Swimming to Cambodia

Ever heard of Spalding Gray? For The Sydney Morning Herald he is "an unholy cross between James Joyce and Hunter S. Thompson", for The Minneapolis Star and Tribune "a new wave Mark Twain", and for me he is the guy whose Swimming to Cambodia and Impossible Vacation gave me some really good hours. Here are two excerpts:

Some say that the Thais are the nicest people that money can buy, because they like to have fun. They know how to have fun and, perhaps due to their very permissive strain of Buddhism, they don't have to suffer for it after they have it.
From: Swimming to Cambodia

I was awake the whole next night straining on Air India to see anything, any glimpse of the wildly imagined landscape below. Meg slept while I pressed my nose to the window and saw a portion of my face, reflected, which I first mistook for Turkey or Saudi Arabia ...

... Like the trip from the airport into Amsterdam, the ride into Delhi was confusing; but there was no time to reflect on it. We both held on for dear life as the cab careened through streets of chaos. I only had time for two thoughts: one, how Gandhi had ever imagined he could bring peace and order to such a place, and two, that I did not want to die here and that was what I felt was about to happen.
From: Impossible Vacation

Photos & Paintings

I thought of oil paintings when I looked at these photos for the first time - a good illustration of the importance of background that my friend, the photographer and painter Blazenka Kostolna, who, this year, took some of her annual pictures of me in her studio, always stresses.

Copyright @ Blazenka Kostolna

Wir sind alle süchtig

"Nicht die Droge ist's, sondern der Mensch" enthält Beiträge von Walther H. Lechler (Nicht die Droge ist's, sondern der Mensch; Wir sind alle süchtig), W. Seidenwerth (Rückfälle und menschliche Natur), Berthold K. (Vom Nutzen der Sucht für das Leben), Ambros Wehrli (Behandlungskonzepte für Drogensüchtige), Karl A. Geck (Suchtgesellschaft kurz vor dem Entzug) und Karl M. (Münchhausen lässt grüssen) und ist uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen. Um diese Behauptung zu illustrieren, will ich im Folgenden ganz willkürlich aus den verschiedenen Beiträgen zitieren. Auch deswegen, weil ich keine Veranlassung sehe, mit eigenen Worten zu sagen, was andere schon treffend ausgedrückt haben:

"Drogen machen nicht süchtig. Alkohol verursacht nicht den sogenannten Alkoholismus", mit diesen Sätzen leitet Walther Lechler seinen Beitrag, "Nicht die Droge ist's, sondern der Mensch", ein. Es versteht sich: Das sehen die meisten im Bereich Sucht arbeitenden Menschen (und von dieser Sucht ganz gut lebenden - man denke an die Pharmaindustrie, Therapeuten, Sozialarbeiter, Politiker, Anwälte, Soziologen, Beistände etc.) ganz anders: "Wehe dem, der sich offen oder versteckt anschickte oder heute versucht, die heilige Kuh eines bereits fest institutionalisierten, wissenschaftlichen Glaubens zu schlachten oder ihr nur das Recht ihrer Stellung abzusprechen!"

Aufklärung ist von Nöten: "Die Metapher 'Alkohol' heisst übersetzt nicht allein C2H5OH oder Äthylalkohol, oder aqua vitae, sondern ist ganz schlicht Synonym von Lebenslüge, Selbstbetrug und Selbsttäuschung. Sie bezeichnet alles, was dazu dienen kann, unseren Blick vor der Wirklichkeit zu verstellen." Und was die Hilfe für Süchtige angeht, da zitiert Lechler u.a. Konstantin Wecker:

"Einem Drogensüchtigen kann man nicht helfen, höchstens Brücken bauen. Er traut nur Gleichgestellten, die ihn nicht in ihr eigenes Lager führen wollen, sondern einfach mal liebevoll die Hand ausstrecken und ihn dann auch nach seinem eigenen Willen und Weg weiterziehen lassen."

"Wir sind in dem Wahn gefangen, dass wir die Sucht besiegen können - doch wir alle - der Süchtige und wir - wissen, dass es nicht stimmt, aber wir tun so als ob", liest man bei Berthold K. Und weiter: "Der Süchtige glaubt im Stillen immer noch, dass er die Sucht in den Griff bekommt ... und so wird der Kampf der Drogenbekämpfungskämpfer fortgesetzt", obwohl: "Keiner weiss, was hilft - keiner kann sagen, was Süchtige zur Umkehr zwingt - darum muss man die fragen, die es geschafft haben." Und was sagen die? Einer von ihnen, Berthold K., sagt dies: "Ich weiss, dass meine Genesung da begonnen hat, wo ich den Kampf gegen die Droge Alkohol endgültig aufgegeben habe - wo ich auf der ganzen Linie kapituliert habe ... Süchtige geben ihr Spiel - ihren Kampf mit der Droge - dann auf, wenn kein Gewinn mehr erkennbar ist ... wenn sie etwas gefunden haben, was ihnen mehr bringt als das Spiel mit der Droge. Wenn ihr Leben wieder einen Sinn hat!"

