economic matters a la T

Anyway ... there is not much we can do about it now besides of finding ways
through the crisis. Over all there is some bitterness in the aspect of
privatizing profit and socializing losses world wide right now and the
realization that something is very wrong and needs to be corrected to bring
the aspect of a state back to life: Being a state meaning being a bigger
community to protect the weaker ones of the community (for example by public
health care) by taking a bigger share of the profit from the richer ones. I
am still trying to formulate my own ideas about it - I guess I am not angry
about people like Bill Gates who make a lot of money with a good idea,
selling it and creating a lot of jobs on their way. But I get increasingly
angry at for example hedge fund managers (like for example the ones from
Blackstone, ___'s main owner or Carlyle, ___'s main owner) who buy
companies and require them to make higher profits or take savings away for
their own profit - sometimes making a personal income of more than 1 billion
US$ a year! They take long saved money away from these companies, put it in
their own bank accounts and make these companies take additional bank
credits to increase the profit per capital employed. This requires to
companies to pay more money to the banks for interest rates out of the daily
business and not investing this money in their own future. The hedge funds
are fine and most of the time getting away with these companies paying being
taken over by the hedge funds with their own higher credits. So the risk for
the hedge funds is really limited in the end! So one of the main ways for
these companies making more "profit" on demand of the hedge funds is firing
employees and producing in low cost countries, cutting jobs in high cost
countries. So all the people who pay in retirement funds who then invest in
hedge fund shares are in a way cutting off their own jobs! Some calculus: 1
hedge fund manager who makes a personal profit of 1 billion dollars (even
with some tax cutting opportunities like they are offered by the American
government where they can declare this as profit from investments with a tax
rate of 15% instead of income with a tax rate of 35% could - just with this
profit - afford an annual income of almost 30.000 families with 35.000$
each. I am sure if 30.000 families could maintain an annual income of
35.000$ the whole economy would be better off than 1 person making 1 billion
and surely not consuming it in a way that would help a majority of people
... Since most of the hedge fund managers live in the US and a big part of
the crisis started there, it's going to be a big burden and task for the new
president to lead a way out of the crisis. Good luck and a lot of success to
him!

En Route / Unterwegs I

Everyone loves monitoring their transformations, I don't care who you are, but do it. Transition into sickness; changing location, I view my adaptation (the bumbling and success zusammen) with pleasure. What passes? What's untranslatable? Who listens? How do people appear to listen or not to listen? Why?
I cannot help but feel special, arriving in Detroit from Paris. It's a naive specialness//attained only through not knowing the histories of those around me. Especially on the flight to Memphis from Detroit (or anywhere else I might have arrived from Europe), it feels like everyone knows eachother. Everyone has some easier, more intimate conversation...Except me? I talk, but is it intimate?
Why does that matter?

I woke up early this morning. My window open to Memphis in winter (humidity never dying, about 50 degree F) I had been dreaming I was trying to explain some mistake I made. I was speaking German outloud between dream and waking, to some supervisor figure (some sort of kestner paranoia or things to come in another work environment?)
It made me feel more connected though, to the last four months of my life.

I barely got out of my seat on the trans-atlantic flight. I could feel some types of body tissue in my legs pulsing. But I didn't care. I had a headache, came and went, and saw the latest by Ben Stiller and some English drama back-to-back. Could tell I might be getting a sore throat...
But, I wrote out plans, as I always do:
Kunst - Performance irgendwohin
idea-gender switch, -wechseln, -verwirrend
narrative (something to follow, arme Publikum)
an ending without resolution
Musik/Ton - mood/Stimmung darstellen
Use of karaoke (mundane everyday performance possible for all)
the abject-weakness and strength, catharsis
fuzzy numbers, Behauptung / Claims, Assumptions / (Ver)Urteilungen

