Something spooky and beautiful for Hallowe'en. Be sure to click on the tiny crosses at the top of each photo, and look closely.
Ring in the new year, y'all...
From Ostblog, another amazing link: DDR-Bilder is an exhibition of photography by Hans-Joachim Helwig-Wilson from 1958 to 1961. Organized by the Commissioner for Stasi Documents in Berlin, the show offers a visual description of Berlin just before and just after the construction of the Wall.
In German AND English! (haven't read the English text yet, though)
Kicking Ass , a blog sponsored by the DNC, reports that the White House has edited its website to keep search engines from archiving pages on Iraq.
A convenient way to keep people from comparing old versions of pages to newer ones. Is this revising recent history?
via Random Items.
I just had a look at my alma mater's web page, which has finally been redesigned, something it desperately needed. But I noticed that the title now reads, "A Great Place to be Smart." Huh. Did I feel smart there?
I've been waiting for all the summarizing critiques on Kunst in der DDR to come rolling in, but they're taking their time. Meanwhile: the AICA (international art critics' association) proclaimed KidDDR "exhibition of the year."
The Berliner Zeitung wonders why the show was so successful:
Möglicherweise...war die Anziehungskraft so stark, weil es die letzte "DDR-Schau" war und jetzt endlich der Zaun weg ist - für eine gesamtdeutsche Bilderausstellung. Dann könnte man endlich wieder richtig streiten.
I don't know if that's the reason the vast majority of the 210.000 visitors went, but I admit that I'm curious to see how things go from here: what will the first "Gesamtdeutsche" exhibition look like? How long until it happens? Who will organize it? Where will it be shown? What kind of conceptual framework will it have?
(site mostly in German)
This is quite an improvement over the old site design. Includes book reviews, an exhibition calendar, and the all-important "career-outlook" page (for German jobs, natch).
Portal Kunstgeschichte
What's the state of feminism and art? Artforum tells all.
Adrian Piper's contribution made me think it would have been fabulous to be a fly on the wall during the discussion from which the 9 essays were reworked. Huh.
The Next Documenta Should be Curated by an Artist, according to some at e-flux, which is offering opinions on the subject by various artists. I had a look at Martha Rosler's:
Right now there is a protracted tussle within the art world over a basically conservative aestheticism, a refurbishment of Kant, and the more conceptual-rationalist work from the latter part of the past century. So far, this aestheticism is less hysterical and precious than the other fin de siècle aestheticism, but its intentions are just as revanchist, and pernicious. Documenta needs to evade this temptation; the last two curators did a mostly excellent job of this, but this job is obviously too big for one person, and there are always sub-curators, assigned to sub-regions, I suppose. This means regional factionalism and favoritism, inevitably subverting the grand design with outrageously extraneous inclusions.
It's a big hairy job.
Today we bought a 12 pack of... .::Drum Roll::. ..
First taste tests suggest that it's not bad, and that we'll make it through twelve bottles with no problem. It is not, however, a great beer, which Shiner Bock definitely is.
At 120 calories (vs. Bock's 143) it's just not really worth it to me to sacrifice on the taste. In terms of numbers, after something like the sixth beer it would start to make sense. Or not make any sense, more likely, because I wouldn't be able to see straight, light beer or no.
Anyway, we thank the Beer Goddess that She put Shiner, TX so close by.
Well, we went to the Alamo Village and saw Kill Bill. I don't know what to say, except that everything people are saying is basically true. It is terrifically violent, and really gruesome in its detail. I had to look away a number of times.
There are some seriously wicked fight scenes, even with a bit of fantasy choreography, which I loved. Unfortunately, I don't know all the film references he was playing to, so I can't talk about that.
Given the rather thin story and the graphic (in several senses of the word) way it was delivered, I don't know—there was something kind of cartoony about it all. I found I couldn't be upset about it afterward. It had none of the gutwrenching chill that some of Tarantino's other violent visions have.
Watching it was sort of like a whallop over the head with no bump or bruise afterwards.
Mel Gibson's Jesus had a bit of a run-in with the forces of nature, apparently. He wasn't hurt seriously, so I feel I can extract some smug satisfaction from this incident. Is that cruel of me?
via pullquote through artnotes.
