Dear Monika,
of course I was just editing minor incorrect spellings and mostly adjusting line-breaks. As for the title, it's just a suggestion. Well, I send you also the word-document. And please check, if the quote from the movie is a quote - as I was indicating it now.
Best,
Reading, Sönke.

Unlike a Regular Diagram

Yesterday was the Day before!

This speech – for I was asked to give a speech, not a lecture, although I am not sure what exactly this means – will retrace the thought processes which led me to suggest The Department of Doubt in three sections. This somewhat rigid structure, reminiscent of a short, but painful phase in the French Education System, will hopefully keep me afloat and offer something to cling to if I loose myself in my two main handicaps when it comes to public speaking and unfortunately also private conversation: namely (1) digression, followed by loss of direction and (2) radical scepticism of my own previous thoughts and arguments (which leads to a dialogue between me and myself, not really offering you anything to grab on to).
Where was I? Yes, three sections on why I want a Department of Doubt. Those will also incorporate practical examples on how doubt is manifest in my working life and on how I can envisage the functioning of this department. Usually, I encourage people to interject discussion during any talk I give. However, since this seems to contradict the definition of a speech as I understand it, I will keep going. Alone. In front of you. And I imagine, slightly breathless and somewhat terrified by now.
As I am writing this, this seems a good moment to ask: Am I talking too fast? Too quietly? CAN YOU HEAR ME? Where was I?

Doubt as Pretext: Avoidance of failure and conflict

Doubt – what does the word mean as opposed to e.g. uncertainty?
Doubt is uncertainty in the context of trust (where it takes the form of distrust), action, decision or belief. It implies challenging some notion of reality in effect, and may involve hesitating to take a relevant action due to concern that one might be mistaken or at fault. The term ‘to doubt’ can also mean to question one's circumstances and life experience.
When I accepted to come here, I partly suspected my motives: the ‘good’ ones, if I try hard and manage to do so, is that I can speak freely, meet new people who will do likewise to me, and openly discuss this doubt and other things and reach some, however fleeting, new clarities and doubts. The ‘bad’ ones are that it makes me feel good to be asked, I feel good about myself. And I get to travel, meet people and so on. As an example of doubt, this is quite close to the self-flagellation operating in moralistic themes of selling out, keeping it real, and, actually, most teenage coming of age plots I know. A certain element of indecision, a somewhat maybe adolescent feeling: confusion and insecurity of coming-of-age fiction of all kinds; but then this is usually loaded with righteous anger, and so, maybe it has a point!
I am now going to quote from this light classic, Franny and Zooey, which is very much teen lit, but please bear with me (you are allowed to laugh, just don’t glare or I will turn into a puddle). The heroine is visiting her boyfriend for the weekend. They are in a restaurant and have been arguing for some time. Franny is explaining why she stopped doing theatre at University, and the boyfriend is suggesting she may be afraid to compete. I could have picked any part of the passage, but there you go:

‘… I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete – that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of big splash….’

In those fictions characters learn to give up on some and gain other things, which means they grow up. However, I never liked them that much after – their pissed-offness seemed reasonable to me, but the solutions did not really solve anything. This kind of doubt can be deeply annoying, potentially insincere in its self-criticism, immune to outside intervention and stiffling any idea of action, way out or movement, I guess. But it might just also carry a sense of possibility in its radical opposition to ‘common sense’.

What do I know? What do I think? What is to be done?

Now, for the positive side of doubt. THIS IS PART TWO (of the three). If we take the aspect where doubt, to get back to the Wiki definition, ‘implies challenging some notion of reality’, this kind of doubt is created by some of the more grown up cultural stuff I have enjoyed recently:

Luc Boltanksi – The New Spirit of Capitalism
David Graeber – Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value
Jeff Ferrell – Adventures in Urban Anarchy

In more or less rigorous ways such books question current conditions of life. So I can sit there and read sociological surveys about how more or less poor sods more or less like me ‘justify’ their participation in a social, economic and so on reality that makes suckers of them. That’s Boltanski. Or Graeber, which is a bit fluffier and tries to show that the very notions of property and ownership have no existence in other tribal cultures. Ferrell, lastly, looks at crime as a cultural construct. He is, like Graeber, a declared anarchist (whatever that may mean here), and even more anecdotal in his writings. However, he introduces the concept of ‘aesthetics of authority’ and looks at why people conform to blatantly oppressive rules and regulations. Now, I am reading all this more or less perception altering, more or less insurrectionary material, yet… See, I am getting back to the doubt. It seems that the implication of any of the insights of those authors on my life is minimal. It lurks as some discomfort, but things go on regardless, until the next book, film, etc. etc. Or, as this Argentinian activist says in ‘I’ the movie, a new docu about Indymedia:

