My precious attention

My precious attention is absorbed by scandals today. Kuśmirowski's public art course closing party at the Vogelhaus has ended with the complete destruction of the Mirabellgarten with people littering it until the sun came up and then taking a bath in the Pegasusbrunnen. The chief gardener allegedly said:“Public art - never again!“ I call at the Gartenamt and nobody knows about any party littering scandal until I get connected with Ms Sibr who says that when she entered Mirabellgarten at 6.30 in the morning the artists were cleaning up and it was „a bit disturbing“ that two of them were dripping wet from having taken a bath in the fountain. But people taking a bath in the Pegasusbrunnen happens. The artist David Q was photographed swimming naked in the Pegasusbrunnen in 1992. The secret director of the Summer Academy, the artist Stephen R. Mathewson has been witnessing real excessive parties at the Summer Academy in the past 30 years. On an excessiveness-scale from 0 to 10 he puts the Vogelhaus party at 0: juicy but tame, no blood, no fighting.

There is another boring party scandal occupying my mind. At the students home a party allegedly got out of hand with people taking drugs, nudity, carnal knowledges, destruction of the rooms. Everything sounds exaggerated like the 200 Euros cost for cleaning up. So I call the students home and Ms Leitinger says she has not heard of anything like that. Honestly I think if such a party would have taken place anywhere I would have been there myself. Since no party complaints have reached Ms Leitinger when she asks my name she immediately finds my complaint in her database that I orally brought up at the reception: the crashed fake window sill at my room that hideously injured my back, my legs and broke my left ring toe. I will send her a photo of the window sill.

Even if there was any recent excessive partying it was nothing compared to the infamous debaucheries that took place in Salzburg peaking around 1995. Hallein, the former„Loft“ in Salzburg, the former „Paletti“ (now the comparaply slick „Republic“), the former „Jazzkeller“. Real crazy parties just echoing when Ben Becker swings his naked member on some rich people's table. In the mid nineties there were house parties where everyone danced on the table naked in Salzburg, people jumped out of the window with nothing but a pair of skis on their feet a Salzburgian told me who knows all of the 16 families that actually rule Salzburg.

So with these fake Summer Academy scandals consuming my attention I am wondering how the cigarette man trick was played on me. The trick comes from theater and is always applied to distract fire police commissioners at their obligatory pre-premier inspection when there is a real risky theatre effect that the stage director does not want to have banned by the fire police. Short time before the beautiful but risky effect would be tried at the final rehearsal there would always be some actor just behind the stage who would light a cigarette triggering the fire police inspector to interrupt the rehearsal telling the actor not to smoke. The actor would then act furiously enraged, picking a fight with the fire police inspector, telling him how important the backstage cigarette break was for his performance all the while in front of the stage the risky real fire effect would be rehearsed. At the end the actor would give in, facilitating an experience of control for the inspector who would remain ignorant about the real danger.

The cigarette man trick is a model of how scandalization works. It consumes your attention like at today's staff meeting while the real issues receive less attention.

What is the real issue today?

The artist →Jessica Posner has produced a drawing of her own mind after reading the introduction to →Daniel Paul Schreber's →Memoirs of My Nervous Illness for Doug Ashford's course on the Non-Human: