The Kakofonie 002 by Broken Dimanche Press

THE K AKOFONIE

A BRO KEN D I MAN C H E P RESS P UBLI C AT I O N

W ELCO M E TO OUR KAKOFONIE FRIEN DS

Jennifer Allen PaAl Bjelke Andersen Alain Badiou Djordje Bojic Will BURNS Darko Dragicevic Siggi Eggertson PIA EIKAAS Alan Jude Moore AGNIESZKA ROGUSKI Eirik SØrdal UK

…yes to travel across a world in which financial systems seem to be collapsing – the cacophony of the age is made up of disenfranchised voices. Of the poor. Of artists. Of people on the Left. Sent at 22:45 on Sunday Jo ker: well the real cacophony is the one you can’t hear. the financial system itself, speaking so loudly that you can’t hear it. Sent at 22:46 on Sunday dance r : Or smell. How do politics smell in Europe? Sent at 22:49 on Sunday Joke r : smells of rotten lemon in a warm gin drink Sent at 22:50 on Sunday d a n c e r: Yeah. Or rain on concrete in summertime. This issue has some traces of this perhaps: the poetry showing the individual moving through the world’s systems. The articles suggest ways of overcoming these systems. The connection with others. Courage. The everyday. Sent at 22:52 on Sunday Jo ke r: What I love about Paal Bjelke Andersen’s poetry is how these everyday things become politics when they are put in the mouths of politicians, and how it doesn’t go the other way around – it doesn’t necessarily make politicians humans. Sent at 22:57 on Sunday d a n c e r: Haider too – he was killed not by his politics but his human, all too human vices. Like a misdirected headbutt maybe? And the question – why isn’t social democracy ever going to be cool? Sent at 23:00 on Sunday Jo ke r: It’s not particularily sexy, social democracy…

Made in Berlin

NOR

B ei n g a f or ei gn er i n G er m a n y ’ s ca pita l

SER

Jen n i f er Al l en

It’s time, again, to reflect upon the past and future. While adopting the twoway gaze of Janus, I’d like to look beyond the economic crisis. Last year saw the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; let’s assess how the city has been transformed into a global hub for contemporary artists.

SER

One stinging assessment came from the German journal Lettre International, which had invited me to write about the anniversary. The issue promised essays by Boris Groys and Sylvère Lotringer along with works by John Baldessari and Mike Kelley. Instead of writing, I invited artists – mostly foreigners who, like me, make Berlin their home – to make a visual contribution. Imagine my dismay when Lettre International came out with an interview full of elitist–racist statements by Thilo Sarrazin, a former Berlin finance senator and a board member of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank.

NOR

IRE

GER

The Kakofonie is an occasional journal of art, literature and politics published by Broken Dimanche Press. Each issue takes a unique form and is generated by content from across Europe.

The Bundesbank – and many others – denounced Sarrazin’s comments, which included: ‘the problem [is] that 40 percent of births take place in the underclass [of German Berliners]’; ‘a large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown thanks to the wrong policies, have no productive function except selling fruit and vegetables’; ‘[Vietnamese] parents can hardly speak German and sell cigarettes or have a kiosk.’ The only irony is Sarrazin’s ignorance of his own background: his name is a French variation on ‘Saracen’ (Arab Muslim).

The Kakofonie 002 ISSN: 2190-4928 Editors: Line Madsen Simenstad and John Holten Design: FUK Laboratories www.fuklab.org Masthead: Siggi Eggertson Edition: 1000 www.brokendimanche.eu info@brokendimanche.eu

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These comments, however shocking, may seem irrelevant for the art world, since Sarrazin didn’t target Berlin artists, whatever their class or nationality. That may be because art is associated with upper-class culture and highend internationalism. But I’m not going to put myself above his critique of the German ‘underclass’, let alone foreigners in the city. As a writer, I’m not so economically distant from ‘underclass’ wages. As a self-employed foreigner, I’m running a modest business, too. And, quite frankly, I don’t want to live in a city where I can’t buy fruit, vegetables and cigarettes.

