been there - done that

Ever been to a film festival? I have been to the 59th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen. Normally I am saying that I am there for two and a half days (of five). In fact I always watch only about six or seven screenings, sometimes eight. And I also visit one or two discussions. This year I really tried this again, but I didn’t succeed really. Five screenings – and that was it: Two on Saturday, two on Sunday, one on Monday. And that even though I had such a wonderful concept in mind: I had just mentioned Benjamin’s “Kunstwerk” here, have written so much about the internet as something that does something to you in the past. And the motto of this festival was “Flatness: Cinema after the internet”. If you want an easy access to that, just think something like “Flat characters use machines to show (flat characters doing) things that make the viewers dull. Or flat.” Or something. But that’s not the whole truth, of course. It’s more in the way you watch, the way you behave. There are so many ways to watch a film – or be at a cinema. You know that? Fine. “Heightened absence”? Wonderful.

So I will not tell you who coughed almost in time with whom or who moved when. I really tend to think something like “Wow! That’s a good moment to leave the room!” sometimes, when somebody is simply out for the loo. Not just because this festival in Oberhausen understands itself as a political one! But yes, there is really at least one really hypnotic cognitive science piece in the program, “Shikisou” by Yota Kobayashi and Barry Doupé from Canada. And the short film called “Flatness” by Mattin has lots to say about love, empathy, soul – and machines. I am just reminded of how I spoke to a German artist last week and told him that when I had studied communications, it was an important moment for me when I realized the following: Holy shit, these cognitive science and artificial intelligence guys (profs) now also try to take over onthology! (I threw the whole thing shortly after.) But okay: I was also at the festival’s press conference for the first time and – out of boredom – wrote down some “mistakes not to make when writing”. Here they are:

- Don’t always try so hard to find things to write about that you can link to earlier articles of yourself!
- Generally don’t just see what you want to see!
- Don’t trust the press officer or the curators!
- Don’t exploit the artists or their work for your own (imagined) needs or theories!
- Don’t watch too much (and don’t write too shortly afterwards about it)!
- Jubilees are of interest for local newspapers only!
- Some screenings and movies and talks are only there to make money, not because they are worth watching/visiting!

Yes, I felt good with that. I met bright and sensitive people. I had some laughs. I liked the atmosphere. I had “Skagboys” by Irvine Welsh with me for the breaks. The sun was shining. But then I went out on Monday evening. When the real Oberhausen starts to show. When there aren’t children and students and filmmakers (morning) or just students and artists (afternoon). Here they come then, at a Monday evening: The pleasure seekers, the entertainment addicts, the people that laugh too often, the people that do not hear or see themselves, the people that are a bit one-dimensional. The perfect food for every mass media fascist. They do not get it, when they are shown that they are the same somehow – Here! Right now! At this cinema! – as visitors of a Hansi Hinterseer gig on a mountain somewhere (“Hände zum Himmel” by Ulrike Putzer and Matthias van Baaren). In fact as a viewer of this movie I was forced to listen to three Hansi-fans I felt caged in with inside some elevator cabin for about fifteen minutes! Did I laugh about them? But why does this guy next to me laugh about some Indian shaman? Does this make me feel superior? Or is he feeling superior and full of ressentiments? I guess so.

Some paper said that this year’s festival wanted to test in how far the cinema (as a location) can be the right place for films that have “learned from” the internet. Before I went to Oberhausen, my thoughts were quite clear about that. You know: Theatre, Cinema, Television, Computer. Why not be more theatrical, performance-like in cinemas again? Short films also as a part of a performance. Non-interactive (in an odd sense) installations on screens or whatever. Why should short film makers even try to evoke prosumer behavior? All they can do is show us again and again that we are being manipulated, but people often simply like it! Oh, I have been shouting here. Must be the influence of some book and some people I sat next to in Oberhausen. That’s not very professional. And my eyes are tired now. Oh, how tired my eyes are!
(See also: "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" by Phil Collins, Museum Ludwig Cologne.) ((For Thomas Dolby: Look here.))

