wow berlin

WOW – Wir arbeiten hier is an initiative of performance artists from Berlin, a working title and an agenda, all in one. The project was born out of a need to understand work as a mode of continuous interaction. It locates itself at the interface between the art market – which defines work as a product – and a gift economy – which understands artistic practice as sharing and communicating to create a community of work. During the performance platform festival in Berlin (july 5th - 8th 2012), the participating artists will write letters to each other. Formulating their own standpoints, research, practices and concerns through a form of writing that is autonomous and interdependent at the same time. The process of a discourse formation contingent on chance and of a rampant contextualisation can be followed in a newspaper hanging on the wall that can also be picked up daily as a published collection of loose leaves and of course we’ll put it on this tumblr!

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter2 #siegmar)

Dears, dear Bettina, dear Silke,                                                                              

Proximity:

The atmosphere feels charged, maybe because it will rain soon. This is the last day of our writing residency and the last day of the festival. I rediscovered letter writing. Celine says it’s something poetical. Not so much because it is poetry but because it puts something into the world.

I feel what we have put into the world here are monsters. Creatures of proximities that want to show themselves. That come out into the light of our field. The performance field. And sometimes with these monsters it seems even work to keep themselves together. So diverse are the parts the are made of. I like the idea of our letters crawling, flying, sitting, sleeping, being and lettering.

Thank you Bettina and Silke for inviting us and making this possible.

Thank you everybody for this time. The Atmosphere feels charged in this room. And not just because it is thundering outside.

Love

siegmar

[god-bee]

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter1 #siegmar)

 Dear Litó, dear all, dear programmers, dear politicians, dear fellow citizens,

Dear Litó, you write: What we need is already here. What we want we are already doing.

NO and YES. I agree that each of us is individually sometimes collectively even doing things we have described here. This is why we write it and write about it, because we are doing it. And, I don’t think that what we need is already here. A friend, who I would like to see more, but we are rarely in Berlin at the same time, recently told me that she had a few weeks of paid residency here in Berlin. For that to happen she had to enroll in a master program abroad, pay a tuition fee, convince the program coordinators that it was important for her to be in Berlin for this part of the program and finally enjoy her work in Berlin. Isn’t that outrageous. Isn’t it outrageous that sommer.bar, a structure that was exactly working on creating conditions of exchange and sharing, doesn’t receive the appropriate support, isn’t it outrageous, that ALL applications that focused on research and communication of this research to a public did not get supported by the HKF with the argument that they don’t finance research.

Dear Litó you ask me if I don’t value what I do in Berlin?

I DO. AND I WANT TO GET PAID FOR THAT. So I don’t have to go away to earn money, so I can stay here and contribute to the entanglement, so I can spread the confetti and water the garden, my own and ours. This is exactly why I’m so interested in contributing to a discourse on performance practice, that finally becomes heard and finally cannot be overheard anymore. Until creating conditions for our work becomes an option here in Berlin.

Sincerely yours

Siegmar

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter #nina)

 Keywords: confusion, Zarathustra in a storm, about, yes and no

Liebe wow-ladies,

I must admit: I am confused today after reading your letters.

I don’t know what to write. I feel disconnected. My thoughts are too unspecific.

So I’ll try to find it whilst writing.

There is one “episode” though (I especially like this explanation of “episode” that Litó mentioned: “an incidental narrative or digression within a story, poem, etc.,”) I feel responding to. It’s Steffi’s Einar Schleef-episode.

I saw Einar Schleef twice. It was in 2001.

First I saw him in his last piece at Deutsches Theater (I forgot the name of the piece but it was about five hours long and Schleef was performing a monologue from Nietzsches Also sprach Zarathustra for at least one hour, and as he spoke he became, for me, the contrary of what I imagine the Übermensch Zarathustra to be like: Schleef seemed vulnerable.

Later that summer one afternoon I drove by bike close to Leipziger Straße and I saw Schleef passing the street. What an appearance! His grey hair stuck out into all directions. Zarathustra going through a storm!

One day later Schleef died. I read it in the newspaper.

Later someone told me that Schleef had a heart attack whilst he was walking through the streets of Berlin. I was told that Schleef had managed to reach the hospital Charité where he apparently was not being treated immediately because he was considered a homeless person.

Zarathustra going through a storm. Vulnerable.

Coming back to my beginning of the letter:

I feel I am running away from something I should address but I am too unclear.

