It had been arranged about two weeks ago that I would have Easter lunch at my mum’s—my parents are divorced—but on Wednesday I called my mum to ask her for a favor. Said favor was whether she could buy a book I needed for school downtown, which is a two-hour bus ride from where I live. She said she would try. So Thursday I called her to check on that, to which she responded with tons of excuses and told me she thought I was calling to go visit her. I said I had tons of stuff to do for school, reading that book for the next class being part of it. She got mad at me. I get a bit scared of my mum when she gets mad at me and avoid confrontation even if it’s just on the phone. So I didn’t call her and decided that if lunch plans were still on, she would call me. She never did. Sunday morning arrived after a hideous food poisoning on Saturday and I woke up to my dad’s “goodbye.” I didn’t understand. I assumed we were spending Easter together since my mum hadn’t called. He assumed I was still going to my mum’s. He left to his girlfriend’s house so he wouldn’t spend Easter alone. I was then left alone. My mum called at 2pm and asked whether I had eaten with my dad. I told her my dad wasn’t home. She sounded off but I didn’t want to ask why as I usually would. She told me she went to the Fire Ceremony and whether I remembered when we used to go together. I said I did not. She felt sad at that response and told me that I used to love it and that I always wanted to stay near the bonfire. I said I bet I did because it sounds lovely. She didn’t say a thing about lunch nor tea but she did say my sister was going to study and have tea at a friend’s. So no Easter plans, I thought. I then Facebook chatted with my sister. Me: No plans for Easter?—Sister: Mum’s husband’s offspring are coming at 5 for tea. You should come.—Me: Mum didn’t say anything about it and I’ll be late because I haven’t eaten yet and it is a 2 hour bus ride there. She said you were going to a friend’s.—Sister: Haha yeah. I won’t be there. You should go. mum thought you were coming for lunch.—Me: But you didn’t have Easter lunch and mum said nothing about the tea and I didn’t call because she was mad at me about the book. And you won’t be around, which sucks.—Sister: That’s because mum and her husband were arguing so they didn’t know what they would do. Dad then sent me a text around 7pm asking if I was home or went to mum’s, saying he was visiting granny at the nursery home. I answered: “Home”. He answered: “OK. I’ll be back soon”. He got back two hours ago. Didn’t come to my room or say a word to me since he arrived. I remember Easter when I was a child. My grandma would order a huge beautiful open Easter egg, with colorful lovely decorations, and a stuffed bunny inside waiting for me or my sister to hold it once it was time to crack open the eggs. I remember my mum preparing a nice lunch. My grandpa would come from Uruguay (where my mum is from), my other grandparents would come over too and also my aunt. We would eat pasta or chicken or both, we would celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ like a family was supposed to in the 50s. Together, portraying happiness and unity even in if my parents were arguing about whatever silly stuff they would argue about before everybody arrived. Then we would all enjoy the warmth of the autumn sun and maybe play some ball in the garden. Today I found myself eating homemade pasta leftovers I made for Friday night dinner and watching Mad Men, trying to catch some of that sometimes necessary make-belief hypocrisy thinking we are happier than we are as a family; staying together through thick and thin—and also spending Easter with Don Draper, because he is as lonely as I felt today due to miscommunication, individualism, Ayn Rand, and the loss of family values.
lord maxwell of the manor flaum
in blind fits of manic decay he shreds the fabric of his day with restless anxiety that his friends do not have enough of whatever it is he insists they need … he is crippled and deformed and enormous he buzzes and vibrates and hops and bangs around with a 1000 tentacles of mind and pink jostling webbed appendage time ever quickening and running out is greeted with the addicts optimism and disbelief on his noW! XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX ??????? he is spending the last of his paycheck on a vintage telecaster because he is firmly grounded in his presiding belief that he should always have what he wants and that the glory of bruce springsteen for example is still looming large just under his hat w/love and certÄfiable “prestige” . (hypnogogia and taste) lord maxwell of the manor flaum Ä.Ö.K.
