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]
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]
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.
The text Brittany posted today from across the ocean (hey Brit! How are you? I miss you!) on authorial omniscience reminded me of something William Kentridge said in a workshop a few weeks ago: That it sometimes takes years for him to realise what he was doing with [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]
(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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
Wenn es schnell gehen muss: Fertigpizza Ungebügelt in den Schrank Kurzhaarschnitt Plagiieren Ich lass’ das jetzt so
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]