Maybe this is what I want to say: I love ‘about’! Litó, I don’t see what there is wrong with ‘about’. I don’t know what the problem with and the difference between the ‘about’ and ‘not about’ is. Aren’t these letters all ‘about’ and ‘not about’?

A new letter by Siegmar just came in. It sais “NO and YES” = “About” and “not about”?

“NO and YES” as an answer to the questions if things are already the way we want them.

Within these letters: yes

In berlin: NO!

Would we being treated in the hospital?

We are Zarathustras going through a storm. Vulnarable.

With love,

Nina

[live-in-luxury]

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter2 #litó)

 Dears,

“I will now stop and enjoy the atmosphere in this room.”

Nina wrote and did this. Yesterday. I read it. Yesterday. I wrote it a few seconds ago. I will do it. Now.

Still doing it.

And still...

Now I want to describe. I would like it to be delightful in detail, not tedious.

A description of the conditions of this being together. Or perhaps just some left overs to include before we end this residency.

Across the table from me, Steffi continues to smile behind her computer. Yesterday she said and wrote how she loves to write “the Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Robert-Koch-Platz Berlin”. I wonder what she's smiling about now. Maybe Simone Weil.

Alice, in the letter I wrote you today, I also wanted to say that I know my question is huge, especially when you've been specifically honoring practice in your program at Laboratoires dd'Aubervilliers. I wanted to pull out a beautiful sentence from your first day letter. “I often claimed coherence and clarity as major qualities I would strive to achieve. This has remained as a maybe less often told but still permanent fantasy in the background of my self-projections.” This a intuitive half-thought, but I wonder about the relation coherence and clarity have with constraint. Sometimes the constraints that support or bring me the most support or fulfillment are the ones that suspend certain coherence. So that I may discover something new, in something old or supposedly obvious or boring.

Céline (sorry I missed the accent in the last emails) When we worked together at SoDA in May you asked a question (I think you read it from your writing). I have kept hearing it since and especially with being in your presence these days. You asked “Why speak so loud?” I think I supposed you were asking me, as I was aware of the high volume of my voice. I was loaded when I met you all on that first day. First meetings always feel loaded to me, but also I had just been burning my head in my own research residency. Anyway, I had the thought these days that it would be nice, one day perhaps to write, or co-write, 'a script for amplified whispers' with you. Thank you for your letter yesterday. It was more of what I had hoped to do these days.

I want to read the letters that are piling up next to me on this table right now, so I must stop writing.

Thank you all for these magical times. Planting and cross-modifying thought-seeds with you has been a deep joy.

Full respect,

Litó

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter #céline)

 Dears, dears,

About about.

I like prepositions.

They allow to shake to blend to tease stable meanings.

Although this one...

About.

About sounds strict to me.

About is open but not malleable.

About is the little cousin of around.

It keeps you in the neighborhood, in the commentary.

About can be exaggerated, distorted, threatened with

with, from, under, beside, on, for, between, below, in front of, in, after, even to.

What if...

I write from my practice

I write under my practice

I talk with my practice

I talk for my practice

I tell to my practice

I tell between my practice

I write in front of my practice

I write after my practice

That poiein means to make makes me very happy.

That poiesis and praxis are entangled makes me very happy.

I am also very happy that

to say = to make

Boris Vian used to say from the act of writing – to the best of my recollection:

don't use the adjective bizarre, make a bizarre image.

Dears, dears,

our apples hidden behind one image

or exposed naked and branded

face to face

during four days

during twelve hours

HERE

our apples blushed

our apples lit

our apples smiled

to the reception of the letters

from Switzerland

from Hamburg London Nottingham Warrington

from Canada's countryside

from Grenoble

from the garden

HERE

in Berlin

HERE

in Sophiensaele

HERE

Merci merci.

Je vous embrasse.

Céline

[cytoplasms-deactivated20120706]

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter #steffi)

 Dear Sheena,

Thanks a lot for your letter.

The first day when we met here at Sophiensaele you mentioned that you had brought some books and in that moment I wanted to ask you about them. What kind of books? May I have a look? But something else came up and later on I forgot about it. And I only ever remembered the books when you were not around like right now. It is just a small detail but I would still very much like to find out about the books. It feels a little bit like I missed out on a gift, because I wasn’t paying enough attention.

Thanks also for introducing your friend Alexis. It made me think about my friend Roxy who I’m writing letters with for more than half of my life, by now 17 years and still going strong. I’m wondering how many pages we created by now. I could actually check as I store all the handwritten letters I ever received in a big, old suitcase at home. Hm, this writing residency starts to feel like the narrative within a dream, everything overlapping, fading into each other. You waiting for your furniture, packing your suitcases, me using a suitcase as a letter-treasure-box-piece-of-furniture. Is it my tired brain playing tricks on me? Or is it something else? I don’t know, but I like it.

