TTT ISSUE #5 TTT (The Total Thirst/Time To Think/Try To Taste/Trash Turns to Treasure/-please create more suggestions)

TTT (The Total Thirst / Time To Think / Try To Taste / Trash Turns to Treasure/ - please create more suggestions) is not a space for arguments and disputes but for gifts, insights, suggestions, visions, desires of ours and perhaps even love if once a penguin will disappear Inside of us.

(In case anybody would like to be removed from the list of this net please send us back three capital letters NWP /not willing to participate.)

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Dear Gia,
here is the text for the Proposal, Eva and me created within the project THE ARTIST AS A MODEL OF CHANGE, Devin helped us finishing it.


"Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or the in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort - this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Education and the Significance of life


Dear Speaking Artist,
As participants of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture we are in engaged in a condensed institutional structure of art.

The society s conventional system of communication is deeply rooted within this institution. By accepting or adopting the conventional methodology within a context of art without questioning and valuing its functions or necessities, we confine openness and limit creativity. The Lecture, the Artist Talk, and the Critique are exploited exclusively in art schools and museums. They have become routine tools for presenting/representing art. This repeated structure feeds the hierarchical relationships and a one-way communication between the faculty and students, rather than allowing open exchanges.

A system exists to secure itself.

While experiencing a constant flow of professional lectures by faculty and visiting artists these past few weeks in Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, we cannot deny witnessing a standard form of presentation that reflects and enforces a current trend in the contemporary art world.

Why does the Artist Talk/lecture notably resemble a corporate presentation? The whole set up for the performative presentation (projector, microphone, lectern, a different eye level between speaker and sitter, etc.) forces the lecturers to protect and defend their work. The professional lecturer has to stand behind the lectern using a microphone to enhance their well-prepared speech while the audience sits quietly in the darkness as an anonymous and passive mass. The lecturer is allowed to support the reproduction of her/his work by talking, describing or explaining' a slideshow.

They must be able to justify, articulate and be fully aware of their work.
They must be able to answer to any possible question.
There is no space for spontaneous reflection or exchange.
There is room to express neither the vulnerability, failure, and struggles of the artistic process nor mutual understanding between the artist and audience.

We hope that the Lecture can be the place of exchanging authentic thoughts and opinions as well as errors. We hope that the Lecture can be another form of performative action to express and share dialogues on art. We hope to see unique and unordinary forms of lecture that break and challenge the norms of conventional presentation.
Why do we always focus on presenting final objects rather than trying to communicate and share our experiences and developments within our artistic-daily-life-

performance [ADLP]? Through the alternative form of lecture, we will communicate with the inner and psychological dimension of language.

THUS,

We'd like to warmly invite you to a Skinny dip session in Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture with us!

Where artists are naked without feeling shame or necessity to stand behind their work.
Where artists can/ are supported to take a leap and jump into an unknown vulnerability.
Where artists' unidentified and unripe thoughts are genuinely welcomed.
Where artists constantly challenge the language and any conventional boarders within art in order to create an authentic exchange.

THUS,

Let s get all naked with full intention as well as attention,
Let s leave our clothes and armour aside and experiment together accepting and even loving a potential failure.
Because only then, can we avoid the total failure, since not only do we anticipate but also welcome failure.

Florian (floopi@web.de), Eva (isevajung@gmail.com)


Interview of Anna K.E. and Florian Meisenberg for the movie Born in Georgia

Anna
When I moved to the Düsseldorf Academy from Stuttgart I noticed that every class is developed in its character (aesthetically) and every professor tries to adjust student who enter the class towards the aesthetic criteria established in the class. There are classes which are orientated towards architecture; there are classes which have emphasis on narrative and so on. To me the problem always was that professors wish to have one harmonious atmosphere. This harmony seems to me is not a great thing for the students. There are very less controversies within classes and if they exist they are not welcomed

Flo
I think the word harmony within the context Anna describes just secures art processes and even art productions of the students. I have a feeling that beginners in academy feel very insecure. Students don t know what do they want and mostly feel irritated but soon with the time they accept suggestion of the class, its aesthetic orientation and then it s (as Anna mentioned) problematic to build the personal language and personal world.


