PDF - Exhibition documentation + Texts

THERE IS NO QUESTION ABOUT THAT EXHIBITION TEXT Sarah Jones + IMAGES Documentation by Claus Bach at ACC Galerie, WEIMAR 2016 Vorspiel: Das Neu-Schreiben eines Sturzes
Die Schicht im Stripclub besteht aus fünf Dingen – Tables, Abzocke, Monotonie, Lapdances
und mit den anderen Mädels unter dem flackernden Deckenlicht im Backstage abhängen.
Diese fünf Dinge werden von der Musik geregelt. Alles ist durch das endlose Wummern
kürzlich erschienener Pop-Remixes aufeinander abgestimmt. Jeder Song erzählt eine
Geschichte – und treibt jede Tänzerin an den für sie bestimmten Spot, zielsicher wie eine
Navigations-App. Das Wummern sagt dir, wo du hinmusst, was du dort tust und wann du
weiterziehst. Es ist der Herzschlag von dem Biest, das dein Einkommen ist. Es ist das
befriedigende Klingeln der Kassen. Es hält den Takt und zählt die Münzen.
Das Tanzen auf der Bühne wird „Table“ genannt. Du bekommst keinen Cent dafür, und du
musst es jeden Abend machen, auf Zuruf, ohne zu zögern. Wenn du zu spät anfängst, zahlst
du Bußgeld. Man kennt diese großartigen „Sexy Dancing“-Clips auf YouTube, in denen
junge Frauen in ihren Schlafzimmern vor einem Spiegel tanzen. Ich stelle mir das vor, wenn
ich an den Table denke … Kurz bevor der Spiegelschrank umkippt oder die Eltern ins
Zimmer platzen, gibt es diesen flüchtigen Moment, in dem die Kamera keine Rolle mehr
spielt. Es ist der Moment, in dem das Spiegelbild lebendig wird, kaum sichtbar und nicht in
Worte zu fassen. Aus einer Frau werden zwei Frauen – das Selbst und das wahrgenommene
Selbst. Zwei Frauen tanzen für sich und für niemanden sonst, wie ein Doppelstern sind sie
gefangen auf der gemeinsamen Bahn, und sie staunen über die kreisenden Hüften, die
ihnen nicht mehr wie ihre eigenen vorkommen. Dieser Moment ist der „Table“; auf zwei
Seiten umringt von Wandspiegeln, und einmal mehr gespiegelt vom aufpolierten Stahl der
Pole. Auf den anderen beiden Seiten neigt die Menge ihre Köpfe, um dich zu begaffen, und
meistens gaffen sie über die Spiegel. Tausend Teile einer Tänzerin, millionenfach
aufgeschlitzt und wieder vereint. Die Stripperin, die auf der Bühne emporragt, vertauscht ihr
„Ich“ für all die Augen im Club.
Beherrsche den Raum für zehn Minuten, hoch und runter, drehen und drehen und hoch und
runter. Dann gibt dir die Musik das Zeichen fürs Abzocken. An guten Abenden kannst du
das Abzocken überspringen, dir denjenigen schnappen, der dich schon im Voraus gebucht
hat, und leichtes Geld verdienen. Aber an einem lahmen Abend ist das Abzocken die ganze
Arbeit, das freudlose, monotone, unbezahlte Verführen zum Lapdance.
Es gibt zwei Regeln im Stripclub. Nummer eins, keine Veränderungen, das hier ist keine
Überraschungsparty. Gleiche Frisur, gleiches Kleid, gleicher Tanz. Du musst das
wiederholen, was erwartet wird, und erwartet wird die Aufrechterhaltung eines Begehrens
mithilfe einer sehr eingeschränkten Fantasie. Schulbuch-Fantasie, Hetero-Männer-Fantasie.
Nichts davon wird verwirklicht, und nichts wird geändert, einschließlich der Unterhaltungen.
Du redest über Zeit,
sie reden über Geld,
du redest über Geld,
sie machen ein Angebot.
Reiche deine Hand und laufe mit, Können ist bewundernswert, sich aufspielen
kontraproduktiv. Wenige Menschen zahlen für Angeber, und wenige Angeber zahlen …
genug. Wenn alle wissen, wofür sie zahlen, dann kennt jeder seinen Wert.
Ein Lapdance ist ziemlich selbsterklärend, und nebenbei: Rückerstattung und Retour sind
ausgeschlossen.
Mit den Mädels zusammensitzen ist, als würde man mit den drei Menschen auf ein Picknick
gehen, die man in der Schule am meisten gehasst hat – so wie man sie sich ausmalt, wenn
man sich fragt, was wohl aus ihnen geworden ist: Mindestens eine von ihnen stellt man sich
mit riesigen Fake-Brüsten vor, eine halbgerauchte Kippe zwischen den glitzernden Lippen,
Spray Tan-gebräunt von Kopf bis Fuß, ihre fünfundzwanzig Zentimeter-Absätze in einer
seltsam grätschenden Stellung, in der sie in einen Plastikmülleimer pinkelt. Ihre beste
Highschool-Freundin ist wie immer an ihrer Seite und hält ihr die Haar-Extensions hoch,
damit sie nicht in den Eimer fallen und nass werden. Und dann ändert sich der Ort, aus der
Straße wird ein Vinylsofa, und plötzlich ist die Freundin weg, und du sitzt neben diesem
Mädchen, das eben noch in einen Plastikeimer gepinkelt hat, und dieses Mädchen ist deine
Verbündete. Sie ist es, deren Haarspray du borgst, deren Kunden du übernimmst, wenn sie
gerade keine Zeit hat, sie ist das Mädchen, das dir die Strapse befestigt. Sie gibt dir
Zigaretten und besorgt dir Drogen. Sie sagt dir, wann und wo es in Ordnung ist zu weinen.
Sie bringt dir Drinks und lässt die Leute rausschmeißen, die dich belästigen. Sie gibt dir
Ratschläge zu eingewachsenen Härchen, Schönheitschirurgen und Intimpiercings.
Sie ist auch das Mädchen, das dir die Kunden klaut, sobald du an drei Abenden
hintereinander mehr verdient hast als sie, und dem Clubbetreiber erzählt, du würdest
Blowjobs anbieten, um dir ein bisschen was dazuzuverdienen. Sie ist die Konkurrenz. Aber
ebenso gut könnte sie diejenige sein, die dir wieder aufhilft, nachdem du gestürzt bist. Was
auch immer ihr Name damals war, jetzt lautet er Phoenix, er lässt sich beliebig multiplizieren,
z.B. mit elf: Poppy, Peaches, Tiger, Stella, Bella, Calista, Angel, Sasha, Tasha, Sienna, Sarah.
Eines Freitagabends bin ich, auf dem Weg von der Bühne nach unten, auf der zweiten Stufe
an ihr vorbei. Der Club war voll, und die Menge außer sich. Flaschen und Gläser klirrten, und
die Scheine quollen unter meinem BH hervor.
Heute kein Abzocken für mich, dachte ich zufrieden.