And it was nice to meet you Sheena not “just” through letters but “especially” through letters.

Bis bald,

Steffi

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 8th July (letter1 #litó)

Dear Alice,

On day 2 of our residency you asked if I could elaborate on what I was getting at with my letter addressed to Siegmar from the first day.

When you asked this, you added that you thought you knew, but weren't sure. I thought I knew what you may have wanted me to expand on, but also wasn't sure.

I will take a guess.

I wrote about being aware of the overlapping constraints that act as frames to my perception and agency as I sit around the table with you and the others, answering an invitation to write about work. And of how I could sense us tapping into this central nerve (Nina also referred to to a central core, you also referred to the necessity of loving and caring for the things you work with) of selection, basically, amongst the many perceivable frames and contents.

These days we've expressed the dizzying effect of accumulative, entangled production of concerns that build so quickly (even after the first round of letters to each other – and for me, even from the invite's outset.)

This small reference caught my eye this morning:

“It is only by reference to the limit that what approaches it has a function: the limit is what gives the approach its effectivity, it's reality. The reality the limit gives is movement or tendency.” (Massumi, 2002: 147 – Seite 42 Performance Platform Body Affects Newsletter)

My question to you, to expand on my ideas of how constraints and frames may function to support, is something like this:

Where is practice residing for you? And where is presentation? How and where is one active in the other? For you?

In your letter to us on day 1 you wrote:

“I want to think further about the production, the emergence, the shaping of the “object” (the artwork) and how we can follow it, sense it, trying not to precede it..How we imagine a structure and what is the space for searching, hesitating and changing directions within this. How the frame can be strong and thin in the same time.”

If you take out the “we” for a moment (my dear generous Alice). What is the strong and thin, possibly micro and multiple structure that can bridge your open probing searching with evolvement and observation of object? Maybe too big a question, but I think it's one that relates to concerns we spoke also about when we worked together in Vienna with your Collective Sensations. Your quandary of how to bridge the excitements of the practice to presentable form.

To be continued. With love,

Litó

[shiftinconsciousness-deactivate]

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 7th July 2012 (letter3 #alice)

Dear Siegmar,

THANK YOU so much. The perfect situation technique seems awesome. And the moment you describe it I immediately recognise it from what I know of you, the way you relate to the word. Indeed the articulation of what we might know but have not told yet is very precious. See, you already turned my mind and mood upside down. Now I should be generous too. Naming what might seem obvious to myself as an offering to you, acknowledging the space that separates us and makes mysterious to the one what is crystal clear to the other: subjectivities maybe.

So that we can also play role games and take on each other's strategies. I like it that those are not really technical in the strict sense, or artistic, but rather close to the practice of life in general. Art is an excellent testing ground for ways of living isn't it? Performance work for sure.

So here something about my practice of collaboration. It's a back-and-forth movement between

-      plunging into the other, saying yes to everything proposed and observing what this is when taken on, embodied and appropriated (acknowledging that taking someone's proposal over will also mean tainting, transforming, disloyalty but still striving towards fidelity: the changes are produced by the fact of difference and not by an attempt at differentiating oneself)

-      a continuous production and articulation of ideas as responses to what's already there, as continuation, contradiction, test, diversion etc. that precedes their evaluation (a lot of crap to be honest but also sometimes some gems and production there is a way of thinking in doing, like thinking aloud when having a conversation)

-      a permanent critique of everything put on the table, by whoever, trying to keep track of the consequences of ideas and their organisation

and so on and so forth, these 3 paths running parallel, merging and diverging until something starts stabilising, making itself unavoidable and it usually becomes the piece.

With love

Alice

[wowberlin-blog]

