Others in Mind

Others in Mind is a seminar held by Darya von Berner at Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institute Greifswald in 2023.

Others in Mind is a Biotope on top of an upside down garbage can.

Others in Mind is Bewegung. Process and Reality (Alfred North Whitehead).

Others in Mind is casual talk.

Others in Mind is taking care.

We found an upside down plastic garbage can that had sat outside for a long time. Life had formed in a little puddle on top of it. We debated on how to show what we found and decided to put the can inside our exhibition space at Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institute so others can marvel, talk and think. To mark our piece as a center of collective attention and means of transition to unreality, we added 3D prints of one of Maik’s sculptures and special lighting.

Darya was invited by Rozbeh, one of the CDFI’s professors, to give a one week seminar with the goal of a little exhibition at the end. She came with the idea to do a collaborative artwork that made sense for all of us. We wanted to make sense of what we feel and then share it with everyone. This approach is an attempt to work and live differently than art and culture did in the twentieth century. To show this difference, Darya brought citations from the very beginning of the twentieth century up until its end - see below.

To find a common way of making sense we had to find a mutual understanding of each other. We started to talk about every group member to get to know their art practice, even if we thought we knew already. For that we were introduced to one person’s work by themself and then we described the work, our perception of them, and their way of thinking and working back to them. We interpreted the work of the others, explaining what we felt when we saw or talked about the other's work. For the first two days our mornings were filled by casual talk, showing each others' work, trying to understand each other. This method is inspired by O’Madagain and Tomasellos work on Joint attention to mental content (JAM).

While trying to understand each other we faced the problem of identity: trying to find a collective identity to act together also means to give up parts of our personal identity, to make it fluid. Magdalena had explored this dynamic in works where she tried to merge the concept of a self with nature and explored the group identity formed at feminist demonstations in Chile. Elias, Felina and Erhard discovered with Darya that their works are connected by the greater topic of death. A feeling that you do not have words for shows up in Elias’ work Dyade, Felinas drawings of path lines that show the path of funerals and the videos about movements in different aspects and its interpretation, for example being crushed by the life forces and the destructive human behavior. Death and the problem of identity were the topic in Darya’s staging of Viktor Ullmann’s Opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis where Kaiser Overall realises that he has to relate to others and even has to cooperate with Death in the end.

On Monday after lunch we started to look for something that resonated with everyone, took tours and discovered the grounds of the CDFI. Even students that had already studied for longer discovered new things and became aware of so many details of our surrounding that we would have normally just passed by. Maik’s made a point of pointing out and seeing as a part of his practice and especially in some of his newest work: clay sculptures of a pointing hand and a hand on an ear in listening posture. Besides colonies of firebugs in the backyard and a big wasp nest, a bike in a tree, an old printing machine, a cable seemingly growing out of a tree and an unknown special access for handicapped people, we discovered our object that would be our main focus: A garbage bin put upside down with a newly made world on its top, a biotope full of new life.

The things death leaves behind and non-human life have in common that the identity problem posed above is not not so harsh with them - as Darya put it: “It’s easier to relate with a biotope because the biotope does not try to defend its identity.” (We do know that questions of identity are some of the most pressing and controversial topics in existence, but for working together we had to focus on our relationship.)

At first we wanted to leave the bin where we found it. We discussed the matter of light, and ways to highlight the main object, for example with Maik’s listening sculpture Das offene Geheimnis and sound recordings. Ultimately, we decided to put the bin in the exhibition room, because we wanted the surrounding as clean as possible with undivided focus on our trash bin with the biotope.. It was quite an act to transport the bin over the yard, up the stairs and into the room. Now it stands in an otherwise empty room, ceiling with floral stucco, a round, huge lamp in the middle like the Pantheon’s oculus, filtered natural light coming through the covered windows and the garbage bin in the middle.

Citations on the Problem of the 20th Century

An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.

The narrator of this work, first published in 1983, lives in Madrid and writes an essay on the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould - »the most important piano virtuosos of the century« who, at the summit of his art, stopped playing. In Madrid, the narrator receives a telegram indicating the funeral of his friend Wertheimer, who has committed suicide. The three had met in Salzburg at a music course given by Horowitz. Soon it turned out: Glenn Gould was the greatest genius. Under the impression of the superiority of this genius, the narrator became a "Weltanschauungskünstler," a critic of his time and especially of Austria; Wertheimer, on the other hand, plunged into an irreversible existential depression. The more the narrator thought about his "Versuch über Glenn," the clearer it became to him that his real concern was to gain clarity about Wertheimer, the "Untergeher," as Glenn Gould had said to him early on.

Bernhard, Thomas: Der Untergeher, (1983). Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2012 (eBook). Editorial notice.

Long-predicted suicide, I thought, not a spontaneous act of desperation.

Lange vorausberechneter Selbstmord, dachte ich, kein spontaner Akt von Verzweiflung.

Bernhard, Thomas: Der Untergeher, (1983). Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2012 (eBook). First page citation.

[...] as Franz expressed himself, he, Wertheimer, had telephoned to Salzburg and ordered the piano, and Franz still remembered exactly that during this telephone conversation his master had repeatedly emphasized that one should send him a completely worthless, a horribly out-of-tune grand piano to Traich. A completely worthless instrument, a horribly out-of-tune instrument, Werteheimer is said to have said again and again on the phone, according to Franz. [...] If I expect anything from it, Franz said to me, he will already describe to me the days and weeks that took place on it in Traich. I asked Franz to leave me alone for some time in Wertheimer's room and put on Glenn's Goldberg Variations, which I had seen lying on Wertheimer's record player, which was still open.

[...] wie sich der Franz ausdrückte, habe er, Wertheimer, nach Salzburg telefoniert und das Klavier bestellt und der Franz erinnerte sich noch genau, daß sein Herr während dieses Telefonats immer wieder betont habe, man solle ihm einen völlig wertlosen, einen entsetzlich verstimmten Flügel nach Traich schicken. Ein völlig wertloses Instrument, ein entsetzlich verstimmtes Instrument, soll Werteheimer immer wieder am Telefon gesagt haben, so der Franz. [...] Wenn ich mir etwas davon verspreche, sagte der Franz zu mir, werde er mir schon einmal die Tage und Wochen schildern, die sich darauf in Traich abgespielt haben. Ich bat den Franz, mich für einige Zeit in Wertheimers Zimmer allein zu lassen und legte mir Glenns Goldbergvariationen auf, die ich auf Wertheimers Plattenspieler liegen gesehen hatte, der noch offen war.

Bernhard, Thomas: Der Untergeher, (1983). Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2012 (eBook). Pp. 196f.

[The attacks of 9/11] were the greatest work imaginable for the whole cosmos.