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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

      Beirut. Blue linen, sandy leather.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

“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

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]

Marseille, 2013

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]

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]

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.

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]

A Frenchman’s declaration of love to Brooklyn

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]

Berlin. It’s queuing an hour and a half before Berghain on a Tuesday night, to see Darkside, aka Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington, knowing that the show is sold out, but there are fifty tickets left at box office. It’s counting the people in the line before you, [more]

I don’t have eyes like a swan, the boy used to tell me. But I persisted. Initially, I was unsure. Too feminine of a word to use it as a compliment for the boy? But it was true, eyes like a swan: dark round brown, definite against the [more]