England, July 7th (letter #sharon)

thank you Sheena and thank you everybody for the writing. i have failed to keep up. this england trip too pillar-to-post, too distracted by poorly grandma's and demanding nieces and trying to be a good family member, compensating for a life that takes me away 'from whence i came'. "Sharon, what are you doing, come into the garden and let's do our routine for Granny and Grandad". "Hold on, I'm just trying to participate in a writing circle". "What?" "Oh god. I'm coming". i have been collecting thoughts of performance of a paper then i remembered some previously collected thoughts. i am making the same statements for the rest of my days. and i spent some time on these articulations so i share them with utter admiration missing a physical being-there-with-you. LOVE and Art. Sharon HOW MUCH IT MEANS, HOW LITTLE IT MATTERS - by Sharon Smith. (Performed naked with a microphone)   (Enter) I just had or I am having this dream. It's an anxiety dream, you know the ones… (HAND SIGNALS)  When you're standing in a public place, then you look down, and realise… and there was no fourth wall…   This performance is called Something in the way “she” moves. Or It's not what you do it's the way that you do it Or The poetics of space Or The poetics of self Or one and of/or the other…   If we can all take, I mean if you, you who are not I, if you can all take a moment to observe the ones closest to you - they may be ones - and by this I mean at least twos - who are blurring the edges of you - I mean do they turn you on? Are they turning you on? Could you take or are you taking them in or out or on right here, right now… on the floor - taking space, your place, taking time, spending your time, always and or anyway…   What I'm trying to say is that this paper is about meaning. (When I used to listen to the album Grease, Frankie Valley would sing “grease is the word is the word that you heard it's got groove it's got me-in. “I” used to think that Frankie Valley was a real show-off for singing this and thought it was a bit rich seeing as he only had a very small part) So what I'm trying to say is that this paper is about me - in.   I know what I mean - I mean I will tell the truth, just never the whole truth.   Imagine a field… And then… imagine a bigger field… Imagine their or even your bodies up here - next to mine - instead of mine - eclipsing mine - absencing mine… exceeding mine, filling me to overflowing and flowing over and out and beyond… where I'm at.   I am a woman burned alive. I am burning a woman alive.   This paper is called in a field I am the absence of field Or Mind the gap Or mind in the gap Or in between a rock and a hard place, what time is it?   About being here… things and no things wouldn't be the same would they, if Tom or Dick or Harry stood up or entered her, I mean here and now and up in this field…?   This paper is called the politics of presence in the performance act Or Practising presence Or What is presence anyway or can presence be any old way? Or What does it mean to perform with one hundred percent commitment in the present tense? This paper is about how different people make us feel different things and how how we do what we do means more than what we do   If I told you that 'I' was masculine and that the where 'I' wasn't was feminine, and if you could suspend your disbelief and come with me - I mean - don't go and come without me - and know that if you can wait with me - and if you can invest in time - that I promise you I will come… again and again and again…   Then - and now then now then now then   How 'I' enter space would go and be the most political of somethings and nothings.   I'm trying my best to wake up. I've got sleep in my eyes and dreams fading (LIE DOWN UNDER MICROPHONE STAND)   This paper is called 'I can see myself in her(e)'   In this dream I saw a lion fucking a wolf In this dream my palms were wet and my mouth was dry In this dream the revolution had stopped at Starbucks And all the beautiful people had slipped off the covers of magazines and turned straight into coffee tables.   In theory I read my palm - my hands dappled in the fluid move-moves But to my horrorrosea - in practise they were tied and the author had chopped off my tongue. In super 8 style and shameful nostalgia I was a small child eating sand: Some singular indulgence… autonomous prick bursting my bubble. One binary digit making all the circles flat And where once I had seen myself in her, where I had smelt her all over me there was nothing. As much ado as I could do about nothing I did do. And there was, for my own significant eternity no thing to see   I clung to my books of the marinas and the oceans… and I entered the desert. I laid down the parchment…. I used scrolls as stepping-stones…to stop my feet from burning. I surrendered my story and all her stories and when I awoke from this dream my body had vanished without a trace. Vaporised. There was literally no thing left. (REMOVE MIC FROM STAND AND SIT UP)   This paper is called do I have a body? This paper is called and if so where is it? Is my body some how 'where'? This paper is called to be or not to be Or What does it mean to be in between? Or I can feel you coming in the air tonight. Oh lord… This paper is called without words. And when all the words have burnt to cinders in the midst of a sun that will not rise and will not fall will we forget to remember that we ever thought we knew who we were and why we didn't get what we wanted…   And all that will be will be being in or of or at being and then what of this?   What of this field then? Where would we be? In this field so fearful, which prefers sight s.i.g.h.t. Over site s.i.t.e. In between you and me and me and me. Something in the way she moves touches me. She is the relationship I have with my selves.   This paper is called - (START TO WALK IN A CIRCLE) This is desire. I desire to engage - to feel something… anything, to express my selves I mean to put myself out there, to revolt to turn full circle, to put my stomach in my mouth, to drown in her - and to be - washed up - exhausted and changed. Reaffirmed. Revised. Thought through. Thought through. Thought through.   I am in two minds I am in here in my body, only visible through it, and I am looking at you. Trying to concentrate on my words. And I am out there in the room, looking in, looking like you seeing me. Do you mind me? Do you think of me? Do you mind that I want to take you in, to feel you so strongly that it fucks up my head and I don't have a fucking clue what's going on anymore? Am I parched? (DRINK)     I is not singular I is at least one other. And another Can you feel me? Can you bear to be felt? (DO THE CRAB) Am I spilling off these pages? Can I ask you questions from here? How can I make you come? Can you see me or hear me from there? Do I have something to prove? Can you feel me brush past you? Can you smell my perfume? Does this not matter? And does that not occupy space? How am I going? Have I gone too far? Are you with me? Are you me at all? Can I ask you to dance? Can I ask you to notice that you are dancing? For me? Can I feel your moving? Should I be more reductive, factual, objective, down to earth, everyday, pedestrian, neutral, more and more less until I best cancel myself out completely? Should I get my coat?   This paper is called If you think I'm sexy This paper is called The beginning of an ending Or Just being myself on stage   I is not one. I is collusion. I is in the condition of being one I is real I is not about the real world out there I is the real world in here. (STAND ON ONE LEG) I no longer know what I want. I am unable to form my desires into words. I am formlessness. I am hyphen I get in between I am I turned on it's side I combine I am no thing. I am zero - a score of nothing I am love - a score of zero I am an amateur I am right here. I am right now. I am insecure I fall and submit   This paper is called It's always me me me (LIE DOWN HEAD TO AUDIENCE AND LEGS UP)     I am a one-night-stand I am erotic Honestly Always cruising, always touching you and myself.   Writing has brought me here, to an image of my own sex organ pulled right out and over my whole face, the surface of my skin tremors with an intensity… the soles of my feet, the back of my neck, not to mention my beating heart, my shallow breath, my sweating palms and my dry mouth.   (SIT AND FACE AUDIENCE ON CHAIR)   This body is called a living memorial. This body is called my you-ness Or I am sampled, bootlegged, consumed, spat out, misquoted. I am headings, chapters, subchapters, edits and postscripts.   This body is called And another thing Or I am beginnings, middles, endings, footnotes, citation, cross- referencing. I am anecdote and lie and I am inscribed with many truths that without you will never be the whole truth   This body is called This is your life A vote for love An affirmation A yes for pleasure   This paper is called I can't get you out of my head Or You're shit and you know you are Or Discourse is not my life Its time is not mine. This paper is called Untitled This paper is called the end Or Bring it back bring it back bring it back bring it back bring it back bring it back bring it back. It's freezing in here. Or Thank you and good night.    xxx  

