schama a preposterous, pleased-with-himself figure: presentation as the art of waving one’s arms around while looking smug. Schama camps it up and patronises at the [more]
On Sunday the Museum of Loneliness shot some books, with a Winchester double-barrelled shotgun. An interesting mess: you wouldn’t want that to be the back of your head. There is of course the problem of whose books you shoot. In the 1960s Pan Books produced a paperback edition [more]
The English football season settles down now the transfer window has closed. Wenger, previously seen as petulant schoolmaster is now hailed for his acumen and prowess: “a slide-rule pass,” murmurs the commentator of Arsenal’s latest acquisition. Gareth Bale turns up in Madrid looking like a short-trousered schoolboy on [more]
For no particular reason MoL yesterday made a list of household objects it likes (short) and a much longer one of those disliked including: tea towels; oven gloves; nail scissors; blue wiping-up cloths; soap dishes; washing-up liquid bottles; kitchen roll; any cereal packet; bags for life; most bottle [more]
MoL, a keen watcher of football post-match interviews, notes the following set rules: contempt for the press; stupidity of the questions; tight-lipped unwillingness to say anything of interest; lack of graciousness; the rule that no player can big himself up at the expense of the team. Post-match interviewees [more]
MoL cookbook: recipe one. “Montalbano speaking. I am eating broccoli pasta. Who the hell is disturbing me?” Italian maccheroni, or any spiral or shell pasta (MoL doesn’t believe in weighing anything), broccoli, handful of raisins and pine nuts, a couple of anchovy fillets in olive oil, pinch of [more]
MoL recipe two (Tuesday’s supper): Bacalhoada (Portuguese Salt Cod Stew) MoL suggests no quantities, other than generosity with all ingredients. Salt cod (soaked 36-48 hours prior to cooking, kept in fridge with frequent changes of water); much olive oil; two or more onions; waxy potatoes; hard boiled eggs; [more]
The film Diana, just opened in London and super-panned, is directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The Evening Standard review pointed out Hirschbiegel is best known for Downfall, about the last 12 days of Hitler’s life, and went on to say in its leaden way this was possibly as sound [more]
MoL learned three things today. 1) On the London tube they no longer say “Mind the gap” — three of the finest words in the language — they now say “Please mind the gap between the carriage and the platform,” as if the gap could be anywhere else. [more]
MoL while researching its project Fragments of the Lost Library was struck by how in the old days of book-hunting and physical search bargains were still to be had. With the internet, everyone knows the price. Most paperbacks are available for under one euro. A hardback first edition [more]
MoL shot the books (see previous post); now it thinks about the tee-shirt.
MoL Fragments of the Lost Library. Some titles: The Answer to Life is No by Anonymous (1960, Rupert Hart-Davis) Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor (1976, Chatto and Windus) Negative Space by Manny Farner (1971, Studio Vista) A Voyage in Vain by Alethea Hayter (1973, Faber) Nothing by Henry Green [more]
Breaking Bad comes to an end tomorrow. In the UK we haven’t been able to watch the show on a regular broadcast channel for years, since series 2 was on Channel 5 on a daily basis over a Christmas holiday. The same happened to Mad Men, which moved [more]
I don’t know if they still have them but Dusseldorf used to have the coolest traffic lights which told you what speed to keep to stay on green, or did I imagine this? One of the big problems in London is how long to wait for a bus. [more]
There’s a generation of young TV presenters so telegenic and telefluent they speak a very quick sort of hot air that bears no resemblance to real life. Three appear on a weekly political round-up on Channel 4 and it’s like fast-forward tennis, big serves, rat-a-tat short rallies and [more]
OK, whisper it who dare but just when everyone decides Breaking Bad is a masterpiece, MOL goes and spoils the party by saying the final series is not so scary or funny. The actors look like their decisions are being made not by the characters but by script [more]
What is the method of a museum of loneliness, since you ask? It is about non-place and transit, driven by the idea of a post-cinema. Anti-institution. Opposite end of dot.com BUT embraces new technology. At home in the departure lounge. Techno-romantic. Rubber stamp. Works through other bodies like [more]
MoL says wake up and smell the coffee, and find the email equivalent to a dog turd in your in-box. Welcome to the modern world! How do you do, friend! I live next door to your flat and I was so shocked after what I saw last night [more]
MoL has noticed that the worlds of film and television exist in a parallel universe quite outside electronic time and proceed at an almost nineteenth century pace, akin to dealing with the Court of St Petersburg in 1895, with festivals the equivalent to winter and summer palaces. Philip [more]
Unfortunately the score of Sunderland 1 Man U 0 couldn’t last and now it’s 1-2. Sunderland fired their manager, a mad “charismatic” Italian, because he was too fascist (pro-Mussolini and given to the old stiff-armed salute when playing for Lazio) but what the Sunderland players couldn’t stomach was [more]
MoL is a big fan of crossword puzzles. Best clue this weekend, 13 across: Artist doing nudes? The underwear could go here (6,6). 25 across, just to drive Germans crazy, is a cricket clue: Look to make a cricket score? (6) [ANSWERS BELOW] MoL went to see the [more]
MoL always enjoys self-help and lifestyle and health columns. There was a particularly fine crop of mind-numbing cliches in this morning’s free handout paper. 1) We have created a monster out of stress. (MoL is the first to applaud bullet-point psychobabble.) 2) Some people seem to have been [more]
MoL is employed in finding out as little as possible about Miley Cyrus, not for any reason, just because it is good to take evasive action sometimes. In the meantime, MoL enjoys a good scandal, especially involving the BBC whose senior management has been giving huge pay-offs to [more]
MoL says everyone come to London and check out http://www.testcentre.org.uk The Test Centre | 24th Oct – 24th Nov Test Centre will team up with its roster of writers, recording artists and associates to present a month of events, a rolling exhibition, and a pop-up shop. The Test [more]
MoL spends lonely-guy nights with Netflix. Two episodes of Breaking Bad a session, two bottles of Asahi beer (product placement). Watched BB show finale the night before last. MoL’s lips are sealed. Mmm. Moving on, House of Cards, a UK show years ago — ok; not that great [more]
MoL presents fragments of a lost film script. CLOSE-UP:- Multi-coloured fishing flies in storage boxes. ANGLETON: Flamingo Zonker. Yellow Goofus Bug. Egg-sucking Leach. Ah, the Gray Ghost. The Gray Ghost is a classic American freestone-river design and one of ANGLETON’s favourites. Ochre floss-silk body ribbed with flat silver [more]
Most movie reviews now are like restaurant reviews. They write out the plot like it’s a menu and sort of say whether they like what they ate, meaning that reviewing is no longer about criticism but consumption. If it’s big British film they are more or less obliged [more]
MoL makes map reading errors. MoL gets a lot wrong. Previously it said Downton Abbey would never introduce a racial element. In response a black jazz singer has now been introduced. MoL was complaining about film critics and yesterday one of the few exceptions, with a mind of [more]
MoL went awol yesterday, fugue-state driving, mit dog, through the wind and the rain, ending up some place neither of us recognised. The dog is troubled these days, perhaps sensing that dogs don’t really belong in a museum of loneliness. She has been nervous since the weekend of [more]
The MoL is wondering whether it shouldn’t shut down or at least retreat from view. Three years ago when it started there was nothing comparable. Two weeks ago it met by chance the founder of the Museum of Chance. Now all sorts of people are talking about “museums” [more]
MoL is composing its Fragments of the Lost Library. One hundred books that will be numbered, catalogued and sold with a special MoL bookplate. Book number one costs one pound, book number two costs two pounds, and so on up to one hundred. The dog is not so [more]
Gola! Gola! The fans love England again! England are the new Germany! You better watch out! This time everyone promises not to get too excited! The nation expects! We will fight on the beaches! Applaud our silky samba skills! Quarter final as usual, if that. England 0 Germany [more]
Too long spent waiting in a restaurant for food, left MoL uselessly wondering what happened to all those Beethoven-style glasses men used to wear some years ago and don’t now. MoL faces a dilemma, liking restaurants, disliking being waited on (too much existential performing). The good thing about [more]
MoL went to the Emirates Stadium, predicting the same score as the Chelsea match: Arsenal 3 Norwich 1. Always a supporter of the lost cause, MoL has followed Norwich through thick and thin, mainly thin, since 1959. 4-1 in the end but Arsenal didn’t need to carry on [more]
The government feeds the bureaucracy which feeds the media. Today’s story, a result of a shed of research money being spent, is people are getting so lonely now there is a Campaign to End Loneliness. Because of MoL’s huge search engine monitoring for any sign of the word, [more]
About G&T, since you ask. Gin got gentrified during the British empire with the addition of tonic. Before that it was known as mother’s ruin. The secret ingredient was not the gin but the quinine in the tonic that was added because of its anti-malarial properties. It is [more]
Everyone is saying Homeland isn’t as good since the first series. MoL thought the second series better because when US TV tries to picture Arab life it goes woozy. Everyone says the first two episodes of series three have been dull with no Brody. Is this a man [more]
MoL sent Agent S. to Berlin on a mission. Agent S., who has been deep-cover for years, was briefed cold-war style, on a need-to-know basis only, wasn’t even told there was no longer a wall. Agent S. was instructed to come back with the Fassbinder cans or take [more]
The dog days. Strange weather. We wait. We walken the dog. I had to do a panel on the difference between making fiction films and documentary. More pointing with fiction, I find, while recognising nothing of the process that the others talked about with their multi-camera set-ups. It [more]
The Museum of Loneliness project Fragments of the Lost Library will be displayed next week in a pop-up shop. It is an especially assembled collection of 100 numbered books drawn from an eclectic base. Most have some value in their own right as collectible editions. The 100 books are [more]
Nothing to report. Big storm coming. Clocks go back tonight. No more late afternoon tennis. Norwich 0-0 Cardiff. Chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing.” That’s good, says MoL. People who know what they are doing not so interesting. MoL finishes up with Fragments of the Lost [more]
Maybe this gin thing is your belle époque, maybe to do with football and last season’s rise of the German phoenix. You don’t have to pretend to be Cuban or Spanish any more. MoL says fuck the salsa classes! This gin thing is a bubble too, still post-2008 [more]
Well there was a storm and some trees fell down, four people died and a lot of power went off but it wasn’t a great storm like they were promising on Sunday, like the one of 1987, and for the whole of today they didn’t have enough to [more]
The depressing thing is not the passing but the dire quality of the posthumous content e.g. Salman Rushdie’s tweet. Lou tweeted right up to the end: I tweet therefore I am. MoL’s main correspondent, silent since 60pages began, was flushed into the open by Rushdie, declaring he deserved [more]
MoL’s pop-up shop/show opens tomorrow until Sunday. This is the inventory. MoL PAMPHLET 100 COPIES. Contents i) Fragments of the Lost Library ii) MoL Diaries i.e. 60pages iii) Inventory MOL PAMPHLET : 20 signed copies with CHINESE BOXES bootleg MoL THE CLOCK : 99 pamphlets; MOL reissue from [more]
A coincidence of scatology. Given television’s desperation to cross any boundary to bolster its dwindling status, MoL went pitching to Channel 4: Get Your Shit Together, based on the premise that you are what you eat. Volunteers shit on camera; in fact they shit on the camera. Expert [more]
Actually I have to go. It is the last day of the film festival. 8:30, I have a breakfast meeting in the Sheradon on Colorado Ave. The internet here in the Ice House is very slow. Later there is a picnic in Town Park. Tomorrow at 6:00am a [more]
I have to sleep. The bus takes us tomorrow morning to Montrose. Did I write that before? More from New York. But one image now. The woman on the left is an airforce pilot. She trained the squad which killed Bin Laden. I saw photos on her iphone [more]
He said he is hungry, he needs money. Remember her? Léa Seydoux, the actress with the RUN DMC t-shirt in Telluride.
The Criterion office is on Park Avenue. It’s really huge. Kim Hendrickson gave me a tour which ended in this tiny room with all their dvds. And I got a bag full of the greatest films. (Georg: JP Gorins three films are in the bag) I enjoyed the [more]
I can’t read it anymore. It’s awkward. It’s …. It’s James Franco. The Mindy Project. What a great building: The Port Authority Bus Terminal. My favourite. James Franco: Did I call him Frank in the last post? I love him too. Awkward.
when Colorado Democrats debated gun control and Second-Amendment rights the Centennial Gun Store in the Denver suburbs became the place to be. Gun-cretins cleared the shop of assault rifles. People who had never owned a gun went because “they didn’t want the government telling them what to do.” [more]
I got this book at Strand in New York: “the Quotable Hitchens––from Alcohol to Zionism”. With a forword by Martin Amis. On Generations: “Tell me which decade you love, or hate, and I’ll tell you who and what you are.” (“Empitomizing the Eighties,” Newsday, 12/30/90) “I must say [more]
Dear Christopher Roth, Being obese is a terrible thing. You are restricted in so many aspects that life seems bleak and frustrating. You cannot wear stylish clothes, you cannot get the spouse of your dreams, and you cannot be as active as you want because excessive kilograms stand [more]
“The most lethal and fascistic of our current enemies––the purist murderers of the Islamic jihad––despise our society for, among other things, its tolerance for the alcohol. We should perhaps do more to earn this hatred and contempt, and less to emulate it.” Christopher Hitchens, “Living Proof,” Vanity Fair, [more]
<Do you wish to get money from war? It’s the very time to realize this. Just as the first rockets touch the ground in Syria, black gold prices will rise…> This email came from angela.winters@hrtechinc.com on September 10, at 7:08pm my time. <…just as Monarchy Resources, Inc. (M-O [more]
First nobody believed in him. Only some people of the opponent party, the CDU, liked him. His own party, the social democrats, the SPD, never thought he is the candidate who would push Merkel out of power. He was not down to earth enough, he was interested in [more]
Coming back to Munich is always nice. For a day or two. You see boats on the street with Hawaiian license plates. You see Oliver Berben in front of the former Helmut Lang store: You see this huge monumental and swanky new building for Munich’s small film school. [more]
Today are elections in Bavaria. The CSU will win. C stands for Christian. These elections doesn’t make much difference, 1000 years of CSU, it’s the countryside, farmers, conservatives, but,––BUT if the FDP doesn’t make the 5%, doesn’t make it into parliament, than people will vote for the FDP [more]
Frankfurt as a city always occurred to me as half big, half nice, half interesting, not far, not close, good museums, big airport, the Städel, the Schirn––sure––a tough Bahnhofsviertel which is the hippest area now (Oskar M. is opening his deli and club there), and––the IAA! The automobile [more]
Audi upside-down-Metropolis. Silver Audi bag: Maserati bathrobe, tempting: Best outfit, Lancia: Lancia means “lance” in Italian. The model names are mainly letters of the Greek alphabet. Thesis are typefaces. And Thema? Lancia is part of Fiat and––look at the Thema––cooperates with Chrysler, since Chrysler is owned by Fiat [more]
“It’s only for entertainment use” is written in the manual and in the warnings. Not for business? Spying? Moviemaking? Porn? Terrorism? The AR-Drone 2.0 comes in this beautiful box. Vera Lehndorff once told me that when somebody gave Salvador Dalí a camera as present he threw it away [more]
This just came in from Mr.Porter and because I misread it I read the whole page and all its subpages and links (took me 43 minutes) and when I was back on the homepage I saw that there is not written IRONIC but ICONIC. Now I had read [more]
Anne/Los Angeles 7am Mavie, Wilma/Vienna 5pm Enrico/New Delhi 8:30pm Georg, Christopher/Berlin 5pm David/Zurich 5pm Armen/Berlin 5pm language: Mid-Atlantic & German (Swiss, Austrian and South German) biggest time zone difference: California and Delhi Anne just got up. Enrico was already smoking. Mavie didn’t see us. Only audio. A dog [more]
In the 2010 World Cup, Jérôme Boateng played for Germany against his brother, Kevin-Prince Boateng who played for Ghana. Germany won the game 1–0. Today Jérôme played for Bayern München, Kevin-Prince for Schalke 04. Bayern 4––Schalke 0
Last night I met Niklas. He is one of the founders of #60pages. We didn’t hear from him for a long time but he is such a charming and winning person. He is full of stories. His two main topics are cars (and he is an expert in [more]
Three members of the CDU singing Tage Wie Diese/ Days Like These by the band Die Toten Hosen: Kein Ende in Sicht Kein Ende in Sicht Kein Ende in Sicht No end in sight No end in sight No end in sight
Day, 24, pick 24, today it doesn’t add up. TMI, broken Links, if you are on “Schnupfen” on Wikipedia, what I suffer from these days––a cold––, and press English to change the language, you get this: “…insufflation and exsufflation are ritual acts of blowing, breathing, hissing, or puffing [more]
Fever again, today, the 25th post or pick, still kind of feverish and have read too much Victoria Nelson. September 26, three days after the German election. Brilliant thoughts by Wolfgang Münchau on Spiegel Online about how much Keynes the FDP or German Liberalism could or should swallow. [more]
(continued from yesterday, hate-love, love-hate, hate-hate. Apple, German Telekom, Google, Facebook, Oracle.) The pattern: First they build up these huge dark and in a way invisible empires no matter what. Then they donate. They save us. You, me, the Africans, the world. The Internship (Prakti.com in Germany) is [more]
This piece is called “Zwiespalt,” which signifies discord or dispute, also dought or: of two minds. Pure discord would rather be “Zwietracht.” The sculpture shows two figures looking at each other. One is a representational head, hand on the mouth like in a shock (Hillary Clinton in the [more]
Today I learned from Egon Friedell’s Cultural History of the Modern Age, that Mozart finished his opera Idomeneo in the same year Immanuel Kant published Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781. Friedell was an Austrian Jew. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, he described [more]
From the Happy Science London Temple comes now “the proof for the spirit world”: The life-size statue of Ronald Reagan, at his namesake sports park in Temecula, California, was damaged in an apparent arson fire on Friday, Sept. 20. Here are some comments on pe.com: Mr. Kent · [more]
Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany: Day of German Unity. It is also the 25th anniversary of Franz Josef Strauß’ death. He died in 1988, one year before the German reunification. He died on the last Saturday of the Oktoberfest. After some beers and a knuckle of pork [more]
The German chancellor just said it. Today. And today is the Day of German Unity. He said it on RTL television. Heiner Lauterbach is the German chancellor. They tried to do Independence Day. The Reichstag in Berlin is hit after ten minutes. Burning physicists fly through a laboratory [more]
This was the invitation: wall breaking … bring friends, come for drinks, food, heavy tools, smart action … cheers, arno This was my preparation: And this was today. Nice. With Arno, Armen, Claudius, Peter, Johanna, Tobias, Sam. Tomorrow there will be moving images.
If you are German and very rich, in the top ten of the richest Germans, you get these special photographs made. A little out of focus, something in the foreground. Coat, briefcase, open doors and: An on-the-run-feel to it. This is Karl Albrecht. The 93-year-old founder of Aldi [more]
This is the sound of the bell in a prefab high-rise in the East: [jwplayer config=”audio” mediaid=”5828″] From the time when Germany was still divided. The bells in the West might have had a similar nasty tone. In these times Siemens (and the colour Siemens Beige) ruled the [more]
“Indeed, one of its appeals to the wealthy, and in particular to hedge funders, is that as a currency, art is far more manipulable than most other currencies, save perhaps drugs. If it is not the most corrupt business, art is certainly one of the most loosey-goosey and [more]
Like recommended by Lichtenberg I went to the Sonla Bistro not far from she S-Bahn station Storkowerstraße. It was around one in the afternoon and the place was quite packed. I went for a table for two next to the bar, sat down and ordered (like recommended by [more]
The Guitar Lesson, from 1934, by Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus, is a forbidden work. In 1934, it was shown in Paris for fifteen days only. Covered, in the gallery’s back room. In 1977, it appeared at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery in New [more]
There is one law: every Sunday morning things come to an end, disappear, are missed. Perfume, ink for the printer, deodorant, rice-milk today; last Sunday, toilet paper, basil, green chai, the Sunday before, rice-milk, washing powder, beer. Never Saturday, when shops are still open. Always Sunday morning. Without [more]
at least for me. I was socialized by an educational television series with a bunch of longhaired people in skin coloured body suits that came from the future and/or from planet Gamma. And on Gamma ruled some kind of eco-commune-Alain-Badiou-projection. Nonetheless les Gammas only spoke Gamma (and had [more]
at least for me. Talking about Les Gammas and not really recalling the back-story (was Gamma a wooden planet like in Aliens 3? No, they had a wooden spaceship, right?) I remember this one line they were repeating: “Les Gammas n’existent pas.” Why? Why would they not exist? [more]
at least for me. We hired bikes to go to the Jardin des Plantes (because I visited John Berger in Antony yesterday) and later from the Jardin to the Centre Pompidou to see the Pierre Huyghe show. Two things which would make the perfect day! But France [more]
Sam asked me to do an elective this semester in Dessau where he teaches. And this will happen, starting today at 16:30: Skype is a camera. We do a film with Skype. Medium production value. Locations around the world. Principal photography starts October 2013. Editing in January. Crew: [more]
Each year 60,000,000 pigs get killed In Germany. Last weekend’s FAS: This is Mr. Straathof from the Netherlands who produces 1,5m young pigs a year in Germany alone: With 81,89m inhabitants and 7m vegetarians, (vegans: 800,000) there must be among the other 75m a lot who eat meat [more]
In 1971, Gilbert and George were asked why they had picked Gordon’s for their piece ‘Gordon’s makes us very drunk’ and their answer was: “Because it is the best gin.” For the film, they added their names to the bottle’s label on either side of the Royal crest. [more]
Découvrez les kits de cigarettes électroniques et les saveurs (e-liquides) de chez Alter Smoke Cigarettes électroniques! Sounds great, looks good. In France it is considered cool to smoke électroniques. People show off in front of the Café de Flores with their kits de Alter Smoke. There, in Paris, [more]
People! To tell you the truth: 60pages is not about us and has nothing to do with you or gin or tonic. It’s not about content or style or subject or ideas or therapy. This is about names. The name-game. When Carson Chan didn’t want to write in [more]
I first worked with Mäx in Bremen this summer. For the speculative Mahagonny re-enactment. Mäx wrote a program, which calculated the amount to forget about Brecht. The program said: keep 27,4% of the original content, the costumes, etc. And it worked. Mäx wrote a tool (he might be [more]
Five minutes after my last post Mäx wrote: “My cat’s name is not ‘Heinrich’ but ‘Jean-Luc’! I don’t live there // I live here:” Sorry Mäx! You are a genius Mäx. The names you are putting together are beautiful: Victoria Gisborne-Land, Murat Suner, Britanni Sonnenberg, Mei-Lun Xue, Victoria [more]
Here is Mäx again: “It is not about the beauty of the names––how exotic or whatever they sound. We are calculating 763 components for 6 names per week// in a web of 8 weeks. It’s a map. Call it a frame. The grammar is out there! Read Steinweg [more]
Mäx just wrote: nomen est omen // see/read Freud, now, see/read Sigmund, see Carl Jung (C.G.) and Lacan. Don’t bother about the Jacques / it is La-can. Got it? Look at the names! Today I proposed Sascha Lobo. Mäx: “no”, Rebecca da Gama, “no way,” Boris Groys: “later, [more]
Mäx, I was in Venice. Do you like boats Mäx? I can’t decide, in a way I prefer towers. Mäx, if you were a pigeon––would you live on San Marco? Mäx, are you Bulgarian?
1) Today I read in a ft.com-link that British chancellor George Osborne will launch an Islamic bomb plan. Wow, I immediately clicked on the link but didn’t get very far. My position, job responsibility, and industry don’t allow me to read the ft. After 23 minutes I got [more]
Four posts I still had on my desktop: 1) Ex-footballer Lothar Matthäus was declared dead by the Amtsgericht München because he didn’t pay for ex-wife Liliana and didn’t receive the claims either. 2) Canadian smartphone maker Blackberry is mired in crisis––but German authorities and ministries have ordered thousands [more]
Three images I was about to post during the last weeks but while writing I lost their references: Marcus (and Mäx) really made us understand that it is not 60picks but 60days. It’s a window much more than an archive. Whatever happens within these eight weeks. And then [more]
Mäx posted here (sorry Finn) and here (sorry Lichtenberg). And Mäx published photos from my phone! Shinichi Sawada (Sandra Bartoli just emailed me the name) in the Palazzo Enciclopedico at the Arsenale. Actually I was writing about the Biennale and why I loved seeing all these ugly paintings, [more]
Actually I have to go. It is the last day of the film festival. 8:30, I have a breakfast meeting in the Sheradon on Colorado Ave. The internet here in the Ice House is very slow. Later there is a picnic in Town Park. Tomorrow at 6:00am a [more]
I have to sleep. The bus takes us tomorrow morning to Montrose. Did I write that before? More from New York. But one image now. The woman on the left is an airforce pilot. She trained the squad which killed Bin Laden. I saw photos on her iphone [more]
He said he is hungry, he needs money. Remember her? Léa Seydoux, the actress with the RUN DMC t-shirt in Telluride.
The Criterion office is on Park Avenue. It’s really huge. Kim Hendrickson gave me a tour which ended in this tiny room with all their dvds. And I got a bag full of the greatest films. (Georg: JP Gorins three films are in the bag) I enjoyed the [more]
I can’t read it anymore. It’s awkward. It’s …. It’s James Franco. The Mindy Project. What a great building: The Port Authority Bus Terminal. My favourite. James Franco: Did I call him Frank in the last post? I love him too. Awkward.
when Colorado Democrats debated gun control and Second-Amendment rights the Centennial Gun Store in the Denver suburbs became the place to be. Gun-cretins cleared the shop of assault rifles. People who had never owned a gun went because “they didn’t want the government telling them what to do.” [more]
I got this book at Strand in New York: “the Quotable Hitchens––from Alcohol to Zionism”. With a forword by Martin Amis. On Generations: “Tell me which decade you love, or hate, and I’ll tell you who and what you are.” (“Empitomizing the Eighties,” Newsday, 12/30/90) “I must say [more]
Dear Christopher Roth, Being obese is a terrible thing. You are restricted in so many aspects that life seems bleak and frustrating. You cannot wear stylish clothes, you cannot get the spouse of your dreams, and you cannot be as active as you want because excessive kilograms stand [more]
“The most lethal and fascistic of our current enemies––the purist murderers of the Islamic jihad––despise our society for, among other things, its tolerance for the alcohol. We should perhaps do more to earn this hatred and contempt, and less to emulate it.” Christopher Hitchens, “Living Proof,” Vanity Fair, [more]
<Do you wish to get money from war? It’s the very time to realize this. Just as the first rockets touch the ground in Syria, black gold prices will rise…> This email came from angela.winters@hrtechinc.com on September 10, at 7:08pm my time. <…just as Monarchy Resources, Inc. (M-O [more]
First nobody believed in him. Only some people of the opponent party, the CDU, liked him. His own party, the social democrats, the SPD, never thought he is the candidate who would push Merkel out of power. He was not down to earth enough, he was interested in [more]
Coming back to Munich is always nice. For a day or two. You see boats on the street with Hawaiian license plates. You see Oliver Berben in front of the former Helmut Lang store: You see this huge monumental and swanky new building for Munich’s small film school. [more]
Today are elections in Bavaria. The CSU will win. C stands for Christian. These elections doesn’t make much difference, 1000 years of CSU, it’s the countryside, farmers, conservatives, but,––BUT if the FDP doesn’t make the 5%, doesn’t make it into parliament, than people will vote for the FDP [more]
Frankfurt as a city always occurred to me as half big, half nice, half interesting, not far, not close, good museums, big airport, the Städel, the Schirn––sure––a tough Bahnhofsviertel which is the hippest area now (Oskar M. is opening his deli and club there), and––the IAA! The automobile [more]
Audi upside-down-Metropolis. Silver Audi bag: Maserati bathrobe, tempting: Best outfit, Lancia: Lancia means “lance” in Italian. The model names are mainly letters of the Greek alphabet. Thesis are typefaces. And Thema? Lancia is part of Fiat and––look at the Thema––cooperates with Chrysler, since Chrysler is owned by Fiat [more]
“It’s only for entertainment use” is written in the manual and in the warnings. Not for business? Spying? Moviemaking? Porn? Terrorism? The AR-Drone 2.0 comes in this beautiful box. Vera Lehndorff once told me that when somebody gave Salvador Dalí a camera as present he threw it away [more]
This just came in from Mr.Porter and because I misread it I read the whole page and all its subpages and links (took me 43 minutes) and when I was back on the homepage I saw that there is not written IRONIC but ICONIC. Now I had read [more]
Anne/Los Angeles 7am Mavie, Wilma/Vienna 5pm Enrico/New Delhi 8:30pm Georg, Christopher/Berlin 5pm David/Zurich 5pm Armen/Berlin 5pm language: Mid-Atlantic & German (Swiss, Austrian and South German) biggest time zone difference: California and Delhi Anne just got up. Enrico was already smoking. Mavie didn’t see us. Only audio. A dog [more]
In the 2010 World Cup, Jérôme Boateng played for Germany against his brother, Kevin-Prince Boateng who played for Ghana. Germany won the game 1–0. Today Jérôme played for Bayern München, Kevin-Prince for Schalke 04. Bayern 4––Schalke 0
Last night I met Niklas. He is one of the founders of #60pages. We didn’t hear from him for a long time but he is such a charming and winning person. He is full of stories. His two main topics are cars (and he is an expert in [more]
Three members of the CDU singing Tage Wie Diese/ Days Like These by the band Die Toten Hosen: Kein Ende in Sicht Kein Ende in Sicht Kein Ende in Sicht No end in sight No end in sight No end in sight
Day, 24, pick 24, today it doesn’t add up. TMI, broken Links, if you are on “Schnupfen” on Wikipedia, what I suffer from these days––a cold––, and press English to change the language, you get this: “…insufflation and exsufflation are ritual acts of blowing, breathing, hissing, or puffing [more]
Fever again, today, the 25th post or pick, still kind of feverish and have read too much Victoria Nelson. September 26, three days after the German election. Brilliant thoughts by Wolfgang Münchau on Spiegel Online about how much Keynes the FDP or German Liberalism could or should swallow. [more]
(continued from yesterday, hate-love, love-hate, hate-hate. Apple, German Telekom, Google, Facebook, Oracle.) The pattern: First they build up these huge dark and in a way invisible empires no matter what. Then they donate. They save us. You, me, the Africans, the world. The Internship (Prakti.com in Germany) is [more]
This piece is called “Zwiespalt,” which signifies discord or dispute, also dought or: of two minds. Pure discord would rather be “Zwietracht.” The sculpture shows two figures looking at each other. One is a representational head, hand on the mouth like in a shock (Hillary Clinton in the [more]
Today I learned from Egon Friedell’s Cultural History of the Modern Age, that Mozart finished his opera Idomeneo in the same year Immanuel Kant published Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781. Friedell was an Austrian Jew. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, he described [more]
From the Happy Science London Temple comes now “the proof for the spirit world”: The life-size statue of Ronald Reagan, at his namesake sports park in Temecula, California, was damaged in an apparent arson fire on Friday, Sept. 20. Here are some comments on pe.com: Mr. Kent · [more]
Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany: Day of German Unity. It is also the 25th anniversary of Franz Josef Strauß’ death. He died in 1988, one year before the German reunification. He died on the last Saturday of the Oktoberfest. After some beers and a knuckle of pork [more]
The German chancellor just said it. Today. And today is the Day of German Unity. He said it on RTL television. Heiner Lauterbach is the German chancellor. They tried to do Independence Day. The Reichstag in Berlin is hit after ten minutes. Burning physicists fly through a laboratory [more]
This was the invitation: wall breaking … bring friends, come for drinks, food, heavy tools, smart action … cheers, arno This was my preparation: And this was today. Nice. With Arno, Armen, Claudius, Peter, Johanna, Tobias, Sam. Tomorrow there will be moving images.
If you are German and very rich, in the top ten of the richest Germans, you get these special photographs made. A little out of focus, something in the foreground. Coat, briefcase, open doors and: An on-the-run-feel to it. This is Karl Albrecht. The 93-year-old founder of Aldi [more]
This is the sound of the bell in a prefab high-rise in the East: [jwplayer config=”audio” mediaid=”5828″] From the time when Germany was still divided. The bells in the West might have had a similar nasty tone. In these times Siemens (and the colour Siemens Beige) ruled the [more]
“Indeed, one of its appeals to the wealthy, and in particular to hedge funders, is that as a currency, art is far more manipulable than most other currencies, save perhaps drugs. If it is not the most corrupt business, art is certainly one of the most loosey-goosey and [more]
Like recommended by Lichtenberg I went to the Sonla Bistro not far from she S-Bahn station Storkowerstraße. It was around one in the afternoon and the place was quite packed. I went for a table for two next to the bar, sat down and ordered (like recommended by [more]
The Guitar Lesson, from 1934, by Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus, is a forbidden work. In 1934, it was shown in Paris for fifteen days only. Covered, in the gallery’s back room. In 1977, it appeared at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery in New [more]
There is one law: every Sunday morning things come to an end, disappear, are missed. Perfume, ink for the printer, deodorant, rice-milk today; last Sunday, toilet paper, basil, green chai, the Sunday before, rice-milk, washing powder, beer. Never Saturday, when shops are still open. Always Sunday morning. Without [more]
at least for me. I was socialized by an educational television series with a bunch of longhaired people in skin coloured body suits that came from the future and/or from planet Gamma. And on Gamma ruled some kind of eco-commune-Alain-Badiou-projection. Nonetheless les Gammas only spoke Gamma (and had [more]
at least for me. Talking about Les Gammas and not really recalling the back-story (was Gamma a wooden planet like in Aliens 3? No, they had a wooden spaceship, right?) I remember this one line they were repeating: “Les Gammas n’existent pas.” Why? Why would they not exist? [more]
at least for me. We hired bikes to go to the Jardin des Plantes (because I visited John Berger in Antony yesterday) and later from the Jardin to the Centre Pompidou to see the Pierre Huyghe show. Two things which would make the perfect day! But France [more]
Sam asked me to do an elective this semester in Dessau where he teaches. And this will happen, starting today at 16:30: Skype is a camera. We do a film with Skype. Medium production value. Locations around the world. Principal photography starts October 2013. Editing in January. Crew: [more]
Each year 60,000,000 pigs get killed In Germany. Last weekend’s FAS: This is Mr. Straathof from the Netherlands who produces 1,5m young pigs a year in Germany alone: With 81,89m inhabitants and 7m vegetarians, (vegans: 800,000) there must be among the other 75m a lot who eat meat [more]
In 1971, Gilbert and George were asked why they had picked Gordon’s for their piece ‘Gordon’s makes us very drunk’ and their answer was: “Because it is the best gin.” For the film, they added their names to the bottle’s label on either side of the Royal crest. [more]
Découvrez les kits de cigarettes électroniques et les saveurs (e-liquides) de chez Alter Smoke Cigarettes électroniques! Sounds great, looks good. In France it is considered cool to smoke électroniques. People show off in front of the Café de Flores with their kits de Alter Smoke. There, in Paris, [more]
People! To tell you the truth: 60pages is not about us and has nothing to do with you or gin or tonic. It’s not about content or style or subject or ideas or therapy. This is about names. The name-game. When Carson Chan didn’t want to write in [more]
I first worked with Mäx in Bremen this summer. For the speculative Mahagonny re-enactment. Mäx wrote a program, which calculated the amount to forget about Brecht. The program said: keep 27,4% of the original content, the costumes, etc. And it worked. Mäx wrote a tool (he might be [more]
Five minutes after my last post Mäx wrote: “My cat’s name is not ‘Heinrich’ but ‘Jean-Luc’! I don’t live there // I live here:” Sorry Mäx! You are a genius Mäx. The names you are putting together are beautiful: Victoria Gisborne-Land, Murat Suner, Britanni Sonnenberg, Mei-Lun Xue, Victoria [more]
Here is Mäx again: “It is not about the beauty of the names––how exotic or whatever they sound. We are calculating 763 components for 6 names per week// in a web of 8 weeks. It’s a map. Call it a frame. The grammar is out there! Read Steinweg [more]
Mäx just wrote: nomen est omen // see/read Freud, now, see/read Sigmund, see Carl Jung (C.G.) and Lacan. Don’t bother about the Jacques / it is La-can. Got it? Look at the names! Today I proposed Sascha Lobo. Mäx: “no”, Rebecca da Gama, “no way,” Boris Groys: “later, [more]
Mäx, I was in Venice. Do you like boats Mäx? I can’t decide, in a way I prefer towers. Mäx, if you were a pigeon––would you live on San Marco? Mäx, are you Bulgarian?
1) Today I read in a ft.com-link that British chancellor George Osborne will launch an Islamic bomb plan. Wow, I immediately clicked on the link but didn’t get very far. My position, job responsibility, and industry don’t allow me to read the ft. After 23 minutes I got [more]
Four posts I still had on my desktop: 1) Ex-footballer Lothar Matthäus was declared dead by the Amtsgericht München because he didn’t pay for ex-wife Liliana and didn’t receive the claims either. 2) Canadian smartphone maker Blackberry is mired in crisis––but German authorities and ministries have ordered thousands [more]
Three images I was about to post during the last weeks but while writing I lost their references: Marcus (and Mäx) really made us understand that it is not 60picks but 60days. It’s a window much more than an archive. Whatever happens within these eight weeks. And then [more]
Mäx posted here (sorry Finn) and here (sorry Lichtenberg). And Mäx published photos from my phone! Shinichi Sawada (Sandra Bartoli just emailed me the name) in the Palazzo Enciclopedico at the Arsenale. Actually I was writing about the Biennale and why I loved seeing all these ugly paintings, [more]
This is too good. The new week starts like a new week should start: You see the enemies and you know them. Go, move, vanquish. What happened yesterday in German politics was an excercise in boredom – which translates as contempt for democracy because it is the duty [more]
Holger said: “Why is there no entry in German?” Well, Holger, my hero of yesterday, the guy without whom all of this would not happen: “Because.” This is how it is at the moment. I feel that writing in English, even in this English that maybe sometimes only [more]
This is what my old friend Dirk wrote after my last column: alten freunden darf man das mal schreiben aber merkel herrisch zu nennen ist wirklich absurd. kohl ja, schroeder fischer erst recht aber merkel, machtbewusst ja, wie sonst soll man in der maennerschlangengrube politik voller eitler alphatierchen überleben. [more]
Isa Melsheimer was back from Rome, Bobby Roth was back from New York, Sam Chermayeff and Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge were back from Machu Picchu, I was back from the Uckermark, so we all met on the roof terrace of the Arno Brandlhuber house on Brunnenstraße, the one that looks [more]
They are going to close the Neue Nationalgalerie for renovation, that*s what Thomas Scheibitz told me when I met him on Albrechtstraße, and he should know, because he has an exhibition on right now right there, called, of all things, Bube Dame König Ass, is there are more [more]
It was a great moment of national reckoning when the writer Mohsin Hamid, having come from Lahore to talk about his new, daring novel How to get filthy rich in rising Asia, asked the simple question, sitting at the Bar 1000 Cantina (“is that still around”, Maxim Biller [more]
“9/11”, said Pankaj Mishra, “will be remembered as a minor event. It was an atrocity, no doubt, but it did not change the course of history as much as people think it did.” We were sitting in his office, close to Highgate cemetary in London where Marx is [more]
What I don*t get, what I really just don*t get, is Obama and Syria. Basically all I know about the conflict/tragedy/guilt reservoir of the future – whatever you want to call it – I know from the piece in the New Yorker by Dexter Filkins (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/13/130513fa_fact_filkins): But go, [more]
How could I? I love Zwieback and Freedom, I love Baseball Caps and Fish and Chips, I love Los Angeles and David Foster Wallace. This is a thin line, Bobby said, we were sitting at the Don Xuan Center in Berlin-Lichtenberg, sipping Vietnamese Coffee, which is dripping into [more]
Today, in the museum, I thought of MC Hammer. I was there with my kids, we were minding our business, investigating the depth and quality of Walter de Maria*s fountain, boring, this was our conclusion, not one of his better works. When a guard called from the other [more]
What is it about communal tables? We wanted to go to Richard, this is a place on Köpenickerstraße that Sam and I both like for the quality of the food but also for the melancholic splendor of the setting, think Los Angeles as imagined by a Swiss, think [more]
There is a very popular trend in so called avantgarde theater which is reenactment. It is meant to show power structures, make guilt, shame, the forces of history more palpable. But what if reenactment becomes politics? Does this have the same enlightening effect? Or is it like history [more]
I only met Marcel Reich-Ranicki once. It was at his apartment in Frankfurt, I was there with my friend and colleague Dominik Wichmann for an interview about everything, Reich-Ranicki*s wife Theophila opened the door, she led us into the living room, there was a large black sofa and [more]
And so we went. Beautiful Alexanderplatz. A lot of people. They came for the candidate. Or for the beer. Lou took a lot of stickers home, a two lunch boxes, a bit of candy, a few pens. It was a good place for the Social Democrats. It is [more]
It was, in a way, day one. This is where it happened. So we went. To see and understand. Alexanderplatz, the place where the young Jonny K. was beaten to death, the place where the GDR had ice cream, the place where there used to be the gate, [more]
Yes, it sounds like Joseph Conrad, and yes, this is what Lichtenberg still is for many people: The horror, the horror. Heart of darkness. This is why we went there. Because we dare. Because we boldly challenge old assumptions. Because we had Monkey 47 and Thomas Henry with [more]
And what a night it was. Pankaj came over to meet me at Pariser Platz. He was in town to see his old friend Hal Hartley who had just left Berlin because he took up a teaching job which he was forced to take up because nobody will [more]
We took a cab to the election party of the SPD. The result, this much was clear after the first forecast at six pm., would be unpleasant for the Social-Democrats. And at the Lindengarten, another very German pub where politics is being made in this country, the mood [more]
If it was bad before, it is worse afterwards. The major political parties in Germany had more or less given up the game of politics heading towards the elections, now they refuse to even consider doing the possible, thinking the realistic, enlarging the field of options instead of [more]
It was a cold morning when I met Pussy Riot, in the basement of a bookstore not far from a subway station where a man waited for me by the stairs. He did not talk much on the way, his English was poor, my Russian non-existent. I was [more]
Now that Armen Avanessian brought it up, it might be time to talk about Mid-Atlantic. It was Anne Philippi who said the other day in the skype chat that we had between Los Angeles, Zurich, Delhi, Vienna and Berlin that she had heard people talk about this new [more]
What happened? It looks like Versailles was nothing but a trailer park somewhere in the vicinity of Cologne. There are empty bottles of Coke. There is fruit on the table. The furniture is half royal, half brothel. A fake fire-place in gold. An apocalyptically huge gold cat, one [more]
What Don DeLillo achieves in such a perfect way is this mixture of looking at the present with a critical perspective (is there any other way) and understanding more than condemning what he sees and describes. For a while now I have been trying to remember where that [more]
I saw Leonce und Lena today, a play which might be overrated or overly beautiful, I could not tell from the children*s version we went to with my kids at the Opernhaus Zürich. I had seen the play before, a couple of times actually, the adult version. I [more]
This is an experiment. I am reading James Salter, 88, about his life, a life, about love and sex, so far, marriage in the fifties, New York in the fifties. There is a certain Mad Men glow over this book All That Is which seems to capture something [more]
Something came up, and I had to interrupt reading James Salter and start reading Gideon Lewis-Kraus instead. I know Gideon from a few years back, he was recommended by a friend, Christopher and I were looking for somebody to help us with this 80*81 research about the great [more]
Everybody is looking for something. Everybody seems in crisis. Everything is crumbling. Well, the appearance is still there. You look the same. Just a little worn. Just a little tired. But underneath. The shallows. And it is not only you. There is insecurity all around. It used to [more]
The thing about Thomas Pynchon is, always has been, for me at least, this strange combination of a certain Vorfreude because of the newness of the new work and a nauseating feeling the first, depending, 45 to 450 pages on. This confusion, is there a higher purpose to [more]
I wanted to write this post in German, because I thought there would not be a good English equivalent to the word angenehm which means pleasant, more or less – so is pleasant a good category for thought, for culture, for judgement, for measuring art, people, the world? [more]
What do you do when you sit up in the Swiss mountains eating ecologically correct beef served by the most hunble of Swiss? If you have come here on a boat across the Vierwaldstätter See with captains who look like all they want to do all day is [more]
They used to say that we live in an age of Nervosität. This was in the 1910s and 1920s. Today it is less the age which is nervös, it is more the people. So what is the difference? It is the difference between a war without and a [more]
It is a song of the death, this existential ballad, it is a night without end and a sleep with no coming back, it is red like the moon and dark like the sun, it is Büchner and it is rock’n’roll, good and plain, with a voice full [more]
One. There is no reason to wait for any literary prize, any time, let alone the Nobel. Two. Prizes are modern day shamanism. Three. And as such not totally untrustworthy. Four. It can be like watching a volcano; you may not like it, but there is nothing much [more]
If the American Empire is really to fail, like all empires before it and after it, it will at least be well documented. There it is all, paranoia, autodestruction, total failure: the collapse of society on all levels as shown on The Wire, the collapse of the individual [more]
So Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature 2013, and everybody is content as they should be because: the first Canadian, a woman with grey hair and bright eyes, a “master of the short form” is something to be content about. A good thing. Well, I [more]
Claire and Francis. Two nice names. Not two nice people. Their marriage is a vow: to succeed. Failure is not an option, as they say. I am not sure yet how far they would go. He might go farther than she does, that is so far the impression. [more]
It happened. Claire trumped Francis. And I was surprised, I was not stunned, it was only TV after all. But after a while, this is the thing with a series, you are they. So when I wrote yesterday that the marriage of House of Cards was one of [more]
Sometimes I am late adapter, sometimes not. In the case of Miley Cyrus I am not sure. I guess I am late, but then again, what does that mean if you see a girl on a wrecking ball swing through a studio full of plastic walls? When was [more]
When I think of Michael, I think of him sitting in front of a school or what it exactly was, I don*t know, he has his dark blue down jacket on and jeans and brown desert boots and he has this book by Einar Schleef in his hand [more]
What is it about manhood? There is talk, there is envy, there is ambition, there are lies, there are misunderstandings, there is silence, there is boredom, there is food, there are women, there are friends, there are enemies, there is soccer, there is sex, there is the thing [more]
What is it about American Express? What is their business modell? I once made the mistake, out of sheer conceit, to give in to a woman who presented to me the Platinum Card as a way out of the constraints of the middle-class, my ticket to a world [more]
I ordered a book today because I was listening to NPR on the way to Friedenau which is a very remote part of Berlin if you come from Mitte and Mitte is Berlin and all you see every day is Mitte with its Mittepeople in their Mitteclothes – [more]
I want to start a little project: I want to uncover the meaning of Gin and Tonic. What is it about this drink? Why is it so of this moment? Why is the moment so Gin and Tonic? Where was it a while ago? Why is it everywhere [more]
I think Gin Tonic is austerity and hedonism at the same time. Getting drunk without getting pissed. You can have the cake and eat it all. It is a drink in an age of crisis. It is stabilty, security, without Spießigkeit. You can rely on Gin Tonic. You [more]
It is there. At any given moment. And it is always elusive. One can never catch it, name it, live with it. One can never be one. So why is there this romantic notion that in writing you can be yourself? As if this was some holy sacrament [more]
This is what happened 2013: I had arranged a few days back with a writer whose name you might or might not know to meet at Mogg & Melzer on Auguststraße around four. He wanted to go and see the game of Alba Berlin later, I wanted to [more]
I was going to read the fascinating new edition of Merkur, the flashy, amazing, heart-stoppingly astute magazine for retired German professors and stuck-up Feuilletonisten – I was at their office on Mommsenstraße a while ago to witness the latest scoop of German publishing, a new edition of the [more]
The trouble with a classicist he looks at a tree That’s all he sees, he paints a tree The trouble with a classicist he looks at the sky He doesn’t ask why, he just paints a sky The trouble with an impressionist, he looks at a log And [more]
The rift was there, infront of our eyes. There was a sense of time, a sense of ending, a sense of urgency. Armen was very adamant about it. The new way of thinking, the new way of doing things, or doing business, of bringing people together, the new [more]
We talked about hedonism, and Armen, maybe without really meaning to, sounded like that might be a problem. The good life. The pretty things. The pretty people. The pretty clothes. I knew what he meant. But this is the problem, right, of 2000 years of falsehood. Because: Hedonism [more]
So the rift is really a strategic thing. It is a border to cross, a threshold, it tells you: Now you are here, but maybe you want to be there, so if you want to be there, you better move. If you don*t want to move, that is [more]
Use ideology wisely. But use it. Ideology is not necessarily bad. It gets things moving. It shakes things up. It puts a certain force and urgency behind arguments and observations that if lacking will be felt like a bucket draging behind a boat as you try to move [more]
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. This is, of course, what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, about age and fame and love and wisdom and trying to push ahead and fight, for yourself, for what you believe in, what you want [more]
America can’t deal with Miley Cyrus and this picture shows us why. 1) M. will upset Disney, because they can’t forget about Hannah Montana (Miley’s old character as a child, that made them Billions and Billions) and naturally they would like her NOT to wear things like a comic [more]
5.14 pm. Quentin Tarantino just walked into Soho House. I am surprised, he is wearing belly bottom jeans, they are cut to open in the back. Nobody here would ever wear them. Quentin is sitting down for a drink and is reading his script to himself. I am [more]
I love Cara Delevingne- (the left one next to Rihanna, in NYC yesterday) I think it’s the fat eyebrows. Or her ripped stockings. (You can’t see them here) Cara is just 21, but she deserves love from over 21 year olds. Cara is alive and she has fat [more]
Carine Roitfeld et moi, earlier this year. Today starts her movie “Mademoiselle C”. You should check it out. Madame gives advice to all of us. There are only two schools of philosophy in fashion. One is Karl Lagerfeld and the other one is Mademoiselle C. We should learn [more]
I saw Russell Brand yesterday. He walked into a restaurant like he always does: peacock with tattoos, head a little to high, like an aged and snotty english royal. Russell’s face says “world, listen to me, I have things to tell you”, his legs: yoga strong. Russell always [more]
Today we went to “Costco”, this gigantic supermarket with sizes and packages that are too big for any human being. The first time I went there my head was spinning, too many sausages, too much meat, too many red reindeer, teddies and pandas, bigger than a queen size [more]
I was conflicted this morning. I wanted to write about the fact that Lars von Trier’s new movie “Nymphomaniac” has the length of 5 hours (think “Ben Hur”, but next time.) I got distracted by Russell Brand. From today on we can consider him as one of the first [more]
Russell Brand isn’t the only one going back in time really far. If you are looking for new perspectives on Hollywood, Entertainment and the Nazis, here we go. You might want to look into this book.”The collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler” by Ben Urward. It’s full of amazing [more]
Tonight I went to see my favourite yoga guru. Yes, that’s right, I know it sounds weird in the first place, especially if you are born catholic like me, there is no guru. (Jesus, that’s it) I remember though that a lot of people I knew in their [more]
Last night, my guru talked about great expectations and how dangerous they can be. After class, I thought of Charlie Sheen, who I am supposed to meet tomorrow. I had great expectations. I thought Charlie would be amazing on that april night in Detroit, on stage in 2011. [more]
This is how Charlie looked this morning. (It’s not my picture, you are never allowed to take one during these press junkets.) He looked like an old child. Really, that’ s the first thing I thought. An extremely entertaining, middle-aged child. Charlie apologised, he was a little weak, [more]
The Emmys are coming. On Sunday. And these three guys are nominated. These three guys are the new men. They are not movie stars anymore, thank god. They are so real. Adam Driver from “Girls”, who does not get girls, is America. Mongolian, slightly russian looking, but total [more]
Last night I saw Kiernan Shipka aka Sally Draper, daughter of Don and Betty Draper. She arrived in a silver Honda, not a fancy car. Maybe her dad drove her, I don’t know. She put out her little legs and feet and then there was Kiernan in heels [more]
Last night was one of these nice little LA surprise nights. You never know what happens. Suddenly at the party Rufus Wainwright sat down in the living room and sang like a nightingale. We did not see him the whole evening and felt a little stupid since we did [more]
Last night we went to party with HBO. Amazing party room, everything was done in peacock feather colour. Interior designer Billy Butchkavitz knows, that Hollywood does NOT appreciate any kind of understatement. HBO won, big time, Jeff Daniels ran around like a crazy person, as he got the [more]
Kevin Spacey. The Giant. I met Kevin Spacey this morning to talk about “House of Cards” and all I could think of was his bracelet. I got obsessed with it. It was blue, rubber gum and it said “Be strong” (in neon yellow). He shook his hand up [more]
Ok. Another Miley C. day. Now she is “On the cover of the Rolling Stone”. And how. Like a skinhead hip hop vixen, licking her expensive hollywood pool water from one shoulder. I am conflicted. It seems weird to criticise Miley. She is a pop star and needs attention. [more]
This is one of my recipes to get into a good mood instantly: looking at pictures of Madonna and Sean Penn. It’s totally useless for other people, but for me there is “something”. Back then, as a couple they had this aura of a huge firecracker, that could [more]
Last night we went to see “RUSH”. Daniel Brühl as Niki Lauda is actually very entertaining with his Austria-English. He is really good in doing the “rat face” and performs well as the bitchy and talented driver from Vienna. The story: young Niki Lauda’s and young James Hunt’s [more]
Ok. We are patient. At the moment Hillary is still relaxing and indulging in “just ordinary, everyday pleasures” (Laughing at the family dog, watching stupid movies, taking long walks and going for a swim.) with her family. But soon, Hillary will be ready for 2016. (www.readyforhillary.com) I can’t [more]
How do people distinguish themselves from other people in LA? It’s no longer possible through a Chanel bag, too many people showcase that. Kardashians, High School Girls, Yogies…who ever. Me too. BUT there is a better way these days. Coffee. Where to drink coffee, where to buy coffee. [more]
Why did it take so long to put Jay-Z on the cover of VANITY FAIR? Seriously, Jay Z has the same meaning as Frank Sinatra or Jackson Pollock. Listening to “Empire State of Mind” gives me more goosebumps than any pair of heels or Lanvin dresses. More than [more]
We went to look at furniture tonight, store opening in Hollywood, organic furniture. Something like that. We did not pay so much attention to the sofas, because, over orange flavoured vodka drinks, we got into a heavy discussion about Instagram. What is it? Why is it strange to [more]
First picture: Kim Kardashian a couple of days ago in Paris, styled by Euro-Queen-Carine Roitfeld. Second picture: Kim Kardashian years ago. This is how we know Kardashian. She represents the Beverly Hills/Rodeo-Drive Face: smiling to show your über-white teeth, heavy eye make up, flesh coloured lips, über-straight hair [more]
Amber Heard. She will be in the new Robert Rodriguez movie. Amber. I can’t say much about her, besides that she is dating Johnny Depp (and female french models before) and reads a lot of Hunter S. Thompson books and that she has an amazing sense of style, she [more]
Just saw the new “Carrie” (Original by Brian de Palma from 1976 with Sissy Spacek.) Back then, the evil was the sex, the cheerleader bitches and their violent boyfriends. That was it, kind of an analog evil. The evil now in 2013 is in the cell phone and without [more]
Just met Julianne Moore this afternoon in a tiny, expensive hotel room. I couldn’t stop looking at her freckles. They are the most delightful and elegant freckles I’ve ever seen. They are everywhere. Hands, legs, feet, face. She has them all over the place and Julianne’s freckles are [more]
This afternoon, I walked through my old Berlin -Mitte neighbourhood. I had forgotten some things about Berlin. 1) Max Raabe can never be a real superstar in Berlin. His concert announcements in Mitte are not very well placed, one is located in strange corners at Borsigstrasse. Raabe used [more]
Years ago, we always made jokes about Christopher Roth. Every time there was picture of Hugh Grant in a gossip rag like “Gala”, we would show it to Christopher and tell him, how he looked like Hugh Grant. Of course Christopher hated that, as Hugh Grant at that [more]
I went to dinner with a few of my favourite Berlin people. “Zweiraumwohnung” (Tworoomapartment) The amazing, redhead Inga Humpe, the mastermind Tommy Eckart (and of course band member Aram aka Malakoff Kowalski, the cool persian dude) Their new record is out and you should buy it and make [more]
Walk in Mitte, part 2. Iggy everywhere. On books, on cups and plates, on posters. It is like Iggy Pop is a saint to Berlin and he might replace the Berlin bear one day. I saw Iggy five times today on my way to Spirit Yoga, more often [more]
This morning I had a coffee with my friend Daggi, we went to this super coffee place called “The Barn” in Mitte. Basically everyone here seems to be american. It was pleasant and relaxed, a good sign. The city is on a good way and is leaving the [more]
We went to B.Bs, meaning Bertolt Brecht’s grave today, since it was just across the street. I have never been there before and I was surprised that he has just this little stone and a grave that looks like Prada designed it. Really simple, protestant, NOT flashy, whereas [more]
It is a late night tonight, tomorrow, there will be a lot to talk about. Bonne Nuit.
I am shocked at how cheap Brecht has become. The price reduction on his book is insane, from 1280,00 Euro to 249,00. You could never do that with a Philip Lim sweater, just reduce it from 300 USD to 50 USD, unless it had a huge hole or [more]
New book from Steve Jobs’ ex-girlfriend.”The bite in the apple” Really? The title! Like a bad fairytale. Of course the relationship was “complicated” (No facebook status, it just seemed like a rather chilly sex thing) But who thought that Apple is based on a sex thing, LSD, The [more]
Every time I come to Palm Springs, it is too hot and too quiet. (That’s exactly the reason why people come here, and me too.) Every time I try to figure out, who lives here? Who and what is the “real” palm springs persona, besides a retired American [more]
I was waiting for my team at this great bohemian place in Palm Springs, when I found this incredible book about Lee Miller. I was always attracted to Miss Miller, my photographer that day asked me about her, who she was and I said, she worked with “Ray [more]
Today, I was under the strong impression that LA is run by “Ladies who Lunch” (A term from the old american society world, describing rich, fashionable woman that lunch, because they have too much time and money, if that’s possible) The tables in Hollywood are filled with them. Around [more]
I was always interested in Joaquin Phoenix cleft lip. He is one of the actors, that play with his lips. They are a big part of his art. When Joaquin talks the cleft is moving up and down and you can’t help staring at it. The cleft makes [more]
Back in the day, a celebrity tried to look sleek. Interesting, at least good, when they expected to be photographed. For instance, when Jacky O. walked down fifth avenue, her loafers looked stainless, her hair fresh like a flower bouquet, her smile like a wise woman. Her flared [more]
I watched “Gravity” three days ago. Nothing “happens” and if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. George Clooney in space playing his country music under his astronaut suit. Sandra Bullock is basically breathing and not breathing. Still, you are watching. You enjoy watching nothing. The quiet, [more]
This morning, the Halloween stores were jam-packed with customers. I walked into one of the stores on Hollywood Boulevard. They are the best. You can buy and be anything you want. A dollar bill. A country. Or less “abstract”: Walter White or Jesus Christ. Behind the counter there [more]
Rare picture. Lou Reed (middle) John Cale (left) and Andy Warhol (right) all smiling, lightness. No harm. Lou Reed, who just died, was not famous for being “light”. You looked at Lou and saw all the heaviness, the disturbance, the danger and the grandezza of an underground rocker [more]
You could see it coming. This year, there would be a philosophical fight between the new Hollywood minimalism (The grey ghost is supposedly Leonardo di Caprio in his Halloween costume on Sunday) and new barock style, that was gone for a while. (The girl in the grey swimsuit [more]
60pages. Next week, my 60pages time will come to an end and then there will be a follow up, but more about this next week. First I was not sure, if I wanted to write a daily blog. (Georg told me though, that it would turn you into [more]
I was always dreaming of Candice Bergen’s mask. Made of fur, possibly rabbit fur, it was the most elegant mask that a woman wore at Truman Capote’s Black&White Ball,––the rabbit mask was special. Candice wasn’t a bunny––in the Hefner sense––she was a sleek, elegant rabbit. What’s so great about [more]
Costumes I saw tonight: Cats, lots of cats. Some with a mini skirt and tail. I have to admit cat costumes are fun. Mavie Hörbiger and I once had the best time ever at IKEA. We laughed like crazy, while trying on ears and tails. Almost getting thrown [more]
That’s the thing in LA. You go to some of the events or dinner parties and you never know if it is real. Or what is real. In LA, I often feel like Alice in Wonderland. Things are too big. Or too small. Too loud, too wonderful, too [more]
After a long time off talking about ideas and planning how to put those into practice tomorrow will be the first of hopefully many Slacktivism days in India.After a long time off talking about ideas and planning how to put those into practice tomorrow will be the first of hopefully many Slacktivism days in India.
Slacktivism is based on the idea to use one’s birth given status and privileges to bring a positive change to the lives of the ones who hadn’t been as lucky as they actually deserve to be.
What my fellow slacktivist and me will initiate is a social activity experiment and we all are very excited about its results.
I had been to this area on the outskirts of Delhi many times before. What drove me there initially was the unbelievable sight of a gigantic garbage mountain. What motivated me to spend longer time there, were the people whose silhouettes I saw working on top of the [more]
After many years in India you sometimes start to think that you have seen a lot, maybe almost everything, and that there are not many things that would surprise you.
So it is always much appreciated to be reminded here and there that it is not like this, not at all actually.After many years in India you sometimes start to think that you have seen a lot, maybe almost everything, and that there are not many things that would surprise you.
So it is always much appreciated to be reminded here and there that it is not like this, not at all actually.
Another day of slacktivism comes to an end and slowly but steadily the sun sets at a home for disadvantaged children.
It is almost impossible to imagine how the lives of these children must have been like before they found a home, a family, in this incredibly beautiful and tranquil oasis in the middle of nowhere.
It is a good place to be.
It is a good place for slacklining.
For them.
With them.
Dear mobile thief I wonder what you were thinking I wonder if you really needed the money I wonder how you could be so incredibly fast
After yesterday’s unexpected mobile loss not much has changed. For the moment some older mobile has to substitute for what had been so smartly purloined. But the substitute is not as smart anymore as it once was. These days it lost its capability of visually capturing anything whatsoever. Unfortunately [more]
I guess that’s just the way it is. I guess that’s the way it always was. I guess that’s the way it always will be. There is not much you can do about that and even if you could, why would you? I guess some things don’t need [more]
Time passed.