Anna
What is also important to mention that mostly students see engagement with art as a profession. They say I go to my atelier do my job and come back to home where I have a private life. I see a big problem in dividing art and life. I think one has to breathe art. Art must posses you like a spider catches an insect and fully possesses it.

Flo
Students began to absorb what is established, what is suggested, that gives them feeling of security, to be part of one class part of one body but this is never a search of something new or truth or whatever it is there

Anna
Student becomes a part of whole and he is loosing a chance to conduct his personal fight for self determination.
Anna (anna_k_e@yahoo.de)
Florian (floopi@web.de)

TTT ISSUE #4 (The Total Thirst/Time To Think/Try To Taste)

TTT (The Total Thirst / Time To Think / Try To Taste) is not a space for arguments and disputes but for gifts, insights, visions, desires of ours and perhaps even love if once a penguin will disappear inside of us.


Dear friends,
Beneath we have our dear Flo s letter. He gifted us big and valuable present a deeply sensible reportage from Skowhegan (where Flo has a scholarship right now). It s extremely beneficial for us all to know what s going on across the ocean at the place where they try to collect the most talented and intellectual young artists and to put them in touch with others already more advanced in their art/spiritual researches. This letter makes a subtle impression to which directions taking today updated creative efforts. It is also very useful because it s written by a young man who earnestly wants to understand this new process and to become one with the radical movement which tries to find the new form for human consciousness beyond of hierarchy and subordinations, beyond of production of meaning based on the binary principles, beyond of the thought systems orientated towards the centre and so on and so on. To say shortly all the basic believes/superstitious from where our recent form of consciousness got its shape.
Let s enjoy the sensitiveness of our ears and let s move the penetration capacity of our open hearts.
Best wishes,
Gia



13.07.2009 Skowhegan
Dearare Gia,
First i want to say that i am absolutely astonished and happy that we are able to create such an intense and open discussion and exchange via the internet or our email. It gives me, and i hope everyone, energy and faith to believe. YOU SHALL NOT BORE GOD! (Thanks Stephan!)

I really feel that I somehow disappear, as i am so astonished and wondering about so many things which I never saw, was never aware or where thinking of, so its really difficult to follow or describe these developments and incidents in a written form in a way I am an absolute beginner. And I apologize that it took some time to express myself and I couldn t stay in contact with all of you.
I hope that everyone will be able to accept my attempts to speak about my personality, in a subjective and even eccentric way, as a result of my limited and raw possibilities to express myself perfectly in a written form.

Of course I received your edited version of my letter to Zizek Gia and I thank you very much that you were open for my proposal and also for your ability to understand, sharpen, clear and reconstruct everything in everything. I am looking forward that this collaboration of us will touch Slavoj Zizek and hope it will make him curious to come.

I feel it is not so easy for me to write about Skowhegan and what happening here. For this I need to be descriptive, reflective and also analytical and it s a lot. That s why I decided to divide these parts and hope it makes it easier for understanding. So I decided to write two letters marking them with different colours, one more about the concrete things and events and the other one more abstract and creative.
I have the feeling that the way how i want to live, communicate and practise art in my (as you called it) ARTISTICDAILYLIFEPERFORMANCE (ADLP) needs somehow a new forms or ways of presentation. But for a moment I don t know any special means that can express this ungraspable what we live, commit, act1 for this goal I am still using only a language descriptive structure which is pretty limited and dry way of expression for such a goal. But this resistance which ARTISTICDAILYLIFEPERFORMANCE (ADLP) shows towards being expressed within any medium is a clear proof of its strength, power, the monumental breath of life in it, its giant scale that can t be documented, exhibited, labelled or stick on something.