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, July 8th (letter #alice)

Dear Xenia, Louis, Olivia, Levin, Sam and other children that will join us in the future,

Today is the fourth and last days of a writing residency Siegmar arranged for WOW. Daily, about 6 female performance artists sit around a table and write letters to each other. Because we live here, we work here, we nourish friendships and have families here. We want here to be the site of all this and not all the time travel away in order to work even though away pays better than here. Soon you'll all go to school and it will become yet more important to be here most of the time. We want to live with you!

We also find that our work is one of relationships, feeds on them and creates them; it is in a large part the formulation and enactment of relationships. To make this work locally we must produce time and space for our local relationships, as work.

So here we are, sitting and typing silently, expressing desires and fears, explaining what we do and how we do it and why, hoping to pursue and establish a solid environment for our own work, here, with close friends and just-met people, because our proximity is in our concerns before our sympathy for each other. And I want to share this with you, this moment in your mothers' life, because it also relates to your own. Eigentlich muss ich Deutsch schreiben, English ist jetzt unsere gemeinsame Sprache aber Deutsch wird wahrscheinlich eure sein. Ich bin so neugierig, wie ihr leben wird. Ich hoffe, wir schaffen unseres besten, eine Welt zu bauen, in der wir einander unterstützen, zuhören, aber auch nicht immer verstehen und uns dafür eben näher fühlen. Die Generation unsere Eltern, meiner zumindest, hat in der 60er studiert; ihre Welt war dann ziemlich konservativ und sie müssten sich davon befreien, andere Arte Beziehungen ausprobieren zum Beispiel. Unsere Generation und mikro-Gesellschaft hat Hypermobilität erfahren, für Jahre waren wir überall die ganze Zeit, rund um Europa und weiter, Teile eines internationales Kunstumgebung, mit viel Spass und Begeisterung. Heute ist es noch immer so, neue Begierde und Bedarfe gibt ihr uns dazu, liebe Kinder: die Notwendigkeit, teil einer Stadt, einer breitere Gesellschaft als die nomadische Kunstszene zu nehmen, um uns zu entwickeln und zu agieren. Das Ort zu kennen und verstehen, wo wir leben und in der wir Kinder erziehen. Ein aktiveres Teil davon zu werden.

