Archiv der Kategorie: almost a diary

almost a diary, compulsory reading

Art & Life Documented (for the 11th time)

Dokumenta 11 logoYesterday I visited “Documenta11“, one of the most important exhibitions of modern art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. As the suffix 11 indicates, this is the eleventh of such exhibitions, whose broad aim is to provide either a thematic or temporal survey of modern art and artists.

I am by no means a qualified art critic and not usually interested in mostly pseudo intellectual debates about modern art. So all I can present is my opinion and so please remember – de gustibus non disputandum est.

Well. I went to D.9 and dX in 1992 and 1997. In 1992 I was a) 17 and b) went there with about 50 people from my Gymnasium, so I only remember a huge video installation and a tower constructed from wood. My overall impression was that art had lost it completely. My impression of dX was pretty much the same, I thought it was mostly bullshit presented by pretentious and impolite pseudo intellectuals calling themselves artists (note to myself: public discussion about the definition of artist necessary). The one thing I really remember was a project to have visitors paint cubist pictures and publish them online. Oh, and yes, they had living pigs to show that, yes, life can be art, too. How enlightening.

All in all, it was so horrible I did not want to go until two weeks ago, when I met this American artist Scott (can’t remember his last name) in Berlin. Scott is predominantly painting viruses. He told me that this time, Documenta would be *really different*, exhibiting lots of stuff with a *real meaning”. So I decided to give Kassel another chance.

Today I am glad I did. Scott told the truth, most of the art exhibited does have a message. As the artistic director of D11, Okwui Enwezor, holds, the underlying theme is a cultural discourse – mostly concerned with global distributive justice and the fate of Africa.

After decades of exhibiting meaningless stuff branded “made by famous artist X”, the art exhibited in Kassel is now art which considers people, politics and society as worthy of consideration. But while I enjoyed this change in attitude, the documentary character of many exhibits will again have people ask “what is art?”

No doubt, it is more important to have people watch a documentary regarding the Hutu/Tutsi genocide than to discuss the artistic value of pigs being fed by art tourists. But the question remains – is that art?

I am not going to answer it. I don’t care, as long as I like it. And this time, for the first time, I did like the exhibition. So I will again plead “de gustibus non disputandum est” and leave the discussion to others.

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almost a diary

The Human Stain.

I am about to take off for a friend’s brithday party. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll get Phillip Roth’s “The Human Stain” in the original version. There is no need to praise the book here. Others have done so exhaustively and probably better than I could. So why this entry?

Because everytime I read the adjective human I have to think about how much truth a single word can convey. On the one hand “human”, an adjective, honours all the behaviors and attitudes we aspire to. On the other, it identfies, even in a slight derogatory sense, most of those acts we despise of but accept as consequences of our fallibility. Isn’t it amazing how a single word has evolved which tells our never ending story, the eternal tension between aspiration and fallibility?

So no “stain” is needed at all in that picture. But let’s face it, while probably more sincere, “human” would not have been a very good title for a novel.

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almost a diary

Off the phone. Off the market.

I just talked to a friend who is also suffering from the current anemia of the labour market.

These days, the streets are plastered with highly qualified graduates and post-graduates from the world’s best universities. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung remarked two weeks ago the European elite is currently given the boot by the very same companies that bid up starting salaries to unprecedented amounts during the talent wars of the late nineties. So what goes up must come down? Maybe. Maybe it all does make sense. But we don’t care at the moment.

Isn’t it plainly unfair to have people spend years on their building outstanding CVs and then release them into a sluggish economy? Yes it is. But there you go. I know that markets are marvel and we all benefit from the way they work. They are not supposed to be fair to do their job. But that’s precisely why they do need a bashing from time to time, however unjustified it may be.

And if not now, when? I think I am going to help my fellow victims and go back to do my phd now. Hopefully I’ll finish it right on time for the next talent war…

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almost a diary, self-referential

Hello world.

Now I suppose that is the classic starting entry for any blog. But this is not just any blog, this one is mine. Over the recent months, blogging has become a wide-spread phenonmenon, and I have discovered some blogs to be phenonmenal context enriching sources of interpretation, knowledge, and sometimes wisdom. Since we all know that a general tendency to reciprocate probably is the most fundamental form of human interaction I want to do just that – try to add to this web of wisdom what I think I can. It will be up to you, my (future) readers, to decide whether my contribution is worth reading or even as insightful and valuable as some of the contributions I have read. The ones that made me start this blog. I will probably add links later.

This blog is called t -com (or maybe t.com, I will think about it) as an abbreviation and brand for “tobi’s communications”, for (you might have guessed…) I am Tobi or, rather, Tobias Schwarz from Germany. I think that most of this blog will be in English, i order to give my predominantly non-German-speaking international friends a chance to read it. But my comments might occasionally feature links to German and French publications.

I don’t know how often I am going to update this. I have never used a diary, and this is a bit like one, except for the fact that it is going to be less about my emotions and more about my thoughts. Therefore I think the concept fits me rather well…

It is probably too early to say that I will concentrate on certain issues more than on others. Just stick around and see for yourself.

T-com 1

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