Improvisations
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D e l m o n t : And all the while, looting gangs roam about the forests. But our society scorns the blood and dirt of the ambushes they rig! Random, indiscriminate despotism! Suddenly it's burning. Gun salutes for one and all, automatic pistols just for fun and ammunition belts in your underwear. Poses are a Polish....errmm, poses are a political language and a corruption of meaning. Arguments never, logic forever. Fright is fading. Doctrines of salvation are all right for the rest of the world, but not for us. The final death throes on the grass - Coming soon to a cinema near you: Divine Comedy. Neediness is all around, the police supervise deprivation. The political, oh! The political died with politics and we constitute the remains. The surplus of life. Enlightenment flickers wildly, drug addiction the Romantic movement, the March Revolution, alcoholics, the young Germany. Phantom vessels! Their crew all passed away and the captain is nailed to the mast. For our sovereign lies dead and we are fair game. We fight the power any way we please.H a n s D i e t e r : Yes, yes, ... all right, dad... , you can do whatever you want. RIGHT? But you're in the wrong film now... So, you all fought, RIGHT? Against the cultural privatisation which was being carried out back then? ...RIGHT? D e l m o n t : What privatisation is that you're talking about? Hum? H a n s D i e t e r : Dad.... the nineties, capitalism, globalisation, the absolute COINAGE ... all your favourite topics!! D e l m o n t : Oh yes! ..... the national states are becoming administrative units in the ‘Global Player’...they are falling into competing economic sites, world-wide.... and so on .. H a n s D i e t e r : Competition, competition, that was once my childhood mission! D e l m o n t : Revolution, revolution, there is no revolution without proper execution! H a n s D i e t e r : Innovation, innovation, common cause of motivation! D e l m o n t : ...............The phenomena of a global economy, the incredible transformations at the end of the 20th century can only be represented in the subconscious: Nervousness, mass hysteria, stress, inner conflicts, youth cults, Rococo and Surrealism, perfumed Indian foods, delusion of meaning... H a n s D i e t e r : Are these the new Collections? D e l m o n t : So-called high culture is on a straight drip from all the corporations. The middle class values of the good, the beautiful and the true have been transferred on to the company's account. H a n s D i e t e r : The good, the goods and the gods...... Lovely, beautiful! D e l m o n t : Blind belief, fatalism! H a n s D i e t e r : The 20th century, the maggot in the bacon of time! D e l m o n t : The modern age needed two world wars before everything got modern. And then came Pop! POP, ever more the creative engine for cultural and economical globalisation. POP, that Judas of the Underground, that traitor to all strategies, makes it all available, puts it all on the market. It was POP that hammered the equation commodity=culture, culture=commodity into every pit of this earth. Now POP came true, POP fulfilled itself with it itself. There was nothing in the world which was not POP. Planet POP, the old style.... . Hans-Dieter ... Rock the Market, Roll the Stock...... House the Drum & Homebase....... Hip the Court Blues... Hop the Acid Precinct... D e l m o n t : ....and all that remains today is just a depoliticised poor man's culture, an opium for the masses of the service industry serfs.. H a n s D i e t e r : ... Fanaticism! God, it's crazy.... But... how did you fight it back then? D e l m o n t : Youth culture today is just for old farts. The so-called youth of today... MY FAVOURITE SPECTACLE! Chalky chapped faces, scars and tatoos decorating them like wrinkles, grey (allonge) full-bottomed wigs, breeches, winklepickers. Crinolines and corsets, all kind of crutches, sticks and canes.....and then the lovely long sweep of those tobacco pipes! H a n s D i e t e r : ...those short, white clay pipes are subaltern again now! But!... Back then, did you not have the honour to introduce your idea of a CORPORATE ROCOCO into society ? D e l m o n t : Corporate, how I love you! Corporate, oh please me too! Corporate, come and collect My art, so good, which I’ll direct From my heart and soul To your wealth and to your coal. H a n s D i e t e r : I love you Corporate, I do, Oh sweet Corporate, please love me too. Then dear Corporate, please buy my art, It too is centrist, it's from my heart. D e l m o n t : Corporate, my lord and prince! Corporate, let me convince Corporate, to like my art And to give me coin so hard! All my humility renew, All my luck depends on you. H a n s D i e t e r : Corporate, my prince, my Corporate sire, Corporate, please help me out of this mire. If my art suits you, then pay me coins, I'll surely thank you from my humble loins. D e l m o n t : Not bad, my dear... but ...that is such a dreadful style today! Under no