Let’s say, Greta Garbo—what, not who—was feedback. What you see in the photos is the ricochet. The bounce, the push off, the long arm. Photographically, Garbo equals original prey, one of the most photographed, most erupted images of culture at the time. Garbo woke to a million Garbos. No mirror necessary. In a book of photos, when closed, the photos’ view is of each other. Right up against. And the more she withdrew from her own reflection the greater the triumph of her capture. And a woman of modern gender, practically butch, I’m not interested in analyzing Garbo herself, instead Garbo the photograph. As in the landscape of the photograph, the Garbo photograph. Queen Christina makes her way around every inch of the room, demanding that this is the placement into memory. The physical feel-up. Perhaps her success within this particular scene is due what to is due what it to what is due is due is due is due to what she was busy doing in the shifting multiple dimensions. Being the image, one could shift oneself as the image. Bounce it off. The additional quantities. The image delivers. In the image, it is the image that imitates the images, views the image, is in the image, a circular boomerang. Garbo, first computer, onscreen, taking in the room of Queen Christina. Suspicious—if one can be flattened and literally in between the pages of a printed text, if one can be printed and one is a dimension—I repeat—one is a dimension. Garbo, in multitude, Garbo. Garbo, separate who from what. Garbo, separate who from what. Garbo, the star from Garbo, the star from the photograph, the photograph from flat, the photograph is flat. Paper is flat but liquid all the same. G. Period. Is the name on the door. G period is the name by the phone on the door, of Garbo. G just G. On Garbo one could blame her body’s repulsion from the lens on vanity, fear of aging, the generally simplified and often sexist assumption. The public leans on a public figure. Instead separating the who from the what, Garbo is the photograph. Knowing this when Garbo’s photographs are Garbo’s photograph, a ricochet occurred. A stutter. A miniature cataclysm. The push off the lens. The arms up facing straps, the dispense against the photograph was the reverb, the feedback, the eleventh. It causes the eleventh. It is the eleventh. The sound that meets itself demands face and then forgets, changes its mind, reverses, clashes itself into light. This is the eleventh prismatic.
My intentions are to extend and to develop our present notion of aesthetics, to investigate originality, and to examine the relation between original and origins; opening up space for new thinking.
The production of a duplicate with the claim to an original and “in a way which one might refer to as employing both old-fashioned craftsmanship and advanced conceptualism” was Sturtevant’s unprecedented contribution to the discourse of that time: huge scale, automation, and depersonalization of art production. In addition, America of the sixties, the period of the Vietnam War, expected criticism to take place by means of direct protest and counter-design; no one understood “how you can criticize something by copying it exactly.”
“I am not an Appropriationist by token of intention and meaning. I do not make copies. I am talking about the power and the autonomy of original and the force and pervasiveness of art.”
In her lecture at a symposium of the Salzburg Kunstverein on the theme “Original” in October 1993, Sturtevant declared that concepts such as uniqueness and authorship were tautologies and that it was crucial to liberate originality from its fixed state by relating it to origin. “Originality must be placed within the framework of Nietzsche’s Eternal Return of the same; origins regarded as containing all potential development. With this stance, art is not forced into a static position, but can push forward to face the challenge of high technology, new materials, and forms.”
the world of cybernetics and its obsessive search for infinity and immortality, the growing dominance of digital images over real objects, the danger of disorder and functional disruption (“Now That Ketchup is Green”), and the threat of cloning (that is, doubling). Sturtevant asks us: “Is this supremacy of the double, its dominance over original, perhaps the developing end potential of origin?”
Frank Perrin has spoken here of “again-seeing” (in the Proustian sense of the word): we think we see things but discover them really only when we see them again.
“I say a flower…” and A Throw of the Dice
She thereby points up the moment when the work appears, its relation to time. And, with it, modernity’s incessant questions about dates, precursors, firsts, ex aequos, and newness: this newness which obsesses, irritates, and legitimizes a practice in a space that is ever more spectacular, and when becomes a kind of obstacle race, etc. “Newness” and “originality” which, as Sturtevant reminds us, “are no longer, in this age of ‘technological reproduction’ described in other times by Benjamin, critical.” This newness that concomitantly reasserts the humanity of art, in defiance of technology. “Every action is, in its essence, singular.” There is no repetition. There is, even when the thing seems identical, (only) difference.
Too many works of art tend to define themselves as something they are not. Too many artists send out warnings and attempt to correct the illusions of perception: “Be careful, what I am doing is not what you think it is, etc.” In the constant relation of seduction that obtains between the work and its “beholder” something like a work that says: “I’m not the one you think I am.”
