observations

IN PURSUIT OF NIGHT
PAGE 104 OF OLGA TOKARCZUK – FLIGHTS

It’s hard for me to get a good night’s sleep when I stay in a place for just one night. Now the city was slowly cooling off, calming down. My hotel was one run by the airlines and included in the price of my ticket. I was supposed to wait in it until tomorrow.

On the bedside table there was a light blue pack of condoms. Right by the bed there was a Bible and the Teachings of the Buddha. Unfortunately, the plug for my electric kettle didn't fit into the socket - so I would have to do without tea. Although perhaps it was coffee I should be drinking at this hour? My body was in no state to interpret the numbers on the clock built into the radio on the bedside table, although it would appear that numerals are international, despite being known as Arabic. Was the yellow glow out the window the onset of dawn, or was it a dusk that had already largely condensed into night? It was hard to determine whether this part of the world - over which the sun was about to appear or else had just vanished - was the East or the West. I concentrated on counting up the hours I'd spent on the plane, employing as an an aid an image I’d once seen on the internet of a globe with a nocturnal bar that moves from east to west like a giant mouth that systematically devours the world.

The square in front of the hotel was deserted, just stray dogs skirmishing around its closed stalls. I finally decided it must be the middle of the night, and without tea or a bath I went to bed. Although on my time, on the time I was carting around on my mobile phone, it was early afternoon. So I could not naively count on drifting off to sleep.

What you do is get under the covers and turn on the TV - volume down, let it grumble, flicker, whine. You hold the remote out like a weapon, and you take shots at the very centre of the screen. Each shot kills one channel, but then another follows directly on its heels. My game this time, though, was to pursue the night, to choose only those channels that were broadcast from places where it was currently dark. To picture the globe and the dark scar running down its gentle curvature, evidence of some past attack - disfigurement after an audacious operation to separate light and dark, those conjoined twins.

Night never ends. Its dominion always spans some section of the world. And you can keep up with it with your remote, look exclusively for stations that fall within the shadowy purview of that dark, concave hand that upholds the earth, and in this way you can continue westwards country by country, hour by hour. You will encounter an interesting phenomenon if you do.

The first shot I fired at the smooth, mindless forehead of the television produced Channel 348, the Holy God Channel. Here I beheld a crucifixion scene - some movie from the sixties. The Virgin Mary had perfectly plucked eyebrows. Mary Magdalene must have had a corset on underneath her peasant dress, which was a dingy blue - you could tell it was a black and white movie that had been inexpertly coloured later on. Her massive breasts, cone-shaped, protruding absurdly; her tiny waist.

As the unattractive soldiers cackled and divided the outer garments, the filmmakers interspersed images of every cataclysm imaginable, footage that appeared to have been ripped right out of nature programmes and inserted here without alteration. Now there were clouds gathering at an accelerated rate, lightning bolts, sky, funnel pointing down at the ground, whirlwind, finger of God - which would next sketch a series of flourishes shore, some sailboats, some cheap-looking dummies blown to pieces by that riled water. Volcanoes erupting, a fiery ejaculation that might well have inseminated the sky - but it was a non-starter; the lava slid inertly down the volcanoes' sides. Thus was ecstasy unignited, demoted to plain old nocturnal emission.

Enough. I took another shot. Channel 350, Blue Line TV. A woman masturbating, her fingertips disappearing between her slim thighs. The woman was talking to someone in Italian, speaking into a microphone that was clipped to her ear and reminiscent of a long thin tongue licking each of those Italian words right off her lips, every si, si, and prego.

354, Sex Satellite 1: this time it was two girls masturbating, both bored - they must have been finishing up their shift, unable to hide their tiredness. One of them ran the camera that recorded them with her own remote control, so in that sense they were entirely self-sufficient. Every so often a kind of grimace would surface on their faces, as though they suddenly remembered what they were doing - eyes closed, mouth half-open - but it would evaporate again in a flash, and tiredness and distraction would set in in its place. No one was calling them, despite what I presumed were alluring words in Arabic at the bottom of the screen.

And suddenly Cyrillic - I’d taken another shot at the screen - Genesis in Cyrillic. The words that scrolled along the bottom of the screen were no doubt illustrious ones, illustrated in fact by images of mountains, of the sea, of clouds, plants, and animals. On 358 they were showing the best scenes by an apparent sensation whose name was Rocco. I paused here for a moment, noting a drop of sweat on his brow. As he executed his pelvic thrusts into anonymous buttocks, the porn star put one hand on his hip, and you might have mistaken him for someone concentrating on the practice of some samba move, or salsa move: one-two, one-two.

On 288, Oman TV, they were reading verses from the Koran. So I supposed, anyway. A lovely and utterly unintelligible pattern of Arabic script floated placidly across the screen. It made me want to reach out and catch them first, hold them a while before trying to decipher their meaning. Tease out those intricate flourishes, pull them out into a simple, soothing line.

Another shot and there was a black minister and an audience eagerly rejoining hallelujahs.

Night, then, quieted the raucous and aggressive news and weather and film channels, setting to one side the daytime ruckus of the world, bringing in instead the relief of the simple coordinate system of sex and religion. The body and the divine. Physiology and theology.

Are birds hearing these chimes coming from my window and feeling calmed by it as much as I am? Maybe not just calmed but sort of pushed into a hazy meditation.

What do they think of church bells chiming? Are they hearing them coming from the churches on Sundays and on special holidays and does it mean anything to them? Does it mean the same to them as their chirping does to us – signaling safety and relaxing their nervous system?