Change happened.
The mobile is back.
And with it the possibility of sharing what deserves to be shared.
Like a picture of these two men. Or rather a man and a boy.
The room in which they sit and dye clothes from early morning till late evening is not only their workspace but also their housing.
It is difficult to describe but even harder, if not impossible, to imagine.
Look around your office.
Look around your home.
Compare, think, relativize.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4pFpV_YYKI&w=400 And as so often it is much easier to say these things as to eventually put them into practice. Believe, focus, try.
Just imagine you are 16 years of age.
Just imagine you live in one of Delhi’s rundown neighborhoods.
Just imagine your family has lost all hope in you and doesn’t care about you anymore.
Just imagine your day is dictated by the urge of quenching your need for the next artificial peace of mind.
Just imagine you are addicted to injecting generic pharmaceutical drugs since almost two years.
Just imagine you inject these drugs in places so filthy that an “average” person wouldn’t even dare to sit on the ground.
Just imagine what the older, more experienced, users might could do with you when nobody is watching.
If you would be capable of imagining all this you could get an idea of how this boys life must be. Everyday.
Beyond imagination…
I am pretty sure that slacklining is one of the best ways to spend your time. Especially if you not only do it with someone, but for someone. Slacktivism. What will be the final outcome of it? To be very honest I don’t know yet but I also [more]
Every choice we make triggers an action which in turn triggers a reaction which ultimately leaves a lasting impression.
Yesterday the unavoidable happened. I had no chance of contributing to this precious blog and this for the first time since we all started sharing our thoughts, impressions and ideas with you. Yes I feel a little bad about that but given the fact the my non connectivity [more]
Instead of sharing this picture of this woman cutting grass for her livestock I initially wanted to share another impression with you which struck me while spending time in a remote village in rural Uttar Pradesh. The sun had already set and as I was leaving the house [more]
After a long and quite sketchy journey from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar the arrival at one of the many villages spread all over this East Indian state is much appreciated. Yet don’t be fooled about the tranquility of the photograph. Especially in this region of the country something [more]
As the journey through Bihar’s rural interior continues a lot of interesting characters cross one’s path. The overwhelming multitude of each persons story of life, stories of joy and sorrow, stories of love and hate, peace and violence, are not only almost impossible to grasp but even more [more]
No matter for how long you live in a certain country there are always a few things which you never get used to, you actually never should get used to. The omnipresent, overwhelming poverty under which millions of people in rural and urban India have to survive day [more]
Traveling in a car and watching the outside world passing by is like watching a great movie, maybe even one of the greatest movies of all times. Life itself. In all its magnificence consisting of endless combinations of moving shapes and colors it craves to be observed and [more]
Photography can be a tricky endeavor. You always search for THE perfect moment, framed and frozen in a flawless composition. The camera, ultimately being a limited expansion of your eye, moves your body back and forth, left and right, up and down. It’s not a rare occasion that [more]
Dearest Gandhi Ji Today is your birthday and it seems that except on the rupee notes you don’t play an important role anymore. Almost worse it seems that you actually slowly seem to fade into oblivion and with you all these brilliant thoughts and ideas that once brought [more]
After traveling a few thousand kilometers via air and a few hundred kilometers via land India’s capital once more welcomes one home. The impressions and experiences of the last days get processed and so will the purely digital output of the journey. Things take time to settle and [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
But not the kind that actually unfold in front of you, the moving stills, real life. No. Today photographs just unfolded in folders observed through my screen. It was editing time. Yet for the moment there is nothing visually I could unfold in front of you, for you, [more]
Suddenly your are surrounded by hundreds of people dressed in fine Sarees and suits. A band is playing the drums while the groom appears on a white horse that is almost as fancy as the person sitting on it. The sun is slowly setting over the ocean framing [more]
It’s holiday time and there is not much to tell. You enjoy your life and take it easy. What a privilege. What a gift.
Memory to myself… “The big city can be like a kraken. Leave it as often as possible and know that it’s worth it.” “Ah… and don’t forget the slackline.”
It was a rainy morning and the little alleys and paths of the neighborhood quickly got flooded and turned into small muddy streams. Shoes and jeans got soaked with water in no time and the tiny umbrella could barely protect anything from the ocean pouring out of the [more]
It’s the time of the year when the city slowly but steadily shifts into the pre winter mood. Durga Puja is about to end, Eid al-Adha is about to start and Diwali will come soon. The air is filled with the smell of blooming frangipani trees and the [more]
Yes, day before yesterday I also posted a picture of an elephant. And yes I would like the things for you to see here as diverse as possible. And yes that also includes not to repeat, especially in such short time. However there are things that can’t be [more]
Yes the idea behind 60pages is to post something every day. And so far I could keep up with that. Except on these days when you are out in the middle of nowhere and basically have to live without the “comforts” of a working mobile connection. Yesterday another [more]
Always helpful to find some time out. And especially with these days’ golden rays of the sun a real treat. Always helpful to find some time out. And especially with these day`s golden rays of the sun a real treat.
It’s been at least two years now that this man changed everything I thought to know about addiction. Not only about his addiction in particular but even more about addictions in general. Mine, yours, ours. This strange and often hideous craving for something more, a different perception of [more]
The irony is that what is written on the wooden key pendant seems to be an irony of an irony. Not only because of the other more “controversial” content in the photograph. It’s neither true nor is it false. Trying to define this picture by it’s content is [more]
It’s a public park. People savor the great weather. They have a picnic with friends or family. People enjoy a break, some time out, the freedom of freedom itself. A few families are working though. They are hired to take care of the plants, bushes, trees, meadows. A [more]
Not much today expect the pleasant memories of the beach occurring while being bound to the computer screen. A room is a room is a room is a room. A beach is a beach is a beach is a beach.
Yes once more it’s time to leave Delhi and hit the road. But before the road gets hit a plane is taken. And before the plane is taken passing time at the airport happened. And that again is how this picture came to life. As simple as that.
Up in the mountains of North India the air is fresh, the view is clear, the forests lush, the water cold, the clouds fluffy, the mountains high, the people welcoming, the light soft, the shadows deep. Actually you should visit to see, hear, smell, feel, for yourself.
For the ones who have read a few posts of mine I think there is no need to explain why yesterday’s post wasn’t happening. For the ones who haven’t the answer / excuse is as trivial as always. No network. That’s the way things are in Uttar Pradesh, [more]
You are lying in your bed and the rays of the sun gently shine through the window into your room. You want to get up but somehow feel like staying a little longer in bed. But suddenly you hear this awesome music played by instruments whose sounds had [more]
And realizing that can be a pretty brutal experience. Yet after accepting what you will never be able to change, everything becomes a little easier. Life, the one and only true teacher amongst all the other quacks.
An airplane without windows would be a terrible thing. Especially while spending hours and hours cruising over this magnificent planet we call earth. There is so much to see. Endless variations of natural and man-made structures can compete easily with the terrible TV screen in front of you [more]
At the end it’s the same all over and over and over again. You have the ones who make it out alive. And the others how unfortunately pay the highest price for an often totally meaningless endeavor. Ultimately they all had been part of a perverted game of [more]
And there was light. And I saw the light, and it was good. Very good actually. Or as a friend of mine and I would express it in a very simple term: Goil!
From the National Geographic headquarter To the DC streets and their magnificent autumn colored trees Plus sometimes it’s nice not to think pictures all the time so please excuse the slightly uncreative post.
Yesterday it happened again. I was listening to a talk by the photographer Greg Constantine who was given the stage at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC to present his ongoing photography project on the ethnic minority of the Rohingya people who are facing a genocide [more]
That’s where the person lives who has this great connection to the German chancellor’s cell phone…and basically any other device or communication…of everyone else. Yes he can.
NYC is always busy and you easily seem to get soaked into that kind of hectic rush that almost everyone roaming around here seems to be into. So it’s nice to take a brief break and spend some time with old friends.
The Bundestagswahlkreis (federal electoral district) Berlin-Lichtenberg (Wahlkreis/ Constituency 86) is one of Berlin’s twelve constituencies for elections to the German Bundestag and includes the Lichtenberg district. The 2009 elections: Thus, Gesine Lötzsch (DIE LINKE) won again the direct mandate constituency for Berlin-Lichtenberg. DIE LINKE (The Left) came out [more]
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was the first professor for experimental physics in Germany. He is remembered for his notebooks, which he called Sudelbücher, (scrapbooks) and for his discovery of the strange treelike patterns now called “Lichtenberg figures.” They are branching electric discharges that from time to time appear on [more]
In a tower you not only have a perfect sight you can also be for yourself. That’s why Carl Jung built his own tower at the Zürichsee. Arno Brandlhuber, Sam Chermayeff and Christopher Roth once walked with students from the Wolfgang-Pauli-Institute up on the hill down to Jung’s [more]
Without any effort Gesine Lötzsch repeats her list of demands of DIE LINKE, the LEFT. “Our program? One hundred percent social!” Minimum pension, minimum wage, abolish Hartz IV. “Lichtenberg is indeed not an island,” says Lötzsch. She doesn’t even try to go into Lichtenberg’s specifics. At the end [more]
Many people would rather not vote in the upcoming elections. Peter Sloterdijk just called it “Lethargokratie”, (Lethargocracy). He will not vote. On the other hand they tell you that you vote for the radicals if you don’t vote. Because these are the people who go voting anyway. And [more]
2013 marks the 725th time, Lichtenberg was mentioned first in a margravial deed dated 1288. A historical publication is now issued by the district office. Author and historian Prof. Jürgen Hofmann will present it on Tuesday to the Mayor Andreas Geisel. 12:00 noon in the museum at the [more]
They have a huge screen to watch the Champions League. Usually older men sit there all day long. With their summer suits they look like the Central Committee of the SED during vacation. Most of the top level SED personal were very good ping-pong players. Sometimes younger people [more]
This pretends the display wouldn’t work. No, no, no, it is the whole tram, which doesn’t work. Until October! It’s much quieter around Fennpfuhl now it does feel like in the countryside. The trams do have Flüsterschienen (whispering rails) but the M8 has this long and straight part [more]
In yesterday’s pick we announced to open the REWE stickers: REWE calls the stickers Wunderwelt (Wonderworld). There is also a REWE Bio World and die Feine Welt, a sub-brand which offers Himalayan salt and Spanish olives. Welt an sich. A Heideggerian Welt-thing at REWE? Wonderworld. It’s like the [more]
Join us at the tower. We’ll have Gin Tonics (Monkey 47 Gin) and biscuits and a chef from Pakistan prepares some food and we have a drone as described in Christopher Roth’s second last pick. From 4:30 to 7:30pm. You can either get there from Hertzbergstraße, Entrance Industriepark/ [more]
52.530753,13.491758 Join us at the tower. We’ll have Gin Tonics (Monkey 47 Gin) and biscuits and a chef from Pakistan prepares some food and we have a drone as described in Christopher Roth’s second last pick. From 4:30 to 7:30pm. You can either get there from Hertzbergstraße, Entrance [more]
Tage Wie Diese / Days like these is a song by the band Die Toten Hosen. The album was called Ballast of the Republic. The music is written by Andreas von Holst the lyrics by singer Campino in collaboration with actress Birgit Minichmayr. Die Toten Hosen didn’t [more]
Elektrokohle Lichtenberg was founded in 1872, under the name Siemens Gebr & Co. During the First and Second World Wars Siemens & Co. was a major armament factory. After the end of the war it transformed into a Soviet corporation (SAG) and was held in trust. In 1954, [more]
The Park, 1914 by Paul Klee. Paul Klee was born in December 1879, in Switzerland; his father was a German music teacher, his mother a Swiss singer. Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. Klee got deep into color theory. His lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory are extraordinary. [more]
Here in Lichtenberg the money is on the road. And meat. And you find huge insects. In the dense forests. (here: Fennpfuhl).
Dem Leben gewidmet – die Vögel von Tschernobyl Juri Sinkewitsch, UDSSR – Sandstein 1987 Dedicated to life – The Birds of Chernobyl Yuri Petrovich Sinke, USSR – Sandstone 1987
Another sandstone sculpture around the corner. We thought it would be the same artist as yesterday’s piece. Wrong. It’s by S. Krepp and one year older, from 1986. It is called: “German resistance against fascism”
Around Anton-Saefkow-Platz they had a party yesterday. A municipal get-together, which had this 1960s Eastern atmosphere to it. Nevertheless two guys with sunglasses performed classic rock ‘n’ roll: “This was the big hit here in the Federal Republic in 1957,” one of the guys said standing in front [more]
Impressionen / Impressions Klaus-Lutz Gaedicke – DDR / GDR Sandstein / Sandstone, 1987
Next to the old Carl-von-Linné–Schule ist the new Carl-von-Linné–Schule. Almost the same building. Not far from the Carl-von-Linné–Schule is another abandoned school on Paul Junius Straße:
The Sonla Bistro at Storkower Bogen. Around two in the afternoon the place is empty. The fountain is pretty loud, decent Chinese music––or Thai? Five Asian employees sit next to the bar and have lunch. They are all pretty young. In their mid-twenties. Chinese and Thai dishes. No [more]
Next to the Towers and the Asian centre on Herzbergstraße opened a Pakistani diner ––no name yet–– in three containers. From Monday on the diner will be open from 6 in the morning (breakfast) until 10 at night. Today was the opening, very nice. A lot of well-dressed [more]
The Libero on Karl Lade Straße is actually not really a restaurant. They are not allowed to sell food: “We are a smoker’s bar.” But they have Sky. And Sky shows football. Quite a lot of Bayern fans.
In this shopping mall at Landsberger Allee is a Japanese restaurant on the first floor. It was closed but it looks very nice.
SV Lichtenberg 47 is a sports club with mainly footballers among its 900 members. The other departments are bowling, boxing, aerobics, gymnastics, line dancing, table tennis, and volleyball. The club was established in 1945 as Sportgruppe Lichtenberg-Nord in the Russian-occupied East Berlin and in 1947 it merged with [more]
Everything alright, thanks. Business as usual. Opening windows, drinking pils beer, and the soccer museum.
Die Welt (Forum-Hotel) Martin Fengel Private Collection, Lichtenberg
Foto*Grafo *27, Campinas, 6*19*89, Brasil, A*R*L fundado este desebho em 1961 (este quadro costa 15 cruzados.)
Located on the other side of Berlin, like a 45 minutes drive away, lies an area called ‘Charlottenburg.’ Everything seems different there. Different than Lichtenberg. Charlottenburg is also a term, an expression, if you want to label something posh, not Munich posh, not Milan, it’s more the old [more]
General Idea’s Test Pattern: T.V. Dinner Plates from the Miss General Idea, 40×30.2cm, 1988 General Idea The Standards Fibre-based badge 1988 – 1991
Anton-Saefkow-Platz #3 The Pakistani vendors don’t like to be photographed. The Vietnamese don’t care. The whole area is somewhat paranoid, isolated, afraid of bills, of officials, afraid of people at the door.
not the display. Only two days after predicted the M8 is back. After Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz there is still Schienenersatzverkehr, a bus stuck on Torstraße. Whatsoever, the M8 is back.
S-Bahn Landsberger Allee and the back of the Velodrom, the indoor cycling arena. This is Pankow on the border to Lichtenberg. Next to it is a swimming pool, both built in 1996 by Dominique Perrault in the course of Berlin’s application for the 2000 Summer Olympics.
–MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX–
prophecy: 4 tourists on 4 camels with scout half bear half tree oyster (with pearl) giant barrel sponge (Xestospongia muta/Schmidtia muta) REWE, Lichtenberg
Music of Germany’s migrant workers revived in new compilations. Mark Terkessidis, one of the curators of the Heimatlieder project, remembers tracking down a Vietnamese workers’ choir at the Dong Xuan supermarket in the Lichtenberg area of Berlin. “Our jaws just dropped. There’s a real lack of genuine feelings [more]
Lichtenberg shows solidarity with the Oct 26th Driving Campaign “If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it’s a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.” Christopher [more]
“A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
28.10., Monday evening just before 9.30pm: A 76-year-old noticed nearby the Lichtenberg S-Bahn station, that he was followed by two men. In a side street they beat him to the ground. However, the two robbers had not reckoned with attentive passersby. Both robbers, aged 23 and 24 years [more]
Achilles G. Rizzoli, Virginia Tamke Symbolically Represented, The Tower of the Hour, 1935 miscellaneous: The Central Asian Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, Presented by Ayatgali Tuleubek and Tiago Bom: Encyclopedic Palace designed by Maurino Auriti:
Arriving in Schönefeld you take the S-Bahn directly to Lichtenberg, Storkowerstraße. Usually you do. If the S-Bahn doesn’t work they come up with Schienenersatz-Verkehr, an Ersatz-bus. Ersatz as you all know from Freud signifies compensatory. This is how the compensatory station looks like: 27,4% Reichsbahn pre-1945, 27,4% [more]
The MahuGang “Back to the roots” (Marrabenta) 17 Laurinda Quan họ Choir Berlin 24 Ba Quan Moi Trau
L’asiacenter. Dong Xuan. The heart of Lichtenberg. The future of Lichtenberg. Hội đồng hương Quảng Bình tại CHLBĐ. Hội CCB Việt Nam tại Berlin-Brandenburg CHLB Đức.Hội Phật tử Việt Nam tại CHLB Đức THÔNG BÁO Hội đồng hương Quảng Bình tại CHLBĐ Hội CCB Việt Nam tại [more]
L’asiacenter. Dong Xuan. The heart of Lichtenberg. The future of Lichtenberg. The Original Don Xuan in Hanoi, French colonial Les Halles:
The Great Tower, Giorgio de Chirico, 1913. The Red Tower, Giorgio de Chirico, 1913. The Nostalgia of the Infinite, Giorgio de Chirico, 1913.
Before the internet killed my TV, I used to watch a sports show called “Schwab uf Tour” (or was it Freestyle?) on the Swiss channel Star TV, in which host Marco Schwab was practicing and commenting on any kind of extreme sports. Besides the talking, which was complete [more]
Since Richard Florida’s influential book The Rise of the Creative Class everybody (including me) has been convinced that creative people make cities more liveable, first socially and consequently also economically. The former seems self-evident, the latter somewhat comes with disruptions (creative class moving in a poor neighbourhood –> [more]
This morning, 7.15 a.m., I met Sarah in the city of Winterthur. Sarah is the recipient of a scholarship fund issued by the Swiss Japanese Chamber of Commerce SJCC. On October 1, she will board an Emirates flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo with a stop-over in Dubai [more]
Tuesday and again yesterday I went to hear Robert B. Laughlin giving the so called Paul Bernays Lectures at ETH Zurich.* Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize in physics 1998, started Tuesday evening by talking about his popular 2006 book “A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down”. What he said [more]
It’s Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Nassim #Taleb and Rolf #Dobelli are throwing shit at each other. I reviewed Taleb’s book ‘Antifragile’ some months ago for DAS MAGAZIN (as I also did with Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, where, I guess, Dobelli has found even more [more]
Why the #FT #weekend is so excellent (it’s not the colour: apricot)*: It’s James Blitz on Syria. In “A long week: Putin’s diplomatic gambit” he shows day by day how Russia has outplayed the US over Syria within one week. It’s John Gapper on Tina Brown. “Tina Brown [more]
I am reading Urs Widmer’s autobiography “Reise an den Rand des Universums” (journey to the end of the universe) with great interest (review in the NZZ here). In a strange way, his account is like a distorted and reverted echo of my own upbringing with a gap of [more]
Daniel Dafoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, was known as the ‘Sunday gentleman’ because after having failed one of his businesses and not being able to satisfy his creditors, he only could appear in public on Sunday, when no debts could be collected. Last Saturday, I went to [more]
I had coffee with my friend Matthis this afternoon in a “Altweiber” café close to Hottingerpatz in Zurich. Matthis is writing his doctoral thesis in law (don’t ask me what about exactly. I think doing a PhD sounds good enough, you should never have to explain what you [more]
If you really going to work in Seattle the first thing you should do is going for a Microsoft’s employees’ house cruising tour on Lake Washington.* That’s what I told A. today when we had lunch together. I don’t think A is going to do it. She’s right [more]
Every three months or so I get a haircut near Central in Zurich. It’s always the same procedure. I go in before noon. Sit down. I ask one of the guys standing around – there are only a few girls – to shave my hair 6mm short (sometimes [more]
We finally got to see Christopher’s tower in Lichtenberg (it’s not Christopher’s alone). Everybody who went up was behaving similarly, approaching the abyss frightened and lured. And if you ever wondered who we actually are, check out the growing number of people in our picks section.
I haven’t followed the German election too closely, except for the rise of the somehow very strange “Alternative für Deutschland” as Mr. Lucke is a well-known economic professor who also writes for an economic blog I am in charge of. Still, I was surprised to find Berlin, at [more]
I was moderating (just as a sidekick, not the whole event) today our institute’s 75th anniversary at ETH Zurich (with Josef Ackermann, Swiss Federal Counsil Schneider-Ammann, SNB President Thomas Jordan among others). Whereas I thought my jokes were pretty funny (in a Larry David way of being pretty [more]
I once was participating in an ecological project on the West coast of Mexico. We were saving turtle eggs, mainly from the hawksbill sea turtle (“Karettschildkröte” in German, which sounds much more interesting), as turtle eggs are a delicacy in Mexico (and supposedly good for your virility). Very [more]
We had dinner in the Italia in Zurich. I don’t go there too often, but I like it. It was probably one of the last nights you could sit outside this year (I also had a swim in the early evening in the Limmat which was surprisingly nice). [more]
I assume, I wouldn’t have got to know Armen Avanessian without 60pages. And even if I had in another context, I guess he wouldn’t have given me a book in little Pakistan Lichtenberg called Realismus Jetzt. Realismus Jetzt is a collection of essays, edited by Armen, mainly from [more]
What is the difference between the 5.00 pm and the 5.34 train from Zurich to Basel? Not much. 1.30 Swiss francs. COCA COLA ZERO PET CHF 4.10 – ICE train at 5.00 pm COCA COLA ZERO PET CHF 5.40 – SBB train at 5.34 pm or at 4.34 [more]
I kind of missed it (apparently, haven’t been going out in Basel enough), but now you are not allowed to smoke anymore in Basel’s bars (actually you weren’t allowed before, but that’s a different story). I don’t smoke, but I prefer bars where you can. Why do you [more]
A Sunday goes by that my memory will obliterate the first second Monday starts (Austrian elections don’t change this, believe me). I was listening to Matthew Gurewitsch talking about his life soaked up in culture in the radio show Musik für einen Gast on Swiss Radio. Then I heard Herta Müller [more]
I usually start reading magazines and newspaper articles from the back part. First the books and arts section in the Economist then the rest. First the last paragraph in an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung then the rest. I am not the only one, I know. Today I [more]
When I was studying in the city of Bern, I took diving lessons offered by the university’s sports department. The lessons took place on Fridays at noon in the indoor swimming pool Wyler. We were usually around four people. My diving teacher, Andrea Geissbühler, a copper (since Luther [more]
Today a friend asked if I have read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri because I was telling her that I will pay for my sins with 10000 years in the Purgatorio before I go to hell. No, I have not. It’s not that I am completely unfamiliar [more]
I stumbled over David Bowie’s top 100 must-read books recently published in the Guardian. I saw Bowie last year in the Three Lives & Company bookshop in New York, I am sure he got there one book for his list. The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby (2008) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar [more]
I’ve come to the conclusion that the average researcher in an average university assumes that he’s pretty pretty ironical (speaking from experience, not from research). He is like the flatmate who puts a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on the fridge which stays there for the next 10 [more]
There is a bar in Brissago, the last Swiss village before the Italian border at the right coast of Lake Maggiore, called Flamingo Bar. We usually arrive Friday evening late for a weekend in Brissago (a kind of Tyler Brûlé sentence, Brissago replaced with St. Moritz or Tokyo). [more]
Coffee in Italy. Autobahn in Switzerland. Searching for a radio station while driving. Reading the review of Jonathan Franzen’s new book on Karl Kraus. Drinking white Merlot. Playing silly card games. Jumping into Lake Maggiore. Eating stuffed peppers. Listening to Georges Brassens: En ce temps-là, je vivais dans la lune [more]
It was a Thursday afternoon in August in San Francisco. The boats in the race for the America’s Cup were chasing each other in the bay. We had rented bikes. It was windy. Headwind anywhere we went. Good for the boats (as they were enigmatically always coming in [more]
I started to read Simon Schama’s book The Story of the Jews. There was a place called Elephantine where there was a Jewish community avant le livre. * I realised once again in what kind of globalised world we live. I was buying presents for my godchild which is Japanese [more]
If you are interested in business cycles, you may wonder what their duration could be. Two years ago, Deutsche Bank published a research note where they claimed that the business cycle has become shorter in recent years “because cycles were artificially long in what Deutsche dubs the ‘golden [more]
I went with some friends to the Shinjuku Golden Gai (新宿ゴールデン街). Although it has become a merely hang-out for gaijins (foreigners) like myself, it is still an amazing place to get to talk to Japanese people. Usually there are only around 4 to 6 seats, so if you happen to [more]
Everybody has their city. Some may have Berlin, London, Paris. For me it’s Tokyo, at least as long as I understand a little what people there are talking. Good night, Tokyo. It’s late and I have a wedding ceremony to attend today.
We still don’t know if it was all fake. The fake Catholic chapel? The fake Caucasian priest (with his perfect Japanese that still sounded wrong)? The fake nuns with their big cross necklaces? The fake blossoms we were throwing at the newly wed. The fake Olive tree we [more]
Being in Japan means being a stranger confronted by three questions: 1) Where are you from? 2) What are you doing here? 3) When are you leaving again? 1) Being from Switzerland means you have a very good image (chocolate, cheese fondue, Heidi). 2) Being here for a [more]
We were running through Tokyo yesterday. We started at Shibuya crossing where you can run through hundreds of people and then we went up the Aoyama Dori, the blue (ao) or green mountain (yama) street (dori) as in Japanese ao can mean blue or green, up to the [more]
A few people (at least two) asked if I post the speech I held last Saturday at a friend’s wedding in Tokyo. Not that I am famous for speeches, but I told everybody I met in the last two weeks (at least three people, what makes two a [more]
It was two years ago when I went to see Franz Gertsch’s seasons in the Kunsthaus Zurich over lunch time. Maybe I got hooked by the sheer size of the paintings, I still don’t know, maybe I was just hungry, but I left the museum with a huge stuffed animal gorilla [more]
We went to see the Trial (Der Process) by Franz Kafka in the Schauspielhaus Zürich. They played well, but something was missing. The desperation, the solitude? The solitude of today which probably was already the solitude of Josef K. I asked a young couple (or maybe it was not [more]
What is it with you lawyers (and judges and anybody involved in law) that I hardly ever understand what you are talking about? I remember having classes in private law at university. I didn’t get one single sentence you said. I remember having dinner with lawyer friends of [more]
Who is your peer group? Who do you compare with? Your work colleagues? Your friends? Your enemies? Dead people? Successful people? Scientists? Artists? Journalists? Rich people? The people who are attending the same birthday party? The beautiful?
It was an early evening in May. The evening light wrapped Jerusalem in a golden veil. We were heading towards the apartment of Abir and Lihi. They don’t live far away from Israeli president Shimon Peres’ house. So you might consider their neighbourhood posh. But there is no [more]
Nate “Gold” Silver is hiring. And when the wizard of data (journalism) is hiring you should be listening. If you want to work for FiveThirtyEight, Silver’s company/blog, you have to be a kind of wunderkind, a techy journalist, a journalistic techy. FiveThirtyEight is looking for people with an outstanding combination of [more]
When you part from each other what stays? You meet somebody for lunch, coffee, G&T (everybody on 60pages seems so obsessed with, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and here, and here, here in a way, here, here, and here, and here). What stays? A feeling? [more]
Every Tuesday evening I am playing tennis with a friend in Schlieren, a suburb of Zurich. The first thing you want to do after arriving in Schlieren with the S-Bahn is jumping in front of the next incoming intercity train from Bern or Basel. In other words: Schlieren [more]
Like I wrote yesterday, I usually play tennis Tuesday night in Schlieren (no big deal). Last time my opponent brought bananas with him because they were rotting in his start-up office nearby which attracted fruit flies. “Those little bastards”, he said. Almost everybody thinks fruit flies are bastards, [more]
You have your frequent flyer status and you somehow care about your environment (although someone once told me that no plane has ever left because he was on board. But if you spin that further, your single action would never have any consequences. You don’t have to vote [more]
‘Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde’ is an exhibition now running at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, as I was informed by the Financial Times today. One year ago I went to Moscow with a friend to see another friend. As the latter left when we arrived (it was [more]
Some statistics of fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages (until October 27): 60000 visitors No. 1 day so far was October 21 with 2,330 views Anne Philippi and The Tills are the most visited 60people. The top three posts are: Was machen wir mit den restlichen Wiesn Fotos? Kapitalistischer Realismus (3) Michael Althen And [more]
I learnt a word today. It was adiabatic which means something like “without passage”, describing a thermodynamic process where there is no heat exchanged between a system and its surroundings (correct me if I am wrong). It would be a nice word for a game a friend once [more]
From time to time I debate with people who are somehow proud of their birth place. I always tell them that it was just luck or an accident that they were born in Basel, Zurich, Switzerland in general. Not much to do with them. Maybe their parents chose [more]
I went to Kunst Zürich, the foremost Zurich art fair (is it?), based in Oerlikon. First of all, if you want to eat dinner after 10 pm in Oerlikon go home, head to McDonald’s or le Muh (what a name) near the train station. The interior is a [more]
Went to a ghost walk through Zurich, organised by the British Swiss Chamber of Commerce. Obviously not many ghosts in this town, they had to invent some. I like the British humour, just nastier than the Swiss (and the German) one.
It’s always the same kind of feeling when you leave Basel by train, heading North or West. Direction France or Germany. The land gets flat, the horizon opens. It’s starts in St. Louis or in Weil am Rhein. You know that you are still in the Oberrheinische Tiefebene where you [more]
Doesn’t happen too often but I was for once ahead of the FT. Vanessa Friedman met Joel Arthur Rosenthal, the owner of JAR (or even JAR himself), aka the Fabergé of our time, for the Lunch with the FT series. It was some years ago when I had [more]
There was a guy in the train from Paris to Basel who had the annoying habit of repeating every sentence, every word at least three times. He said “the rich in France pay 75% taxes, that’s too much, that’s too much, that’s too much.” Then he asked his [more]
Not 100% sure if round table is the correct English word for the German Tafel, at least the “Internet” says the translation of Die Ritter der Tafelsrunde is Knights of the Round Table. Evgeny Morozov might add that the “Internet” doesn’t exist. So be it. I’ll be participating in [more]
Tuesday. Work. “Don’t cry – work” (to be found on the back page of Rainhald Goetz’s novel Irre). Tuesday. Tennis. Schlieren. It was raining. Depressing. Normality. Things seemed to be different though. Won the first set. And then I lost the second. All back to normal. Federer lost [more]
Went to Winterthur (#JourTag13) this evening to hear Daniel Binswanger (DAS MAGAZIN) giving a speech about the situation of journalism. Daniel was one of the keynote speakers at the yearly conference of the Association of Quality in Journalism. He compared the latest developments in journalism to bubbles in financial markets. [more]
I’ve written an article for DAS MAGAZIN, which will be published Saturday, about the process of automation and its consequences for human labour. It basically takes the arguments of Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. They argue that the jobs in the US which [more]
So. Here I am. The first of 60 pages. This makes me anxious. What should I write about? I am Italian, so: Berlusconi? Food? Berlusconi and Food? Or film and food? Maybe just film. Or maybe something personal. I turned 41 this year and I feel like shit. [more]
Day 2. Same anxiety. Well, more anxiety. Not only I have to write THIS: most of all, I have to write a speech. It’s for Ludovica’s wedding. Ludovica, well, she’s my writing partner. We write together. Scripts, mostly, now even a book (but it’s a novelization, so it [more]
if you want to reach the Island of Ponza – which is what all the people invited to Ludovica’s wedding is supposed to do – you should reach the port of Anzio or Formia, and there you can take a hyrdoplane or a fast ship to the island. [more]
This is the day of the wedding. It’s a civil wedding, which means more fun (Church wedding are so boring, aren’t they?). I don’t know about Deutschland, but we in Italy we have a new law, which allows basically anybody to be the officer of the wedding. You [more]
Today it’s cloudy. The wedding party went on until four o’clock, we all drank as we should and now what’s left of us roam through the narrow streets of Ponza as zombies. Happy zombies, though. It was nice and tender. Lots of love, on the island. I liked [more]
On Monday I am back in Rome. I need to work a little bit but most of all I need some more rest from the wedding. So I pick my favourite cure: a series. The series, actually: Breaking Bad. I am going trough Season 5 and I am [more]
As you might now from the presentation Christopher Roth wrote about me, I did this documentary called Slow Food Story which was premiered at the Berlinale 2013 and then presented in Telluride (where I met Bobby). Basically I spent a lot of time of this year presenting this [more]
You don’t need a big budget to do a good movie. You just need a great script. Want a proof? STILL LIFE the second film directed by former producer Uberto Pasolini (he produced Palookaville and Full Monty and directed Machan) is a jewel, highly recommended. Pasolini (not related [more]
Until last year I barely knew my doctor. Since I turned forty I have an equipe of people working for me: I see a therapist, a homeopath, an osteopath, a gastroenterologist… I feel like I am Madonna.
The marriage on the island was last weekend, but Ludovica & Nicola celebrations are not over, yet: tonight there’s the party in Rome, open to all those who weren’t able to reach the Ponza. This means Open bar, I guess. Which is even a little scary, nowadays, for [more]
My friends Ludovica and Nicola had a wedding party in Roma a week later the wedding, in a new place called THE APARTMENT, in San Lorenzo. They did it in order to have the chance to invite all their friends that couldn’t partipate at the wedding on the [more]
In these latest few months I can’t manage to stay in Rome for more than one consecutive week, for different reasons: festivals, holidays, work, family, whatever. It’s sunday and me and Valentina have to wake up early (hangover include) to take a train to our hometown, Bra, in [more]
It’s monday night in Bra, the last day of the CHEESE exhibition. Cheesemakers are happy and tired and a bit drunk too… And so is the Slow Food crew who made the event. The whole town looks like a party house as soon as the guests are gone. [more]
Wednesday and I am still in Piemonte. I am not feeling great today. Me and my girlfriend we move for a few days of relax in her family country house in Roddi, on the top of one of the Langhe hills (one of the best wine areas in [more]
I want to write a little bit about each film from my Italian recommended cinema list, so let’s start. Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino, is a film who raised a lot of rumor, in Italy. Because it’s the portrait of one the most controversial politician in the history [more]
My grilfriend Valentina plays ukulele. From a few years now. There’s even a video in youtube in which she ironically teaches how to do it. For her birthday my present was a session in a professional studio to record her first two original songs. Since the studio I [more]
Toni Servillo (again) stars in UNA VITA TRANQUILLA (A quiet life) directed by my friend Claudio Cupellini and written by my other friends Filippo Gravino and Guido Iuculano. It’s a tight noir built on a great character: a former killer associate with Neapols’ Gomorra who escaped to Germany [more]
Today I feel bad. Horrible nausea. I think I have been poisoned. So maybe I have to talk about something else: not me, for once. I think I should mention some interesting Italian films you might want to discover, from the last 5 years. I guess you don’t [more]
Ali has blue eyes is the second feature of young Roman director Claudio Giovannesi, who’s a musician too (he’s the composer for his own film). Claudio had the idea for this film while shooting a previous documentary, Fratelli d’Italia, in which he showed everyday life of three teenager [more]
Well, you should see this film. I recommend it because I wrote it! I wrote it with my friend Ludovica and with my other friend Alessandro. We write often together, we ironically call ourselves the Lemures, as if we were a band. The Double Hour is the first [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
This is a lovely film. A 60 year old never grown up bachelor who still lives with his mother accept to host a few old ladies in his apartment in Rome during the holidays in August to extinguish his debts. This forced cohabitation with these ladies will lead [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
I was really positively surprised by Valeria Golino’s directorial debut – who was chosen for Cannes’ La Semain this year. Style-wise, it doesn’t look like a debut film… It doesn’t look Italian, too. And when I say it doesn’t look Italian I am speaking of that macro-genre which [more]
Scialla is the first film as a director of famous Italian screenwriter Francesco Bruni. It’s a nice, well built comedy about a fifty something school professor who is forced to live with a lazy student dropped in his house by a fugitive mom while he’s writing the biography [more]
You don’t need me to talk about Gomorra, do you? Matteo Garrone’s movie out of Roberto Saviano’s bestseller debut novel won the Jury Prize in Cannes 2008 and becon the icon of Italian neo-neo-neorealism worldwide. It’s a great, powerful portrait of South Italian criminal disaster. Other directors have [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
Ok I know I have to finish my list of short reviews of recommended Italian films but now I have to recommend another film… Mine! My documentary SLOW FOOD STORY is out in cinemas in Germany right now. So leave your computer, turn facebook off, get out of [more]
Vincere! (To Win!) it’s one the best films made by Italian famous director Marco Bellocchio. Bellocchio in the 90’s went trough a “dark phase” – cinematically speaking – of his carreer in which he used to write films together with his therapist: this unusual partnership created very intellectual, [more]
This morning I took the S-Bahn (like the metro but partly above ground). As I was very tired––too much Mosel-Champagne yesterday, which was Christopher Roth’s and Georg Diez’s fault––and not in the best mood after walking ten minutes through the rain, I just wanted to sit down not [more]
I discovered my new breakfast place getting out of the S-Bahn this morning. Wines, Spirits, Breakfast. Berlin Moabit.
Today I didn’t take the S-Bahn, I took the plane. Berlin – Munich. I was sitting at the bar close to the boarding gate. I had red wine. I like airports and especially their bars. It is a kind of nomansland. I always feel like i’m about to [more]
A breeze of Bratwurst lays upon the whole city. Market stalls are set up everywhere. Even the tiniest little places are filled with stands in which traditional dressed people sell useless crafted wooden things or organic Bratwurst. People are wearing funny things but are absolutely serious about it. [more]
I landed at Tegel Airport at 11pm. No way I could take the S-Bahn. Too late, too tired. So I took a taxi. I was looking at the different cars and drivers standing outside their vehicles. This time I wanted to make sure to have a nice car [more]
I’ve been in a place today, a place so sad it almost made me cry. Carpet Land Berlin. I was looking for a red carpet, like the kind you see at movie premiers or the oscars, but just not red. I wanted a red carpet in navy blue. [more]
I was always wondering what kind of people would buy the TV-Programm Magazines. No, actually I thought they wouldn’t exist anymore, probably since the 1990’s, or if they still existed that at least nobody would actually buy them or read them. Until today. One of those people still [more]
The Berlin Art Week started yesterday with a kind of small Oktoberfest on Auguststrasse in Mitte. The street was full of people, nearly impossible to walk through and impossible to enter one of the galleries. It looked like the Love Parade, but it didn’t feel like it. I [more]
Art Week Berlin: Gin&Tonic and fake boobs Oktoberfest Munich: Starkbier and real boobs
I drove through Berlin today. To the far East. Listening to the radio. It was grey and it was raining. I haven’t been listening to German radio for years. They played commercials, I don’t remember what for. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s about the jingles. They were [more]
This afternoon I had to walk through Berlin Mitte to pick up food I ordered. China City on Leipzigerstraße probably already existed in the GDR, like the one just opposite: Vietnamese Palace. Huge, empty and excessively decorated temples. Online, I looked at the vegetarian choices straightaway. #135, the [more]
For the first time in my life I entered a one-euro-shop. Although there has always been a certain fascination, I have never dared to enter. Doing a first step is falling on the other side, I imagined. Into the world of the Spießer, (the English translation is bourgeois [more]
On Spiegel online I read today that Christian Lindner from the FDP (Free Democratic Party) got a hair transplant. I didn’t notice, but it seems true. He does look better now. A far better hairjob than Berlusconi’s. Better than Gerhard Schröder’s dyed hair too. I wonder if the [more]
Today I understood why I love this little car2go smart car so much. Not only that it’s talking to me, it actually got the voice of K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand). The exact same voice (german voice)! I winced. Of course, that’s it. Remember, Knight Rider. My first [more]
“Moi aussi, je me suis demandé si je ne pouvais pas vendre quelque chose et réussir la vie. Cela fait un moment déjà que je ne suis bon à rien. Je suis âgé de quarante ans…” “Me too, I asked myself if I could not sell something and [more]
Today is the last day of the Oktoberfest and a big day in the Bundesliga. BAYER vs BAYERN. The second against the third. It’s been nearly a year now that Bayern Munich has lost a game in the German League for the last time. It was on October [more]
Packing my suitcase once more turns out as exceedingly difficult. This time it is even more complicated as I’m going to three different locations with very different weather situations for four different events. I’m sitting in front of my luggage right now taking a little break thinking it [more]
Not only French men are dramatic, the whole city of Paris is a constant drama, at least for me. Every time I arrive something unpleasant happens. Mostly it’s the RER the French pendant to the German S-Bahn (English: commuter trains). My favorite topic. Either the conductors are striking [more]
Finally in Paris the first thing I did was going to my favorite shopping mall Le Bon Marché, Bourgeois Culture and Department Store, founded in 1838 and then enlarged by a new building designed by Gustav Eiffel in 1869. Not comparable to Galerie Lafayette or Le Printemps. It [more]
Thousand liters of champagne, wine and spirits, hysterical women, men loosing all their finesse. Why are people at weddings turning into something strange?
Why are weddings so different to any other parties? People are doing things they would normally be ashamed of. They are loud, they are shouting, they come up with really stupid jokes as if everything would be permitted. Just for this very short time. The main goal is [more]
On the train from Biarritz to Paris after the three-day-wedding-marathon. Exhausted, empty, hungry. It is a new TGV (train grande vitesse), a high speed train. The interior design changed recently, the colors and the shape of the seats. To me they look like orange and violet shark tails now. [more]
Late at night, after a 13 hour flight I finally arrived at my hotel, too tired to realize were exactly I was. The only thing I knew was that I’m somewhere in Los Angeles. I woke up at 6 am, wide-awake I stepped onto the balcony. The view [more]
I was invited to this Gala Dinner: The opening of a center for art and culture, the first and only one in Beverly Hills. The guest-list was very impressive: Brad Pitt, Robert Redford, Jodie Foster, Kevin Spacey and so forth. I was well prepared, beautiful dress, incredibly high [more]
I didn’t want to write about gin and tonic. It is my favorite drink, I know why, I don’t need to talk about it. Maybe some day I’ll tell you but at the moment I’m afraid that by putting words on it I will no longer enjoy my [more]
Is Markus Lanz the lost son of Howard Carpendale? They do look very similar and they have the same amount of humor (none). Strangely enough in the Lanz show everybody was laughing when one of them was saying something. A really intimate and touching talk on TV tonight. [more]
What is it about Stuck in Berlin ? Stuck, coming from the italian Stucco, a decorative coating for walls and ceilings. Entering an apartment in Berlin, everybody would first comment the Stuck, if there is some or not, if it’s beautiful, apparently it’s always beautiful, I never heard somebody [more]
Trying to figure out where to watch today’s soccer match between the FC Bayern and Berlin’s Hertha BSC I seriously considered getting Sky, the Pay-TV. It seemed awkward and I went to the organic supermarket instead. It felt like time traveling. Was I gone for too long? Is [more]
I was until 7am at Wilde Renate because I didn’t remember how old I am by now. The lovely Tills were there. Now I sit in a huge Sessel and watch Tatort. I did it my way. (Mäx was there)
Tonight they show a documentary about animals in South Africa on TV. Every time I come across an animal documentary I get stuck. Unable to switch channels ever again and immediately stop everything else I am doing. Usually I am a multi-tasker, especially while watching TV. I have [more]
German TV does not broadcast Tuesday’s Champions League matches. (I know I mentioned this before) And still!: Every Tuesday I check all the channels––in hope. Yet after another unsuccessful attempt I searched for a live stream on the net. And found everything but soccer: You can earn $8000 [more]
Congratulations LICHTENBERG! People do constantly underestimate you. You’re big, not the biggest district in Berlin but yet very big. You have the highest buildings and the most beautiful towers. Your parks are wide, your streetcars silent. And what’s more: you got the Dong Xuan Center! I like you. [more]
I did it. I made it. I’m happy and a little bit sad. Already nostalgic but also relieved. Never thought that I would make it through the 60 days. I’ll still watch you. Thank you.
Tief im Westen – vor rund 30 Jahren sang der Mann aus dem U-Boot eine Ruhr-Hymne, und vor 65 Jahren gab es den “jungen westen”, einer der renommiertesten Kunstpreise der noch garnicht gegründeten neuen Bundesrepublik – ein Jahr vorher gründeten die Maler Emil Schumacher, Thomas Grochowiak, Heinrich Siepmann, [more]
“Wenn ich ehrlich bin, muss ich zugeben, wie fasziniert ich von der Idee war, zusammen mit einer Bank Kunst kaufen zu können. Das ist, als würde man einen Alkoholiker zum Winzer machen.” Daheim – im Wohnzimmer. Lebensgeschichten sind das Salz in der Suppe des täglichen Sterbens. Jetzt liegt [more]
Eine blöde Nacht mit Krämpfen im Unterleib. Am verregneten Morgen mehr als schlechte Laune. Magenschmerzen mit langen Leseabständen auf korrekt platzierter Duchampkeramik. Zahnarztbesuch mit gefühlter Vollnarkose im Höllenschlund des Ultraschalls. Später wunderschöne Schwebebahn zwischen Boros´ Werbeblock und Koreabeziehungen im Kultursekretariat. Über die Wupper gehen? Nein, über der Wupper [more]
Gleich geht´s nach Essen, ins Folkwang, wo der unaufgeregteste, eigenwilligste, anregendste Bildhauer unserer Zeit die Werkgruppe Frauen präsentiert, eine Serie von 18 großen, in Bronze, Stahl und Aluminium ausgeführten Plastiken, die in zehn Jahren zwischen 1999 und 2009 entstanden. Die Gruppe ist erstmalig in Deutschland vollständig zu sehen. [more]
“Thomas Schütte sagt, relax, Revolution ist keine Option. Ist das hier die Ausstellung zur Wahl?” (Georg Diez) Ich war dabei, hier die Qual der Wahl:
Was für ein schöner Tag. Sonnenstrahlen nach dem Dauerregen am Vorabend. Drei Frauen stehen vor mir und singen, während links und rechts zwei Gitarristen monoton spielen. Ich höre und schaue, ich vergesse das Schauen und bestaune das Hören. Gitarren und Frauenstimmen entfalten inmitten des Klangs eine wunderbare Getragenheit, [more]
“Machen wir ´ne Herrentour, an die schöne Ahr, trinken wir Burgunder nur, das ist sonnenklar.” Vor allem jene vom Weingut Jaen Stodden in Rech, wo in Finesse und feiner Auslese wunderbare Spätburgunder gelingen. Lagerfähige Weine mit guter Struktur, in traditioneller Machart und langer Reifung im Holz sind was [more]
Da schaut man sich die Wahlergebnisse an und wundert sich eigentlich nicht über den Ausgang nach sinnlosem Beginn. Es ist die Zeit der Rücktritte und Abgänge, Abdankungen und Abgesänge. Gestern noch im Weltgeschehen, heute schon ohne Mitleid zur Pappfigur verdammt. Stunde Null, Abwicklungen, Neuordnungen, wer will das alles [more]
Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten Aber irgendwas stimmt mit den Leuten nicht Ich glaube daß wir in Sünde leben Und Gott läßt bald die Erde beben Scheisse hier scheisse da, es verschissen Jahr für Jahr Und ich sage euch die Wahrheit Endlich heute voller Klarheit Neue [more]
Eigentlich keine Lust #3! Ganz ehrlich. Nun denn, auf eine Neues. Sitz zwar an einem ganz anderen Text, bin weiter weg als mir lieb ist, aber muss ja, muss ja. Japaner in Düsseldorf, oder auch in Köln? Noch einmal schlafen. Holla, die Waldfee. Herrenreiter, und so weiter!! Nun [more]
Komme gerade aus Köln zurück, wo am Aachener Weiher die Ausstellung der Künstlergruppe “The Echo” eröffnet wurde, überwiegend KünstlerInnen aus Berlin, einer aus Tokio, einer aus Düsseldorf. 12 an der (permanent wechselnden Gesamt-)Zahl. Eine neue Generation jenseit von Tokyo Pop und Hello Kitty Fantasy, aber immer noch auf [more]
Heute abend ein Schmankerl mit Arto Lindsay, DNA, der mit John Lurie, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, John Zorn und Bill Laswell spielte, als Produzent für Caetano Veloso, Laurie Anderson und David Byrne werkelte, für Heiner Goebbels Musik schrieb und einer der Kuratoren der Klangkunst-Ausstellung Volume: Bed of Sound [more]
Oh ja, manche haben es einfach raus!!! Alicja Kwade, Haus Esters, Krefeld
Aus der Reihe: Manche haben es eben einfach raus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4cMJXXV6o live solo D-dorf, filmwerkstatt, 28/09/13
Fühl mich wie der Hans im Schwank der Grimms. Ein eigenartiges, nervöses, wohliges, unbekannt anregendes Gefühl in Kopf und Gleidern. All das befremdet mich ein wenig. Und so schaue ich bei Belsenen nach und finde: In motivationstheoretischer Interpretation aus Managementsicht ist Hans ein „eigennütziger Hedomat und unlustmeidender Glücksökonom“. [more]
Neben Kleopatra, der alten Diva, und dem Langahus der Irokesen, den alten “Feinden der Apachen”, nun dies: Im Modder der Summenmutation. Live in Bonn. Einige seiner fulminanten, wahnwitzigen Irrsinns-Aktionen, die John Bock selbst Vorträge nennt, werden in veränderter Form als „RE-Vorträge“ zur Wiederaufführung gebracht. RE-Play. Gleich zur Eröffnung [more]
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Ein Findling steht im Walde, ganz still und stumm. Ja, so war das gestern auf der Waldwanderung im Norden Düsseldorfs. Ach, wer mag der Findling sein, der da steht im Wald allein? Ein Findling, auch Erratischer Block oder Erratiker genannt, ist ein heute meist einzeln liegender sehr großer [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
Mein bester Freund war da und er war traurig. Er finde es ganz schrecklich mit dem Herbst, sagte er, eklige sich fast vor dem Dunklen, dem Modrigen, dem Kalten, dem ganzen Mist vom Herbst eben. Es mache ihn depressiv und er könne nicht verstehen, warum Menschen, so wie [more]
Pilzsuchergebnisfoto ist das neue “lustige Katzenvideo”? Hehe. Hab mich gerade beömmelt vor Lachen, als ich das las. Was Justus Köhncke auf Facebook vor 7 Stunden schrieb, ist so was von heiter, weil es ganz ehrlich das beschreibt, was mich auch verwundert hat. Denn so geht das schon seit [more]
Leben mit Pop ging zu Ende und die Kreativen ergreifen wieder die Macht über das Design und Kapital und erschaffen neue leere, gereinigte Räume! Danke dafür!!!
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
An Tagen wir diese(n) denkt man an den Verrat des Andersseins und an die große Versprechen des oder der ewig Linken und Linkischen inmitten singender Vokalakrobaten für den ewig einigenden Weltfrieden des gütlichen Machterhalts zugunsten einer Anklageschrift für andere Tage wie diese(n) als Revanche entgegen den Zeitgeist mit [more]
Schön, dabei zu sein. In einer Energiebehaftung und einem Denken voller Selbstbeschleunigung und Präzision. Das gilt für vor allem für S-EIN Denken: das Risiko einzugehen, ebenso präzise wie kopflos zu sein. Aufgepasst: Es gibt keine 1 Wissenschaft, keinen 2 Tanz, keine 3 Politik, keine 4 Kunst, keine 5 [more]
Verfolgen, ändern, stornieren oder zurückgeben: Hier geht’s los. Und hier weiter: Unterwegs. Erleben Sie den virtuellen 360° Rundgang!! Am ersten Dienstsitz in Berlin arbeiten gut 450 Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter, am zweiten Dienstsitz im Bonner Palais Schaumburg etwa 30. Ahoi, nicht traurig sein!! Denn Deutschland kommt gebräunt zurück! Hat Leben [more]
Hier, also unten als Link, die Auflösung vom verzaubert zauberhaften Winkelkanu gestern an selber Stelle – oder auch: Wir bauen eine neue Stadt! Mit Calvino ein Traum. Palais Schaumburg und andere Residenzen als Postensicherheiten des neuen Weltgeistes liegen momentan auf das Billigste monokular fokusiert in Limburg. Ablenkunstmanöver vom [more]
Es kommen härtere Tage. Die auf Widerruf gestundete Zeit wird sichtbar am Horizont. Bald musst du den Schuh schnüren und die Hunde zurückjagen in die Marschhöfe. Denn die Eingeweide der Fische sind kalt geworden im Wind. Ärmlich brennt das Licht der Lupinen. Dein Blick spurt im Nebel: die [more]
Palindome von André Thomkins Dogma:I am God“ stiess eid: mit biertrunk nur treibt im diesseits freibier! freibier! freibier! f… bürle knurre grub mild limburger runkelrüb gin ohne banknoten – essen etonknaben honig oho! klarer alkohol, oho! klarer alk…oho! nie reime da kann akademie rein ei-salat à l`asie essakademie: [more]
–––––– Die Frage nach einer „immateriellen Materialität“ könnte ein eigenartiger Schlüssel sein, um einen Zugang zur überbordenden zeitgenössischen Kunstproduktion zu finden. Jean-François Lyotards (1924 – 1998) Ästhetik vor 40 Jahren, seine Ästhetik der Immaterialität, mag überholt sein, steht aber noch im Raum für ein damals sensationell neues, menschliches Selbst- [more]
das sind immer doch die allerschönsten momente der rückbesinnung im heute auf ein ungewisses morgen. da plante ein architekt aus aachen1930 für einen flugfanatiker und textilfabrinkanten aus krefeld mit dem namen lange einen golfplatz, der nie realisert wurde. begehbar, erfahrbar – schöne momente im heute. LUDWIG MIES VAN [more]
„Für unsere Studenten nur das Beste“ – die erste und bislang einzige Rektorin der 1773 gegründeten Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie Irmin Kamp ist in der Eingangstreppe ebendort eingemeißelt. Denn diesen Aus- und Anspruch formulierte die Bildhauerin während ihres Rektorats von 1982–1987. Anlässlich der Ernennung Klaus Staecks zum Gastprofessor meißelten Schüler [more]
Ich liebe dieses Leben von ganzem Herzen und will frei von ihm reden: Ich danke ihm den Stolz, ein Mensch zu sein. Und doch hat man mich oft genug gefragt, worauf ich denn so stolz sei. Worauf? Auf diese Sonne und dieses Meer, auf mein von Jugend überströmendes [more]
ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten daß ich so traurig bin; ein märchen aus alten zeiten, das kommt mir nicht aus dem sinn. heinrich heine, 1823 niemals wieder!
As one of the oldest techniques in human culture, textiles store knowledge and labour and communicate via form. The woven structures are based on a system of intersecting threads leading via seriality and repetition to complexity and beauty. While textiles have been used extensively by artists as material, [more]
Denn wenn et Trömmelche jeht … oha, wie jedes Jahr um 11 Uhr 11, pünktlich mit dem ersten Nachtfrost in den sonnendurchfluteten Hochwasserauen heute ganz früh morgens in Düsseldorf am Rhein. Oh ja, der 11. November ist der Beginn des Ausnahmzustandes vor der Adventszeit, der Weihnachtszeit und dem [more]
Der Weg zum Glück ist es, die Freude und Lust zu maximieren, dem Schmerz aber auszuweichen. Das bewusste Genießen ist der eigentliche Sinn des Lebens: „Als höchstes Ziel steht die sanfte (glatte), zur Empfindung sich steigende Bewegung.“ Dennoch ist ein Mensch nur glücklich, wenn Vernunft, Wille und Begehren [more]
Das Mirador del Río liegt auf einem 475 Meter über dem Meeresspiegel befindlichen Punkt der Steilküste des Famaramassivs. Die 1973 vom lanzarotenischen Künstler César Manrique, unter Mitwirkung von Jesús Rafael Soto und dem Architekten Eduardo Caceres, entworfene Aussichtsplattform (offizielle Eröffnung 1974) ist im typischen Stil Manriques in den [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGOqmXhNzRY&w=400
From My Lunches with Orson, edited by Peter Biskind: Interviewer: Dorothy Comingore, another fresh face, was so great as Susan Alexander, Kane’s mistress and second wife, the one based on Marion Davies. How did you find her? Orson Welles: Chaplin, you know, told me about her. Interviewer: What [more]
From Orson Welles Volume 2: Hello Americans by Simon Callow: Agnes Moorehead was perhaps the most remarkable of all the actors in the Mercury stable. Like many of the others, she had first worked with Welles on radio…In addition to the high spirits and technical skill of the other [more]
From James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work (1976): Sylvia Sidney was the only American film actress who reminded me of a colored girl, or woman–which is to say that she was the only American film actress who reminded me of reality. All of the others, without exception, were white, [more]
From Orson Welles. Volume 2: Hello Americans by Simon Callo: Agnes Moorehead gave an account of working with [Welles] that illuminates the way he collaborated with actors. She felt the scene [in The Magnificent Ambersons where Aunt Fanny’s (Moorehead) feeds her nephew, George (Tim Holt) food before breaking [more]
The most important and emotionally accurate moment in director Steve McQueen’s Steven Spielberg-eque evocation of slavery is due to Alfre Woodard. About half way through the film, Woodard, one of our greatest actresses, sits on a verandah, her cheeks rouged, pouring tea. She is a slave married to [more]
The foremost interpreter of her former husband, Harold Pinter’s, female characters. No one has ever said “Hmm,” like her. It sounds like something between a full stop, a pause, and a dismissal. One thinks of Merchant’s voice as it might have sounded reading certain sections of George W.S. [more]
She was the daughter of a geisha, and an actor; she herself was trained as a child on the shamisen, an incredibly ornate and beautiful instrument. As an actress, her body was an ornate and beautiful instrument, played in films by Mizogushi and Kurosawa–or would appeared be a [more]
This season, the black story line on Boardwalk Empire, does something so extraordinary I didn’t think it was possible–certainly not on television, or in film: it presents an entirely authentic nineteen-twenties Negro world, part Harlem Renaissance perversity, and part Macbeth, all without sacrificing style. In Peter Biskind’s recent [more]
When Vincente Minelli was asked to come to Hollywood–he had been a very successful scenic designer in New York–the studio brass asked him what he’d like to do. He said: I want to to do a black musical. Like Welles, Minnelli used to hang in largely mixed show [more]
It was another big night at the joint in the valley the night I met Orson Welles. Orson was in Hollywood for the first time, like me. I liked him and he liked me, and jazz. We started hanging around together. So when I’d finished at the joint [more]
When I was a student at SUNY Purchase in the late nineteen-seventies, there were two other students of color, one of whom became a treasured friend. Near Halloween, there was a knock on my dorm door (I had never been away from any length of time before). Opening [more]
Some years ago the singer Rickie Lee Jones took me to a Lou Reed concert; she had never seen him perform. About half way through the set she said, incredulous: But he can’t sing. What was astonishing to Rickie was the lack of musicality in Reed’s voice–it’s flat [more]
One of the great artists who taught me to see the world differently because she saw the world differently. Everything she did was based on an internal cinema, the projectors of which turned at a very interesting Gance-like speed sometimes, or Falconetti-like speed at other times, all the [more]
The marvelous thing about hearing Capote read this is realizing how long he lived with Holly’s voice, and the source of Holly’s voice. I laughed during his introduction; “Shall I read something from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ That or a short story.” The last he says like a stern [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbpfdC7Fdnw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCO_1GcoV0
From “My Lunches With Orson” edited by Peter Biskind: Interviewer: How did [Hedda Hopper] know about things like you and Lena [Horne]? Orson Welles: She offered fifty dollars for information and people called her up. Not friends, but waiters or valet-parking people, anybody. Somebody reported that I went [more]
It’s been a while now that I have stopped holding business meetings in my office. People in office meetings almost always behave as if they were mentally paralysed. They anxiously wait until it’s their turn to talk. They play with their mobile phones like old Greeks with their [more]
It might be my personal problem but it seems to me that serious art criticism has died. There are a lot of art magazines but what they do is basically writing about gallery openings and shows of people they are friends with. It is all a big family, [more]
–MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX– –MÄX–
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The Kantine. The heart of the famous Burgtheater in Vienna is the only cantina in the whole of Europe where you are allowed to smoke. Whether you are smoking or not – you have to. I quit. For one year. And started again – there. It’s ugly and [more]
Frittatensuppe is the most delicious soup you can get in Austria. It’s a crazy mixture between Brühe and Eierkuchen. The Eierkuchen (egg pancakes) is sliced in tiny pieces and is floating in the Brühe (broth). It looks like an uncomplicated and not very spectacular meal. But it’s an [more]
Mit Apoll hat der nichts zu tun, er leiht sich von ihm nur manchmal die Gene und den Wagen, in dem schon einmal jemand verstorben ist, dieser blöde Phaeton. Das war wirklich ein folgenschwerer Unfall, meinen hat ja nicht einmal mein Mann bemerkt, nur die Sonne und die [more]
The world’s oldest amusement park is in the centre of Vienna. And with old, I mean old. It’s really old. It has opened in the 1850s. My Kids and even I love it. Remarkable is the sound when you enter the park: Loud techno music, people screaming in [more]
Yesterday after the show I was sitting in the cantina and there was this amazing director Rene Pollesch with sexy Martin Wuttke and the beautiful Birgit Minichmayer. They talked about their work and the new show, called Cavalcade or Being a Holy Motor. They are rehearsing at the [more]
Austria is pretty weird. You probably guessed that hearing about the scary kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch or -even worse- the years of torture Josef Fritzl put his daughters through. Writing these lines and names I just realize, “weird” is not the right term to get across the dark [more]
Frank Stronach, born Franz Strohsack, is Austria’s most extraordinary politician. In the early 1950s he left Austria with only 200 bucks. In Canada, Stronach founded a company that grew over the years into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Now, in his 80s, Stronach doesn’t care about money anymore. He wants [more]
[jwplayer config=”audio” mediaid=”3864″] Yes, it’s Kate Moss “singing”, which I had quite enough of when she decided to feature on a Babyshambles track not that long ago, before marrying Jamie Hince and secretly hoping she could usurp Alison Mosshart and become a full-fledged rock star in her own [more]
The result of today’s Austrian elections is somewhat shocking: The right-wing populist party, the FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) is, with a total score of 22%, stronger than in the last 12 years. Now everybody else hopes that the Social Democrats of chancellor Werner Faymann––still the strongest party with [more]
Yesterday someone told me women shouldn’t drink beer. Such an idiot. There is nothing more elegant than a beer-drinking lady. Bavarian beer. I always drink beer; wine makes me aggressive. Beer and I belong together. I like how it tastes, looks and smells. Right out of the bottle. [more]
This is my friend Kasa. Kasa is wearing a cheerleader uniform. Kasa is really cool––Street Cool. Anyway, we spent a Sunday afternoon together and she was wearing this uniform. Only American schoolgirls wear this, mostly in bad movies. But since that day, I also want one, quite desperately: [more]
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Austria has many sports idols who are actually from Austria. Lots of ski racers like Franz Klammer, Karl Schranz or Toni Sailer. My father loved them. There is of course Niki Lauda, the tennis pros Horst Skoff and Thomas Muster, my father hated them. There are plenty. But [more]
Maria Theresia’s lap dog. The Empress of Austria was also the sovereign of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma and the mother of Marie Antoinette. The dog is now on display in a show-case at Vienna’s Natural History Museum. Creepy.