My final thought for today: Albrecht Gehse has painted Helmut Kohl's portrait, "wohl wissend," says the BZ, "dass dieser Kanzler a.D. der deutschen Einheit und Vater der europäischen Verbündung in kein zeitgenössisches Medienformat passen würde."
Ugh! Poor Gehse. Lucky Helmut. So much could be said about an East German artist depicting THE West German chancellor überhaupt, but I won't do it now.
If only someone would publish the image!! Anyone want to sneak in there and take a snap for me?
Here's the painting. and here is der Spiegel's coverage. I had to chuckle: the author writes:
Fast alterslos wirkt er darauf, mit listigen, warmen Elefantenaugen. Und fast schwerelos. Denn das, was Christoph Stölzl sehr charmant als "karolingische Statur" beschrieb, die Kohl'schen körperlichen Ausmaße nämlich, ist in dem Bild nur sehr dezent angedeutet.
Charlemagne is rolling right now.
Walter Womacka, an artist who was a popular favorite in the GDR and whose work still graces Alexanderplatz (see here and here), will be given two shows this June. One a retrospective (will they have "Junges Paar am Strand", supposedly the best-known GDR painting ever?) and the other a show of his recent work. See the MOZ.
I really hope I get to see both shows. Womacka's use of color and "plakative" representation made him the target of his more avant garde contemporaries, and I have to say that from about 1959 on his work is pretty romper room. But Womacka is an interesting study in popular art, and a few works in the Nationalgalerie are from the late 1950s are quite interesting: see "Rübenhackerinnen" from 1956.
It's worth mentioning, I suppose, that Womacka wasn't included in "Kunst in der DDR," which effectively suggests that what he made wasn't in fact art per se. There's the trouble with the conception of that show: not enough context. Even including someone like Womacka as context would be better than leaving him out, wouldn't it? He was cited in a wall text or two, I think posited as something the Berliner Schule (Metzkes et al) were reacting against. But that's not the same as having a picture in the space.
Ariana wonders, ...WWGD? Which is to say: What would Clement Greenberg do? I'm not sure I think this does the old guy justice but it's still funny to me; and what would be even funnier is if, as she suggests she might, she presents us with WWGD sometime soon (Must have Griselda!).
Marike made an interesting comment on the possibility of Westalgie: West German leftists recalling Berlin in the good olde days when it was an island of radicals.
And then Andrew wondered in a later post (which I think I accidentally deleted!) whether there were older instances of Ostalgie: previous examples of longing for the East—maybe not the communist east, but something else far-from-here. Maybe he'd like to restate that original idea in response to this post?
I wonder if you combine the two things—nostalgia on the part of Western Lefties for the good old days, including, for some, the GDR, whether it could be understood using ideas applied to orientalism? I know people have already dealt with the West German leftists' attitude toward the GDR: but something like a division within the West German left, to the effect that some thought the GDR was "das bessere Deutschland" and some thought it was a failed approach to Communism/Socialism, or that neither of those systems were desirable, anyway.
Today I had a look at Ostblog's Interview page. Tom writes very intelligently about what it means to reevaluate the material and public culture of the GDR. On his own site, he says, he strives toward "value-free remembering," or recalling how things were without making any judgements about them.
Durch die relativ begrenzte und über Jahrzehnte fast konstante Produktpalette der DDR entsteht für ehemalige DDR-Bürger eine hohe Identifikation mit den Objekten und alltäglichen Dingen. Da diese dingliche Welt quasi über Nacht verschwand, wird sie für viele zu einer fast mystischen, heilen, vergangenen Welt.
Mein Ansatz ist das möglichst wertfreie Erinnern. Also: Was war und was war eben nicht...
He sometimes reprints older magazine articles in order to reconstruct old "stuctures of thought," to illustrate particular discussions. I think this is a really useful approach for understanding various modes of thinking in the GDR—if only from the side of official discourse.
Die Artikel aus Zeitschriften verwende ich, um Denkstrukturen aufzuzeichnen. Bestimmte Themen, die man dem Osten heute eher absprechen würde, wie z.B. Umweltbewußtsein, Werbung, technologische Leistungen, Computer etc., waren durchaus vorhanden, wenn oft auch aus anderen Gründen und mit anderem Vorzeichen als im Westen.
