subtruth

When the head of the oldest global criminal organization comes to your town, you know you’ve got one thing to do:

But actually, it was today, some streets away:

Source: Tagesspiegel via Fefe
Background: 2500+ cops for 15- persons

Meanwhile, in Tunisia and Egypt, people show a courage and a determination that have not been seen in the Western World for a long time. If you think this has nothing to do with the situation there, you may want to read this article by Umair Haque, who is not exactly a paranoid leftist. Indirectly, the current situation in the Arab World / North Africa opens some interesting questions about our hypocritical “democracies” as well. Their long support for Mubarak and others playing in the same league is just the start.

So when will our time come when the ratio turns to 15- for 2500+? Probably when we will have learnt to (better) link facts together.

edit (June 2011): first confirmation: Spain. More to come, i assume.

The daring Berliner KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the enigmatic Meir Eshel aka Absalon until 20 February 2011. The most impressive floor is the first one, where Absalon’s most accomplished works stand: his 6 Cellules (Prototypes) are like living spaces squeezed to the very minimal spatial requirements – none exceeds 8 square meters. Claustrophiles, rejoice! But don’t think this is meant to help you live a happy isolation: Absalon, otherwise not much of a talker, saw them as intrinsically urban and as a way of “living the social”. He originally planned to install them in six big cities and actually live in them. Their economy of space forces you to adapt to an economy of movement. What would this mean for your mind and thus for your relation to the others (= the city)? Is reducing to the core a way to reach social purity?

On the other hand, with all this crampedness and extreme functional reduction, it is hard not to think of the bunkers of his native Israel or of an experience in hardcore Bauhaus gone wrong. Is it a cynical critic of the hostage-taking of architecture that is dictating to us all the dichotomy of in/out, as the spatial branch of authoritarian social conventions? Or, more broadly, an offensive against the spatial dimension altogether? I would be inclined to favour the latter, as I also see it in the video Bataille, featuring the artist in a desperate fight against invisible enemies in an invisible perimeter – or against the perimeter as enemy. Absalon, an exemplary soldier who quitted his military instruction one year before its official end to build a hut by the sea and read Nietzsche certainly had some demons to tame and seemed to have found his way, literally a constructive revolt. He died with 28 and unaccomplished but thought-provoking works. Space has won this battle.

There is not much biographical information about Absalon online, as far as I can quickly search. The usual Wikipedia articles are but mere listing of his works. This page from the Centre Pompidou has some bits and pieces, but it is obviously in the sexy language. No, not Hebrew, the other one.

On the way to May Stirner, it was autumn. Some trees would not believe it, others had already resigned to its undeniable light.

Past the flea market with its usual amount of astonished tourists and yuppies taking themselves way too seriously, the streets emptied as one came closer to Stirner. It is a calm part of Berlin Mitte, away from the hype.

After the portal, people wear the faces you would expect in such a place. It is beautiful in the discreet October sun. A walk through the whole length of the main alley, some steps to the left, you will then find a small bench under a tree. Next to it lays Max Stirner.

It has been 154 years already. You cannot miss him, as his gravestone is rather large, although as unostentatious as you would expect from him. It faces Bernauer Straße, almost directly against the open air site of the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer. This means that, if it never moved (which is most probable), this gravestone witnessed the construction of the Berlin Wall and its consecutive history directly at its feet, so to speak. What would Max Stirner have thought of that, he who loathed any kind of boundary?

If you cannot pay him a visit at the II. Sophien Friedhof, at least do it on Wikipedia. Hopefully you will realize how our current times miss personalities like his.