Somehow astonishing but I don t feel anymore much necessity to present or represent something in a certain, or concrete way, neither as a person nor as an artist, i rather hope that it is a permanent natural drift in which i feel more like a joyful mirror reflecting the ongoing process of life in every second, reacting on it in an open, artistic, humorous way.
At this point i would like to put under the stress the word reflect as it consists these two abilities an artistic and deeply human man should try to have this quality.
(I was also thinking about the situation where two mirrors are facing each other and what it can be seen if there is no any concrete object in between of them......)

Just now I met Devin Kenny initiator of our group here for the "Artist as a model of change" .
He told me that he felt that he would only like to make art by watching and trying to document what I am doing every day in every situation. Then he came back for taking photos of a big machine, I built yesterday (please see attachments). I considered this as a really beautiful compliment and felt for the first time that the ADLP, which I just discovered for my self, is able to communicate and to reach or infect people. I also think that the TTT is an endless motivation and wish to reflect in every second inside of the ADLP.

Together with Eva I was writing a proposal for a lecture which we may call:

"LETTER TO A SPEAKING ARTIST
OR better A PROPOSAL FOR A SKINNY DIP"

It is a kind of emailmagazine we created as a reaction and reflection of us regarding the system here in Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (which actually is built on the main and common system established everywhere).
We almost finished our main statement and we would like to send it to you all. Our idea is also to send this proposal to every visiting artist who is still going to come here Luca Buvoli, Steve Mc Queen, Dr.Paul Farmer and Leonardo Drew.
Afterwards we want to grow this magazine into a more general proposal which will speak about possible new ways of communication and understanding art by the artists.

///////////////////hopeless effort to descripe or communicate some of my ADLP sensation/actions in a written form adequately/////////////
//////////////////////////////

//////

It appeared that since I am here I constantly create and realise, even almost not noticing it, all kind of different projects, so now I try to tell you about them:

I gave almost every day a small present to Nate Young////
You know Gia the everyday presents I am always giving to you all, my beloved people, like used handkerchiefs, or the rest of the skin of orange, or the crumps a rubber produced while erasing some writing on a paper etc...
So Nate Young got already a magic spoon from Germany, a cursed onion, a carrot which makes you smile etc. He was first irritated but then he started to understand the presents in his own way and included these presents into his art practice.

One day i figured out that everything on our world is smaller then 4 inches
4 inches = 10.16 centimeters
i proofed this by measuring all things i could see and was able to meassure with my measuring tape. Holding the tape very close to my eyes of course everything is smaller then 4 inches. Here are some of my revolutionary results:

ordinary chair 2,5 inches
ordinary man 3,7 inches
the sun 1,5 inches!
ordinary cloud 2 inches
etc etc

Yesterday I constructed a kind of tent and decided spontaneously that it should be more a machine then a tent and was looking for a reason to call a tent officially a machine. So i found out that the most logical purpose for this was to taint your arms while you are lying under the shade created by the fabric which was hanged between two chairs and a broom.
After 2 hours under the laying under the machine my arms were brown and my body remained white. The machine is free for use for everyone so I invited everybody to use it.
So one more time I felt that the never ending open process of rethinking, recreating and redefining was for me more important than the concrete "piece" itself and this mental process/procedure deserves much more to be called art then the object I created.
I deconstructed the machine today.

Tomorrow i meet with the chief of the kitchen here and we are going to create together a secret mission for everyone poodesserts we will form for the dinner out of a huge mass of chocolat and peanuts more or less individual soft poodesserts. Eating here is for everybody very very important as it is served 3!!! times a day and it is for free. As you told me once Gia about the student who urgently stopped thinking about Nietzsche to rush to the mensa, here we also had to cancel the meeting of the groop "artist as a model of change" because of the dinnertime.
Nobody knows the secret mission and nobody should know it also afterwards when it will be realised, but the most interesting thing will be if anyone will notice it.


I would also like to tell you about the group the "Artist as a Model of Change"
and the thoughts and ideas which came up related to it. I told you about the first meeting on the small wooden island. We felt there that we should meet always in slightly different places or situations to create a chance for a gap in which we could jump or fall to discuss openly beyond of our common behaviour models and boarders.