In my backyard there is a chestnut tree. I like how the tree changes with the seasons coming and going. When it starts to bloom in spring with beautiful flowers and slowly growing green leaves on the branches. In its full blossom during summertime with huge marvellous green [more]
For some time now I suffer from back pain. Hard ache in the lower intervertebral discs. Nothing can make the pain go away besides back muscle training (which I don’t do) and the amazing Thermacare heat belts. The belts constantly and very slowly release heat that causes pleasant [more]
After an early flight and a nice night out in Berlin with white wine, Anne and Bob, I am on my way (Thermacare belt around the hips) to the Burgtheater. Today starts a congress under the banner “Von welchem Theater träumen wir?” (Which Theater is it that we’re [more]
How on earth can I know? How can I know that all the Hollywood movie bad boys stopped smoking? How would I know if the main female character just had a nervous breakdown? And that she is mentally unstable, if she is not lighting a cigarette with trembling [more]
The first symptoms of losing his hearing Ludwig van Beethoven experienced when 26––at 48 he went totally deaf. Historians suggested that Beethoven was suffering from Paget’s disease of bone, but the real cause seems like a detective story: At first Beethoven tried everything to stop the progression of [more]
Who shot Hanns Martin Schleyer? Over decades investigators don’t find an answer, not even with newest forensic methods. The former terrorists from the Red Army Faction keep silent. After 36 years. Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped on September 5, 1977, in Cologne to free imprisoned RAF leaders like [more]
Among penguins, dolphins, monkeys and other animals, it is considered normal when two males or two females have same-sex sex. Even insects and spiders copulate regularly among conspecifics of the same sex and this with an astonishing frequency. Up to 85% of male beetles in some species live [more]
The German ‘gar’ signifies many things. In cooking it means ‘done’, used with ‘nicht’ it is a comparison. ‘Gar’ as ‘even’ or ‘maybe’ is usually used in spoken language. In the South, in Austria and Switzerland it means ‘very’ and textbooks tell you that it would say “Abtönungsartikel”. [more]
Since 1965, on October 26, the Austrian National Day is annually committed. The day the act of Austrian neutrality was decided in 1955. Nearly 1200 recruits from all over Austria, including three women, were sworn in on Saturday at the Heroes’ Square.
More soldiers, more recruits, more heroes, more photos: October 26, the Austrian National Day at Heroes’ Square.
A few days ago it was on the news that now half of humankind was born after 1989. At first that seems terrifying. However I know a girl born in 1989, which I find quite wonderful. Her name is Jasna Fritzi Bauer. She is an actress and has [more]
Captagon is the marketing name for Fenetylline and relatively unknown to Western consumers while it enjoys great popularity in the Middle East. In Central Europe the amphetamine first emerged in the 1980s as doping in football. It was also used for the treatment and improvement of children––those who [more]
The Penthouse editors got thousands of applications by young women who wanted to move out and have been invited for an interview. Here are a few of the rejected candidates.
From his Sister Marion Brasch: Das ist mein Bruder Thomas. Ich habe das Foto gemacht, als ich ihn 1993 in San Francisco besuchte. Er wollte dort für ein paar Monate wohnen, um zu schreiben. “Komm doch einfach her”, hatte er am Telefon gesagt. “Es ist schön hier.” In [more]
Four-leaf clovers, toadstools and chimney sweeps may be common good luck charms in most of Europe, but in Austria, Germany and Switzerland it’s all about the Glücksschwein, a New Year’s luck-bringing piglet made of marzipan. It is often clutching a Glückspfennig (lucky penny). In the Middle Ages, a [more]
Normal filming routine, Cologne. A Glass of Water, the star of the film: Die Einsamkeit des Killers nach dem Schuss.
In Vienna, we have this culture, which you will not find in any other European country, maybe not even in any other country in the world: Das Kaffeehaus. It is a normal coffeehouse with an interesting history and many Austrian peculiarities. The Kaffeehaus culture started in 1685, [more]
In 1971, Edwin Lipburger built a spherical house on a meadow. The meadow was in Katzelsdorf, Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria close to highway 4091. No planning permission existed, Mr.Lipburger defended himself that his “merely transient stabilized ball” would be a “positive constantly curved, two-dimensional space–––and therefore [more]
I saw the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and I was thrilled and fascinated and shocked at the same time. “Men are often haunted,” Werner Herzog tells us at the beginning, “they seem to be normal, but they are not.” His documentary tells the story of such a haunted [more]
Musik, die heilt, die berührt, die aufwühlt, die mitnimmt. Musik, die einen Standpunkt erzwingt und stärker ist als … Ja, was eigentlich? Das ist für mich das Heiligste, was es an Musik gibt … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pA5Nuj2NOY&feature=youtu.be
The song. The one and only song. The lyrics … But most importantly: the one and only singer. Here we realise that indeed he was one of the greatest musicians of all time, no matter which kind of music we think of. And we realise that Gordon Jenkins [more]
Let*s listen to something so essential. It is hard to find any musician*s biography which is so tragic, existentially dreadful, dangerous, negative and yet so important as the one of Dmirtri Shostakovich. Having been a composer of such a genius, power and truth, he suffered so much under [more]
Have you ever seen anything like this? I haven*t. Gyorgy Cziffra. Hungarian pianist. One of my favourite and to me most important and influential musicians of all times. More videos will follow. I want people to listen to this guy. One of the most honest and deepest pianists [more]
Are politics allowed? Should musician be political? I have been present at some heavy discussions on the topic. To be clear: Musicians who think that politics are absolutely unimportant for an artist (a famous one once told me: “If you are interested in political realism, quit music and [more]
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Johannes Brahms who wrote the most sublime music (German Requiem, symphonies, wonderful chamber music, unique piano music etc. etc.) composed a cycle of Hungarian dances for piano solo (also an orchestral version). They became (right so!) terribly famous and were transcribed for different instruments – in this case [more]
Hip Hop? Seriously? Yes! Very much so! And why? Simply this is one of the most magnificent songs I know. Perfect in architecture, strong in lyrics, powerful in sound. A masterpiece! What are all these discussions about a and b music worth? Absolutely nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBCXWdL7Wb8
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Shostakovich*s probably most famous work. The 7th symphony. The Leningrad requiem. His beloved city, his beloved home town was suffering the most horrible blockade. People were dying of hunger, millions. Shostakovich himself was forced to be evacuated. During that period he wrote that magnificent piece. Perhaps the most [more]
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Is it the greatest, the most incredible, most influential of all piano recordings ever made? Live … It is not a record. It is simply the greatest achievement for any pianist by any pianist. In my opinion. Sviatoslav Richter, the titan, the icon, the most magnificent of all [more]
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… die Rache-Szene. Das Rache-Wort. Das geht in die Knochen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GB6Jaas3o0
Wie kann es sein, dass ein Musikwerk nicht nur zu Tränen rührt, sondern – viel mehr als das – einen Zuhörer zum unmittelbar Mitwirkenden verwandelt und ihm, mir, das Gefühl gibt, der Protagonist zu sein? Wie nur? Man versucht so sehr stark zu sein, Schutzschilde aufzubauen, dagegen anzukämpfen, [more]
Dieser menschlichste, wundervollste Liederzyklus ist wahrscheinlich nichts anderes, als Robert Schumanns wundervollste und liebevollste Erklärung seiner Selbst gegenüber seiner geliebten Clara. Heines Texte sind wahrlich nicht frei von Ironie (“Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen”), jedoch von allergrößter Wärme und Nähe. Doch erst die Musik verwandelt diese Worte in [more]
Ein Meisterwerk der Instrumentation. Vor allem aber: ein solch unvergleichlicher musikalischer Genuss. Diese Farben, diese Charaktere! Am Anfang steht wie so oft ein “es war einmal…”, wundervoll lyrisch vorgestellt von den Violinen. Und was folgt? Tills Auftritt – das Solohorn setzt ein, und es beginnt ein unaufhörliches und [more]
Der Größte. Die Art und Weise seines Musizierens suchen bis heute ihresgleichen. Er, der so selektiv vorging, nicht alles dirigierte, was auf seinem Pult landete. Aber was er berührte, das wurde zu mehr als nur zu Gold. Bis heute existiert kaum ein Dokument seines Schaffens, welches nicht den [more]
Darf man das? Werke verfremden? Übertragen? Johann Sebastian Bach komponierte 18 Choräle für die Orgel in seinen letzten Lebensjahren. Die schönsten Werke sind das, rein und – wie Beethoven einmal sagte – direkt von Herzen zu Herzen gehend. Wie erklärt es sich, dass es so viele sogenannter Transkriptionen [more]
I woke up this morning and my vacuum was full. My mother asked me on Skype which party I would have voted for, had I the right to vote in Germany, which I don’t, being Austrian. I’m not sure if I’m going to vote in Austria next week, [more]
For the Fall/Winter Men’s Issue of one of China’s biggest lifestyle magazines – Modern Weekly -, I conducted an email conversation with media philosopher Erich Hörl. He is one of the philosophers currently involved in the ongoing Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, as well as the author of a text published in the catalogue [more]
I dreamt I was foraging through the woods, close to the sea. The ground was strewn with flotsam, rotten chunks of wood cracking under my feet, some trees flattened, reminding me of the Tunguska event of 1908. I wasn’t alone, but I can’t remember who I was with. [more]
In the first days of September and on the very last day of summer, I was sitting at the English shore of Essex, watching the tide roll away and enjoying a few cups of bottle fermented Rosé sparkling wine called “Mount Bluff” with Eva, the artist David Gates, [more]
I was thinking about writing something about a 1985 paper that a mid-level People’s Liberation Army officer named Shen Weiguang wrote in 1985, in which he coined the term INFORMATION WARFARE for the first time in history. I came across it in a paper published by an intelligence [more]
Cognac, Grand Marnier, egg yolk, Piper-Heidsieck Red Top, nutmeg, and a late night Marlene Stark
I start the week with a morning visit to the dentist, and while the olaflur gel is setting and I think of Olafur Eliasson, I watch motorcycle speedway on the telly, which seems oddly anachronistic. I think about floss and loss, and all things dental and mental. Every [more]
A new land has risen from the ashes of tectonic annihilation. Sentimental sediments, seen from the French Pleiades high-resolution Earth-observing system, to form an almost geometrically precise circular island off the coast of Pakistan, emerged from the ocean after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck last Tuesday afternoon, 20km north-east [more]
“We moved into the Heath. There were oilfields, and blackened earth. Jabos flew over in diamond shapes, hunting us. Blicero had grown on, into another animal. . . a werewolf. . . but with no humanity left in its eyes: that had faded out, day after day, and been replaced by [more]
I’m at the annual conference of the Society for Media Studies and there is no time to write something remotely poetic or meaningful. I am writing this on my phone. However, there is so much fantastic language here. I try to document it on Twitter. Follow me, if [more]
I’m sitting in on a panel on “World Peace” after finishing up my own talk on Kittler’s source code as an historical source. His lega-C. Conferences make me stupid. I never tweet, only during conferences. Right now, the brilliant Ana Pinto is speaking about cybernetics and the fabulous [more]
My brother Lukas is a film director. He studies at DFFB in Berlin. His films are usually very stylized, elegiac, enigmatic and rough. Think Andrey Tarkovsky getting drunk with Ulrich Seidl, or Alejandro Jodorowsky going shopping with Michael Haneke. In 2011, however, he did a personal project outside [more]
When I came home from the conference in Lüneburg, which ended with a lecture by a philosopher and behavioural scientist, who actually sang half of his lecture, spontaneously bursting into song, serenading tropical birds and their ritualistic synchronicities, I found a package containing a volume of Felix Salten’s [more]
Bertrand Russell was traveling in China in 1920. Since the famous logician and co-author of the Principia Mathematica knew a lot about the logic of language, but nothing about Chinese, a young and dapper mathematician and philosopher named 赵元任 Zhao Yuanren accompanied him as an interpreter. Zhao had studied [more]
In 1934, an already middle-aged wunderkind by the name of Norbert Wiener embarked on a journey by ship from California to China via Japan. He had been invited to teach mathematics and electrical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, by a former MIT graduate student of his by [more]
My grandfather once got in a fight with Helmut Qualtinger. They were in the same Schanigarten in the Vienna Prater, equally piss drunk, and my grandfather furthermore pissed that Qualtinger had temporarily left Vienna to live in Hamburg. So he walked up to him and expressed his disdain. [more]
WeChat or 微信 Weixin is one of my favourite things in China. It’s like WhatsApp plus social networking, only better in a Chinese way, and has about 300 million users. After a night of running around and away all over Beijing in August, from strangely luxurious basement hotel [more]
In 1985, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley of Wham! embarked on a lengthy world tour, which would eventually culminate in a ground-breaking 10-day visit to China – the first ever by a Western pop group. One of their two managers – Simon Napier-Bell and Jazz Summers – had dreamt [more]
Mark Henry Rowswell grew up in Ontario and came to China age 23 in the late 1980s to study Chinese. For some reason, he was on TV only a few months after arriving and even performed a comedic skit on CCTV’s New Year’s Eve gala, broadcast to around [more]
Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEWb7zhx-VU
There is a Canadian company called D-Wave Systems which has claimed for several years now to build actual quantum computers. Nebulous mystery surrounds their claims, given that it is extremely difficult to determine whether their D-Wave 1 and 2 contraptions are actually making use of the quirky thing that is quantum reality. [more]
It’s a Sunday evening in late May and I am face down in my pretzel prawns at a small street restaurant in Kowloon, Hong Kong. I had spent the day on Lamma Island, losing ridiculous amounts of sweat and talking about snakes. The night before was spent aboard [more]
No. Not Deep Throat. We missed it. October 15th was the annual Ada Lovelace Day, honouring women in science, technology, engineering, and maths. Each year, it is hosted by a different institution – Imperial College London this year – and accompanied by a string of events. For those of [more]
On October 17th, 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann succumbed to the burn wounds she sustained after falling asleep with a cigarette in her apartment in Rome in late September. She was 47 years old. She had been heavily addicted to all sorts of pills for a long time, her body [more]
Two years ago today, at dawn, my mentor, teacher, former boss and friend Friedrich Kittler died. I had been at the hospital for most of the night, as had a few other members of the family, friends, companions. When night fell and breaths became ever more irregular, making [more]
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After Eva’s Sunday manifesto, it is admittedly hard to decide what, and how to write. How to continue, and what to decide. Let’s go where it hurts, she wrote. Austerity instead of oysters. She even used exclamation marks! Manifestos always make me sad. There is a distinct melancholy [more]
Alright, let’s self-reflect, let’s discoursify content management systems, let’s bore the living crap out of each other. Believe it or not, it’s ten o’clock in the morning and I am cooking soup with Sam. Another Sam. At the CDC, which might be the Center for Disease Control, the [more]
I can’t write anything today, not to myself, not about anything, not to someone. So please enjoy Luis Bunuel making a Martini, Jermaine Jackson performing with DEVO and something I just found called Art School Girls of Doom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOAjW3q7MDg&list=RD02Ltfc-IlJiYc
“Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever.” Kim Stanley Robinson “The Devil’s Ballroom.” Roald Amundsen about Antarctica Of all the utopian fantasies of the 19th century, the exploration of [more]
Innovation is driven by laziness. I was just thinking about how great it would be to have an algorithm write all my texts. Writing is governed by Zipf’s law, also called the Principle of the Least Effort, which basically states that we become less creative in our choice [more]
Travel + Leisure named Lesotho’s Matekane Air Strip one of the world’s scariest runways. The tarmac is only 399 metres long, and it ends abruptly at the edge of a couloir at 7550 metres. If you run out of runway before getting airborne, explained bush pilot Tom Claytor, “you [more]
waun e schdeam soit waun i amoe a bangl reis zu deitsch: de bodschn schdrek – i hoff es dauad no a wäu bis zu den leztn schrek – waun i daun oesdan schdeabm soit so bit ich eich nua r ans: jo nua ka r eangrob aum zenträu! [more]
I was talking with Sam about Sam this morning, while walking to the Center for Digital Cultures in Lüneburg. While I was detailing the situation – several conflicts and resolutions, paired with or impaired by a godforsaken time and ungodly level of toxicity – I had the most brilliant [more]
Many doors to many new and old rooms these days, some missing, some still phantoms, some still without keys, some which might close, and some changing every day. I feel like I have been in transit for the better part of a long time, and probably some temporal [more]
I simply forgot to write yesterday. I always wondered what would happen if the divine order of 60 pages was disrupted. Apparently nothing.
From 1930 to 1933 von Neumann often lectured to college groups in Princeton and enjoyed it immensely. It inspired him and he usually spoke without notes. He was said to be an indifferent teacher. His lectures were popular, though he was not easy to follow because he talked [more]
I watched this this morning, half awake. I’m not sure what to make of it. It is snuff sensationalism and emotional exploitation porn as much as it is a heart-wrenching and compellingly humane form of journalism the likes of which I have not yet seen. I have been [more]
As I wake up this morning, I aim to do as the so-called Weavrs (create your own) do and blog myself into existence. I dreamt I was sleep walking. Maybe I was. Nobody said anything in the apartment I’m crashing in. It’s Baltic sea weather outside. Weavrs are simple AI [more]
We know that Maya Deren pioneered lolcat videos in her 1944 The Private Life of a Cat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_iFk1eU1B0 Apparently, film pioneer Georges Méliès was into raunchy stuff, too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYYdTAuGm34
For some reason, for years now every single time I sit down and think about what to write, the word “Spiegel” (mirror) pops into my mind. I don’t know why exactly. I pronounce it silently inside my head, a little like Beckett’s Krapp utters “spooooooool” now and again. [more]
(One day late) We met last night. We raised glasses to Jeanne, who’s done. We made Eva older. We spoke with Georg and Bobby about irony, and being resistant to it. We met Sandra, who is wonderful, I think. We tried to go on with Sam. We went [more]
The corner where I live attracts mythical creatures. Every morning, rain or shine, a one-man bike protest cycles by, wearing a helmet, frantically blowing into a whistle, carrying a huge sign demanding something, and playing the (unrecognizable) demands from a tape recorder, which alternatively blasts a gift card [more]
A couple of years ago I attended a summer school with lots of science historians and sinologists in Heidelberg, and met Solange. Solange Guo Chatelard is from all over the world, and is a serious researcher and filmmaker at the same time. We practiced post-colonial drinking, academic impressions, [more]
Aaron Brown is legally real. I quote: On paper, and in the digital realm, Aaron Brown exists. He has a State of Ohio driver’s license, identification proving that he is member of the Lipan Apache Tribe in Texas, and is licensed to operate a boat. Brown is also [more]
Symbols become symbols only by changing sides. The most significant signifier thus is the empty space, the void, the abyss. It points to absence, lack, longing and desire. The Moebius strip, with his one singular side, eternally changing sides and staying the same, has to get lost in [more]
At Antje Majewski’s studio, with works currently on display at the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle. Fucking corporate joint, good show, his assessment. Performative piece by Jonathan Monk at Phylogenesis of Generosity in the Prinzessinnengarten. Mural piece by Bettina Krieg. He also appreciates arts and crafts: vogueing in a perl [more]
As a reply to Xifan Yang’s post Shanghainese:
I have been partially paralyzed from my psyche downwards this week and thus thinking has become a peculiar pastime. Two things, however, grabbed my attention. Our favourite computer worm Stuxnet seems to have gone rogue and is currently wreaking havoc on its own. I quote the goof people of [more]
Friday night I met Eva by chance for the first time. Well, not really, but somehow yes. A little later Sandra and Linlin adorned me with a crystal necklace which everyone seemed to like, or they just found me ridiculous. Andreas of Die Welt said I looked like a [more]
Almost over now. It ain’t dark yet, but it’s getting there. Maybe I will actually save one post for later. But today is about my friend Zoë Claire Miller, artist, connoisseuse of all things odd, and owner of Novak, The Critical Dog. In October 1666, two fishermen caught [more]
Contemporary Germany is a very strange place. It dominates the European Union with iron inflexibility but it refuses to assume the role of the benevolent hegemon. Its chancellor –unlike any other leader of a major European country since the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis– has been brilliantly [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The circumstances surrounding my first death At the time of my first death I was twenty years old. I lived with my two sisters in a rustic [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World … After losing our mother and father within months of each other, my two sisters and I decided to set up our home after the manner of [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I was granted my wish to die but came back unexpectedly and created havoc So I grew sick in my body not, as many people did, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World What happened to me while I was dead and why I chose to come back from the world of Light and Love I must say, it was [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I was caught by the authorities and ran away and fed myself from my own breasts When I walked out of our cabin the next day, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World (yesterday’s last line: Thinking this would give me a chance to tell him about the world of Light and Love, I leaped off the branch and lit [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World (yesterday’s last lines: “I want to talk with you.” Thinking this would give me a chance to tell him about the world of Light and Love, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I tried explaining this to the tall man, but he said nothing. We were following the long trail next to the Big River and the buggy wheels [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World It was almost sunset. Sky and ocean turned red as my blood under the dark purple rain clouds massing overhead. Heading north, I flew over the settlement [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I twisted and turned my hands in their metal cuffs. Finally, at the expense of a great deal of skin, I got them loose. But now that [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I came to the white city and what happened to me there Living alone at the top of a great redwood tree was deeply pleasing to [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World On the eighth day three bad men tried to drag me into an abandoned mine next to the Russian River. I broke loose from them and ran [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I wanted to find the Ladies’ Giver House the woman on the trail had mentioned, so I asked directions of a man passing by who carried his [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World In the center of the white city the tops of the guano-streaked buildings were as blackened and lightning-struck as the crowns of the giant redwoods in my [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World A woman in a headdress stood guard inside the entrance. Her clean white tunic was smooth as stone, but it wasn’t the synthetic material we all wore—could [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I whirled like a dervish in the ladies’ religious house and sang at midnight I found myself in the biggest room I had ever seen in [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I came to lying flat on my back with all the women gathered around me. I had twirled for six hours straight, one of them told me. [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I came to live and work in a bakery, and demonstrated my powers My stay in the Official Orthodox Holy Giver House of Francisco Kingdom lasted [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World He beckoned me through an open door behind the counter into a big windowless kitchen. Next to a long wooden table whose surface was dusted with flour [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The baker didn’t notice my burned hands when he came in at noontime. He only saw I’d loaded and unloaded all the trays and kept the wood [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The baker opened an ancient white icebox in the corner and took out a dish of butter and a wheel of cheese. Then he drew two flagons [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The baker drained his cup noisily, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a piston rod. He set it down with a bang. “You may be [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World All the interest he showed made me very happy. Martin was the first person to show real curiosity about my indestructible mortal body, and so far he [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Martin seemed to be thinking hard. “I know of a venue,” he said finally, “that would allow you to bring your message to many, many people in [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I was displayed to a large group of people at the place called Fillmore The very next week Martin told me the venue was ready. Travis [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World When I asked him where we were, Martin laughed. “Have you never been in a theater before?” I shook my head. “Have you seen traveling shows of [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Standing to one side but still in view of all the people, Travis called out in a loud half-mocking voice, “Show us, Christina! Show us what coming [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I sat down heavily and plunged my arm in the pail of water, where it disappeared in a cloud of hissing steam. When I drew it out [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I came to live under the bay, and what I decided there By dawn I’d reached the eastern edge of the bay, where the ruins [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I blinked and wiped the blood out of my eyes with my sleeve. When I tried to clear my throat, blood gushed out of the wound again. [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I went back to Sequoia, where my sister betrayed me again So I made my way north again. This time I flew straight as an arrow, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Matilda never failed to remind me of the trouble I’d caused for them with the Duke. With each passing day it seemed to be bothering her more, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I died my second death in the Hygiene Maintenance Facility of the duchy of Sequoia, and what happened afterward This time when we reached the Hygiene [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World He left me shackled all night with no food or water, which my indestructible mortal body did not need but still sorely wanted. The next morning he [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World There was a commotion in the hallway and one of the attendants went to the door. He scurried back and whispered in the stocky man’s ear, “Dr. [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Dead again at last! My soul swelled with joy. Free of my body, I was getting ready to rise straight through the roof to the joyful world [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I came to live in the castle of Sequoia and the miracles I performed there Clad only in a rough burlap shroud (all they had by [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World “Are you planning to fly away?” “Not right now.” I was too exhausted to think of escaping. I also thought I heard Giver whispering I should stay [more]
As a break from the interminable Christina (*only* 22 episodes to go!), a life story instead: Last weekend I was the guest on a traveling live radio show/musical event known as Radio8Ball that is run by SyncHeads. SyncHeads are a wide-ranging group born out of vaguely Jungian-9/11 conspiracy [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I accepted bread from the Duke and olive oil flowed from my breasts The Duke’s guards came for me the very next morning. Belinda had dressed [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The Duke sat back. A handsome man, intelligent and spoiled. When he had first peered at me in the terrible chair, I had sensed an interesting presence. [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How the Duke tried to take my virginity but could not The guards marched me out of the room, up a staircase, then down another long hallway [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I spoke with the Duke’s bear and saved the Duke from a plot “Once upon a time Philip was a good man,” Belinda said. We were [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Words had never come easily to me. But then I remembered I’d managed to deliver a few sharp comments the day before. So I gathered up my [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Shortly thereafter, one of the young boys appeared at the bedchamber door with a small brown bear in tow. The bear had beady little eyes and fluffy [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The Duke stood up quickly when I told him this. “Jonathan,” he said to the boy, “Are you loyal to me?” Jonathan stood straighter and said, “I’m [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How I learned to remember the future The next day the two oldest sons were missing from the dais. Thanks to Chickie, the Duke had averted catastrophe, [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Thus began the long and complicated business of socializing the Frog Creek cow-girl, a process that would alter me for better but also for worse. Even in [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Always, always he came back to the Great Miasma. What happened? Why can’t we remember it? Each time Giver sent me the picture of an enormous blank [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World On the surface all was well, but inside I felt restless. I was happy to give up performing feats with my indestructible mortal body and concentrate instead [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World The very next morning I said goodbye to Belinda outside the Lady House. Then before her startled eyes—for by this point I rarely used my physical superpowers—I [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I called on Giver, but it seemed to me Giver was saying by this silence—a bit like Chickie the bear—it was time I inhabited the grace inside [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World I was a soul being sung by the Light. I lived in this blessed state for what felt like an eternity, watching the rise and fall of [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World At this moment in linear mortal time, I understood, we were in the process of replacing our lost history with something else. Just as the bear had [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World How the Duke began to hear things, and Jonathan’s dilemma “Mercy, Christina!” Belinda sat up quickly in her rocker on the porch when I lit down in [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Nothing had changed, nothing. I returned to the Lady House in a deep funk. That evening over our bowls of vegetable broth Belinda tried to cheer me [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Next day, after he’d sentenced a salmon fisherman to death for poaching on the preserve of an ancient tribe known as the People who lived to the [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World That afternoon he sentenced three more men to death for various infractions. In the evening Jonathan came to the Lady House asking to speak with Belinda and [more]
aber mit Direktkontakt zum Boden, auf dem es sich gerade befindet.
Stuttgart, mit Sonne im Rücken. Ein Hemd wird’s werden. Ein Riesenhemd:
Das ist der Zwischenbereich, den man keinesfalls unterschätzen sollte.
[jwplayer config=”player-400″ mediaid=”3732″] Meine Finger waren Zeuge.
[jwplayer mediaid=”4484″] Braucht man da überhaupt noch einen Titel? Immer schön sauber halten.
Immer schön kämpfen, dachte ich. Und dann dachte ich noch, irgendwie kriege ich das Operndorf noch rein. Das ist der wirkliche Kampf. Vielleicht bald wieder mit einem Bild des Operndorfs.
der wirkliche kampf ist das überleben des operndorfes… gedanken, die christoph begonnen hat in die realität umzusetzen.viel mehr als nur eine vision. es ist nicht nur ein glaube an ideen, sondern bereits seit drei jahren das umsetzen und reagieren. das findet in burkina statt,ist realität geworden. und das [more]
This year Turkey is different, Germany not. There is the Gezi movement and the audacity of becoming citoyens, the joyful youth creating a laboratory of borderless democracy in the middle of a park, relieved by the experience of leaving constant crisis behind, standing as free individuals like a [more]
The first German politician my father showed me was a man with the same hairstyle, Helmut Schmidt. That was in the 1970s, and who could know he would become the nation’s wise old statesman, the ultimate authority of Germany, and the most popular chancellor of all times, turning 95 [more]
I guess it is this thing one calls adolescence or disillusioning or giving up utopia or becoming reliable or resigning from aspirations or may be just forgetting why you stood up in the first place. It is this time period that apparently has to pass until you stop [more]
Yesterday, Tuncel Kurtiz, died at the age of 77. Kurtiz was one of Turkey’s most respected actors, both on stage and on set. In his early years he also played in theatres across Europe, including Göteborg, Stockholm, Frankfurt am Main, London, he also appeared on the Berliner Schaubühne. [more]
Social Bookwork a few days ago in Istanbul and Berlin. Book signing by the authors Alper Canıgüz, Murat Menteş, Emrah Serbes (“april yayinlari” publishing, Istanbul and “binooki” Verlag, Berlin) at “6:45 Dükkan” bookstore, Istanbul. Revue – tools for an unknown future magazine release “REVUE Pop-Up-Event »Transformations«” by Rabea Edel, [more]
When I was a kid I loved and hated that my parents (actually all parents in Turkey) would take my brother and me where ever they used to go, particularly when they were going out in the evening or to see friends. Usually this would mean sitting at [more]
Sometimes I really don’t understand what politics is about, and why it keeps me so concerned, and what intrigues me and disturbs me about it. Where does is actually begin, and where does it end? We are still so centralized in our system and thinking, I think. I [more]
There was once a wall running through Germany. Are we unified now?
Once our former foreign minister asked me: What would one actually consider as Willkommenskultur? I thought: he is a really smart and thoughtful person and he has seen the world, so what can I say? I recalled a situation a few years ago when I arrived at the [more]
Only a few years ago when people asked me where I come from the reaction was quite different than today. Nowadays, to mention Istanbul is enough to cause a vivid talk about how exciting, controversial, beautiful, welcoming, artsy or cool this city is or must be according to [more]
My 77 year old mother would never curse, never say something dirty, and I actually never heard her using the word shit. Today, she sent my a joke. It’s a political one, and I admit it is none of these jokes you would tell because it is a funny [more]
Politics in Turkey is actually not funny. Chernobyl wasn’t funny and the mad cow disease also not. People were injured, got infected, lethally sick, people got imprisoned and people died. And still, there is this embracing ironic attitude out there coming along with a fatalistic smirk, a Monty Pythonesk way [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
A drawing a day keeps the doctor away. A message a day makes resistance stay.
Today is World Dog’s Day. A few years ago I had for the first time a revolving dream. It was about a dog. It went on for about three weeks until I went for a tooth treatment to my friends dentist practice. The appointment after mine had cancelled, [more]
The little capsule shelters her far out in the dark, hostile, endless space while circling around earth with zero gravity. Houston doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know where her signal would connect to, until she links into an AM radio wave, probably while being over Chinese territory. She hears [more]
Shall I point my finger to the book publishing or to the music industry? Or to what? Shall I really write about this? I usually try to be supportive, particularly when someone has written a book, composed or produced a music album. And, if not, I try to shut [more]
Over the last days I didn’t sleep much. When you reach the right dose of too little sleep, and are still up and running from early morning on, reality becomes doubled like a shadow observing yourself. And if the mood is alright, the second ego listens, thinks, evaluates [more]
It was one of the most disturbing interviews that Kristy Warks recently conducted with Glenn Greenwald on BBC Newsnight. I checked myself several times during the interview whether I’m getting it or not. Is she challenging him because she actually knows how strong his journalistic backbone is, and [more]
Georg thinks about Gin & Tonic. I try to join with a mashed hangover brain. First of all, I resigned from Gin and Tonic a while ago after a short but disastrous period of overdosed gin consumption. The only exception was at our wonderful rainy kick-off walk over [more]
Dominique’s story about the FBI analyzing customer data collected by grocery stores in San Francisco in order to find traces of Iranian secret agents leads me to the question what a used Gin and Tonic cup on the tower of Lichtenberg could tell? 47 Monkeys, the Tower, a hole, [more]
I’m ill since days which drives me mad. Worse than that, since days, insanity goes through my mind because of the newest thing going on in Turkey. But I coulnd’t collect my senses to put some sentences together just to describe how insane this is. Today I resumed [more]
Every society has it. The thing that glues us together, for a moment, for ever, who knows. For some it’s the founding myth, the landscape of mountains or valleys or seas, for some it’s the freedom of self protection or the freedom of happiness, for some there is [more]
The more concrete the incident the more intense is the impact, no? If all people ask you to be aware and take care of a matter, but you just deny that it is relevant at all or declare the irrelevance of your concerns, the higher you fall when [more]
During my flight to London I was thinking of how terror prevention was working and actually how severe it could already be back in analogues times. When I arrived I didn’t think to find myself queuing for almost 45 minutes until we entered the customs and border police [more]
Tonight I dreamed of Helmut Schmidt. I have no idea why. We somehow met in a hotel backroom where he took a break from attending a conference as a speaker. I was a bit shy and didn’t want to bother him. However, he understood right away through my [more]
The friend that I visited in London, I have known for more than 30 years. It was in the middle of the year when I joined the tenth grade of high school, took the empty seat next to him in the left rear corner of the classroom. We [more]
Yesterday, 75 years ago, on November 10th, 1938, the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died at 09:05. While the country is polarized over secularism versus religious autocracy, Mustafa Kemal serves may be more than ever as a symbol of separating religion and state. During the [more]
The other night when I was walking around I passed by several Stolpersteine. These are brass cobblestones carrying the imprint of the stigmatized people, mostly Jewish, who were torn out of their homes, deported and killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Why is this important to [more]
Recently a group of Turkish students were arrested because they led protests against a new law that would restrict universities’ nature as independent institutions of research. After the students’ release the minister for youth and sport Suat Kılıç offered to discuss bilaterally with the student representative Emre Ersel Erbaş. Student: [more]
Year 1930: Women allowed to vote in general elections in Turkey. Year 1934: Women allowed to be elected in Turkish Parliament. Year 2013: Women allowed to wear trousers in Turkish parliament.
Late last night Jewrhythmics featuring Jossi Reich performed at Kater Holzig. Ancient to contemporary stories wrapped in 80s synthie-music, sung in English, German and Jiddish. The Kater crowd, as divers as the band on stage, is dancing. The sound is not so well balanced, the lyrics hard to [more]
At the end of my personal 60pages I can’t tell what it did with me. As many of us I’m not a professional writer, but to me writing is to comb through the entirety of myself, and thus with all involved ups and downs, a constant weighing of [more]
La politique était sa passion. Du lundi au vendredi soir il fréquentait des clubs politiques. Un véritable clubiste. C’était un vieillard respectable par son âge et par la sagesse de ses conseils. On respectait en lui le Nestor de l’assemblée. Clubiste & Nestor Removed from the official French dictionary [more]
I’m reading a book by Daniel de Roulet. Ein Sonntag in den Bergen. It’s a great book. On page 63, the protagonist is referred to as a “Textualtäter”. (I don’t know the English translation but it might be “textual offender”.) “Textualtäter” describes somebody who accomplishes an action only because [more]
Il aimait nigauder, s’amuser à des choses de rien. C’était quelqu’un avec du goût pour le design. L’intérieur de son appartement était aménagé de marbre ophite, son jardin envahi d’ormin. Quand il était plus jeune, il y a 30 ans, il a commis une action révolutionnaire mais cet incident [more]
In a letter to Neal Cassady on October 3, 1948, Jack Kerouac wrote: “But listen … do you realize (this is apropos) that a new literary age is beginning in America?”* About ten years later The American College Dictionary wants to add “Beat Generation” to its word list. They [more]
Hardly energetic Not more passionate Somewhat emotional A little less shy Very stressed Less thoughtful Very confident A little less concentrated
Slightly energetic Not more passionate Somewhat emotional Extremely shy Highly stressed Fairly thoughtful A bit more confident Not very concentrated
In 1949, Le Corbusier stars “The Architect” in Nicole Védrès’ film “Life begins tomorrow”. “The only way out of the disaster caused by the old manner of city planning is to destroy everything and to reconstruct it.” (Words spoken by “The Architect”.) A film of adventure, love, humour [more]
Il faudrait être un Œdipe pour deviner ce que cela veut dire. Je ne suis pas un Œdipe. L’énigme reste irrésolue. Œdipe Removed from the official French dictionary
STRESSED INACCURATE FALSE STRESSED HIGH TENSION EXTREME TENSION NOT SURE INACCURATE HIGH ANTICIPATION INACCURATE HIGH TENSION FALSE TRUTH INACCURATE HIGH ANTICIPATION NOT SURE FALSE PROBABLE FALSE INACCURATE INACCURATE INACCURATE PROBABLE FALSE FALSE SUSPECTED STRESSED
Il s’est assoté d’une femme qui le ruinait. Elle était une véritable escroqueuse. L’incorrigibilité de son caractère scandalisait tout le monde. Elle en était consciente. Mais néanmoins elle continuait à escroquer cet homme et d’en vivre opulemment. Assoter, escroqueuse, incorrigibilité & opulemment Removed from the official French dictionary [more]
“Mais ce que je veux dire, c’est que… la facilité d’expression dont vous disposez, eh… est très souvent une manière d’écarter les difficultés, et au-delà, dans la difficulté de la parole, sa signification. Car, contrairement à ce qu’on essaie de se dire ou de transmettre, la parole est [more]
“Tout d’abord, je trouve que la première condition pour un artiste est de savoir nager.” (Arthur Cravan. Dans: Maintenant n°4, 1914)
“Il y a quelque chose dans la parole dont on n’a pas parlé et qui est pourtant, eh… nous occupe tous, quand nous faisons du bruit et quand des sons sortent de notre bouche et que nous essayons de donner un sens à ces sens que la, eh…, [more]
Thinking about Paris means thinking about many things but probably the Louvre comes quite quickly to your mind. Some month ago, 200 guards and surveillance agents working in the world’s most visited museum went on strike to protest the growing number of often violent pickpockets. The Louvre brings [more]
“Bien sûr, je parle de moi et je peux même dire que… eh, la parole étant dans mon métier depuis beaucoup, beaucoup d’années, donc la parole m’a fait vivre. J’ai gagné ma vie en parlant. Et il n’empêche que à chaque fois que je parle j’éprouve un sentiment [more]
On October 16, 1909, the boxer Jack Johnson met boxer Stanley Ketchel in the Mission Street Arena in Colma, California. Jack Johnson beat Stanley Ketchel by KO in round 12 of 20. On April 23, 1916, Jack Johnson was in the ring against Arthur Cravan. Johnson KO’d him. [more]
La conception d’une préscience de Dieu n’était pour lui qu’une futurition qui avait fait dire bien des sottises. C’était donc un homme indévot. Il n’avait point de dévotion et ne respectait pas les pratiques religieuses. Indévot & futurition Removed from the official French dictionary
Sehr geehrter Herr, Christoph Ammann sagte, ich soll Ihnen einmal eine Karte schicken, + hier ist die wohl! Ihr Dieter Roth
palangre, paneuropéen, -éenne, panaméricanisme, panasiatique, panislamisme, paparazzi, parafiscalité, paralittéraire, paramédical, -ale, paramilitaire, paranoïa, parapharmacie, pare-balles, parental, -ale, parrainer, parraineur, partenariat, pédophile, pédophilie, pigiste, plasticien, -ienne, poujadisme, potestatif, -ive, potomètre, pot-de-vin, pétainiste, phallocrate, pharmacodépendance, physiocratie, physiothérapie, populisme, populiste, postmoderne, présidentiable, présidentialisme, prévisionnel, -elle, privatiser, profileur, -euse, programmateur, -trice, programmer, [more]
In times when people discuss the meaning and the qualities of gin and tonic on 60pages, and when Europe is outraged about the US surveillance on phone and internet communications (at least they are in France, since yesterday), my post is about some kind of combination of both [more]
60pages is everything and its contrary. It’s appearing and disappearing. It’s the “I” and the “We”. It’s the “Yes” and the “No”. … It depends entirely upon the perspective. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe2WHLGfvLc
In French, you can use the word “flash-back” (It has recently been added to the dictionary). But as the French don’t like so much all Anglicisms, you can find a side note, clarifying: On préfèrera Retour en arrière. (We prefer Retour en arrière.) Today, I read a story, [more]
In his novel, Point Omega, Don DeLillo writes: It’s all embedded, the hours and minutes, words and numbers everywhere, he said, train stations, bus routes, taxi meters, surveillance cameras. It’s all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time [more]
00:00:415, 00:09:062, 01:09:513, 01:15:156, 01:18:589, 01:24:360, 01:34:356, 01:46:636, 01:48:623, 01:57:132, 02:11:924, 02:23:953, 02:31:281, 02:33:268, 02:49:415, 03:07:696, 03:25:264, 03:30:912, 03:58:782, 04:06:509, 04:20:267, 04:34:157, 04:36:961, 04:40:140, 04:58:117, 05:00:103, 05:02:448, 05:11:388, 05:16:726, 05:20:673, 05:43:358, 05:51:154, 06:23:330, 06:26:215, 06:34:949, 06:41:489, 06:46:043, 06:58:274, 07:11:008, 07:12:994, 07:17:544, 07:30:708, 07:42:358, 07:55:389, 08:04:854, 08:32:886, 08:34:872, 08:37:468, [more]
There is happening a nice thing in the archive graphic of 60pages. Marcus’ green line is about to erase his name. What remains is “weg”. One English translation of “weg” could be “off” and I was wondering the last few days, whether Marcus will soon be “off” 60pages? [more]
00:30:552, 02:15:581, 03:23:251, 03:45:864, 04:51:070, 04:52:961, 04:54:454, 05:41:683, 05:53:161, 05:54:755, 06:09:939, 06:37:592, 06:44:108, 06:48:030, 07:20:106, 07:48:753, 07:58:901, 08:02:904, 08:09:472, 08:28:905, 09:10:309, 09:13:621, 09:15:127, 09:17:405, 09:24:445, 09:26:630, 10:21:385, 10:48:047, 11:08:658, 11:16:097, 11:18:248, 11:19:630, 11:21:435, 12:01:282, 12:14:005, 12:38:493, 13:43:433, 13:50:672, 13:54:391 … are moments of truth, in her 14-minutes speech.
“Fiambre, a salad made from cold cuts, all kinds of meats, fish, vegetables and pickled vegetables, is served on November 1st, after a visit to the cemetery. Fiambre is a cold meal of Spanish origin, possibly from the Extremadura (Spain). Fiambre is a very special meal for Guatemalans [more]
“The task of the physiological resonators is to amplify the carrying power of the sound emitted. […] Subjectively one has the impression that one is speaking with the part of the body in question – the head, for example, if using the upper resonator. […] In reality, there is [more]
– Oui mais, le corps, le corps, le corps. – Celui de la langue ou l’autre ? – Non, non, le corps, le corps, les sens, les cinq sens. Aucun des cinq sens n’a besoin de la parole. – Besoin ? – Bah, non. Bah, non. Les sens [more]
– Non, non, mais… Mais c’est que sinon il n’y aurait pas d’objet. […] Enfin, s’il y avait juste… c’est magnifique, l’idée des sensations éparses. On a des touchers, on a des olfactions, on a des ouïes, des auditions, on a des visions, parfait. Je dois en oublier… [more]
During my 60pages activity, I sometimes wrote about words that are about to disappear from the French vocabulary. Since everything on 60pages is disappearing after 60 days, I thought that this fits quite well the concept. The people in France, who are deciding about the word’s future, whether [more]
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http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
Dear Pebble, Your sleek, black plastic is wrapped quite elegantly around my wrist. Who would have thought that your overly simplistic purpose, bundled in a stylishly retro design, would end up as one of the most highly coveted tech feats of the last 12 months? The demand for [more]
From Microsoft’s ‘live tiles’ in Windows 8, to Google’s new logo: the digital design world is getting flatter (small exception: Yahoo). With Apple’s most recent iOS7, it seems that Ive has given us the official nod: Skeuomorphism is decidedly dead. Flatness is taking over: no more textures or [more]
You’re moving halfway around the globe, and you have 1 day to pack your whole life into 1 bag. How d’you do it? Well, as simple as it may sound – it isn’t. Never mind the clothes, the toiletries, and all those electronic chargers (one for each device, [more]
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The first thing that strikes you, coming to Silicon Valley from Switzerland, is that the ‘valley’ isn’t really much of a valley: there are rolling hills in the far distance, but most of the scenery that is laid out all around you is desperately flat. The term ‘Silicon [more]
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Completely unexpectedly, squeezed in between the likes of Chanel and Hermès on a small pedestrian alley just off busy Union Square, lies Mocca, an Italian deli. Its cluster of little round tables and garden chairs dominates most of Maiden Lane. A musician jazzes away on his double bass. [more]
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http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
I had to send a parcel, so I went to a US Post Office. Unfortunately, the contents were wrapped in a commercial box, which wouldn’t do. And so when I arrived at the post office, I covered it with the largest official US Post Office envelope that I [more]
In Silicon Valley you don’t talk much about the weather (which is always roughly the same). Instead, you small-talk about the 101: ‘So how was traffic today?’. ‘D’you see any accidents?’. Highway 101 is Silicon Valley’s notorious spine, consuming as much as 3 hours of a commuter’s life [more]
As Transamerica towers The people below cower Waiting for the mending Of a duty long pending
Ahead of Twitter’s IPO, rumors spread across town that it is planning to expand it’s offices on Market Street to the adjacent building. The current offices are in a sketchy district, on the outskirts of Tenderloin. The developments would inject large amounts of money into the neighborhood. Will [more]
New Yorker’s Nathan Heller reports on San Francisco’s tech culture, in a thought provoking article: On how the ecosystem is funneling lots of talented people into lots of experiments On how San Francisco has become the capital of the three-business-card culture On how the tech space is moving [more]
I recently attended a meetup in the center of San Francisco. The focus of this gathering was to learn about the 3D printer world. The evening’s speaker list featured a couple of young startup CEOs. Meetups are a big deal in Silicon Valley, not only for the tech [more]
Undeniably, tech accessories have always been fashionable – this is nothing new. This year’s New York fashion week went berserk over Google Glass. The epic September issue in US Vogue featured a photo shoot by Steven Klein, with the beautiful Raquel Zimmermann looking icily in-control wearing her Glass. [more]
Blue Bottle Café @ Station, Financial District SF. Cortado à la Espagnole. And who said Americans don’t know how to do coffee?!
After a long day walking and running errands in the city, there’s just nothing better than slumping into a sofa at home, relaxing, watching a movie, and having some American comfort food. Tonight’s comfort features a 16” Red Eye Pizza, with pepperoni (translate: spicy salami), red pepper (translate: [more]
I almost didn’t notice it. Right across from Mocca’s, on 140 Maiden Lane, is the Xanadu Gallery, or what was formerly known as the V.C Morris Gift Shop. This building is a very special construction – it was entirely designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Its facade is unique, [more]
I recently attended a meetup centered on the future of the book. How will our digital future accommodate the current notion of a ‘book’? According to one of the evening’s speakers, we read (and write!) much more today than we did a decade ago. However, what is changing [more]
At GMIC today, I stumbled across a rather interesting thought. At a panel on ‘Connected Cars’, the speakers threw around the idea that software companies will rule the car industry of tomorrow. As a matter of fact, cars that are being developed today already run on hundreds of [more]
Überpractical, übercomfortable, überfriendly, überefficient – Uber, the übertaxi. Yesterday I used Uber for the first time and I was pretty impressed. Uber, I want you überall.
I gave myself ten minutes to create this (surprising) piece of virtual art – on a digital app called Paper. As their slogan says, the app is Simply Beautiful, unleashing the artist in the most unexpected of us.
10 mins – 5 mins – 2 mins – 1 minute. Anyone can be an artist.
Content publishers are not ready for 4K HD TV just yet – this recent (beautiful) ad campaign will spur the movement… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6kdfaBS4rA
It looks like phone makers are arming their models with enhanced ergonomic form factors. Two recently launched specimen include the LG G Flex and Samsung’s Galaxy Round. Both models feature flexible OLED displays – the former with a curved vertical axis, the latter with a curved horizontal axis. [more]
The thing with tiles is that they *fit* perfectly and naturally onto our rectangular screens. Whenever I interact with an interface that is ’tiley’, it just clicks, it just makes sense. Tiles are inherent to the device they’re sitting on. The bricks in our walls are rectangular. For [more]
In a few hours, Twitter will IPO. The price of TWTR shares has finally been set ($26), valuing the company at roughly $18 billion. The question now, is, what will TWTR do with all that money?
On a recent Sunday afternoon, I went to a coffee shop (to have a coffee). I gave my order and made my way past the counter to wait for my drink, scanning the space while doing so. A guy in one of the corners of the room caught [more]
Behold the fearless flyer. Modern-day marketing meets post-modern story-telling. No grocery store flyer has ever convinced me more than the fearless flyer from Trader Joe’s.
One thing that I haven’t quite yet gotten used to here is the weather. The last two weeks, I have found myself looking up the weather forecast regularly – but in vain! Because nothing ever seems to change. The ten day forecast features a flat line like this [more]
And then it started to rain… You slip on smooth surfaces you never noticed before. You have no clue where your umbrella is. You actually need to *think* which shoes to put on. People comment on the weather: look it’s raining! Like in Europe, when the first snowflakes [more]
According to Vint Cerf, Google’s chief internet evangelist, and one of “the fathers of the Internet”, Privacy is an anomaly. His view-point is that privacy is an artifact of technology in the first place (in the olden days, everyone knew all the time what everyone else was up [more]
There’s this point in your life, when you say to yourself: right, that’s it, now there’s nothing left on earth that I haven’t tasted yet, that I still want to taste, and that I believe will thrill me. Every now and then, you might visit some 3 Michelin [more]
Xmas spirit on Union Square; ice skating in t-shirts, and a cone-shaped Xmas tree.
I flipped through an impressively thick US Wired Magazine today – unfortunately, it’s not thick with content, but rather with ads… Loads of them. For a paragraph of content, I have to turn about ten pages. That’s not so cool, and definitely not a great user experience. I [more]
In anticipation of Thanksgiving and wonderful plentifulness, crowds hustle and bustle around the city today, buzzing with palpable tension. Even here, one of the most consumerist nations on the planet, *all* stores will be closed tomorrow. Fermé. Thou shall stay at home and eat and laugh and drink. [more]
Last night I came back to Berlin after a month of mundane travel — London, Rome, New York, and finally two days with my family in Westphalia (a location I mainly mention because Christopher described 60pages’ interests as seemingly gravitating toward West Germany). (His exact list of prevailing [more]
Last week’s NY Art Book Fair at Moma PS1 was visited by 27.000 people. About 23.000 of them were dressed incredibly well for book people, but maybe that’s normal for the combined crowd of the bookish and the artsy and New York. One of the 27.000 people who [more]
Today, two deaths: On October 2 1968, Marcel Duchamp, optician, voyeur, and chess player, passed away, aged 81. On October 2 2002, Heinz von Foerster, one of the architects of cybernetics and Wittgenstein’s nephew, died at the age of 90. The only traceable connection between the two might [more]
I realise what a slacker I am when I have to get up before sunrise for the first time in ages. But the rest of Berlin seem to be slackers too, the streets are deserted. Then I remember it’s a bank holiday, Tag der deutschen Einheit. Both my [more]
Today’s post is a text written by Walter Benjamin titled “Zum Planetarium”, published in 1928; it was discussed as part of a presentation at yesterday’s panel on cosmotechnology in Lüneburg and it is beautiful. It is written in German but an English translation can also be found. Walter [more]
Yesterday, Christina told me a story about Buckminster Fuller: To make people aware of the movement of earth through space, of the maniacal speed of “Spaceship Earth” through the cosmicomics of our universe, he would tell them to stand with arms outstretched, probably somewhere near Lake Eden on [more]
It’s Sunday. It’s hangover day. Today’s hangover cure is Ragnar Kjartansson and his pomp and circumstance brass band sailing the S.S. Hangover in Venice whose flag flies in the ensign of a fat pegasus. If that didn’t help, I am sure Fitzcarraldo will. Just remember Captain James Lawrence’s [more]
This must be the most melancholy consequence of the US federal government shutdown: Mars rover Curiosity has suspended her twitter feed. “Sorry, but I won’t be tweeting/responding to replies during the government shutdown. Back as soon as possible.” We can only hope that while Curiosity is no longer communicating [more]
In my feverish dreams of last night the infinite and interweaving soundtrack was Miley Cyrus, “We Can’t Stop” and Bryan Adams’ “All for Love” from the 1993 Musketeers movie. Thanks a lot, brain. I can only explain Miley’s appearance with the rhyming homophony of Cyrus and virus. Words [more]
After learning that he had won the Nobel prize for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle in 1964, Peter Higgs vanished on holiday without a mobile phone and now seems as hard to detect as the particle itself. Higgs’ statement on winning the Nobel prize mentions [more]
The first instance of talented assemblage of words in Iphgenia Baal’s biography must be credited to her parents for giving her her name. She carries both parts of it with equal amounts of dignity and disdain. In Homer, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon, destined to be sacrificed [more]
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni We wander in circles at night and are consumed by fire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Si6cTE_n8
Saturday night, Sarah, John, and I talked about game theory and how it had changed their lives and relationships. Treating life as a game and oneself as a player was a liberating realisation, said Sarah. John explained remote manipulation of behaviour. Earlier, we had talked about August Strindberg’s [more]
In the first version of the text Iphgenia wrote about me for 60pages, she described me as “not as polite as she seems.” In the final version that part of the sentence had disappeared. Maybe out of politeness. Maybe because sadly I am as polite as I seem. [more]
Buzzfeed today reported that Glenn Greenwald—together with the filmmaker Laura Poitras one of the journalists who were contacted by Edward Snowden and who broke the story on the NSA’s surveillance—is leaving The Guardian to join a new media venture, ostensibly funded by eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar (as reported by [more]
People, everyone: go see Gravity. In 3D. It is the future of film. It is every film ever. It’s the story of everything. The opening shot instigates what must be a substantial cinematic or Euclidian or Cartesian revolution – the hemisphere of the blue planet looms onto the [more]
Last night at Würgeengel, Georg, Sam, Carson, and I talked about the community of 60pages, about the freedom and discipline of thought in writing, about postmodernist gods, about long reads, about the daily rhythm of production, about the difference between writing and publishing, about form, style and content. [more]
Today’s finds: Kentridge, Duchamp, Rorschach, Rilke Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, [more]
I had such a nice topic to write about today, and now I ran out of time. I had this whole idea laid out on illegible script – script that looks like writing but really is just ornament – to be found in Early Modern painting. It would [more]
On the hem of the cloak of a Verrocchio Madonna with child (ca. 1470) you can discern a band of gold embroidery that resembles script, but which makes no sense. It is painted in perfect detail to bring to mind Arabic writing, however it is just an array [more]
On May 13, 1787, the Friendship, a brig of 278 tons, left the harbour of Portsmouth carrying seventy-six male and twenty-one female British and Irish convicts. She arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, on 26 January 1788, minus the female convicts who had been transferred to other vessels at [more]
My father recently returned from a trip to Australia where he encountered the story of the Cane Toad. He retold it to me in great detail last night on the phone. Here it is: The first 102 cane toads, native to Central and South America, were introduced into [more]
“You can write to Pvt. Manning at the following address. While the outside of the envelope must be marked “Bradley Manning,” Pvt. Manning will be happy to accept letters that refer to her with her chosen name Chelsea on the inside. She has also expressed that within the [more]
Iceland spar, a transparent calcite very common in nature, has the property of polarising light. Specifically, the double refraction of light through the anisotropic crystal led physicists to understand the nature of light as a wave. When a ray of light enters the Iceland spar, it is split into [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXWWz5Tv_I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXINTf8kXCc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5nXuvyBvjI The documentary „Meine keine Familie“ („My fathers, my mother and me,“ Austria 2012) tells the story of the Friedrichshof Commune in the Austrian Burgenland near Vienna from the perspective of one of the children born and raised there. The director, Paul-Julien Robert, lived in the commune for [more]
Dear Eva, It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the [more]
Yesterday would have been Aaron Swartz’s 27th birthday. On January 11 2013, Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. At the time of his death, Swartz, a programmer, internet activist and outspoken advocator of open access, faced more than 30 years in prison and a maximum of one [more]
Here, for no particular reason, is a complete list of Captain Haddock’s curses and insults: Aardvark! Abecedarians! Addle-pated lumps of anthracite! (old) Alcoholic! Anachronisms! Anacoluthons! Antediluvian bulldozer! Anthracite! Anthropithecus! Anthropophagus! Arabian Nightmare! Artichokes! Autocrats! Aztecs! Baboons! Baby-snatchers! Bagpipers! Bald-headed budgerigar! Bandits! Bashi-bazouks! Bath-tub Admiral! Beast! Belemnite! Big-head! Billions of blue [more]
I wish I could retrieve the silver ring I lost yesterday. It was a möbius strip, a surface with only one side, an infinite surface—like a Klein bottle. The möbius band has a boundary, whereas the Klein bottle does not. I wore the ring for exactly three years [more]
During our first and as yet only conversation Maxime was pouring champagne into his vodka drink at Elise’s party in a “no pain no gain” effort which clearly backfired but seems to be constitutive of this guy’s eclectic ideology. While happily ruining the drink he was telling me [more]
In 1978, the businessman Girard “Jerry” Henderson built a 16,500 square foot underground mansion in Las Vegas to be able to escape the dangers of the impending nuclear war that would be able to sustain life for a full year. The mansion features bomb- and earthquake-proof magnetic doors, a swimming [more]
Sitting in her kitchen and eating baklava, my friend told me about her slightly creepy new job today: She answered an advertisement on Craigslist from an American company looking for German-speaking applicants who could transcribe audio records. She passed a test and got the job: Now she receives [more]
We painted Novak the whippet’s toenails and our lips red, our eyes black, we swapped glasses and dresses and got drunk on bubbly, danced to Falco and forgot to eat. We looked like Hildegard Knef. The view over the roofs of Berlin for once gave us the feeling [more]
“Today I received an email from a friend. It said: ‘Dear Eva Today, as I was reading the former Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il’s “On the Art of Cinema”, specifically the lines: “The real objective of cinematic art is not merely to enhance people’s awareness [more]
Dear Eva, since days now i am thinking about what to write you or which form our conversation could take. as you see, i decided to write to you in english, like you suggested. i know my english is not the best, since i just learned in school [more]
The third installment of the guest appearances presents a collaborative text by Alison Yip, Claudia Barth, and Agnes Scherer about their recent project in Düsseldorf involving a local group of Ikebana artists in a two-day, ephemeral exhibition based on a Haiku: “The exhibition ‘At The Indoor Pond’ was [more]
Many of the 60pages dispatches seem to have been written in transit, up in the air. Writers are frequent flyers, cosmopolitans, people of the world. I conform by just having boarded the 5:20 pm flight from Tegel to Vienna. Unfortunately I had to leave my research group’s workshop [more]
Going to Vienna on these sudden trips is always a ride, ein Ritt, never a moment to stop and think about the entirely surreal situations you are casually pirouetted into. The unnerving waltz playing on loop on the Austrian Airlines flight gives you a first indication of the [more]
Dedicated to all Hollywood doomsday fantasies triggered by the advent of the comet Ison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8BSlqHAhuY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLgSKv2P-ow
David Gates on his project to convert a caravan into a pinhole camera and place it in the woods of Essex: “Why my caravan has become subject to threats of abuse, vandalism, arson, I don’t know, they’re not actual threats, they’re the projected threats of people witness to [more]
While I was researching recently built exhibition spaces and thinking about what constitutes “creative space” I came across Wikileaks’ former server room in a mountain in Sweden. Apparently Wikileaks transferred their data there after being removed from the Amazon servers, but has since had to move from Sweden to France [more]
New Year’s Eve in Berlin, over one million humans gather in the middle of Tiergarten, on the “Festmeile” of Straße des 17. Juni. Thousands of fireworks and rockets go off for hours, have been already detonating for days. Many of the birds of the city fly higher than [more]
The Entlastungsstraße disappears in 2006 right after the World Cup. Originally it is conceived as a relief road, built during the construction of the Berlin Wall to quickly connect Schöneberg to Wedding. During the 1970s Autobahn bold euphoria the Entlastungsstraße is considered to become a permanent feature, a [more]
This is the most beautiful place in the core of the city: 210 hectares of dense forest. It is traversed by wide roads, but along with its sanctified ways, there are mysterious almost invisible trails that run through dark woods. They serve a large wild population. Cunning and [more]
In its geological history Tiergarten is richly wet. Part of it is situated in the floodplain along the Spree, the deeply set area of Warsaw-Berlin glacial valley. It is especially evident now because of the complex network of streams running from the Landwehrkanal towards the Spree. After a [more]
1945 Tiergarten is a battlefield. During the severe winter of 1946 the British Army gives permission to the Berliners to cut down most of the trees in Tiergarten to procure firewood. Around 200.000 trees, centuries-old, are burned. 1945 Tiergarten is a battlefield. During the severe winter of 1946 [more]
It’s April, two months away from the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Adidas builds a miniature copy of Berlin 1936 Olympic Stadium on the Platz der Republik. It is called World of Football. In 2005 already many locations are in discussion for this venue in the Berlin Senate. [more]
A beaver’s tail is flat and wide, flapping in the water, its hind-feet are webbed. It is a graceful swimmer. Beavers are often defamed with alleged tales of destruction, but they only cut down plants to reach the fresh foliage and build large dams if there isn’t already [more]
Animals, plants and humans have a way with Tiergarten. Everyone can establish her own territory, around the clock. The malleable boundaries, constantly negotiated, are moving and overlapping. Animals, plants and humans have a way with Tiergarten. Everyone can establish her own territory, around the clock. The malleable boundaries, [more]
Black is water, blue is dense vegetation, pink are paths, brown is meadow, carmine red are blooming areas. The trees were never surveyed, but their location is known to the gardeners who use this plan for their periodical maintenance chores. The lack of budget in the administration allows [more]
Biomass can be very beautiful. Fallen wood eaten by mushrooms, and inhabited by rare black bugs, their antennas surprisingly long; leaves rotting away on the ground, spreading the rot to other plants, wadded mats of decaying vegetation, rain pouring on it. Between water and land it is the [more]
The Magnetbahn was a 1.6 km magnetic levitation line built in 1984 to connect Gleisdreieck to the Kulturforum adding a futuristic quality to the composition, especially of the latter. M-Bahn was an elegant and effortless device that re-used Gleisdreieck station’s platforms and elevated tracks, after bending them a [more]
In 1946, when there isn’t any food available in the city, a large part of Tiergarten is divided in plots for sustenance farming. Photographs of people harvesting vegetables in front of the Reichstag or cutting hay in front of the Victoria convey a sense of closure. In 1949 [more]
Kuhle Wampe was a tent colony of workers who lived on the southern shores of the Müggelsee. It was located near a cove where the water was always cold, even in the summer, the reason for its name: Kuhle Wampe, “cool belly”. The colony began in 1913 with [more]
Epiphyte is a great word, also adopted by Neal Stephenson in his 1999 book Cryptonomicon as the trademark name of a corporation running a data haven for anonymous banking, electronic money and digital gold currency to fund the Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP), whose main server is [more]
From 1961 to 1988 there was a piece of land in Berlin without jurisdiction. A triangle of East Berlin, lying between Potsdamer Platz and Tiergarten and very close to the Berlin Wall, somehow always faced west. Plans for the large Autobahn project of the Westtangente had always included [more]
Pfaueninsel is very different from Tiergarten, still both places deeply relate: in their mutual relaxed slackness, their mysterious lines of sight, juicy tender leaves and the constant crumbling of tree barks, branches and artifacts. Pfaueninsel, the “Island of Peacocks”, is the way it is out of its isolation [more]
1) go naked, wear sandals, ride your bike, make out. the super-natu’rl luscious moss of your metabolist condo grows/unyielding. nothing can stop our voracious youth, a simple bud of your own. 2) this is a very different story from the horrifying memories/skies of hissing lava/and storms of ice [more]
The trees sinking in the water develop buttresses and heavy knees. The trees sinking in the water develop buttresses and heavy knees.