Während ich mir das Kleid nochmals im Nacken band, stolzierte ich zur Kasse. Ich spürte
einen meiner Stiletto-Absätze an der Wade des anderen Beines, ein seltsames Gefühl, als
würde man von einem Miniaturpferd getreten. Den Bruchteil einer Sekunde später verlor ich
das Gleichgewicht. Ein Bein verkeilt in der Wade des anderen, das seinerseits kaum mehr
den Boden berührte. Der Flamingo im Garten des Nachbarn. Meine Finger spreizten und
verknoteten sich in den Nackenbändern meines Kleides. Ich verhedderte mich und machte
eine Drehung wie eine dieser winzigen Plastikballerinas auf einem Kuchen. Und dann
begann ich zu kippen.
Ich sah mit aufgerissenen Augen, wie ihre Jacken, ihre Gläser und ihre Hosen sich zur Seite
neigten, die Wände, die Stühle, die Flaschen, die Bühne im Spiegel, das Mädchen auf der
Bühne im Spiegel, alles neigte sich zur Seite, die Lichter, die Dunkelheit. Ich konnte keine
Musik mehr hören – als wären dein und mein Herzschlag gemeinsam verstummt.
Ich habe einmal ein Video gesehen, das meinen Bruder beim Bungee-Jumping in den
Ferien in Neuseeland zeigt. Eine schauerliche Stille füllte die Schlucht auf dem Fernseher.
Dann stürzte ein Miniaturbruder von einer dünnen Fußgängerbrücke herab.
Das Fallen schien ewig zu dauern.
Hätte mein Bruder nicht in lebensechter Größe neben mir gestanden, ich hätte das Video
angehalten, um seinen Tod nicht mitansehen zu müssen. Obwohl sein Sturz durch das Seil
gestoppt wurde, kam er auf dem Bildschirm nicht wieder zum Vorschein, bis das Video
dieses Geräusch machte. Es war die Art von Geräusch, die sich nicht imitieren und nicht
vergessen lässt. Das Geräusch eines komprimierten Schreis, die gesamte Luft ausgestoßen
von den winzigen Lungen meines winzigen Fernsehbruders.
Ich machte dieses Geräusch, als ich auf dem Boden des Stripclubs aufschlug. Meine Arme
hinter meinem Kopf, als befände ich mich mitten in einer Polizeikontrolle.
Meine Rippen krachten auf den Boden, dann meine Hüfte, meine Knie und mein rechter
Wangenknochen. Das Knacken eines meiner Plastikabsätze traf auf das Echo meiner Füße,
die als letztes aufkamen. Auf dem Boden liegend, kroch mir der Geruch verschütteten
Alkohols in die Nase. Ich konnte Schuhe sehen, den wogenden Saum des samtenen
Vorhangs, die Staubflusen in den Ecken des Clubs.
Ich lag wie tot auf dem Boden und versuchte mich aufzulösen.
Sekunden wurden zu Minuten.
Hatte niemand meinen Sturz gesehen?
Und dann sah ich die vorübergleitenden Blicke, das unbehagliche Verlagern von Füßen; sie
wandten sich ab. Sie taten so, als wäre es nicht passiert. Sie standen weiterhin herum und
tranken, und sie warteten darauf, dass sich der Vorgang meiner Auflösung vollendete. Was
war so verstörend für diejenigen, auf deren Schößen ich mich noch vor wenigen Stunden so
ausgiebig geräkelt hatte? Warum sahen sie in dem Moment weg, in dem sie endlich die
Möglichkeit hatten, ihrer ersehnten männlichen Beschützerrolle nachzukommen?
Ich lachte, als ich mir vorstellte, wie ich aus der Vogelperspektive aussah, ein Eisbärteppich,
dessen Kopf seltsam zur Seite abgeknickt lag. Statt des finalen, eingefrorenen Knurrens mit
aufgerissenem Kiefer Sekunden vor der Kugel – das Grinsen des bereits Toten, desjenigen,
der etwas sehen kann, das dem Jäger verborgen bleibt. Ich lag dort, und sie hielten mich
mit ihrer Verweigerung, mich zu sehen, am Boden. Es hatte funktioniert. Ich hatte mich
aufgelöst.
Es war Phoenix, die mir auf ihrem Weg nach hinten aufhalf. Sie beugte sich auf ihren
gewaltigen Plateauschuhen herunter und gesellte sich zu mir auf den Boden. Sie zog mich
mit der Kraft eines Truckers nach oben. Als wir sicher ins Backstage gelangt waren, stieß sie
mich grob auf das billige Vinylsofa, kramte eine Zigarette aus ihrer Handtasche und schob
sie mir ohne zu fragen in den Mund. Sie zündete sie an. Ich sah zu ihr auf, das Deckenlicht
legte sich wie ein flackernder Heiligenschein auf ihr Haupt. Sie langte nach meiner
Handtasche; ich trat ihr hart gegens Schienbein.
Später verfluchte ich mich, den Club und jeden, der mich hatte fallen sehen. Tänzer müssen
tanzen, sonst sind sie keine Tänzer. Stripper müssen strippen, wieder und wieder, Schicht
nach Schicht, es ist immer noch etwas übrig, das sich abstreifen lässt. Noch ein Stück und
noch ein Stück.
Fallen ist tödlich für das gleichmäßige Wogen, das die Möglichkeit unendlichen NichtVerwirklichens von Begehren aufrechterhält; was letztlich das Begehren selbst ist. Alles
erschlafft. Wer das Tanzen unterbricht, bricht die Regeln. Nicht durch schummeln, nicht
durch Vorsätzlichkeit, nicht als Protest. Es war ein Zufall, aber einer, in dem mein Scheitern
vorherbestimmt war. Aus dem Privilegierten, Vertikalen, Lesbaren, Kenntlichen und
Benennbaren herausfallen, ist nicht einfach fallen, es hat auch nichts mit werfen oder
springen zu tun. Es geht mehr in Richtung schubsen. Ich wurde aus dem Fenster gestoßen.
Ich fiel in Ungnade, die Stimme des Teufels in meinem Ohr.
Ist diese Geschichte komisch? War sie es jemals? Im Mechanisch-Komischen, dem Slapstick
– das dargestellte Ereignis in The Fall – gibt es eine zarte Grenze zwischen Komischem und
Demütigendem. Aristoteles sprach das Tragische den höchsten Helden zu … das gemeine
Volk, das in der Geschichte selten zu den Gewinnern zählt, erhielt stattdessen den Humor.
Sollten Aristoteles und Thomas Hobbes Recht damit haben, dass wir über diejenigen lachen,
die sich in der Hierarchie unter uns befinden, dann verrät das Schweigen nach meinem Sturz
im Stripclub sehr viel.1 Niemand, obwohl sie physisch alle über mir ragten, fühlte sich mir
überlegen. Wenn mein Sturz im Stripclub nicht komisch war, dann weil mein Publikum –
plötzlich seiner Komplizenschaft in der moralisch minderwertigen Dunkelheit eines
Stripclubs gewahr werdend – in meinem Sturz sich selbst in Ungnade fallen sah.