Ambros Wehrli drückt "diesen Kampf aufgeben" so aus: "Bei den meisten Süchtigen besteht erst eine echte Chance zur Umkehr, wenn sie 'gegen die Wand' laufen, also an einen Punkt kommen, wo es nicht mehr weitergeht."

"Ich gehe von Folgendem aus", schreibt Karl Geck: "Im Heideggerschen Sinn sind wir Menschen in diese Welt geworfen und müssen, ob wir das nun wollen oder nicht, uns verhalten, Antwort geben durch unser Leben auf Fragen, die wir nicht beantworten können. Und unsere Antworten haben Folgen, die wiederum auf uns zurückwirken, unsere Realität bestimmen." Diese Antworten (und damit unsere Realität) können ganz verschieden aussehen: man kann sich mit diesem Hineingeworfensein ins Leben, mit der Wirklichkeit also, auseinandersetzen, sich ihr stellen; man kann versuchen, sie zu kontrollieren oder man kann sich ihr verschliessen, indem man sich betäubt (durch Drogen, politisches Theater, selbstgeschaffene Probleme etc.). Die Kontroll- und Vermeidungsvariante sind die beiden gängigsten; die Auseinandersetzung mit der Wirklichkeit, die am wenigsten übliche, denn diese setzt eine "neue" Art zu leben voraus. Nochmals Karl Geck: "Es geht um Veränderung, ja mehr, es geht um wesensmässige Veränderung: um Transformation."

Walther H. Lechler (Hg.)
Nicht die Droge ist's - sondern der Mensch
Santiago Verlag, Goch 2009
http://santiagoverlag.de

Luck & Talent?

Listening to the rumble of the surf he'd tried to imagine the moment when Beethoven had thought of the theme for his Ninth Symphony, alle Menschen werden Brüder - surely one of the greatest thoughts anyone had ever had. It had changed the world; the world had been just a little different after that theme had been composed. But what had happened? Where had the thought come from? He wondered if the world itself had changed, cracked, or decomposed, thereby permitting Beethoven to think that particular run of notes. Or had he, truly, thought it up all on his own? Or was it chance? Perhaps his theme was already out there and he'd only stumbled on it, like Columbus discovering America. When you got right down to it, he considered, it was the question, Did God exist? If Beethoven had merely found his theme, God must have been its true composer; whereas, if Beethoven had created it himself, he was God, or so near it made no difference. Which people hated to admit, so they thought up words like luck and talent.

Anthony Hide: China Lake

Until Today by Ralf Peters

When I asked Hatje Cantz for a review copy of Ralf Peters's Until Now I did so because I felt attracted to his photographs of petrol stations. I liked that they were framed in such a way that they seemed to stand alone out there in the nowhere, I also liked their colours, and I liked their sterility.

Since I'm not really a fan of photographs that were basically done on a computer screen (for that, to me, is painting and not photographing), I wondered why I felt drawn to these pics. In search for answers I started to read Renate Puvogel's "Towards an Aesthetic of Cycles?", a text that can be found in the book and from which I learned that Peters "works almost exclusively in series" and that his pictures "are already conceived as series when he takes them." Renate elaborates: "The series Petrol Stations is an instance of how Peters is constantly examining symptoms of the Zeitgeist. And the serial form is particularly suited to posing questions about the standardization of daily life, globalization, and the loss of identity. The sense that we have lost control over our lives, that they have been reduced to a kind of anonymity, repeatedly features in Peters's work."

While I do agree that "the serial form is particularly suited to posing questions about the standardization of daily life, globalization, and the loss of identity", I'm not really sure how this connects to a photograph of a petrol station that has been altered with the help of a computer. In other words, I fail to see how a willfully decontextualised and altered picture can be a symbol of the Zeitgeist. Moreover, "the sense that we have lost control over our lives, that they have been reduced to a kind of anonymity" did not really come to mind when I was looking at these petrol stations.

Nevertheless, there was an expression in Renate's text that I felt was capturing something essential in regards to these photographs. She writes of "this rather Hopperian theme" - solitude - that these photographs radiate and I guess that this is indeed what they convincingly illustrate.