‘It is not a criticism of communication. It is a criticism of when communication is forced to seduce. In this situation we’re always watching – separated from an ability to act. You can consume road blocks. You can consume revolution. You can consume Che Guevara… or not. For us, the situation of the audience is equivalent to absolute impotence. If I watch TV… sometimes they show me Madonna, and sometimes they show me road blocks. If more road blocks are shown, it doesn’t make me less of a spectator. I’m just a spectator of things I think are better.’

In this respect, doubt comes up, and directs my thinking, with a sense of, I guess, paralysed urgency (gotta do something, but what; and after all this life I am used to is quite safe and not so bad). If you really mean it, how can you take on all you read and make it something more than, in my case, a footnote in my next article?

Questions beyond the rhetorical – Doubt (or Uncertainty?), Change and the Refusal to Function

Doubt is between me and the world. It is very simple really:
I doubt my own up to now held views.
I doubt other people’s intentions and their actions.
I doubt things are what they seem.

I realise by now I am both digressing and circling, tracking back to the beginning. What I wanted to say is that doubt leads to new revelations, new discomforts and anxieties, and an entirely new potential to look at what’s going on. To be more specific and indulge in my current rant: I attended a seminar on art and politics the other week. I am a coward, I will not name names now. Where and who and all that. They might kick me and not like me and my boss would not like that either. And most of all I would be talking behind their backs even more than I do now and that’s not right. I have talked to at least one of you about this before, so please fast forward. So, this seminar was a staff-only do at an art school. I heard about it through the staff and invited myself. The whole thing was filmed to be seen by students later. About half-way through the afternoon Mr. Chair asked about what made a political work of art ‘effective.’ I decided to have a go, after some other statements had been made. By then the debate had digressed. I was actually talking about audience surveys we need to do at the gallery I work at as demanded by the governmental funding body. In my statement, which I did not find spectacular, I just said that this measure did not really address any issue of power and representation in the gallery and was therefore nasty, disrespectful, tokenistic. Suddendly, this other participant in the seminar says that as a black woman she finds my remarks offensive. Yes, here I am getting back to the doubt. I was shocked and thought a lot about things like:

Why did I offend her?
Do I need to review my view of audience surveys?
Did she understand what I mean?
What do I really believe?

And so on…

It was doubt of both of us, her and me. I felt bad at the time, and spoke to her after, which was friendlier but not clearer. There was a gaping hole between our views, somehow. I could understand that she felt current demands reflected that ‘we’ have ‘won’ something, at least, for now. I still could not understand how her identity would make my comment offensive. I wondered ‘Am I really racist?’, and so on. A lot of the issues were not only about the point I made, but how, where, the tone of voice and so on. Right now, if that interests you I do not think I was offensive and I still believe that equality and representation in any meaningful way has nothing to do with bureaucratic little forms and that they hide continuing inequalities and issues of domination (also in terms of acceptable cultural forms etc).
The discussion there, on the whole, remained, as can be seen by the offense my comment caused, stifflingly polite and I felt there was so much unsaid, almost intentionally: The artists present were almost exclusive gainfully employed in academia; they almost exclusively produced conventional art formats shown in conventional art galleries, which dealt with political issues on the level of content, rather than form. They, again, almost exclusively, showed no engagement in political activity (apart probably from voting) beyond the content of their work. One of those present expressed surprise and shock that his ‘radical’ work could be bought by a big bad corporation. I did not comment upon any of this. But I would like to make those guys doubt.
I would also like to move this debate on. If I start to answer them in terms of art object, gallery context, market value, I am taking a role in what seems some ever-lasting retro-reenactment (in a similar way to talking about new new painting forms: painting reactionary, or not. Yawn). I am not going to do some cheap replay of a Joseph Beuys fan in the face of this, I guess I would like to call it stubborn disavowal. The surprising, or rather not so surprising thing is that all those clever discussions, in my case about art and politics, can occur in a manner that actually has no reflection on the level of form. I am not talking about verbal self-flagellation, but the persistent bemoaning of the lack of any potential for genuinely political art is somewhat disingenuous and, the nasty part of me thinks, what does guys really seem to want to do is political art without the politics.
In this case, the things left unsaid, I am doubtful of (in this case the political claim of their work) are, it seems to me, on some level easy to capture. I can say that they do not talk about the form of their work in political terms, only the content, that context and their position within are not examined, and on and on and on…
But for me, this is not the real question. The question, after a seminar like this one, is how can my doubt get me to seeing, or even creating, something different from this? Something less insincere? Less willfully blind to its own position? And another question: would it be better to raise all this in discussion within the institution, with those guys, at work, or should I keep it and bring it hear, and kind of give up on them?

