Apathy is Gross

Addorno, Free Time

I finally understood that Adorno doesn’t always, ever, or, often take a firm stance on things. I feel better about not always knowing what his stance is after a reading. Free time is commodified and as such is another tool to keep the masses down.

Bridge Markland, Faust in a Box.

Confirmation that drag is for all (amidst the ongoing debate that it’s only for people assigned male at birth) and makes everything more accessible and fabulous; oh yeah, and fuck the patriarchy.

Jewish Museum

A feeling of disequilibrium and disenfranchisement to evoke the Jewish reality while highlighting the work of a great architect.

This week I’m finding irony in that this is meant to be an unfree free time and it’s become unbearably more unfree but a gift I must devour whole like a retiree consumes the largest possible RV. I have so much stress about getting work done that I find myself grinding my teeth in thought when my host is talking to me and I ought to be looking at the country side. If it were up to him we would stop at every single port in Normandy but I finally put my foot down. I hoped to get stuff done in the car but it’s terribly rude. At the same time, I’m so nostalgic being here and tomorrow we go to the commune where my ancestor was a cast iron pot maker before he moved to New France in the 1660s. I wish my dad were here. Maybe. In the words of the women from Crass, “System, system, system, death in life.” (From the album “Penis Envy.”)

I’m not sure I’ll get any work done here. My host wants to host every corner of Normandy. How do I say no. I keep dropping hints about having to read…

On Horowitz’s, “Sustaining Loss; Art and Monumental Life.”

Maybe the joke is more direct aggressive passive.

Wednesday, June 22nd to Thursday, June 23rd

• Fill in the blanks on my final portfolio sheet (catch up)
• Fly @ 20:10 to CDG airport in Paris, arrive 10:55
• Catch a bite to eat
• Make way to Bercy station and wait for morning in nice station where I’ll bus out @ 7:30
• Arrive in Caen and train to Bayeux where I’ll dejeuner with Christian and head to his “commune” from there (not to worry, that means it’s a small borough of 1000 or so ppl

Monday, June 27th to Tuesday June 28th

• Make my way back and fly back to Berlin at 6:05

Readings

• Waggoner, M., Housed: Adorno and the Problem of Dwelling
• Find figures on costs of running the City of Olympia Ambassador Program
• Proposal based on Berlin figures with conversion and scale changes
• Read more policy papers

Body as Art, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum 

Minimalist, maybe, art, that can only live with bodies.

Book Fair

Great books, great poets, questionable financier, logicians are cool but I only got some of it, art as media pieces in Russian early century art reminds me of Dada.

Adorno, “Valéry Proust Museum”

When does art come to life and die? But how? Can it be?

Chametzky, “Lost and Found Dada Objects and Subjects,” Objects as History in Twentieth-Century German Art

OG rebels, flipped it all upside down and in Berlin were politically rebellious. We have so much to thank for them; Bowie, punk…

I had a blast at the book fair but I thought that New York financier was embarrassing and dis-empowering to the artists he was representing. I loved the last speaker and was quite interested in the use of language and print image to create questions.