primal screens
Where do images come from?
Let’s assume the words I use are mine.
A revelation: Veruschka at the window. Underneath a black leather coat, loosely girded above the navel, her pale, silky skin is glowing from within, in stark contrast to the darkness surrounding her. I look at her blank face. Is she looking at me? Does she see me? [read the essay]
unser Hitler: nach Amstetten
Wir kennen das Bild vom Tatort des Inzestverbrechens in Amstetten.
Ein unheimliches Bild. Das Bild eines Tatorts, an dem alles so normal aussieht. Furchtbar normal. Wären da nicht die Nummerntäfelchen, die den Ort als Tatort kenntlich machen, wir täten uns schwer, dieses inzestuöse Verlies von einem ganz normalen Badezimmer zu unterscheiden. Es ist diese Normalität, die stillgestellte Zeit, die fehlende Resonanz, die mich stutzig macht. [read more]
holocaust / voids
Berlin. My first visit to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe built by Peter Eisenman takes place on a cool summer day in June 2005, three weeks after the memorial’s official ‘opening.’
I don’t go unprepared to meet the field of more than 2,700 concrete pillars, conveniently located in the heart of 'the new Berlin' between Brandenburg Gate, the former Berlin Wall and Hitler’s Führerbunker. [read the essay]
psychoanalysis interruptus
On Jacques Lacan’s couch psychoanalysis was a “talking cure” only on rare occasions. During the 1970s the French psychoanalyst, who had been experimenting with variable session lengths since the 1940s, introduced what would later be called a “non-session” which typically lasted from a few seconds up to a couple of minutes. Since both the short session’s and the non-session’s termination depended on the analyst’s discretion entirely, analysands could never be sure whether they would have a chance to speak at all. [read the essay]