Also, liebe Kinder, wir machen weiter. Ich bin so glücklich, dass ihr da seid und freue mich auf die nächsten 20 Jahre. Dann liest ihr vielleicht dieses Brief und sehen wir zusammen wie das sich alles entwickelt hat.

Herzliche Grüße

Alice

[onceuponabeat]

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 7th July (letter #sheena)

 Dear WOW ladies,

You know while writing these letters it got me thinking about a friend of mine from Ireland, his name is Alexis. He is a mathematician but has often worked as a dramaturg and mentor. He is an incredible character one which I can’t even begin to put into words, but to say the least he loves his cigarettes and coffee. His work has often put him into clinics and at times he is generous enough to share his experiences of this. But why I mention him here is because he has a very strong practice of writing letters to his friends, his family, his peers and his community. This has become one of his routines (he has many) that allow him to continually articulate, develop and share his work.

A majority of his pen-pal buddies (yes they are all handwritten) have limited knowledge surrounding the depths and procedures of his high-end quirky mathematics. You see Alexis has been developing his own approach to math for I guess around 20 years now and is often rejected by institutions. His research is driven by the history of numbers, developed though the lens of religion, proposing a super interesting hypothesis that numbers, and mathematical symbols have strong connections to Christianity.

Through these hand written, personally addressed letters he calls out for people to connect to him through his work. He continually entangles his life and research in relation to his addressee, opening up new avenues of relation and connection. It is clearly a way for him to get people involved in his solidarity process and to transfer his ever-growing mathematical maps that are drawn over his room. I see this as his gift to people, to share what he has, what he knows, it is what he can give right now, his work, which for him is his life.

This is just something that I wanted to share with you all, maybe something connects to why we are here today.

Thank you, again!

With smiles

Sheena

[wowberlin-blog]

Berlin, 7th July (letter #siegmar)

 Dear Soph, Steffi, Sheena, Zoia, Kerstin

Thank you for your letters from afar. Here we are. And you are not. Some are just some kilometers away others beyond mountains and seas. We write letters to each other. Letters create this distance and intimacy at once. Letters that we address specifically to someone and allow each other to enter that intimacy by reading a letter that is not addressed to me. Thank you for writing from afar, because it makes it palpable why this meeting place is called WOW-We work here.

Yesterday I got carried away with a rant on investment, gift-giving and entanglement. And in writing I realized that for me entanglement is an embodied practice. It is affecting the other and letting myself be affected by the other. I write to test a format. Looking for ways how this WORK that I do here in Berlin every day, the reading, the endless hours in front of the computer, the talks, coffees the self-made structures and strategies, this insatiable hunger that is responsible for me cooking up new ways of working for myself relates to a context - to my local context. For me it does and addressing each other as we do makes these relations visible. My local context sometimes asks me when we meet after a show at the bar: Are you here now? I’m standing right in front of this person, we are having a beer together, and she asks me: are you here now? Entanglement requires presence, actual being here. So I guess the question is how we create conditions for being here.

I’m not quite sure how to go on. Because I am here. I’m digging and grazing at the same time. I’m doing my thing with an awareness of you, not just today not just now, addressing you just brings me closer to you. And now I’m addressing all of you.  This awareness of you comes from living in the same city, sharing the same socio-political climate, having lived through different changes of both. And although I sometimes don’t even get to see your work you are my frame of reference. And I feel we perform a constant frame dragging with each other. Frame dragging is actually something solar systems or very big planets might do with each other. When a very big object moves it drags the space-time continuum around itself. You actually are my big star. By doing your thing you drag my space-time continuum with you. And I find this incredibly exciting.  And its not just artists who have this capacity, it’s urban gardens, one euro cafes, bands, saving SchokoLaden from being sold and turned into luxury apartments, it’s writing from stangers on familiar walls, it’s having 5 hotels being built at rosenthaler platz where I live, in the last two years, it’s children that immediately strip naked as soon as they get to the playground in summer.

I guess that’s what local means to me. To realize how I am part of a texture. The knots and the gaps and the parallel, juxtaposing and crossing threats. This is how I am entagled with you. This is how I am entangled with you, Berlin.

Love

siegmar