So the next meeting was in the Dunkin Donut in Walmart (a huge supermarket), everyone arrived separately with a car and it was not possible to communicate in anyway. It was a real disaster overpowering and ego exhibition.
The last meeting was 2 days ago, we met at 10pm in the evening and went without flashlights and without a concrete aim into the woods we went deeper and deeper. Then we stopped and created a circle with 2 meter distance between each other and started to speak and discuss.
We could see barely the shade of each other in the darkness and we really discussed for the first time in an absolute open and energetic way our ideas and thoughts about change.
I felt that it was really important that we as a group went for a certain time together through space and time and we had to trust each other and were depending on each other. All this and the fact that we couldn t see each other made it possible to really speak beyond of the limited understanding and comparative mind supported by our egos.

For the next meeting we planed to meet in the 2.LIFE a virtual world in the internet, which is basically a sad projection of our own boring vision of life and ourselves by our conditioned and cultured souls and consciousness. It is even worse because it is a "better" one, so this might be a place for the next meeting.

I just have the idea that perhaps anybody from TTT communication net likes to join us?
What do you think? We will do it next week and i love the idea that we could meet in the 2.LIFE to discuss our concerns...

I had to think a lot about change and i heard a lot of different understandings and visions about change in art during our meetings, so my own understanding changed.
I would like to say that there is a kind of common view inside of us what the word change suppose to mean. We associate the change with how to make from something abnormal something normal (this is actually what happens in art as well), to change the ugly into beautiful, to fight for the rights of any kind of outsiders or minorities and make them feeling better like women, blacks, gays etc. which means to accept things, event, people, whatsoever as something of ours, part of our society and culture. As well one could change his girlfriend or boyfriend every week without never feeling or even touching real love.
The human being is so much determined with this scheme that he is not able to see that the only thing he is doing is just manipulating world for fether comfort and consuming and about in real change we even never think of. Real change must happen deeply inside of the human being and it is not stick to anything concrete.

Dear Gia, I wrote as much as I could trying to express what is going on around and inside of me.
Your Florian


1. That s why Andy Warhol always tried to record all his daily speeches with people and his near friend Michel Auder was endlessly putting on the video tape every sequence of their life. (G.E.)

TTT ISSUE #3 (if once a penguin will disappear inside of us)

Dear Caro,
I do my best to meet all of you. But please phone me when you will arrive in Düsseldorf immediately. The thing is that these are the last days of the preparing my book for sending to the printing house and you can imagine that I am really under a big stress, but as always everything depends on the schedule of the concrete day. It will be a pity not to meet you.
I am missing your texts for TTT. You wrote such a wonderful letter deep, intimate, truthful, (which I put on the net) why not to enter this space of research for our own soul capacities and its orientations constantly. The mode of exchange with life in case of artist must change into hyper active. artists, writes or any others if they are truly creative people live only in this tensed mode (this energetic mode Vedic culture calls Radgas ) they permanently are involved with questioning truth (I mean during daily life). We must try all the time to tune ourselves higher, to try to alienate our look from what Husserl calls natural determination our usual view of the world and to perceive existence as only a question mark . Watch and Prey! commanded Jesus (here stress is on watch - watcher). We just accustomed normality as we were suggested by communal space (this energetic mode Vedic culture calls Tamas ) and that is a passive consuming mode it constantly kills our valuable chance for awareness.
TTT is a hyper space none of us is able to pray devotedly, none of us is able to reach quality which calls meditation, but at least here we can reach each other for active and true touch. Krishna commands Speak about me! he even tells to speak about him as a practice is higher then prayer because this puts under the control careless conditions (our talks, chats) which human being loves so much.
Everyone has such a special sensibility referring to the truth why not to always gift it to each other through the net that is the best use of it!

TTT is not a space for arguments and disputes but for gifts, insights, visions, desires of ours and perhaps even love if once a penguin will disappear inside of us.

