I try to avoid hangovers anymore, since my body simply can't handle them. But I had to pass on this tip, posted by OSTBLOG, part of a number of oldish recipes for coping with the day after:
Mecklenburger Nikolaschka 4cl Korn, 1 Scheibe Leberwurst, Senf. In ein schmales Likörglas gut gekühlten Korn geben, an den Rand die mit Senf bestrichene Scheibe Leberwurst legen. Beim Trinken die Leberwurst mit den Lippen abnehmen, zerkauen und den Korn nachtrinken.
[translation: spread a thick slice of liverwurst with mustard and lay it on top of a shot of grain alcohol. Slurp down the wurst as you drink the shot.]
Well, that would certainly take my mind off the hangover.
For an added thrill, I recommend looking at the photo from the original article, where you can see the Mecklenburgische Nikolaschka in the lower center of the image...lets you see just how thick that slice should be, and how much mustard should be swirled on top. Mmmm!
With that in mind, have safe and happy New Year's.
Just back from family visiting in DC, where we were able to spend a morning at the National Gallery, primarily to visit the Romare Bearden show.
What an excellent body of work. Montage is probably my favorite medium (why, then, am I not working on it? Great question), and Bearden developed such an incredible language...I highly recommend the show, and hear that the audio guide was also good.
The show will be in Dallas this summer, but I'm glad we were able to go see it in DC, where public transport, while not perfect, still is doable. It beats a drive up I-35 any day.
Today I stumbled onto HeiKu, which/who keeps a Bilderbuch of K'berg. Sigh...the beaufiful everyday life of and around Kotti.
Thought this particular photo series could serve as a holiday link--whichever holiday you might be celebrating these next few days/weeks. Might be better for February, but then it's the underlying sentiment that counts now, right? :)
Egon Krenz has been released from prison early. Apparently he was already serving a pseudo-term, in an arrangement in which he was released during the day to work (!) and returned at night to the prison...Here's the Guardian's story.
In Fluchtpunkte, the Stadtmuseum Jena addresses abstraction in the GDR. This is one of the first shows to do so in the aftermath of Kunst in der DDR; I wonder whether it demonstrates any recognizable influence from the Berlin show (even if they started planning it ealier, which they no doubt did).
In the brief text on the museum's site, I think I see my thesis is filtering through:
Künstlerische Eigenständigkeit und Originalität war hier selten an der nonfigurativen Praxis des Westens geschult, sondern meist figürlich vom Erbe der Klassischen Moderne geprägt.
Artistic independence and originality (abstraction in this case) in the East, it asserts, was rarely schooled by the non-figurative work of the West, but instead was formally related to the legacy of classical modernity. This is the kind of thing that Kunst in der DDR was working towards: the idea that creative development in the GDR was largely independent of what went on in the West. If this thesis is true, it's harder to argue that abstraction in the East was derivative or second-rate.
Not that I'm suggesting this is a new idea; anyone who's considered Hermann Glöckner's work and his broad influence on younger artists knows that there were plenty of sources at home...
Werner Tübke's archive will be housed at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg. Apparently the Museum is also interested in procurring the personal archives of Wolfgang Mattheuer and Volker Stelzmann.
Not sure why I thought this necessary to post, but I guess it's in part because of the Sitte-Stiftung news from last week. Where are the archives of Heisig and Metzkes? I suppose I should already know.
For fun, I suggest checking out the grandaddy of Socialist-Realist murals, the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen.
The Czech photographer František Synek's understated work reminds me why urban life drives me crazy. It's not the fault of the city, exactly; I just would rather be out in the country.
via the fabulous kosmonautentraum (which offers a daily selection of unusual and often quite beautiful websites).
Der Spiegel reports that Schill has been voted out of his own party. Yahoo! Not to downplay the dangerous intentions of this man and his cohorts, but he's really made a public ass of himself. Repeatedly. I hope this helps to bring down the rest of the "Partei Rechtsstaatlicher Offensive," which is currently trying to save face.
A Norwegian artist has an installation up in the Alex U-Bahn station. His work, says the website's description,
questions the manners of change that the DDR is going through. From the wide range of possible answers he chose a drastic perspective: values and demands of the DDR are dissolved. What's left are the 5 new federal countries that submitted to the mechanisms of marketing and commercialization.
[...]
The billboards lead to an analysis of the DDR - transformation process without promoting a particular approach. They rather confront the viewer with his/her own ideas. They might be distinctive or superficial, clear or distorted by Ostalgia, rational or emotional - a tension is created that leads to an analysis of the subject.
What this amounts to, it seems, is a range of logos made out of the letters DDR and plastered into the poster spaces along the U-Bahn tunnel walls. It's an empty gesture, if you ask me. There's neither critique nor playfulness in the project, and rather than "confronting the viewer with his own ideas" these logos as a whole offer only one approach: commercialization of the memory of the GDR. Which is fine, in itself; in so many iterations, though, it's just boring. On the other hand, in the individual designs there are barely discernable traces of well-known product logos, which makes for an interesting viewing experience; but again, it's at best just puzzle-like and gets old fast.
Of course, I might have a different interpretation if I saw the things in person. Maybe. The installation is up until March.