I first met Aggie virtually, through Twitter. We had many things in common, one of them being my ex boyfriend, who had gone on a date with her way before my time. There is something mysterious yet inviting about her, maybe it has something to do with the fact that she is very talented in a humble, quiet way. I finally met Aggie in the flesh a couple of days ago, only to find that I will never be able to put my finger on what it is that makes her so alluring. I will continue to pursue this quest, and so should everyone who comes across her. Not often does one find a pretty girl with interests and curiosity, or a sense of humor, perhaps because these are not expected from her. In Aggie’s case, beauty is frequently overshadowed by substance, which is why her self-consciousness is nothing but an obvious miscalculation in her perception of the world.
Thoughts for food. That must be one of the best titles for an artwork in the world. Thoughts for Alex Turgeon. He’s been known to call himself “CEO of Me” on gchat, a joke that encompasses our contemporary condition in 3 words. The guy is going places. General Fine Arts. Lately his beard has expanded and he’s been doing these amazing poetry readings (no correlation). I saw him do one performance involving a metronome and when it was over I shouted “again!” by accident. Sonic puns, visual puns, linguistic puns, personality puns. He has this one cropped sweatshirt that never fails to impress, and in the summer he wears white shorts that look even better when dirty. One work he made called Best Friends (Diptych) was a necklace for the gallery ceiling, a half heart dangling from a thin chain down between gravity’s clavicles, nearly grazing the floor. I like to think he wears the other half of the heart underneath his cropped sweatshirt while working at the studio. I don’t remember which day we met; it’s like we just bumped our bikes into each other on Kottbusser Damm. Actually, if I’m being honest, It’s like I purposefully bumped my front tire into his rear end at the stoplight. It’s what we call a “friend crush.” I think he and I speak exactly the same level of German: we get the sound but not the rules. Once we spoke German on the phone together. It was the only time I’ve ever felt fluent.
I was first enamoured by Elvia’s “My Girl” charm when we met amongst the nicotine vignettes at the basement of Times, or was it within the mix of the social cocktail of the Schinkel? Perhaps most likely over a communal wine bottle adjacent to the Spree, I think we both feel most at home there. Whichever the truth, no matter as our friendship began seamlessly as though it was willed into existence. Elvia offers an effervescence that, whether it be a familiar face amongst the crowd or her diplomacy during a Knödel crisis, never ceases to amaze me. I am always in awe of her productivity, bouncing through one professional field to the next, all the while with the ability to squeeze in creativity and to start back at it again when Monday rolls around. We both hate Mondays and we both have a knack for anxiety during the best of times. From organizing panel discussions, composing digital literature and criticizing architecture to rom-coms and chicken wings, Elvia is still able to make the distinction between pussy drama and pussy logic while swapping dick picks over a pinot grigio. There was this one time when Elvia hosted an impromptu pre-game birthday celebration for me in her white cube apartment (seriously a cube), and in the height and heat of our boogie woogies, at the strike of midnight, a bottle of champagne on the table popped all on its own, ushering in a new year for me as me, and as a sign for one of many more with Elvia. This summer Elvia will be participating in a two-month residency on a secluded island where there is no internet, she will be greatly missed, R.I.P.
Photo by Clemens Jahn
(Or, how to commit Beamtenbeleidigung – insulting a civil servant – without paying a fine.)
Yesterday, at the finance department in Berlin, I asked the official processing my tax forms if she knew why Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor of self-immolation fame, had set himself on fire. “No,” she replied, her red pen scratching the boxes I’d failed to fill in on my application. She, like many state employees whose misfortune it is to interact with hapless citizens, didn’t display a particular fondness for questions; and I, I had already given in to bureaucratic fatalism and was planning my life on the run, as a low-income accidental tax evader. “Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire,” I said, “because of the infinite arbitrary cruelty of petty bureaucrats.”
