Katharina Siegel

Cc:theme A (apple) B (critical zone)

On the southern side of Genève, very close to the Rhône as it flows out the lake, there are a number of narrowish, shortish, straight streets of four-storey buildings, built in the nineteen century originally as residential apartments.[...]
These streets lead like the aisles which run between the bookshelves of an extensive library. As seen from the street, each line of shut windows is the glass door to another bookshelf. The closed front doors of varnished wood are the drawers of the library catalogue. Behind these walls everything is waiting to be read. I call them her archive streets.[...]
What is waiting to be read on the shelves in the archive streets is private, unprecedented ans almost weightless. Archives are different from book libraries. Libraries are made up of bound volumes, whose every page has been repeatedly reread and corrected. Archives often consist of papers which were originally abandoned or laid aside.
Genèves passion is for discovering, cataloguing and checking what was laid aside.
No wonder she's short-sighted. No wonder she arms herself — even when asleep — against pity.[...]
What does Genèves passion bring her? It assuages her insatiable curiosity. A curiosity which has nothing — or very little — to do with inquisitiveness or gossip. She is neither concierge, nor judge. Genève is observer, fascinated by the sheer variety of human predicaments and consolations.
Confronted with any situation, however outrageous, she is capable of muttering »I know« and then of adding gently: Sit there, I‘ll see what I can bring you.

John Berger, here is where we met, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005
[]

Jumping Weights- technical drawings for ceramic objects

While walking through Athens I encountered an object — an ancient greek jumping weight. I kept its photographic representation for long in my archive without knowing what it exactly meant to me or what it was good for. But it had a strong resonating impact on me.
By re-reading Heidegger it came back to my mind: "Thinking acts by thinking."1
Philosophical thinking in Heidegger's sense is "future thinking" — thinking in tension towards the future from which its presentness receives its motion. Let's consider this motion as a jump! Thinking is jumping out of the ordinary, jumping over a gap that cannot be bridged, jumping into the bottomless.

The jumping weight as an image that represents the momentum of the jump — the long jump that brings thinking with being into play.

1) Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism
[]

Untitled Painting

Semi Somnolent

Where was I standing, hot cobblestone underfoot, wanting to look at the village church on top of the hill, hot-blue sky, light wind, maybe a swarm of shrieking swifts.
Where did I walk through the narrow alley full of crumbling plaster, it smells of mouldy shade, pleasantly the taste of cellar damp on my lips.
Where was I, numb in sticky half-sleep, mutely angry at something absent, imposing its presence on me.

Language, words, memory, premonition — awareness of the time that has passed.

I lay there, in the faint dusk, on white sheets, the pillows and blankets heaped against the wall, wrinkled, musty and enclosing, bare legs stretched, motionless, in the thick air of my room.
Reclining like stranded wood, I look at the skin and try to remember the feeling of sun by the sea, how the feet dig unnoticed into the sand, while one's just lying there and no longer feel oneself.

The things that once had meaning have become lifeless props.
In their piled formation, they seem lumbering and strange, deprived of function, deposed. A desire so strong that it hinders itself, the body that wants to be body.

Outside, a sound collage, continuously swelling and subsiding, covers everything.
Today, for a brief moment, I was able to filter out the slight rustling of leaves as I passed by, afflicted by the realisation of the other hidden reality, desired and almost impossible to grasp. From an unknown corner the smell of this reality blows, eventually. Volatile. But long enough to be aware of it.

Filter, sieve, zoom — capture the impression. Hot cobblestone.
A veil of sensations — transparent and firm. Layering of realities.

Childhood memories that are not memories, but a flicker, a waft, a flow, sensations that belong to indeterminate moments, dreams perhaps — half asleep states, clotted, tenacious, thick-bodied states of the body.
When was the last time you breathed deeply?

Ronja's spring cry. Repels the thick layer of constriction, freed from the strenuous mastery of her duties.
A callus on the hand grows in good hours, hurts. In benevolent consideration, it is result of being. Being there in your own being. Insignificance is noticeable everywhere.
Small fruit fly, brownish yellow-red and transparent, crawling over the light-gray painted table, tries to sip from my glass.

When was I lying in an unknown bed in my own apartment?
Late summer afternoon when the sun barely hits the angle to cast my favourite light on the wall. For seven years.
The mullion, distorted in a flickering projection thrown against the wall.
A leafy pattern in bright yellow, refracted by a wafting piece of wrapping paper,
attached in the upper left casement frame.

Only the stumpy screws, which once carried large picture frames, are left over.
The footage of misty landscapes, at that time.
A hazy blurred scenery as a projection screen for the distorted light play.
A momentum of a phenomenon that expands the time frame of the present to a supposed past.

Every day the birth of one's own tragedy.

The pictures inside me on the wall. Transmission. Shift. Towards what? Continuously.
Yes. Next, please!

Is it actually late summer? Is the paper not moved by rising radiator heat?
When did the foggy landscape leave me? Kounellis's prostheses are still locked in the box until today.
A walking aid — my walking aid.

Who are you sleeping with at the moment, Mrs. Siegel?
And again a picture — small — crosshatched drawn — legs — a window — bluey-green — emerges briefly.
Late summer, this time on the Adriatic.
It's muggy and the white wine puts me in a pleasant inertia.
Considering a life, a brief episode of the past has moved to an infinite distance.

A few days ago, a letter arrived. I opened the mailbox automatically, like every day.
Click — key in - open close - click — key out. I live here!
My mail does not arrive in the mailbox. Everything arranged differently.
And yet. The one, longed for, even delivered to the front door.

Home has been through many stations, many states of being, soft material deformed.
I enjoyed the thought, things change, deform over time, become void, inscribe in themselves what they have been, leaving their mark.
Change of gaze.

How are you recognized?
You are constantly prepared for the appearance of beauty.1

1) Peter Handke, Gestern unterwegs – Aufzeichnungen 1987 – 1990, Die Vertreibung aus der Phantasie, Woran bist du zu erkennen? Daran, dass du stetig vorbereitet bist auf das Erscheinen der Schönheit.
[]