They look as they’ve been flying in from far away, probably across an ocean. Stretched neck and an enormous amount of stamina. They appear in the Spring, checking the perimeter, eventually taking over. That’s the protocol. Coming out of the lake, they walk the trail in large numbers, [more]
Attiret, a French missionary priest in Beijing reports in 1743 on the large imperial Garden of the Gardens, a flamboyant aberration and delight, where several mountains are artificially constructed. Streams and canals meander in between, forming lakes that extend like a sea. The shores are full of hand-crafted [more]
Sex during the 17th century belongs to the exquisite intricate geometry of the natural. There is a laxness in the codes dealing with the illicit. Directness. One lives in the embrace of the tree leaf. Rows of plants pruned into walls of verdure are there to frame dense [more]
David of Japan sings with luminous hair and elegant powdered face: “Boys, now the times are changing / The going could get rough / Are you contemplating moving out somewhere? / Boys, will you ever find the time? Here we are stranded / Somehow it seems the same / [more]
It is a praxis difficult to grasp. Adopting the eye of the alien, looking at a place, a planet, an environment as otherness, without human projection or anthropomorphist construction and prejudice. Antihumanism integrates the strangeness of the rock, insect, plant and animal, while resisting the immediate equation to [more]
There are two water springs running from Landwehrkanal. Bubbling, they rush in from under some thick bushes, making waves briefly. After that the water flows at reduced speed, exploiting a sweet gradient towards the river Spree. Artificial streams and ponds gather and converge the dampness of the marshy [more]
The reconstruction of several Baroque artifacts of military connotation that were omitted for ideological reasons during the replanting of Tiergarten in the ’50s and ’60s, were resumed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An example is the new layout of all the former Baroque axes as big [more]
Neurotically symbolic in form and choice of location, on the north side of Tiergarten along the Spree, Haus der Kulturen der Welt is an extraordinary building. Hyper-charged with the weight of semiotics, it cannot escape irony. The contribution of the United States for the International Bauausstellung of 1957, [more]
At the end of the film Donnie Darko, Donnie travels through a wormhole in order to save world. The world is a personal universe of family, home, school and the dealing of adults who lost hope and innocence, corrupting the young with each decision every day. Donnie rides up [more]
Built at first for the purpose of scientific research on the south west side of Tiergarten, the Berlin Zoo, transforms into a hybrid place, hosting animals but also catering to the general public’s entertainment. It becomes more and more the focus of royals, diplomats and politicians, as a [more]
Rocks can evoke many different sentiments. At the Désert de Retz, deep in the forest of Marly, there is a legendary opening through a long stone wall in the woods. Through this portal the wall expands into a convoluted rock formation. Famished spruce trees, bent by numerous tempests, [more]
Christoph Schaaf, the former director of Tiergarten, lives inside the forest, in a peripheral house of the small compound that includes the Berlin Parks Department. The compound is set on the side of a Baroque axis which triumphantly opens the view between Schloss Bellevue and the Tiergarten Tunnel. [more]
Alibar is a bar run by Ali. It stands in the middle of the Kulturforum and it is been invisible for eighteen years. A customized container, a dixi toilet, several bricolage storage shelves and boxes constitute Alibar, a combination of Imbiss, bar and coffee place under a thick [more]
Pariser Platz doesn’t exist before November 24, 1994. When the first MTV Europe Music Award fills the space with a white tent for 2.500 invited guests. The show is hosted by Tom Jones, Take That win best group, and Brandenburger Tor turns out well as a stage background. [more]
It is 1987 and part of the 750 Years Berlin anniversary celebration is hosted on a stage design built around the golden Victory Column; a rumor goes that also a reproduction of Brandenburger Tor is part of the structure. The anniversary celebration lasts six months and has West [more]
Shortly before the end of the II World War between March and April 1945, Straße des 17. Juni with its favorable Ost-West-Achse characteristics of extreme width and length, doubles as an airplane landing and takeoff strip at the service of the Luftwaffe. The air traffic control command-post is [more]
There is a hut on the Pfaueninsel that is completely covered in oak-bark. The textured surface is clearly beyond camouflage. Grotto-like and hypernatural, it hurts to look at the structure as a whole, the eye is soon permanently staring at the trippy detail of the skin. Intense. The [more]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau dies in the park of Ermenonville on 2 July 1778. His days there are otherwise perfect, where he walks around and collects plant specimens that he dries out for his book of herbs. When he dies he is placed in a tomb surrounded by poplar trees [more]
The second anti-aircraft gun tower is a massive concrete cube, designed by Speer and built in 1940, north of the zoo’s hippopotamus house, in Tiergarten. Square and forty meters high, it is called Zoobunker. Built to contain 15.000, when the sirens scream 30.000 people gather in front of [more]
Several hawks and common buzzards live in Tiergarten. These birds of prey keep permanent nests in the middle of the city, in the forest: a fact, a paradox, unexplainable and real, contingent and advancing against the horizon of a complete humanization. Buzzards and hawks prefer to be few [more]
Everything that happens, happens in Tiergarten. In early 1919, days after the suppression of the Spartakus insurgency, 100.000 Deutsche Mark is the unofficial reward for capturing and killing the leaders of the Spartakus group. On 15 January, at 20.30 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are arrested without a [more]
During the 1900 craze for glorious monuments of heroic history, Tiergarten becomes the main location for an abundance of dignified and pompous works. Among them there is the 1903 monument for Richard Wagner, a sculpture by Gustav Eberlein, one of the sculptors who worked on the golden Victory [more]
Facing the Japanese Embassy, but standing on the all-embracing, safe side of Tiergarten, there is a new monument. Unofficial, movingly unassuming, and noticed. An insider monument composed by a very young cherry tree, few origami cranes glittering, and a small wooden shield: “Den nie gennannten Kämpfern gegen die [more]
Richard Serra sculpture, a Serra corten specific called “Berlin Junction” that was standing temporarily in 1987 in front of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, is purchased in the same year by the city of Berlin and placed in front of the main entrance of the Philharmonie, a location that pleases Serra [more]
Devolution is a weird, idiosyncratic notion, an ambivalent byproduct of evolutionary theory. It also sounds funny. Its scientific value in biology is questioned, because it supports a biased anthropocentric notion of regress in evolution. The theory of devolution asserts that sometimes a species “de‑evolves” and therefore “degenerates” into [more]
With a complex plot of organic virtual reality, the film Existenz stages a world of low density and presumed post-calamity: lonely gas stations run by black marketeers in remote rural settings, individuals driving Land Rover of the series III from 1978, cute mutant animals that are bred to [more]
One of the 600 year old trees in Tiergarten. One of the 600 year old trees in Tiergarten.
Tiergarten is made for everybody to sleep. When walls are more than one can stand and the world outside is unobstructed in its entirety, open and home. Now that the low forest is thin and transparent, everything is visible, also the sky. The season is back. The under-forest [more]
Early in the morning you ride your bike into the woods eventually entering a topography of glacial time: there is a slight profile to the territory, covered with moss, grasses, leading to a river. You carry a backpack with some sandwiches, apples, water. You are free to stop [more]
The best thing you could do in Tiergarten is to get lost. Four-wheel-drive Panda climbs uphill, on rocks and mud, a small chunky box, unstoppable and green. Through ferns and huge larch trees, bopping, constantly disappearing and reappearing behind mounds and bushes. It’s got attitude up to here. [more]
Alpine vegetation is thick, tapered to the ground, lenient. It doesn’t need much. The higher it grows the more elemental its geometry becomes. The phenomenal high desert of white and steep rocks is relentlessly colonized in fragments of green wads and furs. The commander of the British Army [more]
Kanzleramt is a combination of modern and postmodern references, with gravitas, transparency and lightness playing an important symbolic role in it. One can observe the rich growth of mildew and moss crawling on the sand stone of the building, especially on its north side. For this reason the [more]
Happiness is a dark and warm piece of forest, where everybody is lingering, silent and vulnerable. On the south west side of Tiergarten, below the golden Victory Column there is a busy gay cruising area. Night and day men of every age and look are waiting here and [more]
Mores in Tiergarten are always lax and indulgent. When P. J. Lenné starts in 1830s to change things, ripping out the forest in order to get some light into it, making many clearings, opening meadows and trails, there are protests and people at first methodically destroy the work [more]
It is always exhilarating when signs of appropriation, interpretation and growth keep appearing in the city and attempts of correction are given up, because more evolved aesthetics and striking beauty are at work here. Tree buds sprouting on roofs and facades, cracked roads and side walks shaped by [more]
Christian used to have a house on the top of a hill of a Greek village before the 2010 crisis. The house is Wittgenstein inspired, doesn’t have electricity, the toilet is a dirt field with blotches of heather, water can be found only outside, flowing from a higher [more]
Diplomatenpark is a luxurious housing development recently completed along the Tiergartenstraße. Berlin Liegenschaftsfond sold this area with the name Diplomatenpark in the perspective of the development of a new diplomatic quarter, as it was the case here during the Third Reich. The Diplomatenpark is a series of ten [more]
Goldfischteich (Goldfish Pond) is ancient. First appearing in 1757 as a sunken field of stark geometric shape becoming a small water reservoir called Venussbassin. It is then enlarged and deepened by P. J. Lenné to help the flow, after he plans a network of streams through the Tiergarten. [more]
Diplomatenpark classy villas on the south side of Tiergarten are built on a large area that was a considerable extension of Tiergarten, a wild assemblage of grasses, trees and animals. Diplomatenpark has to finance an Ausgleichsmaßnahme, which is a compensation for the disappearance of this green piece of [more]
There are new plans at work for Tiergarten. The last Planpflegewerk (“Management Plan”) was drafted in the ’80s, completed in 2006 with the reconstruction of all the axes into new allées. In addition to a permanent Festmeile (with or without fence), and the recent obsession to increase tourism [more]
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Große, geradezu unerfüllbare Pläne zu schmieden, das ist mein Metier. Demzufolge ist der durchaus überschaubare Rahmen der Sixtinischen Pages quasi als Geschenk des Himmels zu erachten, – oh ja, lieber Georg Diez, lass mich Dir bitte, dem dankbaren Haushund gleich, dankbar Deine gewaschenen Füße ablecken – denn diesen, [more]
Uups! Unerfüllbare Pläne, unerfüllbare Liebe?? Unerfüllbar? Wie in jener post-pubertären Entwicklungsphase des hochsensiblen 21jährigen sich diese Liebe zu der aus dem Polnischen stammenden Mutter in eine hysterisch-todessehnsüchtige Liebe zum Volk und Land der Polen sublimierte, mich zu der Entscheidung veranlasste, mich auf den besagten Wochentrip ins damals noch [more]
Englischsprachig wird diese meine Erzählung über mich den damals 21jährigen auch deshalb sein, weil ich damit dem Sprachenmix der Sixtinischen Pages entgegen komme, wo ja durchaus eine Menge Texte auf Englisch zu finden sind. Und zwar auch von deutschsprachigen Autoren, oder? Um aus dem bundesdeutsch, langweilig Provinziellen somit [more]
Fein? Lustig? Nicht so lustig? Ist ja auch egal. Da ich – so teilte mir es der edle, gutangezogene Georg mit, dessen dem Betrachter ins Auge stechende Hornbrille ich köstlich finde – als Blogger Nummer 21 an den Start gehen würde, entschloss ich mich, über mein 21. Lebensjahr [more]
Außerdem würde ich die Sixtinischen Pages gerne dazu missbrauchen, Tagebuch zu führen, und dabei auch gleich erklären, warum das gut gegen Gedächtnisschwund ist. Ein erstes Item über einen ganz fundamental wichtigen Schlaftraum, den ich gerade vorgestern hatte, über die Honigsteins, eine hochinteressante Sippschaft aus meiner heimischen Frankfurter jüdischen [more]
Ok, Du Arsch. Arsch kann man sagen. Arsch, das hat eine ganz eigene, in der Regel – so auch hier – lieb gemeinte Qualität und fällt, nach allem, was uns allen bekannt ist, NICHT unter die Kategorie Beleidigung – oder gar Kränkung. (Was ist eigentlich schlimmer, eine Beleidigung [more]
Bevor ich mich nun ab morgen endgültig dem Vergnügen hingeben darf, die Liebesgeschichte zu erzählen zwischen mir und meiner Mama und meiner damaligen Freundin Mirale und ihrem mich dann ablösenden Liebhaber Hans aus dem Jahre 1984 vor dem Hintergrund eines vermaledeiten Jugendtrips zu den Gedenkstätten der Vernichtung im [more]
Chapter One: GOING EAST. Twenty-One. I have to admit that I am not so fond of that number. Ok, it contains three times the whole wholesomeness of the holy seven in itself, and of course: Not only the far ancestors of us Jesus-killing-Jews felt the holiness and roundness of [more]
Today actually I should have finished and delivered Chapter Two: “Me, the continuation of my mother” of my short-story “How my 21st y on earth shaped the things to come”. But I did not find the time for writing today, I – was – busy – with – [more]
Okay! Okay!!! It is a creative process, Mr. White, understand!!! It is the story about the love of a 21y old male virgin to his Mom of the past, a self-devouring love, that made him undertake this awful and painful and shitty excursion to the destruction camps of [more]
I looked from the 12th floor down on my beloved Tel-Aviv, which I do not see so often, because my suburban wife – God bless her, she is God, she is almighty – kidnapped me to the suburb. I saw all this simple four or five storey high, [more]
And in the end, Yuval said, there are so many neglected orphaned empty ruins in Tel-Aviv, why not, like in Zürich enacting a law, that allows sub-culture youngsters to get on it, to inhabit it, as long as the owners are simply waiting for better investment-times, and in [more]
Chapter 2: Me, the continuation of my Mom (part one) Although God gave me a penis, coming along with all those terrible masculine power hormones, who drive us men into this urge for senseless restless and limitless expansion and world-conquista, I definitely am the direct genetic continuation of [more]
Chapter 2: Me, the continuation of my Mom (part two) So here I was, late-born son of aging, forlorn refugee parents, who were actually very sweet and lovely, but much too old-fashioned and conservative. They had become wealthy among the very people who had murdered their people, and [more]
Okay, Mister White, I am still not done, okay, bitch??!! Waiting, okay? Patience, okay? Tolerance, okay???!! I mean, deadlines are there to kill creative processes, correct? So let my creative process come calmly to a satisfying end, okay!?? Not too much pressure?? Done deal??!!! The third and last [more]
Shit, I am in deep trouble. Well, ok, not so deep, but still – trouble. Creative processes are full of surprises, aren’t they? I suddenly understood, that there is not only Chapter three “Instead of sleeping with my Mom, I want to die in her beloved Poland”, on [more]
Is Obama spying after Angela, out of the sheer fear, that she is a lesbian and has an affair with Michelle? Oh COME ON!!! This is such a stupid joke. Please erase it, now!! Does Obama have an affair with the bloody homosexual Vladimir Putin? Is he licking [more]
Chapter 3: Instead of sleeping with my Mom, I wanted to die in her beloved Poland (1) The older and more mature I became, the more I loved the soft, cranky, melodic, motherly, sexy and somehow also very unsexy and forlorn sound of Polish, the language that should [more]
Chapter 3: Instead of sleeping with my Mom, I wanted to die in her beloved Poland (2) I loved their Polish rotten houses, so cosy, warm and turning on my phantasy with all these phantasies about the extinguished Jewish life, that once flourished there; to me they were [more]
Chapter 3: Instead of sleeping with my Mom, I wanted to die in her beloved Poland (3) When our Polish guide, after a bunch of arrogant army-officers had passed our way, said silently to us “These are the masters of our land, but not for too much longer”, [more]
Chapter 3: Instead of sleeping with my Mom, I wanted to die in her beloved Poland (4) After an unnerving night-ride back from miserable chilly Poland back to the capitalistic glory and wealthy comfort of the West-German home-turf, here I was, back on a sleepy early Sunday morning [more]
Okay, this was to be expected. I got mixed up again with my little short short-story. Chapter 4 “How I stopped being a motherfucker and became the soft funny crippled nipple-licker, I am still today” is still in the making. I am not really sure for the very [more]
MELINDA [speaking with sincerity, strength, and conviction]: What Lord Nimrod says of my native Africa is only the TRUTH! We goddamned Negroes are merely here to serve the superior white race. We are blacks. We are born to be slaves. The white race should continue to dominate us [more]
Joe Fleisch (flaysh): like a dog on his knees, at a leash, with a dog-collar, half-naked. Beat me, whip me! You are my African queen, my mistress, my dominatrix. Hahahahaha!! (Bursting out into a shrieking, screaming hysterical laughter) (then turns to Nimrod who kind of ignores him) Please, [more]
Chapter 4: How I stopped being a motherfucker and became the soft funny crippled nipple-licker, I am still today (1) Zyklon B. The gas, they used to use, when concentration-camp-inmates, Jews and also Non-Jews were amassed in the so-called shower-rooms, waiting for the shower, being already full of [more]
Chapter 4: How I stopped being a motherfucker and became the soft funny crippled nipple-licker, I am still today (1) And yes, I suffered like hell from Hans. The minimum of male warrior I was in the very end, now, after coming back from my so-called Ausschwitz trip, [more]
Chapter 4: How I stopped being a motherfucker and became the soft funny crippled nipple-licker, I am still today (2) It was Alex and Alex, my two only real friends in those times, that saved me from becoming a kind of psycho-patient for eternity, e.g. from going nuts [more]
Okay Mister White, sorry…okay Mister Diez, let’s cut the bullshit, let’s drop this weird broken German English, let‘s switch to our mother-tongue, unsere geheiligte Muttersprache, edler Diez. Deutsch, Hannoveraner Deutsch, jene Mundart, die sich im Laufe des letzten halben Jahrtausends zum sogenannten Hochdeutsch mauserte, in diesem unserem, sich [more]
Joe Fleisch: “Yiddish, a language that’s no longer spoken.” Maria Telnov: “By nobody?” He: “Well – still by a few, mostly religious Jews, but not so much by modern Jews.” She: “Why not?” He: “Those modern Jews who did speak Yiddish, were exterminated.” She: “Exterminated? Oyoyoy!! By whom?” [more]
Am Steuer Oshry Karpel, der kleine knackige kernige rothaarige Vollbartträger und Electro-Drummer unserer Band aus dem Tel-Aviver Massenvorort Ramat-Gan. Co-Pilot ist der etwas blutleer-anämisch, aber unbeugsam-ungerührt durch sein Moskoviter Musikerdasein wandelnde Iliya Dmitriev. Eine in sich ruhende Intelligenzbombe, der in geschmackvoll-orthodoxer second-Hand-selection den Kraftwerk-ElektroPop-Look in die nächsten Generationen [more]
Mit anderen Worten, Du kannst das bißchen Werbung in eigener Sache in meinem Item nicht ablehnen. Und überhaupt. Ich hatte schon wieder ein Dreitages-Loch in meiner Blogging-Frequenz. Das ist nicht gut, alter Junge, die Konstanz der Beiträge spricht für die Lust der Blogger am Bloggen, korrekt? Genug geredet, [more]
Und vor allem: Was hat das eine mit den anderen zu tun? Gleich, liebe Könige und Kaiserinnen aus dem ehemaligen römischen Reich deutscher Nation, die ihr euch herablasst, die liderlichen Möchtegern-literarischen Samenergüsse der Sixtonischen Pages über euch ergehen zu lassen, gleich, wenn auch nicht sofort, aber innerhalb Minutenschnelle, [more]
In der Zwischenzeit allerdings hatte die Historie ihr Eigenes verbrochen. Während meine allerbesten Lebensjahre verrannen, hatte das Frankfurter Label des Buccovina-Gipsyband-Maestro Shantel sich darauf eingelassen, das Album der Jewrhythmics Anfang 2012 bei sich zu releasen, im niederträchtigen deutschen Feuilleton-Dschungel sorgen alte jiddische Volkswaisen im neuen Disco-Gewand halt zumindest [more]
Vor lauter Musik weiß ich in diesem Jahr gar nicht mehr, wo mir der Kopf steht, mein Jahrtausendwerk, meine Welt-Errettungsnovelle „Wie der deutsche Jude Siggi Morgensonne die Menschheit korrigierte“ habe ich immer noch nicht zu Ende gebracht, bin ich doch weder Clown, noch Musiker, lediglich ewiger Student, verhinderter [more]
Zum abrundenden Abschluss meiner zugegebenermaßen recht gewagten Ausführungen folgt im folgenden Ende dieses Schriftsatzes ein kongolesisches Schlaflied, das die Mütter im Kongo ihren Kleinkindern vorsingen. Der Künstler Richard Mosse hat es auf der diesjährigen Biennale zu Venedig ausgestellt, neben seinen Photos kongolesischer jugendlicher Soldaten, die er in rosa-rote [more]
I simply started to cut the bullshit. No more longing for the non-existent femme-fatale-like the Polish-Jewish lady, the kind of “like-this-would-have-been-my-mother-creature-Had-Hitler-not-fucked-the-world”-phantasy, that was so completely counterproductive for my development e.g. my capability to gain some – happiness? I acknowledged my Mom as she was and ignored the miserable [more]
hi guys, are u ready for Xmas? I am off, no more babbling on 60pages. My days are over, I am jumping out of my window of the 8th floor of this rotten old Tel-Aviv warehouse, where I put my lofty studio in. The studio of the forlorn, unheard [more]
Sommer 1995. “Steine, Würstchen und Sahne.” So sah nach Ansicht unserer knapp zweieinhalb Jahre alten Tochter Rejsale der Haufen aus, den sie da gerade auf ihrem geliebten “Pippi und Kacka”-Topf hinterlassen hatte. Ich, der große, unbekannte Micky Rosenzvajk, den seine hundsgemeinen Freunde bereits seit 20 Jahren einfach nur [more]
“Kinder, Kinder”, wie wir Deutschen zu sagen pflegen. Ja genau, unsere Kinder und deren brutalisiertes Kino- und Fernseh-Gemüt. Der Schlag mit der geballten Faust in die Visage des Gegners, das aufreizend bedrohliche Hantieren mit der lebensgefährlichen Handfeuerwaffe, die ängstlich hoch gehaltenen Hände des Opfers, der Schuss, der gekrümmte, [more]
Dass ich in den letzten Jahren mit meinen Immobilienschiebereien mehr Geld gemacht habe, als sie alle drei zusammen, stört sie nicht weiter. Dass ich geheiratet habe, finden sie schon ziemlich bescheuert, aber das Kind ist nun mal in den Brunnen gefallen, bzw. Rejsale ist geschlüpft, was soll man [more]
Spätsommer 1990. Schon wieder war Jom Kippur, der Tag der Versöhnung, unser heiligster Feiertag. Wir Juden fasteten und versöhnten uns mit Gott und uns selbst. Geil, oder? Ein Jahr zuvor war das Äffchen in mein Leben getreten, und ich hatte es noch nicht einmal so richtig gemerkt. Klar, [more]
Dann auch noch der äußerst rabiate Verkehrsunfall von meinem Stamm-Dealer Stevie. Stevie war bereits mit 15 ein Fixer und war erst nach knapp anderthalb Jahrzehnten wieder davon runter gekommen. In der Zwischenzeit hatte er eine ganze Menge erlebt. Wenn ich mir bei ihm mein Hasch abholte und wir [more]
Meine Freunde nahmen Shoshi, wie gesagt, gebührend in Empfang. Je nach Lust und Laune brandmarkte Jossl, unser bekloppter Theoretiker – wir erinnern uns, der Kolumnist und Schreiberling – die Israelis als faschistoiden Siedlerhaufen oder schwärmte anderntags frei nach Stalin von einem Transfer aller Palästinenser aus dem Westjordanland nach [more]
Riva Jakubowicz, die, so wie ich mit einem polnischen Elternhaus gesegnet, in die ich, wenn auch aussichtslos, wohl mein Leben lang verliebt sein werde, eine vielversprechende Jura-Studentin, die mit ihren semitisch-wollüstigen Lippen irgendwie an Jassir Arafat erinnert – eine Entdeckung, die Shlomke Schultz gemacht hatte, nachdem sie ihm [more]
“When philosophizing,” Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, “one has to climb down into old chaos and feel well there”. In philosophizing, the human subject touches chaos, the non-ground. It maintains an at least problematic contact with it. To feel well in chaos can mean nothing other than to integrate the [more]
Thinking is critical when it abandons the ground of certainties and starts referring to a truth beyond its consistencies. It escapes the temptations of idealism by subjecting its irrationality to a certain reflexive inquiry. Apparently thinking can neither be reduced to the idealism of rationality, nor to the [more]
The human subject has never been anything but a specter. The rift that divides it cuts through it from the very beginning by making it teeter on the cutting edge between presence and absence, infinity and finitude, ideality and reality. That man disappears “like a face drawn in [more]
It is not the human subject that is infinite, but death. But this infinity only exists for a finite subject.
The subject’s world is not a universe of familiarity into which it were inserted like an object. The subject is not in the world like water in water. It articulates a distance from its world by remaining irreducible to its world-horizon. Therefore, one must insist on its artificiality [more]
A theory of art has to make a connection with a theory of the subject, because the subject has the status of something made, of a construction. The subject asserts its subject-form, among other things, through the assertions of form which are artworks.
What I call the subject stretches into the depths of an insubstantiality, which proves to be the transcendental form of the subject. The subject delineates the scene of an elemental emptiness and, in relation to it, every ontic-empirical subject experiences its reification – as if life means asserting [more]
In a letter to Roger Laporte dated September 24, 1966, Maurice Blanchot describes his scène primitive as the experience of a depopulated sky, confronting an infinity, which he outlines as an empty infinity: “I was a child, seven or eight years old, I was in an isolated house, [more]
To love Antigone means to love this lie of love for which her name stands in the history of literature and theory. This love is itself literary. It produces its own singular law which is not binding for society in general. To love the lie of love is [more]
By self-assertion I denote the transcendence in immanence (not of immanence) characterising the subject qua subject.
Art was never anything other than an agreement with the fragility of its time. Art does not come from a stable situation; it is the experience of the instability of instituted reality. Art exists only as the experience of the porosity of the system of facts.
We know that Maurice Blanchot, rather than making the subject disappear, thinks it as the scene of infinite self-deconstruction, so that its new way of existence [referring to Nietzsche and Foucault] is that of “disappearing.” By undelimiting it toward the outside, he renders it the subject of the [more]
In a review of Michel Foucault’s Les mots et les choses (1966), Gilles Deleuze, responding to the analytic of finitude elaborated in that book, brings a thinking into focus that “would of itself be in relation to the obscure.” A thinking after the death of God, it investigates [more]
Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze argues, is by no means the “inventor of the famous phrase ‘God is dead.’ On the contrary, he is the first to believe this phrase to have no importance whatsoever as long as the human occupies the place of God. Nietzsche was trying to [more]
The non-existence of God indicates the inexistence of a program which would prescribe, whereto the subject moves and where it comes from. In the space of this inexistence it emerges as the agent of self-innovation, maintaining contact with the objective unfreedom (its status as determined subject), without completely [more]
The artwork neither articulates its intimacy with nature and the origins, nor does it declare its solidarity with the Zeitgeist. Art exists only as a conflict with its time.
One could read Hegel’s entire project as a movement of resistance against the narcissism of the unhappy beautiful soul, against the narcissism of interiority. The subject erected by Hegel is the subject of emptiness, but this emptiness is abundantly rich, a kind of positive exterior, a desert of [more]
Jacques Lacan: „Un homme et une femme peuvent s’entendre, je ne dis pas non. Ils peuvent comme tel s’entendre crier.“
A thinking after the death of God must take its beginning from the impossibility of man, from an originarily evacuated subject, a primordially splintered cogito, whose task will henceforth be to confront this void and fragmentation rather than strive for a substantial beginning and a reasoned finality.
While the subject of narcissism – incapable of loving, because it loves nothing but itself or what it thinks is its self – grinds itself up in the conflict between its objective being and its ideal image, playing out this conflict as singular tragedy, the subject of love [more]
The most general of Gilles Deleuze’s projects is to introduce into art as well as philosophy the concept of the infinite. Deleuze appears to follow an equally classical as well as hypothetical evidence by connoting art with the bringing-forth of something new, with an act of creation. Art [more]
The subject of art is an infinitesimal subject. It articulates its infinite nearness to the infinite. So nearness instead of distance. The work which it brings forth can be called an infinitesimal because it expresses the distance separating it from the incommensurable.
À bout de souffle / Breathless is first of all the title of one of Godard’s films. Apart from that, this phrase links at least the two moments of subjectivity and flight. The subject is essentially a breathing subject. Strictly speaking, subjectivity comprises breathlessness. The subject does not [more]
Art exists only as an assertion. Every assertion is headless, blind and exaggerated. To assert headlessness itself demands of art a kind of breathless precision.The subject of art is a subject of this self-assertion. It asserts itself as a subject of breathlessness which leads it to the limit [more]
The question of the subject – “Who am I?”, “What is a human being?” – is always flanked by the question as to meaning, the sense and origin of human existence. Philosophy lives from the phastasm of the prescriptive securing of the essence of the subject in a [more]
Deconstruction — the procedure to which Jacques Derrida has given this name, which is irreducible to a law, a principle or a method and is therefore always a singular procedure — has always appeared as self-deconstruction, as deconstruction of the selfness of the self and the same by [more]
Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of the human subject opens the subject up to a logos, which does not simply confront non-meaning as its opposite. Nietzsche says: The subject has the logos as the essentially undefined, his capacity for language and meaning is the opening-up to non-meaning and the margins [more]
Evidently the definition of the human being, which lies in his not being ontologically defined, is still in the tradition of the onto-zoological definition of the human being as an animal rationale (or irrationale), as zoon logon echon, as a living organism defined by the logos, the ability [more]
In What Is Called Thinking? (1951/52), Heidegger says of man that he points into the withdrawal in that what must be thought eludes him. That that is so means that the event (Ereignis; the belonging-together of Being and beings, or of Beyng and beyngs) shows itself at the [more]
Emma Bovary is but one example in modern literature, in which the narcissism of the protagonist exemplifies itself in her phantasies drawn from books, all of which copy a tragic paradigm of love, a passionate moaning and deliquescence: “… she rejected as useless all that did not contribute [more]
Theodor W. Adorno thinks the social mediacy of art as an interruption of its solipsistic self-deceit, which consists in its existing entirely for itself. Society transcends the immanentism of the work, prevents it. Immanentism would here be synonymous with autonomy, society one name of the heteronomous that has [more]
“Why,” Ludwig Wittgenstein asks, “should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?” We must obviously distinguish between knowledge (the established systems of knowledge) and the language-game. The language-game sustains all knowledge without being knowledge itself. Language-game is Wittgenstein’s term for this purely functional plane that marks the [more]
Let us take the definition of nihilism Jean-Luc Nancy proposes. Nihilism, he writes, is nothing but “the final incandescence of sense,” “sense taken to its point of excess.” When sense is driven to the utmost it is extreme sense, external and hyperbolic acumen. Acuminated sense negates itself, hollows itself [more]
The dead God is the only God with whom the modern subject can live. It is once God has died (or seems to have died) that he becomes relevant to man. The inexistence of God is the condition of the possibility of the subject. Because this is a [more]
A collective, in my terms, is a community whose members are bound by nothing but the absence of an objective or absolute bond. The collective is perhaps nothing other than the community without community evoked by Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot (although in different ways). The bond that [more]
Let us recall the famous sentences Michel Foucault wrote: “It is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man’s disappearance. For this void does not create a deficiency; it does not constitute a lacuna that must be filled. It is [more]
In a lecture during a colloquium at the Collège international de philosophie dedicated to Jean-Luc Nancy in 2002, Alain Badiou called for the distinction of his and Nancy’s thought: a distinction which differentiates between a finite thought of the finite a finite thought of the infinite. Ultimately it [more]
The truth of love is experienced rather than known. „It is in the deepest part of the lure that the sensation of truth comes to rest“ (Roland Barthes). A feeling which relies on the absence rather than presence of the other, on the distance between the two lovers, [more]
In a letter to Thomas Mann dated August 1, 1950, Theodor W. Adorno—anticipating his conception of negative dialectics—described the “writer’s dilemma” in words that apply to the dilemma of art in general: “One either defers to the tact of language, which almost inevitably involves a loss of precision [more]
The dimensions of a radical passivity and a hyperbolic activity intersect in the subject. The subject is the scene of this intersection. Translated into categories of ontotopology, this means that the subject is the place where the future intervenes in the past and the past determines the future. [more]
Where a collective forms or begins to form, there is already a minimum of shared order, a minimum of consistency of shared hopes and projects; there is also the shared betrayal of the non-existence which ultimately constitutes the collective. If there are no binding criteria regulating the dynamics [more]
Philosophy was never anything but the mediation of the immediable: of reason to non-reason, of the finite to the infinite, of being to becoming, of the sayable to the unsayable, of knowledge to unknowing, etc. Wittgenstein’s theory of language-games and forms of life insists on the originary embeddedness [more]
“We Hyperboreans” is how Friedrich Nietzsche headed a fragment from his unpublished works dated November 1887. A few months later he wrote The Anti-Christ. We Hyperboreans, we who live in the “hyperborean zone”, in inhospitability or uninhabitability itself, the exterior. The “hyperborean zone that is far removed from [more]
In the aphorism titled “Love and Duality” in the second part of Human All Too Human, Friedrich Nietzsche concludes: “What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to ourselves ? That love may be able to [more]
Christian monotheism stages the double suicide of God in the form of his incarnation and his death on the cross. The infinite God is finite; his resurrection will be the call to men to unite in a community of subjects without subjectivity (i.e., without God). The incommensurable is [more]
To switch from the petulant gods who populate the Homeric world to the one Christian God already amounts to a sort of reduction of complexity. All thinking remains a form of reductive violence, and that violence is fueled by the phantasm of absolute controllability: of controlling the gods, [more]
“To be a philosopher, to be a mummy,” writes Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. The philosophers — ancient and present-day philosophers, which he distinguishes from the future or coming or new philosophers — operate with “conceptual mummies”, they “kill, they stuff”..Their morality lies in the flight from [more]
Narcissism is a form of self-refusal which aims at neutralizing the contingent portions of the self. It is clear that such a neutralization cannot succeed because the self is nothing but the placeholder of contingency. It exists only above the abyss of an inconsistency which is the ontological [more]
To love belongs blindness, because it exists only as a vector into the uncertain. The subject accelerates towards a void the placeholder of which is the loved “object”.
In his Logic of Scientific Discovery, which first came out in 1935, Karl Popper lays out the foundations of his epistemology of the modern natural sciences, as the subtitle of the first edition of the German original indicates. Important sections concern the principle of falsifiability of empirical-scientific theory [more]
Art is an opening to contingency. To assert a form means to make chaos precise. The mode of being of art, Cornelius Castoriadis says, lies in “giving form to chaos”. Art is a “window on chaos” by trying to give it a form. To give chaos a form [more]
Giorgio Agamben writes: “How it is we do not know something is no less important and perhaps even more important than our ways of knowing.” An “art of ignorance” would open the subject up toward the sphere of the incommensurable Agamben calls the “zone of ignorance,” and he [more]
We expect thinking to lead from darkness into light. That is the self-conception of the enlightenment. Whether in philosophy, in art, or in the sciences: the twentieth century has begun to complicate this imperialism of light (one name for this complication is deconstruction). Not in order to slide [more]
It is part of the subject’s normality to transcend normal circumstances. That is the meaning of Kant’s formula about metaphysics as a “natural predisposition.”/”Naturanlage” We may also say: perversion against nature as naturalness or abnormality as normality. We move within the precinct of the “human,” but this is [more]
Jacques Derrida calls différance a difference that does not belong to the system of identity-difference. The différance is not the negative that helps a positive to a mediation with itself. The thinking of différance is neither negative nor dialectical, nor speculative. It refers to a game that withdraws [more]
What does intensity mean? When do we use this word? Francois Lyotard, for instance, has defined intensity as an incommensurable energetic value. This enables him to identify the “production of concepts” in a representative discourse with an “attenuation of intensities.” Intensity is what resists being channeled. It defies [more]
Philosophy is restless. It is without measure and without rest. It does not find any end. Its desire accelerates into the infinite, is unstoppable and excessive.
With the sharp wits of someone who is overtired, Antigone has an overview of her fate. She accepts that she has to die. It costs her less than living without having loved with this kind of passion which is equally madness and crime. Completely absorbed with herself and [more]
I like to share because I am constantly broke. I am the poorest rich person that I have ever known. I do not think that this is problem only an inconvenience that I believe will be fixed momentarily. I have always believed that. I am always on the [more]
Living in this way, taking so much and still being given more, fulfills its own prophecy. The glass is always half full, my faith in humanity at an ever eclipsing all time high. Prosperity, it would seem, is upon us. It is easy damn it.
Off as I may claim to be, life is tremendously bourgeois. Don’t get me wrong I like it. I would eat more steak if only there were time but I don’t make it. As I go on consuming people seem ever less new. Problems are ever more remote [more]
I would like life to be harder. I try in vain to make it so but come up against an ever-present comfort that I cannot see in its detail or its gigantic totality. This comfort engulfs our dreams of rebellion leaving me wondering what went right and how [more]
The bounty of everyday life makes me wonder how we might enact our own austerity program. To be clear I would like more not less consumption. By this I simply mean that we can be a better bourgeoisie, better for ourselves, further into the mire of pleasures. This [more]
In order to fill (even further satisfy) ourselves with greater quantities and qualities of joy we must cultivate indifference to unnecessary questions that originate in the past, in relationships between those outside of ourselves. I want to have what I want before having the chance or taking the [more]
I get energy from other people. I sincerely wish that I could get it walking through the woods all by myself. There is something quite cool about that and I envy people who appear to have that ability. It is a lost cause and one of my deepest [more]
So who do I want to be? Not who I am, surely. (This is not to be confused with unhappiness though that may also be true.) I want to invent myself. We want to change the world at least make it different and as such have to form [more]
I am most worried about getting bored. The ease of the day makes me wonder what happens when we just pack up and go elsewhere. The good times are already at hand. Where is the future? Again, how do I make right wrong? How do I expose something [more]
It is hard to complain with joy. This is true here on this page as well as in the larger setting of society. When my problems don’t seem real I have trouble convincing myself, much less, my willing peers or worse our unnamed opposition. Searching for problems and [more]
I don’t often enjoy being alone. When I am alone I always begin to form a vision of the rest of the world that doesn’t include me. This is because I need other people to think with me. I do not believe in the collective, rather the author. [more]
We are not communists. Maybe we should be but that is not my main concern. My concern is rather the question of what we are to each other. We are essentially alone together so we are left with our own ideas. Those ideas need playgrounds. I hope that [more]
The notion that you have to give to get goes well with the possibility of doing nothing. I really don’t want to make anyone do anything. Nihilism, the nice kind, only works when I talk about it with my friends.
Much of the past has been about creating stability. There is a glass wall between the hedonist’s space and sacred space. We can bring them together Monday through Sunday.
I trust people. People do all kinds of mean and nasty things. Still, I find it easier, even rewarding, to trust them. I’ve always thought that was because I am a spoiled kid from New York. Now I observe that most everyone around me is spoiled too, good [more]
There is a perceived order to the world around us that is mostly made up of divisions. I.e. this is this but not that. I am suspicious of this ordering while at the same time I would like to be committed and definite.
I am interested in articulating gradients, where they overlap and what they become at their edges. These spaces or sets of interactions involve people for the most part. They also typically involve boundaries. I am not, however, interested in boundaries per se. I can be polite about it [more]
I imagine that the gradients of spaces and things are also the gradients of our persons. Simply, we can blend together. (we can have sex too but that is not what I mean.) Much like a singer in a chorus I overlap with those around me. I am [more]
We should take solace in wondering if we are going too far. Though it remains hard to jolt us out of the easiness and into some new fire we should do it, in itself an easy premise.
Why aren’t more things, people and places sexualized? I think we’re so plutonic out of laziness. It is an example of an attitude towards our own betterment that leaves me thinking that I am too conservative. Again, we must work on this together.
I don’t always want to tell the truth even if I might agree that it is worthwhile. Usually life is more complicated than words, at least I want it to be. The constant pressure to clarify the confusion is upsetting and our own fault. Inconsistency requires tolerance and [more]
There are a lot of smart and easy things, many of which I love. This is because I believe that life is basically smart and easy. Most of us do, it would seem. On the other hand, it was pointed out to me that pain has value too. [more]
I get jealous over things that I don’t actually want. We can observe that many people have this problem. Rarely are people above this. When they are I am quite rightly jealous. In order to be more productive we desperately need to address this. The problem of unconsidered [more]
Let go, I say. Holding on is what makes us, me, so exhausted. I am personally winning this battle. I am worried about less and less unimportant things. Basic things are being worked out with haste and I worry deeply about how to make better spaces / better [more]
I would like to apologize (for past offenses and in advance) for what feels to me like proselytizing. I am committed and sure that I am right. I do not, however, expect you to agree. Or, even worse imagine that I think I am better than anyone else [more]
Friends are so important. That is really the upside of everything when it works. I think I ask friends for lots of things. My friends are amazing. I don’t often feel that they ask me for much. They could and should. I would do it.
Things sometimes come between friends. I think that is fine. My understanding of that possibility is more or less the basis of my friendships. Sharing is the intersection of tolerance, love and independence.
Lebbeus Woods, an architect that I am not really into, said “individualism is obtained through community. Without community there is no individual.” No that I write it down I realize that he even said it twice. It is an important thought in relation to my dreams of togetherness.
I am all for more consumption. To get better at it we need to make this easier. To do that I would very much like to campaign for agreement that it is already easy because that is true. Why is this so hard to do? We’re not Victorians. [more]
As time goes on I find myself “becoming more romantic and more callous at the same time.*” Life is not unbalanced, on the contrary, the distance from my extremes gives me a firmer stance, a more spread center of gravity. In theory, this makes me more open and [more]
http://www.fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages/main/wp-admin/post.php?post=4348&action=edit
Unsettling image: Two men in suits stand in front of 300 coffins. Two representatives of fortress Europe, their heads bowed, look at wooden boxes in which lay: bodies of people, who a couple of days earlier had their eyes fixed towards the north: Europe. Calling their deaths a [more]
Jacques Lacan did not trust language. The French psychoanalyst’s suspicion of words was serious: In his late theories, he rejected them altogether as form of expression. “Where words fail, something else is appealed to” – he used mathemes instead: Why was language so dubious and equivocal to Lacan? [more]
Angela Merkel, die das Internet laut eigener kürzlicher Aussage noch nicht so ganz durchschaut hat, wird jetzt an ebendiesem nebulösen Ort als nerdiger Hipster wiedergeboren. Hipstermerkel, gesehen auf dem gleichnamigen Blog.
These days, my grandfather spends his days sleeping and reading. Sometimes he smokes a pipe and has a bit of whisky. At some point in the afternoon, someone pays him a visit and my grandfather converses with his guest. But most of the time, he sleeps. His last [more]
A couple runs into the sun-kissed sea. Maybe they kiss, while they are facing the broad horizon that lies before them. It’s the last scene of Ozon’s portrait in five scenes of a disintegrating marriage: the moment Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Stephane Freiss fall in love. It’s where [more]
UN Women has recently launched a campaign against sexism. The pictures show close-up portraits of women’s faces, on which, instead of the mouth, appears a Google search box. In it, the beginning of a sentence such as “Women shouldn’t” and beneath it Google’s suggestions on how you should [more]
“Literature could turn you into an asshole. It could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your critical faculties.” The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
Wir versuchen es, aber es kommt nichts bei raus. Heute keine Geschichte, mein Großvater ist müde. Der Abend, an dem er unsere Großmutter kennenlernte, er erinnere sich nicht so genau. Er ist angestrengt. Am Vorabend hat er drei Schlafmittel genommen, und bis jetzt, 18h, geschlafen. Was wir hier [more]
They sit in silence. The man holds his head with both hands, elbows on the wooden table, eyes closed. Three day beard, blond hair, or is it grey. The woman next to him looks past him, her forehead wrinkled, she stares into the distance. She is wearing a [more]
It’s a loop, it doesn’t stop. Day after day after day. Headline after headlines after headline. Mantra-like repetition is the key. It’s precision. When you say, the word Muslim needs to be in the headline, it will be and you know why. It’s impersonal. A self sustaining machine: [more]
He used to say: „Photography will always be my first love. But you will be my second.“ She says: „There was only one love for me: it was him. Sometimes shit happens“. Then she laughs. “Selfportrait of June with models”, 1975 Today would have been Helmut Newton’s 93rd [more]
I. Liebe und Zeit hat etwas damit zu tun, dass man sich älter fühlt, wenn man eine Beziehung beendet II. Liebe und Sprache hat etwas damit zu tun, dass viele Dinge zwischen zwei Menschen eigentlich ohne Worte geschehen Und damit dass man sich trotzdem manchmal in einer Beziehung, [more]
Es herrscht Sprachlosigkeit im Transitbereich und in meinem Kopf. Der Istanbuler Flughafen fühlt sich an wie das Tor, durch das man schreiten muss, um auf die andere Seite des Mittelmeers zu gelangen. Egal ob auf Tel Aviv oder Beirut, hier wird gewartet. Weißes Licht, Klimaanlage, Burgerking, Victoria’s Secret [more]
Mit Imad durch Beirut laufen: Er hält den Rücken gerade, sehr. Wäre er etwas größer, breiter, stämmiger wäre sein Gang fast arrogant. Langsam schwingen die Arme vor und zurück, kontrolliert, sichere Entfernung vom Oberkörper, als würden sie vor lauter Muskeln abstehen. Doch er ist nicht gerade groß, breit, [more]
Hinter der Landzunge leuchtet es rötlich. Die Nacht ist blau, das Meer und der Sand leuchten weiß und kalt, Vollmond. Die Röte in der Ferne lässt sich nur erahnen. Von hier, wo wir sitzen, Süd Libanon, können wir den Ort nicht erreichen, die übernächste Bucht, das nächste Land. [more]
The Arabic word for a state of mental malaise literally translates into the word node. An image suggesting: an intertwined conflict, not easy to dissolve, a chaotic amount of life events, feelings, thoughts, a chaotic amount of colourful strings. With the passing of time, at some point, what [more]
A propose de la guerre: Il y a eu des malentendus et des évènements. Maintenant, c’est du passé A propos de son apparence élégante: C’est ma tenu de tous les jours. Je ne sors qu’en cravate. Ça fait cinquante ans que je travaille ici, juste en haut là, [more]
Something absurd about female nudity on the Internet. While shiny bodies in bikinis, lolling on golden beaches are adored (http://instagram.com/abikiniaday), photos of pubic hair emerging from bikini bottoms are a reason for account deletion. Some examples of female nudity the Internet dislikes: via oystermag. Petra Collins’ Instagram was [more]
Part 1. Adopting a feeling Initially, there is an image from before my time. My father, young, full black hair, a linen shirt, my sister on his back. She’s a pretty baby and she’s smiling into the camera and so is he. Behind them extends a dusty road, [more]
I just came back from Venice. One main thing I wanted to see was the Venice 2013 version of Szeeman’s 1969 exhibition. It was boring. Only the Fred Sandback was really good. And Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings. I rather like this attitude: It’s a piece by Kristin Albrecht [more]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wE3fmFTtP9g
that’s why – all those files must be loaded to display the archive page (09.10. 19:48) and I do love to read the filenames – they tell a lot about the people posting here.
Miese Laune. Warum? Dies war einmal eine Lichtinstallation. Es war meine Lichtinstallation in der Universitätsbibliothek Konstanz. Bis der ganze Bau 2010 wegen Asbestbelastung geschlossen wurde. Nach drei Jahren ist die Sanierung abgeschlossen und das Gebäude ist wieder ein Rohbau. Alle RGB Leuchten sind wahrscheinlich entsorgt. Die Tische, Eames [more]
Blessing Jones Martins 11. Oktober 17:29 Hallo, ich bin Segen, bitte wie du bist! hoffe, Sie sind fein und in einwandfreiem Zustand der Gesundheit.Ich ging durch Ihr Profil und ich las es und fand Interesse an, bitte, wenn Sie nicht stört, ich werde Sie mir auf diese ID [more]
A very old GIF animation made in 1998 for Angela Bulloch Tell me – what do you see?
http://youtu.be/v0GQkWtQ7HU Julie Jigsaw voc, Wietn Wito b, Frank Samba dr perc ATA TAK 1982
one of my facebook friends (Kurt Gottschalk – I never meet him in real ife) reposted this video from http://www.sltrib.com (the Salt Lake Tribune youtube video channel) as the text says: “Three men, tagged as Dave Hall, Glenn Taylor and Dylan Taylor, push over large rock boulders in Goblin Valley, [more]
[jwplayer config=”bombay” mediaid=”8607″] the package was (or still is – can you confirm this Enrico?) on sale in india. the gin and the box did end up in Grünwald. the look inside the box was denied by its owner – so we (Karl and I) are still guessing how [more]
five teen years ago surfing the internet was one of my passions. with a few clicks around the world – exploring content – navigating through (weird) stuff – gathering data – learn how to code HTML – and almost every time i did find something interesting and worth [more]
I/L—…-.—-.D/….ER/–—/–….E/…-ER-.–/.–….I–E/—F/–RU–….–..–/AND/…….E/.–—ULD/N—–/C—NCEI…-E/I–./–I—ID/–….IN–./…….E/FLED/—E/….–IF–/A…/…EA-….–…IRD/—N/–….E/.–IN–.–..–/R—UND/E…-ER-.–/I…LE–..–/AND/.–.—IN––..–/AND/.–.R———N–—R-.––..–/FR——/.–….ERE/LAR–.E/….ERCULE…/.–—UND/U.–./….I…/…–—R-.–/FAR/A…/E–.-.–.–.–IAN/NILE./—-.–/.–.A……I—N/–.RE.–/–….E/——RE–..–/–….E/——RE/I/…A.–/….ER/DAIN–-.–/….UE/–.LEA—/DELICA–EL-.–/–….R—U–.…./–….E/A–..URE/CLEAR—…/UN–IL/.—-.–.–A…/–——/FIERCE/A–.—N-.–/–—/-…EAR/AND/IN/–….A–/A–.—N-.––..–/ACR—……/—-.–/–.RIEF/I–/FLA……..—-.D–..–/–….A–/CIRCE/—I–.….–/FIND/…——E/RELIEF /CRUEL/ENC….AN–RE……/…—/A-…—…-E/–….E/.–A–ER/I/REAR.—-.D/—-.–/….EAD–..–/AND/L——K.—-.D/F—R/.–.….-…U….—-./DAU–.….–ER./ A.—-.…/I…LE/.–A…/.–—NDERIN–./A–/–….E/———N—… /I–/…EE—.—-.D/–—/.–….IRL/AR—UND/—E–..–/AND/A/….–——N/LEF–/—E/DEAD-….-DRIF–IN–./–—/–….A–/FA–AL/.–.—.–ER. Paul I tried it with various online sources – help me please – codebase not clear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB6ZxS23b5s thanks annika – it was just two clicks away from your post. more tattoos, more sunglasses, more hair, better voice. forget lou reed for the next 20 minutes.
and for educational purposes only. Database as of 14.04.2014 / Reconstruction: Sept. 2025}
7 a.m. A bench serves as a perch for two boys wrapped up against the cold, a brass plaque indicates that it was discarded in memory of a long forgotten citizen. The boys’ gaze is at once distracted and meticulous. A storm has left debris fluttering across [more]
Berlin Plastic Classicism Displayed walking past her wall mounted listening device, Edinburgh, Scotland shore based listening device, Glasgow, Scotland
sculpture, seated (wooden chair, cardboard). Edinburgh the chair enjoys gravity, interprets and interpolates it, its probably what brings joy to a chair
On day 5 I went to see Prisoners a film by Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve, it is about various individual wars on God and of course it is also about delivering sustained tension for our entertainment. Jake Gylenhall who plays a cop who perhaps thinks he has the [more]
17/10/13 [jwplayer mediaid=”7779″] Today I bought “Words and Buildings” by Adrian Forty firstly because its frontispiece contains a quote from Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”, secondly because [more]
Agra, Ajo, Allentown, Amsterdam, Anzo-Borrego, Auckland, Barcelona, Beirut, Big Bear, Big Sur, Belgrade, Berlin, Bonifacio, Boston, Brussels, Calcutta, Cagliari, Calexico, Cannes, Chennai, Copenhagen, Chicago, Delhi, East Hampton, Geneva, Goteborg, Hamburg, Jerusalem, Haifa, Hong Kong, Houston, Hyderabad, Innsbruck, Jaipur, Johannesburg, Khartoum, Kuala Lumpur, Las Vegas, Lisbon, Lukeville, Los Angeles, [more]
its not because I learnt about how to be a businessman by reading marx and then the dust jackets of althusser no thats not why i am broke i know the difference between an isa as in ideological state apparatus and an isa as in individual savings account [more]
Ladies and gentlemen the North Missisipi Allstars at Oran Mor in Glasgow a couple of days ago: [jwplayer mediaid=”10315″] a Southern band re inventing the blues, i love them, not least because Luther Dickson is an amazing guitarist whose playing I hear as am intense stream of shapes, [more]
I had the honour of meeting Lou Reed once very briefly backstage in Edinburgh at the invitation of my good friend drummer Fred Maher who was touring with him, Lou was as baffled to discover that someone who lived in Scotland might not play golf as I was [more]
Aphorisms now being made available to citizens in the streets of London: in order to understand how casually profound this statement is you first have to consider the contrary- a statement that long delays are impossible- what would that mean? at the very least a re writing of [more]
I have just been to see the new Louise Bourgeois exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, I am not an established fan of Louise Bourgeois work. I use the term fan to distinguish my engagement from that of connoisseur, collector or critic- my engagement lies beyond the casual but [more]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_last/10599897873/lightbox/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_last/10564566006/lightbox/
VOICEOVER Words bounce off the walls, echoes of my sins, i raise my voice, the words ricochet. Note to self -don’ talk. Scene 28a Exterior shoreline, day. [jwplayer mediaid=”13981″]
Gardening I have a small south facing basement yard which provides some protection from the increasingly common violent winter storms sweeping in off the North Sea and tearing at my house. While replacing 70’s rose coloured cement paving with timeworn granite setts (Scots word for cobblestones) salvaged from [more]
This week I went to see the film Gravity in 3d. I enjoyed it, thought it was good, before you decide whether to take account of my opinion you should know that since I started producing films and found out just how difficult they are to bring in [more]
Increasingly my mind insists that 60pages is an audience not a platform and I am feeling a heavy pressure to say something eloquent insighful and really sparklingly intelligent about something that matters a bit like everyone else seems to do and in saying this I know I’m not [more]
So for the first 43 days I have avoided politics although I may not have avoided the political. Time to catch up. On the 23rd of October Georg Diez said “it is all true”, he had been reading a biography of John Foster and Allen Dulles, respectively Secretary [more]
A day is a long time in politics. My forlorn program of political optimism proposed on day 43, namely that perhaps the long slow motion car crash of 20th Century politics was coming to an end leaving clear road ahead was proposed too soon. There is great attention [more]
Further to my recent updates on retro-politics in the UK and tales of splittists, Maoists and union vote rigging I have today been reading about Hollywood producer Arnand Milchan spying for Israel,- as Georg Dietz said it is all true and as I suggested a couple of days [more]
today I am a curator, I have curated 48 words for you cairn chaos comte corrie cumin displayment downbeat dreich eddy edge elegant ephemeral fallacy fire fractal fragile fuck gaze glacier graphite gruyere haecceity jouissance immanence iteration kerning machair malinger meta mescalin money mote mendicant nape parallel [more]
….. I would love to have taken “T” 1950 or “Snow” 1960 by Saul Leiter. He died on the 26th November and I had never heard of him until “Snow” caught my eye in an obituary. Even better I discover I like what he said about photography “I [more]
In our globalised world when received wisdom is that few issues can be resolved effectively outwith supra national and macro economic interventions it was startling and uncomfortable to read about the current situation in the Lebanese city of Tripoli where we are told tensions between Sunni and Alawite [more]
Unter Centralia, Pennsylvania, brennt seit 1962 Kohle. Der Brand frisst sich kreuz und quer unter das Dorf, Strassen brechen rauchend auf, flüssiger Teer quillt vulkanig. Die Kohle wird noch einhundert bis zweihundert Jahre brennen, sagen die Fachleute und haben keinen anderen Rat an die Bewohner, als das Dorf [more]
40 Sommer lang stand das Haus Lieb der Architekten Venturi und Rauch in Loveladies Long Beach New Jersey auf sandigem Grund. 1969, ein Jahr nach dem heissen Sommer 68 erbaut, stand es da inmitten einer Ansammlung namenloser Strandhäuser, die erst als Nachbarn dieses Hauses Lieb in ihrer [more]
Heute noch spricht Eric Koch ein wunderbares Deutsch. Wenn wir zum lunch sitzen bei Patachou, 1120 Young Street in Toronto, erzählt er mir in diesem Deutsch aus seiner Gegenwart. Und wie es zu der Gegenwart kam.