flying and landing in America

When I think of coming home to Memphis (the HOME of all time) and what I feel there, I am always so excited and aroused. It's the closest I get to the past, The Past, and my memories that are older than 5 years...I was explaining to my colleagues here in Hannover that flying over the Atlantic every year or more is actually a delight for me because it is a quiet time (I have been very lucky in my seating arrangements) and I get lost in thought and read and write as long as I want to and even manage to sleep some. It is a tunnel. And on the other side, I come out into the United States of America. The air is different and the people somehow still surprising to me. The only homelike place in the US is Memphis, Halls, and even Anne's house in DC; No, just her bedroom..the things in there, even the new things, are familiar. Like I was with her when she bought them. Anne, my double cell.
Maybe it's ironic to some people, but being away, I realize Memphis's sophistication. No where I have been do I find the live music, the passionate public display, of people reaching out to eachother through music, that I see in Memphis. And, after considering it so for some time, it isn't just because I understand what's going on (because I do not always) or because it's Home (because it's changed, the crowds have altered), but because there are a lot of people making music, making art, doing things they believe in just because they can and because they are encouraged by their friends and families. No big deals, no huge names--save the history and the living legends.
In Memphis, the places familiar in the US, I feel the most comfortable expressing my desires and driving drunk. Or no. It's another context only.
This week, I had two views or confrontations specifically related to my American identity. One I was able to speak through; the other conversation waits on the backburner--perhaps some LIGHT conversation to bring up at the Christmas Party next Wednesday.
The unfinished one: At my workplace here in Hannover, we watched the old version film of Animal Farm based on Orwell's novel. In the introduction, my colleague mentioned a history of totalitarian regimes, socialism, communism, and critique, and then I did not catch the complete thought (or was it one?) but he mentioned what is having in America.
What IS happening in America?
The other confrontation: THe US and its protest culture and its lack of bureaucricy between an idea and it's realization (at least in the arts). In Germany, this professor was telling me, the people (because of past regimes in Germany, not just National Socialist, but empirial and the Kaiser Reich) are reliant on the government to enact change. In the US, because of the (dreaded) individualism, people do have the idea that they can make change happen. At least, our culture perpetuates this (reality or myth) in historical tales and in biographies of "great men."
Having lived in Germany now for 6 months, the bureaucracy is overwhelming... Perhaps it is also self-assuring and security for some people.
And so my impressions from living in Hungary for two years are confronted with another sort of regime history. How much I assumed to know about Germany! I DO know a lot. I have heard a lot of things and understand. But, I have not yet been an active critic or person involved in German dialogue. It will change, it is changing.

On the plane home, I will listen to music, drink the wine and spirits available, enough to stretch myself out (mind and body) and take self-portraits in the plane's lavatories.
I make plans for projects that I never finish. I have dreams of grandiosity and performance.

Shoutout

First, I would like to send a shoutout to my dear friend, Mihai, in Budapest for telling me to write more.
Ok.
1. Its now December, and the days are shorter and shorter here in northern Germany. I have to figure out ways to cope.
2. My internship at the kestnergesellschaft is going quite well. I am integrated more and more, but still separate. This only takes time (she says optimistically.)
3. My mental state does acrobatics- high sensitivity vs. anger/lunacy. It would seem its all here to stay and I simply must accept it.

I have to laugh more and cry. Its what hurts and feels the best.

Election Eve

Being so far away from "the action," I feel even more excited and desireous to participate in watching and seeing results from the election day. I spent most of the evening at the Hannover Kunstverein, where a new show opened up with work by students from the Kassel Kunst Hoch Schule in various media--most in multi-media or interdisciplinary forms. At midnight, they began live coverage of the US election with three differnt channels broadcast: CNN, Al Jezeehra and German 2DF Channel. I was proud of my chance to explain the process to my Germany friends and colleagues. At the same time, it was obsessive, the coverage and it was slow-going. With three screens in three directions and sound simultaneously circulating, we all laid down on beanbag-like cushions, chatting and staring. After 4 beers, this was luxury, I enjoyed seeing the differences in the projections or tallies from one corner of the world to another.
I contributed my vote. I participated out of a sense of duty, as an American, to choose the next president.
It makes me angry when some Americans say how Obama is trying to "appease" or appeal to foreigners or foreign states. The idea is that he should only concern himself with the US internally. In fact, the US IS concerned with partners and foreign powers, and US presidency occupant effects other lands. The people who get angry about Obama appealing to other nations or simply caring about the opinion of other nations are mistaken in their naive perception of the world as somehow separate from the US. They see the US as a superpower, alone in its high status, and alone in its decision-making. After this "financial crisis," is this also an example of the interdependency of all nations? Who fools him/herself into thinking that the US leader is not a position in which other parts of the world are interested??!
I wish that I could believe that Obama's win would signal a big change, but I do not see that. It will be a better change, but what he can change is not certain.

