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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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 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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
www.whyhaventweseenanimageofthewholeinter.net
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]
Persistent at the heart of reality is an element that is explicit to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG78_q4CMpc
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]
What does one wish for at age 97? Mary Anthony wishes to see Kyoto. Because it’s old. Like it used to be. Not like the rest of modernized Japan. (Mary Anthony has never been to Japan except on layovers.) Alternately, she’d like to go anyplace cold and old. [more]
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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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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 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]
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]