Wie können wir lachen, nachdem wir gefallen sind?
Zunächst sollte die Aufmerksamkeit darauf gelenkt werden, dass das Komische
nicht außerhalb dessen existiert, was dezidiert MENSCHLICH ist.
Lachen ist notwendigerweise eine Reaktion auf bestimmte Bedingungen des
(alltäglichen) Lebens. Es muss eine SOZIALE Bedeutung haben.2
Wir können nicht lachen, ohne gefallen zu sein.
1
Dr. Jay Brinker. Den Humor ergründen. Ein Podcast über das Studium und die Wissenschaft des Humors. Episoden 1 und 2.
Zugriff im Januar 2016: http://drjaybrinker.com/welcome/making-sense-of-humour-podcast/
2
Henri Bergson. Lachen. Ein Essay über die Bedeutung des Comics. 1911.
In Ungnade zu fallen wurde lange als Menschlichkeit der conditio humana betrachtet, es ist
gleichsam ihre Komik. Wir haben alle Anteil an der Komik, wir sind alle Typen, die fallen.
Was demütigend ist, könnte entmenschlichend sein, doch was entmenschlichend ist, könnte
sich später als komisch erweisen. Bekommt die Geschichte also im Akt des Erzählens ihre
Komik? Was verloren geht, wenn man über ein Slapstick-Event berichtet – der tatsächliche
Vorfall des Sturzes – wird durch eine sprachliche und gestische Imitation dieses Ereignisses
ersetzt. Was wir zu transportieren hoffen, ist die Ahnung einer mechanischen Starrheit, die
den menschlichen Körper gewissermaßen entmenschlicht erscheinen lässt.
Ein Mann rennt die Straße entlang, stolpert und fällt hin; die Passanten brechen
in Gelächter aus. Sie würden wohl nicht lachen, denke ich, wenn sie annähmen,
eine Laune habe ihn auf einmal dazu bewogen, auf dem Boden Platz zu nehmen.
Sie lachen, da das Platz-Nehmen unfreiwillig ist.
Folglich ist es nicht der plötzliche Wandel seines Verhaltens, der das Lachen
hervorruft, sondern viel eher das unfreiwillige Element in diesem Wandel – seine
Tollpatschigkeit, um genau zu sein. Vielleicht lag ein Stein auf dem Weg. Er
hätte seine Geschwindigkeit ändern oder dem Hindernis ausweichen sollen.
Stattdessen, mangels Elastizität, durch mentale Abwesenheit und durch eine Art
physischen Starrsinn, ALS RESULTAT, technisch gesprochen, VON STEIFIGKEIT
UND TRIEBKRAFT, führten die Muskeln ihre Bewegungen unverändert fort,
obwohl die Umstände etwas anderes erfordert hätten. Das ist der Grund für den
Sturz des Mannes und gleichsam für das Gelächter der Leute.3
The Fall verbindet anekdotisch Erfahrungen aus erster Hand, die in Bezug zur Komik des
Körperlichen stehen, mit weiterführenden Ideen zum Tragisch-Komischen, zu schwarzem
Humor und zum körperlichen Empfinden im Moment des Fallens/Scheiterns. In ihrem Essay
Komischer Ikonoklasmus erinnert Sheena Wagstaff mit Baudelaires Über das Wesen des
Lachens an die Verbindung zwischen dem Lachen und dem „Missgeschick eines Sturzes im
uralten Sinne, einer physischen und moralischen Entwürdigung“. Sie beschreibt Baudelaires
Umrahmung des Lachens als Zusammenspiel sowohl engelhafter als auch diabolischer
Elemente. Diese duale Tendenz erlaubt das Nebeneinander und die Kollision von
erhabenen und niederen Regungen im Lachen. Sie umschließt „die vermeintlich
Unwissenden und Schwachen“, die sich mit ihrem Lachen auf die Entwertung moralischer
Codes und Werte beziehen, als auch diejenigen, die sich für moralisch überlegen halten und
das Lachen als Bestätigung ihrer vorherrschenden Moral oder Ideologie gebrauchen.
Wagstaff legt dar, wie Künstler, indem sie referentielles und scheinbar unpassendes Material
verwenden, Wissenssysteme ins Wanken bringen können. Wagstaff schreibt:
Sich komischem Ikonoklasmus‘ zu bedienen, ist für Künstler das gleiche wie
einen Witz zu machen: stören, Lachen provozieren, Vorannahmen und
Konventionen angreifen. Durch das Hinzufügen des Komischen schaffen sie
neue Kontexte und Bedeutungen. Wie beim Ursprungswitz, dem Sturz, wird
die verfestigte Ordnung der Dinge bedroht. Gleichsam verschwimmt die
Grenze zwischen der sogenannten „Hoch“- und der Populärkultur … Über
3
Ebd.
den Sturz zu lachen demonstriert die Annahme des Künstlers, selbst auch ein
Zeichen zu sein, und somit das Ende der Idee von authentischer
Persönlichkeit …“4
Der Sturz im Stripclub konnte zunächst nicht komisch sein, weil er ein altertümliches
Missgeschick signalisierte, in dem alle zusammen stürzen. Was hätte komisch sein sollen, die
Entmenschlichung meines Körpers durch die mechanische Starrheit, die sich in meinem
Fallen widerspiegelte, war letztlich nichts anderes als das Vermenschlichen durch die soziale
Komplizenschaft eines Sturzes, der bereits stattgefunden hatte. Vielleicht aber kann er in
zweiter Instanz noch komisch sein: Indem die Künstlerin sich selbst als Zeichen erkennt und
dieses Zeichen durch das Nacherzählen der Anekdote in ihrem Werk zum Ausdruck bringt.
Ich lachte, als ich mir vorstellte, wie ich aus der Vogelperspektive aussah, ein Eisbärteppich,
dessen Kopf seltsam zur Seite abgeknickt lag. Statt des finalen, eingefrorenen Knurrens mit
aufgerissenem Kiefer Sekunden vor der Kugel – das Grinsen des bereits Toten, desjenigen,
der etwas sehen kann, das dem Jäger verborgen bleibt. Wenn wir, Wagstaff folgend, den
komischen Charakter hinzufügen und uns rekontextualisieren, könnte es uns gelingen, die
Unvereinbarkeiten aufzudecken. Die Unvereinbarkeit zwischen Menschlichem und NichtMenschlichem und zwischen Menschlichem und Menschlichem; zwischen Erhabenem und
Niederem, Banalem und Noblem, Komischem und Demütigendem. Man muss sich selbst
aus der Vogelperspektive betrachten, um über sich lachen zu können. Ansonsten droht der
Witz nicht anzukommen. Es dreht sich nicht alles um das Publikum, aber Kontext ist nicht
vom Inhalt zu trennen, wenn man sich an eine Öffentlichkeit wendet. „Hutcheson, Kant und
Schopenhauer vertraten alle die Meinung, dass Komik in den zweckwidrigen Verbindungen
von Dingen liegt und im Missverhältnis.“5 Ließe sich sagen, dass, komisch oder nicht, der
Mechanismus von Komik im (wiederholenden) Darstellen eines jeden Kunstwerkes liegt? Bei
dem Versuch, den Sturz im Stripclub nachzuerzählen, fiel ich abermals hin. Bei einem Witz
kommt es ganz aufs Timing an.
