Author: Asim Chughtai Jirka Pfahl »ausderkunst< Reihe A4 Band 5 ISBN 3-936826-27-7 gutleut-verlag, Frankfurt/ Main und Weimar Dear Jirka, When we met in Berlin you hinted that you wanted my contribution to express how I'm getting on ? can I achieve that with a piece of writing? As you know, I'm done with Berlin. Being here and staying here ? FLEISCH, 'glue' and now also the gallery were never really good reasons, but rather the question as to how to go about not doing nothing and at the same time not doing the wrong thing. That's all there is to say. I don't want to sound pompous and lend a situation more importance than it deserves. People (including myself) love to discuss and get wrapped up in sensitivities ? but such mutual ascertainment is much more appropriate for talking than for writing. Writing is cold and black on white, and leaves no room for the cosiness of sentimental agreement. What also occurs to me concerning your question with respect to my personal point of view: Berlin is a city whose reputation is built on the remarkable efforts of its workers within its superstructure to create myths in actualitas. To clarify how barren the current situation actually is beyond all the prevailing hustle and bustle: Nobody who makes it his second nature to aim high, seems to have the least inkling that this place gains its real purpose the moment one sees in the rear view mirror the neverending stream of freshly showered newcomers, politely biting each other's noses off at the taxi rank. 39. Cherry Tree. 40. Frog. 41. Pit. Another method of dodging demands disguised as requests is the anecdote. This is evidenced in Xenophanes and Duchamp, the Younger. Both forward a critique of Naturalism and have a profound understanding of the object. Both were streetwise. Negroes' gods are snubnosed and horses' gods have long pizzles. Art is not about expression but attitude, not about style but the execution of thoughts. Both Xenophanes and Duchamp are accessible and affable. That Duchamp's silence is overrated is not quite true, for he didn't remain silent, but rather stopped claiming things as soon as he realized that he had run out of ideas. Ultimately, repeating oneself is out of the question. Both Xenophanes and Duchamp were nomads almost all their lives. That being on the tramp is also always a means of escape ? from both the circumstances and friends ? is self-understood. Marcel escapes being excommunicated through his friend André Breton, because he never joined his association. Hearsay allows us to assume that Xenophanes had no choice of joining the circle of believers and later be expelled again from it. To him, the punishment for thinking was slavery. What connects these dislocated anecdotes? Alchemy. Your reply? The anecdotal has an aesthetic quality that cannot be topped: arbitrariness. (The) image and (its) concept lead a relationship that can never be natural (even if our colleagues from the oil province of Saxony like to claim the opposite). Or is it but an epiphany ? a vision overcoming the believer ? of the cyclical art market, if at the moment the image is being idolized? Sticking to the market metaphor, where will investors look next and where will they place their bets? Future demand ? which we all assume will continue to exist ? will clash with which supply? The thrill of such speculation radiates into and contaminates each and every corner, studios and copy shop sessions in which CVs and project proposals are frantically assembled. Not to mention the exhibitions and questions as to who does what, where and when. The fight for surplus value (?Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production?, W. Churchill) of cultural capital is one of many mechanisms, and the new collector heroes are intent on rendering the symbols they purchase stable. When circumstances appear in such a bleak light, they cannot be distinguished from the pork belly cycle: Is that what you're reacting against when what's in your window display looks so dreary and chapped? A dull sparkle ? in between dust, and a large glass. yours, Asim p.s.: [1] 39.40.41. are the last three fragments ascribed to Xenophanes. Very little was known about him from a very early stage, which however did no harm to his career posthumously. [2] Saussure uses arbitrariness as the term to describe the relationship between the signified and the signifier. This is arbitrary random because it solely obeys conventions of general use. 'Cours de linguistique générale' was published in 1916, the same year as DADA, much like an assisted ready-made, not by Saussure himself but compiled from recordings by his listeners, as an attack on beauty, i.e. the familiarly gawped at.