The Aedile (Or, the best training you can do for Philosophical Football is [probably] subconscious)

The Aedile

In my dream the girl knows what an aedile is, the Roman magistrate in charge of public buildings, and our conversations are tendrils of smoke underneath the obtuse right-angles of a perfectly platinum-white ceiling. The talk is of stairways and porticoes, the oneiric potential of the edifices we live in.

        Only of course the girl has a morbid fear of obtuse angles, borne from a bad trip in the Chelsea Hotel. And: There are other worlds than what you know. Obtuse angles bred from the girth of buildings and grow is what they do: they never stop.

                                                                      So what starts as chitchat over a cigarette grows into dreams and fantasy before turning in on itself into horror, terror, the daylight delusion of a bad trip’s flashback. There needs to be laws agaisnt such things; we need to contain the buildings we meet in: we need to try and and live without them such as we try to do in our dreams.

Stimuli + Tropisms

In the beginning is movement that comes from a need, itself being curiosity or neccessity: both presenting themselves as a need borne out of an active or passive stimulus.

Tropism can be a movement to acquire something new and previously not owned, or involuntary, a forced movement due to prevalent circumstances.

Tropisms can include remizing, translation, transcoding [as in the form art takes] pliage, bricolage, cut ups, etc.

Stimuli can come in many different shapes and forms and can be active or passive.

Tropisms can also be in the form of everyday life. 

The purest stilmuli for many today is distraction: reloading of internet pages, status updates, simultaneous channels of information and communication; we do not need the face of Janus, but rather a multifaceted face of some unknown monster.

What kind of tropism is a novel in the face of such a stimulus?

Talking about The Readymades and other tidbits

Displacement Series: Open Talks

In July PISO continues the series of open conversations with invited collaborators integrated in the Displacement Project.

These working tables will be documented to create an archive that will be integrated in the upcoming exhibitions of Piso Collective and it will be available in our webpage.

Our guests for this month are:

John Holten

John Holten has spent the last two years writing the novel The Readymades, which tells the story of a group of artists that move between Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna and Paris. The novel uses a mise-en-abyme between a thriller novel and a translation of a found academic text in order to tell these artists' story. In presenting the practice that formed the writing of The Readymades, ideas of displacement, translation and transcoding fiction will be discussed, branching out to look at the art of research, recent   debates in contemporary art (and their possible use for fiction), a writer's audience in today's Europe and the impact travel and living abroad have on the fiction under discussion.

Presentation will include short readings from the novel.

Bio:

John Holten (b.1984) is a novelist and poet from Ireland. Since 2004 he has moved across Europe between the cities of Paris, Berlin, Oslo and Dublin. His fictional work has often taken the figure of the contemporary artist as its main subject matter, investigating the liminal existence of the nomad and the networked individual. His work as an associate editor with Broken Dimanche Press has also seen him involved in numerous trans-national translation projects.

Further reading:

-www.johnholten.com/lgb 

-http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2005/dec/interview_clementine_deliss.shtml 

-http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm

-www.stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=550 

-Altermodern Manifesto

-Three Ragnaröks

..................

Nina Bendzko

Bio:

Nina Bendzko studied Applied Cultural Sciences and a Masters in Creative Documentary Filming. During the past years she has worked and lived in Spain, France and Colombia, collaborating in various film projects. The most recent are the documentaries “Cuchillo de Palo” (http://www.cuchillodepalo.net/) by Renate Costa, “La Terra Habitada” (http://vimeo.com/8051825) by Anna Sanmartí and a new film idea by José Luis Guerín. Now residing in Berlin she is developing her first feature length documentary project “Zwischenräume”. 

Further reading:

-ZWISCHENRÄUME

-References

Doors open at 19:00

Entry is free.

-- 
How to find us:

Altes Finanzamt
Schönstedtstraße 7, access through the yard
U7, Rathaus Neukölln

www.altesfinanzamt.blogspot.com

The Whiff of Sulphur in the Air

I'm just back in Berlin from a week in Ireland, where I travelled to Dublin, then up to Louth, and then over and down to Offaly, before finally returning to Dublin. A lot of running around and meeting people, from Austrian embassy staff on Ailesbury Road to cement truck drivers from Armagh.

Then I went to Dusseldorf where my sister had a show opening of her latest beautiful work which moves in and around The Golden Bough. (I also got to see some of this work the day before in Dublin at the Rubicon Gallery on Stephen's Green) I then went up to crash on the couch of my brother in Oberhausen before coming back to Berlin the following day for a long weekend of partying.