Liebe mich, wie ich mich lieben will! Solitäre Selbstliebe , unter uns, für alle Agni eszk a Ro gu sk i Bin ich hier? Die Nähe liegt im Abstand – so wie ich dich berühre, bin ich weit von dir entfernt und doch genau dort, wo du mich brauchst. Wir verdunsten. Irgendwo. Genau hier, wo wir wirklich werden. I Love love love this video! wurde auf einem Foto markiert. wurde auf einem Foto markiert. Wir nennen es Facebook, sprechen vom Web 2.0 und glauben, den Zeitgeist virtuellen Teilens zu treffen – wir adden ihn als allgegenwärtiges Netzwerk, dessen Nutzen sich im Sog einer Informationsmaschine aufzulösen scheint. Alle teilen sich durch Mitteilung. Endlich Effizienz, und wir meinen zu wissen: das ist nur Schein, hier kann ich alles sein. hotttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!misses+++++you little volcano!!!!!!!! Wie ist das zu glauben? Wie kann Liebe im Nichts wuchern, das Unechte so wirklich sein? Indem wir scheinen, sind: im Medium, beschäftigt mit dem Gedanken, über es zu schreiben. Das Subjekt passt sich dem Medium an, ich teile meine Präsenz und werde wirklich durch mein Als. Seltsam bin ich als ich, umherirrend zwischen mir und mir, mich haltend an dem, was ich teile. Ja, das bin ich, ich kann es dir zeigen! Sichtbar als

Beziehung, als Verhältnis, spürbar nur durch Resonanz – mein Spiegelbild, das bin ich, wie ihr mich seht. ist jetzt mit und 15 weiteren Personen befreundet. _DSC0424. wird an Zombies Geburtstagsmassaker teilnehmen. Wir teilen, ja, permanent: Teilen zu zeigen. Der Luxus des Phantasierens mutiert zum digitalen Delirium, frisst sich ein in die Einsamkeit des Ideals, das wir nun sind. Artikuliert und repräsentiert im Galopp ewiger Buchführung, der Stapel einer alles vertilgenden Bilanz im Dauerlärm. Es gibt sie nicht, die voneinander unabhängigen Sphären. Ich schöpfe mich, indem ich mich vernichte: alles produziert mich, und ich bin nichts als Produktion. Hilf ihr dabei, ihre Freunde zu finden. Ich werde Abstand nehmen, um euch näher zu sein: Ich, das ist die dritte Person. Ich, das ist mein Wunsch, der von nichts als Mangel geschaffen wird. Der Wunsch – das ist die Realität selbst, einzigartig beliebig.

Like many Berliners, I can’t afford to buy much art. Since Berlin lacks a thriving art market, many argue that the city, despite its international community, is not a ‘real’ art centre like London or New York. Yet that argument confounds old internationalism (with its stable bilateral exchanges) and today’s globalization (with its constant circulation between countries). Globalization divides production from consumption by moving both commodities and producers: from fruit and fruit-pickers to art works and artists. Indeed, that familiar tag ‘lives in Berlin’ means ‘made in Berlin’ – and likely sold elsewhere. Since 1989, the city has become to the art world what China is to world manufacturing. If globalization empties factories (or turns them into galleries), why shouldn’t it be able to transform an entire city into a global artist ghetto, reminiscent of Montmartre in Paris in the 1900s or New York’s Lower East Side in the 1970s – cities that seemed to have priced themselves out of the affordability bracket for entry-level foreign artists.

Berlin’s more than 400 galleries – both German and foreign-owned – are a testament to the maelstrom speed of globalization. It seems cheaper not only to make art in Berlin but also to put art on sale there, since works can always be owned and exhibited in other cities. Fairs are not the sole points of exchange. Berlin’s Gallery Weekend – which brings private collectors to the city for a weekend shopping trip – puts art into a ‘fly ‘n’ buy’ programme. While economics is not the only reason for Berlin’s rise over the last two decades, let’s stick with the Marxist approach. What kind of global workers are Berlin’s artists, critics and curators? German or foreign, we are closer to migrant workers than to Chinese factory hands, although we follow biennials, fairs and exhibitions instead of seasonal harvests. Yet, unlike migrant workers, we don’t send money home. Many (especially non-EU artists with restricted visas) earn money elsewhere, only to bring it back to Berlin to pay taxes. No wonder Sarrazin exempted foreign artists from his rant. How long will such tolerance last? Let’s look back, and ahead: Turks were welcomed in the 1960s, as foreign artists are today, albeit as ‘guest workers’ for Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ – until the miracle was over. Fifty years from now, we may read about artist–pensioners straining social services. Like many Germans, including leftists, Sarrazin refers to ‘migrants’ who move on like guests instead of ‘immigrants’ who stay put. In fact, Germany has no ministry for immigration, but a national ‘representative’ for ‘migration, refugees and integration’. Sarrazin – despite being preliminarily investigated by the public prosecutor for inciting hatred – was demoted rather than fired. It also seems that the Bundesbank president, Axel Weber, okayed the interview, despite publicly denouncing it. In light of these events, it’s high time for Berlinbased artists – from Germany and around the world – to unite. One advantage of living in the country – the artist health insurance Künstlersozialkasse, which is partly state-funded – came under heavy fire in the parliament last year and will again. Unfortunately, most artists in Berlin – being foreigners – can’t vote. Judging from my annual income, I don’t think taxes will translate into political power for many working in the arts. But, whatever their nationality, when Berlin’s artists work outside the city, they augment its global reputation – and have raised its symbolic value as a cultural capital in the eyes of foreigners over the past 20 years – precisely by adding: ‘lives in Berlin’. Why not make that labour more tangible, useful, pertinent and political?