My best wishes to you all and welcome to Düsseldorf,
Gia 12.07.09



Hi Gia,
It seems you are the centre of good impulses - gathering interesting talks around us.
Us, because we are within each other. This could be nice to be reflected artistically.
Will work on the project with the house , I told you once, in August looking forward to it.
We will be in France by next Monday, so Larissa and me will be working on our
understanding of "good lord" in ourselves.
Best wishes and tight hugs to your beloved ones,

Simon (sh@4wende.de)11.07.09



Dear Gia,
If you allow, I would like to continue this Zen postulate of master Linji Azif you mentioned you meet Buddha, kill Buddha I always knew the first part of it and it was very interesting for me to read once the second part (I ll try to translate it correctly):
Wenn ihr Buddha trifft, tötet Buddha (..) Dann erlangt ihr zum ersten Mal Befreiung, werdet nicht mehr von dingen gefesselt und durchdringt alles frei.
If you meet Buddha, kill Buddha (..) then you attain for the first time a liberation, you would be no more bind with a things and get through everything free.
.....
I think that is the same reason why light or shadow doesn t exist in an Japan/China painting it s no immanence of God there (the immanence that we know from another religions)

best regards

Ilona Keil (keililona@gmx.de) 11.07.09




Dear Gia,
due to Gabriela Oberreuter I was very pleased to receive your and Flo's email. The idea of communication net is great and I will be happy to participate in it. Thinking about the space and public art, I remembered the idea of http://www.liftarchiv.de/, the project of the http://www.szuper.org/.
With best regards,

Janina (janinasweg@googlemail.com)



Thanks Janina,
You are more then welcomed! The sites you sent to us are really great!
Gia


Thanks also everybody for participating and gifting each other your thought, feelings, emotions, insights, visions, positive and encouraging energy to everybody!!!

TTT ISSUE #2 (YOU SHALL NOT BORE GOD)

Dear Stephan,
The phrase "You shall not bore God" you presented to us in your last letter is just marvellous; it never goes out from my head. I told it to the people around and everybody was fascinated! Did you invent it? I never heard it before. Whatever you have to make a great series of art pieces within this statement/topic.
I love this kind of exchange between souls,
Love
Gia

Hi Gia,
Not really, it is not mine it is the title of a chapter of a book about life and spirituality. I didn't read this book but was fascinated of this term too and like you said it should be THE motto for artists. In a deeper meaning it has a lot to do with questions concerning consciousness, evolution, being human and how we define this idea of "something called God" in a contemporary and non-religious way.
We should keep it always in mind and maybe we can work with it - hey it's a great title for a performance or exhibition too.
Yeah it's wonderful to stay in touch and share ideas and thoughts...
we keep it on-
Stephan (stefstark@yahoo.de)


Dear Stephan,
It s Gia. I want to add Rajneesh (one of those great guys - Indian sage) makes distinction between Religious feeling which is connected with institualisation of the authentic messages of the prophets (their adaptation towards social needs and public weaknesses) and Religiousness what is the unintentional gift which culture luckily made to human being due to creating gap/abyss between him and the nature. He advises to drop down feeling of Religious inside us (which is mostly built on fears, feeling of gilt and wish of obedience) and to cultivate Religiousness (to keep this unique capacity of human being detached from any kind of identifications) which is a purely creative force directed to everlastingly unfolding and growing Thirst (some people call this unconditioned love). All what was sad refers to the Dzen Buddistic saying when you see Buddha immediately kill Buddha; which means - what is seeable never can correspond to unlimited nature of the desired by us. That s why Religiousness is an everlasting Thirst the thirst without satisfaction is the ground for dynamism and ex-static, The Total Thirst (TTT) is able to cancel all the other time modes (past and present) and set real - endlessly opening future which is never associated with anything, future as a future and future - one never ending inhale, run from nowhere to somewhere, as birds when they are flying in the highest skies.