Wenn die Anekdote des Stürzens weitergegeben und somit ihrem ursprünglichen Kontext
enthoben wird, dann wird der Mechanismus der Slapstick-Anekdote freigelegt. Kunst lässt
uns die Vogelperspektive einnehmen. Kunst kann auf der Nebeneinanderstellung oder
Neupositionierung scheinbar gegensätzlicher Diskurse beruhen – „E“- trifft „U“-Kultur, das
Banale wird das Noble, der fremde Blick der eigene, der eigene Blick der fremde. Ein
Kunstwerk kann aus der Distanz die Parallelen und Kollisionen auf die gleiche Weise
erkunden, wie man einen Witz verstehen könnte, sowohl verstörend als auch beruhigend,
inhaltlich wie formal. Ein Kunstwerk ist auf Wiederholung, Nachahmung, Vertrautheit und
Überraschung angewiesen. Kunst ist der wirre Raum zwischen Idee und Ausstellung – Witz
und Pointe.
4
5
Sheena Wagstaff: Komischer Ikonoklasmus. In: Der Witz des Künstlers, hrsg. von Jennifer Higgie. MIT Press. 2007.
Kristine Stiles: Fluxus-Performance und Humor. In: Der Witz des Künstlers, hrsg. von Jennifer Higgie. MIT Press. 2007.
The shift in the strip club is made up of five things – tables, hustling, monotony, lap dances,
and sitting out back under the fluoros with the other girls. These five things are managed by
the music. Everything is timed and cued by the ceaseless thump of recent remixed pop
releases. Every song tells a story —it allows you to pinpoint a certain dancer’s location like a
GPS. It tells you where you should be, what you’re supposed to be doing there, and for how
long you should be doing it. It’s the heart beat of the animal that is your earnings, and the
satisfying ringing of the register. It keeps time and counts coins.
The stage dance or pole dance – is known as 'the table'. You don’t get paid for it, and you
have to do it every night, on time, and when you’re told. If you’re late you get a fine. You
know those great Youtube videos of girls ‘sexy dancing’ in front of the mirrors in their
bedrooms… This is what I think of when I think of 'the table'… Right before a closet comes
down on someone, or somebody’s mum unexpectedly bursts into the room, there is a
fleeting moment in which the camera is forgotten. It is the moment when the image in the
mirror comes alive. It is beyond vision and very much outside of language. One girl becomes
two girls, and here, she is one girl; something like the self and the perceived self come
together. Two girls dance for themself and no one else, locked like binary stars in one
another’s orbit and gazing with wonder at the writhing hips that they no longer recognise as
their own. That moment is 'the table’; surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling mirrors
and mirrored again in the pole. On the other two sides the crowd tilts back their heads to
watch and most often they watch in the mirrors. Thousands of pieces of a dancer, slashed up
and made whole a million times over. And the stripper, towering on the stage, trades her ‘I’
for all the eyes in the club.
Hold that room for ten minutes, up and down, around and around and up and down. Then
the music tells you to step down for 'the hustle'. On a good night you can skip the hustle,
grab whoever has prebooked a dance with you and make easy money. But on a slow night,
'the hustle' is the real labour; the joyless, monotonous, unpaid, procuring of clients for lap
dances.
There are two rules in the strip club. Number one, do not change. This is not a surprise
party. Same hair, same dress, same dance. You must re-enact what is expected, and what is
expected is the perpetuation of desire through a very limited scope of fantasy – textbook
fantasy, straight-guy fantasy. Nothing is to be fulfilled and nothing is to change, including
the conversation. You talk about time, they talk about money, you talk about money, they
make an offer. Hold out your hand and move right along, skill is admirable but flaunting it is
counterproductive. Few people pay for a dazzling intellect, and few dazzling intellects pay…
enough. If everybody knows what they’re paying for, then everybody knows their value.
Lap dances are fairly self-explanatory, and besides there are never any refunds or returns.
Sitting out back with the girls is like going on a picnic with the three people you hated most
at school. When you next wonder to yourself, “Where are they now?”, imagine one of them
with huge fake breasts, a half-smoked ciggie hanging sideways from her glossy lips, spraytanned orange from head to toe, straddling awkwardly in ten-inch heels, pissing into a
plastic rubbish bin. Imagine her high school sidekick beside her as always, holding her hair
extensions up out of the bin to keep them dry. Imagine now that you and her are allies. She
is the girl whose hairspray you will borrow, who will palm off the clients she doesn’t have
time for, who will tie your straps. She will give you cigarettes and sell you drugs. She is the
girl who will tell you when and where it is acceptable to cry. She’ll bring you a drink, she’ll
have security throw someone out for you. She will advise you on ingrown hairs, plastic
surgeons, and the intimate purposes of her many discreet piercings.
She is also the girl who will steal your dance tickets and tell the manager that you’re giving
blow jobs for an extra fifty bucks if you make more money than her three nights in a row. She
is the competition. But she might also be the girl who will pick you up when you hit the floor.
Whatever her name was then (it’s now Phoenix) multiply her by eleven: Poppy, Peaches,
Tiger, Stella, Bella, Calista, Angel, Sasha, Tasha, Sienna, Sarah.
One Friday night I was passing Peaches on the second step, coming down from the stage.
The club was packed and the crowd was enthusiastic. Bottles smashed and the cash in my
bra was sticking to my skin. No hustle for me tonight I thought smugly.
As I was retying the straps of my dress behind my neck, I rocked forward for the final step,
ready to head to the register. I felt one of my stiletto spikes catch on the back of the
opposite leg; a strange feeling, like being kicked by a miniature horse. Pain jolted my chest
forward and in a split second I had lost my balance. One spiked leg barely touching the
floor, the other now bent awkwardly out to the side. Think pink flamingo in your neighbour’s
lawn. My fingers splayed out and knotted in the dress’ halter-neck straps. I was tangled and I
was bound. I started to spin like one of those tiny cake-topping plastic ballerinas. And then I
started to tip.
I watched, wide-eyed, as their jackets, their glasses, and their trousers turned sideways; the
walls, the stools, the bottles, the pole in the mirror, the girl on the pole in the mirror,
everything turning sideways, the lights, the darkness. I could no longer here the music – as if
our heartbeats had stopped together.