Charles Gwathmey hat Modelle gebaut und Alvaro Siza, Luigi Snozzi und Don Hisaka, Philip Johnson und Peter Blake. All die Architekten haben Modelle gebaut; aus Pappe, aus Holz, aus Knetmasse. Sie haben ganze Häuser modelliert, oder Details von Häusern. Auch Baukörper, klein in einer Landschaft mit Bäumen aus [more]
Le Corbusier hat gezeichnet, vornübergebeugt, mit einem Stück Holz, in den Sand am Strand von Long Island. Die Zeichnungen sind verschwunden im Meer, bei der nächsten Flut, nach wenigen Stunden. Le Corbusier hat Amerika nicht gemocht. Betrogen fühlte er sich und bestohlen um ein Projekt; nämlich es [more]
Niccolo Paganinis Geige hängt in einem Glaskasten im Palazzo Tursi in Genua. Il Cannone. Es war seine Lieblingsgeige. Ab und zu wird sie aus dem Glaskasten genommen und gespielt. Die meisste Zeit aber hängt sie da unberührt. 1840 ist Paganini in Nizza gestorben. Auf dieser Geige hat er das Caprice Nummer [more]
Nun soll also in Berlin, nach dem „upper Eastside“, diesem feuchten Grossstadttraum in Stein, auch ein „upper West“ entstehen. Am Breitscheidplatz, wo bis zu seinem Abriss das Schimmelpfeng Haus stand. Was ist von Stadtbebauern in Berlin zu halten, die ihre Gebäude „upper Eastside“ und „upper West“ nennen, mit [more]
Den Kopf schräg angelehnt sitze ich unbequem verdreht seit zehn Minuten regungslos. Die Vibrationen des Flugzeuges übertragen sich auf meinen Schädel, in den Nacken, verlieren sich in der Wirbelsäule. Vor dem einen Auge, dicht an der Kabinenverkleidung, verschwommen ein Karomuster. Mit dem anderen Auge sehe ich durch das [more]
Eines Tages war er verschwunden; ein Freund, Architekt im Tessin, mit Lehrauftrag in Amerika, Publikationen in dieser und jener Fachzeitschriften, ein von vielen Kollegen geachteter Entwerfer. Zu einem Geschäftstermin am Vormittag war er nicht erschienen und kehrte auch am Abend, von seiner Frau in zunehmender Spannung erwartet, nicht [more]
Noch einmal Le Corbusier: 19 Sommer bevor er in der Bucht vor Roquebrune ertrank, hat er sich oberhalb dieser Bucht auf des Grundstück von Eileen Grey geschlichen, mit Farbtöpfchen und Pinsel, aber ohne Unterhose. Die eine oder andere Wand des Hauses E1027 von Eileen Grey dünke ihn etwas [more]
Ein Nachruf ist die legitime Reflexion über die Wirkung eines Einzelnen auf die Dynamik einer Gruppe von Vielen. Die Wirkung des Einzelnen auf einen Einzelnen betrifft die Vielen nicht, das ist privat, intim oder uninteressant. Nun sind aber die sozialen Netzwerke voll von solchen individuellen Äußerungen, kaum ist [more]
11F; mein Sitzplatz. Neben mir dieser schwere Mann, verharrt zwischen den Armlehnen wie in einem Käfig, die Hände breit geöffnet auf seine Oberschenkel gelegt, bewegungslos, die Finger liegen einzeln, jeder für sich, ohne Zusammenhang. Ich versuche den Mann im Profil zu sehen, sitze aber zu nah für [more]
Die Häuser meiner Kindheit verschwinden; hinter Isolationsplatten, unter Stoyropor. Ich stehe nach Jahren plötzlich als Fremder auf dem Bürgersteig des Dorfes; der grobe Putz am Gemeindehaus ist verschwunden. An diesem Putz habe ich mir die Fingerknöchel blutig gerieben. Hinderlich waren die Wundpflaster beim Geigenspiel; der Bogen, kaum [more]
Schnell ist man sich einig (drei Stockwerke über der Karl Marx Allee): Die Berliner Baubestimmungen, nach der Wiedervereinigung um 1991 aufgestellt, waren ein Versuch, die Moderne zu eliminieren. Was die Zeit zwischen 1933 und 1945 nicht geschafft hat; jetzt sollte es doch noch gelingen. Steinfassade, Lochfassade, Traufhöhe, [more]
Was das heutige Berlin ausmacht (nein; ausmachte), ist die Präsenz des Nichts. Die Leerstellen, das Dazwischen. Es fällt mir wieder auf, sehe ich die Luftaufnahme der Alibar im Pick von Sandra Bartoli. Auch diese Leerstelle soll bald verschwinden, aufgehen in vermeintlich städtebaulichem Sinn. Eine Art reziproke Proportionalität; [more]
Vier Pappeln sind zu sehen von weitem, stehen auf dem Grundstück, am Ufer zum Kanal. Der Westwind biegt die Pappelspitzen parallel. Strassennamen gehen verloren; zwischen den Jahren, in alle Himmelsrichtungen, nach einem Krieg. Luisenstrasse 16. Der Name des Kanales ist geblieben; Kalkgraben. 1927 fuhr ein Dampfschiff auf [more]
Am Telefon sprach er zuerst Englisch, dann sprach er deutsch. Das irritierte mich. Wir verabredeten uns für Donnerstag. – Hier in Boston liegt Schnee seit letzter Woche, wann sind sie angekommen? Er werde mich mit dem Wagen abholen, darauf bestand er trotz meterhoher Schneehaufen beidseitig der Strasse. [more]
Neben mir steht jener Mann, den ich auf der anderen Strassenseite aus einem Wagen hatte steigen sehen ohne ihn weiter zu beobachten, denn gewartet habe ja ich auf einen Wagen in der Hotelvorfahrt. Sein Gang ist unsicher und langsam, das war mir aufgefallen. – Kommen sie, meine [more]
Vorbei an Lichtenberg, auf gerader Strecke. Im Kofferraum Sedum und Wisteria, Für dieses Jahr das letzte Grün, das ich vergrabe.
Der Kellner sagt; Claude, how are you. Beth, you look great. Die beiden bestehen darauf; ich soll mir etwas aus der langen Vitrine aussuchen, wollen selber aber nichts essen. Das Gebäck sei köstlich, wiederholen sie mehrmals. Als ich vor der Vitrine stehe zeige ich blind auf ein [more]
Es kann vorkommen, dass für Augenblicke während des Abbruchs eines Hauses, Architektur entsteht.
Jahre bevor das Opernhaus la Fenice niederbrannte, umgeben von den Lagunen Venedigs, stand er, über eine enge Seitentreppe nach oben geschlichen, direkt unter dem Dach des Konzertsaales in einem engen Technikraum, sah durch den Spalt einer geöffnete Türe hinab in das helle Licht der Bühne und hörte [more]
Ende Oktober 1982 war ich, wie noch viele Male danach, an der Oriole Road in Toronto. Wenige Wochen zuvor war Glenn Gould gestorben. Seine Wohnung (eine seiner Wohnungen) lag um die Ecke, in der St. Clair Avenue, auf meinem Weg zur U-Bahn; Yonge Street at St. Clair [more]
Louis Kahn behauptete, den Backstein zu fragen; was willst du sein, was kannst du. Trotz solcher Poesiekrücken hat er wunderbare Gebäude geschaffen; schwer und doch leicht. Die Single a Whiter Shade of Pale von Procul Harum lag einen heissen Sommertag lang auf dem Beifahrersitz des alten Rovers [more]
Selbstverständlich kommt man ab und zu nicht darum herum, eine alte Meinung (seine eigene Meinung) zu korrigieren. Man hat nicht weit genug gedacht, oder übers Ziel hinaus geschossen, oder nicht mit allen Eventualitäten gerechnet. Bei 60 Pages besteht dank der 60 Tage genügend Zeit, so eine Korrektur [more]
Eine über hundert Jahre alte kanadische Eiche hat 800000 Blätter. Erst Knospen im Frühling, entwickeln sich die Blätter, belauben den Baum im Sommer und fallen im Herbst. Alle 800000. Nicht von einer Minute auf die andere, sondern innerhalb mehrer Tage. Die Beetrose Professor Sieber der Rosenzüchterei Kordes [more]
Die englische Bildhauerin Rachel Whiteread hat 1993 in London ein Haus ausgiessen lassen mit Beton. Das ursprüngliche Haus, zur Gussform geworden, wurde niedergerissen. Übrig blieb das, was zuvor der Innenraum des Hauses gewesen war, jetzt in Beton. Erinnerung als Gegenstand. Für die Pieta hat sich Michelangelo [more]
Und dann hört man den Satz; er war ganz und gar kein politischer Mensch. Gesprochen in der Eröffnungsrede einer Ausstellung von Arbeiten eines Grafikers, der 1938 in Deutschland Plakate entwarf, auf denen auch (aber doch ganz klein nur) Hakenkreuze zu sehen sind. Gesprochen in einem Museum von [more]
Auf dem Grundstück Oriole Road Nummer 18 in Toronto stand eine weisse Eiche (white Oak). Sie war 200 Jahre alt. (Wie viele Blätter eine 200 Jahre alte weisse Eiche hat ist mir unbekannt.) Der Baum ragte weit über das rote Backsteinhaus, hob riesige Gehwegplatten aus massivem Stein, [more]
Geht mein kindlicher Traum in Erfüllung? Die online Ausgabe der Zeitschrift Monopol berichtet in einem Artikel vom 21.11. über Querelen am Bauhaus in Dessau, dass der Kurator für Architektur und Design des MoMA Philip Johnson einen offenen Brief zugunsten des wackeligen Leiters des Bahauses Dessau unterzeichnet habe. [more]
Die Firma Vitra, Möbelherstellerin und Hüterin des verfeinerten Retrogeschmacks, ist anscheinend auch auf dem Gebiet der Masslosigkeit ganz weit vorne. Der Lounge Chair von Eames zum Beispiel ist in drei verschiedenen Grössen erhältlich. Aus gross wird klein wird übergross; ein wahrer Hexensabbat an Wahrnehmungstäuschungen. Die Masse eines [more]
Meine Grosstante Filomena sass auf einer Bank unter dem Kaminsims Tag für Tag und schwieg. Im Sommer sass sie vor der leeren Feuerstelle, im Winter schob sie mit einer Eisenstange das glimmende Kastanienholz zurecht. Filomenas Feuer brannten einzigartig. Brach sie ihr Schweigen, so vernahm man den längst [more]
Mit seinem Tod schliesst eine Epoche ab; man liest es oft, wenn einer gestorben ist, der lange gelebt hat, auch in der Öffentlichkeit und nicht unpolitisch. Mit seinem Tod schliesst eine Epoche ab, die Tage habe ich es gelesen, geschrieben unter das Fotos eines Mannes mit Orden [more]
– LED in Zusammenhang mit Leuchten, Weihnachtsdekoration etc. – Richard Wagner. – Leni Riefenstahl; ich find die Aufnahmen so toll…(gefolgt von einem Satz, der das Wort „unpolitisch“ enthält). – Von Jahr zu Jahr grösser werdende Sofas; sie wachsen in die Breite und in die Tiefe und werden [more]
K. mag Zürich nicht. Bereits die Ankunft am dortigen Flughafen sei ihm ein Gräuel; Grüezi in riesigen Lettern über einer Fototapete; Kühe, Berge, Milchkannen. Trotziges Beharren auf Andersartigkeit, Lokal- kolorit bei gleichzeitig übermässigem Dazugehörigkeits- wunsch zur weiten Welt. Ich kenne K.s eigentliches Leiden an Zürich; nämlich seine [more]
Mein drittes Auto war mein schönstes Auto. Ein schwarzer Alfa 164 3.0 V6, Baujahr 1989. Fuhr ich allein, lag auf dem Beifahrersitz ein CD Player, mit dem Radio verbunden durch einen Cassettenadapter. Manchmal habe ich im Auto geraucht und die CD im Player auf dem Beifahrersitz gewechselt, [more]
1997; mein zweiter Sommer in Berlin und der Wunsch nach einem Sommerhaus im Umland wird zur fixen Idee. Ich bin Architekt, leide unter ständigem Entwurfszwang. Anstatt endlich ins erfrischend kühle Nass zu tauchen, stehe ich bis zu den Knien im Schlachtensee und sehe mir auf die andere [more]
Unsere Nachbarn hatten schon 1969 ein Fernsehgerät. Im Sommer jenes Jahres sass die halbe Nachbarschaft vor dem Gerät und sah zu, wie einer als erster Mensch verkleidet von einer Leiter hinab auf den Mond sprang. So richtig habe ich es nicht begriffen. Aufregend aber war die Aufregung [more]
Es werde schon seit längerem verwendet, mir aber ist es erst heute aufgefallen; das neue Logo der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Ein Logo soll mittels einer Assoziationskette die schlüssige Umsetzung eines Namens oder einer Tätigkeit oder einer Institution sein. Was ist da grafisch Umgesetzt und welche [more]
Meine erste Erfahrung mit Leben als Katastrophe; als Karlheinz, der Sohn von Freunden der Familie, mit Gudrun, die er Tage zuvor seinen Eltern als Braut vorgestellt hatte, beim Schlittschuhlaufen einbricht im dünnen Eis des zugefrorenen Sees. Die Sonne blendete in der spiegelnden Weite, schwarzblaues Wasser an der [more]
Am 1. April 1944 wurde der Bahnhof der Schweizer Stadt Schaffhausen durch die US Air Force bombardiert. Ein Versehen; darauf einigte man sich auf beiden Seiten. Der Bahnhof war halb Schweizer Bahnhof, halb Deutscher Bahnhof und in mancher Nacht hatten deutsche Züge (beladen auch mit Waffen) den [more]
Die Kamera meines Iphone ist mit mikroskopisch kleinen Fuseln verunreinigt, glaubte ich. Tatsächlich sind es rosa Vögel. Reisen mit, fliegen neben her, überqueren den Atlantik, zehntausend Meter über Eisschollen.
Too much information? I hope it doesn’t scream self obsession, that wasn’t the original idea. It was more an experiment. One of each test was taken today, the other one a month ago. I was convinced it couldn’t be accurate due to one’s mood. And sure the numbers [more]
The light still feels early and fresh at 9.30am, nice October. Train just left Brussels. Heading to Antwerp. Central station has been hyped, so pretty happy that is my first stop. Antwerp Central Station
The aim is to aid curators towards an increase in gender neutral exhibitions. A celebration of female artists. And to name such a project is tricky. Does Jessie work?
The notion of writing to anybody or nobody is strong. The nowness of the medium. The appropriation of words. The quantity. The quality. The urge not to write down a personal brain storm. Whoops.
This went down well. So I am sharing content between blogs. Roofs of Neukölln from Pretty Neukölln.
Bright new things, classic painting influences for some not so classic illustrations. Travelling around the states. Six young men driving highway to highway. All creative, feeding from each other, hungry with competition. The need to make, do and draw with skills they had and are discovering they now [more]
Now he left with all the things he brought, all his dreams and all his thoughts I’m still wearing his jacket And its got holes in its pockets, he was wearing it for years, holes in it’s pockets, where everything disappears, but… I’m still wearing his jacket I’m [more]
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera Watch the film, sure. But read the book first.
Too far away for my liking, too much of the time. The ease to tell all or nothing to. Open ears and open arms. A smile that enforces one to mirror it.
Today’s roof was in Copenhagen. Why does it feel so good up high? Its a state of mind I think. Out of the gutters. I live in a ground floor apartment in Berlin, I am looking forward to the time when I can live a little higher in [more]
http://youtu.be/LV86pwOnm4w My mom and dad both love Lou. Lou, my mom and my dad, made me love him too. (I wonder if YouTube are making the adverts more expensive on Lou Reed videos today?)
I made my first Wikipedia page from scratch today. It was for United Visual Artists, within 1 minute I had received a message stating somebody had made a claim for a speedy deletion of my article. Bearing in mind, one my article was not finished, two I was [more]
Wiki worked, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Visual_Artists It became encyclopedic enough! I even got linked and added to. Thanks wiki.
So Thursday night I hosted a Karaoke party, it was fantastic. I love karaoke. I think to sing in front of a room of people, as a very unprofessional singer is a challenge, an achievement and super fun. It’s a sort of therapy – the woman who used [more]
A trip to Berlin’s Designpanoptikum Surreales Museum für Industrielle Objekt, is a trip into humans needs and wants real science’s surreal beauty. Recommendation for Berlin dwellers.
Today I had a crash on my bike with a pretty speedy car and it was my fault. Firstly I am fine apart from a little bruised wrist. Secondly my bike is also fine apart from some slightly twisted handle bars, but I was able to ride home. [more]
The 5th of November. I missed bonfire night. That means I missed lots of expensive fireworks. I missed my dad making a Guy Fawkes that he made from his own clothes. I missed watching the life size 6ft 2 home made man burn on the fire. There is always [more]
Zaha Hadid’s Science Museum in Wolfsburg. Wow. Totally space age. Beautiful (although not so great for the environment) concrete walls all sloping this way and that. Nucks and passages. We were there at dusk. Perfect. Next time I will go inside.
Last night I traveled all over the world. Not in my dreams, but also not in reality. It started with the worry of winter. The memory of the dark cold days, and nights to beat. It went on to seeing where I could go to escape. Skyscanner took me [more]
My hometown was described in the Guardian as the best place to in the UK. I struggle with this concept.
There should be compulsory trips for everybody to go to the coast and breath some sea air.
Monday morning saw me sat in the German embassy in London, waiting my turn to speak to somebody behind some glass about my application for a German passport. It is harder than I thought it would have been, baring in mind that was my second appointment this year [more]
To get a German passport I have to trace where my German-ness comes from. To write my mother’s side of our family’s history down is harder than I thought. It is connected to this passport, but I feel it needs more consideration than I am giving it right [more]
Autumn cleaning. Like spring cleaning, but less light to see what needs to be done maybe. Deep clean November. I am in a bad habit of Googling everything I do. This came up. If I could do that (puke) smiley thing from skype I would put it right here.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/no-smoke-without-ire-the-ecigarette-revolution-8994118.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/asylum-seekers-living-in-australia-forced-to-sign-code-of-conduct
So what is one to do when the brakes just stop. They have been making a terrible noise sporadically but now, now it has got just too bad to ignore. Now there is no choice. An 8am visit to somebody who knows slightly better than me will be [more]
There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around the world. There are worse things happening around [more]
It will all be ok again. A safe drive back to Berlin. Being able to stop when it is needed. Oh the joys of owning a car.
I found out from my parents, the birth certificate I have, was the cheaper of the options they were given at the time. There was one that was slightly more expensive that had their names written on it. I have just my name. I have ordered one with that [more]
Birmingham Central Library, Designed by John Madin and completed in 1974.
St. Agnes Kirche designed by Werner Düttmann completed in 1967.
The Roger Stevens Building was built in 1970 as part of the development of the Leeds University South Campus by the architects Chamberlin Powell and Bon.
Man muß sich beeilen, wenn man etwas sehen will, alles verschwindet… Paul Cézanne PHOTOS BY DANIEL MAYER If you want to see something, you have to hurry. Everything disappears. Paul Cézanne PHOTOS BY DANIEL MAYER
Trapped in a prism, in a prism of light Alone in the darkness, darkness of white We fell in love, alone on a stage In the reflective age (Arcade Fire) http://vimeo.com/74355104
Buongiorno (good morning) Mr. Taylor! thanks for your kind words of appreciation. My english is not as good as yours… it’s rather pidgin (as spoken in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea), but I’m ready to discuss with you about books and/or other topics by using all the idiomatic [more]
„Es wäre so schön, wenn man jemand anderes und trotzdem man selbst sein könnte.“
Night is this apparition: everything has disappeared. It is what we sense when dreams replace sleep, the dead pass into the deep of the night, when night’s deep appeares in those who have disappeared. Maurice Blanchot „The Outside”
`Our words no longer correspond to the world. (…) Every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. (…) Consider a word that refers to a thing -`umbrella’ for example. When I saynthe word `umbrella’, you see [more]
https://vimeo.com/58614208 The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mythological resources [more]
the force of your gravity it defines my tendency velocity’s equal to throwing myself with you we have potential energy motion between you and me i’ll be your sounding board just throw yourself toward this energy that sings between bounce off of me elasticity elastic kinetic electric connection [more]
Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair That rose in strangled ebony curls Moving in a yellow bedroom light The air is wet with sound The [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG78_q4CMpc
By empty, I mean an elevator with nobody else in it but you. Virginia Woolf once sung the praises of a room of one’s own; she may as well have been speaking of elevators: tiny rooms with a wall of illuminated buttons and, more often than not, a [more]
Last week I was waiting for the light to turn at a crosswalk, listening to the new CHVRCHES album, when I felt that prickly sensation of being watched. I looked around and saw a boy, eight or so years old, dark hair, round eyes, staring up at me. [more]
Every Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 I go to high school. The school is in Wedding, in a grand old pre-war building, with echoing halls, fluorescent overhead lights, and Koreans who can’t find their classrooms. I ignore their beseeching looks – I’m late to class myself – and take [more]
Yesterday, I was sleepily putting coffee on the stove, listening to my favorite radio station. I like loud music in the morning, a tradition that began at a coffee stand at Fudan University, in Shanghai, that served Nescafe mixed with hot milk and tapioca pearls. The two girls [more]
On the balcony opposite, straggling flowers, left for dead after months of near-claustrophobic care – watering twice a day, gentle whispering (they hated that; never wanted to know what the woman was thinking), plucking (humiliating human preoccupation with tidiness) are thrown into diagonal lines by the wind. The [more]
Alice Munro is badass because her characters are passionate but never sentimental. Children leap to their deaths and drown the dog while they’re at it. Nieces coolly despise their maiden aunts and then get bitch-slapped by a revelation from the aunt’s bastard child at the aunt’s funeral. Everyone [more]
These days, the partner look is all the rage on the streets of Beijing, as the newly fashion conscious Wall Street Journal reported a couple weeks ago. Just to set the record straight, I felt it important to point out that the forward thinking folks at the Leipzig [more]
1. Orchestra Concerts. You love classical music. You love performances. You love getting dressing up. So why, two minutes into a symphony from Beethoven, do you inevitably begin wishing they would just hurry up and be done with it? Why train your eyes on the conductor’s sheets of [more]
“If you want to do things by yourself, why get married?” –Nancy Featherstone In response to my post about the partner look in East Germany, astute 60 Pages reader Jane Fränzel, a globetrotting Mandarin whiz and a blur on the dance floor, pointed me to an intriguing Guardian [more]
It is our third day in Gasthof Kohlern, a small, isolated hotel in Süd Tirol, tucked into a mountain’s gentle slope. All 17 rooms are full, and breakfast and dinner are served in the large front dining room with blond pine floors and picture windows overlooking the valley. [more]
Co-written with Erwin M. Schmidt. The German hiker is a special breed. Below are some key indicators for spotting the species in their natural habitat. If 3 out of the 5 descriptions below apply, chances are that you’ve spotted a German hiker! They wear lots of gear. Not [more]
Or: Local Pigs Complain of Prejudice, Unfair Treatment This morning I was chased by pigs the size of pimped-up Harleys down a small forest path. The pigs made as much noise as motorcycles, grunting in a menacing pissed-off-pig-fashion, not unlike growling motors. I had spotted them early on, [more]
Today the hotel we are staying in closes for the season. There is an air of giddiness among the staff, coffee refill requests are cheerfully ignored, the unimaginative flirtatious comments of 50-year-old German men are met with no indulgent smiles from the young Polish waitresses, just an impatient [more]
Paul Gauguin, The Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) Stay low on defense. Move your feet. Don’t be lazy. Box out. Grab the rebound with two hands. You can’t debate feasibility. Go after efficacy instead. Speak clearly and don’t be afraid to make eye contact [more]
The best beverage on earth is 100 Plus. Tragically, it is only available in Singapore and Malaysia. I could say 100 Plus tastes like carbonated grapefruit Gatorade, but to do so would be like trying to describe Shakespeare’s genius by listing the alphabet. 100 Plus and The Tempest [more]
Yesterday, the sky outside the Wedding Volkshochschule was distractingly beautiful. The overhead lights were off, and as Reinhard, our philosophy teacher, attempted to explain the difference between Trieb (instinct) and Instinkt (instinct), the saturated late-afternoon sunlight melted on the wall of a nearby brick building. The room’s dimness, [more]
They rode the subway to the final station. Aside from an old alcoholic drinking beer and talking to his large, mournful German shepherd mix, trying to cheer him up, they had been the only ones on the train for the last three stops. They climbed the exit stairs, [more]
Last night, the rare female taxi driver picked me up, cackling as soon as I opened the door. Her dyed blond hair was gelled tight to her skull, the rest tumbled down in a peroxide ponytail. “Where’d you come from?” she yelled as I climbed in, like I [more]
(Naaadjaa! Ich liebe dich. Spray paint on cement. Anonymous.) Bergmannkiez, my neighborhood, is not fun at night. The few bars are either trying too hard or not trying at all; your best bet is lingering over wine or grappa at La Bionda, the Italian restaurant at the corner of [more]
Courage is easy on a summer night. Your skin needs no protection: the sun is down, the wind is warm. There’s a loud party across the street, the song that’s been playing nonstop on the radio since June drifts in through the open windows. Long into the night, [more]
I love contemplating narration, the way soccer fans love dissecting a breathtaking goal and the crisp passes that led to it. In what voice does the story unravel? Or does the story unravel the voice? Does the narrator emerge more whole at the end of the telling? Or [more]
A few days ago, the good folks at FLUX FM announced the National’s imminent concert, or, as they put it: “music for the elderly.” I shudder to think of what equally sensitive words they would have chosen to mourn Lou Reed’s passing. Last night, with the help of [more]
Yesterday was my final philosophy class, which I celebrated by taking the wrong subway and arriving half an hour late. The Korean girl had just delivered a presentation on choice, to which nobody was responding, despite Reinhard’s gentle prompting. I asked for a copy of the handout she’d [more]
It looked like a cruel day from the window. Pedestrians were grimacing against the wind, and even dogs on walks looked aggrieved. But when I stepped outside, it was downright balmy. I had so many layers on it felt like Florida. Suspiciously warm weather prompts a kind of [more]
Before I arrived at the apartment in Hamburg where my husband Erwin and I are spending the weekend, the question “How do I build my yacht?” had never crossed my mind. Luckily, there’s a book here that goes into great detail on the subject: the helpfully titled How [more]
Ejnar Nielsen, Die Blinde. Gjern, 1896/1898 Why is art so hard to look at? Sometimes it feels like regarding a too-bright landscape at midday, the sun glinting off of every surface. Or being in the mall, Rihanna singing at a harmless volume, drifting from clothes racks, feeling sweaters. I know [more]
I’ve got that pre-solo trip nervousness, that top-of-the-waterslide gulp. The very notion of a writing residency – self-imposed exile for a month, away from my adopted city, back to my passport country – suddenly seems preposterous, like taking a naked walk at midnight around the neighborhood. What’s the [more]
Dressing for the plane: a supposedly simple task, but one I’ve never pulled off to my satisfaction. Right now, for example, despite having switched outfits three time this morning, to optimize for warmth, comfort, and pockets, I screwed up in a crucial area: socks. My sweatpants, I only [more]
Yesterday, after clearing customs, I entered the Charlotte, North Carolina airport with the manic joy that always characterizes my first hours of return to the United States. Luckily, everyone was playing their part: the kid in front of me at customs squeaked, as the officer stamped his passport, [more]
I’m sweating lightly, taking a breather after a fierce game of ping pong. Having lost the last two matches, I’m reminded of how competitive I am; moans and curses always escape when a shot goes wild. Somehow, I care. That attitude is arguably good for ping pong and [more]
This afternoon, I was sitting in a van, as the driver went to the drive-thru bank. The interaction with the teller went something like this: Hey Josephine. Hey Bee. You want quarters. Yes ma’am. You need anything else? We’re starting up the Christmas pageant rehearsals this week, so [more]
Last night I was playing ping pong with a white-whiskered German, a murmuring Brit, and a long-legged Floridian. The German, a painter from Bayern, had perfected the art of talking smack, a skill set I never would have credited him with upon first glance. He stood inches from [more]
This morning I went to brunch in town with two fellow VCCA residents at What a Blessing. That’s right; the name of the bakery is What a Blessing, and if you walk in wondering what kind of blessing they’re talking about, there are bible verses pasted all over [more]
On the train from Newark to New York after a flight from Virginia. Substituting misty dripping woods and lounging cows with tired, concrete-colored industry, the odd pastel box car. It looks like Shanghai outside: the unbending gray, the smog giving up the fight and dissolving into dusk. A [more]
1.The drum circle: Chairs and bongos suddenly materialize in the middle of the subway car. For reasons of acoustics that are beyond me, the drums are barely audible over the rattle and shudder of the hurtling train. 2. The gospel quartet: Four black men in dapper, church-like attire [more]
Today, after an unforgiving sprint across the Charlotte Airport to catch my flight back to Virginia, I walked across the sunny tarmac to the tiny plane. An airline worker in a fluroescent vest led me there, a tall man with a broad smile and kind eyes. “Where you [more]
A shock of bamboo, twice my height, hiding the house behind it. A sign: State Maintenance Ends Here A man, wearing hunting gear from head to toe, except for a small portion where his midriff sticks out, like a teenage girl who’s planned her outfit accordingly. He holds [more]
Last night, I sat down with two fiction writers and one painter to sing. There were two guitars, one banjo, and lots of sheet music. We started with some classic bluegrass numbers and moved into the blues and then some Gram Parsons country. Most of the songs I [more]
What isn’t like shooting freethrows? The more I think about it, almost everything feels like standing at the painted line, the ball in your hand, the ref’s whistle in his mouth, your teammates tensed, ready to lunge. The safety dribble: your little signature, your lucky pebble, your last [more]
I never knew a residency would be a riot of conversation. But sharing three meals a day with twenty other people, who are constantly cycling in and out, means that when you’re not writing, you’re talking. The meals determine the tenor of the talk. Breakfast is gentle, people [more]
I’ve been taking a walk every day in Virginia, on the backroads behind the residency. On these walks I pass various insolubles. After nearly two weeks here, I am getting no closer to the answers. It’s particularly frustrating because I’ve started rereading Sherlock Holmes and have a higher-than-usual [more]
Today I waived my firm anti-guided-tour policy and joined a band of visual artists from the residency to check out the Natural Bridge caverns, a forty-minute drive from VCCA. It took a while to get inside the caverns, as one artist required hundreds of thumbs from a wax [more]
It has poured the entire day, a relentless, thudding rain that is rare in Berlin, where it spits and then stops and then spits again. This morning, the mountains were shrouded in cloud and fellow residents seem to have disappeared, too; I’ve only seen the odd painter poking [more]
(William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve) It’s a creative writing workshop mantra that even if a character doesn’t know something in a story/novel, the writer needs to know it. But is this really true? Is there any way that the character’s ignorance and the writer’s ignorance [more]
Thursday morning, 6am: Taxi picks me up from the residency. Taxi company is a husband and wife team, and they’ve both showed up today out of solidarity/sleeplessness. It’s still night outside. I snuggle into the back seat and they take off, murmuring gently between them, the radio on. It’s [more]
My Midwestern side of the family lives in northwest Ohio, on neat acres of farmland that grow corn, wheat, and soybeans. The terrain is profoundly flat, divided into mile-long squares, demarcated by the county roads. If you set off down one of these roads, you can see the [more]
Last night a fire drill was conducted at my grandparents’ assisted living home. Ten minutes before the drill, a staff member had entered the recreation room where we were eating Pizza Hut supreme thin crust and announced, apologetically, that the room would be crammed with all of the [more]
Last night, Cora Tabb of Tabb’s Cabs picked me up from the airport, along with a buoyant Sweet Briar freshman. As we were exiting the airport, the freshman announced that she wasn’t headed to Sweet Briar College, but to an address in Lynchburg, to spend the night in [more]
I feel I’ve been remiss in not sounding more shocked about how beautiful everything is here in Virginia. Not because I was expecting it to be unbeautiful, but because the beauty, even if you have an intimation of it, shakes you anyways. So here, in no particular order, [more]
I learned to drive when I was 27. That means 12 intervening years of embarrassment, in which silly, vaguely slapstick scenes ensued as a result of being vehicle-impaired. I nearly ran over a cop at the London airport, who insisted I move the car when my mother was [more]
The home closest to my heart is a retirement community in northeast Georgia, just south of Highlands, North Carolina. It has the slightly unbelievable name of Sky Valley. Most of the houses in Sky Valley were built in the 1970s, a combination of ranch and chalet styles, with [more]
Utopias are funny places. They emerge unexpectedly; any plans to create them crumble. They are like fine weather or a close, sudden friendship: inarguable and generous. Settings can be utopic one day and banal the next. In Berlin, I consider Tempelhofer Feld, an airport that has been converted [more]
This morning, I stepped out into Florida. The air was warm and moist. Ambling along the street, peeling off my layers, I stopped and sniffed: the rising temperatures had unlocked the smells of the woods and pasture to either side. I was still in Virginia, but it was [more]
Today four fellow residents and I busted out of VCCA to attend the local Lynchburg Christmas Craft Fair. We meandered from stall to stall, lingering over pottery and bound leather journals, but for me the standout was a bow-tie stand. The vendor, who was also the designer, was [more]
My husband Erwin enjoys taking long train rides when he travels to his hometown in Romania. He says it makes more emotional sense for journeys to be long, enduring ordeals. That hopping on a four-hour-flight dodges the greater truth of how far Romania is from Germany. And how [more]
This morning I hailed a cab from Tegel Airport in Berlin, treating myself to a quick ride home. I was in an unholy mood after 17 hours of travel. I hardly ever sleep on planes – watching TV and movies is too alluring – but I always pay [more]
Yesterday, I showed up to my weekly sing-along, held in a friend’s apartment, to find that her kitchen looked more like a war room than a piano bar. Apparently, the downstairs neighbor had threatened to go to the landlord to complain about the music, and the group was [more]
This morning I noticed two essential differences between the US and Germany. 1) Pre-schoolers are taken on strolls through graveyards and 2) German squirrels have shockingly long ears. I discovered the first item as I was walking through the cemetery near my house. I’ve been looking for wooded places [more]
Today is my last post for 60 Pages, and it feels like the end of basketball season in high school: you’re relieved you don’t have to go to practice anymore, but then you feel a little empty when you walk by the gym, hungry for a ball in [more]
du kannst den post aber bearbeiten und sichtbar schalten – einfach das custom field empty löschen
du kannst den post aber bearbeiten und sichtbar schalten – einfach das custom field empty löschen
Im Oktober 1913 kommt in St. Petersburg die erste und einzige futuristische Oper zur Uraufführung: „Der Sieg über die Sonne“. Sie ist Auswurf eines künstlerischen Gipfeltreffens namens „Regierung des Erdballs“, das sein im Titel formuliertes Ziel nicht erreichen wird. Und das, obwohl die berühmtesten Künstler ihrer Zeit dabei [more]
Präsentation der Produkte von RLF bei Andreas Murkudis. Auf einer Europalette zwei Stapel mit Postern. Der Anblick motiviert zu einer Handlung, die im Umgang mit Postern auf Paletten als selbstverständlich begriffen wird und folgende Gleichung voraussetzt: Europalette + Posterstapel = mitnehmbar, kostenlos Ein Posterpaletten-konditionierter Besucher nimmt sich also [more]
Eine junge Frau sitzt in der Tram. Schräg gegenüber, ihr zugewandt, eine andere Frau, älter, schwarz gekleidet, in einer Hand einen zusammengerollten Regenschirm. Aus dunklen Augenhöhlen wirft sie stechende Blicke auf die junge Frau. Die rutscht unbehaglich auf ihrem Sitz herum, murmelt, „Schon klar, wenn Blicke töten könnten.“ [more]
Endlich haben Menschen, die schon seit ein paar Jahren bis Jahrzehnten aus der Pubertät heraus sind, eine Erklärung und Legitimation dafür, sich immer noch so zu fühlen und zu benehmen, als steckten sie mittendrin: Das Internet hat dafür gesorgt, dass Jugend nichts mehr mit Alter zu tun hat. [more]
Dieser Beitrag bezieht sich auf das Projekt 60pages als solches. Es ist der erste und einzige Beitrag dieser Art von mir. Danach wird alles wieder so sein wie vorher. Damit es so weitergehen kann, wie ich es will. In ihrem Beitrag von gestern stellt Eva Wilson die gleichen [more]
Manche Leute glauben, es werde deshalb so viel mehr getrunken in der Kunstwelt als in anderen Welten, weil man den ganzen Kunstquatsch nüchtern gar nicht ertragen kann. Nun sind aber auch andere Welten nur alkoholisiert auszuhalten, da muss man sich nur mal bei Medizinern oder Journalisten umschauen. Dass [more]
Auf mikroskopischen Aufnahmen wirken Bakterien und Viren erhaben. Sie verkörpern die Schönheit, die im Schrecklichen liegt. Es macht einem Angst und Freude zugleich, dass man so etwas Erstaunliches im eigenen Körper hat. In einem Körper vielleicht, der von außen eher nicht so toll aussieht, wimmelt es nur so [more]
Unendlichkeit ist anstrengend. Weil sie nie aufhört. Deshalb wird man ja auch verrückt, wenn man sich mit dem Weltall beschäftigt. Gedanklich. Was komischerweise gegen Unendlichkeits-Blues hilft: die Bilder anschauen, die das Hubble-Weltraumteleskop vom Weltall macht. Bilder von Planeten, Cepheiden, ganzen Galaxien. Sie geben der Unendlichkeit ein Gesicht. Es [more]
Beim Wohndesign-Onlinestore Monoqi gibt es heute Reflexionen im Angebot. Für 259 statt 290 Euro pro Reflexion. Da ich meine Reflexionen nicht zu verkaufen pflege, zumal ich sie in der Regel eh nur für den Eigengebrauch anstelle, bin ich relativ uninformiert, was den gängigen Marktwert von Reflexionen betrifft. Sind [more]
Vor ein paar Tagen wurde ganz England von einer schrecklichen Angst erfasst. Grund war eine Giftspinne, die mehrfach gesichtet worden war und der man die beunruhigende Fähigkeit zusprach, sich so rasend schnell zu vermehren, dass eine Apokalypse nicht auszuschließen war. Bis sie wieder Entwarnung gaben, breiteten englische Medien, [more]
Die Sache mit dem Turmbau hängt den Babyloniern heute noch nach. Man glaubt, sie waren geltungssüchtig und maßlos. Und schuld daran, dass sich die Welt mit Fremdsprachen herumschlagen muss. Dabei waren die Babylonier hochkorrekte Leute. Sehr auf Pünktlichkeit bedacht. Kein Wunder, sie hatten die Pünktlichkeit ja selber erfunden [more]
Dass Frauen in Saudi-Arabien kein Auto fahren dürfen, weiß ich schon lange. Dass dies von vielen Männern (auch außerhalb Saudi-Arabiens) begrüßt wird, auch. Neu hingegen war mir bis gestern, dass auch die GEMA etwas gegen saudi-arabische Frauen am Steuer hat. Am Wochenende protestierten Saudi-Araberinnen gegen das Fahrverbot für [more]
Heute vor 175 Jahren wurde die Eisenbahnlinie Berlin-Potsdam eröffnet. Heute vor 175 Jahren geschahen noch jede Menge anderer Dinge. Aber dafür ist jetzt keine Zeit. Was vor 175 Jahren geschah, ist eh nicht verantwortlich dafür, dass heute keine Zeit ist, insofern ist es heute nicht nur unmöglich, sondern [more]
Morgen ist Halloween. Da verkleidet man sich. Ein Kostüm tragen, für nicht wenige Menschen der pure Horror. Es soll aber ziemlich viele Menschen geben, die sich gern verkleiden. Der Verkleidungsmarkt jedenfalls boomt, das sieht man an all den Kostüm-Verkaufsplattformen im Internet. Zu Halloween verkleidet man sich klassischerweise als [more]
Etwa 24 Stunden lang glaubte ich, den perfekten Nagellack gefunden zu haben. Vielmehr den perfekten Nagellack-Farbton. Dass der Lack selber nicht perfekt ist, weiß ich, weil ich schon 20 Lacke dieser Marke besitze. Sie decken nicht perfekt, sie splittern, sie greifen die Nägel an. Aber die Farbtöne sind [more]
Eine Straße. Ein Passant. Im Begriff, diese zu überqueren. Er macht ein paar Schritte auf die Straße und sieht einen Radfahrer kommen. Der Radfahrer sieht den Passanten auf die Straße treten und berechnet anhand dessen Bewegungsgeschwindigkeit den zu erwartenden Überquerungsverlauf. Der Radfahrer ermittelt, an welcher Stelle auf der [more]
Je mehr Frauen von sich zeigen, desto stärker macht sie das, glaubt man bei American Apparel. Weshalb die weiblichen Models bei AA gern möglichst spärlich bekleidet sind. Die männlichen Models haben zum Jeanshemd immer noch eine Hose an, die weiblichen oft nicht mal ein Höschen. Jetzt hat man [more]
Letzte Nacht war Sonnenfinsternis in Turkana, Nordkenia. In ganz Afrika hat es seit 40 Jahren keine mehr gegeben. Die letzte Sonnenfinsternis, die ich bewusst wahrgenommen habe, war am 11.8.1999 in Berlin. Es war nur eine partielle, aber sie war trotzdem beeindruckend. Ich betrachtete sie durch einen schwarz eingefärbten [more]
„Laternenmasten können Geld verdienen“, weiß man beim Werbeflächenvermarkter mediateam Stadtservice. „Werben Sie an Laternen“, fordern Die Draussenwerber, die Spezialisten für lokale Außenwerbung in Berlin. Wen interessiert es, ob Laternenmasten Geld verdienen können oder nicht? Ich meine, schön für die Laternenmasten, aber ich stehe keinem von ihnen nahe genug, [more]
Auf Sad and Useless erschien gestern folgender Beitrag: „Best Pictures from Russian Dating Sites“. Er ist treffend betitelt, denn er versammelt die besten Fotos von russischen Dating-Portalen. Also die schlimmsten. Dass es sich um Bilder von russischen Portalen handelt, merkt man abgesehen von den musterfreudigen Wandbehängen im Hintergrund [more]
Neulich suchte ich im Internet nach etwas, das ich gern kaufen würde, wenn ich es bräuchte (nicht zu verwechseln mit Dingen, die ich gern kaufen würde, wenn ich sie mir leisten könnte). Bei meinen Recherchen stieß ich auf folgendes Angebot: „Hier finden Sie ein Podest für Zirkuslektionen für [more]
Auch heute ist wieder viel im Internet. Viele Menschen finden ja, zu viel. Man weiß ja gar nicht mehr, wo man zuerst hinschauen soll. Wegschauen geht aber auch nicht. Denn wenn man mal einen Moment weggeschaut hat, ist schon wieder alles voll mit neuem Zeug, das man anschauen [more]
Die Ducati 1199 Panigale ist ein Superbike der Extraklasse. Herausragende Leistung, brillante Technik, unverkennbarer Charakter, einzigartiges Design. Und Unisex. Erhältlich zum Beispiel bei Motocorsa.
Für die Konservierung von visuellen Erinnerungen gibt es Fotos, für die Konservierung von olfaktorischen Erinnerungen gibt es – bald vielleicht auch eine Lösung. Riechen ist ja eine viel stärkere Stimulanz als Sehen. Bilder wecken Erinnerungen an etwas, Gerüche erwecken Erinnerungen zum Leben. Leider sind Gerüche flüchtig, das liegt [more]
Die Story mit der höchsten Verbreitungsrate in den Sozialen Netzwerken ist heute wahrscheinlich die Nummer mit den Eiern, die gestern auf das Pflaster vom Roten Platz in Moskau genagelt wurden. Und zwar von dem Mann, dem sie gehören. Um sich einen Nagel durch den eigenen Hodensack zu treiben, [more]
Gestern fiel in New York der erste Schnee des Winters. Immer fällt irgendwo gerade Schnee, in manchen Regionen sogar ständig. Aber der erste Schnee in New York bedeutet ein Ereignis von saisonaler Tragweite für alle Menschen, deren kulturelles Koordinatensystem sich innerhalb zentralwestlicher Gefilde bewegt. Wenn es dagegen am [more]
Kaffee gehört zu jenen Produkten, die mit jedem Schritt in ihrer Verarbeitungskette an Wert gewinnen, und zwar in einer Höhe, angesichts der man sich am Ende dieser Kette fragt, warum man so blöd ist, 3,20 Euro für einen Kaffee auszugeben. Zumal der Anteil, den die Erzeuger des Grundproduktes [more]
Immer wenn einem langweilig ist, muss man einfach nur „Sarah Palin“ googeln. Da kommt immer was Gutes bei raus. Jetzt kommt gerade was zu Weihnachten. Oder vielleicht eher gegen Weihnachten. Wobei Sarah Palin nicht gegen Weihnachten ist, sie ist im Gegenteil sogar sehr dafür, sonst hätte sie ja [more]
Niemand kann alles lesen, was an Text bis heute produziert worden ist. Seit mehreren Tausend Jahren wird geschrieben, wobei sich das Alphabet als schriftliche Darstellung einer Lautsprache bis heute bewährt hat. Das Lateinische Alphabet ist bislang noch das am weitesten verbreitete, der höchste Anteil des weltweiten Textaufkommens ist [more]
Neulich lag auf dem Gehweg an einer Straßenkreuzung direkt neben einer Ampel ein Schuh. Es war ein schwarzer Pumps aus Lackleder, beziehungsweise wahrscheinlich eher aus Lackplastik. Er sah jedenfalls aus, als hätte er nicht mehr als 29,90 Euro gekostet. Wäre es ein wertvoller Schuh gewesen, dann wäre der [more]
Der Express vermeldet, dass sich Großbritannien auf den schlimmsten Winter seit 1947 einstellen muss. Ohne zynisch klingen zu wollen: Da kann man nur froh sein, dass ein Großteil der aktuell lebenden Bevölkerung Englands 1947 noch nicht auf der Welt oder in einem Alter war, in dem man schlimme [more]
Neulich fragte mich ein nichtdeutscher Freund, ob ich ihm die Sache mit den aktuellen Koalitionsverhandlungen in Deutschland mal erklären könnte. Die Frage war mir peinlich. Nicht, weil ich sie nicht beantworten konnte, sondern weil meinem Freund von vornherein klar war, dass ich dazu nicht in der Lage sein [more]
Heute ist nicht einfach nur der 19. November, heute ist auch Welttoilettentag. Seit 2001 wird dieser Aktionstag begangen, auf Anregung der Welttoilettenorganisation. Aber erst in diesem Jahr wurde er von der UNO-Generalversammlung zum „Welttoilettentag der Vereinten Nationen“ erhoben. Nun gibt es ja jede Menge sinnlose Aktionstage, den Weltknuddeltag, [more]
Der Bildschirm ist Blau Das Augenpaar eines Mannes späht nach links nach rechts geradeaus Um das rechte Auge schließt sich ein Fadenkreuz Das Fadenkreuz reißt auf, dahinter erscheint die verschwommene Silhouette eines Mannes Er hält sich die Hände schützend vors Gesicht Rennende Beine auf nassem Asphalt Aus einer [more]
Viele Kinos heißen Odeon. In der griechischen Antike bezeichnete ein Odeon einen runden, überdachten Raum für Konzertaufführungen. Wie ein Amerikaner namens Thomas Tally darauf kam, 1896 seinen Filmvorführraum als „odeon“ zu bezeichnen, ist nicht überliefert. Mit den antiken Horten der Hochkultur hatte sein mit klapprigen Stühlen ausgestatteter Raum [more]
Manchmal stelle ich Google Fragen, auf die ich keine Antwort will. Grundsätzlich hat Google natürlich auf alles eine Antwort, auch auf die Suchanfrage „suchanfrage ohne suchergebnis“ gibt es ungefähr 230.000.000 Suchergebnisse. Aber ein Suchergebnis ist eben nicht automatisch eine Antwort. Mein Ziel ist es, Google eine Frage zu [more]
Gestern habe ich einen Fehler gemacht. Ich habe gefehlt, im zweifachen Sinne des Wortes. Ich habe eine Leerstelle hinterlassen und das war falsch. Zu fehlen war ein Fehler. Den ich nicht wieder gut machen kann. Es sei denn, ich kann die Zeit zurückdrehen. Vielleicht geht das. Das erste [more]
Die Digitalisierung der Musik war natürlich Satans Werk, hat er so doch bessere Möglichkeiten, seine Botschaft unters Volk zu bringen. Mithilfe von Software lässt sich jede Audiodatei rückwärts abspielen und auf mögliches Backmasking überprüfen. Für das Rückwärtsabspielen von CDs brauchte man einen speziellen Player, und in Zeiten von [more]
Das MDR-Fernsehballett soll abgeschafft werden. Damit stirbt nicht nur ein Stück Fernsehgeschichte, sondern auch eine Idee: dass Fernsehen eine Bühne sei. In seinen Anfängen sollte Fernsehen nicht real sein, sondern das Gegenteil davon. Scripted Reality hätte in den Sechzigern nicht funktioniert. Dass es das heute tut, ist kein [more]
Als Kind fand ich das Wort „Tagundnachtgleiche“ sehr interessant. Ich dachte, wenn es Menschen egal ist, ob Tag oder Nacht ist, dann nennen sie das Tagundnachtgleiche. Im Winter gibt es manchmal Tage, da weiß man nicht, ob es noch nicht hell oder schon wieder dunkel ist. Tag oder [more]
Wenn es schnell gehen muss: Fertigpizza Ungebügelt in den Schrank Kurzhaarschnitt Plagiieren Ich lass’ das jetzt so
Mir ist aufgefallen, dass ich Wetter, Weltall und Zeit sehr gern mag. Das war mir bislang nicht bewußt. Aber wenn man jeden Tag über irgendetwas schreiben muss, 60 Tage lang, dann wählt man sich wohl etwas, das einem nahe ist, zu dem man eine Beziehung pflegt. In diesem [more]
Wenn man am Flughafen in Miami bei der Passkontrolle durchfällt und ins Hinterzimmer zur extrasorgfältigen Personalienüberprüfung gebeten wird, fragt man sich, ob die NSA die Sache mit der Überwachung wirklich so gut im Griff hat. Wäre dem so, könnten sich die USA ihren absurden Einreisekontrollapparat an Flughäfen dann [more]
Morgens um 5 vor 10 ist die Welt sehr schön. Sie besteht aus einem Pool, der groß genug ist, dass man darin Bahnen schwimmen kann, darum ein paar Palmen und einige wenige Menschen auf Liegen, die sich kaum bewegen, kaum reden und kaum auffallen. Was gut ist, denn [more]
Heute ist Cyber Monday. Der schönste Tag des Jahres für Leute, die gern online shoppen. Onlinestores hauen heute ihre Waren zu Preisen raus, bei denen man nicht mehr von Sonderangeboten sprechen sollte, sondern von Sonderbarangeboten: Irgendwo muss die Sache einen Haken haben, wenn ein Fernseher, der vorher 1000 [more]
Rollerball ist eine fiktive Sportart, die zudem nur in einer fiktiven Zukunft ausgeübt wird, nämlich im gleichnamigen Science-Fiction-Film von 1975. Rollerball ist so brutal, dass die Karrieren der Spieler höchst kurzlebig sind – wer Glück hat, scheidet aus dem Spiel, wer Pech hat, aus dem Leben. Das ist [more]
Eine von vielen möglichen Folgen von Schlafentzug: Kopfschmerzen. Schlaflosigkeit kann behoben werden, zum Beispiel durch die Einnahme von Melatonin. Eine von vielen möglichen Nebenwirkungen von Melatonin: Kopfschmerzen. Soll ich jetzt Melatonin nehmen, um besser zu schlafen, aber mit Kopfschmerzen aufzuwachen oder soll ich schlecht schlafen und einfach so [more]
Man sollte meinen, es gäbe viele Orte auf dieser Erde, die „Land’s End“ heißen. Denn es gibt ziemlich viele Landzipfel, die von Engländern entdeckt oder besetzt wurden, als Britannia noch Herrscherin über die Wellen der Weltmeere war. Tatsächlich gibt es aber nur ein einziges Land’s End, und das [more]
Dass jedes Jahr Weihnachten ist, und zwar jedes Jahr zum selben Datum, ändert nichts daran, dass ziemlich viele Menschen jedes Jahr aufs Neue von Weihnachten überrascht werden und auf den letzten Drücker irgendwelche Geschenke besorgen, deren Auswahl zeitmangelbedingt entweder banal, lieblos oder unpassend ausfällt. Auch ich werde zu [more]
Gerade las ich einen Bericht darüber, welcher Typ Mensch bevorzugt Opfer von Soziopathen wird: der empathische Typ. Offensichtlich bin ich nicht empathisch. Jedenfalls hatte ich es noch nie mit einem Soziopathen zu tun. Mit Intriganten, Schizophrenen oder einfach nur Blödmännern schon, aber Soziopathen scheinen ein anderes Kaliber zu [more]
Es wird kein Wiedersehen mit Ison geben. Der Komet zerfiel, weil er der Sonne zu nahe kam. Von wegen Sonne ist ein Lebensspender. Allerdings schwächelt die Sonne gerade: Die Zahl der Sonnenflecken ist viel niedriger als normal, sie sind weniger aktiv, und das Magnetfeld der Sonne spielt total [more]
Verscheuchen oder verjagen, wo ist eigentlich der Unterschied? Verscheuchen tut man wohl eher kleinere, harmlose und vor allem scheue Tiere, die bei einer Handbewegung oder einem Zischlaut schon das Weite suchen. Verjagen tut man eher Tiere, die sich nicht so leicht was sagen lassen, die einem lästig sind, [more]
Wer Buße tut, gelobt Besserung. Wer eine Lücke büßt, füllt sie aus und macht damit alles besser.
Die Tamale ist ein lateinamerikanisches Gericht aus Maisteig und anderen natürlichen Zutaten. Hot Tamales ist eine US-amerikanische Süßigkeit aus Zucker und anderen unnatürlichen Zutaten, die nach Zimt schmeckt und irre süchtig macht. Hot Tamales gibt es seit 1950, und seit es sie gibt, haben sie sich, von der [more]
Vintage Obama: Many folks in the US still call themselves Birthers and are convinced that BHO was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii, back in 1961. All they need is the birth footage, preferably in 8mm, to Q.E.D their theory. I gave it to them. The baby I’ve [more]
A few heretics in North London decided they want to pray for a non-God together agnostically in harmony. I met them. The pastor: Nimrod on twitter @nnimrodd
I went to E1 in the West Bank, to see how much of a discount I can get on a family flat, as a British Jew. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DewZ796XAtQ Jew diligence – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwpgTfRfvBQ Nimrod Kamer, @nnimrodd
I pretended to be Jack Nicholson’s son. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQOHUEwJjfE
Ned Kelly, the Irish Australian bushranger: played by Mick Jagger in Tony Richardson’s 1970 film adaptation; by Heath Ledger in Gregor Jordan’s 2003 update. June 21st 2012: Jonathon Stenberg decapitates his neighbour Ned Kelly after an ongoing dispute over land. June 23rd 2012: During an unprecedented manhunt for [more]
Susan Stenger: Irish American composer and voice artist. In an empty row on a crowded plane. Late boarders take the remaining seats: mother, father, screaming child. Hard luck. But then the mother pulls out a tablet and gives it to the little girl. Touchscreen silence. “Amazing…” whispers Stenger. [more]
Liberated as free from industry. Lost, forgotten. Made in impossible circumstances. Mutant. Banned. Too much. Temporary holding place for films you can’t guarantee. Available by donation. Sample projections extend the architecture of a Flawed space. LFS is a subsidiary purge. Purge distribution. Purge DVDs. Purge Stoke Newington. [more]
The gob behind the girl chewing gum takes a working holiday down the west coast. Happens to be in Hollywood for the red carpet premiere of Anna Karenina (formerly a book by Tolstoy), credited to an ex-student of CSM living in James Dean’s first loft-style apartment. Limo downtown [more]
Once identified as a sympathetic character, you can and will commit the worst deed without losing the audience’s respect.
Mastertech’s first job in Britain was slapped in Nine Hours to Rama.
Poll taken tonight at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) confirms The Last Movie as the best movie of all time, and the most liberated film made in 1970 and 1971.
“Berlin: a film for the ear” appears in a lightly defined pentagram (ballooned) on a promotional poster for the album by Lou Reed. Necessary compromise made by RCA after rejecting the working title of Babylon. By 1973, the libfilm audience are beginning to lift out of the three [more]
Breaking Free: Escape in Cleveland (2013). Written by Ariel Castro, Directed by ABC news. Starring Amanda Berry. Duration: 12 years. Castro is noted as leaving a student on the school bus, and cursing at them. On September 3rd 2013 his contract was terminated. Liberated Film Store; Purge Stoke [more]
Some people got no choice, And they can never find a voice… That they could even call their own, So the first thing that they see, That allows them the right to be, They follow it. You know what it’s called? DVD. Out of the chip shop and [more]
The Liberated Film Store confuses CCTV footage used in this morning’s LAX shooting, with Chris Petit opening a door to morning during the shooting of Flight to Berlin.
Charles Byrne: the Irish giant. Born 1761. Arrives London April 1782. Exhibit at Cox’s freak show, Spring Gardens. Ratings waning within a year. Fandom of John Hunter (The Godfather of modern surgery) consistent. Byrne keeps growing. April 23 1783: Byrne at the bar pick-pocketed of his life savings [more]
Helmet Scott taught a course on film in the hyper-inflationary Weimar Republic, and frankly, Hackney, Peckham, and.. Ripon “this feels quite similar.”
Hitler invested heavily in speed, and in 1939 sent BMW to compete in the Isle of Man TT. War was declared three months later, and supercharged engines are eventually banned. Manx cat patches are exclusive to the Liberated Film Store.
To the Zapatista, “The important thing is the spectacle that you make out of an event in the media, as opposed to the event itself.”
An off-duty soldier is murdered on May 23rd 2013. Fragments are available online within hours. The material is rendered before court, and spin-offs confuse the verdict. An unsuccessful sequel follows in July of the same year (Adebolajo: HMP Belmarsh).
In the wake of Berlin Alexanderplatz (Petit’s introduction notes the possibility of Fassbinder turning 70 in 2013): “freely adapted to our times,” Franco left this year in what would have been Soledad Miranda’s 70th. She died on a Lisbon highway in 1970 at the age of 27. Soledad [more]
Copyright on sale of the revolution belongs to Ono. Photograph belongs to Purge with thanks to Mind. Black on black hand embroidered ’70’ patches are available exclusively at the Liberated Film Store. Spandau Barry ‘7’ patches also available, also exclusive to the Liberated Film Store. Q. Who [more]
Children of Men use their characters as government run media, hence the cast of Clooney and Bullock in .CoM sequel. A turd, scratch or tone persists long after the credits role in most examples of Liberated Film passing. Often, the image lifts off completely.
[jwplayer mediaid=”17766″] A man with a gun bursts through the revolving doors of a TV station on the outskirts of Paris. An old man with a walking stick will climb up a flight of stairs to the street. The gunman steps around the old man, menaces the TV [more]
The gunman behind several recent attacks in central Paris is caught and named. Convicted in 1998 for links to Bonnie and Clyde. A manhunt had been under way since Monday morning, when the gunman critically wounded a photographer at the offices of Liberation. The gunman was sentenced to [more]
Court psychologists dub the gunman as an individual with “mythomaniac tendencies”.
Dibbs drops his camera in the abattoir slurry. A year later, to the day, his gate slips on the Kings Road. Something else about the film and the gutter.
“When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour.”
NSA planned to discredit radicals over web-porn use. Huffington Post published a document, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, identifying two radicals said to be vulnerable to accusations of “online promiscuity”. An official said this was unsurprising. A campaign group called it frightening.
A woman lay on the street, apparently dead, in front of a flower shop. Through the viewfinder it all seemed removed from reality. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Thirty years later, I’m surprised to find the flower shop is still there.
Alleged killer of Fusilier Lee Rigby handed a letter explaining his attack to the woman who stroked the body of the fallen soldier. “Sometimes the cowardly and foolish could be those dearest to you, so be prepared to turn away from them.”
The fourth term of Sylvester’s Sequence, one more than the product of the previous terms (2 × 3 × 7).
Brian May noticed that the scrollkeeper cronjob tries to fetch a DTD for processing its configuration file via HTTP. However, this fails if the host is not connected to the Internet or has to use a proxy. Jochen Dross explained that this is caused by the docbook XML package which doesn’t [more]
The premise that an end-reel moment can redeem all that has gone before.
After a long televised battle, Nelson Mandela is finally released on December 5th 2013. In less than a month, Long Walk to Freedom (“It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”) will open in cinemas across the United Kingdom. The director, Justin Chadwick, starred as [more]
Cinema is the liberating application in the margins in search of the proper world.
The Liberated Film School booked a hooker from Eyes Wide Shut to shout Cromwell down.
Change which seems impossible; challenges apparently too great to overcome; the ultimate responsibility of the filmmaker. Define the way future films are made. Mobilise and manipulate technical and social possibilities to create 100 more, better things, that everyone knew and were casually hoping to see.
The same film can’t be made twice. The film as a tangible byproduct and accurate representation of event could act as a warning for and responsibility of future filmmakers.
“Act like you’re in a movie or something. You can’t be scared of shit. You have to be hard. Don’t be scared of anything.”
The journalist is the scriptwriter answering to the specific political bias of the paycheck. The film adaptation goes further to revise any inconsistencies in the original broadcast.
According to a recent poll, Gravity is the least Liberated Film ever made, and possibly the worst movie of all time.
“Never ask what you did. It’s better not to know,” said O’Toole. Lawrence ends in the opening of Lean’s Arabia.
Penultimate is the original and easiest-to-use handwriting app that combines the natural experience of pen and paper with the flexibility and syncing of forevernote. Lose the paper, keep the handwriting, and remember everything.
Fragments of an inner projection. Memories of our old universe in the black studio of our imagination. Full of lonely marionettes of human beings, changing figurines of the ego, endless material for monologues, mono-plays and tragedies on celluloid. Dances of death, dialogues of death, dialogues in the land [more]
Es gab mal einen Film, einen Hollywoodstreifen, denke ich. Auf jeden Fall gehörte einer der Darsteller zu denen, die man kennt, auch wenn man nicht viele Filme schaut. Deswegen gehe ich mal davon aus, dass man ihn als Hollywoodstreifen bezeichnen kann. Die Handlung war ganz nett, vielleicht etwas [more]
It was an autumn day today. Warm like spring. A perfect day for bananafish and for Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”. (31 characters remaining) I bought Super Tattoos on my way home. Bubble gum and a tattoo in one for only CHF 0.20. (52 characters remaining) It’s a blue [more]
Italian food is available almost everywhere outside of Italy. German bread becomes more popular in Europe as well as in the States or other countries where either expats or natives, fascinated by the dark character of this German bakery product, open up a bakery. There is this certain [more]
In front of my house there is bar called Erea. It is a very strange place. It’s not a very nice or charming bar and the people going there seem mysterious. I have no clue what they are doing or what they think or believe. But it seems [more]
How is it possible to make a good decision? A decision that actually proofs to be the right one. To make a choice in general is not the easiest thing existing. Too many things are relevant. Making a decision can be an act of creation. People invent a [more]
Dr. Norden is a German physician based in Munich and he is famous for taking good care of his patients. He never reduces a patient down to his medical condition. For Dr. Norden the human being, full of feelings, is always the center of attention in his own [more]
#8 Nach einiger Zeit war klar, wie es um beide steht. Sie konnten es nicht ändern, sich nahe zu sein. Sie waren sich sehr ähnlich, zumindest ging er davon aus und das mochte er. Nach einiger Zeit, sie sahen sich weniger und machten weniger miteinander, änderte sich nichts [more]
In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 60 pages. In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 60 pages.