This event was entertainment or something to fill a space for me. This entertainment is for all the people. The audience does not want conclusion or a solution, it is believed. It only wants tension, struggle, and emotional confusion. When there is no drama, I believe many Americans look for it.

Retrospective Thoughts on Jehanne Complex

Retrospective Thoughts on Jehanne Complex
2 November 2008
The repeated rehearsing of something does not lead to lack of catharsis with each performance. This I learned clearly. The throwing of everything up and down again. Giving. Self-obsession or self–entrenchment again and again. But, it is also investment FOR people, as well as a self-congratulations. (Initial inspiration and motives, in the end, are perhaps not so important.)
First scene: “My name is Jeanne, and I’ve just eaten a hamburger.” Black men’s suit, tie, shoes and skull cap with white button-down shirt. I carry a Burger King meal bag containing a whopper, French fries, a coke and a Heinz ketchup bottle. I walk around the stage, staring at the audience suspiciously, after closing the white curtains making up the stage’s backdrop. Meditative, Middle-Eastern-sounding music comes on and I remove my shoes and meditate. After I can relax and control my breathing, I emerge from my meditation and begin to unpack the meal bag. I spread a lot of ketchup over the whopper, set out the French fries and coke, and begin to eat. I always ate three big bites of the burger (it affected my digestion).
Second scene: Microphone “Close to the town where I was born, there is a tree known as the ladies’ tree. It’s a great beech tree, centuries old. In the shade of its branches, there is a spring. In the month of Mary, children decorate the branches of the ladies’ tree with garlands. They sit beside the spring and eat together. I did that with my friends, but I never saw or heard tell of dwarfs or any other creatures of the devil… God’s voices haunt me. They never do leave me in peace. They are constantly encouragin’ and pushin’ me.” The microphone has ghosts that trick me. I speak into one and the other one produces sound. My voice is manipulated and distorted…a sort of comedy.
Third scene: Shaving The legs, like a girl, then the face, like a boy. Jehanne was sexually ambiguous with no period bleeding and breasts, and a mission from “God”. I contemplatively shave one calf in silence…getting some shaving cream on my chin, I begin to rub it along my jaw. Gospel song of “Run on for a long, long time…” I felt like a hero preparing for battle. Like Jehanne before leading an army. But then, my tormentors arrive…
Fourth scene: Hushabye Mountain The dancers, walzing in

most important things in my life

3 November 2008
What I think about emotions driving me crazy…
I value the craziness and unpredictability of life and chance…
One of the most important things in my life is conversation and mystery. Wordplay, suspicions of desire, and thinking of fulfilling desires, but they go on…they nag…they cause me to run for miles… now that I am in a “stable” environment in Germany, I start to look back ( a week ago, 6 months ago..) and truly believe that I have had mania, unstoppable, and unbearable… And the things I could have done with it now seep into my mind.
Mystery I refer to is the unfulfilled desire. There is no mystery of intention on many levels because I seek to clarify if my desires are well-placed. And then I confide or I hide my face or I face the other head-on, not knowing for sure if I will decline and take the “higher” ground.
A way of ascending past this emotional, strenuous and mysterious game is to make art. I do believe. One can set up one’s own performance, and some people will watch. And there’s a catharsis in the fantasy. The hysterical is possible in society, in company, not alone or by oneself, but sharing…
The conversation that goes on and on, with others giving and…and receiving and responding. Sympathy without dishonesty; a sort of love without dependence..in fact it feels like utter independence, yet with support. You can feel it building throughout a conversation. And I felt this relief, catharsis before, and it can never be planned or orchestrated fully. So much is chance.

http://picasaweb.google.com/brechtorama/JehanneComplexRehearsals#

http://picasaweb.google.com/brechtorama/JehanneComplexRehearsals#

http://picasaweb.google.com/brechtorama/JehanneComplex#

http://picasaweb.google.com/brechtorama/JehanneComplex#

Simplifying is deadly ...