For the copy is, first of all, the obligatory act of apprenticeship, the necessary transition that places the artist under the sign of the master and the school: the gaze brought to bear not so much on the world and on the real as on the work as a world in itself: an act of submission, certainly, but also the path of transgression: “He is him, and I am me.”
it was always, be it printed or spoken, from the mouths of the educated or the undereducated, the same clichés and the same tone. And even in the case of those who were the most persecuted victims and of necessity mortal enemies of National Socialism, even amongst the Jews, the LTI was ubiquitous – in their conversations and letters, even in their books, insofar as they were still able to publish, it reigned supreme, as omnipotent as it was wretched, omnipotent indeed in its very poverty.
The Republic, almost suicidally, lifted all controls on freedom of expression; the National Socialists used to claim scornfully that they were only taking advantage of the rights granted them by the constitution when in their books and newspapers they mercilessly attacked the state and all its institutions and guiding principles using every available weapon of satire and belligerent sermonizing. There were no restraints whatsoever in the realm of the arts and sciences, aesthetics and philosophy. Nobody was bound to a particular moral dogma or ideal of beauty, everyone was free to choose. This motley intellectual freedom was celebrated as a tremendous and decisive leap forward compared with the imperial age.
Every language able to assert itself freely fulfills all human needs, it serves reason as well as emotion, it is communication and conversation, soliloquy and prayer, plea, command and invocation. The LTI only serves the cause of invocation. Regardless of whether a given subject properly belongs in a particular private or public domain – no, that’s wrong, the LTI no more drew a distinction between private and public spheres than it did between written and spoken language – everything remains oral and everything remains public. One of their banners contends that ‘You are nothing, your people is everything’. Which means that you are never alone with yourself, never alone with your nearest and dearest, you are always being watched by your own people.
The sole purpose of the LTI is to strip everyone of their individuality, to paralyse them as personalities, to make them into unthinking and docile cattle in a herd driven and hounded in a particular direction, to turn them into atoms in a huge rolling block of stone. The LTI is the language of mass fanaticism. Where it addresses the individual – and not just his will but also his intellect – where it educates, it teaches means of breeding fanaticism and techniques of mass suggestion.
The French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century has two expressions, themes or scapegoats of which it is particularly fond: priestly deception and fanaticism. It doesn’t believe in the genuineness of the priest’s convictions, sees in every kind of cult a deceit aimed at making the community more fanatical and exploiting the resulting fanatics.
Never has a handbook of priestly deception been written with such shameless candour as Hitler’s Mein Kampf – although the LTI calls it propaganda rather than priestly deception. For me it will always remain the greatest mystery of the Third Reich that this book could be promoted in public – indeed had to be – and that Hitler still came to power, and that he should have held sway for twelve years, despite the fact that this bible of National Socialism had been in circulation for years prior to the takeover. And never, at any point during the entire eighteenth century in France, was the word ‘fanaticism’ (together with its corresponding adjective) given such prominence and used so regularly – moreover in an entirely distorted sense – as was the case during the twelve years of the Third Reich.
‘Goerg, that harmless young man who hasn’t read a book in his life, has been writing in that style and toying with the same ideas for ages.’
How effortlessly people with harmless average dispositions adapt to their environment! With hindsight we remembered how in Heringsdorf the good-natured young man had already talked of a ‘clean, cheerful war’. At the time we took it to be a cliché endorsed without so much as a second thought. But clichés do indeed soon take hold of us. ‘Language which writes and thinks for you . . . ‘
Prior to the First World War there was a widespread joke about national attitudes: representatives of different nations are given as a theme ‘The elephant’ and they can make of it what they will. The American writes an essay ‘How I shot my thousandth elephant’, the German reports ‘On the deployment of elephants in the second Punic war. There are a large number of Americanisms in the LTI as well as other foreign ingredients, so many, indeed, that one can occasionally almost overlook the German core. But it is there, terrifyingly and decisively there – no one can claim apologetically that the problem was an infection which flew in from abroad. Partenau the professional soldier was no figment of the imagination, but rather a classically stylized portrait of countless contemporaries and peers; he is well read, and not only at home in the works of the German general staff: he has also read his Chamberlain and his Nietzsche and Burckhardt’s Renaissance etc. etc.
In a toy shop I saw a child’s ball with a swastika printed on it. Would a ball like this belong in the dictionary?
10 April. You are ‘artfremd {alien}’ if you have 25 per cent non-Aryan blood. ‘In borderline cases a ruling will be made by the expert in racial research.’ Limpieza de la sangre as in sixteenth-century Spain. But at that time it was a matter of faith, while today it is zoology + business. Spain – that reminds me. It seems to me to be an ironic twist of world history that ‘the Jew Einstein’ is ostentatiously appointed to a chair at a Spanish university and accepts the post.
A sudden order from on high, with far-reaching implications for the university timetable: Tuesday afternoon it o be kept free of lectures, all students are to be trained during these hours in military sporting exercises. At almost exactly the same time I came across the word on a cigarette packet: Military Sport brand {Marke Wehrsport}. A half mask is the same thing as being half unmasked. Universal conscription is banned under the Treaty of Versailles; sport is allowed – officially we are not doing anything illegal, although we are a little bit, and we also make it a little threatening, we gesture towards our fist, which remains – for the moment at least – clenched in our pocket. When will I find in the language of this regime a single, truly honest word?
