A violin case lying wide-open,
broken-backed filthy and discarded on the pavement and half-filled with
rain water, somewhere down the way here on Rheinsburger Strasse.
Late afternoon, once the obligatory downpour is done, we see the Thomas Hirschhorn at Arndt & Partner.
A sign on the door says its not suitable for kids but on my quick
inspection I miss the images that are *really* unsuitable (colour
inkjets of internet pictures showing grisly corpses, probably in
Iraq - faces shot to pieces, entrails wrapped around sticks, limbs
hacked off). We're in there already before I realise.
Its
a good piece I think - long thick lengths of cardboard constructed
'tree trunk'/ intestine/pipeline making their way thru all the rooms,
obstructing ones progress, a series of large fireplaces spew detritus
of timber and other stuff all over the floor making progress even
harder, books are piled here and there, whilst smashed phones and
computer elements (screens, keyboards, mice) are all parcel-taped to
the walls here and there and what clear space remains is scrawled all
over with marker-pen graffiti in red black and blue. A huge density to
the text itself. Slogans, out-of-context words, mad phrases, many
repeated so often that they become scrawl or meaningless scribble. Much
of it is ersatz-political press-release-ese; phrases that seem to float
around the war in Iraq - 'containable situation', 'sustainable democracy scenario' and 'regional interests'.
The rest is less nice talk - more bitter rumour, rant, paranoia and accusation; "Can't get in. Can't get out. Can't get in. Can't get out. Can't get in. Can't get out"
it repeats at one place. In another spot who-ever has been writing
stuff has given up and simply tried to cross out a wall-mounted clock
using spray paint, a big crude black X running right across its face.
In yet another there's a scrawled version of the sign you often see in
bijou antique shops - 'If You Break It You Pay For It'.
I guess that just about sums it up with Iraq.
M. came out saying 'bleak, bleak, bleak..' but he seemed to get something from it.
S. for his part took one look at the first set of extremely grisly
images (taped at intervals along the twisting tree-truck/pipe-line
structures) and looked back to me.
"Dad, these pictures are Horrid." he said.
I laughed (trying not to make it worse..). "Yes. They are.. Maybe don't spend too long looking at them.."
"OK" he said and with no sign of trouble, dismissing the pictures with the single word "Horrid"
he went back to the game that he'd already invented, playing
stepping-stones along the cardboard circles that Hirschhorn has taped
at intervals on the floor. Amazing. I found something very resilient,
very optimistic in that. Later we read some parts of the text together
and talked about it. All fine.
What I liked about the piece is that its hard not to be in it - you
are in it in fact, as soon as you step through the door. It surrounds
you with itself, with the knots of the situation, with the horror of
it, with the discourse around it, with the impossibility to escape and
with the literal problem of navigating a space that is extremely
barricaded, made difficult to pass through. I'd seen a related piece by
Hirschhorn in New York some while ago (a year or more?) and hadn't
liked it that much - I think because that one so dwelt (and relied) on
the same kind of war-images from Iraq, screaming with a voice invoking
their authority and authenticity, but also, in a troubling way,
underscoring their redundancy. In this more recent piece (Stand Alone
it's called) the reliance on the images is not so great, though they're
there in the background, like a serious toothache. Instead the
experience; ugly, disconcerting, rather total and immersive, is as much
about space and language, about ones physical presence as a
body/thinker/witness through language as it is about some kind of
confrontation with 'the truth' or 'the evidence'.
The image is one of several of Stand Alone at Hllr's photoset on Flickr. Some rights reserved (see here for info).
> I couldn't bear the thought of another woman having your child.
Torrential rain in Berlin, alternating brilliant sunshine. Corresponding dips and hikes in the temperature.
Yesterday at some pretty haphazard Wall Museum with the kids. Strange
arrangement of random artefacts, photos, texts. At some point for no
reason that I would grasp the focus shifts from 1945 and 1953 and 1989
to a room devoted to 'Religions Of The World'. Its a temporary glitch
tho - before long you're back to the rooms featuring models of the East
and and the West, photos of wall construction, bona-fide chunks of
graffitied concrete and the hollowed-out Trabants and improvised
aqualungs that people used in escapes.
What stayed with me was the whole genre of photos showing people just
after escape - earth-covered men and women blinking in electric light
on emerging from tunnels, two families stood next to the home-made hot
air-balllon they flew over the border.
Best of all was the whole string of shots of people smuggled out in the
trunks of cars, or people emerging from them or people stood proudly
beside the cars in fields, driveways and garages - drivers and
escapees, proud, pleased, dazed, numb. Adults playing hide and seek.
Pictures taken to mark the moment, to prove that this happened, a
certificate of some kind. In some cases the eyes in these images are
blanked out - like in personal-ad sex pictures, or as if they were
innocents caught by accident in pictures of criminals and whose
identity must be protected.