What do I know and what do I think is and is right?
What is my interpretation of what is going on?
What is the correct attitude to hold, or action to take?
How can doubt, can doubt lead to action!

I want to speak for myself, and I hope I also speak to you: I want to ask the questions better, not only find what I am looking for. As I am somewhat nasty, I also want to get better at making other people see the questions. I am now going to hand out a diagram I made. This was the first one, I have been doing maybe one every other month in my notebooks for the past couple of years. This was in spring 2002, I think, sitting outside in London waiting for someone to call to meet. I draw those when I am thinking about decisions I have to make. Unlike a regular diagram the logic between the points is usually only in my mind. And the solution not one would take. I guess this is somewhat whimsical and does not obviously fit with what I said so far. But I find them calming and they are part of the reality of doubt for me.

Maybe you want to draw me one too? No, they do not clarify the first point, but I calm down when I make them, I am secretly quite pleased with them. I thought that this would be a good way to begin.

Dear David,
as I did with Paul and Nebojsa, I would also like to send you a word-document, which shows all my corrections and suggestions concerning your speech and its appearance within the newspaper of the Faculty. You will recognize that I am following your use of "pa" - if you want to change that in capital letters, just do it. The headline is of course only a suggestion. But I somehow liked it on the top of your speech as it produces immediately this idea of actuality of the text, which as I see it distinguishes your approach to art history from art history, to simply say: but now - I also thought about terms like "participation", "reinvention" and "thought experiment". Other changes concern the use of the word "global", which you wrote mostly with a capital "G" - what is your mind on that? And then I decided to take out some breaks and introduce punctuation to both kind of lists, which are to be found in your text. Ah, and I erased everything follwing "B)". Please have a close look at it and undo anything you like to.
Best wishes,
Reading, Sönke.

But this very Moment
By David Goldenberg

The development of post-autonomy (pa) that I have opened here – (although I am still unclear how a department of pa is to work) – extends the issues and experiments examined in the pa-website launched in March 06 with the assistance of Stefan Beck – particularly the on-line debates, is another platform that explores »participation« and the materialisation of the space of pa. During the talk I want to look at the role and understanding of speech and issues of context within the framework of the project of pa. From the outset pa can be seen to be a tool by functioning as a question »what is pa« tests out our memory and understanding of the function of autonomy, whether in art or life.

Pa introduces the possibility of looking at the Euro-centric tradition and history of art in a flexible way by working through a range of scenarios.
The possibility of rethinking and replaying its history.
Looking at the historical body as a complete and finished body with the possibility of moving onto develop another model.
Developing, extending and evolving that tradition.