I once watched a video of my brother bungee jumping on his holiday in New Zealand. An
eerie silence filled the canyon on the television screen and then... a miniature brother
plummeting from a thin footbridge. The falling seemed to last forever. If life-sized brother
hadn’t been standing next to me at the time, I would have stopped the tape to avoid
watching my little brother die. Even though his fall was broken by the elastic, my tiny-screen
brother didn’t come back to life until the video made his sound. It was the kind of sound that
you can’t imitate or forget. The sound of a compacted scream, all of the air being thumped
from tiny-screen-brother’s lungs.
I made that sound when I hit the floor of the strip club. My arms behind my head as if
midway through a police search. My ribs found the floor, full-force, only moments before my
hips, my knees, and my right cheekbone. The crack of the first plastic heel was echoed by
the second as my feet fell last. Lying on the ground I could smell the booze-mopped floor. I
could see shoes, the swaying hems of the velvet curtains, the tumbleweeds of dust in the
corners of the club.
I lay down dead and attempted to dematerialise. Seconds turned into minutes. Had nobody
seen me fall? And then I caught the sliding glances, the uncomfortable shifting of feet; they
were turning away. They were pretending it hadn’t happened. They stayed standing, they
kept drinking, and they waited for my dematerialisation to complete. What was so
devastating to those whose laps I had casually writhed all over only hours before? Why was it
that given this opportunity to fulfill their role of “looking after the girls” they were averting
their eyes? I laughed at the bird's-eye view of myself, a polar bear rug with its head turned
strangely to the side. Instead of that final, frozen, top-jawed snarl just seconds before the
bullet; the grin of the already-dead, someone who can see something that the hunter can’t. I
lay there and they held me down with the weight of their refusal to see me. It had worked. I
had disappeared.
It was Phoenix, on her way out back who picked me up. She bent down from her towering
platforms and joined me on the floor, she dragged me up with the strength of a seasoned
trucker. When we had made it safely out the back she dropped me roughly on to the cheap
vinyl sofa, took a cigarette from her purse, and shoved it without asking into my mouth. She
lit it. I looked up at her, haloed by the horizontal fluorescent lights. She reached for my
purse; I kicked her hard in the shin.
Pain crept up to where I could feel it. I lay on my back out of site and cursed myself, the club,
and everyone who had watched me fall. Dancers must dance or they are not dancers.
Strippers must strip, over and over, layer after layer – there is always something else you can
remove. Keep (re)moving. Falling kills the constant vertical swaying that sustains the
possibility for the endless unfulfillment of desire, which is desire itself, and that’s just not
(up)right. To stop dancing is to break the rules. Not by cheating, not in an act of willfulness,
not in an act of protest. It was an accident, but one for which I was set up to fail. Falling
outside of what is privileged, vertical, legible, recognisable and nameable is not only falling,
but nor is it throwing or jumping. It is somehow being pushed. I was defenestrated. I fell
from grace.
Is this story humorous? Was it ever? In the mechanical comic – the slapstick, embodied event
of the fall – there is a fine line between the humorous and the humiliating. Aristotle himself
awarded tragedy to the elite heroes of the imaginary... real people. History’s grotesque
runners-up, got humour. If Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes were right in saying that we laugh
at those who are beneath us, then much is revealed in the silence after my fall in the strip
club.6 No one, though they towered over me physically, could feel himself above me. If when
I fell in the strip club it wasn’t funny, it was because my audience —suddenly made aware of
their complicity in the morally debased darkness of a strip club— saw in my fall, their own fall
from grace. Who are we to laugh; having fallen? We are those who have something in
common. Those who have discovered that humour must have a social signification.7
We can only laugh, having fallen. The fall from grace has long been considered the
humanness of the human condition, it is also the humour of it. We are all in on the joke and
we are all the fall guy. What might be humiliating, might be dehumanising, but what is
dehumanising might later be what is humorous. So is this story humorous in its retelling?
What is lost in the recounting of an unwitnessed slapstick event —the accident of the fall—
is replaced with a linguistic and gestural imitation of the embodied event. The thing that we
hope might travel through is the notion of mechanical inelasticity. This is a change in
movement, where the momentum of dancing becomes, ‘…through lack of elasticity, through
absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A RESULT IN FACT OF RIGIDITY OR
OF MOMENTUM…’ the body frozen in an involuntary fall; becomes somehow in-human.8
The fall connects anecdotal first-person narrative experience, pertaining to the relation of
humour as/in the body, to broader notions around the tragic-comic, black humour and the
micro-encounter (or minor-encounter) of bodily sensation in failing/falling. In her essay,
Comic Iconoclasm, Sheena Wagstaff recalls, through Baudelaire’s On the Essence of
Laughter, the link between laughter and the ‘accident of an ancient Fall, a physical and
moral debasement.’ She describes Baudelaire’s reframing of laughter as having the dual
tendency towards angelic and diabolic elements that function simultaneously. This dual
tendency allows for the paralleling and collision of notions of high and low cultures in
laughter, ‘as both the province of the ignorant and weak,’ pertaining to debasement of
moral codes and values, as well as that of the one who believes they hold a position of moral
superiority and uses laughter to reinforce hegemonic morality or ideology. Wagstaff
discusses how artists, using referential and seemingly incongruous material, can destabilise
6
Dr. Jay Brinker, Making Sense of Humour, A podcast all about the study and science of humour. Episodes 1 and 2, accessed
January 2016 at: http://drjaybrinker.com/welcome/making-sense-of-humour-podcast/
7
Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, 1911.
8
Ibid.
systems of knowledge as well as their own subjectivities. Wagstaff writes:
By using comic iconography, artists do the same thing as making a joke: perturbing,
provoking laughter, attacking presuppositions and conventions. By annexing the
comic character, they recontextualize it, thus altering its ‘meaning.’ Like the Original
Joke, the Fall, it threatens the abolished order of things. As well as appearing to blur
the distinction between so-called ‘high’ art and popular culture... Being seen to
laugh at the Fall demonstrates an acceptance by the artist that she is also a sign, so
signalling the end of the notion of authentic selfhood… 9
The fall in the strip club could not be funny in the first instance because it signalled an
ancient accident in which everybody fell together. What should have been funny as the
dehumanisation of my body in the mechanical inelasticity displayed by my falling, was in fact
humanising via a social complicity in a fall already taken.
Perhaps though, it can be funny in the second instance: In the recognition by the artist of
herself as a sign through her retelling of the anecdote in her artwork: I laughed at the bird’s
eye view of myself, a polar-bear-rug with its head turned strangely to the side. Instead of
that final, frozen, top-jawed snarl just seconds before the bullet —the grin of the already
dead, someone who can see something that the hunter can’t.
If, following Wagstaff, we annex the comic character and recontextualise her, we might
begin to expose the incongruous relation. The incongruity between human and non-human,
and between human and human; between high and low, banal and sublime, humorous and
humiliating. One must have a particular bird’s-eye view of oneself to guarantee a laugh.
Otherwise, the joke falls flat. It’s not all about audience, but context is inseparable from
content in the delivery of anything made public. 'Hutcheson, Kant and Schopenhauer all
argued that humour resides in the inappropriate association of things and in incongruity.'10
Could it be said that, funny or not, the mechanism of humour is what is (re)performed by any
artwork? In an attempt at a retelling of the fall in the strip club, I fell again. A good joke is all
about timing.
