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]
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]
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 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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.
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.
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).
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]
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]
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 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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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.
Normal filming routine, Cologne. A Glass of Water, the star of the film: Die Einsamkeit des Killers nach dem Schuss.
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]
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.
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]
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]
Vorbei an Lichtenberg, auf gerader Strecke. Im Kofferraum Sedum und Wisteria, Für dieses Jahr das letzte Grün, das ich vergrabe.
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]