In that respect pa can be seen to be part of that tradition that includes Luhmann, Lingner and Rancière that looks at rethinking through how we think and define art and politics. Schiller’s notion of the aesthetic revolution, against Hegel’s idea of the reduction of art to an art object in the space of the museum. Luhmann’s idea that a particular stage of what we understand as art is complete. Or Lingner's idea, that the trajectory and developments that art has taken since its origins is a problem, with the need to start again.
Key to pa is the methodology of participation and communication as the central means for dismantling existing hierarchies. The notion of participation adopted in pa combines action and research, which looks at breaking down the role of the colonial view through recognising each individual own reality – and Lingers idea of using the audience to challenge the position and integrity of the authorship and the work of art.
Given the over use of the terms »communication« and »participation«, we may have an idea of what participation and communication are, but do we? Therefore, I want to suggest from the outset, that unless we have a clear idea of what participation is, or how participation works, then we cannot go any further down this line. For that very reason many recent projects, particularly in collaboration with the Dutch artist Wim Salki, have looked at how it is possible for both communication and participation to work, along with developing criteria to evaluate these processes. Nevertheless, the coming together, mixing and meeting of people from different backgrounds and cultures, and the exchange of ideas through discussion between people plays an important part in these projects.
The use of participation and communication adopts systems theory terminology – and it does so since the process that this introduces into a rigid, orthodox framework of art, provides the possibility to undertake a fundamental reconfiguration of positions available in this framework, away from the orthodox hierarchical structure we are familiar with, where the Euro-centric tradition is structured along the lines of artists, audience, curator, art work. But I do also see that the mechanism goes further by confronting and breaking down both internal and external colonisation – as I understand colonisation through Chomsky’s analysis and my reading of the invention and deployment of multi-culturalism in India – in whatever form that takes, along with the break up of other repressive mechanisms. This process marks a shift from »representation« and the »representation of politics and art», towards actual structural and mental solutions and changes, so that the politics becomes internal to the process!
So what is the department of pa expected to do? To take part in the department of pa all are asked to is agree to co-exist as equals, to talk and share knowledge freely, and to put yourself in a position where it is possible to test out and dismantle your own and others belief systems and mind set, as a trajectory towards reconstructing a practice/thinking/praxis along fundamentally different terms.
I understand the very process of speech making as a process of throwing obstacles in the way of (my own) thinking. But I also understand this performance of speaking (is) within the space of pa – as a space that has disengaged from the Euro-centric tradition of art – where I am working through the process of stripping away that tradition – en route to locating a point to begin reinventing another or different model. But what is important is that this very moment is this moment that breaks with the repetition with the Euro-centric model. So that how the material of speech and language behaves is in a completely different way, language is both language and not language. A point that is simultaneously an exiting that leads to an entry point into the space of pa.
Before I discuss the central body of my speech I need to cover the basics about pa in order for what I have to say can make sense. So the information about pa that I want to sketch out is only specific to the speech. Many projects since 02 have looked at different platforms to explore participation and communication, or more recently establish a context specific location for materialising the space of pa. Current developments into pa:

Building pa.
The pa-website.
Exploration of participatory/interactive platforms – on-line discussions.
Examination of global context without occupying and colonising territory.
An on-going series of collaborative installations with Wim Salki to test out participatory practices.
A space to think and dream and get rid of ideas.
Plotting the formation of my cultural construction – understanding a Euro-centric tradition from the inside.

The development of pa has developed against the backdrop of the reinvention of the art system from the end of the 90’s until the present – i.e. the Anglo Saxon commercial model and can be seen to be equivalent to the conservative revolution! Pa takes place in the wake of the failure of institutional critique - those critiques, procedures, tools that were at our disposal to understand the institution of art can in hind sight to have been fundamentally flawed, since the critique was only able to understand what was already in place, rather than proposing other models, or bringing about change of meaningful substance. How do we then locate new tool’s that are able to full fill such a promise? The failure of existing critique is highlighted in its utter failure and inability to both understand and visualise the function of a Euro-centric tradition of art against a global context, particularly the link between a Euro-centric tradition of art with Western expansionism and global colonisation. In other words, how we understand art and how art functions with the existing globalizing forces and mechanisms are unavailable or invisible to us – here we can refer to Brian Holmes recent project Continental Drift, in collaboration with 16Beaver Group, who explore discussion as a practice.
A global context is not necessarily the problem, but the alignment of art with expansionism and colonisation is. However, how we understand spatial models – for instance the global – is a complex issue that is undergoing fundamental revision, especially with the development of the concept of global cities, which doesn’t necessarily illuminate the function of an Euro-centric tradition of art. How do we address or resolve these fundamental problems inherent in a Euro-centric tradition (along with the historical body of information we understand as the Euro-centric tradition of art)? If we cannot say what art is or how it functions globally in spatial/political terms, then I want to put forward the possibility that we can use the model of pa to reconstruct how we think art functions, by rebuilding and rethinking art now on our own terms in a way we understand and can use.