– – Yesterday evening Gusti W. visited us, back after four months from Turö, where she and her sister Maria Strindberg had stayed with Karin Michaelis. Apparently a small group of communist émigrés had come together there. Gusti related the dreadful details. ‘Horror stories’ of course, which may only be whispered secretly into each other’s ears. In particular the misery experienced by the now sixty-year-old Erich Mühsam in an especially evil concentration camp. You could vary the proverb and say: something worse is a friend of something bad; I really am beginning to see Mussolini’s government as an almost humane and European one.
I only heard the word as a boy, and at the time it had for me a thoroughly exotic, colonial and quite un-German ring to it: during the Boar War there was much talk of compounds or concentration camps in which the captured Boars were guarded by the English. The word then disappeared entirely from common German usage. And now it suddenly reappears, describing a German institution, a peacetime establishment set up on European soil and directed against Germans, a permanent establishment and not a temporary measure against the enemy in time of war. I think that when in future people say ‘concentration camp’ everyone will think of Hitler’s Germany and only of Hitler’s Germany . . . Is it cold-heartedness and petty schoolmasterishness on my part which makes me focus my mind repeatedly and increasingly on the philology of this misery? I genuinely examine my conscience. No! It is self-preservation.
the entire propaganda is truly such consummate humbug – people wear little badges on their coat lapels bearing the word ‘Yes’, you can’t say no to the people selling these emblems without appearing suspicious – it is such a rape of the general public that it ought to bring about the very opposite of its intended effect.
On Sunday there was a repulsive scene with Herr and Frau K., whom we had had to invite for coffee. I say had to, because the snobbery of this woman, who without so much as a thought repeats parrot-fashion the latest tittle-tattle or current opinion, has been getting on our nerves for a long time now; but her husband, although he likes to play the role of the wise Nathan, always seemed to me to be tolerably sensible. So it was that on Sunday he explained that with ‘a heavy heart’ he had decided, just like the Central Organization of Jewish Citizens, to vote ‘Yes’ in the plebiscite, and his wife added that the Weimar system has finally proved itself to be unworkable and that one had to ‘see things for what they really are’. I lost my composure entirely, banged my fist on the table so that the cups rattled and repeatedly shouted the same question at the husband: did he believe the policies of this government to be criminal or not. He answered in a most dignified manner that I was not entitled to ask this question, and then inquired sarcastically for his part, as to why, in that case, I was remaining in office. I said that I had not been appointed by Hitler’s government, didn’t serve it and hoped to outlive it. Frau. K. continued to maintain that the Führer – she really did say ‘the Führer’ – was undeniably a brilliant man, whose extraordinary influence couldn’t be denied and from whom one could not pull back . . . Today I almost want to offer my apologies to the K.s for the extent of my ferocity. In the meantime I have heard very similar opinions expressed by all kinds of Jewish people in our circle of friends. People who, without a doubt, must be regarded as intellectuals and who would generally be numbered among the quiet and independent thinkers . . . Some kind of fog has descended which is enveloping everybody.
The advance notice and radio announcement stated: ‘Ceremony between 13.00 and 14.00. In the thirteenth hour Adolf Hitler will visit the workers.’ This is, as everyone knows, the language of the Gospel. The Lord, the Saviour visits the poor and the prodigal. Ingenious, right down to the timing. Thirteen hundred hours – no, ‘the thirteenth hour’ – sounds too late, but HE will work miracles, for him there is no such thing as too late. The Blood Banner at the rally was of the same order. But this time the dividing line separating it from ecclesiastical ceremony has bene broken down, the antiquated costume has been shed and the legend of Christ has been transported into the here and now: Adolf Hitler, the Redeemer, visits the workers in Siemensstadt.
I could keep telling myself, firstly, that the result was rigged, and secondly, in the absence of any controls, also undoubtedly doctored, just as a mixture of sham and intimidation must be at the root of the news from London that people there are particularly surprised that there was even a majority of Yes votes in the concentration camps
It takes itself so seriously, it is so convinced of the permanence of its institutions, or at least is so keen to persuade others of that permanence, that every trifle, however insignificant, and everything that it comes into contact with, has a historical significance. Every speech delivered by the Führer is historical {historisch}, even if he says the same thing a hundred times over, every meeting the Führer has with the Duce is historical, even if it doesn’t make the slightest difference to the existing state of things; the victory of a German racing car is historical, as if the official opening of a new motorway, and every single road, and ever single section of every single road, is officially inaugurated; every harvest festival is historical, every Party Rally, every feast day of any kind; and since the Third Reich seems to know nothing but feast days – you could say that it suffered, indeed was mortally ill, from a lack of the everyday, just as the human body can be mortally ill from a lack of salt – it views every single day of its life as historical.