Hi dear Flo,
Where did you disappear? Is everything all right? Is it still everything active and boiling in Skowhegan? If not don t worry; at the beginning everybody is nervous and kin to present themselves to each other (to the foreign people) in the best way and begin to throw out (in to the public space) the most and the best things they collected in their life (thoughts, concepts, memories, fantasies) after while situation becomes more calmer and normal, people appear in their normality . The over hyper condition (when all power and all knowledge gathers and still strange energy inside of man outpacing all these) is a rarely presented in human s life and usually very soon is away. Unfortunately man s inner constitution is based on the principal of economy of energy that s why some inner rule always strongly tries to avoid man to dwell in ex-static conditions. This rule discovered Malevich and wrote pretty much about it. To fight with this constitution, which makes us just ordinary members of the spectacle, to overcome this economy in every possible sequence of time is a spiritual goal which on it s highest level means to find that magic outpacing energy which is based on The Total Thirst (TTT) for the every next coming second. This specific energy outpaces events, thoughts and emotions, abstracts them into one Running Future which has no inside static appearances like self, ego, mine that s why people in this condition look like beautiful beyond of beauty blessed, possessed with no graspable.

I am looking forward to hear from you my dear man,
Gia

The Total Thirst (TTT) is a result of the wrong look which is directed not to the phenomena but to the open sky where nothing is to grasp, to communicate, to be part of, to consume it is just a run (of objectless and aimless desire/love) within something widely open, which finishes (vanishes) with us or me.

TTT ISSUE #1

Thanks dear friends,
For the great input (all the letters which follow),
What about the movies especially the The Society of the Spectacle
by Guy Debord, his book was crucially important for the artists and also thinkers with truly ambitious efforts.
One general answer to the mood of following letters:

(E) Das hier verwendete Wort Abschied hat jedoch in unserem konkreten Kontext nicht den Charakter von herzbeklemmender Trauer über einen Verlust, sondern ist das jubelnde Gefühl anlässlich der Schließung des soeben Erschienenen in der Erwartung des atemberaubenden Folgenden (diese Dynamik hebt die Gegenwart auf). Abschied ist hier die Ekstase und Besessenheit von der folgenden lebendigen Vitalität und weiter und weiter
(G) in this context, the word farewell as used here does not have associations of heart-rending sorrow at a loss, but is instead the joyful feeling on the closure of the just appeared in expectation of the breathtaking event that will follow (this dynamic movement abolishes presence). Here, farewell is ecstasy and obsession as regards the subsequent lively vitality and so forth...
(E) Belief was that God is an eternal presence, but it has appeared that in reality God is eternal future

Can we imagine the consciousness which has inside only a future? When the history is gone and the fact is eliminated together with it, what is the rest then? When one is desperately thirsty and drinks water thirstiness outpaces satisfaction, the Thirst is prior to satisfaction.
The Total Thirst (TTT) is the endless future with no need in satisfaction.

With affection to all of you,
Gia 07.07.09


Dear Gia,
thank you very much for the letter of Flo. Very interesting thoughts, at
least very much encouraging.
I have many questions to Flo, however.
One I want to share with you:
Flo speaks about art and society and how they are separated and how art
is being introduced into society in a very one dimensional way.
Generally this, i think at least, is a right conclusion. On the other
hand it leaks a problem, though. The problem of
valuating positions in a system. It is written from Flo's point of view,
revealing a closer look into Flo's world, which I am grateful for, but
lacking the consciousness of this special phenomena as part of the problem.
The problem is that, after his nevertheless intensive reflection, he
judges and in a way devaluates the quality of the problems and questions
a "normal" guy has by only taking care of his every day life. I think it
is very essential that we must not forget that our main task is to be
aware of this the first place, before trying to get down to the problem.
We are part of the system, no matter how eloquent, intellectual or
primitive we are. We must start in ourselves to look for answers. One
could be to try to really understand another societies (e.g. the
"normal" peoples) viewpoint on the world. Then embrace it in ourselves
(because we also come from this platform) and then find a way. Before that
it will always only be about "Meinung" ( doxa G.E.).
That is my believe, so far, I really hope, however, to meet you soon and
start to have the personal discourse.
For now, have a good day,
all the best,
Simon (sh@4wende.de) 06.07.09