Yesterday in the Frankurter Rundschau there were a number of articles dealing with antisemitism. The discussion stems in part from the Bundestag's discussion of the Hohmann affair, but also from the results of a recent survey of public opinion on questions related to public ideas about Jews in Germany. Very interesting, if slightly worrisome, data (which I think Andrew might have said was reported on NPR last week?).
The survey indicates that antisemitism has found its way back into bourgeois values. Christian Bommarius at the Berliner Zeitung explains with only a bit of irony that when the typical German of the "Mitte" wants to express himself, "dann sagt er nicht "die Juden", nicht "Zionismus", nicht "Weltherrschaft", dann spricht er über "Israel", "das Palästinenserproblem", "die Siedlungsfrage".
From the FR: "69,9 Prozent der Befragten stimmen der Äußerung zu: 'Ich ärgere mich darüber, dass den Deutschen auch heute noch die Verbrechen an den Juden vorgehalten werden.'" This is scary: but on the other hand, exactly how strong an expression is "sich ärgern"? And that single question doesn't allow for any grey area: why it angers the respondent, for example. Is it because "I didn't have anything to do with it" or because "We paid our dues already" ? Those are, in my mind, two very different reasons for agreeing with that first statement. Not that I would say that either of those justifications is acceptable, but I mean to point out that these kinds of sentiments come from different angles, and we'll never understand what's behind this shift in public opinion if we don't allow that those angles exist.
It has long seemed to me that the German discussion of antisemitism is too undifferentiated. The FR and the BZ were both so disappointed with the Bundestag's "debate," or lack of one, because no one in the parliament was willing to argue about the issue. No one wanted to call Hohmann by his name, or to state any specifics. Instead they all seemed to stick to sound bites, platitudes, which certainly won't help further the discussion.
Update: According to der Spiegel, part of the problem was that no one showed up for the Bundestag debate:
Waren zu den vorangegangenen namentlichen Abstimmungen zur Europapolitik die Stühle im Plenum noch dicht besetzt gewesen, dünnten die Reihen - auch auf der Regierungsbank - vor Beginn der Grundsatzdebatte aus. Dem Thema antijüdische Ressentiments schlug zur besten Mittagspausenzeit seitens der Parlamentarier nicht viel Interesse entgegen. Die wenigen die ausharrten, lasen Zeitung oder zogen sich zum Plausch in die hinteren Reihen zurück.
Sounds like Congress.
Via OSTBLOG, news that Willi Sitte will donate the works he currently has in his studio to a gallery made just for them in Merseburg.
The MZ reported Monday that a foundation had been created to manage the works and gallery, which will host its first show, a retrospective, in 2005.
This is one way of resolving the various squabbles surrounding Sitte's work as head of the VbKD in the 70s and 80s. Rather than negotiate with other museums, make your own...not that I think it's necessarily a bad idea.
Well, I'm only a wee bit late with this news: Harald Schmidt has abruptly decided to take some time off, which means no more Schmidt-does-Dave in prime time. I always enjoyed watching Schmidt, less in this incarnation than when he was working with Feuerstein—that show had an edge. But Schmidt must still have some pull in the tv world, because he's immediately being wooed by the heads of all other networks, it seems...
kulturnation.de wonders what happens to the staff, who, presumably, in Germany's current employment situation, can't just roll into another job the way the star of the show can. Do they have any contractual rights? [I have to say I've never thought about that when some show gets cancelled on tv here.]
Ok, I promise not to always post about silly quizzes I've run across, but this was entertaining: Which Twentieth Century Theorist are you?
You'll never guess who I am (I know *I* never would have).
You are Louis Althusser! You tried to bring together structuralism, Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Your brilliant analysis of ideology and the state is still widely influential. You murdered your wife, were put in a sanitarium, and lived the last decade of your life alone before dying in 1990.
Still trying to decide whether and how I will use a blog in the class I'm teaching next semester. Anne Galloway recently posted a bit on this, and that discussion is helping tremendously as I wonder and worry about the benefits and possible pitfalls of required blog writing.
[Hoping to engage this further at some point; see below for caveat.]
I've noticed only a few of the blogs that i read regularly have been slacking off with posts in the last few weeks, in spite of the impending end of the academic year (which involves many of the bloggers I keep up with). I can't see how they do it: my brain is so fried that it's all I can do to keep reading, let alone think hard enough to post anything. (I will not mention the status of the disseration.)
I hope to be more conscientious about posting in the coming weeks. You know, during the calm of the holidays.
Via OSTBLOG , a test from Stern to determine how well you remember "Red Germany."
I scored a 67%. Kind of embarassing, actually, considering how much time I spend on this stuff in my daily life, but I think that puts me in the "normal" range.
Flip Flop Flyin' has provided us all with an excellent Advent Calendar, just when I was beginning to wonder where on Earth I would find one.
Yay!
[May I also draw your attention to this page of fabulous FlipFlopage for your desktop pleasure.]
Too busy to write anything lately, and even too busy to read much, but I saw this article at Salon on changing ideas about Sex in China. I haven't thought about the one child policy or any of the related issues in a looong time and this is an interesting update.
[if you don't have a Salon subscription, you can watch a brief ad and get a day pass so you can read the full text of the articles. But I recommend subscribing, they deserve our money.]