Maybe we are living in an unknown symbiosis. A flawed one, of course – as with everything human – in the city, or on the big loud roads and motorways, on New Year’s Eve or when we change the clocks for daylight savings.

Are birds religious in a way? Is their avian chirping their version of a communal call to prayers and how they tell time? Chirping oneself to transcendence, is that why they sit in the trees – high up – to be closer to God? Are these rituals we witness every day? In our gardens, from our bedroom windows and balconies.

Then disappearing in the winter to perform their rituals elsewhere, spreading their sacred texts, going on a pilgrimage to a foreign land and charging themselves up with the invigorating warmth of the sun.

I wonder what they learn in those months. Do they become witnesses to God and hear of others having become witnesses to God? Do they share a collective religion or does it differ from place to place or bird species to the next?

Their ritual has stopped now and so has mine, the guitars chime forth in my mind, and so do the birds songs.

Wie sieht Literatur in einem Ausstellungsformat aus? Wie schafft man es ein Buch, ein Kapitel oder eine Zeile eines Buches nicht nur lesbar zu machen, sondern erfahrbar oder assoziativ begreifbar? Es ist wohl wie mit allem so, dass Kunst, Musik und Literatur gut in großen Räumen und in Menschenmengen erlebbar sind, aber sie uns doch auch so nah kommen und uns berühren, in der Stille und in der Alleinsamkeit. Würde mich Olga Tokarczuks Buch „House of Day, House of Night” nochmal so berühren, wenn ich es als Ausstellungskonzept erfahren würde? Würden mich andere Aspekte dieses Mal viel mehr und noch andere nun weniger berühren? Es ist wohl ähnlich mit Konzerten, bei denen die Hör-Erfahrung durch die Energie des Raumes in der Verbindung mit Künstler*in und Publikum viel intensiver gelebt wird, wo der Bass tief in den Körper dringt und die Wärme der vielen Körper, der Schweiß und das gemeinschaftliche Tanzen und Singen einen ganz anders erfüllt als allein im Wohnzimmer, auf kleinen Lautsprechern oder in der U-Bahn mit Kopfhörern und dem ganzen Getümmel. Und Sie können sich ja erdenken, dass es wohl auch die stilleren Lieder gibt, die mit geschlossenen Augen, etwas betrunken und melancholisch nach dem Feiern im Bett oder in nächtlichen Zügen oder während dem Küssen eines neuen Liebhabers, so viel besonderer wirken, als sie dann erwartungsvoll von Künstler*innen live gespielt werden können. Wenn diese aus dem Takt geraten oder die Stimme müde und weniger emotional ergreifend klingt oder wenn diese eine Person vor Ihnen alle Texte schief mitsingen muss.

Es gibt also das erste Erleben, das sehr prägend ist in der Entscheidungsfindung und in der Meinungsfindung. Dieses Erleben ist abhängig von so vielen Faktoren, dass der Versuch ein perfektes Erlebnis für eine*n Besucher*in (Dies umfasst ganzheitlich wohl auch Leser*in, Hörer*in und Betrachter*in) zu kuratieren und zu gestalten, fast unmöglich ist. Es kann lediglich ein Ansporn sein, kein Erfolg, ein Ansporn darin, das Gesehene, das Gehörte, das Erlebte, in sich aufzunehmen und in sich grübeln zu lassen und vielleicht etwas in sich wiederzufinden oder zu entdecken, wovon man nicht wusste, dass es existierte, etwas ausgedrückt zu bekommen, was man noch niemals selbst gewagt hatte auszudrücken. Und damit eine Reise zu beginnen, ob kurz oder lang.

What does literature look like in an exhibition format? How does one manage to make a book, a chapter, or even a single line not merely readable, but truly experiential or intuitively graspable? As is likely the case with all art forms—be it music or literature—while they can certainly be experienced effectively in vast spaces and amidst crowds, they also have the power to draw us in close and touch us most deeply in moments of silence and solitude. Would Olga Tokarczuk’s book, “House of Day, House of Night”, move me in quite the same way if I were to encounter it as an exhibition concept? Would certain aspects resonate with me far more intensely this time around, while others—perhaps different ones entirely—might move me less? It is likely much the same with concerts, where the auditory experience is lived out with far greater intensity—fueled by the energy of the venue and the palpable connection between artist and audience—where the bass penetrates deep into the body, and the collective warmth of the crowd, the sweat, and the shared dancing and singing leave you feeling fulfilled in a way that differs entirely from listening alone in your living room, through small speakers, or on the subway amidst the hustle and bustle, wearing headphones. And, as you can surely imagine, there are also those quieter songs—the ones that feel infinitely more special when heard with eyes closed, perhaps while lying in bed slightly tipsy and melancholic after a night out, or on a late-night train, or while kissing a new lover—than they do when performed live by the artist, laden with the weight of expectation. Especially if the artist falls out of rhythm, or their voice sounds weary and less emotionally resonant, or if the person standing right in front of you insists on singing along to every lyric—badly off-key.

Thus, there is the initial encounter—an experience that plays a profoundly formative role in shaping our judgments and opinions. This experience is contingent upon such a multitude of factors that the very attempt to curate and design a "perfect" experience for a visitor—a term which, in this holistic context, surely encompasses the reader, the listener, and the viewer alike—borders on the impossible. It can be merely an impetus—not a success, but an impetus to take in what has been seen, heard, and experienced, and to let it ruminate within oneself; and perhaps to rediscover or uncover something within oneself that one did not know existed—to find expression for something one had never dared to express oneself. And thereby to embark upon a journey—whether short or long.

You can’t force people to like stuff, you can only force them to notice. Everything after that is organic.(@wildwillberry, a comment on a tiktok)

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