Gia,
Thank you so much for sending me these messages. For the last couple of days I got a feeling of some vulnerable hope and the little spark for reason of life that was hidden for me temporarily (I hope). I love the idea of this type of communication. Your e-mails are like a window into outside - from claustrophobic surrounding into the vast space with lots of oxygen.
I really appreciate that you put me too into your list.
love,
Maia (maianaveriani@london.com)


Dear Gia,
First I would like to thank you cordially for everything! Lately I often asked myself, is that, what we make, really authentic and honest. Wouldn t we betray ourselves? We always want to release ourselves from restrictions of structure but I think some day we are determined that we cannot escape from it, as long as we possess a physical existence in a binary and separate world.
I watched your movie Apocalypses Now and was very fascinated of it, how at the end everything, death, life, the victim and the culprit became one and I could separate nothing more at all.
I enjoyed the thought to be able to enjoy and to bear the brutal, somehow it tormented and pursued me on a certain way. After few days I understood, how sticky it made me and how heavy. If I look at the slaughtering of a lamb and pursue that, of cause it is a pleasure, but are not we, ourselves those, who are slaughtered in this moment and if we are they, what we want to slaughter in us, if we are nevertheless already everything.
I hope you understand what I wrote here as I already said my English is not great.
I m not sure about these thoughts.

Alles liebe
Helene (helene_meier@web.de) 06.07 09


Dear Mr. Slavoj Zizek,

We, Anna and I (Florian) were at your vital lecture in the University of Bonn.
After the lecture we shortly spoke with you mentioning the art academy we are studding in and also asked you for your e-mail address hoping to invite you with a lecture. I have a modest hope that you still remember this situation.

With this letter we would like to give you a short introduction on our thoughts and ideas.
We are both studying in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and we see the academy as an old traditional institution working in and for the cultural space by shaping the pattern consciousness of the students as a means to secure and to feed our society then rather to help the students to become independent and creative minds.

The Düesseldorf academy is known as a manufacturer of never ending stream of "artists". More over it also takes care to find for them the place and the territory within art world and the culture. This activity has as a platform system of classes every Professor has his "own" students and the students have their "own" Professor (the class is the cursor for the student for post Academy life). The idea of an open exchange even within the Academy, beyond of the classes, is fully limited.

As the director on long run Markus Luppertz who focused on a strong tradition and reputation of the academy is leaving this year we would like to initiate a process of inquiry, which will help to redefine the model of Academy, to create and to share new visions for it.
There is a feeling that something is ready for change a new generation of interesting artists came to teach, but steel there is a deep necessity to involve challenge full people from outside the art world, with strong visions, to create a deep and fundamental impact.
These actions shouldn t look like a therapy or a blood infusion but more as a radical operation or recreation we never thought of, we even hope it could be more than that a new vision about the studding process and the role of art institutions in general. Art in our culture is associate with (art) object in its concreteness, like a painting, video piece, installation or performative action, appropriative for communication, trade, perhaps even entertainment.
Within this circumstances we ask ourselves shouldn t art be more a kind of strive for constant awareness and openness towards the outer (or inner) limitless room serving as a strong turning point for our daily life?
Is it a right statement to understand and to treat the true art product more like a relict or a trophy from the daily-life-performance which succeeded in transgression?

In this concern the Düsseldorf Academy had a great past; the radical and provocative ideas have been once powerfully generated there but are now almost fully forgotten. We hardly can remember and even imagine that Joseph Beuys was teaching in the same academy some years ago.

So: "BACK TO THE FUTURE!"

We would love to invite you to participate in the upcoming discussions and lecture series or movement "BACK TO THE FUTURE! in the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf.

If you will find time and energy to help us with your uniquely unordinary way of thinking we would do our best to support your appearance here in Düsseldorf.

Thank you very much for your time and
warm greetings from
Anna K.E. &
Florian Meisenberg (floopi@web.de) 06.07.09