Alles was ich warf, fing ich
Fing ich auf, fing ich auch
„Der Kuss“ – Einstürzende Neubauten

Right now I am recovering from a week full of soccer, conferences and the usual pop biz of Berlin. I have been to Akademie der Künste to reclaim not only public but also private space and wrote about that here. I visited Böll again to find out if there are nerdish subversive strategies I don’t know of - and even wrote about that for you, the dear public.

Two weeks ago I went to the annual meeting of an organization I co-founded at Ruhr Area that’s called Kreative Klasse Berufsverband Ruhr now. I wrote about and linked to that here.

The fruits of my labor in March for DJMag Germany are being described here.

And this is where I have linked to and written about some music I found in the last two months.

This project I am involved in called “fly spree – a c.i.z. compilation” has something new to offer, as well. Here is the teaser for the album and here, here and here are new pages of acts involved in this compilation-to-come, which also features tracks by projects of my Radio Gruga and “I got some software, let’s make some music”-days.

Finally: There is a new column called "Substitutes" that may seem funny. I intend to use that one to show that I haven’t forgotten about this blog here, when I don’t have much to write about or simply don’t want to.

And now I will take quite a break from all this again. Cheers!

Artists invite academics to talk about the nerd-phenomenon. It’s Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst time at Böll Stiftung. It’s a Sunday afternoon in spring, and there is lots of green tea waiting for me in the hall. Inside it all starts with a loop. The conference “Doing Nerd” is being recorded for a stream via Soundcloud, so that we have on the one hand microphone issues and radio-show like moderation and jingles here, but also slides announcing “pause” or “coffee break”. The thought crops up that one of the presidents of the NGBK, Diedrich Diederichsen, will be sitting there one day, maybe with some students, maybe with headphones on, to analyze the conference somewhere in America, or Zurich, or also in Berlin. The audience is taking notes or mainly listening. Glances here and there. Body language. Attempts to speak with one’s eyes. Especially when the speakers are in danger of making fools of themselves (or the audience), but also to show affection and approval. It’s always interesting to notice when somebody changes his or her role and takes the stage, comments on something and sits back again or simply brings water for a speaker. This may be a gift you lose when you visit too many conferences, change roles too often or never, or if you don’t know about constructivism and deconstructivism in your real life. Doesn’t the nerd give in to something without planning for a way back? Isn’t he or she first willfully, then unwillingly lost in strange surroundings? Here comes the ground control now, the nerd fishers show their tools, their lighthouses for those lost at the digital and non-digital sea. (All pictures taken at Valentinstüberl, Neukölln.)

The working group of NGBK that has organized this event shows itself very interested in notions like “dilletantes” and “virtuosity”, with the nerd being the “virtous dilettante”, somehow very amateurish, but at the same time very skilled. - I have to mention the “Geniale Dilletanten” of Berlin myself at the “late lunch”, just to show where that thought may have come from. I also have to think about amateurs who handle life and profession like method actors and about professionals who can distinguish between earning money and having a private life. – When I was at university and even years after that I had cancelled private life, so to speak, so I am not surprised to see some students act (intellectually, coldly) like there is no tomorrow, giving some people they invited a hard time. Nerds and the likes are being exposed here at times. This is partly a real-life exhibition, with some who think they can “control” this, some who know that and let it happen, some who half-know and play along, some who don’t. But of course there are also people who brought these tools with them.

Michael Makropoulos brings in a sociologist's views, partly philosophical sometimes. If nerds (and hackers, and geeks) are outsiders, outlaws, who cut themselves off from society, then how can we build bridges to win them back? Makropoulos evokes an image of people acting like astronauts, all alone and far from home, working on something that is lost – like the nerds themselves are – for society, if they don’t get the chance to come back. Of course they are brought back if the market finds something to make of what the nerd was working on while outside. And this is only possible because mass culture, especially via internet, does not only estrange people from their surroundings, but it also offers so many turning points to re-win people, often years later. Isolation is ended, the camera eye has found a “crazy genius” – and there is another small Bill Gates, who is welcomed as a pioneer back on earth. Of course Makropoulos speaks in terms of Luhmann, Krakauer and other sociologists, about “contingency” and “structural coupling”, and he states that urbanism is more or less the sine qua non, without which all of these schemes don't work. And he makes it quite clear that people who felt that free outside of society (though they weren’t really) afterwards also need some space for themselves, self-organization instead of strict schemes and authority. Most of all they need something they can relate to, so that they want to come back from their not-so-chosen exile. (Makropoulos has some objections againt Walter Benjamin's "Das Kunstwerk", which I am reading again right now. In fact I started in Essen and have just been unable to finish it in Berlin yet.)