I list all this not becuase this is what I normally do on my blog and any readers (if there are any) know by now that I do quite the opposite here, but because during the last two weeks or so I had the distinct feeling that no matter where I went, or who I met, I was confronted with outright right-wing rhetoric and at times downright fascism. This, needless to say, became a little unsettling. It has felt as if I was attracted to it, as if I had been out looking for it.

From people I know voting for the Conservatives in the UK elections to the simple, almost jolly, throwaway remark that 'immigrants come here and take all the social welfare, leaving none for the Irish.' To other, more stranger sights such as a father reprimanding a teenage daughter in St. Stephen's Green, on a beautiful summer's evening, my last in the country for a while, decideing to quite forcibly hit her. I mean like raise his hand high above his head and whallop the girl on the head, swearing loudly. In public. I coughed, made my presence felt. He took a moment to turn around, as if forgetting that other people may exist, and that what he just did was out of hand, before raising his finger at me and saying rather cryptically: 'Excuse me.' I don't think he was apologising.

Everything about this little act stank of what is bad about Ireland: patriarchal (the mother just stood by, looking as remorseful as the seated daugher, smoking), misogynist, not afraid to use violence to uphold 'decent morality' (yes, let's blame the fucking church), and no doubt deeply hypocritical. The only strange thing about it was that it was in public. I had also been told that the victim of rape in Listowel town is still being ostracised (for my foreign readers, yes this sentence is strange, but I'm very sorry to say I have made no mistake). And was sad to hear that the literary festival seemed to go ahead without any attempt of a boycott or such.

I could go on; it has been a strange time when people just seemed too happy to casually add a jokingly racist comment or anti semitic rant - aided and abetted of course by  Isreal's own recent actions - and it is clear that no matter how well ordered and progressive us humans can be, we are just a moment away from letting out the fascist beast in us.

To round things off I was informed of someone who gave their second vote to the NPD in the recent by-election in Nord Rhein Westphalia. The person in question maintained that their first vote was for the SPD. I don't know what this means really,  or the motives, but it put a full stop to what has been a pretty depressing few weeks politically.

At least people still smile.

And this blog post is dedicated to the Persian man who gave me a lift from Oberhausen to Berlin, for free, and shared his stories and his sweets and nuts with me.

Long live generosity!

2nd Prize Karlspreis fuer die Jugen

So yes, surprise of all surprises occured a week ago in Aachen. BDP got 2nd prize in the huge Karlspreis for Youth. They recognised the quality of our content, our ambition to question the borders of not only 'Europe' but also what young artists and writers and activists can get away with regarding preconceptions toward them and their work. Free of any big organisation - unlike many of the other projects - our work was independent and yet sure of itself.

I was delighted to get to go on behalf of the team and pick up the prize. Line gets to go to the EU parliament this autumn.

I'd like to thank everyone here who worked with us on the book. All our great contributors, our translators (Joy!), our design team, all our hosts, all our supporters, our few and very special buyers of the book, and Youth in Action for first giving us the chance to start things.

Things went really strange just before we were all due to leave Aachen. After a week of drinking and making fun around town, I woke up with no clean clothes left, unwashed hair that was in a bad need of a haircut, a hangover, and a growing feeling that they might have meant what they said about sharing the stage with the bigwigs. An hour and a half later, live on German TV, I found myself about to vomit, and with my  great imagination sat through the first half hour of the live transmission of the prize ceremony for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk picturing myself vomiting, or fainting, or simply standing up and walking (or running, why not?) out the door. I hate TV. Always have. Now I really hate it.

Who knew making books could be so surreal?

Rue Danielle Casanova

When I first went to rue Danielle Casanova I was homeless. But life was good and the swing of things went from very bad to very good via New York and back again. In the middle of listing all the places I'm sleeping this year, I think Danielle Casanova will remain hard to beat in terms of connotations, memoriesm setting. I think that's why I put it in The Readymades so much: I wanted to write about it the only way I could. Anyway, doing some half baked research I came across the above text. It's wonderful that Picabia - of all people! - lived just down the road, in I think the same building I went many a morning to buy tobacco. It was Picabia's work that started off my writing in my first story, Germania. He is, of course, big inspiration for Djordje Bojic and other LGB artists.

Tada!

First Day of New Camera by Europe's Worst Photographer

The Newspaper and The Artist

Guest blog

Cover Design - What's the Opposite of Covers Dictated by Marketing Departments?

