Day 159: Back in Germany

Mes amis digitales,

I have officially set up camp for the next few weeks in my mother’s house and while I am trying hard to get work done (and I will need to get a lot of it done), it is always rather difficult to not just sit around and relax, or play with my dog in my mother’s beautiful back yard. Just to give you an idea, I posted some pictures I took last night on flickr. They should appear soon in my sidebar (bottom right), or you can click on the link in the sidebar (“more photos”) to get to the cerebraljetsam flickr photos (or click this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cerebraljetsam/).

The flight here was quite an adventure. The food on Air India was actually great (if you like Indian food, that is, of course). I had lamb curry and it was among the best airline food I have had. Sadly, the aisle seat I had reserved apparently went to a higher bidder, so I had to sit smack in the middle of the middle row (oh, yes, the best seats on any long flight). Initially, I was glad that the people sitting next to me were small and skinny (something that cannot neccesarily be said about me–well, it is not that I am fantastically large but about 200 pounds @ about 6″1 just need a little more space on flights and am always uncomfortable, since the seats are too small for me). The initial excitement about the small people next to me faded very quickly, though, as the older gentleman on my left quickly colonized my space in a quite spactacular manner (probably thought I was British and launched a spatial payback-campaign). Pressing my arms tightly against my torso in order to leave him some room (“he’s older, let him have his space,” I thought) apparently still was not enough and so the nice older man began to elbow me (with a very skinny, thus pointy elbow!) in the arm and ribs, a workout regimen he surprisingly was able to keep up for the entire flight (scared of thrombosis, I assume–I was tempted to point out that the complete anti-thrombosis package should also include kicking me in the shins). In addition to this I had three little children behind me who kicked the back of my seat for about 7 of the 8 1/2 hours of the flight. At one point I almost fell asleep, an action that, of course, needed to be immediately corrected by the passengers surrounding me. In this case, the person correcting it was the child behind me who tried to climb on top of my seat (I had gotten used to that spiel at that point), slipped, fell and tried to secure himself by holding on to my hair. Good stuff! So much for sleeping. Needless to say I spent yesterday catching up on sleep and only got to set up my workspace this morning.

But I do have to say that I am quite relaxed, even after just one day of being here. The weather is nice, I had some good food, some good beer, went running/hiking with my dog and spent three hours napping while “watching” yesterday’s stage of the Tour de France. Today it’s back to work. I’ll keep you posted on the events over here, including my confrontations with small, old men.

Day 130: Brian Walker

I kinda like the work of Sydney-based artist Brian Walker, even though it sometimes painfully reminds me of Cindy Sherman’s PoMo trash I dislike so intensely. Pictures like the one below, however, often seem strangely outdated, as the whole cyborg wave has not been theoretically interesting any more for at least the last decade–but there is something strangely anti-futuristic/nostalgic about these photographs (i.e. an element that undercuts the Haraway-chic that has become so boring and politically useless) that makes them borderline interesting to me. In other words, as illustrated by the image below, the cyborg component is removed from the focus of the work and is replaced by the retro-directed focus on the fruit loops and the yellow drink–it is not a depiction of liberation/addition but rather of loss, which is precisely why I am interested in Brian Walker’s work.

Day 49: The Unbearable Purposefulness of Noah

I know probably most of you have seen this by now. I am still wondering about something, however. About once a month I watch this thing again and contemplate the problem of teleologies and stable life narratives in present society, as well as the affect that is attached to the idea of purpose and the necessity of articulating the self in relation to, or by means of a  teleological narrative. Can it be this easy? Is this why I want to kill myself every time I watch this?

Strange.