Agnieszka Roguski is a writer and curator living in Berlin.

D r a f t in g

S ta ð lar og höfuðbæ kur

Ei ri k Sørdal

Ei ri k S ø rd a l Sænska sendinefndin vill láta breyta “will try” í “shall try”

The Swedish delegation wants to substitute “will try” with “shall try” It is vital to come down hard on human trafficking through Eastern-Europe

það verður að stemma stigu við mansali frá Austur-Evrópu

Jennifer Allen is a critic living in Berlin. This article first appeared in Issue 128 of frieze magazine. www.frieze.com

Djord je B ojic

but first en fyrst an exemption is crucial for the factory in Uppsala and its continued production of plastic landmines high demand in Sri Lanka has not gone undetected

þarf að fá undanþágu fyrir verksmiðjuna í Uppsala til áframhaldandi framleiðslu plastjarðsprengna þær eru heitustu lummur Sri Lanka um þessar mundir Þjóðverjar eru banana þurfi franskir bændur mótmæla grískir bændur mótmæla íslenskir bændur mótmæla það sjá allir sem tekið hafa evrópskan menningararf að sjálfsagt er að borga undir framleiðslu þótt enginn hafi borið upp eftirspurnina óspurðar spurningar krefjast oft lengstu svaranna

handan tollamúrsins situr svangur svertingi

the Germans are in sore need of bananas French farmers protest Greek farmers protest Icelandic farmers protest anyone left with a European heritage can see the self-evident reasoning: there is nothing wrong with subsidising certain production and getting high on our own supply even though nobody has asked for it unasked questions often require the longest answer outside the free-trade area a starving black guy squats

en sænska sendinefndin vill útrýma negrum, kolamolum, niggurum, surtum, blámönnum, skrælingjum og víst nokk svertingjum

but the Swedish committee wants to uproot negroes, spades, spooks, coalfaces, sambos, niggers, and sure enough black guys

úr samevrópskri tungu því formanninum finnst réttara að segja lystargóður óevrópskur einstaklingur

LI K E S BLACK S GAYS C ROWS

from the pan-European vocabulary

Eirik Sørdal works with words in Reykjavík and Berlin

the chairman thinks it more appropriate to say nutritionally challenged non-European individual

Djordje Bojic (1972—2008) exhibited work across Europe, most recently as part of the 2008 Trans-Felde Festival in Utrecht.

the courage of the Present Alai n B adi ou For almost thirty years, the present, in our country, has been a disoriented time. I mean a time that does not offer its youth, especially the youth of the popular classes, any principle to orient existence. What is the precise character of this disorientation? One of its foremost operations consists in always making illegible the previous sequence, that sequence which was well and truly oriented. This operation is characteristic of all reactive, counter-revolutionary periods, like the one we’ve been living through ever since the end of the seventies. We can for example note that the key feature of the Thermidorean reaction, after the plot of 9 Thermidor and the execution without trial of the Jacobin leaders, was to make illegible the previous Robespierrean sequence: its reduction to the pathology of some blood-thirsty criminals impeded any political understanding. This view of things lasted for decades, and it aimed lastingly to disorient the people, which was considered to be, as it always is, potentially revolutionary. To make a period illegible is much more than to simply condemn it. One of the effects of illegibility is to make it impossible to find in the period in question the very principles capable of remedying its impasses. If the period is declared to be pathological, nothing can be extracted from it for the sake of orientation, and the conclusion, whose pernicious effects confront us every day, is that one must resign oneself to disorientation as a lesser evil. Let us therefore pose, with regard to a previous and visibly closed sequence of the politics of emancipation, that it must remain legible for us, independently of the final judgment about it. In the debate concerning the rationality of the French Revolution during the Third Republic, Clemenceau produced a famous formula: ‘The French Revolution forms a bloc’. This formula is noteworthy because it declares the integral legibility of the process, whatever the tragic vicissitudes of its unfolding may have been. Today, it is clear that it is with reference to communism that the ambient discourse transforms the previous sequence into an opaque pathology. I take it upon myself therefore to say that the communist sequence, including all of its nuances, in power as well as in opposition, which lay claim to the same idea, also forms a bloc. So what can the principle and the name of a genuine orientation be today? I propose that we call it, faithfully to the history of the politics of