When the anecdote of falling is relayed, out of the context of its original site, the mechanism
of the slapstick anecdote —inseparable from the body in space— is finally exposed. Art is
what allows a bird’s-eye view. Art can rely on the juxtaposition or repositioning of seemingly
oppositional discourses— ‘high’ meets ‘low’ culture, the ‘banal’ becomes the ‘sublime,’ the
gaze of an ‘other’ is inverted. An artwork can explore from a distance the parallel and the
collision in the same way as one might experience a joke functioning as both incongruous as
9
Sheena Wagstaff, “Comic Iconoclasm” (1987) in: The Artist’s Joke, ed. Jennifer Higgie (London: MIT Press, 2007) p 79.
Kristine Stiles “Fluxus Performance and Humour” (1995) in: The Artist’s Joke, ed. Jennifer Higgie (London: MIT Press, 2007) p.
52 - 58
10
well as expositional in both content and form. The space of an artwork is reliant on
repetition, imitation, familiarity, and surprise. Art itself is the incongruous space between
idea and exhibition — joke and punchline.
I flew thirty hours away from summer to live alone in two rooms in an otherwise empty fourstory house, on the outskirts of an unfamiliar town, in the middle of the German winter. I
walk out the door and look left: headstone shop, ahead is the cemetery, to the left in the
Deutches Rotes Kreuz, Palliative care unit. Dying, dying death. ‘Grabmal’ the world’s least
festive banner says. The aesthetic of misery, appropriate to adornments for the dead, is
finely tuned; think Weimar classicism, Fascism, Socialism. There are stacks of stones, rows of
stones, stone walls, stone paths and stone suggestion boards; if Annie Dillard really could
teach stones to talk, it’d be a riot over there, but as it is, everything is quiet and everything is
grey.11
The soundtrack for this scene is pretty minimal and only really features sirens. I stay inside
and read about The Fall. Humanity’s fall, Chaplin’s fall, Bergson’s fall, and site-specifically —
since he is buried in the death-house across the road— Goethe’s fall. I can’t imagine selling
my soul to the devil for my lost youth, but watching the snow fall through my studio window,
I can almost imagine selling it for a few hours of the Tasmanian summer. Short-lived, and
maybe for that reason more precious, it's the only time of year in Tassie where nobody
seems deeply socially awkward. I’m not sure what that says about my social circles but
whatever it is, there is a very real sense of belonging that swells around us all in January and
February, like a slightly creepy, lingering, hippie hug. It could also be that there are a lot of
slightly creepy lingering hippies around in summer, all of whom seem to scamper back to
forest blockades further north, come April.
I am genuinely lonely. Spending two hours a day on Skype doesn’t compare to the
exhausted laughter of too many people in a hot car on the way to the beach; to the slow rise
in volume of too many conversations in unison. The crunch of my boots in the snow is not
the crunch of beer cans on the lawn out the back. And the sun is setting far too early.
Missing the summer is not about missing the heat; it’s about knowing more than six sides of
a place, no matter how small or how far away that place is. Humour is social. I decide to go
to the mall.
What should heaven look like? The sky should be blue. Unending-mid-summer-solsticepowdered-blue, maybe with some of those tiny fairy floss clouds wafting around. It could
look something like Jim Carey’s sunny-days-sky-dome in The Truman Show, or like one half
of the gift shop in the maternity ward at the hospital. There should be golden light! Golden
rays of sun pouring down and golden chandeliers! Dawn light and dusk light should flood
“Grey, all grey, is the sole, the rightful color of freedom. Every drop of dew on which the sun shines glistens with an
inexhaustible play of colours, but the spiritual sun, however many the persons and whatever the objects in which it is refracted,
must produce only the official color!" Karl Marx - The Aesthetic Component of Socialism from David Walsh’s lecture, delivered
on January 9, 1998 to the International Summer School on Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century,
organised by the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) in Sydney from January 3-10, 1998.
11
from both directions, light should break upon light and everything should glow. And Heaven
should be warm, really warm, tropical warmth without humidity. Constant, unwavering
warmth. The kind that would explain why angels have been wearing the same thing in
paintings for centuries. Warmth that requires no seasonal fashion. There are columns and
patio chairs and balconies on which to eat ice cream. Windows with warm light, bountiful
food that always tastes as you expect. Heaven is just like Venice! Except with fewer tourists
and a better tourist information centre. And you don’t have to worry about the
Mediterranean weather, or the smell from the canals. Skip the canals altogether, a nice
fountain and a public toilet would be better. Heaven should be an improvement on Venice.
It should be what Venice would be (could be!) if reconstructed inside of a German shopping
mall. Wilkommen to the Weimaratrium.
The Mall, including what is now the Weimar Atrium, AKA 'Heaven', has a rather dark past.
The Nazi’s built its shell in the 1930’s as a place for mass gatherings. The glass roof of the
Atrium with its wide triangular beams is part of this original structure. It was during the DDR
years that the building became a shopping centre. Even the Weimar-era-Stalinist-schooled
communists couldn't fight the public’s desire for luxury goods. Apparently the regime asked
its loyal adherents to please stop calling their west-side relatives. But anyone who didn't
listen got Nescafé and Nutella.12 Today, fallen from its Exquisit 60s and 70s grace, but having
fulfilled its westward capitalist dreams, it is a fully-fledged shit mall. A hell-hole of capitalist
malfunction, seemingly functioning seamlessly. The ground and first floors feature some
cheap chain stores and below ground level in the basement is an ALDI supermarket and its
monstrous and more expensive sister EDEKA. The escalators will take you from the depths
of hell, through purgatory, all the way up to the clouds painted on the ceiling of the skyfilled Atrium. The Weimar Atrium is Heaven... It is also Venice.
The Atrium was remodelled around ten years ago in the image of Venice. When I asked the
woman in the tourist information centre, “why Venice?”, she looked me dead in the eye with
the utmost seriousness and in a thick German accent replied: “Because Goethe liked
Venice.” Which in that moment sounded uncannily like “Because I said so.” The Weimar
atrium was built on that special parental logic that you just can’t argue with, a logic akin to
faith, hence, Venice-Heaven.
12
“Schooled in the Stalinist ranks of the Weimar-era communist movement, and with the sacrifices of the Nazi period ever-fresh
in their minds, the old communists of the Politburo clearly felt more at home with work and necessity than leisure and luxury.
Nevertheless, the question of consumption was not one the regime was able to escape.” Josie McLellan, ‘Even Under
Socialism, We Don’t Want To Do Without Love”: East German Erotica*’ in: Uta Balbier, Cristine Cuevas-Wolf and Joes Segal
eds. East German Material Culture and the Power of Memory, Supplement 7 of the Bulletin of the German Historical Institute
Washington DC (2011) pg 50. Accessed online on 27/2/2015: http://www.ghidc.org/files/publications/bu_supp/supp007/049.pdf
I go to the mall to escape winter. I put on my thermals, my jacket, my gloves, my scarf and
my beanie and I ride the escalators up to the sunlit Atrium. I don’t remove my winter clothes.