Yet this tome not only shows petrol stations but also supermarkets, portraits by night, a series called men/women, and much more; in fact, the 198 works in this volume provide "an overview of all the artist's series from 1995 up to the present day."

The ones that I liked best are the airport series (Salta, Seoul, Sar) that show views seen through the reflective window panes (not an easy task at all) from the arrival hall. Again Renate Puvogel: "The composition makes one think immediately of the artists of Constructivism or De Stijl (despite the fact that Piet Mondrian, for example, generally avoided green). In this series it becomes particularly clear that although an individual can work by itself, a series is a better way of developing a basic idea." I couldn't agree more.

Ralf Peters
UNTIL TODAY
Ed. Bernhard Knaus
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2010

Portuguese Impressions

Ten days ago, my flight from Faro to Geneva, due to volcanic ash, did not take off. The next Easyjet flight leaves a week from now, the lady at the airport counter told me and added that I would have more options in Lisbon - and so I took the next train and spent some unplanned days in the Portuguese capital, a stunningly beautiful city although pretty much in decay, as a German tourist aptly described it. This has to do with our bureaucracy, the receptionist of my hotel said: you need permissions for everything.

Hotel breakfasts are served from 7.30 hrs to 10.00 hrs. I thought this rather late and asked how they accommodated business people who surely had to start work early. Well, offices open at 9.00, I learned, dinner is between 21.00 and 22.00, and prime time televison starts at 22.30 hrs.

Most of my time I spent wandering around town and sitting in pastelarias drinking café com leite while observing people coming and going. Two scenes I remember particularly well:

A guy, in suit and tie, in his fifties or sixties, who upon entering immediately demanded loudly a brandy, waited impatiently at the bar, got it, and gulped it down - then he was ready for church (it was across the street and I saw him heading for the door).

A young man, dressed in a sports jacket, waited in a sandwich place until the employee preparing a fruit juice turned around, then took an orange from the pile and left while several people, including me, were watching him. When a young woman let the employee know what had just happened, he just shrugged.

There must be a nest of Africans near the Praça Rossio because at one end of the square lots of them are hanging out; the few women among them, some in wonderfully colourful dresses, are sitting on cardboards under trees chatting.

In Albufeira I spoke to an African who grew up in Zimbabwe until he was 18, from 18 to 30 he lived in London and for the last three years he was residing in the Algarve. Why the Algarve? It is the closest to Africa without physically being there, he explained: the trees are the same, and the flowers, and the blue sky; also, things usually take a lot of time and rarely work very well ... it's pretty much like in Africa but safer. Similar things I heard from a British woman who grew up in Kenya.

In Faro, I asked an older man for a taxi rank. He told me (in French - in the touristic South, but not in Lisbon, most of the people, when I addressed them in Portuguese, responded in English) to come with him to the house next door but the neighbour (a taxi driver) was not in.

One morning, I walked into a hairdresser's place. The place was empty, except for the woman at the reception. She showed me her schedule (that to me looked not exactly full) and said it is full today.

Later in the day, I asked a middle-aged woman for a taxi rank. You need to call a taxi, she said, do you have a cell phone? When I said no she took me to her nearby office where she asked her boss whether he could call a taxi for me. Her boss quite obviously thought this a rather peculiar question and instead showed me a taxi rank just a few meters away ...

Last but not least, in some supermarkets I found my treasured Guaraná, a soft drink I had thought would only be available in Brazil.

Frida Hyvönen by Anna Wahlgren

Frida Hyvönen @ Anna Wahlgren

I'm not always sure why I like a certain photograph. I react to photographs instinctively and then find reasons for my reaction. In other words, I interpret, I rationalise. Sometimes, however, I do not feel like rationalising my instinct. And this was the case with this pic of Frida Hyvönen by Anna Wahlgren that, after I first set eyes on it, made me want to look at it again and again. And while I did not, for once, want to guess (for this is what interpreting and rationalising really is - guessing), I did wonder how the photo came about, and so I asked Anna for some background. Here is what she wrote:

The photo was taken at a music festival in the south of Sweden called Siesta. At that time I worked for Sydsvenska Dagbladet and covered the festival. Frida Hyvönen is a Swedish musician with a very special style. Her music has a very personal tone with thoughtful and smart lyrics. You can listen to her music at myspace. During this festival I took many concert photos, something I enjoy but it can also become very stereotypical and boring sometimes. What I like the most is to capture a feeling of the music and expressions of the artist.

For more of Anna Wahlgren's photography, go to
www.annawahlgrenphotography.com