More than anything else though all these pairs of people stood next to
cars or clambering inexpertly from the trunks, look like they're in
clumsy publicity shots for a set of strange deconstructed magic-acts. A
series of drab magicians lacking glitzy costumes, all photographed in
black and white, with their grinning but dazed-looking assistants stood
next to them, gesturing prouldy to their dated, home-made automotive
disappearing cabinets. A kind of old urban magic.
A beautiful combination of vagueness and super-concrete detail in Tony White's great new story at 1001 Nights Cast, Barbara Campbell's project which I wrote about already here with some thoughts about my own most recent contribution. In Tony's story Ahead in the Line
men whose names you don't know are telling tales that the narrator can
only half-remember as they wait in some kind of line for something that
you don't really get to the bottom of but which you intuit is probably
horrible.
Most
of the time you're filling in narrative blanks, running scenarios in
your head about possible contexts/ relationships/contents. All the
while you're addressed as if you were a visitor from far away, for whom
common sayings or phrases need gloss and explanation. Even the
narrators voice might best be called enticingly unsteady; oscilating as
it does between thick and thin, contemporary and slightly antique. But
there's really more than enough in the constellation of details coming
out of the fog, and the constant gaps in information, for your
brain to get to work with.
"There was a funny story too – I can’t remember. Something about a
woman and her daughter. I think the daughter was this guy’s niece. Who
was telling the story. And this was when those wretches were going from
door to door. And they had no respect at all."
This one reminded me, although it's very different, of M John Harrison's stories for the 1001 project, especially his first, from the prompt Cocking A Snook,
in which the narrator seems to overflow with details about a situation,
but on the other hand utterly neglects to give any kind of overview. He
generalises a lot too, in description, which is beautifully
disconcerting - "a man" arrives in his room in a "long house", "figures
in authority" do certain things in the corridor just outside and a
radio plays "the local music", where we can't possibly know what kind
of music that means or what kind of authority these "figures" have over
what. Very wonderful and funny and deadpan. Taken together its a
picture that's totally in focus some places but murky and blurred in
others. You're aware of vivid detail, but lack much solid framework to
put it in. The world comes out of fog, or emerges through a
constellation of points and shadows, or is discovered like a gift only
half unwrapped, or an object wrapped hastily and inexpertly in rags -
in some places you see precisely what's there, other places you can
only make out forms, shapes and structures that must be guessed at.
"It was impossible to calculate how many rooms there were in the
long house. This information was known only to the figures of authority
who often squatted in a line along one side of the corridor eating a
vegetarian meal."
Watching Bloody Mess last night in Toulouse I felt like I'd forgotten so many
things. At the end I walked around the stage and took more pictures of
the shredded tinsel, strewn popcorn, spilled water and beer, boiled
sweets and other stuff that's littered everywhere - detritus of the performance.
The popcorn, sweets
and tinsel against the black floor look so like galaxies.
my main impression of the audience was a constantly changing glow of
faces lit up by their mobile phones as they were checking the time. I
found myself whimpering like an 8 year old at one point in what felt
like a free fall of lack of interest - but a couple of vodkas in the
bar nearby seemed to help - a bit.
F. describing life in general at the moment:
no big stresses besides the usual bike
falls, benzine flares, lost keys, learning how to be
loved, shopping at german discount shops, etc, etc...
Some spammer/robot inserting random text after the usual gif with info on unmissable Cialis/Viagra/Stock Exchange Options:
We are the civilian contingent - representatives of the town intelligentsia and merchants.
The caller can disable this behavior by setting bit 3 in DX.
RSS feed
Its
a good piece I think - long thick lengths of cardboard constructed
'tree trunk'/ intestine/pipeline making their way thru all the rooms,
obstructing ones progress, a series of large fireplaces spew detritus
of timber and other stuff all over the floor making progress even
harder, books are piled here and there, whilst smashed phones and
computer elements (screens, keyboards, mice) are all parcel-taped to
the walls here and there and what clear space remains is scrawled all
over with marker-pen graffiti in red black and blue. A huge density to
the text itself. Slogans, out-of-context words, mad phrases, many
repeated so often that they become scrawl or meaningless scribble. Much
of it is ersatz-political press-release-ese; phrases that seem to float
around the war in Iraq - 'containable situation', 'sustainable democracy scenario' and 'regional interests'.
Most
of the time you're filling in narrative blanks, running scenarios in
your head about possible contexts/ relationships/contents. All the
while you're addressed as if you were a visitor from far away, for whom
common sayings or phrases need gloss and explanation. Even the
narrators voice might best be called enticingly unsteady; oscilating as
it does between thick and thin, contemporary and slightly antique. But
there's really more than enough in the constellation of details coming
out of the fog, and the constant gaps in information, for your
brain to get to work with.
Watching