Kai van Eikels stresses that there is a strong notion of revenge in the nerds’ behavior. There has been some kind of hurt, a humiliation that made the nerdish person draw back from society. But if the internet is at least partly a result of thousands and millions of outsider’s fantasies, then how do they react, when everything on the web goes commercial and mainstream? Van Eikels quotes Terre Thaemlitz, an outsider par excellence, who is utterly disappointed exactly because (!) there are so many paths that lead back from nerdism to society – via mass culture, sometimes even back into the mainstream. Some people draw back even more, when they find that their way back may lead them into the heart of consumerism. But they also want revenge. Their idiosyncrasies and their procrastination is only a means to this end. They are passionate, full of longing. They want to show the world who they really are. They come back with a vengeance – if they can. And they must be allowed to make mistakes then. Burroughs is quoted: “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” Van Eikels sees lots of ressentiment in nerdish behavior, thus he pleads for a sublimation of these negative feelings, partly by trying to integrate oneself slowly, by learning to adjust one’s new found skills to the “real world” of everyday society, leaving the anger and disappointment behind. With Adorno: “Wäre nicht das Versöhnende dem Zerstörenden erst abgetrotzt?”

At the end of the conference there is also some talk about political and economic institutions that seem to offer ways back: Piratenpartei, Chaos Computer Club, enquete commission. Miriam Seyffarth of Piraten even states: “Politicians are nerds.” But is she a lighthouse keeper – or is she an astronaut herself? It becomes clear that most of us are both at the same time. And we are always negotiating where and when to land. How much market, how much consumerism? Now or later? And of course we will be back in (cyber-)space again soon. For how long? Will we have changed again when we come back? Who will be waiting? Of course this may remind you of drugs like LSD. The internet is a (technocratic) hippie dream come true as well. (See also: "The Whole Earth", the exhibition, the conference in June and the education program at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.)

That (without what's in brackets) was also the title of a conference by Goethe Institut on the 22nd and 23rd of April 2013. Subhead: “Culture between public and digital spheres”. And here’s the jar: Even though a lot of the conference’s talks were meant to be about different aspects of re-occupying places (via art, demonstrations, networking), almost every moderator tended to ask the same question all the time: Does the internet help or is it even responsible for reclaiming public spaces? This is quite tiring, especially when there are people like Sherief Gaber or Mike van Graan on the podium, people who use media as a means to document protests in Cairo or to help build a pan-african artists network. These people come closest to being “revolutionary” at this conference, but they are also mainly seen as “media people” here. There is no one “from the streets” around, apart from “net activists” and artists like Bahia Shehab and Rabih Mroué you have lots of German academics speaking, from Wolfgang Kraushaar to Dieter Mersch. But of course Goethe has to deal with arts and culture (and media), as THEY DON’T DO POLITCS! (Putin will love to hear that.) But then again: Don’t interventions by artists change places, surroundings, perspectives? And can’t they bring “power to the people”, especially when in the Far East or Africa symbols and exemplary actions are so very important? (See also: Architecture and cultural heritage, suicidal terrorists, clothing, determined spaces, even apartheid at public transport services.)

