the closest thing to magic

I had my first training session in moving things through thought-power. It's all scientific!

That's how it works:

First, my friend the neuropsychologist pluggs my brain to a machine while I'm thinking of certain hand movements. After 30 min. of rigorous thoughts-workout the machine has figured out the patterns in which my brain imagines these moves. Then it's my turn to train speed and strength of imagination - the goal is to reach and hold the maximum level of activation the computer has measured.

The screen in front of me shows a hand and a glass. I have to stay motionless - no blinking, no swallowing. At first, nothing happens. Then, suddenly, fueled by my thoughts, the hand on the screen starts to move, approach the glass, and take it. The better I imagine the movements, the closer I get to the glass; after a while the hand grabs the glass in a split-second.

In the end I feel like I heaved a crate of beer with my brain - without lifting a finger... Now if that isn't magic...

you can't jump into the same river twice

time.
Zeit.

Indo-Germanic:
dā. "to divide, cut, tear apart"

The "now" that is now, is no longer the same "now" in this very moment,

or:
"You can't jump into the same river twice" (Heraclitus)

However:

The "now" that was once remains unbroken in art,

or:
Heraclitus was not quite right...

Vermeer's Milk Maid

The constant flow of time in a calm flow of milk. The jug hasn't emptied since 1658.
(Check for close-up to see the impressive study of fluid in motion...)

Francesco Furini, Lucia

the smell of skin, the taste of dismissal, flicker of candles, rustling of fabric

Lucia, the saint of light, bathing in intimate chiaroscuro - between seduction and abstinence. Her charms are obvious, in contrast to her attribute, the eyeballs.

Bruno Liljefors, Jaybird

cool air, the smell of rotting leaves, surprise, infinity, fragility

The artistic point of view of a professional hunter.

Anders Zorn, A Premiere

laughter, the gurgle of water, gooseflesh, the sound of splashing and encouraging words

In uptight Europe, Anders Zorn turned portraits of Nordic "shamelessness" into gold.

it's there but it's not

Yay! I found a tutor for my thesis! Well, this announcement isn't that spectacular since sombody had to take care of me anyway. On rare occasions however, I can get incredibly resolute in the face of (universitarian) bureaucracy. I tracked down a teacher who is in fact already retired, I persuaded him due to my hazy but great ideas and he agreed to help me write my thesis after my straightening out of the concept.

Eternal growth: Francesco Zucchi, La Primavera

After two weeks of hesitant reading I'm beginning to doubt my sanity - since writing about "time" would involve a lot of phenomenology. And phenomenologists really aren't nice people. Most of them just don't want anyone to understand their thoughts. At least they don't want me to follow them. Maybe I just reached the limits of my cerebral capacity. Or phenomenology is nothing but the philosophical incarnation of a tale called "The emperor's new clothes"... Pretending to understand things that never made sense anyway... Owww - come on, let me dream....

Eternal death: Matheus Bloem, Still life

So... time... the thing is that it doesn't even exist. Although everybody knows time, it has always been terribly difficult to define what it is. Take physical time, for instance. There was the need of a precise definition of time, so we built atomic clocks. Assuming that we have 5 atomic clock and 1 shows a different time due to a technical problem. The 4 other clocks will reprehend the 5th for giving the wrong time. But theoretically, they could be wrong too. In this case, time is given through a majority of votes. Before the physicists we had ancient priests, medieval merchants, astronomers and even popes to give us time. Difining time means the possibility to coordinate all kinds of processes happening in different places. "Possessing" time means influence over work rhythms, the flow of money and goods, and many more. Ultimately, it means power over growth, evolution, and death. More power, more money.

Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano. Early study of movement: the body in time and space

So, time doesn't really exist, but it has the power to make us ridiculously wealthy if we happen to walk on the bright side of life. On the other hand it is an unsatiable Big Eater - nothing can withstand it. Pretty impressive for a nonexistent thing, eh?!
Have you ever tried to picture time? I mean T-I-M-E; not a clock or a number, your wrinkles, children growing up, the four seasons, an hour glass or the expiry date on a yogurt. Try it. I bet it won't work. Time ultimately needs space to be grasped by the human mind. Time has to be imagined connected to an event or an object, otherwise it remains an empty formula.

How about the ultimate absence of time? Ever tried to imagine that one: eternity? Or, worse: eternal space? A friend told me that his mother comes close to black-out every time she attempts thinking of the endlessness of the universe. Well, it is a brain twister...

to whom it may concern...

Thoughts from this morning's walk to university:
I'm thinking that I don't like to see chocolate-Santas sold in the middle of October.
I think that I like how the old guitar-playing cowboy in the city looks at me every morning with this knowing smile, without knowing me. I like to smile back.
I think that I should discipline myself to look the beggars in the eye.
I'm thinking about how I live my life: being thrown into the unknown by an astonishing security net, making it more solid every time I fall back. So the trick is the jumping!, I grin and I walk past a ticket shop...
Un ballo in maschera, I'm thinking about me in a black dress, gold, velvet, an orchestra, and then I remember two black and silver masks, the Night, a crazy Frenchman, an asylum, glittery stars and a crazy croud.


Then I think of Victor and Ingmar, who kept me busy one year ago - this year it was Otto... I remember being undetermined whether I should be homesick or not. Approximately one year ago I was cooking a huge pot of pumpkin soup that would change my life.

A potage might be a strange symbol for this past year, but that's just what it has been: warm, rich and very filling. Thanks to all the responsibles, but especially to the one who added the piri-piri.

what's behind it?

What's inside?

Mary Kelly's lighthouse of feminists' experiences

I've been thinking for a while now how to write about what I saw and learned at the Documenta 12, a big exhibition of contemporary art in Kassel, Germany. Time to write it down before the memories fade completely...

As usual, I already forgot most of the names and all the "important" stuff. What I remember quite well, though, is a way of thinking, a state of mind and the kind of bliss resulting from heavy intellectual labour...

I remember a group of people under the guidance of an admirable teacher, getting cerebral exercise in onion-peeling; finding layers within layers, within layers, within layers...

I remember being more than relieved to find myself with people and most of them not confusing their dislike of a work with its being art or not.

I remember thinking, rethinking, twisting things, looking at them again and again, feeling - really dissecting them... Asking zillions of questions:

Simple questions, but hey, once you start there's no stopping: What's the artist's object? How is it transferred? Why this way? Why not another? Do you actually understand the accompanying text? [good one!] Where does it come from? Where is it going? References? Memories? Facts? Beliefs? And - in what way can a museum destroy art?

I remember transformative experiences: meeting a work of art, not understanding it, and stepping away an hour later being all enthusiastic. I remember going to bed at night still brooding about something I saw, or heard, or felt, trying to catch it and find out what's behind it...

I also remember tired feet, an ugly city including pretty depressed looking people, a yummy turkish dish (forgot the name again...), cheap beer from plastic (?) bottles and lunch packages made from the hotel's breakfast buffet that fell apart in their paper wrappings after being tossed around for hours in our bags. Oh yes, and long busrides...

Alexander in battle, mosaic from Pompeji -
a still familiar viewpoint of history...

... transposed into "magnet" by Simon Wachsmuth
"Where we were then, where we are now", 2007

Celestial Teapot, 2006/07

Lukas Duwenhögger's proposal for a memorial site for the persecuted homosexual victims in the Third Reich