emancipation, the communist hypothesis. Let us note in passing that our critics want to scrap the word ‘communism’ under the pretext that an experience with state communism, which lasted seventy years, failed tragically. What a joke! When it’s a question of overthrowing the domination of the rich and the inheritance of power, which have lasted millennia, their objections rest on seventy years of stumbling steps, violence and impasses! Truth be told, the communist idea has only traversed an infinitesimal portion of the time of its verification, of its effectuation. What is this hypothesis? It can be summed up in three axioms. First, the idea of equality. The prevalent pessimistic idea, which once again dominates our time, is that human nature is destined to inequality; that it’s of course a shame that this is so, but that once we’ve shed a few tears about this, it is crucial to grasp this and accept it. To this view, the communist idea responds not exactly with the proposal of equality as a programme – let us realise the deep-seated equality immanent to human nature – but by declaring that the egalitarian principle allows us to distinguish, in every collective action, that which is in keeping with the communist hypothesis, and therefore possesses a real value, from that which contradicts it, and thus throws us back to an animal vision of humanity. Then we have the conviction that the existence of a separate coercive state is not necessary. This is the thesis, shared by anarchists and communists, of the withering-away of the state. There have existed societies without the state, and it is rational to postulate that there may be others in the future. But above all, it is possible to organise popular political action without subordinating it to the idea of power, representation within the state, elections, etc. The liberating constraint of organised action can be exercised outside the state. There are many examples of this, including recent ones: the unexpected power of the movement of December 1995 delayed by several years anti-popular measures on pensions. The militant action of undocumented workers did not stop a host of despicable laws, but it has made it possible for these workers to be recognised as a part of our collective and political life. A final axiom: the organisation of work does not imply its division, the specialisation of tasks, and in particular the oppressive differentiation between intellectual and manual labour. It is necessary and possible to aim for the

i Migh t h av e k n o W n t h e r a in W o u l D co M e

i would be walking the dogs on gréve de lecq.

I am convinced that a third historical sequence of the communist hypothesis will inevitably open up, different from the two previous ones, but paradoxically closer to the first than the second. This sequence will share with the sequence that prevailed in the nineteenth century the fact that what is at stake in it is the very existence of the communist hypothesis, which today is almost universally denied. It is possible to define what, along with others, I am attempting as preliminary efforts aimed at the reestablishment of the communist hypothesis and the deployment of its third epoch. What we need, in these early days of the third sequence of existence of the communist hypothesis, is a provisional morality for a disoriented time. It is a matter of minimally maintaining a consistent subjective figure, without being able to rely on the communist hypothesis, which has yet to be re-established on a grand scale. It is necessary to find a real point to hold, whatever the cost, an ‘impossible’ point that cannot be inscribed in the law of the situation. We must hold a real point of this type and organise its consequences.

Translated by Alberto Toscano Originally published in Le Monde, 13 February 2010. Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School

c a s t e l s a n t ’ a n ge l o

paal Bj elke Andersen

Al a n Ju d e moore

Drawings by Pia Eikaas: 1) Man With Pipe 2) Valuable Stones 3) 4 Papercuts

Pia Eikaas is Saakie Aip

Nasaret og Norge og Stiklestad og Norge og Amerika og Norge og Sunndal på Nordmøre og Norge og Norge og Telemark og Norge og Vest-Europa og Norge og Norge og Midtøsten og USA og Oslo og Nordsjøen og Balkan og Kosovo og Norge og Kosovo og Balkan og Tsjetsjenia og Norge og Sør-Afrika og Sør-Afrika.

