The questions, more or less, and approximately, the answers:

– Is there a relation between avant garde and violence? YES. Starting from Marinetti and futurismus. Everything had to be made new again, and such a revolution had a violent component.

– Is literary or artistic influence a source of anxiety? This form of questioning belongs to the XIX century, imagining an artist or writer “creating” alone among books. Nowadays influences are too present everywhere to be afraid of them.

– Is the 68 movement still very influential? Yes, but not the 68 as it really was, but the 68 that we create today, again and again, a different product depending on who is speaking.

– Is the Oedipus complex still relevant today? We are not sure, we’ve got to ask our mothers.

– A quote from (sorry, we were not able to avoid danger) Wolfgang Huber, SPK: “I realize that theory makes you stupid, but stupidity sets you free”

FREE TABU!!!

…für eine Stadt! Für alle!

KLAU MICH ended up in the street. This is something that I could see coming. Revolt had to escape the theater space.

KLAU MICH visited the future in the show on August 10, with Rolf Schwendter. Now it has visited it again, with the first preventive demonstration ever. Preventive demonstration? yes, Didn’t you hear about preventive wars? Preventive demonstration is a sort of civil rights preventive war.

Gentrification is not yet an issue in Kassel. Yet, it is an important issue in Hamburg and, in Liverpool- where the next project will happen in a few days. Truth is, smart politicians and investors have discovered that a very efficient and profitable way of avoiding social conflict is just sending away from their homes the people who are victims of this social conflict, the conflictuous inhabitants themselves- by making it impossible for them to keep living where they live. This is gentrification, and artists are often knowing or unknowing accomplices for that.

Curious to know, and to understand? double check this:

News from Outside.

The show on August 31 was a very special one. Here the official summary: AUGUST 31, POLITICS, PERFORMANCE, AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY. Or How performance is politics. Theater curator Matthias von Hartz and journalist and activist Christoph Twickel are guest at the Steal Me show with the moderation of Ellen Blumenstein. They discuss how much art needs politics and how much politics needs art. Following a tradition of art and street activism, the show ends in a rather unusual manner, with the audience, the guests, and the TV crew leaving the Klau Mich stage to go to demonstrate on the street, with the soundtrack of Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.

However, a quote by Matthias von Hartz really caught my attention: art is not sustainable. In which context was it said?

“The museum is one of the few places where you don’t have to consume, where you don’t have to shop. I started to use the City Theater as a political space and within no time people where coming to me to use the Theater to defend their causes. And this was quite unusual in a city like Hamburg.

Art can be a protective space.

But is art political? there is the consensus that dOCUMENTA 13 is a political space. But there is a danger to it. Whenever you see something extraordinary, a demonstration, you may dismiss this with the words “It is just art”. So the danger of blurring art and politics is that both lose their edge. That both become domesticated.

It would be good indeed if art become more “real”, closer to the reality of the citizen. Intervention in reality is fundamental to art. Art produces live performances in places that were neglected and boring. Art is an important tool for urban development. And in this respect it has a double role, and art should be aware of this duplicity. Performance on the one hand, and political involvement on the other.

So, regarding dOCUMENTA, the fact that the art festival is using so many off-spaces, almost squatting some of them, is perceived by the real state of the city as something very positive, because almost immediately these places will double their economic value. Art has that power, but the problem, is that art is not sustainable. Is not really challenging when an artist comes and does his or her part in a certain building or neighborhood of the city and then leave. Art should be able to keep its engagement for a longer period of time, transforming really the place.

But this seems to go against all the dynamics of exhibitions, institutions, curators, and art consumerism.

The scene does not have a precise beginning as I was following my needs (and my thoughts) while being at Ständehaus, in particular in the men’s room (toilet, restroom), inside the cabin and using it in its originally intended way. The sound of a strong and regular breathing sound catches to my attention. Suddenly a whispering voice, very quietly: “Hey you. I am playing with my dick… how about you?”. No one answers but a few more sentences of a similar content are pronounced. I freeze, being convinced of being an accidental witness of an intimate phone call. I remain silent and without any motion hoping to escape the embarrassment by waiting until the scene will find its (happy?) dénouement soon, and I will be able finally to leave undiscovered and unnoticed. The man is now more clearly audible in his activity (Activity which one of the Klau Mich Guests would probably call a “Extasetechnik”) and then, suddenly, he went silent for a while. God! What now?