A puffy ball of various wool mixes, I start to feel a little hot, so I buy an ice cream. I sit under
the chandeliers, next to the plastic tree on an imitation marble park bench and sweat. I eat
my ice cream gazing up the blue sky and pretend that it’s summer.
The mall where he was supposed to meet the girl had recently been renovated. Mum was
dropping him off and then they were going to go to the movies together. I was ‘forced’ to
tag along and was nonchalantly – in an older, cooler big sister way – not giving a shit in the
back of the car. I was plugged into my Walkman, not listening to anything. My little brother,
in the front seat, had his eyes fixed on the always forward-moving horizon. His little mouth
was tight and it made his spiky gelled hair look severe, almost military. He looked as if he
were barely breathing. He had never been invited anywhere by a girl before. I thought of
him as a ridiculous kid, all gangly, with a laugh like a kookaburra. Annoying. But really he
never bothered me, he was shy and quiet and lived in books. He let me sleep in his bed
when we were little.
Mum and I rode the escalators one step behind him. I examined the white scar on the back
of his head. It was low down, in the closely shaved part of his mid-nineties-tapered haircut.
The little spectre interrupted his almost dead straight hairline. It glowed on his skinny brown
neck. What a dork, I thought, as I stared at that tiny little day ghost leaning over the edge of
his floppy denim collar. I remembered how much that cut had bled, the endless recital for
weeks afterwards of how many stitches he’d had. He never really complained. He turned
around quickly and I felt I’d burned right through him with my staring. In his awkwardly
pitched pubescent voice he told us that he had to get something, and then he would go up
to the cinema alone. We were free to go. Dismissed by the awkward teen with the spikey
hair on level three. My mum looked suddenly soft in the face, which was rare then, with three
teenagers and a full-time job. I wondered if she was seeing my lame little brother as a
potential man? I nearly scoffed, but something stopped me; abashed, I mumbled “see ya
dickhead.” Her hand clipped the back of my head but without conviction. The shiny mall
swallowed my little brother. My mum and I stood at a loss at the top of the escalator on level
three.
“What’s he buying?”
“Dunno.”
“Let’s find out”
“Ugh, then can we please go mum?”
I followed unenthusiastically at her heels as my mum practically skipped towards the
glass elevators across the floor. Everything was reflective and gold. We rode to the cinema
level, the light dropped moodily, it was kind of twinkly.
“There he is.”
His jacket looked ridiculously big from across the mall. He was still more boy than man, and
at that moment, more coat-hanger than boy. Examining my brother from across the mall, as
if he were a stranger made my insides wince and twist. Clumped uneasily out the end of an
oversize denim sleeve was a small shop-bought posy. He had bought her flowers. I stared
into the never arriving horizon, as he had in the car, too nervous to speak.
“Look, he bought her flowers” my mum almost whispered.
“What a loser” I said, to blot-out the pain in my throat. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” Her brow creased.
Time stretched out as we – hunters on safari on level four of the mall– watched my
little brother as ivory. The three of us waited for his date. Six sweaty palms, one of them
filled with a bunch of pink daisies and some fluffy, green fern.
My brother craned his neck to look at something we couldn’t see.
My Mum rose on to tip-toes, conspicuous as humanly possible, reflected in an eternity of
smudgy-gold-mall-cinema-mirrors.
My brother took six steps backwards, away from where he had been looking, and dropped
the little bunch of flowers in the bin. Something momentarily swallowed all the light in the
mall. An awkward group of teenagers, mostly girls, approached my brother. She had
brought her friends. My brother, shoulders slightly dropped, joined their ranks. He and his
jacket followed them towards the ticket counter.
Years later, I watched a video of my brother bungee jumping on his holiday in New Zealand.
An eerie silence filled the canyon on the television screen and then a miniature brother
plummeted from a thin footbridge. My sister howled excitedly and my mum feigned terror. I
watched my little brother fall and I remembered the day in the mall years before. I wondered
silently if he remembered the green-ferny-posy with the pink flowers, that for fear of
humiliation, through misunderstanding, was dropped with popcorn boxes and drinking
straws and chewing gum into a brass-look rubbish bin, outside the mall cinema. I refocused
on the television screen, on an agonizing fall that seemingly had no end. If my life-sized
brother hadn’t been standing next to me at the time, I would have stopped the tape to
avoid watching him die. Even after his fall was visibly broken by the elastic, my tiny-screen
brother didn’t come back to life until the video made his sound. It was the kind of sound that
you can’t imitate or forget. The sound of a compacted scream, all of the air being thumped
from tiny-screen-brother’s lungs.
Last night I saw a spectacular sky in Weimar. A sky with more stars than is possible. I walked
up past the cemetery away from town. At the top of the hill the road intersects the Goethe
trail. The stones are large and uneven, laid in muddy black Earth that sinks into itself, it’s so
worn it’s almost concertinaed. Not like the corrugated desert roads with their thousand
small rivets running against the grain of travelling. The ridges and sinks of the Goethe trail
run the direction of the road as if the path itself were a series of mangled gutters. The trail is
dark and slippery during the day-night, there are no streetlights and no houses, just
paddocks and blocks of spindly, leafless winter forest. You can only find the stones when
some diffuse light —maybe from the cloud-choked moon— lines them faintly silver. It’s like
walking the oil-slicked scales of a black snake fish. At four in the morning the falling snow,
stealing the scaly roads reflected silver, comes down in lines of icy stars in the fields that lay
open. They twinkle with the eyes of a smiling drunk, lolling and groggy with a secret
sadness, they struggle to keep themselves in the sky.
I visited the death-house at nine o’clock on the sunniest winter morning I had seen in
months. As I approached the door, I noticed that the door was slightly open and that there
was a piece of black linen wound round the iron door handles. It made a u-shaped figureeight, half inside, half outside, and it stopped the door from slamming. It was totally
incongruous with the neoclassical perfection of the front of the building. Three wide and
shallow stone steps - four thunderous columns beneath the typical triangular façade- double
wooden doors with the bolt heads precisely centered in every panel, and then this black rag,
twisted painfully around on itself. Such a powerful little wretch that rag who could steal the
bonecrushing slam of those towering doors from out of the crisp air.
Inside of the huge double timber doors is a glass box with a living human being inside it.
This is a cash desk that has been turned into a human terrarium presumably so that the
cashier can be kept warm without heating the whole death-house. Because warm tombs are
weird. Every step echoes through the small square building so perfectly that it sounds as if
you are following yourself. You’re your own acoustics are unsettling. There is ghost-stick
audio tour will tell you stories if you ask. It is a beautiful device, like a remote control; you
just push the numbers and the ghost-stick starts talking. But the stories start at number 261?
You are alone in a freezing cold crypt with only your sound-self and somehow you have lost
260 stories?