Politics functions on simplicity of identities, since identity politics became the main politics of our time. So, there are constant choices and declarations made in order to situate oneself within a group or constituency.
The historians simplify for clarity and lack of infinite space and time. What gets written then gets set aside, is published or not. The "grand narratives" of our time ("our time" meaning primarily American or "western" and the last 50-100 years, at least that is the time period I know best) are written in books and newspapers published by a small number of media companies/conglomerates. Newspapers have a powerful position in creating and recreating stories over and over daily and on a massive scale (via internet, TV, etc.)
Growing up in an American school system and with American media, there were certain things I "learned" and had no reason not to believe or assume.
After five years "abroad" I have had the repeated experience of catharsis upon the discovery of an alternative narrative of history, of an alternative reading and understanding of the same event, and so on.
It makes me angry.
I know every nation-state participates in the editting of history and information for its citizens. The US is not special in this. However, the United States' hegemonic position, at least in terms of economic influence, but also culturally through its products, means its choices of what IS history or what IS the truth for its citizens can have further consequences; inaccurate assumptions by an entire population whose government commands a vast number of destructive tangible or non-tangible items reduces the "democratic" process and voters miscast their ballots.
This brings me to the topic of September 11, 2001.
In my opinion, past events of "the west" like the two "world" wars, Cold War tensions and the dismantling of the Soviet Union were all events able to be narrated, in my former American context, as keeping in line with the American "destiny" of belevolent dominance and the wisdom of spreading democracy around the world. The United States was always on top or came out as the "good guy." This all fit nicely into the narrative of God watching out for "us" and blessing our actions (continuing onward as in the right-wing or neo-conservative discourse declared by Pres. Bush II and Republican vice-pres. nominee, Gov. Palin).
The September 11th attacks were orchestrated, meticulously planned (over a period of years) and coordinated over many borders. The young men were successful intransmitting a message of frustration, discontent and rage through simple but highly destructive actions (pilot killing+massive airplanes+tall towers+inattention to "collateral damage". The monuments were the targets, but also the people inside and around them.
This attack did not fit into this grand narrative of American history. We were victims and we were tricked, out-smarted.
We had to cancel out our extreme victimhood by creating other victims.
What makes me angry is the lack of acknowledgement within American culture and politics of our constant victimizing of "innocent" people in many countries around the world.
Like any other colonizing power, we helped carve up European, Middle Eastern and Asian nation-states. But, we don't count ourselves among the colonizing countries (although we call the early settlers of North America "the colonies").
We have organizations cloaked in secrecy.
My point is that simplifying history has made it easy for a dominant American history, THE narrative, to exist among a majority and, perhaps most importantly, among law makers and media disseminators.
The September 11th attacks were reminders that another dominant narrative exists simultaneously.

Thoughts on Writing History and

Thoughts on Writing History

When I am running--after about 30 or 40 minutes--my thoughts become so lucid and wonderful and spontaneous. I am not afraid to go THERE or think about past events or plan something, to visualize something happening, to want and desire. I can think of past regrets or embarrassments or mistakes and wretch and run faster.
I think a lack of closeness with one's body leads to disaster on the local or global scale.
Within my own experience, I think being an American makes me inherently more obsessive and worried. (At what point can one make such a judgement absolutely?--never.) But, I think this "Amerimind" is reflected so clearly in our foreign policy. Allow me to be romantic now. If only governmental (mostly) men with agendas took time out to pay attention to their bodies and what state of health they could attain (physical and mental). I would recommend running (training to attain 10-km running endurance) to members of the CIA and other organizations with similar sinister work.

Giving

In Hannover now...after a long absence. Since my last entry, I have gone from Györ to Budapest and on to Germany...a little over a year. I am part of a large community that I feel is very diverse and wide. And usually I have not produced anything addressing it. Sensitivity hinders and deepens, as well as inspires. So, that's what I endeavor to do with my time now... be inspired and produce things-- ideas/commodities/experiences.
This does not have to be so SCHWER! I always know that it never had to be. The mantel must be put in perspective...
Ask yourself what you avoid thinking about, and think about THAT.