Now a head with short blond hair appears from under the door inside my cabin looking up to me. (Me being still motionless sitting in my original position). “What are you doing??? “ I heard myself asking followed by the very unimpressed reply (and with the self-assurance with which he could have asked for a bread in a bakery): “I am just looking what you are doing!” The situation was cut short, when my bourgeois reflexes produced the answer: “And do you think this is ok?” Silence, the head retreats, I hear the door closing.

(he seems to think for a moment)

And this show will unfold like an essay, that is the reason why we have called it “on radical education”.

(he seems to think again)

Some among you, as documenta insiders, staff, artists or just frequent visitors, know that we share this room with the “maybe education” department. The “maybe education” department is the name documenta 13 has given to the public program, or the lecture program. Why is it called maybe education? Does any of you know? Because it might not be education after all? Or because they are teaching the virtues of the potential, of the maybe, of the doubt?

(thinking again)

Do you know?

(thinking again)

There is a certain recent trend in art towards education.

(thinking again)

What does Klau Mich, a TV show have to do with education or radical education? With the Simpsons, we could say that all children since four generations have been really educated by TV. In one of the programs that served as a direct inspiration for Klau Mich, TV Party, a public-access television cable TV show in New York City that ran from 1978 to 1982, the perplexed audience called host Glenn O’Brian asking:

What is this show about? What is it for?

and he answered, solemn: “For your education, madam.”

What is Klau Mich? a TV performance originating in one book, Klau Mich, by Langhans and Teufel. This book, this book educated a whole generation. The book presented the transcription of the 1968 trial where two twenty-year old students confronted the authoritarian, almost totalitarian structure of the German Judiciary of that time. They convinced everyone that the personal is political and the book became indeed an educative text. A manual!

Klau Mich is here for your education, Madam.

But it is not an educative project.

We believe to be in perfect synthony with our guests of today, when we say: education is not something you possess that you can give to someone else to possess in exchange of money or similar, it is not something you sell and you buy, it is not something you have and others have not.

Education is a process and a struggle.

There are some keywords we will discuss with our guests. One, is struggle, another one is process. Another one is community, another one is self-image,

another one is dignity, another one is authenticity…

(it all begins to sound a bit rap-like)

another one is engagement, another one is creativity, another one is self-management, another one is group dinamics, another one is stigma-fighting, another one is self-determination, another one is justice…

At this point, he is interrupted by the little girl behind…

You say, “Work on, wipe the glasses, my girl.”
And just slip me a dirty six-pence.
And your pennies will be taken, and your beds will be made,
(But I doubt if forty winks will come anybody’s way)
And you still don’t know in hell who’s talking,
You still don’t know in hell who’s talking.
Still one fine day there’ll be a loud bang from the harbour,
And you’ll ask, “Jesus Christ, what was that bang ?”
And you’ll see me standing right behind the window,
And you’ll say, “Why has she got the evil eye ?”
And the ship, eight sails shining,
Fifty-five cannons wide, Sir,
Will be aimed at this town.

So then lads, it’s time for tears, no more laughs at the bar,
For the walls will be at your ankles.
And look out, lads, the town will be flat as the ground,
This dirty shit hotel will be spared wrack and ruin
And you’ll say, “Who is the fancy bitch lives there ?”
You’ll say, “Who is the fancy bitch lives there ?”
There’ll be rows of people running round the hotel
And you’ll ask, “Why should they have spared this hovel ?”
And you’ll see me in the morning leaving lightly
And you’ll say, “That one, her , she lived there ?”
The same ship, eight sails shining,
Fifty-five cannons wide, Sir,
Flies crossbones and skull.

