Richard Serra | East-West/West-East | 2014

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Nothing; just the soul.

Your ego won't help you.

— Mark Rothko

She wore moonlight like lingerie.

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Not everyone deserves to know the real you.
Let them criticize who they think you are.

My basic view of the world is that right next to the world we live in, the one we're all familiar with, is a world we know nothing about, an unfamiliar world that exists concurrently with our own. The structure of that world, and its meaning, can't be explained in words. But the fact is that it's there, and sometimes we catch a glimpse of it, just by chance — like when a flash of lightning illuminates our surroundings for an instant.

— Haruki Murakami

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Letztlich suche ich Klarheit.

Ich gehe immer aufs Ganze. Ich führe eine Sache bis zum Ende. Ich verschwende mich. Ich liebe von ganzem Herzen.

— Romy Schneider

Le Figaro, 23.09.2018

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Come with me. No time to explain.

Emotion; dir. by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1966

[Bangs; as always.]

When she does not find love, she may find poetry.

— Simone de Beauvoir

That raw ache for another arty soul.

Behind the scenes:

Persona; dir. by Ingmar Bergman in 1966

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The ruined cities in her eyes, the bitter beauty of her lips.

— Robin Hyde;

from: The Desolate Star & Other Poems

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Meine Zeit mit dir, 1979
Wo sind die Mädchen, 1980

Glück ist nie von Dauer. Wir dürfen uns nie zu sicher sein. [Können Sie das Unglück noch ertragen?] Ja, darin habe ich Übung. [...] Das Unglück würde mich nicht schocken.

— Charles Bukowski

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Legs are the only thing.

Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

— Maya Angelou

Gilles Deleuze

One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate reason.

— Albert Camus

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Wir sind viel mehr, als wir immer nach außen zu sein scheinen.

— Uli Paetzel

[Heavy rotation.]

Richard Serras' Arbeiten provozieren. Zu Eigenständigkeit und Selbstbestimmung. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit einer Ordnung, die den menschlichen Maßstab sprengt.

— Martina Müller

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Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach, 11/2018;
Philharmonie Essen, Alfried Krupp Saal

This concert version of Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass is a collaboration between Suzanne Vega, Ictus Ensemble, Collegium Vocale Gent and the visual artist Germaine Kruip. It presents a sheer musical approach to the full score of the legendary Glass/Wilson opera where the virtuosic instrumental, singing parts and crystalline structure of the piece are enhanced by a site-specific approach and a sophisticated sound design.

The focus of this production is the musical score itself and the musical sound of the libretto. We opt for a long-stretched performance; very close to the full score composed for the actual opera. In this way we want to create a minimalistic sound-bath of more than 3 hours length that reconnects to the freshness and radicality of early minimalism. The door of the concert hall will be kept open throughout the performance (the audience is free to wander in and out), the gap between stage and audience blurred thanks to Germaine Kruip's visual intervention to be viewed as a contemporary art installation.

Indeed, for this concert there is no scenic extravaganza, no ambitious Gesamtkunstwerk in the sense of the original Wilson/Glass/Childs production. It is the music making itself that will be exposed. The physical and mental challenge of making 200 minutes of music. We will show musicians at work. In a shared time and space with the audience, structured by the music, they will perform different parts from different positions on stage, share the audience view when not playing, surround them or play frontal, thus transforming the concert hall in a visual and auditive surrounding environment. And in structuring space in this way, as expected, Robert Wilson and Lucinda Childs are looking around the corner again.

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Dokumentation von Martina Müller, 2009

Je näher man dem Stahlkoloss [Bramme für das Ruhrgebiet, 1998] rückt, desto größer die Herausforderung. Reaktionen auf Monumentalität, Schlichtheit der Form und auf eine Fläche, die der Verwitterung standhält und Graffiti in Kauf nimmt. Kunst ohne Sockel; aus einem Material, das auf sich selbst verweist. Auf Gewicht, Masse und Schwerkraft. [...] Stahl auf Kohle, in den Boden der Geschichte gerammt. [...] Seine Bramme, eine Grabstele der Montanindustrie.

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True philosophy consists in re-learning to look at the world.

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty;
Phenomenology of Perception

If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens.

— Andrei Tarkovsky

She may have a wild soul;
but she's a lover of simple things
and quiet places.

<3

We're in an age where common sense sounds esoteric.

— Thomas Sowell

Moon, Mars and Milky Way; by M. Taha Ghouchkanlu, 2018

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Nobody speaks to me. People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me and — and all that sort of thing. But no one speaks to me. I sometimes think that no one can. Can you?

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: Remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

― Eckhart Tolle

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda; 2018

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As for myself, I had a lot to say. But I was silent.

— Albert Camus

She heard the listening forest.

— Denise Levertov

Marc Aurel; Selbstbetrachtungen

Seines Zeichens letzter Philosophenkaiser.

Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn't get better. You get better.

— Joan Rivers

If you meet unkindness, listen, gently. Someone is confiding in you their fears.

— Quiet Lotus