Nice interview, that goes three ways, between Tom Mc Carthy, Dan Wagstaff and Peter Mendelsund around the Knopf cover of TMC's forthcoming novel 'C'. Interesting to hear that Mendelsund felt that it read less as a novel but more than a work of philosophy, that it left him 'changed'. WIll TMC follow up Remainder?

Read the interview  

Nice to see a designer who got so into the book and wanted to reflect that as artistically as possible with an optimal design. With Broken Dimanche we of course talk a lot with FUK Laboratories on design and I think they're turning me into the type of guy that design matters to; I've found myself interested a lot in fonts and layout. I've always been taken in by texture and constuction of books of course, but it feels like it's going up a notch.  

Why do I find a Suhrkamp cover nicer than a Faber and Faber cover? And why are Gallimard covers more pleasing than both of them?

Some of my recent words are over at Cristian Dragnea's Romanian-Spanish-French-English blog. Believe it. Outtakes from this long growing sprawl of pluralies Berlin is creating in me:

WE POETRY

Reading

I will be reading on Saturday here:

The Buntesdruckerei

Axel-Springerstr 40, 3 OG. BERLIN

I think the nearest UBahn is Spittelmarkt

At around 8pm.

The reading will take place at the bottom of a large stairwell which should be nice, and when I heard this fact I thought of Bachelard - stairs being the ultimate metaphor for life, dreams and cauchemars. I think I'll read out a philiosophy of stairs.

We say goodbye to each other at Bornholmerstrasse, we say goodbye to ourselves on the road home in loud, or first road, the road of our first darkness; we lose ourselves on it as moon alone lights stones endless and ourselves are waved goodbye to, we become one with a world beyond islands - 

                               We grow - 

We say goodbye to each other on the quay of Pankstrasse unterbahnhof and once again a train carries us away, like at Ostkruez or Gare du Nord or Oslo sentralstasjon, we go on, we carry on, with precision and ease - 

We leave each other with tears and peristalsis going wrong, at Zentral Omnibus station, airports, doorways to new homes. We walk alone and go forth and each time we think we’re joining a party that’s been arranged for us singly when really it is just a waiting group, a waiting room, in caravan, that more or less or great and worse is not for one but noone and we go on - we carry on -

                        Regardless -

Charlemagne Prize

Very honoured to have found out today that You Are Here was choosen by a couple of MEPs and the head of the Youth Council Ireland to be shortlisted in Aachen in May. The Charlemagne Prize, both for youths and elders is a very cool thing and I am down with it!

Irish winner who will compete for European Youth Prize announced

'You are here', a book project including contributions from 14 young people across Europe, was today announced as the Irish winner which will go forward to compete for the Charlemagne European Youth Prize in Aachen in Germany on 11 May.  The project, which was submitted by John Holten from Ardee, Co. Louth, brought together young people born after 1980, 'who enjoy freedom of movement in Europe and work in a country they did not grow up in.'  These young people have also grown up without the shadow of the Berlin Wall.  Mr Holten said that the project had succeeded in creating 'greater European awareness among [the] group, including people who would normally not get a chance to meet each other or publish their work together.'

 Irish MEPs Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael) and Nessa Childers (Labour Party) were members of the Irish jury, along with Jean-Marie Cullen of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI).   Ms Childers said that she was 'delighted to be involved in a competition which encourages young people to take an active interest in EU issues.'  Commenting on the point of departure chosen by the winning project, Mr Mitchell stated that 'to understand Berlin is to understand the European Union project.'  Ms Cullen said that 'the NYCI welcomes this initiative which rewards young people's creativity.'

The 'You are here' project, represented by Mr Holten will now join the winning project from each of the other 26 EU Member States at the award ceremony for the Charlemagne European Youth Prize in Aachen in Germany on 11 May 2010.  At the ceremony, overall winners will be chosen, and they will receive funding of between €2,000 and €5,000. 

The Charlemagne European Youth Prize is organised on an annual basis by the European Parliament and the International Charlemagne Prize based in Aachen.  Francis Jacobs, Head of the European Parliament Office in Ireland, commented on the range of projects submitted in Ireland this year.  He said that the 'variety of the projects was impressive' and spoke of the fact that 'they bring together young people across Europe, in order to exchange experiences and learn from each other.'

In 2009, a Polish youth project 'YOUrope Needs You' was the overall winner of the Charlemagne Youth Prize. Through a series of secondary school workshops run by university students, this project conveyed interesting facts about Europe to teenagers. The second and third prize went to projects from France and Germany respectively.

Berlin Reading in an Anagram