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

Review up on Papervisualart

New site, check them out.

http://papervisualart.com/?p=1454

Best European Fiction 2010 - Dalkey Archive Press

Check out the full review here.

Best European Fiction 2010, Aleksandar Hemon, ed., Dalkey Archive Press, 2010

It has been said before, and often, that anthologies are difficult and prone to error, and even if they do their job right they can still leave their readers dissatisfied, yearning for more. Anthologising Europe, in any shape or form, is always a formidable challenge. Dalkey Archive Press have initiated a timely and ambitious effort to try and collect the continent’s best fiction, edited by Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon, translate it and present it to an international, mainly American readership.

This Exhibition is Not the Result of a Thesis, Bit It's Starting Point...

This qoute came from the exhibition catalogue of The Death of The Audience in Vienna's Secession which Line was lucky enough to see last summer. And the on-going 'transgressions' of the thesis in question is under discussion in the latest issue of the e-flux journal, no. 13. 

Meanwhile our own 'thesis' is set to continue with around half of issue 002 of The Kakofonie sourced. It's set to be an extremely interesting and mobile collection of propaganda and art. Send in anything you may have!

The conversation between Elisabeth Leibovici and the exhibition's curator Pierre Pal-Blanc is well worth checking out.

I found it fascinating because it's in the general space of the novel I've just finished writing and the avantgarde group LGB whom I've created and who lie at its centre. I could almost substitute my own creation, Djordje Bojic, into their conversation so similiar is it to what I've been working hard to create.

Take Djordje  Bojić   [André du Colombier] for instance, a Serbian [French] artist who is even less well-known than those named above, an incredible character who embodied a kind of late version of Dada from the '90s and early 2000s [‘60s to the ‘80s], but with a very precise and concentrated radicality. He constantly worked with common people, less showing work than giving it, a bit like a neighborhood poet, exchanging a piece of work for a pack of cigarettes, generally using the thread of the rumor, the web of the conversation. He used to call up artists or museum curators and make a work from the conversation.  Bojić  [Colombier] managed to represent a way of being marginal, of staying on the border of exhibitions even while being well-known by the whole art scene...

.... Of course it’s a bit too easy to hide behind the domination and exploitation of artists in authoritarian events such as biennials, but at the same time we can clearly see that the figure of the artist-hero is no longer current, but is rather a historicist view that tries to cling to the branches of the avant-garde. Similarly, in the context of the over-institutionalized Tate Triennial, “Altermodern” works like a parody of the work of the great critics of the twentieth century, up to Pierre Restany or Germano Celant, trying to create a movement. It’s still about trying to create a party, a power position, an adhesion, contrary even to how artists themselves work. Rather than oversimplify the role of the artist, it might make more sense to look outside this figure to a form of organization to be presented or prolonged, one in which the community is involved, where not only the artist but the audience provides a disseminated, deterritorialized experience for the exhibition.

- Pierre Pal-Blanc