I do not love Dick

do not

If the book deals with obsession, is it normal for me to get obsessed with it? Well its too late now, I did, now it should all end, I devoured everything there is to devour, I guess I could watch all the interviews that are on youtube, but that will kill the fantasy, what do I mean? let me explain. My friend Franzi showed me this book she just got, the title was a total bummer, we both agreed, it makes you already wonder, why would you read that shit, to what she answers “ its supposed to be this really empowering work of feminist art” aha interesting that is a bit subversive, does it mean that the title stands for actually the opposite? So she “does not” love dick, ok I can deal with that.

Time passes and I get some links here and there that validate the thesis of the feminist piece of art, at some point I read that the creator/director of transparent is involved in doing a serie based on the book (loosely based I would say now). I forget all this for months.. one fine day I guess other random links to the book remind me of it, I know Franzi couldnt finish it. I want to borrow the book from her, I have the strong feeling am gonna like it, or maybe I have the strong feeling that its gonna be one of those books that I can not stop reading. It was. I finish in 3 days, and … did I like it? Its so weird, I have Franzi’s copy, and she didnt finish, at some point i reach the point where she stopped, at that point I totally understand why she stopped, at this point I skipped some pages, pages of very random narrations of Chris past life, I though if this continuous, it is boring… but somehow (when writing this i already finish, so i have to listen to the audio message I sent to Franzi, "damals" cause already know I forgot what I felt "damals" ). I was already obsessed at that moment, I was puzzled, I liked it, but the obsession itself, the obsession of Chris towards Dick seemed so fake to me, why would you allowed yourself that, is it not a waist of time?. At this point there is a lot of mirroring, I relate a lot with this letter writing, not any letter, letters that you write thinking of someone, but with the clear idea that this someone will never ever read them. So, what is this? This is for you, this is a way to hide your obsession, a way to deal an compartmentalize, Someone is not willing to deconstruct and “desmenuzar” all the little details of our non-relationship so what u do? U write, u write to free your mind of mental chaos, you write do deal and to forget. I still feel ashamed of those letters(yes i also wrote letters, even though now i know they were not for anyone else but myself), am not ready to read them yet, I struggle with the strong desire to burn them (like my mum burned her diaries, she told me once "once married" ¡?).

So at this reading point ( page 115, roughly at the beginning of the second part of the book “ Every Letter is a love letter”) I declare not to be obsessed anymore, or at least to be less obsessed. At this point I google the serie and from now on am doomed, Dick becomes Kevin Bacon. I fight this by putting zero attention on him, which is easy, its not about him. And that's the thing, what is the book about? I think is about Chris allowing herself to obsessed about a person, an object, a man (a man is being objectivized) a man that she barely knows. And she claims she loves him, and that's it, why not, right? Well, then it comes... My female embedded properness tells me we dont do that, we dont show our passion, what is this, what do we love, we dont love, we dont know, we repress, cause .. cause what? Cause what would people think? That u are crazy, that u can not control yourself? That u have nothing better to do than obsessing, Also once you start you can not stop, its like a snowball of thoughts and emotions, better no to think about it, better to lock it away.
In a way it is marvelous that she doesnt even need Dicks reciprocity, she constructs her own Dick, in the book, there is little Dick I will claim, the meetings are spread across long periods of time on the serie, on the other hand there is more of Dick-person. But u see what am doing here? Am trying to rationalize desire, it is “acaso” more accepted to obsessed from the distance and across time, than face to face in a couple of hours? Exactly THAT'S NOT THE POINT. There are many things I like but I dont know how to put them all together, I like fantasy in the book, there it has much more to do with repression and imagination, the letters usually end up not being sent, and I fell Cris doesnot care about what Dick thinks, cause again, its not about him, also she is allowed to drift more, she goes to far fetch random thoughts, that she relates to him, somehow. Instead in the serie, in episode 2 Chris has already sent all the letters, and we donot get any hint what would have ignited Chirs passion for him, here I would claim u need the background of the book ( WELL clearly that what I need, to make sense, very important, it has to make sense, right, cause if it doesnot?!), In the serie the link is much more carnal, dick is there most of the time thus the fantasy is easier to break, you just need to be confronted with the real Dick, and yes, unlike a fantasy, he disappoints you. That's very invigorating, I love the end of the serie, much more than the book, nevertheless both times i thought Dick is an asshole, ahaha, I also like that.

The display of feminist art in the serie is totally awesome, I took so many notes, but to be fair am maybe like a person of my generation, very pop very image oriented, thus a tv format fills me more. I also took a lot of notes from the book still the most awesome part of the serie es that the story goes beyond Chris and Sylvere, and the cast and their stories are really good, lesbian sex, queer love, an like I said a lot of actual display of feminist art. The serie deviated totally from the book, it is a thing by itself. I can not say which one I liked the most, I liked them both, but they are very different and am very happy I endured it all .

i hate/ate apple

Patriarcado at its best

El otro día, fui a esta mega tienda de muebles, 11 pisos, toda una tradición de empresa. en uno de los pasillos era posible encontrar estas fotos, aquí se puede ver a la izquierda, al caballero que fundo la empresa, su apellido es aun el nombre de la empresa. En la siguiente foto podemos ver a su hija, casándose con el que seria el continuador de la empresa familiar, como se pueden imaginar, el nombre de la única mujer en la fotos, no es mencionado.