In the midday sun a hundred men will step ashore
All tramping where shadows crawled.
They’ll lay their hands on men, hiding shit-scared behind doors
Lead them in chains here before this silent woman,
And they’ll say, “Well, which ones shall we kill ?”
They’ll say, “Which ones shall we kill ?”
Come the dot of twelve, it will be still in the harbour,
When they ask me, “Well, who is going to die ?”
And you’ll hear me whispering, oh, so sweetly, “All of them!”
And as the soft heads fall, I’ll say, “Hop-l!”
That same ship, eight sails shining,
Fifty-five cannons wide, Sir,
Disappears with me.

(The guests enter. Ulf Aminde goes directly to the pianist and begins to read accompanied by her piano)

Ulf Aminde:

Dear dad, I am doing well. How about you, How are you? When are coming home? We are waiting for you to come home again. Will you bring me something? I was bothered again by Kleo in school. I didn’t do anything and she came from the back and pulled my ears. When are you coming? I am making a band with Marta.  I hope you are doing well, you always have to work so much. Today I listened again to the song “Pirate Jenny” in Mum’s computer. I listened to it many, many times. Lost of love, Marie.

And the ship, eight sails shining,
Fifty-five cannons wide, Sir,
Will be aimed at this town.

I have read this letter to you, from my daughter who writes to me because I am so often away from home. She wonders why I am away and not with her, and I wonder why she likes so much the song of Pirate Jenny. Perhaps I could be the captain of such a boat that makes Jenny so happy.

That same ship, eight sails shining,
Fifty-five cannons wide, Sir,
Disappears with me.

Felix Ensslin:

When I think of Jenny, I make totally different associations. Jenny Müller, Jenny Jetke, Jenny Ulmaier, there is this sort of secret society of Jennys here in Germany, women that are now 44, 45, 46 years old and they are all called Jenny. And one realizes this all of a sudden, when you are in a party, in a children’s party perhaps, and in one corner you can see one Jenny, then in the other corner there is another Jenny, and she says, I know you, but she does not continue talking. And then of course you wonder, what is that supposed to mean? And when you do a little research, you realize they always had their holidays in the same place,  In the SDAJ (socialist working youth),  in Rostock, in Dresden, and of course their parents were all in the DKP (German communist party), and then the daughter had to be called Jenny, like the daughter of Karl Marx. One of those Jennys came to me and said: Hey Felix, Do you remember, we were together in the communist, anti-authority toddler school in Charlottenburg, and I said, Well to tell you the truth that memory is not that present right now, and then she showed me this picture, saying “Look at this picture, that is you” and I could see six, seven children, all naked, painting the walls, drawing, running around, and there were wooden blocks and on one of them there was this one child sitting, very shy and silent, and wearing clothes, and that was me.

(The guests enter. Ulf Aminde goes directly to the pianist and begins to read accompanied by her piano)

Ulf Aminde:

“Lieber Papa, mir geht es gut. Wie geht es dir? Wann kommst du? Wir warten, dass du wieder nach Hause kommst. Bringst du uns was mit? Heute bin ich in der Schule wieder von Kleo geärgert worden. Ich habe nix gemacht und sie kam von hinter und hat mir auf die Ohren gehauen. Wann kommst du? Ich mache jetzt mit Marta eine Bande. Ich hoffe dir geht es gut, immer musst du viel arbeiten. Heute durfte ich wieder die “Seeräuber Jenny” hören, auf Mamas Computer. Ich habe es ganz, ganz viele male gehört. Viele liebe Grüße, Marie.

Und ein Schiff mit acht Segeln und mit fünfzig Kanonen wird liegen am Kai.”

Diesen Brief hier lese ich vor, der ist von meiner Tochter, die mir schreibt, wenn ich viel unterwegs bin und ich frag mich natürlich, warum bin ich jetzt hier, warum bin ich nicht da, bei ihr, aber ich frage mich vor allem auch, wenn sie so gerne das “Jenny – Lied” hört, ob ich eigentlich der Kapitän sein kann, der das Boot, auf das sich die Jenny freut, lenken wird.

