[-empyre-] Benjamin, Peter Weiss, the city as performative?

Wed Mar 14 06:07:32 EST 2012

During several years there was this judgement about the 20th century and
its culture, that sustained Paris as the centre of European Modernism
whereas the center, if it really existed, should be considered either
Berlin or Moscow. While people got scandalized by Strawinsky's/Nijinsky's
Sacre du Printemps, Malevitch, Khlebnikov, Krutchonikh and Matiushin were
enjoyed by the russians. And in Germany Wedekind, Heym and Kokoschka
produced the scatological world of strange, noisy paranoia of its early
modernism. Berlin kept this spirit of unconquerable anti-harmony which is
still part of its charm. I also lived there for three months that could
value as a year. The people who visit always feel this amazing sensation of
property but the city is contradictoire also. At the same space we find the
relics of Bauhaus and, some meters ahead, the Wittembergplatz station from
where, under the subterraneans of KDW, left trains to concentration camps.
The construction of the so called Museum Insel is a tremendous work of
robbery produced by the Hohenzollerns, who piled lots of Eastern treasures
and put it inside the big museum. Nothing different, in fact, to what was
made in France or England.
I remember the inscription that probably still exists in Savigny Platz S
Bahn Station, saying "we are the scum of the world". Found something about
this sensation of being a foreigner and part of that all simultaneously at
http://books.google.com.br/books?id=4fp-OaPpriAC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=savignyplatz+wall+inscriptions&source=bl&ots=F34qCRiiHr&sig=V_HE5DZknyIIUlZ2WZtZmoqUPfY&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ei=PJlfT_mOAsf8ggepvbmmCA&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mixed feelings is what Berlin provokes to anyone, even the most
indifferent. Thank you Ana for your comments on Weiss, it is going to be
interesting to look for these references. You should write something about
this case of Barber and Gert, Alan! It is a great oportunity of thinking
about the neglected origins of performance art..
best
Lucio BR
2012/3/13 Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com>

> Interesting references, Alan! The Living Theatre is an important part of
> my own past, they defined themselves as anarchists and I met them in
> several opportunities.
> But going back to Weimar and to Weiss and to Anita Berber and Valeska
> Gert, I am not aware of Weiss refering to them, not in his writings not in
> his interviews. We lived in the same city, Stockholm, and I met him twice
> before he died. He strucked me as a very humble man, not making great fuss
> about his public persona.
> But I was in Berlin last year and visited again the Bauhaus archive and it
> was indeed Weiss time and the city as presence.
> Berlin doesn't have the same literature or/and atmosphere as London, Rom
> or Paris, but I love the city, I visited it many times, when the wall still
> existed and afterwards. And I saw the altar of Pergamus which Weiss writes
> about in "The Aesthetics of Resistance", probably the most magnificient
> piece of religious and political architecture from the Ancient times.
> Berlin is as a city, for me, a great example of what we discussed last
> week, resilience and resistance.
> Ana
>
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 5:04 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There's a lot of material on Weimar performance which tallies with this;
>> I'm thinking particularly of performers like Anita Berber and Valeska Gert,
>> both of whom have had a large influence on my work. Interestingly, much of
>> the best performance work, much of the legacy, is the work of women. Gert
>> later came to the US, and opened a cabaret/cafe here in NY for a time; she
>> had an effect on Living Theater. Both Gert and Berber were within the
>> imaginary of resistance; their own identity was on the line. There was also
>> Mary Wigman, many others. This was all swept away of course. I'm just
>> curious - did Weiss reference any of this?
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I am reading again Peter Weiss "The Aesthetics of Resistance", the best
>>> description of Berlin together with Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz. The city
>>> is described as a hub of energy, as the place where all converge, where
>>> utopian thoughts and political work blends and interact.
>>> Curiously I don't find in Weiss work (not only this one but all of his
>>> writing, his Marat-Sade, his Process, etc) any reference to Benjamin. They
>>> were not in the same age, Benjamin was born 1892, Weiss in 1916. They
>>> belonged to different generations and they were intellectually quite
>>> different.
>>> Weiss saw himself as a people's intelectual, as someone anonymous, as
>>> anonymous as the builders of the altar of Pergamus, which play such a
>>> principal role in his book "The Aesthetics of Resistance". He was a
>>> communist and believed in the workers as the base of the society, the ones
>>> being destroyed by the gods in the altar of Pergamus.
>>> Benjamin chose another path but for both writers the city was this
>>> canvas where all activity could be performed and be herself a performer.
>>> Ana
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.twitter.com/caravia1585959
>>>
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>>> http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
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>>> http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
>>> your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
>>> long to return.
>>> — Leonardo da Vinci
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> =====================================================
>> directory http://www.alansondheim.org tel 347-383-8552
>> music/sound http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>> email sondheim ut panix.com, sondheim ut gmail.com
>> =====================================================
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> http://www.twitter.com/caravia15859
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
> http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/
>
> mobil/cell +4670-3213370
>
>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
> your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
> long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

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