Norge og Norge og USA og Sør-Asia og Norge og Sør-Asia.

looking down on us the pockmarked abandoned spaces of chariots and angels

Norge og Norge og Lørenskog og Oslo og Holmestrand og Oslo og Soria Moria slott og Europa og Norge og Norge og Asia og Pakistan og Norge og India og Afghanistan og Kabul og Sverige og Norge og Norge og Norge og Norge.

the heavy locked gates left behind by emperors and popes

Norge og Norge og Norge og Spania og Latin-Amerika og Spania og Norge og Oslo og Norge og Sør- og Østlandet og Sunndalsøra og Haag og Bjøllåga og Melfjord og Beiarn og Norge og Norge og Berlinmuren og Øst- og Vest-Europa og Europa og Norge og Europa og Europa og Norge og Kosovo og Balkan.

Bangladesh og Kirkenes og Kårhamn i Finmark og England og Nordland og Norge og Mongstad og Månen og Norge og Steinkjer og Nord-Østerdal og Røros-området og Libanon og Israel og Palestina og Bethlehem og Beirut og Afghanistan og Libanon og Afghanistan og Stord og Norge og utlandet.

Oslo og World Trade Center i New York og USA og Russland og India og Pakistan og Norge og Afghanistan og Afghanistan og Oslo og Burma og Norge og Norge og Norge og Midtøsten og Norge og Norge og Nord-Troms og Finnmark og USA og verden og Norge.

Norge og USA og Kina og USA og Nordpolen og Kilimanjaro og Himalaya og Norge og Bali og København og Norge og Bali og Norge og Norge og Mongstad og Kabul i Afghanistan og Deichmanske bibliotek i Oslo og Afghanistan og Afghanistan og Kabul og Meymahneh og Masar-eSharif og Norge.

from the series Empty by Darko Dragicevic

eMPtY D a rk o Dra g ic ev ic

Will Burns is a poet and song-writer from England.

The principal virtue that we need is courage. This is not always the case: in other circumstances, other virtues may have priority. For instance, during the revolutionary war in China, Mao promoted patience as the cardinal virtue. But today, it is undeniably courage. Courage is the virtue that manifests itself, without regard for the laws of the world, by the endurance of the impossible. It is a question of holding the impossible point without needing to account for the whole of the situation: courage, to the extent that it is a matter of treating the point as such, is a local virtue. It partakes of a morality of the place, and its horizon is the slow reestablishment of the communist hypothesis.

f r a t h e gr e f s e n a D D r e s s (s t e D e n e , n o r ge , 2 0 0 0 — 2 010)

on my own. He would be here, waiting for a tow truck by the side of the road, or sitting at three a.m. in a hospital waiting room, just to feel her hand touch the small of his back for a moment.

The communist hypothesis has known two great stages, and I propose that we’re entering into a third phase of its existence. The communist hypothesis established itself on a vast scale between the 1848 revolutions and the Paris Commune (1871). The dominant themes then were those of the workers’ movement and insurrection. Then there was a long interval, lasting almost forty years (from 1871 to 1905), which corresponds to the apex of European imperialism and the systematic plunder of numerous regions of the planet. The sequence that goes from 1905 to 1976 (Cultural Revolution in China) is the second sequence of the effectuation of the communist hypothesis. Its dominant theme is the theme of the party, accompanied by its main (and unquestionable) slogan: discipline is the only weapon of those who have nothing. From 1976 to today, there is a second period of reactive stabilisation, a period in which we still live, during which we have witnessed the collapse of the single-party socialist dictatorships created in the second sequence.

The living proof that our societies are obviously in-human is today the foreign undocumented worker: he is the sign, immanent to our situation, that there is only one world. To treat the foreign proletarian as though he came from another world, that is indeed the specific task of the ‘home office’ (ministère de l‘identité nationale), which has its own police force (the ‘border police’). To affirm, against this apparatus of the state, that any undocumented worker belongs to the same world as us, and to draw the practical, egalitarian and militant consequences of this – that is an example of a type of provisional morality, a local orientation in keeping with the communist hypothesis, amid the global disorientation which only its reestablishment will be able to counter.

in De X o f iM a ge s

Wil l Bur ns

She sleeps all the next day. And the rain and the drive, and the broken down van are just shreds of a bad dream for a while, at least.

essential polymorphousness of human labour. This is the material basis of the disappearance of classes and social hierarchies. These three principles do not constitute a programme; they are maxims of orientation, which anyone can use as a yardstick to evaluate what he or she says and does, personally or collectively, in its relation to the communist hypothesis.