She hadn’t yet heard that version of the “Arab Spring.”
Now she knows.
“When you are coming from a war zone, you can’t tolerate dead time. The most important thing is to start rebuilding something,” says Bashar Tamawi, a 33-year old urologist from Syria, who is currently holed up at an asylum center in Berlin-Gatow, pending his second court date. It took Tamawi three months to get to Berlin from Deir Ez-Zorr, where he performed over a thousand surgeries in a field hospital, only a stone’s throw away from the front line and often without electric power and sufficient medical supplies. The German authorities, some of whom may themselves in future require Tamawi’s services, e.g. for a prostate exam, should allow him to begin rebuilding a new life without further delay. And I should stop making references to prostate exams when talking to German asylum bureaucrats.
Tamawi’s asylum hearing is next week. The case worker who questioned Tamawi in Berlin promised him (and me) that it would not affect his asylum application if he detailed how he entered Germany. This is untrue. According to the Dublin convention, asylum seekers can be deported to their first point of entry in Europe.
Here is a wonderful profile of Tamawi from Wednesday’s Die Taz.
As Murat proceeded me and named his first and excellent post on 60pages ‘Crisis what Crisis’ ( after a superbe Supertramp Album btw), I couldn’t help but had to find another title for my first post in ‘Countries in Crisis’ about Turkey. See above. Istanbul is where I reside right now besides Berlin and I went through the weeks proceeding the local elections and am now going through the aftermath of the outcome. The title popped up my mind immediately and of course I wanted it to name the same because this title is so gripping and befitting for the actual situation in Turkey, post elections. In a nutshell: the ruling AK Parti with Prime Minister Erdogan won the local elections and manifested their status quo with a raise in percentage of votes. Erdogan declared these elections not as the communal elections which they were supposed to be but as the elections in which the country decided whether he is going to stay in power after last year’s Gezi protests and the huge corruption scandal which evolved within the ruling party. Well, he is staying in power and his revenge is bitter! Some people are beyond happy with and are very responsible for the outcome because they voted relentlessly for Erdogan. Some are saying that this period is the worst nightmare that this country is going through (sooo wrong!) and some are saying ‘Crisis what Crisis!’ because it has never been different and will never change, they say. Thinking that elections will make radical changes in democratic societies is the underlying misapprehension. Elections may shift power structures but they are not changing them. Either they are there or they are not. If the past months since the Gezi protests in Istanbul showed something it is anything but the predominant power structures occupying turkish politics. The young folks and majority of people who occupied the Gezi park for a couple of weeks and took their anger to the streets in order to be met with disproportionate violence by the police don’t have a party as their voice. Most of them (but not all of them) were either a-political or weren’t interested in participating in extra-parliamentary aka alternative movements or were involved but got frustrated because of the belief that nothing will ever change. This has many reasons which I can comprehend and retrace but for me it causes a lot of questions and concerns when I want to show my solidarity wholeheartedly. For me especially one reason always bothered and will always bother me: A lot of people were oblivious to the fact that there is an ongoing political and military ‘confrontation’ (to put in an euphemism) for almost 30 years in the east anatolian pre-dominantly kurdish region of Turkey. To explain this conflict would exceed these pages but to name one fact: more than 30.000 people were killed in the conflict and only recently a supposed appeasement strategy has started. For a very long time this didn’t bother too many secular or religiously conservative young or old people in this country who weren’t kurdish. Kurdish-turkish people weren’t allowed to speak their language, listen to their music, express their political opinions, assemble in associations and so on for ages. Only recently the situation is changing and kurdish people are granted more rights and self-determinative power. Only recently means: since the ‘evil’ AKP is in power and opened the peace negotiations. To stand up and take your discontent to the streets is something I support wholeheartedly because I did it for the majority of my life in Kohl and post-Kohl Germany as a leftist person. Leftist organization and opposing the conservative governments also has a history in Turkey but this history is soaked with blood by three military coups. Following these coups people got estranged of taking sides, showing their political viewpoints upfront and got a-politicized to the fact that they couldn’t care less when an inner war is going on in their country and thousands were killed. It were always the ‘others’ never themselves and now that the wind has changed the urge to change something emerges. Yes, something has to change but is not the fact that Party A has to go in order that Party B has to come. My viewpoint post-electorial is this: The country was ruled by secular conservative militarist bozos for the majority of time since the founding of the republic. The kemalist republican doctrine was used a political and strategic instrument in order to enslave the citizens and make them forget the loss of their civic power in a democratic society. It screwed people’s minds severely and the effects are still prevailing. The oppression, prosecution and killing of thousands and thousands of political and religious dissidents in the name of Atatürk and the kemalist doctrine for the entirety of the republic has left a severe trauma and mutual mistrust among the people. I am nothing but a critical thinking person but in my opinion this is the root of a majority of problems which are encountered right now. Anything else is make believe. This got already too long as my first post but will elaborate soonish.