I can't explain this one. But it's excellent and strange.
h 3 ^ Z ] T t h 7 & 1 m H W ( # K ] q w h i Y T k 2 U 8
postscript: I am so out of touch. Apparently this has already made the rounds. But it remains very cool.
In Friday's Berliner Zeitung Eckhart Gillen asks,
"Verschenkt die Nationalgalerie mit der kontextfreien Kanonisierung, mit dem Verzicht auf historische Zäsuren, Auf- und Abbrüche, auf das Politische schlechthin, nicht gerade die Chance, das Besondere, ja das Aufregende dieser Kunst herauszuarbeiten?"
This has been the question I've posed to myself many times in considering the show. On the one hand, I understand the importance of finally allowing these works to function as, well, works of art. But they are so bound to their historical situations. As is any artwork. The wall texts never gave me enough information--and I already know most of this stuff. But maybe that's part of the strategy: assume that your audience has a certain level of knowledge about context and eventually, it will?
Gillen is an art historian deeply involved in writing the history of GDR art.
Read more: Selig in überzeitlicher Aura
Kommentar: Good bye, Osten
Ostkunst, letzter Aufruf
Der Osten, ganz nah
As the Kunst in der DDR show closed this week, I've started looking around for the press's final commentaries on the show and its implications for East German history. Here are the responses from the FAZ, the Berliner Zeitung, and the Tagesspiegel.
Commentary to follow once more of the papers have spoken.
We have befriended a feral cat, one of many in our neighborhood. Our descent into becoming attached to this kitty began with feeding, progressed to playing chase-the-string, then to patting. Now she sometimes cruises through the house if we leave the door open for her. And we named her: Tiny. Where will it end?
OSTBLOG collects relevant news items pertaining to the GDR and its current reverberations. The motto is "nix ostalgie|nix ddr-show|lesen-sonst nix."
I like what he looks at. (Especially the advertisements. For all my attempts at objectivity, I never said I didn't have a GDR material culture fetish.)
While I haven't yet had time to collect them, I am about to choose some of the better (read: more frustrating) responses people have had to the news that someone wanted to build an GDR theme park in Berlin. Apparently this was the news story that got a lot of non-Germans thinking about Ostalgie.
Every response registers disbelief that people could be nostalgic for a repressive system, which the GDR most certainly was. But I doubt that it's the state apparatus that people are longing for. There were ways of living in that system, types of community or support networks that were somehow unique to it. Those who felt they belonged to that community are really missing it now. I don't just mean the fact that everyone had a job, or that childcare was easily available or other positive aspects of the socialist system (with the necessary caveats concerning the drawbacks of such state-sponsored social programs). I mean a sense of belonging, perhaps springing especially out of that particular type of adversity, which in the "integrated" Germany is totally lacking.
Digging around in the archives of "Die Zeit" I found a very early (so it seems to me) use of the word "Ostalgie." (Lots of the people I've been reading treat this term as if it had sprung fully-formed out of the ground just months ago.) In this article from 1996, "Was das Ostfernsehvolk gerne sieht - und was nicht", Christoph Dieckmann was meant to describe "What the Saxons like to watch" on t.v. At the moment there's a lot of discussion about the Germans "new" love of sanitized versions of East German history on t.v. Turns out that it's been around a long time:
Am 4. November 1995 vollzog das ZDF endlich die deutsche Einheit. An jenem Samstag abend gelang in glückhafter Weise die Vermittlung genuin ostdeutscher Lebensart an ein gesamtdeutsches Massenpublikum. In Thomas Gottschalks Sendung "Wetten, daß . . .?" war der 69jährige Erich Schwarz aus Schnepfenthal/Thüringen geladen. Dieser tat vor aller Augen, was er zu Hause heimlich tut, und trat trotz einer Rückgratverkrümmung binnen drei Minuten einhundertmal mit dem rechten Fuß an den Querbalken über der Wohnzimmertür. Diese Darbietung am sechsten Jahrestag der Halbmillionen-Demonstration auf dem Alexanderplatz gab exemplarisch Auskunft über Leistungsbereitschaft und Freizeitverhalten der Ostdeutschen. Gottschalk lobte Erich, nannte ihn "fit wie ein Turnschuh" und fragte den von Beifall Umbrausten, ob er daheim in Thüringen wohl wen zu grüßen wünsche. Trotz einer Sprachstörung stieß Erich Schwarz hervor: "Nürnberg!" Dafür gab's 4000 Mark. Dann kam Michael Jackson.