Berlin, June 5th 2009 14:14 Every day, at least for a moment, I step out from the apartment. Sometimes I go to buy flowers. At first I always pay attention to the white flowers and if I don’t find them too beautiful, then I decide to get something else, but always in a combination with white. What I love the most are the white spaces. They remind me of traquillity and organisation, preciseness and cleanness. Like the white box of a brand new Martin Margiela’s ring. In white I can see the structures. Walls, every single line. When I think about white I think about The Repulsion by Roman Polanski. That is my white. White, long legs of Catherine Deneuve, white sink where she puts them to wet her ankles with the white foam. When I step out from white I get into grey. In between I can see a photograph with two empty beer bottles on the floor by German artist Michael Riedel.

Norge og Maridalen skole og Oslo og Maridalen skole og Norge og Bergen og EØS-området og Norge og NATO-landene og Praha og Sovjetunionen og Europa og Johannesburg og Norge og Norge og Norge og Afghanistan og Kuwait og Israel og Irak og Kuwait og Irak og Norge og Oslo og Sri Lanka og Sudan og Irak og Norge og Norge. Iran og Norge og Norge og Norge og Norge og Norge og Norge og Næroset i Ringsaker og Næroset og Næroset og Norge og New York og Irak og Norge. Indonesia og Det Indiske hav og Sør-Asia og Norge og Norge og Norge og Norge og Sverige og Norge og Karlstad og Norge og Sverige og Norge og Madrid og Beslan og Norge og Sudan og Norge og Darfur og Norge og Norge og Europa og

Midtøsten og Gaza og Norge og Gaza og Midtøsten og Norge og industrilandene og andre land og andre land og Raufoss og Karmøy og Mosjøen og Sykkylven og Norge og Norge og Norge og de fleste andre land og Norge og Norge og der barnedødeligheten er høy og der det å føde barn er noe av det farligste en kvinne kan gjøre og Kongo og Darfur og Zimbabwe og Afghanistan og utlandet. Egypt og Norge og Egypt og Spania og Amerika og England og Spania og Spania og Norge og Norge og Stovner videregående skole i Oslo og Stovner videregående skole og Månen og Månen og Månen og Månen og København og Kyoto og Kina og USA og Norge og Afghanistan og Tsjad og Norge.

along the river like robes flowing gathering in those around it small waves and currents run from the port to the colonies and back again the ghosts of well paid mourners skip across the slabs towards girls hiding out in the brothels of Trastevere home they walk sullen and slow on chipped pavements; the stench of crucifixions mixed with baking bread fish slapped across the marble dead eyes removed home they walk through the dipping lights running across the ruins down Napoleonic paths leading to the circus by the gladiator temples and small boarding houses the women in their shreds hanging from lampposts left and right the old men benched and stationary scooter boys and parlour girls waiting for instruction hands in mouth beneath the maps of the world and the standard bearer’s empty perch

Alan Jude Moore is from Dublin and his third collection, Strasbourg, will be published by Salmon in autumn 2010. www.alanjudemoore.com

n at i o n a l Al a n Ju d e moore

Berlin is grey. My feelings in Berlin are grey.

flags wave on the precipice lead down to the sound of horns and harps

Grey is the colour of my footsteps on the pavement and the colour of my paths on Berlin facades. Grey is the colour of my growing disinterest, mild absence. Grey are enlarged birds I’m keeping in a small resolution. Grey is the hole in the wall. The hole in the asphalt. Like something undefined.

unknown songs dictate the pace heavy boots thumping slabs in time

Like Catherine and me sitting in a living room with overexposed white windows while the sounds from outside are coming in. Grey are the first four floors in the Hans-Otto-Strasse 32, while the last two are black because the lights are almost always off.

flags wave on the precipice music plays from deep historic drains

Black is when I stop on the stairs to get some air. Black when I open the door, turn on the light of the evening lamp and step in the black room where the echoes of Bohren & der Club of Gores music can be heard. Black when I pour the red wine into the long glass, looking at the china figurines and once again waiting to get back to white.

Darko Dragicevic is a visual artist and filmmaker, born in Belgrade, currently living and working in Berlin.

all the time changes wrestled from the past drag us up from mudland bog and marsh

how little we know of these others these patriots using our names Paal Bjelke Andersen, b. 1966. Editor and poet. Lives in Oslo. Founder and editor of the small press Forlaget Attåt. Latest book: The Grefsen Address (Ntamo 2010)

speaking of indivisibility from out on the other side