Zeichnung (483) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Ein Raum an der President Street, Brooklyn 1975. Haushaltsmesser, Tasse, Wollknäuel mit Stricknadeln und die perspektivisch verzerrte Postkarte mit Edward Hoppers Gemälde Room At The Sea mit projizierten Schatten. 11231 war die Postleitzahl des damals noch heruntergekommenen Stadtteils. Wir lebten auf der Grenzlinie zwischen italienischen und puertoricanischen Nachbarschaften. Eine Kampfzone, die ein Nachdenken über die Eigenzeit provozierte. Der komplexe Zellverbund, der mein Ich hervorgebracht hat, ist wie jedes andere Objekt des Universums an einen inneren Zeitablauf gekoppelt, der sich gleichzeitig ungleichzeitig zu denen aller anderen Objekte verhält. Das ist der Krieg. Eine Zeitmaschine habe ich mir aber immer nur dann gewünscht, wenn ich einen Brief in einen falschen Schlitz eingeworfen oder mir mal wieder den Arm gebrochen hatte. Meine außerhalb der Zeit agierenden subatomaren Teilchen hatten sich gegenüber den komplexen sozialen Situationen, in die sich mein Ich hineinbegeben musste, wieder einmal hilflos unterlegen gezeigt." (Aus: Zeichnung oder Film, 2013).

(1975) 

Drawing (484) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Loving cups. On July 9, 2019, David Marc passed away. He was one of the first and best to analyze American television. His books Demographic Vistas (1984) and Comic Visions (1989) were foundational, his collection of essays Bonfire of the Humanities (1995) is ingenious. Here he can be seen standing stoically next to his VW in autumn 1974, the vehicle in which we had slid down an incline in the Catskill Mountains. Our friend Tim Kennedy, the filmmaker and later landscape planner, fled the scene of the accident. We were post-war kids and slowly, but surely, became the theoreticians of this transitional period, which ushered in a new war for him long before it did for me. His venerated teacher Ken Jacobs, who cut all ties to him early on due to some trifling matter, had said to me in 1975 as the first German in that circle, 'I wouldn’t be exchanging a single word with you if the Vietnam War hadn’t taken place'. David didn’t deserve such harshness, because he knew the wars we experienced personally would be entirely different ones." (From: arsenal, september 19).

(1975)

Drawing (485) from DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Hamburg, 1978, the nightmare of arrested time: Two loaves of bread riding a dark thought - one round and one tin, both sucked in by a vaporizer of milk - provide the starting point for a film with the working title Ordinary Sentence of Simultaneity. In the corner of my room a crest from a Japanese wood carving. Three black steamers in formation glide undisturbed through the through of the wave - an irreversible movement: The arts complete themselves, life fulfils itself- unavoidable and unaccompanied. That the world would go under in style was a widespread belief of the social class I stem from, and that that does not need to be duplicated through representation is mine. Perhaps the despair of those days is retraced too elegantly here, but the fact that a new twist in filmmaking led it away from its torpor speaks against such a view. Nonetheless, the wavering space between cool perception and its impact remains." (From: arsenal, january 12).

(1978)

Drawing (486) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Brooklyn, 1975, 240 President Street. A sofa bed complete with cushions floating upwards into weightlessness, a fan set to zero and a woman in a black dress whose braceleted arm is stuck to the plastic covering of the armchair. Zero gravity. On the tour of Morocco that Paul Bowles undertook with Aaron Copland at the start of the 30s, the former admitted in Fez that he wasn’t able to share the latter’s enthusiasm for the country. He said there was nothing new for him there, he’d already seen and heard equivalent things back on President Street in Brooklyn when he was a child. Places can speak to one person, but remain silent for others. I had no idea where I’d ended up, although I knew I was at considerable risk of going mad in this place, just like Nelson Dyar did in Tangiers in 1951. Later, Jacques Levy and Bob Dylan told the story of Joseph Gallo, known as Crazy Joey, on Desire, who was born there and carried to his grave there too. Even more than an experiment, life seemed to me like a forced research exercise." (From: arsenal, july 2021)

(1975) 

Drawing (487) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"An autistic aquarium, the inside and outside of a head, with a world speeding by. The body of a female water-skier in a one-piece bathing suit ready to start from under the surface of the water. Ruffles of waves prevent a clear view of her head. A drop of water separates the white light into the colors of the spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The dissolved horizon as a fluid separation line between the mediums of air and water. Paradoxical, respectively applying refraction laws of light in a water glass - below and above water - in the pub The Smudgy Spoon in an entirely comprehended world. I preferred no longer wanting to know what was the case beneath the surface. The horizon returns as each individual's spherically limited field of vision and their points of view. Their radius is an intimate dimension. Just like the rainbow comes into existence differently or not at all from each point of view. I don't see an inner horizon, that's how hammered in it is." (From: arsenal, june 11).