Why not moving out of cities. Spending your time in a quiet place, not influenced by the hectic outside. There is small but existing possibility of having some time thinking and doing. You can sleep longer, have long walks, the best and freshest produces. In the best case [more]
[jwplayer mediaid=”15201″] [jwplayer mediaid=”15201″]
carving, laughing, skating now! carving, laughing, skating now!
Sei mir gegrüßt, Melancholie, Die mit dem leisen Feenschritt Im Garten meiner Phantasie Zu rechter Zeit ans Herz mir tritt! Die mir den Mut wie eine junge Weide Tief an den Rand des Lebens biegt, Doch dann in meinem bittern Leide Voll Treue mir zur Seite liegt! Die [more]
Issued in 1876 by English artist William Hogharth “Beer Street” and “Gin Lane” were two drawings used to accompany the states campaign against Gin. Back in the days England faced a huge alcohol problem. The authorities connected the high level of crime to the consumption of certain beverages, [more]
Check it out! The Way of the Shovel http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/next/all/324 Check it out! The Way of the Shovel http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/next/all/324
Imagine there is something that makes you dependent. Something you want to do even if you feel it’s not right for the moment. Anyhow, it feels good. At least it is a good feeling doing it. It makes you feel relaxed. It helps you. It supports you. It [more]
Ideas rise from the deepest most hidden part of your soul. They come not announced and neither there is a way of pushing them to come. They appear, out of the blue, like a mermaid could come out of the blue ocean. And, suddenly they are here. But [more]
I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd A host of dancing Daffodils; Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the [more]
Maurice Blanchot describes the experience of emptiness as a “feeling of happiness” that assails the subject as a “ravaging joy”. Joy of an opening that opens toward its closure, so infinite is this emptiness that contains not the least positivity. An emptiness that closes the space of the [more]
Jean-Luc Nancy: Collectivity means collected people : that is, people taken together from anywhere to the nowhere of the collectivity or of the collection. The co- of collective is not the same as that of communism. This is not only a matter of etymology (munire versus ligare) . This [more]
Philosophy is the triumph of the impossible over the possible. Therefore it has a bad reputation (of being out of touch with the world, unrealistic, ‘abstract’, over people’s heads, etc.) because it refuses to calm down in the present and instead to put it into question and in [more]
We expect art to be critical: critical of institutions, society, art itself. Simultaneously, there is no art that exhausts itself in critique. Even the most critical art has affirmative traits. How can we think the possible coexistence of critique and affirmation? What, actually, is critique and what does [more]
Ludwig Wittgenstein speaks of the embeddedness of the subject in a language game, meaning that the affirmation of a frame of reference or system precedes even the utmost skepticism, critique, and doubt: “All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And [more]
We must, says Wittgenstein, rely on our forms of life and language games, we must accept them like the ground on which we tread. Yet this does not mean that we had a reason to leave ourselves a last ground, a final certainty, because each life form and [more]
When Adorno writes, “in the midst of art, the social thorn grows back,” he says that the opening toward the socio-biopolitical sphere of facts belongs to art, whether art wants it or not. Art cannot succeed in locking itself into an l’art pour l’art aestheticism or immanentism. But [more]
The transcending of its conditions is the precondition for art. The transgressive transcending of these conditions is affirmative because it holds itself open to the beyond of realities as possibilities. An opening that tears the subject from its embrace with reality.
At no point is philosophy a flight from reality. On the contrary, philosophy can be a movement of flight but what it flees is not reality. Philosophy flees the ghosts and phantasms that step in front of the appearance of the real. It flees the consolations, illusions, mere [more]
The first object of critical inquiry is its own conditionality: the impossibility of the unconditional; that is, the impossibility of undisguised freedom or authenticity. When Adorno, in his book on Husserl, insists that “the real life process of society is […] the core of the contents of logic [more]
To philosophize is to love in an exaggerated, restless and excessive way by fleeing from the ghosts of unfreedom into reality for the sake of freedom. Philosophy does not flee reality. It flees into the heart of reality.
The subject’s entanglement with reality indicates its being-in-the-world. Reality is another name for world, with world meaning two things here: firstly, the hyperbolic totality of what is (German Seiendes, as opposed to Sein, lit. being) in its ontological indifference; secondly, the homogeneity of the universe of facts as [more]
The oversized terms of the metaphysical tradition (justice, truth, freedom, etc.) are markers of inconsistency because what they denote does not have a 1:1 representation in the field of constituted facts, since by definition it represents the threshold of the spectrum of representation and therefore destabilizes it. The [more]
„The romantic“, Georges Poulet writes, „is a human being discovering him or herself as the center”–just like the narcissistic subject. Falling back on the narcissistic imaginary has a stabilizing function. It bridges the abyss of non-sense by filling it with meaning. The narcissist lives his life trying to [more]
What distinguishes the love of truth from the belief in truth is that the subject of the love of truth (the philosophizing subject) does not presuppose truth as substantially given. Only in touching truth does truth constitute itself. Truth means nothing other than the untouchable, the beyond of [more]
Because Jacques Derrida “parallels the critical moment of deconstruction […] with an affirmative” (Christoph Menke), he defines deconstruction as “deconstruction of critical dogmatism” (J.D.). That is, it’s an activity open toward the affirmation of the event or the unforeseeable, the incommensurable, which is why he can say “that [more]
Freedom exists solely in the self-extensions toward non-freedom. The same holds true for critique: it can only operate on affirmative grounds, not from a safe outside or a distance that imagines the schöne Seele of the constituted realities, but in factually being contaminated by the subject of its [more]
As headless as this crazy child may be: Antigone is aware of her own precision. Consistently she overhears Ismene’s voice, representing the general doxa. What speaks through Ismene is established reason. Ismene knows nothing but caution, contemplation, comparison. Antigone, however, verges on the delusion of the subject. Her [more]
One cannot help but to compromise oneself. One is already compromised. No subject is ever intact (or, as Adorno puts it: „None is tabula rasa.“ There is no integrity untouched by the facts. The incommensurable measure of freedom, which Antigone allows herself despite Creon, articulates itself only in [more]
Antigone’s desire is desire for autonomy, embedded into the heteronomous, an autonomy from this world, if you will, one turned towards the heteronomous as the mundane nomos. Something like self-determination can only exist with a window towards heteronomy, in the here and now of codified reality. Freedom is [more]
One cannot sacrifice one’s life to the unliveable without being a lofty idiot. The philosophical perspective into which the antigonistic subject puts itself is not transcendence. It’s neither about higher values nor about a divine law superior to a human one. It’s not even about a childish heroism, [more]
Could Antigone’s evidence lie in this non-idealistic conception of freedom: in a claim of freedom, which runs through all the stages of objective non-freedom? There is the appeal for a certain kind of resistance and freedom connected to Antigone. Antigone barricades herself from the established order, in order [more]
A truth which does not need to correspond to given criteria can only be a lawless truth. Blind or headless truth to which a child spiralling out of control commits. A truth founded not on any knowledge, which therefore remains unproven and unjustified. That’s what we call evidence: [more]
Persistent at the heart of reality is an element that is explicit to it.
To speak of a subject, no matter whether it be to deconstruct its modern form and its traditional predicates (self-consciousness, freedom, independence, autonomy, etc.) by demonstrating its transcendental derangement, or whether it be to confront it with the ineluctable obligation to judgement, resoluteness and its rational grounding, demands [more]
Deconstruction expends itself as the desire for a faceless future which includes also the desire for a new responsibility and justice; it falls over itself in the expectation of that which no expectation accommodates. It exists only as this somersault, as an ebullient movement into the unknown, as [more]
Philosophy, insofar as it represents the event of a culture of logos that has lasted more then two and a half millennia, associated itself from the outset with light (with the platonic sun, the Christian lumen, the Aufklärung, the enlightenment, the Lumières, the Husserlian evidence and the Heideggerian [more]
Jacques Derrida: “A just, appropriate decision is always necessary immediately, at once, right away. It cannot first go about getting hold of infinite amounts of information, the limitless knowledge of the conditions, the rules, the hypothetical imperatives that could justify it. Even if it had such a knowledge, [more]
There is no active consumption. In the objectivity of the consumer, the subject becomes controllable. It is disciplined, calmed down, tranquillized and put out of action. The subject of capitalism as this receiver-subject is a subject reduced and restricted to its capacity to consume. It does not decide [more]
The world of facts is a sphere which by definition excludes truth in order to enable social, political, cultural, that is, identifiable reality. Realities or factual truths are truths that are not truths. The space of facts is constituted through the pathological exclusion of truths because truth is [more]
The lacanien real is the name for that which does not belong to the space of facts. The real names the border and the constitutive exterior of the factual dimension. The real is more real than reality. It is what inscribes a fundamental inconsistency into „realistic“ calculation, the [more]
How to back out of the alternative of finitude and infinity, reality and ideality, the possible and the impossible? How to think an opening that opens toward something not-given—toward the nothing itself—; how to affirm this opening toward closure without depriving it of its characteristic openness? How to [more]
Gilles Deleuze: „Moi, je veux sortir de la philosophie par la philosophie.“
The onto-political concept of the refusal introduced by Maurice Blanchot is anything other than reactive. It is aggressive. It corresponds to the law, not of unity, of consensus and of satisfaction, but of a “necessary division and an infinite destruction”. In it an echo of Walter Benjamin’s destructive [more]
Perhaps every engagement with the work of Maurice Blanchot, who is both a writer (doubtless in a new sense established by him himself) as well as a philosopher and political thinker, has to be an engagement with the undecidability between politics and ontology. How can the relationship between [more]
Every real artwork verges on the realm of nonexistence. Nothing divine emerges from it, no infinite depth, but the fragility and the precariousness of reality itself. No beyond—nothing transcendent appears in the apparition of nonexistence. By including nonexistence into existence itself, the nonexistence of positive transcendence reveals itself [more]
What is the highest ethical ideal according to Nietzsche? That human beings free themselves from the spirit of revenge. Freedom begins where the will to revenge and punishment turns into the will to responsibility, i.e. to freedom. To want to revenge oneself means to want to be unfree [more]
Antigone is this raving dreamer, who tries to protect herself against the symbolic imperatives and the temptations of the imaginary in order to develop a self-assured demand which is a kind of law of all the lawless, the ‘law’ of those who come into conflict with the law, [more]
1. Because in every moment of her writing Duras circles the “origin” of the origin. 2. Because this circling is related to an unrelated emptiness. 3. Because circling around the empty origin is touching truth. 4. Because to touch a truth means to relate to the namelessness of [more]
“I was a child, seven or eight years old, I was in an isolated house, near the closed window, I looked outside — and at once, nothing could be more sudden, it was as though the sky opened, opened infinitely toward the infinite, inviting me with this overwhelming [more]
Theodor W. Adorno: “Relativism, no matter how progressive its bearing, has at all times been linked with moments of reaction, beginning with the sophists’ availability to the more powerful interests”.
1. Because Foucault is the thinker of the subject of a certain self-derangement. The subject leaves its traditional position. It becomes the subject of a movement of decentralization. The subject is the subject of a powerful self-marginalization. It is the subject of self-exceeding. It goes through the experience [more]
The clash of two blindnesses, of opaque pre-reflective matter with the opaque self of a subject without subjectivity, marks the scene of birth or beginning of another, non-Cartesian subject that unites the darkness of its origin with the veiling of its horizon, a singular subject that is equally [more]
Melancholy presents the subject with an account for its subjectivity. The subject has to pay for what cannot be paid for. What cannot be paid for is the name for the subject’s initial encounter with loss. For there is something resembling a subject only as the subject of [more]
For Foucault, Nietzsche is the philosopher who has broken with the modern concept of philosophy, with philosophy as a movement of totalization with a universal claim. Since Nietzsche, thinking is satisfied with establishing the particular. It is itself perspectival instead of assuring itself of its origin and its [more]
It is obvious that there cannot be any beginning before the beginning. So what is before it? And what name do we want to give to it? Philosophy is nothing other than this temptation of the nameless. Philosophical desire circles around a void which would be misrecognized if [more]
In his Leibniz lectures in the summer semester of 1928, Metaphysical Principles of Logic, Martin Heidegger touches on the “question of ethics”. Fundamental ontology as developed in Being and Time is not the whole of metaphysics. It has to be supplemented by a metontology. Only the unity of fundamental ontology (which [more]
Because the subject does not have any transcendental or religious, that is, substantial determination, it cannot miss its destination.
The “tragedy” of love, its failure does not describe its course in the sense in which one says that a relationship has ended ‘tragically’ or ‘has failed’. It is the origin of the movement of love as a movement of mutual distancing from the self. The subjects of [more]
J’habite une douleur Le poème pulvérisé (1945-1947) Ne laisse pas le soin de gouverner ton coeur à ces tendresses parentes de l’automne auquel elles empruntent sa placide allure et son affable agonie. L’oeil est précoce à se plisser. La souffrance connaît peu de mots. Préfère te coucher sans [more]
The first sentence of the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason from 1781 sketches the outlines of problematic subjectivity. “Human reason has a particular fate in one genus of its knowledge: that it is troubled by questions which it cannot dismiss because they are posed [more]
If undecidability is a part of decision, as Jacques Derrida has shown, then this means for the subject of decision that it is a subject in the space of undecidability and also the subject of undecidability. The question concerning this subject and its relation to other subjects would [more]
The withdrawal of the human being has already begun. The subject in human being is accelerating on the line of departure from the human being. It draws the trace of an exertion which tries to turn the world and the self upside down by giving way to an [more]
The philosophy of modernity since Descartes, since the Enlightenment, since Kant has been put into question as such a practice of violence insofar as the concept and the demeanour of construction (for instance, of systems) and of erection (of a transcendental subject) are invariably combined with the authority [more]
Section 42 of Being and Time cites the 220th fable of a certain Hyginus, as Martin Heidegger says, “by way of pre-ontological evidence for the existential-ontological interpretation of Dasein as care”: ”Once upon a time, when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she came upon some clay-loam. Reflectively she took up [more]
What if democracy existed only as an opening to the dimension of its negation? What if democracy had to open itself to a negativity (or positivity), to a danger and a threat, to an absolute alienness and incommensurability in order to constitute and assert itself as democracy, as [more]
To detach oneself from one’s narcissism means to subscribe to an indeterminacy which evades control.
Going to North Korea for holidays has become fairly popular in China these days. I guess for many Chinese, it’s a bit like visiting a cousin in prison who you were really close with but at one point winded up on the wrong path in life: You kinda [more]
There is a certain coolness about Chinese grannies that I’ve always admired. These Shanghainese ladies for example gang up in my neighborhood every day – they just sit, drink tea, sit, play mahjong, chat and sit. After dinner they go a public square and dance to old Chinese folk [more]
I live in downtown Shanghai. In the past two years that I’ve been here I get the feeling my neighborhood is slowly turning into one single luxury shopping mall with a couple of luxury hotels, a streets and office/resident blocks in between. Within a circle of three kilometers [more]
I wouldn’t be surprised if top party officials at Beijing’s government headquarter Zhongnanhai are toasting each other these days with ridiculously expensive French wine over the fact that Merkel’s phone has been bugged by the NSA. A decent bit of Schadenfreude should be involved: The more international media [more]
Winter is coming soon and that means “super smog” is back in Beijing. This picture was taken on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, probably recently. I don’t know the time and photographer, found it today here.
And here we are. What a gift for the Chinese propaganda ministry. State television CCTV explains with pleasure why Merkel being a “Handykanzlerin” makes her an easy target for the NSA. China Daily has to say: […] Chinese experts said the disclosure shows the United States is making the most of its intelligence capabilities to secure its supremacy in the world, and the scandal will weaken its global credibility. […] Shi Yinhong, a senior expert on US studies at Renmin University of China, said, “Perceivingitself as a superpower, the US holds the arrogant attitude that it is not a big deal to steal othercountries’ information”. […] Guo Xiangang, vicepresident of the China Institute of International Studies, said Washington […] will never give up surveillance of other countries, including its allies. […]
Another blog about malls. But then again, Asians really take the whole concept of a shopping to the next level. Yesterday I came back from a trip along the coast of Myanmar where I barely saw any people for a week. I made a 24-hour-stop in Bangkok and [more]
I’d like to share two reads that give a quite depressing insight on corruption in China. Since Xi Jinping took over, the government has been launching a nationwide campaign against corruption that, on the surface, seems to be effective: Media reported that luxury sales dropped and posh restaurants [more]
“What’s life like in Shanghai?” I am often asked by friends in Europe. It’s everything at the same time: fast-forward and backwards, exciting and depressing. It’s hard to nail it. And much easier to tell with pictures. I really like “Shanghai Blink”, a new coffee table book by [more]
Unless someone/something forces me so, I would never move to Beijing. I consider this city as unhuman and unliveable. Needless to say why: The traffic + the air. Friends in Beijing keep calling me ignorant and refer to the intellectual scene and the cozy hutong bars. They are [more]
While having dinner at a Shanghai hotpot restaurant last night I couldn’t help but take a paparazzi shot of this couple (sorry guys): She is watching a movie on the iPad (next to the bowl with the salad), he is doing whatever on his iPhone. The perfect date, [more]
I need to take back what I said the other day – about never wanting to live in smoggy Beijing. For a change, this week I would need go to the capital to breath properly. Right now air pollution in Shanghai has gone off the charts, for the [more]
This year, a revival of the famous 1966 Method Acting Festival of Belgrade, Montana will happen in Berlin. Like the original, it will take place on Christmas Eve. In preparation for the event, some Berlin residents were invited to take part. For the untrained, like me, a crash [more]
Today, our crash course on Method Acting was both a lesson and an exercise. We met at the Rosenthaler Platz where a lecturer in German literature from the Humboldt-University gave us some background to the famous novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin. Of course, the Alexanderplatz gave the [more]
Our course in Method Acting turned more and more into a discussion on urban semantics. Here is an example for a strange semantic situation, which we worked on today. Our subject, the Method Acting, brought us to the questions: who is acting, what is present, and how does [more]
Dear friends. Here comes the ultimative task in our Method Acting class. Two of us got an original New York City Taxi for the next 48 hours to work with. One of them is me. You can call me day and night, here is my phonenumber: XXXXXXXXX911
My weekend with the original NYC-cab brought a lot of surprises. The most memorable is the actor, who was part of the entourage of Lady Gaga. His career lead him into the inner circle of L.A. society, but without further reputation in the history of film. He played [more]
Before the Method Acting will immaculate my thoughts again, let me introduce a historical person. His name is Wolfgang Pauli, an extraordinary physician of the 20th century. He was famous for his research in quantum theory. He published some of his research the normal way, by writing books [more]
Before Method Acting will take over control please let me offer one last image to you. The Wolfgang Pauli Street is under construction, the main function of the Wolfgang Pauli Street is moved to the rear development. By this, the Rear Window became the belle etage, where you [more]
There is an apparatus made out of two. The smart phone and the binocular as an untechnical innovation. It is not technics, it is rather a systematical misuse of two monadic systems. Films should be made this way. For my Method Acting experience I will try not to [more]
There is a new building in Berlin, finished in 2012, that brings the discussions of the last years to a crucial point. Is it innovative or is it just a playful interpreation of the good old facade logic of contemporary investment architecture? During my 72 hours in the [more]
While spending 72 hours at home I did not witness any crime in our neighbourhood. Instead I found out, that the city works as an astronomical calender. Some distinctive buildings or structures in the city seemed to be strongly related to a moment of sunrise or sunset. The [more]
The sun is not only good for measuring the time (see yesterday), it also shows hidden things. Working like an X-ray, the insights of the city become visible. Today the sun was raying Tour Total. The inner structure of the building becomes visible, and with this the utilisation [more]
Like me, Tour Total was not training today. We have not been training for the Method Acting festival on Christmas Eve. Tour Total has not been dancing naked in the sun. Today Tour Total rested in the grey bed of the sky.
There is a new style in architecture: Method Acting. Not only Tour Total is playing Monte Verita, also this stunning building appeared recently in Berlin. It is described on the website this way: “… The individual stories project at various depths and angles from the wall alignment in a [more]
Here you can see an image of a new building by Edouard Francois, a master of semantics shifting Architecture. Three structures stacked: a 1920´s row-housing situation, a block of the 60´s and cheap prefabricated houses of the 80´s. Housing that imitates archetypes of 20th century housing. Self explaining, a triadic ballet of housing [more]
Following the latest style, the phenomena of Method Acting Buildings, I lost the track yesterday. And ended up with the method of an Epic Theatre. Edouard Francois entered the stage as the master of Epic Theatre Architecture. But what about the Epic Theatre itself, the Berliner Ensemble. Will [more]
How could I forget to talk about Casa Camper. It is one of Berlins pearls of Method Acting Architecture. Until today it makes me feel uncertain. Is it acting like this or is it acting like that? It is an example of double role acting, the mastery of Method [more]
Let us continue the research into Method Acting in architecture. Here comes another building, one of my favourites of the glorious year 2012: the Ärztehaus. It is not easy to decipher, which role it took on. What about the column, is it bearing the load of the building? [more]
The Method Acting Architecture is always close to the point, when it get converted into Tourette Architecture. It is a fine line to walk on. One of the radial streets of Berlin is like a walk on this line: Müllerstraße. I will walk this way on the next [more]
The strange building that I praised yesterday, here it comes again, as top view.
What I always wanted to visit: The building, that is part of the Schering-Area, standing at the corner Müllerstraße-Sellerstraße. On the ground floor and the 1st floor it is hosting a Commerzbank. But what about the roof? Is it a little landscape, shaped over the decades by some employees [more]
The car parking that is vis à vis the Schering-factory. My first impression was, that it belongs to the company. And maybe there is a connection in the underground between the two sides of the street, that I could not see. It is on my list for further [more]
The interesting roof situation on top of the Schering-building seems to be under construction and is probably changing. I found the former situation on google maps and posted it some pages ago. When I returned to Müllerstraße for further research I was very surprised to find out, that [more]
Müllerstraße is a cosmos in itself. It is hosting a lot of attractions, not only the Schering factory (now Bayer) but also the glorious Erika-Heß-Eisstadion. A construction as simple as crazy, five times the same: E R I K A.
Here comes another surprising picture from Müllerstraße. You remember: this radical radial powerline, heading towards Mitte. No comment on this house, just respect.
As mentioned yesterday, there was this idea to focus on the radial streets of Berlin. As main theme for the International Building Exhibition that was planned for 2020. To focus on the radials: radically. Look at this playground in Müllerstraße, hidden behind a parkhouse, will it fit into [more]
Terry Richardson says: Friends don’t let friends twerk.
Aesthetical problems bodybuilding solved long ago. By command: Never sacrifice form for weight!
Korn says: “Paranoid And Aroused” Can’t stand the music (there are simply not enough oppressed aggressions inside of me I suppose). But in terms of contemporary mentality I must say: They got a point there. Paranoid and aroused – don’t you feel it too?
Mr. H from F says: “Das jähe Sichlichten ist das Blitzen.” Or is it just the other way round?
Ernst Bloch said: “I just know Karl May and Hegel. Everything else is just an impure mixture between the two of them.”
Don Winslow says: “I’ve lost the ability to be shocked long ago.” Is that a good thing? Or just unconditional surrender?
Eugene Allen, a White House butler for more the 30 years, says: “The room must feel empty when you’re in it.” Shouldn’t we remember that next time someone babbles about that contemporary fetish named charisma?
Pharrell says: “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof / Clap along if you feel like happiness is a truth.”
Today I like the idea of being the worst enemy of my own prejudices.
Tomi Ungerer on what it takes to be successful: “Discipline, pragmatism, enthusiasm.”
A veteran holiday resort host says: German tourists very much act like their own cliché. They really reserve their sun lounger early in the morning and they like to live ecologically aware even on vacation in Egypt. That’s why there is waste separation in so many Egyptian hotels. [more]
The Dutch anthropologist Joris Luyendijk asked London bankers, traders and brokers what they do regret the most about their job. Many of them answered: That they once had been loyal to a bank they worked for. No bank happened to be loyal to them later on.
To honor the dead is not to pretend they haven’t died, or that nobody has died, ever, or to make sure they’re safely buried or to think that a few gentle words and two coins on their eyes alone make for a proper send-off. With that in mind [more]
This is maybe the nicest thing about “Ravenous”: only after 80 minutes or so does it start to suggest that its main subject – cannibalism – might be a metaphor for something. I’m not sure for what though – homophobia, slavery, Manifest Destiny, all of the above. It’s [more]
No plants on TV anymore. When did that stop being a thing? After “The Tonight Show” moved to Los Angeles Johnny Carson always was surrounded by green stuff. A forest, a jungle even, sometimes the cheesy wallpaper that it just was. “You have to understand, it was the [more]
So Koestler spent time in Paris in 1946 – right when Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote a scathing parody or review of Koestler’s “The Yogi and the Commissar” for “Les Temps Modernes”, the magazine founded by Sartre. Camus was around, of course, as was de Beauvoir. They all hung out. [more]
I stayed up all night to watch the YouTube Music Awards, because I’m supposed to talk about them on the radio in, oh, three hours and also because I wanted to know. I found them to be a quite depressing affair, but exhilarating at times. They took place [more]
NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” is in its 39th season now. The show has many rules – most of them laid down by evil Buddha Lorne Michaels. The two most important ones seem to be that 1) every episode hosted by a woman of color will be strong and [more]
Just to dispel any notion that this here publishing endeavour is some sort of cult or pyramid scheme: I recruited another writer to join #60pages and I got no stinkin’ shirt. Just the gratification that my friend’s great ideas will be heard and read by people. Which, nice, [more]
“I just don’t enjoy pretty faces in leading roles” my friend Polina says. We’re eating bagels, ’cause we Jews. More specifically: Jews from the 50s. Whenever she’s in Berlin we meet up, to work on things and to eat the Jew-iest things we can find. But not like [more]
Another thing that #60pages might be: an oral history in the making. An oral history of things that were very rarely actually said out loud, but still. Or maybe I’m just thinking that because I’ve been wondering why they’re everywhere lately. Oral histories, I mean. We’re living in [more]
There is this story of stolen art going around – do I want to say “still” because it’s been like a week? I hope that one day maybe Lawrence Weschler will write about it. Anyway: It’s been referred to as a Nazi-Schatz which makes me think of the [more]
Even if Gabriele Tergit hadn’t been a good writer she’d be interesting to read just because of the times and places she found herself in. But she was, so it’s even better. She wrote everything – short prose, long prose, straight journalism, not so straight journalism – as [more]
So the best German novel of the last year – either the last 12 months, or of 2012 entire – is “Eskimo Limon 9” by Sarah Diehl. And it’s a wild beast of a novel too. A beautiful sprawl, about many things at once – and yet it [more]
So “Gravity” – which I saw last night – is perfectly fine. It is a film that seems to be centered around small moments: a great visual interpretation of the song “Space Cowboy”, a dog and a baby, or a joke so fine that I almost believe that [more]
20 years and some odd days ago two albums were released: „Midnight Marauders“ by A Tribe Called Quest and „Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)“ by the Wu-Tang Clan. If memories of the Golden Age – be they first-hand or passed down – make you giddy or sweetly nostalgic: [more]
Strange headline, maybe. It sounds like a particularly desperate song by a garage-punk revival band from Portland from the early 2000s. But there is more to it than that. I won’t bore you with what my life was like in 2008 when the mortgage crisis started. Let me [more]
Don Draper must have smelled like a ferret. All those heavy suits, the booze sweat, the old smoke. That’s not a new observation – though I don’t think it’s been addressed on the show. I’m just thinking about it because on this week’s “Brooklyn Nine Nine” there was [more]
It’s easy to not be a Berlin asshole in Berlin. You know the type: complaining about Swabians and expats and basically everyone and everywhere that is not Berlin. Who cares, ultimately. Maybe it’s not so easy to not be that outside of the city though. Like when I [more]
Below is what may be the most disturbing video on YouTube that nonetheless is completey PG. Well, almost. Anyway: In 1987 during the broadcast of an episode of Doctor Who this guy hacked the signal and managed to be on the air for a full 2 minutes. (Earlier [more]
There is nothing worse – nothing, I tell ya! – than starting a negative review with “I’ve tried, Artist X. I’ve really tried.” So I’m even gonna be pretend that I’ve tried to like “Arcade Fire”. But I have listened to them, quite closely in fact, at various [more]
I went out, to get some lightbulbs. I wasn’t sure which size and what Watt power. I wanted to surprise myself. I wasn’t feeling weird, like, at all. There’s a Gentleman’s club not far from where I live that I passed. For the first time I noticed the [more]
That’s probably a really common thing but there was a time when things that announced themselves as aggressively high-brow were quite appealing to me. I knew about The New Yorker, yes, but when I learned about The New Republic I was quite charmed. Because of the age, yes, [more]
In 1938 L. Ron Hubbard went to a dentist. He was just a pulp writer at the time, who worked so fast that he used butcher paper to type on, which he then cut up and sent to his editors. The dentist put him under. Hubbard felt himself [more]
When I search for “60pages” on Twitter – which amounts to ego-googling these days, because obviously it is I and I is it – I very often find schoolgirls and – boys who complain about homework and their workload: “still 60pages to read till tomorrow”. They’re mostly French, too. [more]
I guess I am a Millenial – please bear with me; but also I don’t care if you do because I’m a Millenial – but I think I have a pretty decent understanding of how things used to be, sometimes even from my own memory. Like, I have [more]
Florence “Shotgun“ Nightingale The goat is the animal that is least likely to be a metaphor when it appears in a novel or a film. Nobody eats gooseberries There’s a lot of Thomas Mann in European literature, but not much Europe in Thomas Mann. Or anything else, for [more]
Can mouthwash get you high We should only start showing high school pictures of celebrities once they’ve hit 30. Everything before that is creepy. More like Lacan’t (note: this will actually be a text one day) How do you make your own mouthwash The lost Beach Boy Picketfence [more]
This is the single greatest film about Hip-Hop, more specifically Hip-Hop from 1987 to 1993. Which according to some is the only Hip-Hop that counts anyway. On the surface „Fear of a Black Hat“ just takes the structure of „This is Spinal Tap“ and transfers it to the [more]
“More ideas in the ten first minutes than other films have over the entire running.“ has become somewhat of a cliché, sadly, but it can still be true. “Youth of the Beast“ is one of these movies. It’s full of little twists and turns, both stylistically and narratively, [more]
“Coulda woulda” is always a fun and sad game to play. “Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam” (At night, when the devil came) is one of the most “coulda woulda” things in film history. On the surface it’s decent enough, maybe even intriguing considering its history. It’s one of [more]
Actually “Wattstax” is quite a weird thing. It’s mostly a concert film, about the Wattstax concert that took place in Watts in August of 1972, the seventh anniversary of the riots. There’s some other stuff, like interviews with Stax locals about their lives and above all Richard Pryor [more]
Bill Burr. “The New Louis CK”. Very funny: everybody is wrong, including me. Machine gun, hard worker. Just great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcGSsT4BAOc
Carole Lombard makes me curious, Fredric Marc makes me excited, Music by Oscar Levant seals the deal and Written by Ben Hecht makes me giddy: “Nothing Sacred” is one of those movies that builds up almost impossible expectations during the credits. It’s a newspaper picture, a genre that [more]
When Preston Sturges made “The Sin of Harold Diddlebrook” in 1947 it was at the tail-end of what may be the most amazing stretch of comedies in film history. It had started with “The Great McGinty” seven years earlier, the first film he directed. By then the Sturges [more]
This, right here, is one of the most wonderful movies. One of the most wondrous. It seems to come out of nowhere, it shines brightly and then flickers away, only to re-appear again and again. It’s the lost highway and the light in the darkness. Sedmikrásky. Two young [more]
There’s a storm a-comin’, so I went to the corner store to get supplies. Like, some chocolate milk. The corner store is a supermarket, so I couldn’t really expect to see people board up their windows and doors. Or maybe they did, on the third floor of their [more]
Before you bury someone you need to dig up some earth – some dirt, as it were. In the case of Nelson Mandela it’s other people who get dirty. And some fabulous dirt it is too. There’s a poster going around made in the 80s by the FCS, [more]
There is a very nasty and very sad book by Otto Weininger called “Geschlecht und Charakter”, Sex and Character. It’s a nasty book because it blames women – or “the Feminine“ or just “the Woman“ – and Jews (the feminine being par excellence) for many of the world’s ills. [more]
Tom Scocca writes: “Here is a piece of writing that has attained a certain length. Share it, this quantity of reading.” He’s talking about Longread culture. He’s talking about many things in his essay “On Smarm“, published by Gawker and puzzled over these last few days like a [more]
What’s a good movie anyway? I don’t know, but I’m pretty confident in saying that “The Counselor” is a good movie. Maybe even more than that. So I don’t know why people aren’t talking about it more. Maybe if this was 2008 and people suddenly cared again about [more]
Nothing but these two thoughts. Yes, Leon Wieseltier once wrote that “displaced and unglossed quotations […] bristle smugly with implications”, but maybe this time it’s different. I don’t feel they are displaced. I. “Nature is very exact in the matter. Grief hurts just as much as it is [more]
In front of the Landesbank, not far from the Fernsehturm, you very often see people recruiting other people, for the Malteser or Amnesty International. Sometimes it’s Scientology offering free “stress tests”. The Amnesty and Malteser folks will step in your way and even follow you for a meter [more]
(Not to be confused with “A People’s Guide to Peoples”, about the screenwriter and director David Webb Peoples.) So there are all these categories we try to put people in. Some of them have historical origins, some don’t. Most of them are pretty useless now – devoid of [more]
Today I bought a Yahrtzeit candle. The place where I usually get them didn’t have any left. (Yes, you read that right, “them”. I could just buy them in bulk, but I won’t.) So the owner explained the way to a different shop. “And then you get to [more]
I guess it’s tempting that every time you have a group/collective/society you look back and think of them as creative geniuses who were also great pals and just hung out a lot. That of course very very rarely was the case. But of course we’d like to think [more]
Maybe that’s a really obvious truth. But there are some people so influential, who’ve left a mark so indelible you can’t even see it. Some people would add: and those that came first, so super-influential, also feel a bit pat now. Or trite. I don’t think so. I [more]
I must have listened to “Ignition (Remix)” by R. Kelly many hundreds of times. It’s a great song: goofy, fun, a killer bass line. Just a stone-cold jam, of which Kelly has quite a few: “Sex in the Kitchen”, “I Wish”, “Shut Up”. If I ever threw any [more]
Let’s talk about dismissing artists for moral reasons, and be honest about it. I wrote a long text about R. Kelly yesterday – please, do read it, I beg of you – and the struggle to dismiss artists you like. (Just to be clear: the struggle in that [more]
What if you’re having one of the most meaningful, therapeutic, religious, cathartic, pain- and beatiful film experiences of your life – and somebody in your aisle (not the person sitting next to you) is laughing out loud, but not because of shittiness or derision or “irony” but because [more]
Answer to the question posed yesterday – and it really was a question, despite the lack of a question mark – is as follows: you go back the next day to see what’s what. The Coen Brothers’ latest is a great film about, among many other things, what [more]
I like best things. Not “better” things – this film is better than this film – but best things. I will often say: this or this is one of the best things. Of course you have to draw the line somewhere, because otherwise everything would be the best [more]
Tolokno is free, and maybe we can see how important that is because she herself says that it’s really unimportant. Maybe this is not a time for theory though.
(h/t: Kliph Nesteroff) Okay, don’t worry, this ain’t gonna be another one of those “What does a Jew like you think of Christmas?” posts. Really. Cause the truth is simple: Christmas is the best. Just the best. “Completely flawless” as another Jewish friend has put it. Especially if [more]
There are some things I’m quite happy to not know anything about. I hope that doesn’t sound ignorant – even though that’s probably the very definition of ignorance. I’m mostly talking about French theorists after early Foucault. I know enough about Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida and Badiou to confidently [more]
„Wer nichts zu verbergen hat, der hat bereits alles verloren.“ Ich hörte diesen Satz gestern in Günther Jauchs Sendung auf ARD. Er gefiel mir auf Anhieb. Nicht nur deshalb, weil er mir sofort klar machte, dass meine bisherige Einstellung in Sachen Datenschutz und Abhörskandal noch etwas naiv ist, [more]
Das Schweizer Fernsehen zeigt im Moment wieder die glücklichste Sendung der Welt: Landfrauenküche. Eine achtteilige Sendereihe, die Bäuerinnen und ihren Alltag porträtiert und zum regionalen Kochwettbewerb aufruft. Das Interessanteste an dieser Sendung wächst allerdings nicht im Garten der Teilnehmerinnen, sondern auf ihrem Kopf. Die Kurzhaarfrisur. Wer die Sendung [more]
For example the beautiful Neil Young cover “Into the Black” by The Chromatics. The song of their LP “Kill for Love” ends after 5 minutes and 22 seconds. When a song really catches me, I listen to it over and over. And nonetheless suddenly the magic of the [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBccr-aLu4I
There is an irreconcilable difference between art and culture, and so art must needs defend itself against culture and its imperatives. He is an artist who engenders a conception of art that has never yet existed in this precise form. The only works of art that count are [more]
Art exists only as an assertion of form which accelerates beyond what is well-known, while refusing to allow itself to be assimilated to any kind of nature. The alliance with the natural is necessarily regressive. It enters a coalition with a metaphysics of the origin which is at [more]
To think the childhood of philosophy, Greece, means not much more than pointing to the Mediterranean and to the peoples which triumphed over it. Of the philosopher it can be said what Hegel said of the Hellenic people: that they are at home on the water of the [more]
Chaos is the lack of ground or the abyss. It is the dimension which forever precedes the Logos, reason, language and communication. The Logos refers to this abyss. It points to it. The abyss of the Logos cannot be thought as ground. The Logos glides over its own [more]
The hyperborean subject inhabits the universe of facts without assimilating itself, like the hypochondriac subject, to the order of facts. The world of facts is the world of objective unfreedom, the world of determinants, laws, definitions. It is the world that has already been decided, the universe of [more]
In 1971 Marguerite Duras met Francis Bacon in Paris. They spoke about painting and writing. It was a matter of the experience of accident shared by writing and painting. Bacon said, “I do not draw. I begin by placing a lot of spots (taches). I wait for what [more]
Do art and philosophy share a concept of experience of this sort, one aiming at an event that is excluded, by definition, from the apparatus of established realities but emerges, as what is excluded, in the space of fact? How can we assert such an emergence without hypostatizing [more]
That the world is indefinite means that it remains open towards its inconsistency which describes its state of immanence that Maurice Blanchot has associated with the topoi of an empty past. Only in the opening towards non-determinacy can there be freedom, in the acceptance of the contingent character [more]
Transcendence is the essence of a subject without essence. The subject is the ecstatic subject of a primordial self-transgression and self-surpassing. It is the subject of this ontological nakedness and poverty, to be nothing but a subject of emptiness, indeterminacy and lack of essence. This subject appears in [more]
Michel Foucault consigns thinking to its indeterminate future as much as its complex arché, “an unthought which [thinking] contains entirely.” Let us quote the following important passage in full: “The unthought (whatever name we give it) is not lodged in man like a shrivelled-up nature or a stratified [more]
Neither the romantic narrative, nor its disenchantment in the postromantic sequence of a love identifying as a phantasm hit its aporetic core, which identifies them as lived difference. With Alain Badiou, love can be thought as „encounter and thinking“, as „asymmetric egalitarian becoming“ or „procedure for a truth [more]
The work of art draws its power from its resistance against forces that reduce it to an effect of what already exists.
Part and parcel of the infinity of love—which names its punctual intensity, not its temporal extension—is that the loving subject is not immortal = finite. The finitude of its life gives meaning to the infinity of love. I love, I die: this certainty can give rise to love, [more]
Flying implies all the risks of lifting off, of speed and crashing. Flying demands the courage to an unknown movement into the unknown. Flying is the form of movement of philosophy, of another philosophy withdrawn from evidence, from light and enlightenment, from the imperatives of facts, from the [more]
There is art only in the here and now of the one world without exit: the world of fact. Art is not an escape from it; it frames its aspiration to autonomy amid the world of determiners in order to escape in an opening toward heteronomy its phantasmatic [more]
Theodor W. Adorno never ceases to insist on the possibility of aesthetic autonomy in its opening toward its own impossibility. This renders him the advocate of a possible impossibility. Part and parcel of art is its “rejection of empirical reality.” Art departs the “empirical world” not by fleeing [more]
The definition of art that I attempt to give culminates in the assertion that art asserts a consistency owed to its opening to inconsistency.
To affirm the other as being constitutive for me means to touch his or her truth, which seems to be inseparable from mine. Coincidence of two aporiae, because this is a bonding of two incommensurabilities: the incommensurability of the other as the other and the incommensurability of a [more]
The work of art stands its ground amid a world to which it cannot assimilate. The act of creatio is not so much a heroic act as one of embarrassment. “Go with art into your very own narrowness. And set yourself free”: the sentence from Paul Celan’s Meridian speech [more]
In On Certainty from 1949-1951, Ludwig Wittgenstein showed that there is no reasonable ground not to put one’s trust in what is groundless. The language game and the form of life on which our social and scientific evidence is based are without ground. They themselves cannot be grounded [more]
The demystification of the world has led to the mystification of the demystified reality. Enlightenment has engendered its own obscurantism; facts are now the new religion. They bring consistency and reliability. That is the meaning of the word and its function: to guarantee familiarity. The opening toward the [more]
The definition of art has to open up to the question concerning the museum. If one reads the article which Georges Bataille contributed in 1930 in the Documents on the concept of the Museum, one can only be disappointed. From Bataille, the theorist of the heterogeneous, one would [more]
The question concerning the subject (What is a subject?) — the question concerning art, the question concerning writing, the question concerning philosophy (What is art? What is writing? What is philosophy?) must open itself to the question of blindness. It is as if there were a subject — [more]
The artwork has the power to disturb through clarity, to suspend the subject’s certainties, “to suspend reality,” as Gilles Deleuze once said. There has never been art that entered into a coalition with reality. Art is resistance against that which is, not in the name of what ought [more]
In his lectures on Philosophical Terminology, Theodor W. Adorno insists on the connection of identity and the thinking of identity with the principle of synthesis and the concepts of the whole and the one vis-à-vis the dangerous uncontrollability of the non-identical, the diffuse and the many which resists [more]
In his Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno quotes the passage from Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics where the earlier philosopher says of the artist that, “as a free subject,” he attempts “to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness” in order to impress “the seal of his interiority” [more]
Art “refuses definition,” writes Theodor W. Adorno, but it equally calls for one. Art hardly exists other than as the work on its concept, the work of determining what art is and ought to be. In opening up toward what it has long been embedded in, the dimension [more]
Like any acceleration, the head over heels dynamics of love hold the risk of missing and drifting. Love is experience and experiment. It is a test of reality. In this way it suspends the established values and brings forth new categories. Contingency delimits the space of determined events [more]
In a commentary on Deleuze’s last essay, “L’immanence: une vie” (1995), Giorgio Agamben arrives at the following diagrammatic conclusio, which schematizes a certain sequence in modern philosophy: TRANSCENDENCE [more]
From the outset philosophy has caused anxiety. What caused the anxiety was the lack of anxiety, philosophy’s courage, because philosophy is a movement full of risks. It is a movement of love (philía, philein) requiring courage and resolve. People have tried to subject it to ridicule. People were [more]
The diagram stands between order and chaos – just like the subject. It is wrong to think that the object did not do anything but to oppose chaos. As long as we define chaos as universal incommensurability, which, instead of describing a mad world, indicates this one and [more]
In the history of philosophy, chaos has many names. It is the divine, the noumenal and the sublime, the untimely, the uncanny, nothingness or freedom, the infinite, becoming or the exterior, contingency and pure multiplicity, the dimension of the ethical, of the mystical, of the miracle and the [more]
If the entire onto-theological tradition, at least in the orthodox reading, has privileged an onto-theology of two worlds over the alternative of immanence, if there is in it a turn in faith toward a beyond and toward a life after life, then its structure can be identified as [more]
An object that fascinates—what kind of object is that? What does fascination mean? Fascinationm marks the split between subject and object. To be precise, it confronts the subject with its objectness. It heterogenizes the subject, reconciles it with basic heterogeny. Fascination objectifies the subject; it hollows it out, [more]
To philosophize means to take on the identity of a subject without subjectivity (and that means also without identity). It means to resist the comfortable indolence of securing one’s identity in cultural, social, political and other models. Philosophy is resistance through opening up. And what the philosophical subject [more]
Chaos has the status of a radical outside, but it shares the one territory with the subject which is the world of immanence, the world without an outside, i.e. without an exterior.
The experience of art is the experience of the conditions of its possibility as much as of the affront to these conditions the work represents. The concept of art condenses the paradox of a performance that must turn against its own possibilities for the sake of the impossible [more]
“The human being”, says Martin Heidegger, is “in its essence itself a katastrophé […] – a turning-about which turns it away from its own essence. Among beings, the human being is a complete, unique catastrophe”. The meaning of this statement, of course, resides in the circumstance that the [more]
How is the place of the work within the social field to be determined? How do the production of art, art criticism, art studies, and philosophy relate to one another? Is there a political commission for an artwork? Is art necessarily critical—critical of institutions, the market, ideology? Or [more]
The aporia leads towards a threshold which the human subject cannot cross. Contrary to the idea that with it, loves comes to an end, aporia is a part of love. The aporias of love prove to be the conditions of its possibility, if love means to resist narcissistic [more]
The subject is not a self which can be certain of itself as it could be certain of a fact. It is the scene of self-experience which proves to be the experience of inconsistency insofar as it experiences the lack of a stable self as the condition of [more]
To be a subject means to surpass and transgress the horizon of facts in order—in the assertion of a new form, the form of the subject—to give space to the experience of a primordial inner turmoil, which is the truth of the subject. I call this inner turmoil [more]
Theodor W. Adorno quotes the passage from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics where the latter says of the artist that, “as a free subject,” he seeks to “strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness,” impressing on it “the seal of his interiority” in order to “enjoy in the [more]
1. Art is that which generates a concept of art. 2. The artwork implies a surpassing and transgressing of its factual conditions. 3. An artwork is something other than (merely) a document of its times. 4. Art articulates a difference from the texture of facts. 5. The artwork [more]
Marguerite Duras: La mer est une force illimitée où le ‚moi’, le regard se noient, en se perdant pour retrouver leur propre identité.
What I call a collective is the dream-figure of a lawless community of subjects who put their trust in nothing but their singularity and ontological loneliness, a trust which, like all trust, is without ground, blind. One could formulate the difference between the subject of we-subjectivity and the [more]
Theodor W. Adorno never ceases to insist on the possibility of aesthetic autonomy in its opening toward its own impossibility. This renders him the advocate of a possible impossibility. Part and parcel of art is its “rejection of empirical reality.” Art departs the “empirical world” not by fleeing [more]
Within the horizon of Michel Foucault’s analytic of finitude that supplants the “metaphysics of the infinity,” Gilles Deleuze writes, man is “traversed by an essential disparity, almost an alienation by rights, separated from itself by its words, by its works, and by its desires.” It would be wrong [more]
We can speak of a subject once the willingness appears to substitute for the esotericism of the quest of self-discovery a self-invention; that is to say, once a little of the courage to address oneself as something other than an object comes into play. With the death of [more]
Can there be an equality of subjects who can rely on nothing but the absence of substantial guarantees? What would this community of equals be? Would it not be at first the community of those who participate in the incommensurable? In the incommensurable which is another name of [more]
It is not always easy to make sense of love, as absurd as it seems, as resistant against every meaning. One is based on a rift, which Jacques Derrida describes as the difference between the who (qui) and what (quoi) of love: “Is love the love of someone [more]
Rupture designates the rupture with established presences. It serves notice on co-operation with firm realities whether they be positive (plainly legitimating) or negative (plainly negating). The rupture is already rupture with this positive-negative model, rupture with plain affirmation as well as with plain negation in order finally to [more]
If, in love, there is a moment of criticism of ideology, it lies in the necessity to open the rhetoric addressing the other, which is controlled by stereotypes towards a space of a language yet to be invented, which expects as little convention as possible of the singularities [more]
Everybody knows that to love demands the transgression of the narcissistic „narrative of the victim“ (Eva Illouz), which declares the subject to be an object of a structure of determinants. Because this transgression isn’t easy, Jean-Luc Nancy distinguishes between „good“ and „bad narcissism“. Good narcissism would be nearly [more]
Every genuine artwork comes from the future, never from the past. Poor art can be recognized by its sentimentality, nostalgia, admiration of the past, in short, by its inability to make the future precise. Instead of competing with documentation and historical work, it is always a matter of [more]
Because inequality exists there is something to be thought. Because the world — the spectrum of institutionalized realities — is a world of unequals (not only of unequal subjects), it is not only a living space but a space of thinking opening up the possibility of holding up [more]
The “affirmative essence” (Thodor W. Adorno) of art must turn against its own distorted image, against the idealist temptation to locate art somewhere beyond the world of fact. Affirmation is not naïveté or approbation. Affirmation is invention and construction. The affirmative intensity of the work of art includes [more]
Art shares with philosophy that they are both: affirmation and resistance. Affirmation does not equal approval. Affirmation means saying yes to reality in its incommensurability-value. Being open to the world as it is. That is why such affirmation implies a certain resistiveness, a resistance against a schema of [more]
So, the whole thing begins with the unprecedented storm in London today. There has been 4 deaths in the report and the tree in front of our house got a real neat hair cut after the gush of wind this morning. As i was watching 3 TV-atenas dancing in [more]
It feels like i am in a baseball field when i am dealing with my emails and text messages: just keep hitting the balls as fast as it flies in. In the past years, I am proud to have developed a way to make the most efficient way [more]
As part of the South Korean state visit (welcome president Park), a venue was held in the Old Billingsgate along the landmarks of Thames. On the ground floor were displaying cultural / industrial products from Korea, naturally headed by multiple images of Psy (Gangnam Style). Hidden under this [more]
In my old architecture school, we had people locking up their models and drawings before they went home so that others will not freely copy their genius ideas. In the year 2004 i first heard about MIT’s open courrseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), where this prestigious school has opened up [more]
25 years ago, on the 29th of october 1988, the east-berlin newspaper “berliner zeitung” writes about the start of the unamnned soviet spacecraft “buran” at baikonur. buran (russian: Бура́н) translates snowstorm. the picture below the note “heute zweimal um die erde” is labeled “Tyuratam Space Assembly and Launch Complex. Courtesy [more]
the concept of national football selections competing is highly problematic. not only that “nation” itself should not be supported as prime category of identity at the expense of social agreements, it’s for example simply awkward to have angela merkel or any politician in the dressing room of the [more]
honestly i don’t care about halloween. it didn’t exist when i grew up and anyway i was wondering about it’s tremendous role in the us-tv-shows i used to watch as a kid. suddenly it knocked on my door first time years ago and especially german suburbs became more [more]
it has been the second time this year that it works: visiting an architectural sight i read texts about/in front of them and they wondrously open! a text about ulrich müther’s rescue station on the island rügen this spring suddenly brought the appearance of his widow asking “what [more]
due to the highly industrialized agriculture around the town where i grew up, almost all the flat land there is covered with plastic film for long periods the year. maybe because of that hidden landscape and because i don’t care about agriculture, i never really noticed the gurkenfliegers, [more]
ministerpräsident is the title worn by the head of the government in any german federal state. his power more or less depends on the size of population and the economic contribution to all of germany’s gnp. according to the way the ministerpräsidents interpret their authority, germans sometimes call [more]
50 years ago today jfk was shoot in dallas. 34 years ago the campaigns for 1979 san francisco mayoral elections reached top with except of “sister boom boom”, a transvestite nun running for the “nun of the above”-party, dead-kennedy’s singer jello biafra as one of the mayoral candidates. [more]
i’ve just been at saturn electronics store on alexanderplatz, a place i like for many reasons. first there is the building itself that completely ruined the urban set up that was original planed. if you’re sensible enough, it gives you an idea of what would happen if the [more]
: dear uschi, in markus lanz‘ show you said, that we as east-germans are not qualified enough to earn wages of at least 8,50 € per hour. we think that this must have happened because you don‘t know east germany and its inhabitants. with this petition we invite [more]
last weekend matthias lehrberger raised the question of “strategies to transform postmodern stupidity to higher forms”. something i lost concentration on after all that followed and that i tried to recover from the entire sunday whilst 2002’s “equilibrium” crossed my way. this somehow 1984/matrix-mash-up is not something that [more]
today chairman of german social democratic party, herr gabriel, via e-mail reminded again to not forget about my vote for or against the treaty for a grand coalition with the christian-conservatives. thank you! this weekend johanna uekermann, who origins from the same local party chapter as i, won [more]
the hague, guantanamo, the gulag… definitely babo will not go to sochi, sends billie jean king instead… billie jean king. [by dbking cc-by-2.0] the bee gees. [wiki commons via discogs.com] barack obama. [by white house (pete souza) cc-by-2.0] vladimir putin. [kremlin.ru cc-by-3.0]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFwUXUMq_zs
well, if aliens ever visit us i think,this event would be more important then the voyages of christopher columbus… …that din’t turn out well for native americans. wow-signal-pic: the ohio state university radio observatory and the north american astrophysical observatory (public domain)
just try to understand i’ve given all i can borderline feels like i’m going to lose my mind you just keep on pushing my love over the borderline with a credit to hosental /// boris kramarić
i keep a close watch on this heart of mine i keep my eyes wide open all the time i keep the end out for the tie that binds because you’re mine, i walk the line
don’t push me ’cause i’m close to the edge i’m trying not to lose my head it’s like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how i keep from going under
on the borderline, she’s a danger sign on the borderline, getting out of line on the borderline, but it feels so good on the borderline, on the borderline on the borderline, borderline
doo oo oo yeah a but I try and tell ’em straight, tell ’em a wrestle my hand doo oo oo yeah a simmer down my darling… I hope yeah doo oo oo yeah I don’t put down a crossing lines doo oo oo yeah a riverside stop [more]
We’re going to do it. Yes we are. It’s going to happen. And when it does it will happen fast. You’ll have to staple your eyelids to the top of your skull to catch it and even if you do you’ll be really unsure and insecure when you [more]
NVM LOL BRB STFU OMG LMFAO DOA SOB GOD ETA ETD DDR GDR NYC PDX IDGAF IDK RN CU GR8 L8R FU NBD ASL SWM WAR FAN LKG DL QT RAM WOW MOM CAT OIO BDSM STI FDA COB BYOB RSVP TODO BOB OWS 411 LD YOU [more]
www.whyhaventweseenanimageofthewholeinter.net
1: You could, like, go all heat-death-of-the-universe on the whole affair. 2: Like lightly defuse it in a really micro way? Like the difference between a whole neighborhood’s worth of fourth of july fireworks and a pipe bomb? Clustered versus dispersed? 1: No, I guess that’s [more]
“Do you know how to get to the beach?” I ask Diana as she buckles her helmet snugly around her chin. I don’t know her name is Diana yet but she answers in a thick Italian accent and points me towards the grouping of hotel and residential towers [more]
… 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Incredible Amazing Essential Unforgettable Magical Fun New Best Worst Outrageous Important Must Need Want See Now
Diskussionen auf Wikipedia sind faszinierend. Wenn man sich geduldig durch jeden „Versionsunterschied“ klickt, stößt man nicht nur auf allerlei Albernheiten, auch Uneinigkeiten innerhalb eines ganzen Berufsstandes können zum Vorschein kommen. Der Eintrag „Cutter (Film)“ kann mit beidem glänzen. Am 4. März 2009 gab ein Nutzer, dessen Profil daraufhin [more]
“Date Modified: 24.01.1984” – Looks like my computer is adapting to current events.
Gestern Abend, Karstadt am Hermannplatz. Verzweifelter Versuch meinerseits, der Verkäuferin mit herzlichen Floskeln ein Lächeln zu entlocken. Natürlich vergebens. Ich glaube fest daran, dass die von Deutschen oft so monierte „falsche Freundlichkeit“ der Amerikaner im Servicebereich den Verkäufern selbst etwas Gutes tut. Schließlich produziert das Gehirn auch Endorphine, [more]
Gestern Abend, Tagesrandverbindung (ein Wort, dass ausschließlich von Bankern benutzt wird, aber an DDR- Wörter wie „Jahresendfest“ erinnert) Berlin- München. Neben mir ein älterer Geschäftsmann, der gerade eine Deutschlandkarte des Handelsblatts auffaltet. Auf der Karte steht „Zukunftschancen Deutschland“; die verschiedenen Regionen sind in unterschiedlichen Farben markiert – Rot [more]
Ich weiß nicht, ob das ein neues Phänomen ist, aber in den letzten Jahren sehe ich immer wieder Fälle, in denen sich Menschen aktiv gegen Werbung wehren. Außer dem Klassiker, bei dem die grinsende Fratze auf einem Plakat mit einem Schnurrbart verziert wird, gibt es auch noch kreativere [more]
If you’re in Berlin, go see this exhibition at Import Projects. I promise it’ll be worth it. Beny Wagner investigates the notion of ‘transparency’ in a project entitled Invisible Measure. Take it away, press release: “From the use of transparent materials in architecture beginning at the turn of the last century, to [more]
Ich liebe amerikanisches Fernsehen. Und nein, ich rede nicht nur von den „guten amerikanischen Serien“, in die das deutsche Feuilleton so verliebt ist. Ich schaue mir jeden Blödsinn an. Jedes Jahr im Herbst gibt es die „Fall Premiers“ und ich untersuche gewissenhaft zumindest die Piloten. Dieses Jahr war [more]
2. Eine weitere neue Serie mit dem überlangen Namen Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ist die Erfindung von Joss Whedon, der mit Buffy seinen bislang größten Erfolg hatte. Die Prämisse ist völlig abstrus, sagt aber schon eine Menge über die Haltung der Serie aus. New York wurde von Aliens [more]
3. Hostages basiert auf einer israelischen Serie mit demselben Namen und hätte eigentlich ein Film sein sollen. Der Plot (eine Ärztin, die den Präsidenten operieren soll, wird in ihrem eigenen Haus als Geisel genommen und gezwungen, ihn mit einer tödlichen Injektion umzubringen) ist zu einfach, um auf zehn [more]
Dear Anglosphere, there’s this rumor out there that the English language is easy. It’s not. I mean, how do you explain to a non-native speaker that the word diaper is spelled like that? It looks like a crazy mistake. It looks like it should be pronounced dee-aper. [more]
Amy Zegart mit einem Vortrag (und einer Studie) darüber, wie die Darstellung von Geheimdienstagenten in Hollywood die Wahrnehmung von realen Geheimdiensten beeinflusst.
In der letzten Woche gab es gleich zwei interaktive/innovative Musikvideos: Bob Dylans Video, bei dem man sich, wie bei einem Fernseher, durch 16 Kanäle klicken kann, auf denen jeweils ein anderer Schauspieler Like a Rolling Stone synchronisiert und Pharell Williams’ Video zu Happy, das 24 Stunden am Tag läuft [more]
Trotz, Selbstironie und Unsinn, so wie sich das gehört für eine gentrifizierte Gegend.
Eigentlich sollte ich jetzt schon in Hamburg sein, um die zauberhafte und talentierte Sophia Kennedy mit ihrem Produzenten Carsten “Erobique” Meyer bei dem Abschlusskonzert ihrer Tournee zu sehen. Leider hat mir mein Körper einen Strich durch die Rechnung gemacht und stattdessen schnäuze ich mich alle zehn Minuten. Ich fühle [more]
Es gibt kaum etwas Anstrengenderes, als mit einem Gegner der Frauenquote zu diskutieren. Obwohl sie ja nun im Koalitionsvertrag steht, wird diese Diskussion wohl noch einige Male auf uns zukommen, wenn es dann um konkrete Gesetzesentwürfe geht. Letztes Jahr veröffentlichten Kenneth Ahern und Amy Dittmar von der University [more]
Seit ein paar Tagen blättere ich in Heften, die mir meine Mutter aus München mitgebracht hat. Fünf Exemplare der „Schwarzen Botin“, eine feministische Zeitschrift mit satirischem Unterton, die 1976 von Gabriele Goettle gegründet wurde und in der Frauen wie Silvia Bovenschen, Elfriede Jelinek, Meret Oppenheim und Roswitha Kaever [more]
Mit Schrecken stelle ich fest, dass ich unter Ermüdungserscheinungen leide. Vorgestern wurde die neueste „Enthüllung“ im „NSA-Skandal“ bekannt. Ich setze diese Worte in Anführungsstriche, weil mich schon das Vokabular der Berichterstattung ermüdet. Was ist bloß passiert? Noch im Sommer habe ich jedes neu veröffentlichte Dokument gewissenhaft durchgelesen. Ich [more]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYKIUu5fg3U Hilfe! Auch der Flughafen München hat jetzt seinen eigenen ‘Markenfilm’, inklusive lip dub, virtueller Flugbegleiterin (1:28), bongo-spielendem Inder (? 1:38), einem ausgestopften Leoparden (2:16), rotem Teppich (2:36), Brautpaar auf dem Flugplatz (3:16), Kellner in Lederhosen, der ein leeres Bierfass trägt (3:52) und Schuplattler (4:15). Immerhin wurde hier [more]
(via www.ulrichmoritz.de) Es erscheint fast sinnlos, etwas über einen Künstler zu schreiben, über den sich schon so viele Schriftsteller eloquent Gedanken gemacht haben. Ulrich Moritz hat seine Werke jahrelang nur an einen kleinen Kreis von Sammlern verkauft, die ihn dann letztes Jahr in einer Ausgabe des ZEIT Magazins [more]
This time of year is dominated by ‘best of’- lists, which is unfortunate and hugely annoying, but NPR’s list of songs in 2013 actually reminded me of one thing I really enjoyed this year: Jay-Z’s video shoot at Pace Gallery. I know, I know, it wasn’t something that [more]
Julian Schmidli objected to me using the term “bingeing” when it comes to pop culture and I agree with him. After all, I watched all seven seasons of The West Wing in what must have been two months and when I started watching Battlestar Galactica, I didn’t fare [more]
Wie einem jeder selbsternannte Generationenspezialist bestätigen kann, leben wir in einer Zeit, in der die Menschen dazu tendieren, sich unangreifbar machen zu wollen. Beliebte Mittel hierfür sind Ironie, Referenzen, Diskurskritik oder Obskuritäten. Ich bin leider nicht in der Lage, mich auszunehmen – das hat mir die tägliche [more]
I have this pet peeve: I hate it when others recount a movie to me. My father tries to avoid watching movies for some reason and my mother loves to give him very detailed, elaborate summaries of whatever last Lars von Trier she saw. These accounts can last [more]
Yesterday, this tiny plane brought my family and me to the Norwegian mountains. I was convinced that eight days in comparable solitude were going to do wonders for this essay I’m trying to write. When you wake up at ten in the morning, however, and the light is [more]
In Norwegen gibt es eine Tageszeitung mit dem schönen Namen Klassekampen. Laut eigenen Angaben erreicht die Zeitung täglich 50 000 Leser, aber schon allein die verkaufte Auflage ist beeindruckend: 16 353 in einem Land mit ungefähr 5 Millionen Einwohnern (nur so zum Vergleich: das ist weniger als in [more]
In the spirit of starting a new year, the conversation at dinner last night revolved around small utopias: little changes that really wouldn’t be that hard to achieve and yet would never actually be implemented, mostly thanks to the idiocy inherent in power. I, for example, would like [more]
Wenn ich richtig gezählt habe, und das weiß ich nicht, weil Zählen nicht zu meinen großen Stärken gehört, dann ist das heute mein letzter Post für 60pages. Deswegen möchte ich ihn einem Thema widmen, das mich in den letzten Jahren sehr beschäftigt hat. Vier Jahre war ich in [more]
Odd Title, true. (reminded me immediately of the Mel Brooks classic ‘Men in Tights’) But this is what I thought after I read an article on the DTN Website today about the next taboo which has been lifted in turkish parliament: A few days after the headscarf ban [more]
Today was a good day! The energy of this city kicks big time right now and with music all the way from morning till now it really made a fantastic day!! With no words left in my brain I let the music talk. Started the day with SOUL [more]
From Seymour, an Introduction: “In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant, before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I’m sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the [more]
Had a minor hangover and the most lovely day around town yesterday. Happy Happy to be enjoying a warm and sunny autumn!!
or is it the message?! While researching, brainstorming, looking mainly in the internet ( and my brain) for new ideas to work into new concepts for my projects, this rather old but still relevant quote by Marshall McLuhan came across my mind. ( After being quoted for a [more]
I saw this pic of River Phoenix today and it got me wandering from there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTp-gBfGVvU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpoqzt2EHaA Lollapalooza Festival 1994
Looking for an apartment in Istanbul is a tricky thing. After having decided where to move to I am now contacting landlords and real estate agents and making appointments to visit the flats. It’s going to take a while for some reasons but every now and then I [more]
was a Sunday! The Sun made it my Day. Yes Yes Yes! The Sun- always the sun!