When I visited the conference, my first question was: So who will reclaim these spaces for whom? What will we have after the revolution? Places full of artists? Places full of pop art freaks? Places full of citizens? Consumers? People “in function” for some western employers? Media crazy tourists like one could see looking down from the place of the conference, Akademie der Künste, at Brandenburger Tor? There were lots of people in costumes, too. Disguised. Working. Doing promotion or just clowning about. Are these people the ones the public place around Brandenburger Tor was reclaimed for back in 1989? And all these cameras! This almost feels like internet out there. And yes, Christoph Bieber, political scientist, states that the internet is no public space either. It barely ever was. And it was never free and never will be. Sherief Gaber assists by saying that during the protests in Cairo the internet was barely used as a “horizontal” medium, but mainly to broadcast and make people watch (and read) things. Maybe this is why the protesters kept moving onto the streets: They were not troubled by having to polish their image via social media. And the other way around: “You can protest as long as it doesn’t matter”, says Gaber. That reminded me of the quite laughable bicycle demonstration I had seen on my way to the academy: Berlin and its light politics on a sunny day in April. Everything is so fine, Germany is so post-revolutionary these days. When home.

“Revolutions are not televised”, states Rabih Mroué. He claims that a liberalization of behavior in public makes people shameless, losing their natural shyness and individuality, whereas it claims to liberate them, to bring them freedom. Mroué is pro privacy, he urges to redefine the internet from the outside so that it can’t steal our privacy from us anymore. Mike van Graan declares that there are never any neutral spaces, that there are just battles for spaces. And the constant changing of borders. Literally. Van Graan also stresses that in Boston as in Cairo, in Afghanistan and Israel people go out on the streets to show that they are not intimidated by their governments or armies. Dieter Mersch warns, that a mystification of the internet tends to let people lose their sense of politics and responsibility rather than helping them organize themselves to fight for their interests. All of that sounds plausible in a way, and at the end of the conference it turns out that this is exactly what Goethe’s politics are about right now: Less platforms on the web, more real life exchange.

Gabriele Becker of Goethe Cairo tells the audience, that her organization had put up a platform for activists to “support democracy”. And they shut it down before the whole thing went politically risky. She sees cultural management as the main issue for the next years, which may mean that there will be lots of cultural and pop business deals with Africa and parts of Asia to come. Johannes Ebert, secretary general of Goethe, states that his institute had become more political after 9/11. But now impulses for civil societies are meant to come from public discourses about cultural hubs. Doing this Goethe wants to push the borders of public discourse in Africa and Asia. But Goethe also offers safe physical spaces, he states, and that’s an important gift, too, of course: Goethe has its own room, Germany has its own space out there. They will be doing more “Realwirtschaft” and cultural politics in the future. Ebert almost laughs about how the UK and Germany had “virtual institues” in mind for quite some time, i.e. politics via cyberspace, no rooms in the real world. Germany won’t follow there. The opposite is true: Like it can be seen at “Mapping Democracy” in Berlin right now, Goethe won’t only export culture, but also bring “ideas” from other countries back home, Ebert announces. This also happens right after this final talk, when Rabih Mroué holds a “non-academic lecture” called “The Pixelated Revolution” in the cellar of the academy. He has brought a very symbolic story with him: The people we can watch on YouTube who film the moment when they are shot by soldiers, they are not dead, he states. But we, our souls, die “with them” as we watch how others are being killed. Guerilla war struggle is a new entertainment. A deadly one.

Served my time, served it well
You made my soul sell
Write the rules in the sky
But ask your leaders why, why?

"Live & Let Live", LOVE

What did I have in mind when I prepared for these interviews? Well, in the beginning there is always some sort of idea about what may be interesting for me as well as for the readers – about the music, the artist(s), their development, their attitude. But sometimes it’s different. For example when I had heard that the 10th Elektronische Wiese Festival (as part of Werden Open Air in the nice South of Essen – by the river, trees, blue sky I hope) will feature Monkey Maffia, i.e. one half of former Wighnomy Brothers. So we talked about how Deep House West met Deep House East, about how both scenes relate to official institutions and how we like our open airs, clubs and record stores. Another issue was how to get younger people involved in your scene without being stabbed in the back and/or having to give in to a jet set life. Furthermore: Little Boots and Thomas Schumacher have their own record labels now. She got Tim Goldsworthy of DFA and LCDSS as a producer for that. RP Boo is the Chicago Footwork guy that brings the hood back into the virtual arena. And Kitsuné conquer America without asking Angela Merkel for permission – I guess. What do I have in mind when I ask you to go out now and buy the print issue for 5 Euros? Well, it almost feels as if I have something to sell.