(1976)

Zeichnung (488) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Red Air. 

(1976) 

Drawing (489) from The BASIS of MAKE-UP

"Dial NERVOUS for the time, using sharpened pencils to operate the rotary dial on a black telephone, even though the heavy receiver is still on the hook. A view from the front room of our railroad apartment onto President Street, Brooklyn by night in winter 1975. The Northern Lights stick out into the image from the bottom left, shielding the telephone. The landlord had let us use his refrigerator, which was the height of a man, in order that the kitchen facilities were sufficient. While being transported, the fridge was dropped on the floor just before our front door while being transported, its door opening wide in the process and a horde of cockroaches streaming out from inside. Visible from afar, they scuttled over the snow and disappeared into various nooks and crannies. It wasn’t just for that reason that our Puerto Rican and Italian neighbors detested us. We lived directly on the dividing line that separated them and an additional ethnicity was not welcome. An anonymous letter that appeared in our postbox shortly afterwards began as follows: 'Dear Sirs ...'.” (From: arsenal, january 17).

(1984)

Drawing (490) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The continuation of the anonymous letter, Brooklyn 1975: “... The people of President Street are upset of your actions. The little children SEE what's going on in that room. Either you put something to cover your windows, or you get off the block and move. We are waiting 1 week. If you don't cover your windows, you'll hear from us again but next time not so friendly. Thank you for your cooperation.” A degree of uncertainty and distress was the result and we returned to Manhattan in a move already anticipated. On the right-hand side, between the lines of the letter, a woman kneeling on the ground places a warning sign in a white circle. On the left-hand side, a telephone doodle shows a headless female nude, a portrait of my forehead and a French policeman’s head. The deliberate attempt to produce ugliness was successful without any great effort and equally without the ideological contortions of the German painting of the 80s, which was ridiculously referred to as “wild”. I can indeed make out swastikas wherever I look." (From: arsenal, february 17)

(1984) 

Zeichnung (491) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"ODE - SS - SA: Promis sind auf der Welt, um Geld zu verkörpern. Sie tun es in dem Bewußtsein, sich damit für uns aufzuopfern. Sie zeugen Kinder, weil sie die ersten Fotos von ihnen für viel Geld an Illustrierte verkaufen wollen. Dieses stiften sie dann für "gemeinnützige Zwecke". Das Geld, das sie durch eigene Zurschaustellungen verdienen, ist ihnen dafür zu schade. Weil sie prominent sind, fliegen sie, ohne dafür bezahlen zu müssen. Auch wenn man das nicht will, bekommt man sie überall zu sehen. Man kann sie deshalb aber nicht auf Schmerzensgeld verklagen. So bringen sie die Menschen in Rage, und sie müssen Bodyguards anheuern, weil sie sonst abgeschlachtet werden. Little Odessa: Sie hatten keine Idealmaße, aber für einen Auftritt in einem Touristik-Prospekt hat es gereicht - als hysterisch unerlöste, menschliche Wellenbrecher am Boardwalk von Far Rockaway auf Long Island. Ein Serienkiller bei der Arbeit: Eine aufgeschlitzte Frau, deren Eingeweide auf einen in Flammen stehenden Mann herabstürzen: Ich lösche deine Flammen mit meinem Blut." (Aus: Zeichnung oder Film, 2013).

(1983) 

Zeichnung (492) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Lautmalerisches aus Jütland: le zjell, der Himmel oder das Ziel, la mähr, das Meer oder die Geschichte, und la kamelle, das Kamel oder die Kamelle. Der Wegeplan von Hennestrand an der dänischen Westküste, Stand 1979, und das überraschende Erscheinen eines Zirkuskamels in einem Dünental. Eine Stewardess hält die Bindentüte einer Airline wie einen Schleier vor ihr Gesicht und bittet damit um Mülltrennung. Bedruckt ist ihr Papier mit einem Observed-Aquarell frei nach Peter Blegvad, dessen Vorfahren aus dieser Gegend stammen. Bevor Landschaften ihren Reiz verlieren, werden sie zu inneren Landschaften. Als solche werden sie durchgebetet, als Träger entlegener Zeitsysteme zuende analysiert, in der Vorstellung zeitraffermäßig abgearbeitet und dann umgehend abgespeichert und vergessen. Danach geht der Mensch durch seine Landschaft, ohne sie noch eines Blickes zu würdigen. Das Unvorhergesehene ist kein überraschendes Ereignis mehr, sondern der lange erwartete und gelassen konstatierte Abschluß einer Rahmennovelle: ... but he never saw what hit him." (Aus: Zeichnung oder Film, 2013).

(1983) 

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