After having a maaahvellous weekend with lots of sunshine and happy tunes, a sunday dinner with lovely friends and way too many drinks and cigarettes, monday replied with an awful headache, the worst hangover and the absence of the sun. Awful day! Tuesday (today) and the upcoming Winter [more]
Today a friend of mine here wrote me an SMS, telling me that I can now have the dual citizenship in Germany ( referring to the ongoing negotiations of CDU and SPD not to forget the CSU regarding the upcoming coalition and the negotiations about the dual citizenship). [more]
While working on a new project today I somehow ended on a trip down memory lane/ extended stream of consciousness whilst thinking of communication back in the days and nowadays. Here we go: I started texting with one friend on Whatsapp in the morning, skyped with another then, [more]
Three different topics which seemed to have no connections in the first place got linked to each other somehow in my head. It made me think loosely about Mandela, utter assholes, injustice, refugees from Syria in Istanbul, the responsibility of all of us to help somehow, dumb ass [more]
After I posted the last pick I found an article on The Independent Newspaper online: ‘From terrorist to tea with the queen’. The quote by Margaret Thatcher that I cited was a translation from german to english in my words. The term ‘Wolkenkuckucksheim’ I described as Lala Land, [more]
It’s this time of the year, for almost 30 years. Three decades and it always feels like the first time. The song and especially the video is ingrained in 40 western-european somethings. No matter what you listened to after the age of 14, even if it was hardcore, [more]
My 60 Pages term comes to an end today and I look back with joy and sadness. Joy that I had the chance to be part of it for a short while and sadnees because I coulnd’t write as much as I wanted to write. When I started [more]
It all began with this, a little blurb I found about a little Bavarian town on the Jewish Museum of Berlin’s website. The town is called Schopfloch, which has the unfortunate, nonsensical approximate meaning of “hair hole.” There have been so many metaphors and bon mots to describe [more]
Ringing bells are part of the German soundscape. Germans hardly ever notice them, foreigners in Germany almost always do. After years of hearing them, Glocken just elicit a sort of contemplative feeling among Germans. To an immigrant like Avrom Nahum Stencl, who left his native Poland and his [more]
Identity is a powerful concept. In its strongest sense, according to Rogers Brubaker, identity is believed to be universal and mostly the same over time. We can be unaware of our own identity: it can be revealed to us at a later date, or we could be [more]
I remember the guy working the front desk at the Hotel Alex in Berlin – the night I was there with 23 American students at the end of a two-month study trip I was leading. It was very late at night on the 3rd of July, and that [more]
“Schieß doch, Jude!” That’s what Daniel Josefsohn always says. Of course he means with a camera. His camera. You see, he’s a photographer in Mitte and he’s gotta survive, after all, amidst all that Mitteschmerz because Germany is giving birth to its new identity there. And so in [more]
Kommt der Jude heim und wird von seiner Frau gefragt, welchen Namen er von der Polizeibehörde bekommen hätte. Er: “Schweißloch”. Sie empört sich: “Was? Wofür haben wir so viel Geld ausgegeben?” Er: “Was meinst du, wieviel Überredungskunst mich das W gekostet hat?” In 1787 in Austria, in 1808 under [more]
You don’t need to know your meme – your meme is doing just fine without you. Once born, your meme will continue to grow and mate with another meme (or many memes, because love is colder than death in the meme-world). And then your meme might die and [more]
This year, I decided to visit three synagogues built around the year 1000 on the Rhine, which later became the center of Jewish learning and culture in Europe in the Middle Ages. For the record, these shuls are in Köln, Worms and Speyer. Yes, Speyer. Here are the [more]
In his essay, Hidden Name, Complex Fate, Ralph Ellison recounted his process of discovery as a child in a Negro neighborhood with the name of Ralph Waldo. Those in the ‘hood who possessed the spark of recognition at the string of names, Ralph + Waldo, and then measured [more]
What is this here? A picture of the Wailing Wall, from the men’s section because in this holy space, the men and women are divided according to the strictures of Orthodox Jewish law. The men standing there are engrossed in prayer, as most usually are at this location. [more]
habe ich diese bekannte Erzählung von Brecht ins Jiddische übersetzt. Und sie klingt auch schon besser. Auch wenn Brecht selbst einmal schrieb, dass Jiddisch keine “so voll entwickelte moderne sprache” sei wie Englisch und Deutsch. Trotzdem wirkt er inspirierend auf Jiddischisten aus aller Welt, wie das Video-Interview mit [more]
If you are ever on the Rhine during tourist season, you will encounter what I did: the ship called the MS Heinrich Heine. It was for work, my Rhine boat cruise. And it was not on the MS HH. With students who were seeing the Rheintal for the [more]
Ephraim Yossel I was stuck on this name when I tried translating a poem by Yehuda Leyb Teler, called Hitlers araynmarsh in Vin [Hitler’s Invasion of Vienna] from 1940. Young Yehuda, the boy born in Tarnopol, Ukraine (part of Galician Austria), fled to New York with his mother [more]
Now that Yona Metzger was arrested today, there’s really no leadership of the Ashkenazi (German) Jews both in Israel and around the world. Yes, I know Rabbi David Lau took over the position of Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel when the Metzger scandal first erupted over the summer [more]
I don’t carry many books with me. That’s not a badge of honor but a fact after moving house 36 times in my adult life. And it’s not as if I don’t read. Now that the cloud is our digital repository of memory both literary and real, I [more]
It’s true we want to charm you with our readymade expressions. And with our curry. Because we have a favor to ask of you. The truth is, we need you more than you can ever know. The reason? Sometimes when we write our own words, we can’t look [more]
50 years ago today JFK was killed in Dallas. As a kid, I heard about this event through the eyes of my parents who were at the impressionable age of 18 when the shots rang out from the book depository and into Kennedy’s head, according to the story. [more]
Modern Jewish satire began in regions of Germany and Austro-Hungarian Galicia in the first two decades of the 19th century, later spreading to Russian territories in the 1830s and 1840s and extending into the 1860s and 1870s throughout Eastern Europe. It originated with the traditionally educated adherents of [more]
Mohnkuchen, Neues Museum Café, Berlin, December 1, 2011. Taken by me, the botanist of the sidewalk. Took this photo because I cannot order Mohnkuchen (poppy seed cake) without thinking about Paul Celan’s book, Mohn und Gedächtnis (poppy and memory) and I thought it was so fitting to record [more]
Messianists have a strange relationship to history. Where we see current events in the news, messianists are interested in the same events but only in order to furiously gather clues and prophecies for a final end or a final return. There is nothing fundamentally new in the news [more]
Soul food restaurant in Berlin. If you landed on this site because you googled that phrase: soul AND food AND berlin with Boolean search terms, let me welcome you. Now for the bad news: there is no soul food restaurant in Berlin. Not the kind you will find [more]
Before I saw this film last night, I admit I had fallen into a trap. The kind of trap where I assumed this film would be about an Orthodox community in Israel who, for the convenience of keeping the family together, decides to go machmir or do a [more]
Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) is a one-generation phenomenon. A maskil (an adherent of the Enlightenment) has certain characteristics: he is male, he comes from beis medresh (traditional house of learning), and he has learned Talmud on a high level. Somewhere along the way (usually when a teenager), he becomes [more]
It all started with one of my first posts on the immigrant Avrom Nahum Stencl listening to the church bells of Berlin. The emails started to come. People asking for advice. First a trickle, emails here and there, and then last week they became a daily occurrence. Strangers [more]
Dear fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages, I have been in Germany happily since 2011. Despite everything, Germany is a real democracy because there is a complete separation of religion and state and it’s totally annoying that I cannot get married to my boyfriend in Israel if he’s not Jewish. Nor can I [more]
Worthy fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages blogger, I am a man who has already lived half my years and I can say that I have never had any peace. I was born in Russia on the Black Sea near Georgia. My parents were poor and when I was quite young I went [more]
In order to predict what the encounter between a religious community and new media looks like, one must look at that religious community’s historical relationship to both religious authority and the interpretation of sacred text. In a text-centric religion like Judaism, it may seem that there is little [more]
Once when I lived in Vienna near the Schloss Belvedere, I had a Viennese writer friend call me on my cell. “I can’t meet with you today,” he said, “I am in the hospital.” Thinking something terrible had happened since I had seen him the week before when [more]
On November 15, 1898, the Viennese Jewish writer, Richard Beer-Hofmann published a poem, Schlaflied für Mirjam (“Lullaby for Mirjam”), dedicated to the birth of his daughter in 1897. The poem first appeared in the German periodical Pan, and it was reprinted over the next few years in several [more]
I have uncles and aunts in the second district. The last snows trickle down from the rooftops onto Leopoldstadt. The gutter laps up the erev pesach water. Birds carry straw like crosses to a great old window of the Schiffshul. Jews wet their fingers at the washbasin. A [more]
Scientists at Emory University claim they have found evidence of the inheritance of memory from previous generations in mice whose “forefathers” had been trained to be afraid of the smell of cherry blossoms and who appeared to remember this fear. This is another example of current research in [more]
Dear Editor, I am the grandmother of a twenty-one-year-old boy, a Berlin-born boy with all the finest qualities, and I am writing to you about our problem with him. Our grandson met a boy about six months ago, a boy a few years older than he. They fell [more]
Dear fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages Editor, I haven’t been in the country very long, and I ask you to clarify a certain matter for me. I was brought here by my brother-in-law, with whom I get along very well, but we have a difference of opinion on one thing. I think [more]
Today I am thinking about Elfriede Jelinek and how she has been positioning herself in the past 15 years as an author, both in her writing and in her public persona. What I find in Jelinek’s collaborations with Christoph Schlingensief in the first decade of the 21st century [more]
I really knew very little about her. I suppose my perception of her was colored by a media-driven image: Elfriede Jelinek the socially phobic, feminist, Jewish-but also Catholic, Marxist intellectual who gladly and stridently voiced her opinions to journalists about the FPÖ and Haider, always at a distance. [more]
Maybe you’ve heard about the idea of “other Zions.” This is the movement in the history of Jews where, despite the biblical narrative of return to the land of Israel, Jews founded new “father lands” in the period of their dispersal where Jewish states of autonomy were able [more]
Later-generation Holocaust films are no longer driven to document the entirety of the atrocity, rather they seek the “devil in the details.” The 2007 Austrian film, Die Fälscher (2008 Oscar, Best Foreign-Language Film), did just this by taking the perspective of a rather limited population of camp inmates: [more]
Dear fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages, I am a proud Muslim from a family with a rather long tradition of religious scholars. I have read about the history of Jews in Germany and how they were able to adapt to German life in the 18th and 19th century through a process of [more]
How did a non-territorial Germanic language like Yiddish “migrate” into German letters at the start of the 20th century? The status of Yiddish, known somewhat derisively as “Jargon” for most of the 19th century, was seen as a second-class language both within the learned Jewish community and among [more]
A Zionist movement that transplanted Jews to a new land, according to Theodor Herzl, would instigate physical and psychological transformations in Jews once they adapted to their new environment. Herzl’s faith in Darwin’s description of the effects of the environment on organisms was a central feature of his [more]
Last year’s ruling on circumcision in Köln and the subsequent absurd debate on the matter ended with a parliamentary protection for religious communities in Germany against prosecution for the practice. During that debate, there was one argument that stuck in my mind. This was the idea that, in [more]
Reflections after seeing the documentary, Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, 2010 There was a time, in the shadow of the pogroms of Russia in the late 19th century, when the situation of the Jews in Czarist Russia became so intolerable that their sufferings could only improve through [more]
My previous forays into the role of maskilic literature in Judaism in the early 19th century, I hope, will set the stage for what is significant in the new iteration of Jewish satire in the Internet age. While traditional maskilim used the varied genres of the printed word, [more]
The idea that Jewish theatrical genius was a product of Jewish evolution was a common presumption in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In his 1869 ethnographic study of the Jewish “tribe” (Stamm), the Viennese rabbi, Adolph Jellinek, points to Dawison as a prominent representative of [more]
Christoph Schlingensief’s play, “Sterben lernen,” was performed in December 2009 in Zürich. The play gives the audience a primer on “how to die” using the example of the main character, Mr. Andersen, who discovers he has terminal cancer and has to deal with his grim prognosis: 60 minutes [more]
While you were trying to decide which type of horseradish to order from the Gefilteria in order to complement your homemade sushi, that term globalization has undergone some kind of meme upgrade. There’s glocalization, maybe you have heard about that. It’s a term from Roland Robertson and it [more]
Holocaust selfies? http://www.jspace.com/news/disturbing-trend-worst-holocaust-selfies/ These people are stupid and naïve. But they aren’t a “disturbing trend.” And I am not outraged. How can I be if they are taking pictures in the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas? I mean, the place is strange and the history it references [more]
I am sitting right now in the center of the ex-Amish community, Columbia, Missouri, USA. How did it come to be this way, a center for people who break away from their Amish community? No one really knows, just some people who left the community themselves with some [more]
Some of the first Yiddish words recorded are nitl and levkoches. Nitl, from the Latin natal=birth, sometimes written Nittel, is a holdover from the Judeo-French spoken before the emergence of Yiddish proper in and around the year 1000. It means Christmas. Like most first Yiddish words, these were [more]
Dear fuenfnullzwei.de/60pages, Not long ago I had a lovely, fleeting encounter with a fellow student, Gülgün. She was beautiful and from Istanbul and spoke German because of her studies at the German School there. Later, she studied Economics, also in German and she never wanted to return to [more]
My uncles and aunts from the second district: pointy beards and white ties, heavy chains on high bosoms, used to bring to the borders of the Seret[1] train cars with provisions, sermon-gifts, candies for the kids, the lilac of the Kaiser’s riches. The aunts, like turkeys with excited [more]
His body was found. Did we see an ethereal light shine in the sky that led to his corpse? Did his wet nurse sell him to the Jews for ritual murder? Was little Werner taken on Gründonnerstag (or is it Weiß-, or Heiliger?) right after he received the [more]
If there’s a new “grammar of migration” in Germany and the “Turkish turn” is the Anlass (according to Leslie Adelson[1]), then surely there is a place for some apocryphal literature to that new rulebook. And by that I don’t mean spurious writing but rather non-canonical, constitutional stories. Like [more]
What’s cosmopolitanism? Today, cosmopolitanism denotes a supranational existence. In the modern period, however, prior to the development of nation states, cosmopolitanism meant being connected to more than one place, perhaps to several places at once. Cosmopolitans had allegiances that extended beyond political boundaries. And yet they didn’t just [more]
It doesn’t really matter at this point how it all started, English in German. Of course it’s related somehow to the occupation. But even that seems like old history now. English doesn’t exactly have prestige. It’s more like a functionality in advertising that makes it a privileged language [more]
Theodor Herzl went to Jerusalem in 1898 and worried that he might be arrested by the Turkish authorities. Just like Shabbatai Zvi. He got sick while he was there and he was frustrated by his efforts to get meetings with the Sultan. His trip to Jerusalem also took [more]
It looks staged but it is not. It’s a shot of people who are waiting to go on stage. The showplace is a small town parade in southeastern Texas called Fiestas Patrias Mexicanas in the dusty remnants of a train station outpost town called Bryan. About 25,000 people [more]
Are Jews a race or a religion? Today, this is a question that is less about solving this age-old question than one that seeks to position the person being questioned politically. What do I mean when I say it is all politics? It is politics not religion that [more]
On the Manhattan Bridge, a steady stream of cyclists silently make their way to work at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. A middle-aged businessman with toddler daughter in bright pink cat-eared helmet. Toddler girl securely fastened in rear bike carrier, nodding off. Beard-sporting hipster on fixed-gear bike. Kryptonite [more]
Inside the red-brick Brooklyn schoolhouse, you’re greeted by a waft of indistinct odors—Freshly brewed coffee? Multi-day-old sweat? Oven-fresh sweet breads? The rubber of basketballs? The menthol, camphol, and mint oil of tiger balm? At noon, at the polls, the atmosphere is jovial, casual, communal, congratulatory. At the top [more]
I opened the newspaper this morning to yet another story of an ordinary young man doing what used to be an extraordinary thing (in a public place). A 20 year-old man with AK-47 walked into the Garden State Plaza mall in northern New Jersey late Monday night, terrifying [more]
At a small library branch, in Brooklyn, I see him all the time. Who is he? What’s he working on? A man perhaps in his late 50s. Or maybe early 60s. He wears a weather-worn red baseball cap, inscribed with NY. He sports battered sneakers. He dons a [more]
Free coffee! Free coffee! I used to see them maybe twice a year, usually at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Manhattan or mid-way across the Brooklyn Bridge. But recently they’ve been making more frequent appearances and show up on some slightly less-beaten paths. Today they set [more]
Do you want an on-stage cushion seat? It’s thoroughly comfortable. It has a backrest. And they’re our most popular seats for the shows that have them. A non-toxic, washable paint will be used during this performance and may splatter on audience seated on stage. Please note, the Brooklyn [more]
On the F train at noon, heading from Brooklyn into Manhattan…. ….a young Hispanic woman in her 20s in checkered rain boots (they predicted sleet) listens to music on headphones (audible beats), scrolls through messages on her iPhone, and nurses a Dunkin Donuts coffee…. ….. a young couple [more]
My adult immigrant students of English as a second language recently told me about their first impressions of New York. Trees, clean air, canned food, shopping carts, fall leaves, low buildings, tall buildings, a lot of activity, and much, much more. Why are all of the trees without [more]
Walk into your local CVS drugstore anytime in November and find yourself bombarded with a tri-polar holiday disorder. Pilgrims or pumpkins? Turkeys or trees? Wreaths or witches? Goblins or gingerbreads? Piled high in bins of reduced-priced good are ghosts and goblins, witches and werewolves, orange-and-black M&Ms, plastic spiders, [more]
Today, as is often the case, the sunset views from Valentino Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn, were awesome; and, once again, the vastness of these views served as superb backdrop for some significant mental musings. We really should have a word in English for Gschlirkwolke such as these, [more]
Cowbells. In Brooklyn. Really? Over the years, I’ve come to associate the sound of cowbells mainly with one of two things. Cows. In Switzerland. And ski races. On TV. Cows, from when I was a child and would lie awake at night in bed with the window open [more]
A little over a year ago, giant alien faces, hovering helicopters, googly eyes, bubble letters, Charlie Chaplin, cartoon creatures, hearts and swords and sailors and statements of a wide variety adorned the warehouse walls at 5 Pointz, in Long Island City, Queens. For more than 20 years, 200’000 [more]
Six months from today, some adults will no longer be able to legally buy cigarettes in New York City. Those 18 to 21. Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation that will raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21. And the minimum purchasing price for a [more]
The controversial Whole Foods supermarket along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn has gone from topic of years-long debate to near-reality. After more than five years’ delay (due to community opposition—traffic, artists neighborhood, upped real estate prices), the Gowanus branch of this ‘natural-only’ supermarket is slated to open in December. [more]
Reflection, introspection, contemplation, meditation. These are supposedly what tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, is all about. So how did the day become synonymous with giant pop-culture balloons where companies blatantly market their brands? Not to mention shop-till-you-drop Black Fridays which have crept in upon Thursdays. The more commercial, the better, [more]
With immigration-reform advocates fasting on the National Mall for more than three weeks now (a first group of fasters was replaced by others yesterday), immigration reform is once again at the forefront of national consciousness here. The debate, of course, revolves around ‘undocumented immigrants’. Pathways to legalization? Border [more]
I just finished reading Sheri Fink’s gut-wrenching book ‘Five Days at Memorial’, which delves into the agonizing decisions some medical professionals were forced to make at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina disrupted the power supply to that facility. Generators provided only spurts of electricity, [more]
Biking past Sara Delano Roosevelt Park at the confluence of the Lower East Side and Chinatown in New York City this early Saturday morning I was reminded of many a weekend early lunch break I spent listening to the caged birds sing. I heard them there today again. [more]
Walk into Hunter College of the City University of New York on the Upper East Side, here, and you’re bombarded with more sites, smells, and sounds than 42nd Street-Times Square during rush hour. Serving more than 20’000 students, and part of a university system (CUNY) that serves some 270’000 students, Hunter College [more]
Having returned from my current home in New York City to my childhood home in Switzerland for the holidays, I’ve been struck over the past two days by the frequency with which people here ask me about New York’s mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. People here have a curiosity unbounded [more]
this is Mäx: not Mäx: not Mäx: not Mäx: not Mäx: not Mäx: this is Mäx: this is Mäx: try it: Mäx, not Mäx, not Mäx, Mäx, Mäx, Mäx, not Mäx
Mäx: Mäx: Mäx: not Mäx: not Mäx: Mäx: not Mäx: Not Mäx: Mäx: Mäx: Mäx: not Mäx:
Five new HACKERS join FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list Have you seen any of these men, in person or online? The FBI is offering up to $50,000 for information leading to any of the above. Seen them on Google+ or Facebook?
3 sessions, each longer than 1 hour, to get my painting. Glad I hadn’t been naked. And here it is: Cool, isn’t it! Very! Thx Christoph! (He’s famous says Rälph, famous painter from NY, Abstract City and shit, says Rälph, lots of awards says Rälph. And Rälph must [more]
Shouts going out to Mäx and Christoph! Here is my first pick: Arnold Schoenberg had (like me) triskaidekaphobia––the fear of number 13. I always had it. Schoenberg’s triskaidekaphobia might origin in the thirteenth song of the cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten, from 1908. Moses und [more]
Number 3 determined Nikola Tesla’s Life. Tesla washed his hands 3 times, Walked around the block 3 times before entering a building, took 18 napkins when he dining in a restaurant, dining alone. (18, because numbers that were divisible by 3, were his favourites.) Impoverished and alone, the [more]
In 1958, Pauli fell ill with pancreatic cancer. When his last assistant, Charles Enz, visited him at the Rotkreuz hospital in Zurich, Pauli asked him: “Did you see the room number?” It was number 137. Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung were obsessed with the power of the number [more]
Annä, well it’s Anna, Anna is the mother of Rälph and Annä, no Anna (sorry Anna) cuts my hair. Mäx has loads of hair, like the Prefab Sprout guy, style hero, all grey, he doesn’t hear, see or feel anything anymore, but listen to Billy: [jwplayer config=”audio” mediaid=”16617″] [more]
Here’s my second haircut (with massage) Ümlaut/ poem goes on: poem, goes on: poem, goes on: poem, goes on, by Anna, Rälph’s mother 7 Bäume, Äste, Gräser. Grüne Blätter bräunen. Gärtner, Mörder, Päderasten. Kärnten, Österreich. Ötzi, Kernöl, Röslein. Küsschen? Nö. 8 Hände, Münder, Möbel. Königinnen können gönnen. Völlig [more]
Hello everyone, This is my first post on 60pages. I met David Iselin, who invited me to participate to the 60pages project, about a year ago, in a place some people tend to call “Holy Land(s)”. To be honest, we did not really meet in any holy place. [more]
Yesterday I met with my friend Sophie, she used to intern with me in Amnesty’s office in Tel Aviv. We have not seen in each other in a year, and she invited me to a concert of oriental klezmer in a cool concert hall of Paris, because she [more]
About a year ago, my mom sent into exile a selection of books to our new house in Tangier. She said it was a random selection, but most of them belonged to me of course, probably because of this tendency I have to drop my books in my parents [more]
As I decided to try living as a free spirit right after graduation (organizing my very own festival) instead of sweating for someone else, I quickly had to find a source of funding that would bring my Bohemian aspirations and my consumer life-style together. So I took this [more]
Probably you all knew the following verdict for a long time: Life is full of bullshit. Well, not me (although I had a feeling). I wasn’t aware of the magnitude of bullshitness in my life until, a few months ago, I finally read Harry G. Frankfurt‘s essay «On [more]
Last night I went to a concert by the upcoming Swiss band Pablo Nouvelle. It was a mesmerizing, nostalgia-inducing experience. There was something about the venue, small and snug, and apparently the only music-place you can smoke inside in all of Switzerland. There were exactly so many people to fill [more]
A few weeks ago I got a job offer. The kind of shiny-new-job that is supposed to save journalism. Except that it won’t. Because no one has a clou what they’re talking about. You see, there is a gap between the generation of the bosses (in their 40ies [more]
I like the german word «Entschlacken». Schlack is the kind of sticky slag you’d find, if you melted an entire building: an impure mixture of iron, copper, glass and the likes. It is the state I sometimes feel like after a really busy week. Schlacky. Saturdays, for that [more]
In today’s issue of the german magazine DER SPIEGEL you can find an astonishing, sad story about a man, fallen out of time. He grew up during the Nazi era, son of a go-getting art dealer. When his father died (and later his mother), he inherited a treasure [more]
There is something about running. The combination of repeating a simple body movement and reaching a higher state of flow. The sky above, the ground below, getting on, letting go. It’s like recalibrating your brain. I don’t like going to the gym for that matter. There are eyes [more]
What really can get you through a cold, rough day: humour. It can be silly, it can be dark, it can be sweet or nasty. If laughter prevails, so will you.
A lot of people mistake appearance for quality. The better something looks, the richer the form, the better it is. Or so they think. This is interesting when it comes to writing or the market of thoughts in general. A book – finely printed paper, carefully bound and [more]
Tomorrow John F. Kennedy will be dead for 50 years. Don’t get me wrong, but I am no fan of anniversaries. They often celebrate a part of the past in a glorifying tone that makes me feel uncomfortable. The past is reduced to a few well-narrated lines whilst [more]
There is a certain mutual agreement taking over a lot of people’s minds, and it says that technology is bad for you. You can look at bookshelves and bestseller-lists and you will find all kinds of books, essays and guides claiming it. Some say, the internet rewires our [more]
Today I went out to vote and on my way I still couldn’t decide what to vote for. Here’s the dilemma: the people of Switzerland are voting on the so-called «1:12-Initiative». Coming from the left, the initiative, in a nutshell, wants to oblige companies to not pay higher [more]
On a regular Swiss voting-sunday, taking place every few months, you can experience the magic of democracy in its full perspective. Even in the smallest towns in the backcountry you can see people practicing their citizen-rights, waiting in line at the voting polls. There are thousands of people [more]
Yesterday I went to a fabulous performance of «Rigoletto» at the opera in Cologne. It was my first time seeing a Verdi-Opera and it blew my mind. I was lucky to go with a friend and opera-aficionado, who briefed me on the train ride. Opera is all about [more]
There is nothing wrong with having preconceptions. In a way they are intuitive predictions of how someone will be, based on the experiences we’ve had before. Oftentimes they prove to be right. So we stick to them. I love it, when my preconceptions are proven to be wrong. It [more]
I adore this quote: «The reader walks away from real art heavier than she came to it. Fuller. All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can’t be for your benefit; it’s got to be for hers. What’s poisonous about the cultural [more]
To fight bullshit in your life, what you need most is what Ernest Hemingway called a «built-in, shock-proof shit detector». Something inside of you that makes the alarm go off immediately: Bullshit! Bullshit! A signal to bridge the noise. A Geiger-counter for nonsense. You can train that detector [more]
I just lied to you. This will not be about sex. But I lied to you on purpose. You see, there is a subtle difference between lies and bullshit. Because, as Harry G. Frankfurt puts it, «it is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the [more]
You know the situation: You sit at a table with some friends (or your family, or at work). You’re having a conversation. And every so often someone reaches in his pocket and starts typing on his smartphone. It doesn’t disturb the conversation but it kind of feels intruding: [more]
«In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there [more]
This is a truth, so sad and beautiful, that some days it almost kills me: You and me and all of us will miss almost everything in this world. When I was a child, I felt like time was endless. Days were these undiscovered spaces. I was an [more]
Ich habe einen Freund, der kann Geschichten erzählen wie kaum einer. Er erzählt sie nicht von Anfang bis Ende, nicht von hinten nach vorne, sondern gleitet am Rande des Unerzählbaren entlang, wie ein Fischer auf dem Hades, mal hüben, mal drüben, durchhangen von Nebelschwaden der Melancholie, erzählt in [more]
Douglas Adams says: «I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.» Woosh.
Recently I read an interview with a poet from the tuareg tribe. Apart from the striking beauty of his unimaginable existence in the middle of the Sahara desert, I found a quote that made me think. «A good story is always true, even if it never happened», the [more]
I once read a graffiti in the subway of Barcelona: «Ni un dia sin poesia» Not a day without poetry, it says. And it is so true: Some lines of Emily Dickinson, Nicanor Parra, Mascha Kaleko or Walt Whitman can save my day. No more words needed. Zum [more]
Margret Boveri, so umstritten wie sie war, trifft mit diesen Zeilen doch ziemlich zeitlos ein Gefühl dieser Tage: «Ich fühle mich fähig, entgegengesetzte Elemente in mir zu beherbergen und jedem zu seinem Recht zu verhelfen. Der Preis dafür ist, daß ich auf die Frage, ob ich links oder [more]
Do you sometimes think about leaving it all? Pursuing an exit strategy, not coming back? For me, there is something calming about it. I was at the country-side over the weekend, visiting family and friends, reflecting my life in the light of others. We hiked onto a hill [more]
Woody Allen says: «You can’t ride two horses with one behind.» By now I must be riding a whole herd.
Most of you know me as a calm, rational person, but I have an obsession to confess. I am obsessed with people. Not everyone, just certain kinds, very special kinds of people. Persons that make my heart bounce around instantly like a squash ball without the gravity. They [more]
There is something startling about natural scientists. A friend of mine recently dated a post-doc physicist, who needs 11 hours of sleep and says he wouldn’t even start thinking a thought without a timeframe of minimum five hours with no disturbance. They often have something philosophical about them, [more]
Lately I seem to be surrounded by cokeheads. In the train, in bars, even in work related places. You recognize them from afar: Their galvanizing body movements, like the ministry of silly walks on speed. The constant fiddling with their noses – sniffing, puffing, snorting. The stray gaze [more]
A friend invited to a conspirative meeting with strangers (where I bumped into 60pages-fellow Simon), so I joined in for a pinot noir. And how refreshing it felt: straight-talking to people, unknown to me to that minute, cutting the crap. We plowed through the topics – the definition [more]
I often ask my parents for advice. They’ve known me since, well, always and they often do a great job. But what they totally fail with is predicting my future. They tend to draw from their own experiences, and honestly, those are outdated. The circumstances of my generation [more]
This smart pick by Theresia Enzensberger made me think of how I consume pop culture. Theresia concludes with the observation, that people apparently like to binge on pop culture, referencing House of Cards and the new Beyoncé album. I think, in that sense I might be a binger. [more]
Michael Haneke says: «I’m interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn’t thought about before, films that help me progress and advance. Those are the kinds of [more]
Are you one of the chosen few? Find out with this test. You better be ready! Ready? Okay, here we go: How many times – within one day – do the two pointers of a clock cross each other? I I V Do you know? Come on, do [more]
Back at journalism school we used to play a game called «Bullshit Bingo». Everyone got a paper full of business lingo or political phrases, and we would watch speeches or read PR magazines out loud. Everytime you heard a word from your list, you could cross it out. [more]
When the year comes to an end, a lumbering sadness overcomes me. It is checking a checkbox, knowing it was not all done. I haven’t done everything I wanted to. I haven’t lived or laughed or kissed enough. I have wasted time, arguing with people, being angry at [more]
… and to you all, marvelous smart bright shrewd 60people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BaqIManacQ
Zwischenjahreszeit. Zwischen den Jahren, zwischen den Zeiten. Katapult in die Vergangenheit, zurück in die ehemalige Heimat, Heimat noch immer, Heimat auf ewig. Auf der Eisbahn, schlaksig die Beine, trocken der Atem, wie eine Wolke aufgewühlten, gefriertrockneten Staubs aus den Tiefen des elterlichen Estrichs. Alle kreisen hier, die coolen [more]
Zwischenjahreszeit, Karussell der Erinnerungen, Schleudersitz der Gefühle, zweiter Teil. Dieses Gefühl. Nach Hause zu kommen, in das Zimmer, in dem man aufwuchs, wo alles so klein ist was mal so gross schien, im zu kleinen Bett zu liegen, Waschmittel wie vor zehn Jahren, einen Atem voll nehmen, die [more]
These days I’m a visitor at Chaos Computer Club Congress #30C3 in Hamburg, the biggest european meeting for hacks and hackers. Germany has recently become a haven for internet/information activists, guesting people like Laura Poitras or Jacob Appelbaum. No surprise the issue around the governmental eavesdropping on literally [more]
The biggest buzzword in 2013 was «Big Data». It was everywhere, especially in the speeches of all the bullshitters. And as with everything buzzy, a counter-movement has emerged, claiming «Big Data» is harmful. In the light of the NSA-scandal: an obvious point to be made. As for me, [more]
On New Years Eve in Hamburg, fireworks are omnipresent. You can buy them everywhere and in huge stocks. Arsenals of rockets on sticks, packs of small paper balls filled with black powder, «Chinaböller» by the dozens, whole blocks of assorted, orchestrated mini-rockets that look like some modern air [more]
Der deutsche Schriftsteller Wolfgang Herrndorf schrieb oft über den Tod, seit er 2010 an einem Gehirntumor erkrankte, feinfühlig und wortgewaltig. Unter anderem diese sehr lustige Passage: «Wenn ich es mir aussuchen könnte, würde ich am liebsten bei einem Flugzeugabsturz sterben. Aber auf gar keinen Fall im Bett. Vielleicht [more]
At the moment there is a discussion going on in Switzerland about a really serious subject: humor. It all started with the mayor of our capital-city, an elderly guy from the left, and his ambitions in stand-up-comedy. His jokes didn’t really work, so no one bothered, except for [more]
Science sometimes blows my mind. It puts things back into perspective and, after a hard day at work, refreshes my curiosity. No one could be better at this than the fabulous guys of Radiolab: fresh, witty and incredibly entertaining. In their latest podcast, for example, they explain why [more]
I am a nerd. «A nerd (adjective: nerdy) is a person, typically described as being overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired.» says Wikipedia. And yeah, I am exactly that. Even more: I am a nerd for life. It starts at the edge of my bed. Piles of books, [more]
There is something odd about the concept of time. It suggests that every hour, every minute, every second have the same length. That life is countable and everyone has got the same amount of it. To me, this feels wrong. Time is like the perfect dance. A prompt [more]
I know people who remember everything. They remember what they were wearing when we met, every time we met, they remember everything we talked about, every silly little joke. They remember everything about their childhood, every punch they’d taken, the names of the punchers, the shape their bloody [more]
Jonathan Harris, writer, visionary, artist, published a very moving, personal essay about his achievements in life. The internet-wunderkind, always striving for sense in a connected world, has come back to his original talents and gives precious advice: «We have these brief lives, and our only real choice is [more]
In my first pick I described the very nature of bullshit, concluding by citing Harry G. Frankfurt: «Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.» This often is the case with people who are required to talk all the time: [more]
How to live a life with less bullshit, a happier, a better life? At the end of these loosely connected essays, this might be the most important of all questions. I found a rather beautiful answer in a speech by George Saunders. He deeply encourages everyone to harness [more]
Today I stumbled upon the funniest, nerdiest love-story in a long time. Before I’ll tell you all about it, let me lose a few words about finding love in the 21st century. Have you ever heard about Tinder? It’s a social dating app on your phone that uses [more]
Manchmal, wenn die Gedanken nicht zur Ruhe kommen, wenn die Hände sich nicht vom Buch lösen können, festgekrallt in dieser nächtlichen Zwischenwelt, wenn der Blick durch das Fenster über die Häuserreihen meiner Stadt schweift und an einem einsam leuchtenden Fenster hängen bleibt, da frage ich mich: Wer sind [more]
Rilke says: «Don’t take away my demons because my angels will depart as well.»
Weißt Du, als Kind fürchtete ich nichts mehr als den Fuchs. Unten im Wald hinter dem Park unter dem Schloss hatte ich beim Spielen ein verbeultes altes Warnschild gefunden. „Vorsicht Tollwutgebiet“ stand darauf zu lesen und ich malte mir wunderbare Dinge aus, die man wohl anstellen dürfte bei [more]
Gegen 19 Uhr verließ ich das Bratwurstglöckl. Die Kellnerin, die aussieht wie Prinzessin Shrek, schickte mir einen Kussmund hinterher. Im Stehausschank traf ich Stummel, der mir sein neues Monokel zeigte und mit mir noch einen Schnitt trinken wollte. Er bedauerte, dass er seinen Schnupftabak nicht eingesteckt habe. Ich [more]
Draußen auf der Terrasse tänzelt Weinlaub. Dunkelrot, braun und dunkelbraun gescheckt, und schon so vertrocknet, dass es bei einem heftigen Windstoß zerbröselt und als aufgeregte bunte Wolke davonstaubt. Einmal hatte ich einen eigenen Weinberg. Er lag über dem Kamptal und gehörte früher meiner Großmutter. Schon als Kind wurde [more]
(frei nach Christian Morgenstern) Kroklokwafzi? Semememi! Seiokrontro – bidunowa: bialzha hotty hulalemi: quasti basti Babo… Yolo yolo yolo yolo yo! Harakets Matata miromente asap zes rü rü? Niveaulimbo, leiolente klekwapufzi lü? Yolo yolo yolo yolo yo! Simarat Swag malzlpempu silzuzankunkrei (;)! Chabo dos: hdgggdl Lempu Diggi Playa Sei [more]
Einmal hat jemand Helmut Dietl ins Ballhaus Ost mitgeschleppt, wo ich irgendeinen Bühnenunsinn aufgeführt habe. „Das Helmut Berger-Komplott“ hieß der Abend. Die wunderbare Staatsschauspielerin Dagmar von Thomas las aus Helmut Bergers Memoiren und ein paar Ballhaus-Schauspieler und ich hatten Liedtexte und Gedichte dazu vorgetragen, die etwas über die [more]
Ischgl, Tirol, so genanntes Winteropening mit Stargast Tamara Ecclestone, hochschwanger, Babybauch hinter kiloweise Pelz. Metrosexuelle Trash-TV-Moderatoren und deren Kolleginnen im Billionaire Girl-Look, wie sie Dir in Instyle zum Nachmachen empfohlen werden. „Regt sich da keiner auf, dass man überall rauchen darf?“, fragt eine Reporterin den Barmann. „Naaa, mir [more]
Ich sitze im Schellingsalon und beobachte die Billardspieler. Die Bedienung ist eine Frau und sie hat einen Schnurrbart. Ein Kind mit einem besonders schönen Schmetterling im Gesicht kommt, und es sagt, wie man am besten am einarmigen Banditen gewinnt. Der Vater, sagt sie, säße am Tisch und sei [more]
Les touristes qui vont à Vienne visitent la Hofburg parce que c’est là où la princesse Sisi avait habité. Et ils visitent la Berggasse parce que c’est là où Sigmund Freud avait analysé ses patients. Et ils visitent la Ziegelofengasse parce que c’est là où Falco avait écrit [more]
Auf dem Ötztal-Bahnhof in Oetz steht ein älterer Herr und blickt traurig in die Ferne. Es ist Professor Doktor Hans Haid – und das „Professor“ und das „Doktor“ muss man unbedingt dazu sagen, denn es gibt im Tal noch einen anderen Hans Haid, der ist Direktor des Heimatmuseums [more]
Der heilige Urban war von 222 bis 230 Papst und Bischof von Rom. Heute ist er als Patron von Maastricht, Toledo, Troyes, Valencia Grünberg, als Schutzheiliger der Weinberge, des Weines, der Weinhauer und Küfer beschäftigt. Trotzdem oder vielleicht deswegen soll er seine Fürbitter auch vor Trunkenkeit beschützen. Die [more]
COPY+SEND: United States Supreme Court C/O Attorney Chokwe Lumumba 440 N. Mill St. Jackson, Mississippi 39202 Hon. Supreme Court Justices: I am writing this letter in support of Mark Anthony Myrie AKA Buju Banton. Mr. Myrie has filed a petition in this court seeking review and [more]
My fear is that when slavery was abolished in the mid-1800 and my great grandfather was given a name I fear that he was some kind of religious freak who because of that was given some biblical name to keep him happy. Other than that I have no [more]
ciao iph! hey double bitch! che freak. 21.11.12 Haddon House, 10 Hanson St, London W1W
He presents a woman so filthy that her ears are ridden with worms and her eyelids act as a fly-trap for the insects which swarm around her bleary eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniYRR2N2f4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_gAVZBKoMI
You’re never gonna catch me… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-64DIXTlQ
Milan, behind Garibaldi train station, just in front of the unfinished “vertical forest’” buildings. in this district where everyhting is changing, you find this great popular place, where the time has stopped, where magicians come for diner to show they new tricks. The amazing food of sir Tomaso. Via de [more]
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a nun currently living in Jerusalem. She grew up as the daughter of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, but spent much of her young life in exile, first for schooling, and then again during Mussolini’s occupation of Ethiopia’s capitol city, Addis Ababa, in 1936. Her [more]
1 large egg yolk 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt plus more to taste 3/4 cup canola oil Combine egg yolk, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in medium bowl. Whisk until blended and [more]
Steve Albini (image source: http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Steve+Albini/+images/438915)
– 58 110 000 000 Chickens – 2 817 000 000 Ducks – 1 383 000 000 Pigs – 654 000 000 Turkeys – 649 000 000 Geese and Guinea fowl – 517 000 000 Sheep – 430 000 000 Goats – 296 000 000 Cattle – 24 [more]
When it comes to racism or discrimination I’m like a super Nazi. I can’t help it; it’s stronger than me. It’s physical. I’m the person you don’t want to have at a party, when someone blabbers out prejudices. I become like police. I detect it everywhere or at [more]
My father sends me this photo today of him in 1968. A weird coincidence after me reflecting on iranian youth. I call him to find out whether he agrees if I publish it or not. A discussion starts. It’s for my own protection, that I shouldn’t. I sense [more]
I wanted to raise some real smart questions on sexism in theatre and film that I had today but I’m just too tired. So I conclude: Acting just sucks sometimes.
It was too late to go to a restaurant and there is no food at home. I know I need to go shopping in order to have something to eat, but in this regard I will stay a dependet child. Psychoanalysis couldn’t solve everything. So I went to [more]
There is some good advice that you just want to oppose to until you get an idea what was actually meant by it. One of these things you hear in acting a lot is called “moment to moment”. Now the mother of my friends therapist. No, the therapist [more]
Independence is a result of self-value I think. If you give less a damn on the judgment of others then you are either stoned or you care about what you do. Things don’t serve to compensate the “forever empty” (as Louis C.K. has named it wonderfully) inside you. [more]
Facebook makes people now officially and scientifically-proven unhappy. The study claims that feelings of loneliness, jealousy and self-doubt are being experienced to a very high percentage. No news. That means the majority feels terrible but keeps “liking” until they hate themselves. Of course Fb’s representation of reality undermines [more]
“My name is Ismail Yozgat, my son has died in my arms. From 2000 until 2011 documents have been destroyed, hidden and burned. And if this was not enough the documents of Andreas T. will not be released because of irrelevance.” Andreas T., who works for the intelligence [more]
I am fascinated by what people are afraid of. It’s probably because of my parents being therapists and hearing about phobias since I’m little. Today I found out about the term Agoraphobia, pretty common fear. A friend of mine is afraid to be killed in his sleep, he [more]
Today there was a coincidental 60pages meeting in Berlin. At least there were couple of people present. They shouldn’t have met, one of us suggested. There were some beautiful dramas. In one I was involved (nothing to do with 60pages) in the other I wasn’t (probably nothing to [more]
Hanno Hauenstein (hallo Hanno) wrote today about how we need to paint our future again. A couple of weeks ago I saw the new Spike Jonze film “Her” at a festival and it left a bigger impact on me than I thought at first. I was never into [more]
I haven’t left the house for a long time. I’m sick and that’s how I justify my abstinence from the outside world. Feeling tiny bit guilty but not really because I think it’s actually the best. If you are sick you are eligible to be in opposition to [more]
I take everything back I have had enough. Head’s still spinning and bored to death. Even Berlin’s rainy days seem more attractive than my bed. Human contact show me what you got I can handle you. Easy. Moments to consider: Haven’t seen as many dicks in a row. [more]
There is a little farm in our park. Maybe it’s a zoo but I like to think of it as a farm. It always reminds me of an imaginary childhood on the countryside I never had. It was feeding time when I arrived. I heard the animal keeper [more]
It’s been said that time is moving in circles and every age brings new challenges. When you’re old, people around you die and you get introduced to the finitude of life, as it gets emptier and emptier around you. When you’re my age, life is about creating new [more]
I want to pack my things and move out into more interesting times. To see my conceptions shatter, to find out where the rebels live. Conformity here makes me want to sleep. Lots unsatisfied, circling around themselves, lingering in space, waiting to be loved. Nothing to cry for, [more]
I saw young students on stage today and it sounded like this: Deutsche Bank is an asshole, capitalism as well, Hessel has no answers, Zizek has some but mostly a speech impediment, fair trade is a guilt relieve, we blackface but are ironical, we talk financial speculation and [more]
Man with gold chain chewing gum in a hurry, a couple screaming at each other, two Japanese in duffle coats carrying pizza, men in boubou, women in headscarves, two Indians speaking loud, iPods, iPads, smartphones, laptops, earplugs, Chinese newspapers, Amsterdam only 29 Euros, all escalators out of order, [more]
Five people one car. Three students and us. One future architect, one future human rights lawyer, a future philosopher and us, older than them, so future us already. A homogenous group of strangers sharing a car. It’s a question of minutes until similarities will be shared. The female [more]
The question is what happened? I refused to write, me who was determined to not skip a single day. And now a whole week of empty squares I don’t even dare to look at. A line of shame. But what can you do I’m on the countryside and [more]
For 50 Euros no sticky floors, no smell of piss, no search for food in trash, no cheap perfumes. No running noses, no growling stomachs, no coughing, no body smells, no empty staring. 50€ and non of this misery. Just a cab, skipping the poor, directly to the [more]
Jean Pierre Léaud the face and actor of the Nouvelle Vague had a childhood close to the one he portrays in Les 400 coup. Rebellious and always up for some “connerie” he once stated that if he hadn’t met Truffaut he can’t imagine what would have become of [more]
I am definitely not an expert in educational questions and looking back at my own childhood it seems it would fulfill most criteria of what children today should be kept away from. A few weeks ago I bought a book for my Godchild. I didn’t read it myself [more]
Sometimes or let’s say most of the time someone has put in words, form or action something you have been carrying with you forever. You stumble over it and go like: Yes that’s exactly what I meant. But before that you fight with finding the perfect example to [more]
Close friend, who is six years younger than me, has called me a granny lately, not a mom or an aunty but literally a granny. And only cause I thought it’s gross to wake up in the morning to go to Berghain. (It was afternoon, even grosser). It’s [more]
It should be contemporary but timeless, it should be banal but profound, it should be funny but sad, it should provoke but not disturb, it should be ironical but serious, it should be emotional but not kitsch, it should be big but not megalomaniac, it should be sane [more]
Jerry Zaks, the Broadway director tells a story of when he was a young actor replacing Austin Pendleton as the character Mostel. He had to ask for the hand of one of Tevye’s daughters and was consistently rejected and humiliated by Tevye. Tevye was still being played by [more]
In the last days of my 60days I reconsidered what my father said at the beginning, about sharing information publicly like we do here and the danger that might come with it. Well I still wouldn’t go so far to talk about danger, but I did question myself [more]
Brief der protestierenden Geflüchteten am Oranienplatz und der Gerhard Hauptmann Schule an den Senat und insbesondere an den Innenminister Frank Henkel Wir bitten Sie, über die Forderungen unseres Protests nachzudenken. Wir glauben, dass sie schlussfolgern werden, dass unser Protest legitim ist. Eine Räumung ist keine Lösung, denn dann [more]
The demographics expert Christopher Guilmoto from the Paris Research Institute for Development (IRD) has calculated that selective abortions and infanticide have cost in Asia alone, 117 million women’s lives. A UN report from 2010 makes only China and India responsible for over 85 million prevented woman’s lifes, in [more]
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Living outside of Europe makes me realize that in most places of this rapidly urbanizing world the cities are younger than the people who live in them. In Europe, cities are always older than their inhabitants, history is being accumulated in built heritage, and cities [more]
Pune, India. Every so often another “house of the future” comes on stage. In papers and presentations. At biennales and triennales. Made with lots of words, garnished with images of shiny, happy people, surrounded by the latest gadgets. The echoes of these projects, however, don’t last for very [more]
Johanneskirchen, Germany. The house where I grew up is at the edge of town. A few houses down the road there is a sign that demarcates the border of the city. On the one side of the sign there are some old farmhouses, a medieval chapel, villas, row [more]
Hatsudai, Japan. In Japan, all dimensions are extreme: what is big is huge and what is small is tiny. Tokyo, the world’s biggest city, is based on a very small-scale urban fabric. Most the 27 million people live in houses, which are smaller than 100m². Except for the [more]
Gleisdreieck, Germany. What a name for a place. Couldn’t be more generic. Probably thought out by an engineer. Without bad intentions, of course, like always. “Gleisdreieck”, the name means “traintracks” and “triangle”, how innocent. But in Berlin, nothing is innocent, historically. “Gleis” and “Dreieck” – these two words [more]
Ang Mo Kio, Singapore. Before branding became an issue in design practices in the noughties, and every project had to be charged with themes, there were still some places to be found, which were untouched by design intentions. Places of pragmatism. Underdetermined, open, neutral. Without doubt, Singapore can be [more]
Dresden, Germany. Inauguration day: pictures of people happily walking over a newly constructed bridge in their city. No cars on the road yet, but from on the next day this new piece of urban infrastructure would make life in the city easier. No more detours to cross the river, [more]
Sendai, Japan. In my first weeks in Japan I spent hours sitting on the floor of an old temple in my neighbourhood. Literally, spaced out. Never before had I experienced such a limitless space within a small compound. It is surrounded by a solid wall, but the architecture of [more]
Al Hail, Oman. The week around national day is fireworks season in Oman. The celebrations of the country’s remarkable progress over the last four decades take place not on the ground, but in the sky. Through the spectacular show of fireworks in the sky everyone can participate in [more]
Casablanca, Morocco. At the end of my high school years I got a book on modern architecture. The cover showed a building that looked different to anything I had seen before: an abstract composition of cubes, no windows visible from street level, all life hidden behind walls. It [more]
Sarbet, Ethiopia. One of the main traffic junctions in Addis Ababa is called “confusion square”. Seven roads from different directions intersect here and the one and only train line of the city crosses, too. No big deal, but colloquial names of places always indicate the signs of the [more]
Taman Negara, Malaysia. Walking in a jungle is the ultimate experience of non-spatiality. The jungle surrounds the hiker with a similar colour range in all directions, and a constant and even soundscape. When walking it is impossible to anticipate the path ahead and so every move becomes questionable [more]
Halban, Oman. Since the technocratic hubris in architecture burst in the sixties, the self-image of modern architecture as a morally and culturally superior discipline collapsed, and architects could no longer just be architects, but had to lean on other disciplines as a source of justification for their works. In [more]
Cottbus, Germany. A century ago, Cottbus was a thriving mid-size town in the middle of Germany. A city with industries and an upper class of citizens that had no difficulties to afford building one of the most outstanding art nouveau theatres without much ado. The city was nice, [more]
Maerklin, Germany. For Christmas we built up the toy train set, meaning The Train Set, made by Maerklin, made in Germany. We bought it second hand this year and for our bi-lingual third-culture-kids this is a bit of a bizarre exercise, because Maerklin is the embodiment of a [more]
Chadigarh, India. When India and Pakistan became independent the state of Punjab was divided between the two countries. Since its main city, Lahore, remained on the Pakistani side, there was need for a new capital city on the Indian side. Nehru, the first prime minister of India, seized the [more]
OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! by Dr. Seuss Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know [more]
Johannesburg, South Africa. Having a tennis court in the garden of our company sponsored villa was rather an embarrassment for my parents (or at least they pretended it was). It was too obviously the sign of a privileged lifestyle among a society that was utterly unjust. It underlined [more]
Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Bashing Dubai for its vulgarity is an all too easy target. Of course, it is ridiculous to see copies of buildings from other cities. There is a copy of Big Ben, but this time its really big! There is a copy of the elegant [more]
Hong Kong, China. With a bit of wit and luck we managed to invite ourselves to participate in a culture festival between the cities of Berlin and Hong Kong. While the pavilion that we built on Tamar Square celebrated the void spaces of Berlin, we invited students to go [more]
Pirmasens, Germany. In a landscape of dark forests and narrow valleys, a landscape that could not be a more picturebook scene of a German “Wald” lays the smalltown of Primasens. Here in the back of beyond, my great-grandfather practiced as an architect and was head of the municipal [more]
Berlin, Germany. Berlin was supposed to be all built up in a “Berlinish Style” by now. At least this would have been the expectation twenty years ago. After the fall of the Wall an almost bloody battle emerged between conservative and progressive architects, about the question how the [more]
Reinhart Wolf: New York. I grew up in a bookish house, and cannot remember ever having gotten a present from my father other than a book. In most rooms of the house we were surrounded by shelves filled up with volumes of all sorts. But one book did [more]
Rem Koolhaas: S,M,L,XL. No other architect puts more emphasis on not being an architect than the most influential architect of our times: Rem Koolhaas. In almost every text, interview, or lecture he makes it a point that he actually is a journalist. For him, writing a book is at [more]
Dieter Wieland: Grün kaputt. In the eighties there was an apocalyptic mood in Germany. Whether or not the environment was treated better of worse than today is hard to say, but certainly the take on the situation was much less optimistic then now. The world was seen as being [more]
Hans Ibelings: Supermodernism. At the end of the last century, a new ism was proclaimed. The Dutch architecture critic Hans Ibelings wrote a book about his observations of a paradigm shift in architecture triggered by globalization. The assumption is that, if anything can happen anywhere at any time, [more]
Dirk Baecker: Organisation als System. This title doesn’t sound like holiday literature, does it? I read it over a long weekend holiday in Arba Minch, a small town near the border between Ethiopia and Kenya, which is a rather unlikely place to have an enlightening encounter with a [more]
Bijoy Jain: Studio Mumbai. It was about time for an Indian architect to step forward and break out of the standard mould of how things are done in our profession. The way we think and make architecture is still defined by the practices of the Western world (including [more]
Robert Gernhardt: Gesammelte Gedichte. There are endless, and futile, attempts to define quality in design (or lets rather say in anything we make). The easy ways out are to either find a safe ground on hard facts and restrict the verdict to judging by counting, or to seek [more]
Geert Mak: In Europa. Complex circumstances can best be described through simple structures. One of my design teachers told me that when you are stuck with a difficult matter make a sketch of it every hour, it will clear up things for you. Similar frames are set by [more]
Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust – Eine Tragödie. Published by Frederick Ungar, New York. The title page of this edition is stamped with: “Censored. Office of Intelligence & Censorship. Prisoner of War Camp. Camp Forrest, Tenn.” On the last page is another stamp: “Sold by PW Canteens Fort Niagara, [more]
Miyajima, Japan. The last ferry had left for the mainland. I had missed it on purpose. The place was just too beautiful to leave, and I wanted to spend the night on the island. Except for a few monks in the monastery, I was probably the only person staying [more]
Peter Handke: Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wussten. There are many examples of urban places, which are devoid of any people. Some exist on paper only, luckily. But others are for real. Unfortunately, there are too many of these kind of places where one feels like one [more]
Munich, Germany. It was a birthday party, our children said. Actually it was rather a re-birth that was celebrated as a big public event, when the river Isar was re-naturalized within the urban area of Munich. The river Isar is an element of the urban landscape in Munich that [more]
Oslo, Norway. There was snow all over the sloping planes. And people: climbing up to the top just for the sake of it, and coming to see each other. The opera in Oslo is located on a peninsular within a bay. The square that usually goes along with [more]
John Cage: Silence. As much as I tried to force myself to like it, I never enjoyed listening to John Cage’s compositions. But I very much enjoyed looking at his notations as graphics. I also like imagining an audience listening to a pianist to whom Cage assigned the task [more]
Florence, Italy. Florence was the first city I visited on my own, when I was just about old enough to get through passport controls at a border. Needless to say that the trip left a deep impression. On my second visit, 25 years after the first, I could finally [more]
The cabdriver had a moustache and looked friendly. He wore a brown leather jacket and a neat white shirt underneath. I like friendly cabdrivers, and so we talked, and his accent was soft and lyrical and full of warmth. It sounded familiar, and I asked him where he [more]
It was cold and wet, cars swooshed by splashing rainwater up my legs, and I was drenched to the skin. As I was pedaling down one of the most unpleasant streets in Berlin, the city seemed to exist of nothing else but big nasty SUVs fighting me in [more]
Last night, after a wonderful evening with lovely friends, we were sitting in the U2 recapturing the topics we had discussed over dinner. We found that we agreed with our friends’ standpoints and that we loved their company and their wine, too. It was late, and we were [more]
The sky looked crisp and blue and the houses outside our window were gleaming in sunlight. You could almost think they were rejoicing. The beginning of the day was promising. It’s been a while since we had been blessed with such a light, bright and clear and simply [more]
Again, Alexanderplatz. I’m going up, up, up on the escalator from the third to the fourth floor in one of the big classy buildings overlooking the square. I’m in a rush, and there are a lot of people. Next Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent, and we [more]
I’m not gloomy, mind you. I love the ocean breeze from the tracks high above, wave after wave, swoosh and swoosh and swoosh, and the glittering sunlight reflecting on the street. I’m holding a drink in one hand and a good read in the other, sunglasses, t-shirt, naked [more]
The executioner at the reception looked at me with a deadpan face. “What’s this weather you brought with you? Quite unexpected.” – „Agreed“, I said. “I usually bring tons of sunshine.” He handed me the padlock. “Happy workout”, he said. I thanked him and took the padlock and [more]
This morning I sat down with a coffee thinking over the day and went through the list of things to be done. There were insurance policies to be understood, a beef with the landlord to be settled and one with the health insurance company, the tax declaration to [more]
It just so happens I was obliged to take a few cabs today. The rides were quite unspectacular. Just an unknown guy driving his Mercedes Benz while listening to some silly station’s speedy shit. But one ride was different. The taxi driver was listening to some silly station’s [more]
She was a southern girl, she was beautiful and wild. She fled her home in the poor and mountainous canton of Ticino close to the Italian border, and she moved north. Moved to where the people spoke in harsh tongues and looked pale and worked hard. She liked [more]
There’s a Christmas tree in the foyer of the big square building where I go to work. It’s been there since last Monday, I think. I don’t remember exactly, just that it was there some morning. Bang, it popped up from nowhere and seemingly out of the blue, [more]
We’d already had a few, even one with the girl behind the bar who was mixing the drinks, she was in such a bad mood we felt we had to invite her, but she said that she wasn’t allowed to, so we said, c’mon and learned she was [more]
Lately, I never seem to find enough time to read DIE ZEIT. There are somewhat high and frightening stacks of past editions loafing about in a dark corner of the apartment. Heaps of time reminding me of the absence of time in our time.