circumstances should it be further pursued! In the beginning I wanted to change society.... but now I can’t stand the sight of those decrepid old pantaloons. H a n s D i e t e r : But an altered political and economic structure that is at heart absolutist, must also produce corresponding, representative forms.... ? D e l m o n t : That's why artists are always so welcome at the Court. And that is an important chance: for it is always worth sundering the splendid rings of our virtual COIN and breaking its contracts with our stupid hearts. H a n s D i e t e r : You must believe it....... And phantasm falls apart! You gold agent, You kiss and a promise! D e l m o n t : For like any public statement, art is never without influence on others' tastes and heads.....and it is therefore in itself political as well. Whatever you do - what you say and how you say it - will always also stand in a relationship to power. Therefore, whether you like it or not, art constitutes strategy and influence as well: CRITICAL ROCOCO! H a n s D i e t e r : Yet the question remains: to what end?! D e l m o n t : It was a case of using the changing era in order to assert a new sovereignty for the subjects, against the domination of the public by the Corporations. And also to develop a new lightness of touch in the fight for self-determined cheerfulness in the realms of the political and aesthetic. It was precisely there that I saw a possibility to develop some fabulous anarchic fun. You could play around with the different images of the artist, say, pop star, romantic genius, auntie society or uncle media ... An artistic resistance to the culturalisation of life! H a n s D i e t e r : Certainly... everything is just THEeAtrre, self surrender, heavenly game! .......citizen, clink citizen....citizen clink clink.... D e l m o n t : Sovereignty, sovereignty, ha, ha, ha! For our sovereigns lie dead... and all the various self-determined fractions, all the clubs, tribes and co-operatives seem to be more or less going along all right these days. It took 30 years for the totalitarianism of the Global Player to be broken down, and for a new sovereignty of individuals to be achieved, with their claims to autonomy and their own economics against the dominance of the corporate Courts. And furthermore, all the various fractions' elected envoys had to be fed back into the system, controlled, and, where necessary, dispensed with entirely. H a n s D i e t e r : Mother told me that you once leaned quite far out of the window in a spot of star-gazing - you wrote a science fiction called ‘Futurism of the public’? D e l m o n t : Oh my God, how embarrassing... that is something I never wanted to tell you... H a n s D i e t e r : Oh Daddy, that’s quite all right. I’ve read it in secret anyway and I think we could now check out whether some of it came true or not! D e l m o n t : Oh no, sonny!... the game just always remains the same. Come, go out into the world and study it! Then decide for yourself whom you want to serve or not. But consider this: everyone dies for himself alone - and now I must go as well. I thank you, and all my friends for their love, but I thank especially your revered mother whom I now will soon follow. Here, Hans-Dieter, son, my last poem...for you: H a n s D i e t e r : The frost of a cold millennium settles its sleep in the valley. The night becomes slowly softer. We have laughter under our breath and the hoar frost slips giggling from our bones. There, the first sunshine licks our dusty garb, dropping a gentle kiss in the darkling night. How softly it withers and wanes... Oh, that my spider's web would wake! The ball is beginning! Vapid expectancy fills the air, whilst the larks twirl and the blackbirds tussle. A great chord chimes, milder than the rain in May, than a child's sweet kiss, than the scent of a rose. The blossoms have taken to wearing dew drops about their necks, as if the crystal beads could proclaim a gleaming new age. Hark! The joyful shouts of beast and bird! Hark! The spinning planet too is heard! Lo! Our spirit is profoundly stirred! The rotting breast sucks deep on this freshening morning. The cold smoke dissolves through streams of fine veins. The campfires of the courageous are extinguished. Ardour dreams deep under the ashes and their spirit withers in the irreducible spheres. The corpses are drained dry of blood, and yet... morning's crimson hours are calling. Summon your strength and lick your wounds! Cleanse them of the marks left by blade or gun and let them heal! Make full the complement of arms and get some fencing practice in. Fill the empty shells, roll the lead bullets... It is with gratitude that I salute this fresh dawn! We shall stockpile this feeling with the rest of our arms and meet the new day ahead. Cool, clear and filled with merry certainty. There are only a few of us already awake under the apple trees. Some friends still lie punch drunk. Our fathers are dead and fair game are we. |
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