I walked down the stone steps into the vault. I have been in museums before, and the crypts
of English churches where everyone is neatly housed in Marble boxes, but only at funerals
have I ever seen the coffin. The death-house across the road is a room full of coffins, raw
somehow. The coffins are personalised, date stamped with the fashion of the time, you can
walk right up next to them, there are five tiny coffins for children. I turned quickly to leave
and was met by the ends of the two huge boxes closest to the door. Each with four black
iron rings along the side; brass letters like those used for house numbers on letterboxes:
GOETHE. SCHILLER. I selected story #281 to fill the silence. Story #281 has nothing to do
with Goethe and Schiller.
A polite British-accented ghost voice asked me to turn to my right and look for the two
coffins, behind all the others, in a strange dark alcove that I hadn’t even noticed. The
furthest back is easily the most beautiful in the vault, the detail in the paintwork is so
delicate, it seemed strange that it would have landed behind four others in the musical
coffins of the last two hundred years. It sits under its own stone arch, at the bottom of a dark
staircase closed off by an iron gate. It belongs to Maria Pavlovna.
Maria Pavlovna was eighteen years old when she married Grand Duke Charles Frederick,
moved to Weimar in 1805 to become the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. She was
a patron of the arts and sciences, the audio tour told me that it was she that first invited the
composer and pianist Franz Liszt to Weimar. Wikipedia added later that she was also a
patron of social welfare during a time when Weimar was comparatively poor, and that
Schiller dedicated one of his last poems to her. She was a devoted Russian Orthodox
throughout her life but her husband, like the others entombed in the death-house, was
baptised Protestant. Before she died she told her son that she should be buried in
accordance with her religion, but that she wanted to be buried next to her husband.
The Russian Orthodox Church in the cemetery in Weimar is built on three cartloads of
Russian soil. It is built uncannily close to the mausoleum because underneath, in the vault
with the coffins, they become one building. The back of the Vault was opened and Charles
Frederick and Maria Pavlovna’s coffins lay side by side; his in the Ducal vault that bears his
family name and hers directly beneath her church, in Russian earth. The death-house
became somehow ridiculous and romantic, tragicomic; completely human and very much of
the living. I thought about how Goethe had kept Schiller’s skull in his study for a while after
he died. I imagined him tapping it idly with his fancy quill and cracking a few very clever
German puns to it before returning to the very serious business of finishing Faust and
missing his friend.
In winter very few people visited the cemetery and those that sporadically came, parked at
my front door for no longer than fifteen minutes, always around midday. The visitors sit in
their cars for five, sometimes even ten minutes, and then suddenly they leap from their cars
and run for the graveyard, gloved fists balled tightly around a box of matches and punched
into their coat pockets. They navigate the icy gravel, kneel to fire up some of those windprotected red candle jars, and bolt for the warmth of their vehicles. They remove their
gloves like murderers, start their cars, and continue up the otherwise empty ambulance
access road. Drive-by mourning.
The Winter is trying to leave quickly but it has gotten tangled in the arms of the
untrustworthy Spring. They attempt to move ahead in opposite directions and slam
forcefully into one another. They face one another, each takes a step backwards and then
launches into a coming or a going and they hit each other again. Some days it’s like
watching the long kelp leaves tangle in the soft sway of the Southern Ocean. Long tendrils
stroking around and into to one another in the soft washing of the water. Seamlessly they
braid a curtain and the ocean changes from blue to black. The spring pushes the green up
through the white snow and blue seeps like water through the grey winter sky, buds appear
along the dead arms of the trees and burst like popcorn. The seasons braid together and
the pale trees with armfuls of spring flowers and frost look perfect under the new blue sky.
But sometimes it's more like shirt-fronting.
The Winter and the Spring smash into each other like the robotic Pachycephalosaurus that
I saw in a travelling robotic dinosaur exhibition when I was eleven. Four Pachycephalosaurus
legs frozen in imitation-reptile-skin wrinkled plastic, two bulbous fibreglass skulls aimed
squarely at one another, and a flaccid plastic palm tree, black-lit in the semi dark of the Late
Cretaceous period of 1993. The sound of the mechanics audible over the Jurassic park
sound effects as two idiotic robots bonked noggins to the cheer of all the sugared-up
children and their parents. It was here that I learnt about the worlds joy, in the futility of
violent collisions, as sport. The seasons slam against each other moronically. Hail shreds the
new blossoms and an icy wind rips the warmth from the sun. The rain slams down from the
blue sky and grey clouds bring a mugginess that is as nauseating as a lie, and the world is all
a glow. The tiny birds arrive.
Sitting outside in the sun this morning I watched an old man and woman, arm in arm, walk
slowly down the road. He carried a shovel and a serene smile. The woman held his arm as if
she were having trouble seeing, her brow furrowed, she looked sour and uneasy even as the
first of the seasons sunshine cloaked her bent shoulders.
Once, working with my mother in the psychiatric hospital, I witnessed a boy have a violent
psychotic episode. He grabbed a pair of scissors and then he grabbed my mother, whom I
knew he loved, around the neck. He held the scissors to my mother’s throat. Standing
opposite them, I looked into my mother’s eyes and I stole her terror. Panic rose and
widened my grey-blue pupils as hers grew still, all rainy sea, no wind. She let her body fall
softly like a ragdoll. As I froze in agonizing fear my mother relaxed. The boy with the scissors
couldn’t hold her up anymore, her sleep-dead body had a weight that frightened him and
he dropped her. Then he dropped the scissors and quietly started to cry. He crouched down
in the corner of the room and he put his large hands to his face, he cried short breaths under
long heavy tears. I learned that it is very hard to hold the weight of a dead adult, even if you
are bigger and stronger.
The man led his wife toward the cemetery gate with the sharp shining shovel held high like a
flag above them. Where is the best place to kill someone if you’re not strong enough to haul
a dead body around? Where will no one ever think to look? I jumped to my feet. What
should I do? Follow at a distance? Stop him before its too late? Noisily wander around the
cemetery so he is aware that there will be a witness? I think about going inside for my coat.
They are passing me now, on the opposite side of the street and I can see that they are
speaking, strings of conversation float back towards me Schön… kleine Vogel… Blume they
are talking about small birds and flowers. I plant myself back down on the front steps and
wonder if the subject of tiny birds and flowers has some sinister meaning in this moment that
I don't understand. I conclude; that I do not need my coat because I am not going to witness
a murder today; that after almost three months I still understand nothing of Weimar; and
that I spend too much time alone which is making me decidedly morbid.
The old couple are almost at the gate and, as their backs come into view, I see that between
them she is carrying a small basket full of flowers, not cut but in pots. Coloured pansies.
They are going to plant flowers. Humour is social, I decide to go back to the mall.
Text: Sarah Jones 2015-2016. www.sarahjones.net.au
Works included in the exhibition: Sarah Jones and Pip O`Brien, 2010 – 2016.
This publication accompanied the exhibition There Is No Question About That at ACC
Galerie, Weimar, Germany, April 2016.