It’s still very small and frail, kindly supported by two sturdy wooden posts and strong ropes. You almost overlook it on your way when passing by. Only a miniature memorial stone embedded by low concrete kerbs in the form of an arrow points to it. In fact, I [more]
Friday evening, seven o’clock, hectic times in one of Germany’s biggest organic food stores. I had just won a fight with a preppy couple in quilted jackets over the last hulled wheat bread with sesame seeds. Triumphantly, I walked on and steered my way through tons of trolleys [more]
Apparently, the Swiss don’t like their national anthem anymore. Pointing to the verse “Betet, freie Schweizer, betet!”, they dub it “too religious, over-ornate and antiquated”. They say it is “stylistically unwieldy” and they emphasize the argument by quoting words such as “Alpenfirn”, “Strahlenmeer”, “Sternenheer”, “Nebelflor” and “Abendglühn”. They [more]
When we’re both at home, we usually have a cup of hot tea before going to bed. In recent years, I’ve taken to lemon verbena. I buy the elegantly pointed leaves sun-dried and whole, and the light-green infusion, almost translucent, tastes immaculate and innocent, and there’s only a [more]
As I was driving through the cold, dark streets, I thought it’d actually be nice to be someplace else, someplace warm, and then I thought, but I would miss my city and its dire winter and its short gray days, and then it occurred to me that I [more]
This morning I sat down with a coffee thinking over the day and went through the list of things to be done. There were insurance policies to be understood, a beef with the landlord to be settled and one with the health insurance company, the tax declaration to [more]
It was good to meet a friend and sit in a warm and crowded place surrounded by strangers who seemed happy and relaxed, and it was good to talk and drink Saxonian beer and forget the outside world for a moment. My friend had come to town on [more]
Just a few more days to go. But wait! Have we written all the cards, thought of all our friends, wished everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, have we bought all the presents, ingredients, decorations, and, most importantly, baked all the cookies? I have managed [more]
Lange geschwiegen und meine Arbeit gemacht und nichts zu sagen gehabt. Aber jetzt kann ich nicht länger auf dem Mund sitzen. Ich schäme mich für meine alte Heimat, die gerade drauf und dran ist, sich selbst ins Ausland zu schießen. Am kommende Wochenende kann sie es verhindern. Ich [more]
Beloved reader. Please indulge me. About six months ago I quit my Facebook account. After kicking that habit, I now hungrily grasp this opportunity to immerse in an unapologetic display of whatever enters my brain and share things with you I think are so worthy of checking out! Even [more]
The passage of time, central to all aspects of human experience, is fundamental to the perception and understanding of existence in general and in my life inherently of works of art. However, as a metaphysical concept and a popular topic within the contemporary art discourse, it had only [more]
Tonight, children all over the Netherlands will celebrate the age old Sinterklaas feast (or more formally Sint Nicolaas or Sint Nikolaas; Saint Nicolas in English). For those who don’t know, its festivities are centered around a winter holiday figure who basically looks like a roman Catholic priest with [more]
Two days ago I went to see a show by American artist B. Wurtz at Galerija Gregor Podnar. The show really put me at work, so to say, displaying a wide variety of works and ideas that seemed fresh yet old fashioned, retro-futuristic maybe? I was reminded of [more]
I must have been ten or eleven when I read Children of Mother Earth by Dutch author Thea Beckman. The book describes a utopian society in which in humans and animals exist in complete harmony. They would use a remarkable penal system: when a crime was committed, a [more]
Me and many of my female friends who are approaching thirty, hovering over it, or are in the midst of their third decade have unintentionally but collectively started a silent campaign against young famous women who, seemingly out of the blue, have turned back the clock on their [more]
London light is some of the most beautiful light I’ve recently seen (‘recently’ being: this morning). It is soft and hazy because the fog is so thick yet razor sharp with coldness that it cuts right through your chest. London is like the Marilyn Monroe of cities; it [more]
As one of my best friends said wisely, he was one of the most beautiful voices in movie history. Irish bred, London schooled, Shakespearian trained. He was the man with delicate features and mesmeric blue eyes that turned Lean’s T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, shooting him into [more]
I am writing now in preconceptions Those of sex and ropes Many frantic cruelties occur to the flesh of the imagination And the imagination does have flesh to destroy And the flesh has imagination to sever The mouth is just a body filled with imagination Can you imagine [more]
“S: It’s so unfair. I guess these silent types make you work twice as hard and then you can’t escape because you yourself create the cage. Maybe’s that’s why you feel so bad. It’s like he’s watching, watching you do this to yourself. C: Misery and self-loathing is [more]
As I am writing this, I am sitting in my favorite Amsterdam café, hidden in the narrow streets of the Jordaan area. In the spirit of Christmas they are playing the soundtrack to “Sound of Music”, which is unusually appropriate in light of their usual playlist. The couple [more]
This is long overdue for me but I can’t seem to finish my thoughts on this as I am changing my mind.
It is Christmas Eve. I’m at my parents’ place, the place where I grew up. Being brought up in a catholic home and having a father who sings in the church choir it is evident we will go to church tonight. We are only three instead of five. [more]
In 1935 Martin Heidegger wrote ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’[1] in which he posited the concept that a relationship could be both critical and respectful, both detached and attached, at the same time. It was not until 1978 that Jacques Derrida was to take this philosophical idea [more]
In the middle of some unsettling events in my life, I’ve come to appreciate the notion of temporal awareness that comes close to what Freud understood as Nachträglichkeit, or deferred action;[1] events that have never been given as fully present are experienced only after the fact. It implies [more]
Airport Schönefeld has reintroduced passport control and they’re doing a thorough job while at it. Today I arrived from London. After waiting in line for ten minutes (which feels like forever at an airport where the walk from plane to gate takes no longer than four minutes), I [more]
In my ever-continuing random thoughts on how the most ephemeral and hard-core philosophical topic can be approached and defined, Martin Heidegger has been a frequent guest in my notebook. In Being and Time, Heidegger actually posed the idea by revealing it as a threefold condition of Being in [more]
From January 18 to March 4 2008, Okwui Enwezor organized the exhibition Archive Fever at the International Center of Photography in New York. According to Enwezor himself, the aim of the exhibition was “to show the ways in which archival documents, information gathering, data-driven visual analysis, the contradictions [more]
Isn’t it remarkable how friendships born out of failed relationships can lead to what a dear friend of mine poignantly called, social detention? This particular friend(ship) evolved from such a situation – although this connection is no longer actively nourished. In honor of your friends, you are inclined to make [more]
The New York Times hosts today’s post. In anticipation of my upcoming departure from Berlin, it’s hard not to look at my beloved city through rose-colored glasses. And on this Monday afternoon it is doing its utmost best to seduce me once again. I arrived here, almost five [more]
You really become aware of the hours in the day, the days of your life and the years in a human life time in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. For reasons I have never understood, a waiting room always seems to have a clock that ticks [more]
To no surprise, I have come to realize that I have many amazing women in my life. Women that have overcome incredible hardships or are going through them as we speak. Women that chose a life of security that comes with tons of commitment, honor, love, energy and [more]
24.02, On the train from Berlin to Amsterdam. Here’s what I love about German trains: they are punctual, they are spacious, their comfortable seats and tables make up for the fact that you are basically staring at boring landscapes for at least the first three hours of the [more]
I’ve been taking the train to my parents a lot lately, and so consequently to the house where I grew up. It is the strangest form of travel; taking me from past to future but never really to the present. As if duration and the passing of time [more]
I have a fetish for print. I actually enjoy touching paper. Doesn’t it sound like a tale from the realms of magic: The fact that reading a book – inanimate signs on paper – can get you into this internally buzzing, thudding, cavorting state of mind (body)? Read [more]
One of my favorite rap artist’s name – correction, my absolute favorite rap artist’s name – is an anagram of that American-Intelligence-Token, which recently attained quite an amount of media reputation over here. Guess who. Right, it’s NaS, born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones. His voice accompanies me [more]
Some days ago someone was tested positive. Unluckily for me, she’s a good friend. More than that, I was first to get the message. After half a bottle of whine and me sending out some pathetic Video-Messages to another place in the world, I started researching things I [more]
A magazine I write for (attention, explicit advertising: REVUE) came out today with its new issue on rituals – “People commonly engage in rituals with the intention of reaching a desired outcome such as reducing their anxiety and boosting their confidence, alleviating their grief, performing well in a competition, [more]
Der Waffenmarkt steht vor einer Revolution – behauptet zumindest die Münchner Firma Armatix. Die Seite des Herstellers sieht nicht anders aus als erwartet – phallische Grafik, schnittiges Design auf schwarzem Grund, „Perfektion aus Prinzip“. Im Video spricht Generalleutnant a.D. Jörg Schöhnböhm, der neben seinem Bundeswehr-Inspekteurs-Job auch CDU-Politiker ist [more]
Maryam (Zaree), Hi! You tied me to a movie I haven’t seen. But after I read your text and saw the trailer I feel a need to catch up. Not just because I fell for some of Fellinis movies, also because the topic you speak of – the [more]
Viel ist gesagt, geschwallt, enthüllt worden über Gurlitt, die Raubkunst, die Deutschen. “Wir können viel nicht wiedergutmachen, aber wir können Kunstwerke und Wertsachen, die auf unredliche Weise nach Deutschland verschleppt wurden, an die Nachfahren derer zurückgeben, denen sie einst gehörten“, schlussfolgerte Götz Aly – logisch. Unabhängig davon, ob [more]
Today I read a personal report in the Guardian by Bim Adewunmi reflecting on her current Berlin-experiences. She describes how people here grabbed and insulted her for the fact that she’s black. Bims expectations of the city boiled down to the point where she cannot wait for her [more]
There’s a hammer hanging in Nimrods room – a judges’ hammer. Rumors circulate about that solid piece of wood. Some say Nimrods grandfather stole it in a UN-meeting. Others say it stems from the time of Israel’s foundation and actually belongs to a museum. Recently on Skype we spoke [more]
Kreuzberg vor zwei Stunden. Ich bin auf dem Weg in die Uferhallen, dicke Nebelschwaden über der Schlesischen Straße. Was als Performance zu Sex-Arbeit angekündigt ist, entpuppt sich als öffentlicher bzw. halb-geheimer und trotzdem irgendwie öffentlicher Live-Stream-Chat. Die Frau der Stunde kniet auf einer inszenierten Matratze – im Video [more]
Irgendwann Anfang der Nuller Jahre mutmaßte ich erstmals, „der Kapitalismus“ sei etwas Schlechtes. Die Mutmaßung pulverisierte im Bauchgefühlsartig-Verbunden-Sein mit Betroffenen, mit Musik, mit Freuden, mit mir selbst. Im Grunde war „der Kapitalismus“, mit mehr oder weniger Distanz betrachtet, mit mehr oder weniger komplizierten Sätzen beschrieben, doch negativer Geburtshelfer [more]
Der Posten des Gesundheitsministers ist besetzt. Diesen Sommer sah es eine Weile aus, als würde Jens Spahn, das geschliffene Jungeisen der CDU, es werden: Er hatte die nötige Portion Chuzpe, die SZ nannte ihn einen „Mann wie eine Walze“. Geworden ist es Hermann Gröhe, einer der, Pardon, aussieht [more]
There is no such thing as the drug. Drugs exist in all colors and shapes. The charts of attributes the word drug entails range from natural, chemical, hard, soft, stimulating to consolidating, sometimes deadly. Yet the semantic instructions to separate the medical from the mundane or the endogenous [more]
Yesterday I fell in love with Joy Wellboy, a band, that is: a girl and a man, who quickly managed to transform the impression of two clashy antipodes into a remarkably charming performance (them standing in front of a magical image of estragon might have contributed to that). [more]
Two days ago I managed to throw a glass of Darjeeling tea over my laptop. The incident, which later caused an eternal breakdown of my silver 4-year-old (I guess the sugar slowly wandered into the filament), in the beginning affected only the keyboard, that is: the letter “A” [more]
The place I grew up in is an epitomized fairytale. Things are clean, people civilized. Narrow alleys bear the ambience of the middle-ages. Seats in cafés are standardized, so that no one gets confused with the distractions of modernity. It’s a place one finds “boring” when growing up [more]
Fake blood, rotating circus screams, cake-sex-Nazi-fetish – more Nazi-fetish – a fortiori Nazi-fetish: I finally made it to the Kunstwerke-exhibition today, a three-floor-wide video-panorama of Schlingensiefs visual legacy. Since I was caught on some sort of seemingly unavoidable December-flu this week, I was quite weary while walking through [more]
People told me, my posts here tend to be quite personal and revealing: not always in a good way. Yet I feel I should write this: 2013 wasn’t a good year. Losing a friend (plus, finding out about it via Facebook) was one of most sad and formative [more]
I’m hardly in touch with old people. I mean, people above the age of 70. Recently, on a train ride in the Ringbahn, I got in touch with one: A woman, who must have been 80-something. She had noticed me reading a text in Hebrew. “Oh is this [more]
One might guess, that the combination of being under 30 and living in Berlin should amount to some widened knowledge on the panorama of fetish, the extended range of desire (at least in the arts). Moving to Berlin – about ten years ago – exposed my to film-makers [more]
People have told me I have an indefensible lack of knowledge when it comes to American Pop-Culture. Something like a week ago – with a poor deferral of almost 15 years – I started watching The Sopranos. The way it sometimes goes with those episodes, it (totally) occupied [more]
He held his eyes closed. Dash, Dot, Circle, set into stone with a chalk. A boy and a second boy drawing symbols in front of a castle, excerted by drizzling rain, wearing caps and masks, their scriptures hardly visible, down on the gound, gleaming, set in concrete. When [more]
I learned: politics is all about how to spend your recourses. And – at least in the German model – to stick to some assumed combination of integrity, transparency and emotional readiness (Volksgeist). Otherwise people will tear you apart. In my personal list of “Relevant Things”, nationality sits [more]
Wandering between texts I should have written, bits and pieces in my apartment I should have fixed, and dinner-appointments, where the question, if what was deferred to infinity was the actual dinner or the friend I wanted to have it with, seems blurry, I got stuck on Youtube [more]
I’ve been absent here for a little while – I went through the world without a laptop, a situation, which, even though I didn’t choose it, felt relieving in some ways. Anyway, since I’ve met many Israelis in Berlin over the last years and since I started writing [more]
Writing about things, you would have wanted to, but didn’t actually see, seems extraneous. If I would have made it to Rotterdam this weekend, I’d have watched what they call Vertical Cinema. Why even speaking about the menace of cinema in the age of Youtube, and all the [more]
There have been some delicte debates about the strange liaison between memorial sites and the common exercise of smartphone-selfies. Ariel Efraim Ashbels and Romm Lewkowicz for instance collected online a series of supposedly seductive profile pics for the gay dating-platform Grindr. You see muscular topless men posing within [more]
Last Saturday around noon my old friend LA called me out of the blue. He was in town for the weekend and wanted to catch up. As is often the case with LA, there was a certain urgency to his proposition. Indeed, when I picked him up in [more]
Every morning when starting up my Bloomberg terminal, I am greeted by a quote of the day. Today it read: “Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done”, courtesy of a certain Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who isn’t familiar, I must admit). Duh. Truisms leave [more]
We’re all doing great. Excellent, even! If worse comes to worse, we’re doing pretty decent. That’s the disease of the Western hemisphere. You can (and probably will) call me cynical, but think about it – unless you’re a shrink, when is the last time that you heard someone [more]
I’m an unabashed driving enthusiast. Not only do I find the act of driving extremely calming. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s also a good use of my time. Proponents of public transport (of which there are many in Switzerland who extol its virtues with messianic zeal) often augment [more]
Judging by the abundance of animal-related posts on Buzzfeed, one has to conclude that “Puppies That Make Your Heart Melt” and “Dogs That are Not OK With Sweater Weather” are high up in the public interest. While the obsession with the “human touch” makes crime, violence, extravagance, scandal, [more]
It’s remarkable how effortlessly people develop a sense of community. Not hard at all, especially if you’re a business traveller stranded at the airport. As I write this, I sit in Terminal D of Zurich International Airport. I got up at 5:45 to catch the 8:20 flight to [more]
It’s rare that I manage to arrange a spontaneous meet with someone. I barely dare ask my friends anymore because the probability of success is so low. So when it actually works out, it’s unequivocally a positive surprise. Wednesday night was one of those surprises. I didn’t have [more]
“Classic” has become a ubiquitous adjective. While it’s supposed to identify something as having enduring value and merit beyond its time, it is now routinely accorded to anything that’s not quite new. At least not old enough for it to have proved its worth over a significant period [more]
Speaking of universal truth and the pop culture binge reminds me of a particular achievement of creative ingenuity that miraculously manages to combine both in a compelling fashion. It is firmly ensconced in the mainstream, yet unrelenting in its scathing critique of the same. It is crass and [more]
Diehard pessimists, critics of civilization and fear-mongers like to claim that reality is crueler and more depraved than the darkest corners of human imagination. I always thought that was unnecessarily apocalyptic. First of all, the statement is based on flawed logic. By definition, any outcome of human action is rooted [more]
I had planned on writing something else. In fact, I had already started writing something else. But, alas, fate intervened. In this instance, I had to make a judgment call. I choose a very recent first-hand experience over a carefully laid out argument on a more serious subject. [more]
Wednesday’s Fed meeting, above all, drove home one message: economics and finance are more publicized, yet less understood than ever. In the run up to the decision, the media were all over the issue, spilling black ink by the gallons on front pages, op-eds and headlines. It wasn’t [more]
This week my Alma Mater, the University of St. Gallen, announced that Alumnus Joe Ackermann, the former chairman of Deutsche Bank, would sponsor a new chair for “Business Economics and Public Policy”. On 29 September, my other Alma Mater, Yale University, announced the largest donation ever received in [more]
There is probably no contrast between two discrete time intervals as stark as the one separating the pre-Christmas from the post-Christmas period. It’s as if, on Christmas eve, someone flicks a switch and the city goes into hibernation, giving way to a virtual dead zone of human inactivity. That [more]
As I tried to look up the viewing rate of the latest installment of “The Bachelor”, the massively popular reality show about a highly eligible single man choosing his dream girl by way of an elaborate scheme of natural selection, I was directed to an unlikely website thus [more]
We live in the age of specialization and highly trained experts. It’s the end result of a lasting trend that began with the division of labor in the industrialization period, which spawned all sorts of management practices in manufacturing (think Toyota’s car plants and conveyor belts) and ultimately [more]
You can position yourself and build a reputation in basically three different ways: 1) you go mainstream and espouse average opinions, the safest and most popular choice but a recipe for mediocrity. 2) You follow your own instincts and convictions, regardless of what others say. That can be [more]
I like lists – best-of lists, worst-of lists, year-end lists, rich lists, breakup lists, auction record lists, box office charts, you name it. Yes, they’re flawed – they’re judgmental, intransparent, self-serving and often lack objectively verifiable criteria. But they put my mind at ease, at least for a moment, by [more]
Some people claim that friendship can withstand long spells of not being in touch. Those people obviously have no idea (and no friends). If you can’t spare the effort, it’s nothing short of insulting to resort to the baseless notion that friendship transcends time and space. It’s a [more]
Friday night I went to a new club that goes by the ominous name of “Kauz”, which translates into “oddball” or “little owl”. I didn’t encounter any birds (nor anyone resembling Athena, for that matter) but I sure did run into some oddballs. And they make for a [more]
Whenever I hear someone exclaim enthusiastically: “There’s an app for that!”, I go a little ballistic inside. Yes, there very likely is an app for it – and that is exactly what’s fundamentally wrong with the concept of “developer-friendly” software platforms like iOS or Android. They’re supposed to [more]
If design were a form of government, it would be an authoritarian dictatorship. If it were a religion, it would be a monotheistic, intolerant one. If it were a film character, it would be Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from “Full Metal Jacket”. In short: design rules by an iron [more]
Pundits and peers are giving Matthew McConaughey a hard time for his rambling, incoherent acceptance speech at Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild awards. The web community is no less vitriolic. McConaughey’s agitated 2.5 minute monologue about thespian virtues and space travel to Neptune instantly went viral and will be used [more]
I pity history. It’s the most abused and mistreated subject matter there is. It doesn’t help that history is a soft science that can’t rely on axioms, mathematical proofs and systems of equations to convey anything close to what we like to call truth. And it certainly doesn’t [more]
Alas, all the complaints about the fast life! Is it really the most pressing issue of our time? Many want to make us believe so. Countless books and articles are being written on the subject – about exhaustion, fatigue, burnouts and the unbearable pressures of the performance-oriented society. [more]
I’ll tell you a story now. The story of a generation that gets easily overlooked and technically isn’t even a generation at all. Why does it get snubbed? Because it’s a fortunate generation, a generation of great promise, ambitions and privilege. There’s a tendency not to think about people [more]
Did you ever throw money away? I mean on purpose. Prof. Jem Bendell did it with a 20 Euro bill on his TED Talk in 2011. It was just 20 Euros, and I thought: This is super stupid! Today, after reading Tom Sedlacek, Götz Werner and Karl Marx, [more]
Kürzlich ging ich zu einer Tankstelle, um Luft in meine Autoreifen zu pumpen. Normalerweise gab es dort immer einen gewöhnlichen Druckluftbehälter. Heute haben sie dort eine große silberglänzende Luftmaschine. Und sie haben mir einen Euro für Luft berechnet. Natürlich wegen der Innovation. Aber ich habe mich gefragt, ob [more]
Was ist Wasser wert? Nun, für einen Liter abgefülltes Mineralwasser (von Evian) müssen Sie 95 Cent bezahlen. In Deutschland spült eine einzelne Person etwa 1.320 Liter Wasser pro Monat ins Klo. Damit könnte man ein gutes Geschäft machen, demnach 1.250 Euro pro Monat. Verschwendung von gutem Wasser. Aber [more]
Vor kurzem habe ich eine Crowdfunding-Kampagne namens c3s (Creative Commons Collecting Society – eine Genossenschaft, die Creative Commons sammelt) unterstützt. Das ist eine Initiative, die versucht mehr Gerechtigkeit in unser Urheberrechts-System zu bringen. Die Regeln für das Urheberrecht machen in Deutschland seit vielen Jahrzehnten die GEMA (Gesellschaft für [more]
When I walked along the beach in San Francisco in 2012 I have seen so many young people who slept there, obviously they were sort of homeless, but somehow not suffering from living without a shelter. In the streets you see selfmade cardboards serving as temporary mini homes [more]
Beginnen wir mit einer guten Nachrichten für alle, die Sex mögen: Erektion ist ein Menschenrecht! Und aus diesem Grund darf kein Unternehmen ein Patent auf Pillen wie Viagra haben. Lange Zeit hat Pfizer einen Vorteil aus dem Leid von vielen Männern (und Frauen) gezogen. Pfizer hat sein Monopol [more]
Let me begin this story with a personal revelation: I am illegal. This story begins in Laos in 1975. It’s a story about crying, remorse and tears. The Chinese electrician Sengdao fell in love with his maid Thi Tam, a Vietnamese tailoress. The unlike couple grew up in [more]
Let us talk about land, property and real estate. Everybody pays loads of money monthly to his landlord. And those, who owns an apartment or a house still pays a lot of money to a bank. Here is my thesis: The rent we pay (and the interest we [more]
Recently I had a crazy idea. I thought of founding a startup. The business plan is a little weird. The idea is to found the Official Administration of the Universe. I would be the CEO of that office. Actually, I would become He-Man – the master of the [more]
What is 3×2? A pupil answers with big eyes: 3×2 is the same as 2×3! The whole class laughed out loud and the teacher punished the poor kid to stand in the corner for the rest of the day: Take your time and think about what you made [more]
Julia Engelmann is a 21 year old poetry slammer. Recently a friend showed me a youtube video of her, where she slammed about life. you find the full text at the bottom. She is the most popular slammer in Germany today with more than 3 million views. She [more]
Is it possible to send a letter without a stamp? Try this: Just swap the sender’s adress with the recipient’s address and put the envelope into the mail box without a stamp. It takes like one week, but the letter will be sent to the sender’s address for sure. Post [more]
I just come from the doctor, we made a 35 checkup, this is a prevention checkup for people older than 35 years. It’s free for me, the government pays. I wanted to have my body and my health status checked. I have a new born son and I [more]
Everyone knows that feeling, it comes up, when your colleague at the office gets an appreciation for something in which you probably are better. It comes up, when your best friend suceeds runs the marathon much faster than you did it (and he just took half time training [more]
Ladies and gents, here is a task for you: How can you find out the distance (in km) from here to the moon? No wikipedia allowed. What you can do is calling all your friends (who also are not allowed to look it up on the internet). One [more]
This is a very simple thing, that can restructure your day with a deep impact: Change your sleep habits. Don’t go to bed too late. And get up early. I always have a souvereign feeling, when I can make it not to get seduced by my snooze button. [more]
“No one has ever become poor by giving”, Anne Frank once wrote in her diary. As you know Anne’s life was short. She wrote about life, love and strawberrycakes. She was 15, when she got killed from the nazis. I have read her diary when I was at [more]
As an architecture student I remember we had a professor in our university who we called Dr. F-Weiler, because the F-Word was part of his familyname: Fickweiler. Foremost my female muslim college fellows didn’t dare to call him, because it’s simply haram. And I remember the mother of [more]
Peace is a big word. I found a way to give peace. Actually you can not literally GIVE peace, because peace isn’t a thing or a product, that can be given, you might say, but yes: I think I found out what it is. And I will share [more]
My neighbor is pregnant. She asked me if I had an idea how to redesign the kitchen. She wants everything to be fixed before the baby comes. I have designed a lot of interiors, Cafés, apartments, offices, lounges, booths and showrooms. This is actually my expertise and passion. [more]
A few days ago my father gathered the whole family at the Good Friends Restaurant in the Kantstrasse, which is probably the best chinese restaurant (my father is chinese). There was a momentous occasion: Chinese New Years Eve. Normally my father doesn’t accept people from outside the family [more]
Facts first: Over 10.000 tons of waste are shipped to chinese garbage dumps every single day. 3,5 million tons of waste do people alltogether produce everyday on earth. Despite of recycling our garbage production increases, we simply buy too much and more and more people on earth emulates [more]
I recently quit my contract with my fitness studio. Imagine, I have been a member since I was 18. That’s exactly half of my life, and I still don’t look like an athlete. Actually the most important thing for me is to have a flat belly. When I [more]
This is my subway story. 1986. Berlin Wall still there. S-Bahnstation Humboldthain. I was standing in front of the ticket machine. No money, no jacket, no mobile phone (they haven’t been invented yet). I must have been 9 years old or so. Tears ran over my cheeks. I [more]
Hooray! Felix Loch went Gold in Sotschi. Are you watching the olympic games in Russia? A friend of mine used to be an olympic athlete. His name is Kofi, and he belonged to world’s best long jumpers. He jumped more than 8 meters. He had the sex appeal [more]
Yesterday someone on facebook contacted me. Something bad happened to a woman, that I am friends with. She tried to commit suicide. This leads me think about death. If people don’t want to live anymore, actually what is wrong about deciding not to live anymore? I know what [more]
When my grandfather passed away, his daughter decided to move into a temple and join the vietnamese buddhist association. I was thirteen, when my mother left us. She shaved her long black hair and put a grey cape over her shoulders and moved in the buddhist pagode in [more]
Are you a leader? Are you in charge of a team in your company or organisation? Then you might know these management strategies: Top Down, Down-up, Management by exception and so on. And you will probably have heard that a good manager delegates tasks. It’s good for the [more]
In Berlin we have 1.102 bridges, more than Venice. 7% suffer from a disease that normally human beings know: Cancer. No joke, experts found out, that there is an acid reaction taking place in the concrete, that injures the bridge: concrete cancer (“Betonkrebs” in german). There is no [more]
She is smiling at me, constantly smiling. Does she really like me? Probably not. Actually she is also smiling at the people in the rows in the front and in the back in the same way. The stewardess, who we call flight attendant today, gets paid for doing [more]
A lot of people complain about their homes, because they don’t feel that comfy, although they have already spent so much money on expensive furniture, pillows, accessories and flowers. And what do people do when they don’t feel at home at their homes: They move out and seek [more]
“I smell smoked meat. The smoke comes from the skin of my left arm.” This is how a Dan Brown Novel kicks off on the first page. Gooooosebump! How much goosebump makes your talk? Yesterday I joined the TEDx MünchenSalon and learnt a lot about telling stories, about [more]
If you want to meet inspiring people, ask them for an interview. This is how I got the chance to meet people that I know from the newspapers: typographer Erik Spiekermann, Rapper Kool Savas, the Musicians Boss Hoss, Architect Thomas Willemeit (Graft), enterpreneur Ralf Anderl (ic! berlin), Food-Activist [more]
Money is very practical, because it gives you the freedom to transform it into happiness the way you want it – as long as the things that makes you happy are buyable. Such as a Porsche, the new iPhone or a day off at Artemis. But what about [more]
My friends were a bit taken aback when they saw my mother. She had shaved off her hair and was wearing a robe. “From now on, I am no longer only there for you, my son, but for all children,” she said. It was her way of dealing [more]
I got famous a few years ago with blueprints for so called Hartz IV Möbel, Bauhaus inspired furniture. I do not sell the construction plans. I give them away for free. Well, that’s not entirely true. I do expect something in return: a story. People pay me with [more]
You can not solve the problems with the tools that caused them. This is what Einstein once said. So, when we talk about economical issues, we should try to look for some answers outside the economic box. We should not try to answer wages issues with more wages, [more]
This method is influenced by Confucius and Bruce Lee. It is clear that our lives are situated in a permanent field of tension between two poles: plus and minus, day and night, supply and demand, giving and taking, and so forth. Followers of Confucius speak of yin and [more]
You are a designer, an architect, a software developper – brief: You design products? Then do me favor: Stop it. The world doesn’t need more products. We are full of products. I proclaim the peak product. The world was never missing the nescafe nespresso cups, the E-bike, the [more]
Are you more the kind of Taker-type, Giver-type or Barter-type? For Adam Grant, one of the youngest professors at the Wharton Business School Pennsylvania (USA), there are these three characters, that rule the world. The taker-type is a career focused person who is trained to use ellbows. The [more]
This poem you need to read. It was twittered a few days ago: Our Generation (by Jordan Nichols) Our generation will be known for nothing. Never will anybody say, We were the peak of mankind. That is wrong, the truth is Our generation was a failure. Thinking that [more]
I drink to make you seem more interesting, Hemingway famously said. At least this is what I think he said. It may have been Orson Welles. Or some other sardonic lush. (I should probably google it.) I blame my brother Leon, not imperfect memory or marijuana, for my [more]
Google-chats with my mother. From Beirut. July 26, 2006 me: bombing beirut like crazy right now pound thud pound thud boom boom boom like an upstairs neighbor having an orgy bam bam bam bambambambambambambam August 9, 2006 me: i have to have to buy a cake and wine [more]
In Mahmoud Kaabour’s documentary “Being Osama” (2005), which follows six Canadian men who all happen to carry the first name Osama, one of the protagonists describes his undue detention at a Swiss airport (at 1:20 mins): [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpgXeTb3x10#t=79] “In the Swiss airport, they put me in the room [more]
A few years ago, a Norwegian couple – academics, if I recall – attended a dinner party in Beirut. They, eager supporters of the Palestinian cause, were discussing the work of archaeologists in the West Bank, whose excavations aim to uncover evidence of ancient Jewish settlements and hence, [more]
I called the asylum intake center (Asyl-Erstaufnahmestelle) in Berlin-Spandau today, on behalf of an acquaintance who had fled Syria and made his way overland to Germany under grueling circumstances. Locating a number for the place was a feat even for an adept Googler. All I found were protest [more]
I grew up just a few hundred meters from the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, the most distinctive feature of West Berlin’s silhouette. The church bookends the city’s former main shopping artery, the Ku’damm. It is visible from our street corner, except in summer, when the trees obscure the [more]
The cafeteria in Building A of the Gesundheits- und Sozialzentrum Moabit (GZSM), where refugees arrive to complete the first stage of the asylum process, knows its clientele. On Monday, the “World Food” lunch option consists of Rinderroulade Hausfrauen Art, Apfelrotkraut, Klösse (beef roulade à la housewife, apple red [more]
I went to the ER this evening because of a pain in my left eye. The eye doctor on duty, a young bespectacled fellow with an extravagant quiff of blonde hair, wanted to test my vision by making me read a series of ascending odd and even numbers. [more]
A few nights ago, I read a story I wrote for the launch of Block Magazin at a gallery in Berlin. As is customary to disclose, I informed the audience that the story had been translated from English – the language in which I write – into German. [more]
According to my mother, I had sworn off all forms of organized religion, and God’s very existence, by the age of four. Initially, the characteristic attributes of the Almighty were transferred to Mary Poppins, who I believed was all-knowing and vengeful. Our babysitter took advantage of this, sending [more]
Bassem*, the youngest of six, has an older brother who has been living in Bavaria for some 30 years. He refers to him as “German Brother,” and while I’ve met this brother many times, I can never retain his real name. German Brother, like many Lebanese expatriates in [more]
Syrian nuns apparently now rival Israeli soldiers as the most valuable hostages in the Middle East. Yesterday, in exchange for 13 nuns who had been kidnapped by a local Al-Qaeda franchise, the Syrian regime released 25 to 152 prisoners (according to state- and opposition sources, respectively). Jabhat al [more]
Zweitens grösser und freier, höchstens eine oder zwei Etagen, mit möglichst wenigen Winkeln, Pfeilern und Wänden. Also ein oder zwei grosse, freie Räume mit Tageslicht von mehreren Seiten, vielleicht auch von oben. Das suche ich. Für mich und meine Abteilung. Einer der Räume soll im Erdgeschoss sein, mit [more]
Die Bewegungen sind ein Weiteres. Verfehlt die Bewegung ihr Ziel, war sie vermutlich eine Platzverschwendung. So kann ich mir überflüssigen Platz vorstellen. Ort an dem eine verfehlte Bewegungen zur Ruhe kommt. In meiner Arbeit sind treffsichere Bewegungen gefragt. Ware, Menge, der Ort an dem sie sich befindet, der [more]
Vor einer Woche habe ich Werner rekrutiert und die Nachricht an alle Abteilungen gegeben. Zwei Tage später erfahre ich, dass Werner in Wahrheit Berndt heisst. Das sagt nicht er selbst sondern Enzner, der im Keller gearbeitet hat, zusammen mit Berndt. Enzner sagt, Kowalski wundere sich, warum statt Berndt [more]
Der Raum ist derselbe, alles, was sich darin verändert hat, bleibt mir verschlossen, vermute ich. Vielleicht hat der Luftzug eine Blume gedreht, einer mit seinem Mantel ein Plakat gestreift. Vielleicht fehlt die eine Wand. Staub. Dann betritt einer den Raum und fühlt sich ein. Die Gefühle ermatten. Seine [more]
Du weisst doch wie es läuft, du gewöhnst dich schnell, gehst jeden Tag denselben Weg. Nach vier Jahren fühlt es sich an, als wärst du ihn nur einmal gegangen. Geregnet hat es. Eisig war es. Trockene Luft, warm. Heisser Wind, Staub. Satt jedem Einzelnen, fühlst du doch nur [more]
Die Makler schlagen täglich neue Objekte vor, die Meisten erfüllen nicht eines der Kriterien auf meiner Liste. Ein Makler schrieb, unmöglich, dieses Objekt gibt es nicht. Ich lasse ihm ausrichten: Weitersuchen, kein Objekt unter drei Kriterien, möglichst wenig Wände, kein Platz für Gedankenverknüpfungen. Ich habe meinen Kaffeekonsum reduziert, [more]
Das andere Objekt – noch besser! Zwei Flächen auf zwei Etagen, jede so gross wie eine kleiner Park. Die Aussenwände sind die einzigen Wände, die vier Mauern. Innen dafür sechs Gruppen von vier Säulen, um den Boden der ersten Etage zu halten, und dort noch einmal sechs Gruppen, [more]
Im Traum sah er aus, wie ich ihn mir vorgestellt hatte, als ich vor seiner verschlossenen Tür stand. Mich umgab eine Projektion des Erdreichs, über meinem Kopf das mächtige Fundament, auf dem das Hochparterre sitzt, und etwas weiter von meinen Augen entfernt, die Umrisse des Öltankraums. Zwei graue [more]
Donnerstag – die Verhandlung um den Öltankraum ist gescheitert. Ich hatte Jémand gesagt, wir brauchen diesen Raum, egal was. Er hat mich missverstanden, er dachte, es sei eine Redewendung und redete sich ein, dass er niemanden verletzen sollte, vergass aber, dass es auch andere Möglichkeiten gegeben hätte. Ich [more]
Ein dreieckiger Raum in einer ehemaligen Postfiliale, zwei rechteckige und ein quadratischer in einer weiteren Postfiliale, vier in einer Schreinerei, einer in einem pharmazeutischen Labor und ein zusätzlicher in dem daran angrenzenden Finanzamt. Die Räume wurden von ihren Vormietern aus gutem Grund verlassen, wie die Räume die sie [more]
Beim Frühstück spüre ich nichts, die üblichen Dinge, Ei, Brot, Butter, und alles was dazu nötig ist. Es ist immer dasselbe, Salz, Pfeffer, der Raum der Küche, dieses Haus, hier, und diese Strasse. Eine Strasse, die nach fünfzig Metern von einer zweiten gekreuzt wird. Noch einmal fünfzig Meter [more]
Die Anderen und ihre Abteilungen, ich habe sie erwähnt. Einmal als Büroetage, oder an der Stelle meiner Bitterkeit, oder als Bewegung relativ zur darauf folgenden. Vielleicht hat die Büroetage ihre Schuldigkeit getan, wir bemuttern doch nur unsere Pflicht. Das ist eine Erlösung für manchen Genossen, seinen Schreibtisch nach [more]
Dass die Dinge nicht gehen. Mir begenete im Traum die Koryphäe der Psychoanalyse, ein Mann um Sechzig, ein Esser und ein Trinker, dünne Arme, ein dürres, gezeichnetes Gesicht, Ranzen. Er führte mich im Reality Television Format durch seinen Akquiseprozess, mal in seiner Limousine, einmal zufällig auf der Strasse, [more]
Fünfunddreissig Wände, zehn Toiletten, sechs Säulen, drei Duschkabinen, die Genossen sind begeistert. Jémand steht vor der Kitchenette, sie ist noch nicht da, aber ich kann sie so gut wie sehen, und wie Jémand sich Quark aus dem Kühlschrank holt. Da hängen natürlich nur elektrische Kabel aus der Wand, aber [more]
Der Sonntag hat mein Gefühl nicht wiedergebracht, vier Eier waren umsonst. Jetzt endet mein Gefühl einen Zentimeter vor den Zehenspitzen, nicht bloss einen Millimeter. Ein Teil meines Körpers fehlt, oder der Teil ist der Welt zu Land geworden, oder ich weiss nicht mehr so recht, worauf ich gehe, [more]
Fünfunddreissig Wände, zehn Toiletten, sechs Säulen … ich sagte, ich muss mich auf dich verlassen können, Jémand. Seit ich mich nur noch mit dem Einen beschäftige, hältst du die Bewegungen in deiner Hand. Ich bin nicht sicher, ober er das verstanden hat, wir sprechen nicht einmal dieselbe Sprache, [more]
Wie immer die vier Etagen hochsteigen müssen, ins Büro. Besonders leicht heute, vielleicht war ich in Gedanken. Auf einmal vor meinem Schreibtisch, eben noch auf der ersten Stufe oder Zuhause im Bett. Gar nicht so sauber und frisch, nachdem der Moment im Bett sich mit dem Moment am [more]
Wälzen sie sich nicht unter dem Wochenende wie kalte Gewässer, die zum Montag und zur Oberfläche strömen. Im Gegenteil, soweit ich spüren kann, ist es ein warmer Abend, und es waren warme Nächte seit Freitag, oder es war das Schmerzmittel. Die Zehen sind blau, beim Aufprall haben sie [more]
Tiefer musst du fallen, so tief, dass du im Spiegel dich selbst nicht erkennst, warte nicht darauf, bis dich das Alter entstellt, vergiss deine hübschen Pläne, mach dich kaputt. In unserer Branche sagen sie es auch. Geh auf die Strasse und leg dich hin, öffne das Fenster und [more]
Start oder Ende einer Bewegung, oder ihr Kreuzen eines bestimmten Punktes, stösst weitere Bewegungen an, das weiss jedes Kind. Heute also im Stadtbad, statt im Büro. Es (unsere) wären keine ordentlichen Bewegungen gewesen, folgten ihrem plötzlichen Ende nicht eine Reihe neuer Bewegungen. Trotzdem nicht auszuschliessen, die Bewegung ohne [more]
Habe ich mich um nichts, als das Aufstellen und Niederschmettern von Kriterien gekümmert, stand mir vielleicht nicht zu, meine Verantwortung mit so viel Selbstvertrauen zu tragen, war die Entscheidung gar nicht meine, haben wir die Bewegungen derweil abstürzen lassen, haben wir unsere Stelle verloren, halten wir nun unsere [more]
Keine Sorge, ich habe Geld, für einen Monat reicht es. Vier Etagen weiter oben gibt es zwei freie Räume mit Aussicht, die mieten wir. Ich werde sie mieten. Du kommst jeden Morgen zur Arbeit, du arbeitest für mich, ich zahle. Wir haben unsere Arbeit verloren, es ist nichts [more]
Ein Teil der Wand zwischen ihnen wurde durchgebrochen, vermutlich mit dem Vorschlaghammer, die Bruchstellen wurden nicht verschalt, sondern an ihrer rohen Oberfläche verspachtelt und gestrichen. Der Durchgang ist nicht eckig sondern bogenförmig und bröckelig wie die Seiten eines Minenschachts, aber eben verspachtelt und gestrichen. Andere Teile der beiden [more]
Stell Dir vor, eine Kammer, oder dein Gefühl für deinen Körper. Und nun lösen sich die Flächen von einander und entfernen sich. Der Boden fällt nach unten, die Decke fliegt nach oben und die vier Wände gehen jede in ihre Richtung. Mit dem Boden fallen die Füsse. Rücken, [more]
So stürzt nichts ab, oder wir erschaffen nichts Eigenes, das einmal abstürzen mag. Wir ziehen das Werkzeug durch etwas wie eine Landschaft natürlich aufsteigender und abstürzender Bewegungen. Zwei Räume, zwei Schreibtische, unsere zählbaren Bewegungen sind das Anheben und das Manövrieren des Werkzeugs in der Landschaft ausserhalb unserer Räume, [more]
Falls es wiederkehrende Bewegungen sind, nehmen wir ihnen bei jedem Kreuzen denselben Betrag ab, oder unterschiedliche, nach einem Muster getaktete und tarifierte Beträge, je nach dem. Für jede Bewegung gelten die Gesetze der Welt, in der sie sich wähnt, wir beurteilen Bewegung für Bewegung. Manchmal sehen wir verirrte, [more]
Es stand nicht viel herum, Schränke geschlossen entlang einer Wand, im Sechsten von sieben das Schrankbett, dann der Schreibtisch, also vor allem dunkel parkettierter Boden, helle Wände und Decke. In meinem Rücken, falls ich am Schreibtisch sass, die vier grossen Fensterscheiben in ihren Rahmen, und falls ich mich [more]
Wir lassen etwas kommen, sitzen am Tisch vor dem Fenster und sehen Bezirke, die am anderen Ende der Stadt liegen, essen, trinken. Ich tue es allein. Wieder Steak, mein Wasser, und der Wein für Jémand. Ich trinke beides und esse beide Steaks. Ich versuche mich an die alte [more]
Geradeaus, am zweiten Schreibtisch, niemand. Aus der Richtung riecht es nach Jémand, oder nach saurem Rotwein. Da muss noch ein Glas sein. Es gibt einen Waschraum mit Toilette, dort habe ich niemand ein oder ausgehen sehen. Hier, zu meiner Rechten, die Anrichte mit einem Kühlschrank hinter einer Tür, [more]
Verhalte ich mich wie ein Genosse. Aber zu wem, ohne andere und ihre Abteilungen. In Treppenaufgang und Lift gibt es Möglichkeiten, meine Muskulatur ist bereit, vor allem im Gesicht. Nur verzweifelt jeder, in diesem Haus, wenn er an mir vorbeigeht, während ich bestenfalls humpeln kann. Es sieht nach [more]
Das kann ich nicht sagen, ich meine, ich möchte es nicht denken. Meine Augen verdrehen sich, oder besser gesagt, mir erscheint ein Selbstbild, in dem ich schiele. So kommt mir das vor. Das impliziert Umstände, die nur durch eine unnatürliche Haltung oder durch einen Silberblick richtig proportioniert erscheinen. [more]
Am Schreibtisch höre ich nichts, oder der Strom stört mein Gehör. Ich rolle zur Mauer mit dem Fenster, aus der Schneise der Bewegungen. Ich bin nicht sicher, ob die Kassen klingeln, oder die Bewegungen schon wieder abstürzen, das Geräusch ist schwer zu vernehmen. Jetzt hört es sich an [more]
Or did I already have this silent prejudice before really thinking about it? While I am travelling, indulging myself in a flirt with exotism, my mind is travelling into phrases, losing itself in gloomy flowery encounters of wished-for wonders. Where is the play with thoughts in all these [more]
Or was he making this up for the sake of fascinated listening eyes. Ever wondered, why water buffalo’s don’t have lower teeth and never smile as everyone around them? They used to carry men. Work for them. Maybe work with them. Once the tiger came. Of course, the [more]
(I know we agreed not to dwell in unknown places but…) He has a wonderful, round belly. No neck. And big ears. He sometimes pulls them away with one of his four hands so he can hear you better. (In India they say that you can whisper your problem [more]
Or wouldn’t they build like this to prevent the houses from being flooded during the rainy season we wondered. But as a matter of fact these houses sit on stilts, so that the Nagas can pass under them – protective snakes that are often depicted shielding the Enlightened [more]
“Do you remember what I told you to forget?” (Foreign Correspondent Club, January 31st, 23:60)
Or you can think about a dark and grey building called „The White Building“. The housing complex has space for over 400 homes and was originally built for social housing and used for artist residences in the 60s. It has turned grey with time and events. It is stretched [more]
Sweet voice: “Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, lady, buy, lady, one dollar!” A voice with an accent “No, thank you.” Sweeter “One dollar, lady, postcard one dollar.” Voice a little bit nervous “No, no.” [more]
Let’s start with the beginning. The impulse that becomes an idea, the idea that turns into form, form that is filled with more of the named-above. 60 days of virtual insanity and the hope that it might get deleted for ever or at least vanish after a sixth [more]
When you have a quality product that you’re confident with, the question of distribution appears (remember The Wire Season 3?) . You know that you have a very good product, but still you have to find a name, a brand and some kind of packaging to get it [more]
If there’s a divine jazz quintet somewhere up there in outer space, I imagine Sun Ra, Mrs. Coltrane, Mr. Monk, Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Byrd leading the rest of the players and welcome the other vibrating musicians arriving in soundscape new heavens. ‘It go Halle Berry or hallelujah‘ [more]
What is undeground if the world goes down? A question that popped up loomed inside my head two years ago. Don’t know whether it had to do with the Maya or the fact that everything related to electronic music became ‘deeper’, ‘darker’ and more ‘original’ or ‘straight forward’ than [more]
As Ladybar used to be a whorehouse, the table dance is still standing in the middle of the bar. Besides this, most of the hundred year old buildung was restored, refurnished and made into what it is now in no more than four weeks. It was just before [more]
Remember the scene in Adam’s Apples, where Ivan Fjeldsted (Mads Mikkelsen) is asked by Adam (Ulrich Thomsen) about his son and how he’s holding up with it? Ivan tells him everything is perfectly well (although his son is paraplegic, his wife killed herself after giving birth and Ivan himself was abused [more]
It’s already post seven, post-day of the sun and it’s night time again. On one side at least. We shall all rest now and delight the things we created during time and space in those sevennights. If you click on the dreamcatcher (handmade by Seraina of K-Pony) you can [more]
“Es stimmt nicht, dass ich, dass ich auf, eines Tages auf die Idee gekommen bin, dass ich meinen Beruf oder wie auch immer meine Betätigung, falsch ausgeführt hätte. Das ist, das wäre Unsinn wenn man das so verstehen würde. Sondern dass ich seit langer Zeit, danach gesucht habe, [more]
sorry, we’re closed. daytime was longer than expected, not too many 60minutes without a chit or a chat & no more muse for amusement left over. so just chill. and listen to lou bond. but never forget cato the elder: “niemals ist man tätiger, als wenn man dem [more]
Recently I asked a drummer slash producer about the best jazz drummer there is, dead or alive. I can’t remember what he said but I still recall that most of the mentioned players were already gone. But still, some of them are alive: Take Chris Dave (used to be [more]
I commercialize my thoughts by expressing one after another. When I have commercialized myself hollisticaly into this infinite allness, the rest of my wrappings will be blown into the wild and open sea where we will all meet again in an area of vasted vastness, filled with glorified [more]
I’m starting to loose my voice. time for salvia and quality music. no fancy post today, just a little pro motion: don’t be afraid, come to ladybar for any kind of jackin’, head bangin’, bouncin’ or just foolin’ around. Neevo is here (if you say quality balearic & house music, I say [more]
Leider habe ich gerade keine. Und ich muss weg. ‘Schöne’ Falls jemand jedoch doch noch Zeit findet, um sich damit auseinander zu setzen: Longitude: The True Story Of A Lone Genius Who Solved The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Time von Dava Sobel. Mehr kann ich dazu nicht [more]
today, I’ve learnt to differ between: motivations without explanations a simple past and a perfect presence hurt feelings and feedbacks unfinished and finished business faking reality and making reality taking a day at a time or less for more.
Don’t stop reading when you think I’m going into this whole realness thing again. Or Black & White. I’m just writing. Trying to find voicing words like decoding an unknown language, written on a role, hidden in a canvas(!) & understanding only by assembling without knowing what I’m actually construing. Damn, Saul. [more]
time is of the essence but not a credit. it’s just here for you and me. and the big ones and the tiny ones, until we all get a different part in this übermächtigen uhrwerk being, where most parts are already designed by nature. and if it ain’t [more]
IDM Wave stands for Italo Disco Minimal Wave. And it looks like this cover. but even more important sounds like those videos further down. Quality dance music as usually in Ladybar but this time only from a certain period of time. To be more precise: the 80ties (don’t [more]
I remember very clearly how it felt not being able to decide whether to sit or lay down, smoke cigarettes or eat any thing, go outside or stay home in my dungeon. It wasn’t really the best time of my life. now it’s a different animal, different time [more]
nuff said bout’ every thang that became reality on saturday: XXV I XIV
It was already yesterday when I began this flaschenpost about all those bigger and smaller ideas and thoughts in my head. I tried die deutsche Ausdrucksform but could not finish my mental Autobahn express ride (either I was too ermürbt or too unbeholfen). Still, I love the german language for so [more]
The first coincidences I had with classical music where on sundays, connected to the smell of freshly baked plaited loaf (or just zopf). I was around 9 years old more or less and the strings and harmonies did not yet talk to me but subconsciously transmitting those unique [more]
Western society has this spleen with getting old or dying by negating the obvious eternal ending or transition of one’s self into a holistic entirety. Usually the most obvious approach is through clutching on adolescence like some rich girl at her gucci bag she got for her sweet [more]
It seems like pure schizophrenia when I go into the desert for a week to visit my father (more about this later), make plans and play music and then show off such a stillleben filled with all this plastic & carbon before even leaving. One might think my head [more]
Have you ever paid to argue about any thing? Not the suffi kind of paying for receiving (I know, every good or bad thing has its price before hand). I’m talking dead presidents for an argument or two. Have you ever learned moves without behaviour? Or hanged yourself [more]
Have you ever dreamed the dreamers dream? I know a place close by, where dream and reality verge to each other like day and night time. It’s hard to differ but also pointless. Either you’re having lucid dreams or reality is like a dream itself. You can choose one [more]
“let the music do the talking..” like laid back. click on the bazaar if you want to hear that music. that simple.
achtung: alle analog, synthese, maschinen- und sequenzer-sexuellen menschen unter uns musik liebenden: heute abend spielen wavetest aus liechtenstein & züri von der zuki & der drumpoet community in der ladybar. das ist live hausmusik mit dem gewissen boogie und das alles vom feinsten. dazu gibt es ohne weiteres noch [more]
Pro-motion #3: OK, I don’t have like mines & valleys filled with this precious & in-apprehensible thing called time. test test, WAVETEST. So I just tell you a short story about what’s going on in a distinct district close by, just over by the 3rd bridge, where the [more]
Can You Share A Line Of Coke, Please? For A Lost And Angry Dope Fiend? Have You Ever Heard Of Dolpins? Getting High Like Post Rich Golf Teens? XIV II XIV I II III
You get up, do what you’re supposed to do, organise yourself & yourstuff. You get sleep, food or shelter, make love, music, work-out, clean up your bullshit & some other person’s dog shit. You check your social life by browsing & scrolling your humble fingers up & down, [more]
JEFFE Are you there, Counselor? COUNSELOR Yes. JEFFE I dont mean to upset you, but reflective men often find themselves at a certain remove from the realities of life. In any case, to prepare a place in our lives for the tragedies to come is an economy few [more]
nmw. lthmdtt. https://soundcloud.com/therealnamegame/w-up-f-a-catch22-o-t-22nd-m
I Have you ever heard of the Acid Test? “Also know as the ‘quick ratio’, this is the ratio of a COMPANY’S liquid ASSETS (like cash, bank balances, and easily salable SECURITIES) to its short-term debts, that is, the money it must repay other people in the not-too-distant future. [more]
So let’s keep the spirit alive. De-celerate & con-template for the time being. Celebrate tomorrow for it may never come. Reflected shadows of the past for yesterday’s new quintet has vanished into lounged horizons filled with too many impressionists. It’s time for true melancholy (sic!) & true detectives (sick!) to clean up [more]
The richest people of our time – let’s say last year – made their money with computers, software, mobile phones, supermarkets, chemicals, textiles, real estate & investments in all kind of areas. I don’t know what that means but I also don’t see the difference between 1 billion [more]
People in nightlife tend to believe they have power over time so day and night time are irrelevant. There is only party time or no party time at all. Like a never-ending loop on a record, turning around & around, up & down, creating 45 monotonous revolutions per [more]
‘It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.’ Blaise Pascal, Pensées [more]
I don’t know the numbers & statistics too well, but it started on january 6 & it ends today on march 6. If one sums up those days in between, you get more or less 60pages filled with spiracles out of my membrain. Pretty much straight from the [more]
Usually two to three days before Christmas I am overwhelmed by a very strong feeling that pops up every year. I HAVE to do Butterbredele (the Alsacian word for Mailänderli in Swissgerman, which are Christmas cookies that originate from Alsace in France). Or the world will go under. [more]
Every compulsive behavior has its own consequences – with varying degrees of severity. The consequence of my CDCCCB (see CDCCCB I) is that it is associated with a huge Pre-Christmas stress (on top of the non Butterbredele-derived Christmas stress). Well, this year, I thought about optimizing a solution [more]
Back to my roots (or kind of), in Alsace, I went with a good friend of mine to visit a common friend from primary school. Same age, same school, but different. Our friend got married about six years ago. Like her sisters, she got married to her cousin [more]
Detecting cancer with a fruit flie’s antenna. This is the title of a recently published scientific article showing that the activity pattern of a fruit flie’s antenna differs upon exposure to the odour of cancer versus control cells. In simple words, fruit flies can discriminate between healthy and non-healthy. [more]
Not only fruit flies can discriminate between healthy and cancer cells, also dogs and bees can do so. And most importantly, they can be trained to tell us whether human breath contains volatiles of cancerous origin, by, e.g., ringing a bell or flying into a given box. But, [more]
The French First Lady Valérie Trierweiler was apparently admitted to hospital when she read in a stupid magazine that her boyfriend, the French President François Hollande, had an affair with a pretty French actress. The personal bodyguard of Mr. President himself went every morning to buy two Croissants [more]
Recently I went to have a coffee with a Magrebian friend of mine. And we spoke about many different things. One such thing was the adoption of a new constitution by the Tunisian parliament. Despite the fact that Islam is the official religion in Tunisia, the new constitution [more]
At least once a week I’m completely lost during two hours: “Every mode consists of two tetrachords. The names of the modes may be the same than the tetrachords. In between tetrachords you have trichords and pentachords that may share the same names than the modes (not always [more]
Tonight I had a precious phone call. I didn’t expect this person to call me. And even less what she asked me. She wondered what I was doing in my life. Strange phone call I thought. She wondered what would be the next step. And then I told [more]
Est-ce que l’on sait où l’on va? Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, Diderot
Tenez, mon ami, si vous y pensez bien, vous trouverez qu’en tout, notre véritable sentiment n’est pas celui dans lequel nous n’avons jamais vacillé, mais celui auquel nous sommes le plus habituellement revenus. Le rêve de D’Alembert, Diderot
Lately I had a chat with someone who works in the same building than me. But in a different institute on a different floor, which is the reason why we never got properly introduced to each other. I passed by his office several times and always said “Hi”. [more]
There is a little bar close to my place that serves delicious Italian sandwiches called ‘Piadina’. And this bar is open until midnight, which appeased my hunger many times and saved me from eating chicken nuggets at McDonald’s or a Döner box around the corner. If there would [more]
I used to have one boyfriend who was my first boyfriend, a charming Swiss guy. We didn’t differ much in our opinions and “penchants” except for one thing: are woman “allowed” to work full-time (or almost) and to have a family at the same time? Of course! Being [more]
I fall very easily in a kind of semi-conscious dream state. Or I am very absorbed by what I am reading (which is why I tend to get easily frightened). And that’s a clear disadvantage with regard to public transports. And it’s particularly frustrating when it’s the first [more]
If I were another on the road, I would not have looked back, I would have said what one traveler said to another: Stranger! awaken the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued from [more]
Sometimes I wish I had the courage to leave everything behind me. To sell all my belongings. To keep only a good jacket, good shoes, a small recorder and a passport. No obligations, no bills, no office, no lab, no meetings, no agenda, no plans. To leave everything [more]
After each laundry, I’m missing at least one pair of socks. My father used to call them orphan socks. And I think that this fits pretty well. But what shall we do with orphan socks? We can’t throw them away; this would be cruel and amoral. We shall [more]
There is nothing better to recover from a long night than going really really early to bed the next evening. That’s what I did. Because I had no choice. And I haven’t had experienced the feeling to wake up in the morning awake – without the urgent need [more]
Bar’s road or Prostitute’s road? I usually choose the latter one when I have to walk home late at night. I might sound awkward but I feel safer amongst prostitutes than amongst drunken men. They aren’t drunk, or aggressive or impolite. We start getting knowing each other, we [more]
Multiculturalism: one culture, two cultures, three countries, four (potential) languages. I am not sure how to think about multiculturalism. If both branches of your family are multicultural, then great. If both branches are unicultural, mmhhhh. It depends on how much you identify yourself with each branch. It depends [more]
But what if you’ve been born into a uniculturally oriented multicultural family? And if you don’t feel equally comfortable in both branches because you’re not familiar enough with the culture and because you’re not able to communicate equally well in both languages. And, importantly, if your family expects [more]
Have you ever experienced difficulties to wake up in the morning? Have you ever ignored the snooze function of your smart phone? Yesterday, I thought to have found THE solution: the intelligent alarm function of my Samsung Galaxy Advanced. It’s so intelligent that it starts very smoothly to [more]
Will be still be able to celebrate immigrants who won an Olympic medal for Switzerland in a couple of years? Fight again mass stupidity!
While traveling to Lausanne, I was sitting next to a “modern” Moroccan couple. At the beginning of our common train ride, they were focused on their smart phone. Each of them had the newest version of the Samsung Galaxy SX and was staring at it as if their [more]
Things didn’t get better on my way back to Zurich, when I was sitting next to Algerian asylum seekers. They didn’t have a train ticket. They were drunk. They asked everybody for money and every woman for a romantic dinner. The train police had to come. They told [more]
Feeling offended by stereotypes that indirectly concern my identity, I decided to fight against my own stereotypes. The first step to fight against stereotypes is to be aware of the fact that you’re going to think or react according to a particular stereotype. This may help to avoid [more]
Tonight, I went to a talk given by Micheline Calmy-Rey, former head of the federal department of foreign affairs. Not because I’m deeply interested in politics (even though I should be), but rather because I’m deeply interested in “personalities” (or great leaders), whether they’re Nobel Prize winners or [more]
A couple of days ago, I asked a scientific group leader what he thinks is the difference between research in Switzerland and in the U.S.A. He answered me as follows: “Think of a crazy idea you may have. And of a rather difficult experiment that may somehow demonstrate [more]
They are all helpless. But I’m still going to these meetings. Because I somehow have the hope that I can learn something. All of them start with the exact same slide: the women’s quota in the Swiss academic landscape. Depressing. So what? Change something! These meetings want to [more]
I can’t stop now I have accepted the challenge to write 60 chapters on whatever for whoever. I was invited by Sandra Bartoli whose essays on the Tiergarten were so riveting that I read them in one sitting. A hard act to follow. I mulled over what to [more]
‘Upsey daisy ducksy doe that’s the way we want to go’ chants my mother as she climbs back to our apartment. We have just come back from dinner at La Palma, a restaurant by the sea where no one goes at this time of year. We were the [more]
Last night I dreamed of an old boyfriend of my sister’s. He was Irish and pronounced 3 as ‘tree’. In the dream I was looking at a greetings card which made it clear he had always loved my mother. There were kisses all over it and declarations of [more]
Today I am tapping on in the spirit of come-what-may writing. This morning’s sugar packet wisdom was Seneca, the younger, giving some good advice about the importance of daring to give time to things that seem difficult or impossible. Transforming the impossible. It’s unsurprising that motivational speech has [more]
Recently I wrote some answers to 10 questions posed by an undergraduate. This was one of the questions: Is the audience a participant of the work? Are they active/passive, and is that good/bad? I answered, ‘Yes, of course they are part of the work. They are up close, [more]
In the sixties I went to school with children of the beautiful people. Only one other mother, apart from mine, wore knee length skirts. At night I would imagine my real parents, they were young Americans with big smiles and tight pants. They were Doris Day and JFK. [more]
Last night I heard from Georg who was enquiring after my missing prose. ‘Are you ok Marcia ?’ I have been all over the place ( lit. and fig. ) I explained and thanked him for the kindness in his message of enquiry. I want to do this. [more]
I lie in bed seeing 8 on its side looking like infinity and remember first drawing 8, one circle on top of another. My granddaughter’s name begins with O. She asked me when she first realised this ‘What is the O for Marcia ?’ Indeed. She draws circles [more]
‘Everyone knew as time went by they’d get a little bit older and a little bit slower but …’ John never did. Lennon and Farquhar were two Johns who never did get old. I called my father ‘John’, he didn’t like names like daddy or pop. He loved [more]
I like Roman numbers especially ten. X looks like a letter for voting, kissing and seeing through (ray vision) . ‘On my 4th birthday I’m going to be ten’ says O for Olive and I laugh because she is serious and because choosing an age to be makes [more]