Starting again – Going beyond a Euro-centric tradition.
If we accept that there is a possibility for rethinking and rebuilding the Euro-centric tradition of art along fundamentally different principles, what are those principles and how is it possible to dismantle, disengage and strip away this inherited tradition and mind set, so that we reach a point to begin rebuilding another model? What space or room is available for disengaging from the Euro-centric tradition? If you move beyond this tradition is there nothing or is there something? My understanding is that if you strip away the existing system that is in place through which we understand art, all we do is strip away the European invention we understand by the Euro-centric tradition of art. The issue then becomes what do we put in its place? How do we identify a »model« for a fundamental reinvention or reinvention of a Euro-centric tradition, along with a language and methodology? How are to understand this uncoupling and disengagement from the existing system we understand as art? The very real challenge here is that no other parallel model has replaced the Euro-centric tradition of art.

Thought experiment.
Navigating the space of pa.
Starting from this space.

Dear Nebojsa,
as it might be clear right from the start one question I haven't solved yet is the correct spelling of "musealised" and thus "musealisation" - we should ask Monika or David about that. Of course are all those changes, which mean a restructuring of the syntax, only suggestions. Thus I will send you also the word-document, which allows to follow all my corrections and suggestions, so that you can decide again. Please have a close look at this document and don't hesitate to ask. By the way, I was wondering if by any chance you might give a very brief description of M's project in the first place as it will be difficult to get a good idea on that project without looking at her webpage. The headline of course is also a first suggestion.
Best wishes,
Reading, Sönke.

The Musealisation of Eastern Europe

Ok, let's try to open the Department of Learning with this letter to Inga.
I would say that I find the Tbilisi project of Marjolijn Dijkman (Revolution is Just Around the Corner) quite problematic. When I saw the presentation of the project on her website (http://www.marjolijndijkman.com/projects/view/1/82) the first time I only noticed that it was too »ethnographic«. Today, after visiting the website again, I would say that it is even colonialistic, judging from the conceptual approach and with respect to the accomplished texts and explanations. The author's concern for the native and cultural importance of these objects being endangered by the restricting and regulatory economy-policy of the Georgian prime minister is kind of nonsense! My assumption is that the Georgian prime minister would gladly impose exactly the same treatment to these objects – sending them to history and maybe also to museum.
For a start I really don't see any crucial difference between this project and projects of early explorers of various African regions for instance, with their greed for curiosities and hunger for qualification of yet unqualified people and objects. The author's need to enlighten natives and their institutions, to introduce present logics of world order by putting things first of all in order, and thus confirming certain »economic evolutions« by musealised objects is upsetting for me. The common predecessor of today's museums and zoos, the curiosity cabinet, is reintroduced here. Although not in the collector's country but in the country, community from which the objects originate. Of course in opposition to the once explored Africans, who weren’t ever »enabled« to reflect the aesthetical and evolutional supra-layer of utilitarian objects, Georgians are invited to the circle of enlightened nations, which should take care of their present cultural habits as their own heritage in the future.
I have the impression that these street stands are problematically purified, aestheticised and even fetishized here. As it is the case with the (purification and) fetishization of mercantile goods that serves to hide the sufferings of those that produce them, here we might have a similar operation: sterilized objects, deprived of their grim content and function, appear to us, the connoisseur’s, in their sophisticated texture and constructive elegance – in their (un)discovered beauty. Do we have to forget the coldness of the streets that they are exposed to along with their owners, or their pocket knife practicality needed for a sudden appearance of an inspector or policeman? Why do we have to admire them as musealised objects? What is the artist's intention in this project, and how can we check her argumentation?
Let’s put it this way: do we have to believe researchers and scientists in what they say and write about origins and meanings of design in warrior's shields from Africa for example? It is not easy for us to check their argumentation, but there are many of their colleagues that would do that in the course of their professional practice. In contemporary art domain it seems that no one is concerned with relations between diagnoses and factography, assumption and argumentation. This is where the problems can partly come from. I wouldn't say that the evolution in construction of items presented in Marjolijn's work matches or presents the evolution of economy in the given country. There is hardly any evolution in economy in Georgia or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, since it is altogether transformed into a big multicultural colony. As it is well known, colonies are not supposed to have their economies. In that sense these objects might rather be a part of economical history of Western than of Eastern Europe.
Still, the origin of shields or the evolution of economies can be disputed while the factual diagnosis in arts is obviously of no one's critical interest. Let's just take a quick look at an expert presenting an artwork, namely the explanatory subscription of the video by Marina Abramovic, displayed in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. I just want to state that the song that we hear in this video is not the Serbian national anthem at all. Did anybody notice that? I've sent the information about that to the stuff of Stedelijk. Let's check if there is any change in the work-subscription and what is says now. Can anybody do it for me?I also wonder if Marjolijn did some work of that kind in her own country or elsewhere in Western Europe, since the markets in Amsterdam or London do not lack this kind of objects at all.
Now let's also consider those circumstances in which this kind of work might appear in the course of residency in Tbilisi or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, altogether with the author's instruction to include this collection in the National Ethnographic Museum's collection. There is a lot of criticism recently of the so-called art-tourism, the fact that a big number of artists in travelling across Europe produce their art. Apart of many good effects (contacts, opportunity for co-operations as well as misunderstandings) it is really the question if there is a way to problematize (otherwise automatically reproduced) positive connotations of the »cultural and artistic exchange«. The impossibility or incapability to challenge this automatism would be the first bad circumstance, which will hardly be successfully treated by scarcely informed and sometimes just ignorant cultural administration in the respective countries of the artists or art-tourists. The second bad circumstance or better to say the constitutive agency for possible confusions is a growing number of art and cultural practitioners in the East that for some reasons uncritically accept every cultural –exchange-proposal that comes from their Western colleagues. Lacking an apparatus of analyzes, a budget for decision-making and concepts to question the future of their economic and political underdevelopments, they yield to any offer from »there« and usually passively collaborate in this exchange – that in turn has an effect of spontaneous colonization. And in spite the fact that colonization might not be the worst thing in the world, especially when it comes on voluntary basis, as for the future of the European and worldwide art exchange and their possibly productive roles in reflecting accumulated social, political and economical problems that we share, these and other related circumstances are quite annoying. In the choice between the overall incapability of questioning present conditions of art exchange and the lack of means for critical resistance to discourses imposed by this incapability both circumstances are worse. For both exchanging sides.