Und das Schiff mit acht Segeln

Und mit fünfzig Kanonen

Wird beflaggen den Mast.

Felix Ensslin:

Also wenn ich an Jenny denke, dann kommen mir erstmal ganz andere Assoziationen, Jenny Müller, Jenny Jetke, Jenny Ulmaier, es gibt so eine Art Geheimgesellschaft von Jennys hier in Deutschland, von Frauen, die sind alle so 45, 46, 44 Jahre alt und die heißen alle Jenny. Und die erkennen sich auch alle gegenseitig, wenn man auf einer Party ist, auf einer Kinderparty und in der einen Ecke sagt eine, sie heißt Jenny, dann sagt die andere Jenny in der anderen Ecke, ah, ich weiß du – aber sie spricht es nicht aus. Und dann fragt man sich natürlich, was steckt da dahinter? Und wenn man genau hinguckt, dann erfährt man, die haben auch alle ihren Urlaub immer gleich verbracht. In der SDAJ, in Rostock, in Dresden, und dann natürlich, die Eltern waren alle in der DKP, und dann musste die Tochter, wenn sie erstmal geboren war natürlich den Namen erhalten und der war ganz selbstverständlich Jenny. Nach der Tochter von Karl Marx, Jenny. Eine von denen kam neulich zu mir und hat gesagt, hey Felix, erinnerst du dich noch, wir waren gemeinsam im ersten kommunistischen, antiautoritären Kinderlager in Charlottenburg, ich habe gesagt, ne, ehrlich gesagt, so richtig lebendig ist die Erinnerung nicht, die hatte ein Foto dabei und sagte, guck dir das Foto hier an, da bist du auch drauf, und es waren so sechs, sieben, Kinder, alle nackt, die haben an den Wänden gemalt, irgendwelche Zeichnungen, zwei, drei, sind noch durch die Gegend gerannt, und es waren so Holzklötzchen, relativ große und auf einem in der Mitte saß einer, ganz angezogen. Und das war ich.

Moderator:
I therefore demand it explicitly, again, because I wanted to know whether your way of working includes the emotional manipulation of the audience as a concept. So for example, by choosing a particular music, or by choosing a particular topic?

Frank Matzke:
Yes, of course, that was now in the “Best Song Of My Life”. The main subject of “Best Song Of My Life” was what theater means to the individual players and for the group, but it was expressed through favorite songs. And this it is the case for Piaf, Edith Piaf’s “Non, rien de rien”, the song is very well known, it is related to the biography of the singer, it is part of the collective imaginary, and so one can very well anticipate the feelings of the audience. It helps you to achieve a certain mood. But this does not take away the authenticity of Lia when she speaks about acting: “I do not act, I play a role in everyday life but I do not act in the theater because I’m as real in theater as in real life’ , which is actually a very paradoxical process, and this testimony with the song of Piaf as a background gives a wonderful contrasting effect. And this is where you can get your thoughts about it and in that case one could be reasonably sure that it works.

Ich bin noch immer unbefriedigt,

Ich bin noch immer unbefriedigt,

und deshalb muß ich schrein, schrein, schrein.

Die Zeitschriften krakeelen von früh bis spät,

über die anscheinend befreite Sexualität.

Doch außer einem bißchen Ersatzlust

han’ich von allem nichts gewußt.

Man hält mich dumm und hält mich wie ein Tier.

Man hält mich auch sum Narren: “Konsumier!”

Das wird dir nicht gelingen, mein lieber Mann.

Das Zeug, das ist bald schrottreif: und was dann?

Die, die da herrschen, die haben ein Alibi.

Ihr Alibi heißt Freiheit, und heißt Demokratie.

Doch ist das demokratisch, wie ich’s begreif,

wenn an mich in 4 Jahren mal zur Wahlurne schleift?

Die Herrschenden, die sagen: Ich tu, was ich tun kann.

Doch was bieten mir die Herrschenden schon an?

Statt Umwälzung nur eine ganz kleine Reform,

streng nach althergebrachter Norm.