456

Drawing (456) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The swinging legs of the Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall in NYC during a Christmas show, their military alignment reminiscent of the swarm intelligence of animals. They appear to want to trample everything underfoot as if on some revenge campaign, yet they’re actually just trying to be funny and mock the military; whoever believes them is a saint. Behind them,  healing hands, which rest on top of the skulls of two executed pirates. Their severed heads were nailed to two wooden poles on the Grasbrook in Hamburg harbor to act as a deterrent and to rot. “HeHe”: Hermann and Heinrich. Heinrich liked Hermann, Hermann was indifferent, and so together they gave themselves over to robbing and killing, first in the employ of the Hanseatic League and later, and fatalistically, against them. It doesn’t hurt at all is what Heinrich’s severed head wanted to say to Hermann from the basket, but he, as mentioned, was indifferent to everything anyway. His single wish: not to have to be resurrected as a red coated dancing girl at the Cologne carnival." (From: arsenal, december 17).

(1983)

The drawing was published 1995 in David Marc's book Bonfire of the Humanities on page 46 with this legend: "With mental automation as with physical automation there is an inevitable transcendence of mere improvements in speed and efficiency". It was the opener of Chapter Three of his book: "Mass Memory – The Past in the Age of Television".

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