28 / 30 What you did not read

The last preparations are on its way. In a few hours the final exhibition will open and the summer academy 2015 will come to its end. And with it my six weeks of participatory observation. In the first light of this last day, I am going through all my notes that I took for this blog. I realize that you only read a small share of my observations, conversations and reflections.

In many cases this is probably for the better. Nevertheless I will give you in this post a little peek into some of the things that somehow did not make it into the blog. Or to say it with Bernhard Martin: “I give the illusion of being a storyteller, faking an idea that I did not have.”

(…) I met Professor Anne Koch from Munich University today. She is one of my anthropological mentors and was in Salzburg coincidentally. We drank a coffee together on the Festung. I asked her about her observations on my observations. She likes the project, but is surprised by my use of photos. “These are not illustrations, but something else.” She is right… What about the social facts? What about the persons on the photos? (…)

(…) Every town has these places where you go when nothing goes anymore. In Salzburg this place is called Mirjam’s Pub: lost souls playing darts, a jukebox and a drink that consists of vodka and Tabasco. Somebody at the bar tells me that already the poet Georg Trakl would end up here. Salzburg, even your strangest corners claim to have a great history (…)

(…) What is the problem with bad political art? It is a cheap moralization: we should be concerned! You are complicit! You have to act now! It is useful in the worst sense. It just imitates and sustains an economy of concern. Good art and good political art are concerned with something else than concern. (…)

“Not those who are saturated, happy, successful and powerful envision the new. To the opposite, new evolves from the critical break, the suffering from society, from the impotence before the state and from the pain of injustice. Mourning gives birth to the new.” (Hartmut Böhme)

(…) Gabriele Winter runs the office and has been working almost as long for the academy. When I ask her if and how the students have changed throughout the years, she responds that nothing has changed. Later, she tells me that the rhythm of the academy is different today. Before the 90s, students and teachers would spend five weeks together. Nowadays, none of the courses lasts longer than three weeks. “Students and teachers don’t have time to spend five entire weeks on one project.” The acceleration of the art world it seems has not held back from the summer academy. (…)

 “For Foster the relationship between artist and anthropologist is that of mirroring. Both look at each other as an image of what they would want to be—an “envy”: anthropologists want to be artists, they envy their freedom and openness; while artists want to be anthropologists, they envy their critical perspective, and direct access to cultural alterity.”

(…) Professional Deformation: At a philosophy conference some time I ago, I learnt that the artist is the prototype for the new neo-liberal worker. The old workers hated their work and thus had to be controlled, disciplined and punished. The artist however is passionately working. To her and to him working is not a choice, but a self-realization. Be creative, disruptive, innovative. Be your own boss. But in times of the professionalization of desire, how do you love? What happens to the amateur, the lover? Further, I am always suspicious when people are framed as prototypes. (…)

(…) There is something strange about beginning. You leave your home and comfort zone. You have to find directions and approach new people. The dust of everydayness and of your routines are blown away. And you are confronted with the failures of the automatic knowledge that governs your thoughts and observations from day to day. In that sense, beginning pulls you back into the present, into the immediate environment you are in. (…)