Later, Dieckmann relates a story about an acquaintance, a story that in many ways sums up the necessity of the "Selbsterfinderisch," or "handy," in everyday life in the GDR--as well as what happens when what was once necessity becomes obsolete.
Einst, Ende der achtziger Jahre, befand ich mich im Besitz einer Schwiegermutter an der Ostsee. Sie war in zweiter Ehe vermählt mit Sigi, einem besonders enthemmten Exemplar der Spezies DDRHeimwerker. Sigi wollte ganz Heringsdorf mit ARD und ZDF bestrahlen, was bislang an der Erdkrümmung gescheitert war. Nun fällte Sigi im Garten die Obstbäume und knallte einen fünfzig Meter hohen Stahlrohrquader als Kollektivantenne hinters Haus, um im Verein mit dem Berliner Fernsehturm die Erde terrestrisch zu entkrümmen. In anderen Orten empfingen die Bürgermeister im Frühjahr 1989 anonyme Drohbriefe: Ohne Schüssel auf dem Dach fällt die Kommunalwahl flach. Was Sigi damals ersehnte, hat er bekommen: Westfernsehen. Doch auf Sigi unerklärliche Weise ist nun auch der Westen DDR: der Staat von hier. Das Drüben fehlt, das Jenseits zu hier, die Alternative zum hiesigen Tag, und somit die alte Zeit. Das ist Ostalgie.
I always wondered what I could use all those photos of flowers for: blog filler!
This is from the Charlottenburg Park, Berlin, sometime in Fall 2001.
Since I haven't added any kind of 'about me' type of description to this page yet, I thought I'd explain the name of the blog. hem is my nickname from somewhere around the 6th grade. It's just my initials, but somehow it stuck. Only a few people call me by it anymore, but somehow I'm amazed that I have any nickname at all (as a kid, nicknames seemed so cool to me).
In German, "Hemmungen" (as the subtitle states) are inhibitions. Seemed like a good combination of ideas, since often my mode of operation is one of struggling over one intellectual inhibition after another. Not so inhibited in other behaviors, just in...well...thinking.
Frau Wolff at the Archive of the Academy of Arts first directed me to Perlentaucher. I'm mostly interested in the survey of the cultural news sections of the major German newspapers, "Heute in den Feuilletons." How else can one keep up with them....
Andrew posted a comment which directed me to a very thoughtful article about the recent German phenomenon of Ostalgie.
While I'm still trying to figure out what Ostalgie actually means for the Germans, I also find myself wondering what it means for US commentators. More soon on the reception of that German behavior in the US.
I can't resist pointing out that the Guardian has wondered, "Can anyone be truly confident, knowing what we know about Ostalgie, that in a few years' time Iraqis will not themselves be gripped by something that will inevitably be dubbed Saddamania?"
Holy Smokes.
Is that a reasonable (or useful) comparison? Seems like we're dealing with two entirely different regimes, not to mention two VERY different "regime-changes." Oh, and two different systems/nations/identities, however that should be phrased.
Earlier this year I resolved to write a bit every day, since this is apparently the secret to finishing the dissertation. Does blogging count as writing? Wait! That's not really what I mean--I mean, does it (anything) count if it's not specifically thematically related to my research?
Should I be pleased with myself or even just relieved if I can at least write an entry a day? Does that count? Some part of me thinks that the main thing is to develop some self-discipline, and that the form it takes is fairly inconsequential.
So long as I just write.
When you know someone who makes brilliant things you simply have to share. Craig is an artist, this is a recent example of his work and just enchanting. Roll yer mouse over the different parts of the poster.
Well, it's two months since my last entry. I clearly have no discipline were writing is concerned--no surprise to those who know me well.
I recently stumbled onto the blog of Yule Heibel, the art historian who wrote the English-language book most closely related to my dissertation subject. What a surprise! And interesting writing, too. I'm curious to read more.