Dear Paul,
while I was reading your written speech I introduced some breaks, suggested a headline and made some corrections that would need your confirmation. Thus I am also going to send you a word-document that will show all my changes. In general, I think, we should always write the Faculty with a capital "F" as long as we are speaking of the Faculty of Inivisibility - in line with this habit, I decided to capitalize the first letters in "Department of Haunting". But please, feel free to undo that again. What I haven't done yet, is to highlight some specific sentences as there are so many I like.
Best,
Reading, Sönke.

The Many that Takes Part in Me

Again I would like to tell you everything. It kept me from writing it. I use more likely oral communication. I warn you, the text sounds rather familiar. It is not the text of he speech I held in Maastricht. There, I listened, I looked and I spoke from my mind. The ancient Greeks called that parrhesia: telling everything, a sort of truth telling, a fearless speech, a speech in which one will say it all. It does not matter anymore where to start, when it is about saying everything. Everything - that does not really start somewhere and it doesn’t end elsewhere. Now as I am in front of you, the matter will be our relation. Not analyzing relations from some hypothetical remote point of view, but getting aware of the relations taking place inside oneself. In doing so, one tries to deal with the strangers inside oneself.
How we relate to each other. Every time I am speaking everything, it is different, it changes each time I address it. I made many attempts, you should know. I tried many times to write everything to »you«. It has not been without changing my mind. Changing my mind is the mean and the aim. Or rather, there is no aim. Changing my mind is changing everything. I am inhabited and the words I use are not mine, they often come from someone else. They circulate through me, through you. It goes that way for words, it goes that way for the rest and by extension it goes like that for life in general. It goes through me, it doesn't belong to me as a property. What is proper? What constitutes me, us, what we are made of, is not ours. Our habits, our ways to do, ways to be, are not ours neither are they characteristics to be categorized. It circulates through us. It inhabits us. We inhabit each other. We can’t help being host of each other. We're never alone. We have been made by the others, my parents, dear parents, my sisters and my uncle, my friends, each of you, and teachers and people sharing our life. And anybody that just lives next to us. They inhabit us. I am one thing among others in the world and the distinction between me and not me orinside me and outside me is not to be taken seriously. I am not somewhere located in the top of my head. I am not a body with hermetic borders between an »around« and an interior.
»I« am happening, here, in space and time. I am part of those things going on. The depth of someone is not towards an interior secret place, where a smaller someone is sitting at the control panel. There is not a little room deep inside with conscious sitting on the throne. The depth is the many that takes part in me. Genetic depth, friendship depth, cultural depth. We are present at the same time in the same place. We are haunting each other. Or I would like that we haunt each other, more silently interacting. Not judging, not controlling, not advising, not helping, curing, expecting, evaluating, checking, asking, demanding. But barely sharing, what is given. Maybe not even participating, contributing, but rather an economy of the sharing. Of the gift, the one way exchange. You give. I take. Consciously undergoing the unworking of our productions and competitions. No more and no less than being with each other.