Elena Meilicke
Jane and I first met in the fall of 2001, at Cookies in Berlin, immediately striking up a close friendship – so close that some time later, at a Le Tigre concert, roadies videotaped us and asked for how long we had been going out. We hadn’t, not in that sense – but we were to go to many places together. We took the same courses at university and I remember us sitting through endless lectures in German literature: stuck in a not yet renovated auditorium of Humboldt University, with greenish paint peeling from the walls, and a faint, but distinct GDR smell in the air, we’d spend hours passing notes back and forth, scribbling Riot Grrrl slogans („Pärchen verpisst euch, keiner vermisst euch!“) and practising Chinese characters. Jane wrote little nightlife columns for a leftist newspaper on the side, passionate and poetic miniatures that captured both the frenzy and melancholia of Berlin nightlife, before taking off for Beijing where she became a DJ herself – Girls & Horses being the name of her act. Today, Jane works as a writer and translator, and continues to live life with enthusiasm and joy. She possesses a huge capacity for friendship and a radical openness for whatever great things might come along, while at the same time cherishing small things with loving care and attention: the old china from her Dresden family, neatly arranged on white cupboards, or the wide array of succulent plants she smuggled in from Los Angeles. Her small apartment is a baroque cabinet of wonders, and sometimes Jane strikes me as a modern day, big city, very benevolent witch. Now that Jane chose to swap the meek pleasures of a Berlin spring with the exotic promises of Hawaii, I rummage through the many little gifts I received from her over the years: tiny erasers in screaming colors, a ton of mix CDs, and postcards from all over the world – covered in wild and bulgy slopes, a deliriously expressive handwriting I can’t stop being hypnotized by.
Elise’s Swissness (what a tongue twister) is hard to pinpoint, maybe because it has been partly obscured by her London years (or her years in Barcelona or New York). Since she moved to Berlin a couple of months ago (after we both had spent some time in the waltzing city of Vienna), I have become aware of an accumulation of Lausanne expats that seems to be constantly hosting lovely dinners or performances consisting of picnics and sunny afternoons. Elise seems to be immediately surrounded by a large gang of fabulous friends and collaborators in every city she goes. She is a freelance curator, artist, writer – in itself an act of constant defiance against the forces of economics and pragmatism – and is one of the most productive people I know, despite or maybe because of the dinners and picnics. Collaboration and communal thought are at the centre of her endeavours. She is massively committed to her work, to people, ideas, and I hugely admire her sensibility. She gets up at ungodly hours in the morning and makes poker-face fun of me sometimes for being constantly anxious. Once she told me about a conversation she had with an ex-lover in the bathtub that changed her life, because she realised that she could be whoever she wanted to be.
Since March 2014, Elise Lammer is artist-in-residence in Marfa, Texas. Together with French artist Pauline Beaudemont, she is currently conducting a research on the city’s mystic and subconscious history. She also plans to kill an old pair of Chelsea boots while hiking through the desert.