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]
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]
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]
After yesterday’s quite disturbing red light district experience it’s much appreciated to once more have escaped the never ending madness of the big city and experience nature and the humans connected to it through a strong bond of tranquility. It was one of these days that overwhelms you [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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
After writing so romantically about my favorite Top 5 movies last night and thinking about which one to watch… I suddenly (ok, not that suddenly) found myself in the middle of the dancefloor of the hidden club called QUIT in the heart of Pera in Istanbul, chanting the [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.
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]
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]
Sonagachi is the biggest red-light district in Kolkata and the fact that prostitution in India is actually illegal is in a stark contrast to what you see while walking through streets filled with hundreds and hundreds of girls and women selling their bodies.