Arte en la calle

Jannowitzbrücke, Berlin

Alguien hace estos collages/graffiti/arte en mi barrio, por la similutud en la burbuja, solo puedo asumir es la misma persona, gracias! son una belleza =)

the gender marketing

Der Goldene Zaunpfal

last friday i went to the award ceremony of the most ridiculous marketing for an article based on gender, i was very happy that one of the 5 nominated was the stupid kinder egg which i already spotted in the shops some time before

other nominated was a stupid pink globo terraqueo

T-shroom

or Kombucha

this is a slimy , tick or thin depending on how old it is, pancake that floats in tee. The story says that probably comes from japan, through russia, then to europe, but this is also not so clear, as well as the benefits. It is also not clear if its "a helthy drink" or a sugar bomb".

on friday in the mycelium exhibition, the artist asked people to adopt one t-shroom, i though it was gonna be fun, so i signed in. i was too late, but someone that didnt live in Berlin steadily was gonna pass his to me on monday. i went to pick it up and carried it through berlin in my open-front-backpack up like a baby all day. we talked with D. the guy that gave it to me that we would try to experiment with other types of sugar,cause besides tee, your supposed to also add sugar, after reading a bit i am not to sure about making that move just yet. i want to get familiar first with how it behaves, ah by the way we decided to call the scoby (this is an acronym which stands for "symbiotic 'colony' of bacteria and yeast" , so the pancake is not a mushroom, is a colony) Lenin, cause Lenin was a mushroom, more on that story later*.

With all the movement of Lenin through Berlin, a thin amorfous pancake came out of the scoby, i put it in another jar already, eventhough am not clear if babys come from the top or from the bottom, how deep... the pancake/scoby got the form of the jar where i put it, with the amourfous mass underneat, interesting, now i put it in a bigger jar.

Dasha claims to know other types of colonies, one that you feed raisin to, this sounds interesting too!, it seems that out t-shroom is calles chaikvas in russian, this is very perturbin cause it has nothing to do with kvas.. more exploration needed here. Talking with L. about this we found out that it is possible to buy it in DM, but its too frizzy for my taste, didnt like it

and thats all for now, lets see how long do i like to keep my lenin alive .

Ever elusive - transmediale

Ecologoies worshop- Earth observarory

There is this festival (on art & digitalculture since 1988, thus westgermany) called transmediale, i have attended every year, cause there is something interesting (and for free) to see. the truth is i just let myself be inspired, most of the time i dont quite get the grasp of what am gonna see from the description, i go anyway. this lead me to the third weekend workshop this year, i really wanted to attend the other one which took place in Ver.di (the biggest german trade union that unites, supports and coordinates trade unions accross the country, this particular worshop dealt with datafied politics and digital populism)but that weekend i had my cut and construction workshop (for that another post).

The workshop took place at silent green, that was my first motivation to attend, this is a former (and actually the first in Berlin) crematorium now turned into a cultural center.

Ecologies features new artistic research into the messy, disperse ecologies that now characterize life on the planet as it is re-contructed in flows of data, capital and natural resources. Understanding how planetary systems work requires multidimensional thinking, and so collaborative and interdiciplinary frameworks will emerge throughout the excursion. By embracing the topic from a geopolitical perspective, the problematics of scale are brought into the foreground, and ways for connecting the micro-the -macro political in DIY artistic practices as well as interdiciplinary research projects will be proposed. The program also deals with the resource heavy realities of technology and its impact on the earth from a geological "deep time" perspective, and looks at new approached to the earth's own media such as mushroom* and rocks*.

The people in leading the workshop were Jamie Allen and Martin Howse, from the beggining they said though they didnt want to have much of frontal lecture but a discussion. anyway, cause we had so different backgrounds they started giving us input on lay lines , radioactivity, we also talked about the unavoidable anthropocene and also about colonial espistemologies, this somehow i havent heard in this constellation, it has do to with having the knowledge that something is there, that something exist and somehow once you "know" this you can not avoid but to want to "explore"* it. We also talked about the middle of germany, and how the "need" for mapping this across time and different mediums to do it has lead to different places clayming to be "the center". There was also the mention of the "Superfunds which brings us back to the anthropocene and the places that have been so affected/contaminated by human hands that they are deemed dead. we were asked to question what are direct consequences of the anthropocene in our dayli lives? - Jamie tolds us that once in Paris in a polluted day he was told he was not expected to pay the ticket for the metro. It made me think of my time living in Santiago and how besides the "visual spectacle" of having to live under a grey cloud of smog, i never was affected in the sense of not beeing able to go somewhere or not being able to do sports, i guess in the 00 years things were better already, or?

hands on

we got express trained into how to find.. let call it lay lines just for the fun of it. we had to built our how pendulum. The pendulum was a radioactive stone from the south of germany; martin placed the stones in front of a radioactive measuring divice, it produced that particular sound that you hear in chernobil documentaries, i mean, they were real BUT not harmful. We could pimp our pendulums with gems and copper (cooper works as a blocker of radioactivity, so we thought we can "direct" the energy of the pendulum deppending on the way we place it on it.

so we found our inner lay lines, we place a shovel on the spot and then we went inside to hear a talk about the launch of the Mycelium network society. after we went out to perform the "array activation ritual" here we made a hole in the ground in the same spot were we before stuck our shovels, there we put a seed, and in the center of our array (or where we started the search for the lines) we had a box made of concrete were we sepulted our pendulums, so we have our radioactive center conected by lines to our seeds =).

References

• movie: Merchants of doubt
• movie: Into eternity -about Onkalo in Finland
• Reader: read till the end!

Mycelium

Parallel to the workshop and the talks there was a tiny exhibition happening on the balcony of the mourning hall of the crematorium, there one could have kombucha or tshroom, then i remember, i had one when i was tiny! but i didnt drink it, it was a sort of community network though, cause everyweek you where supposed to give one to someone, and after 3 weeks you were supposed to let it dry. am very clear about the fact the my tshroom was called natacha, and that once dryied i kept it in an envelope. Well, now i have my own new tshroom, its quite big and tastes good.