Here, I open the Department of Haunting. To inhabit each other. A department in which it is question of our multiplicity and of our sharing. Who is the guest, who is the host? I don't know. How can we enter each other, be guests, be hosts, multiply ourselves, undertake all the political actions necessary inside ourselves? How to be in each other’s minds? Being in each other. Don't you have someone in mind? It seems that space and memory have a bond. I remember all the places I've been. What we do with haunting, is inhabiting spaces, being there, present, to inhabit memories. Do you remember me? Do you follow me? In a way. Let's forget who is talking to whom. We have similar stories: we are power at play within each other.
I always lived with people. I've never lived alone. I got their habits, their ways of talking. It has never been easy. You know what I am talking about. Don't you? It is not easy to deal with each other, to live with each other. There's always a third part, and a fourth and so on. One has to compose or to dispose. That is politics: how do we depend on each other, how do we shape this disposition. Who are we dealing with and how? I am already haunting the Faculty. I am inhabiting you or you are inhabiting me. Again I don't really know who is the guest and who is the host. I have you in my mind. I have Roe in my mind, I think, yes it is about being present, about an encounter, haunting. It is about common spaces, about intruding the private. Yes I have Wim in my mind. Ghosts like you? Like you, Inga. I rather repeat myself than read it again, otherwise I doubt, yes doubt and uncertainty, I don't know what »I« want.
That sounds like a confession. Let's try to follow this thin line in between fearless speech and pathetic confession. Actually it is not the pathos of confession that I dislike, it is the duty of confession, the institution pulling the confession out of me. What is the place for secrets in a fearless speech? So, I repeat myself, until it curves, until I get out of it. It is about how we constitute each other. It is about property and invasion, or intrusion. We depend on each other. How to learn to live together? I do not claim or call for a more together, more united life in society. Not more together. I'm rather interested in how we can use the space together in a better way. That is haunting as a discipline. Finding ways to access, to open doors. A discipline, and yes, Vovan, we are relating to each other. Here it also is about our survival. Yes, it is a matter of necessity. Living without money. How to survive? Not only cosy ways, not only romanticism, practical. Yes, practice. Where to sleep in the city at night, without home, without money? Romantic when it is said. Done it is an experiment. Done again it is practice. I eat the menu. »I« don't know what I want. Haunting the Faculty, it counts as well for David: post-autonomy? Do you mean that we depend on each other? Do you mean autonomy is an illusion, independence a lie? This text is like a big bag, where I can throw everything in. I warned you though. I don't know where to start. I start again.
Hospitality for the pilgrim: what are we doing with hospitality? Some enters, others don’t. That is how it is. Who enters you? Whose words, faces and whose not? They enter you, they might become familiar, you might become them. What is good with the stranger, the intruder is that it makes me a stranger too. It makes me an intruder. And diet and wisdom? Diet, a little bit of everything at the right time. Finding the right amounts rather than a refusal of what is »bad« and an excess of what is »good«. It is maybe tiring to read. Maybe I should apply »my own« principles: more silence, a good diet. No excess. And wisdom? Is diet wisdom? Is asceticism wisdom? No more, no less? Just being. Making my own schedule, having my time. Who buys my time? What for? Who am I selling my time to? A series of bold questions often indicates the near ending of my writing.
I have been told I might be fooling myself. Who is this »I« that is fooling myself? I did what I thought would be true to myself. During two years I had the intention to follow those two rules wherever they would lead me: to not spend two nights in the same place anymore and to not use any money. Of course it is about not having to work. It is about living, it is about everything that I am trying to say. But then again, how true is it to live like that for a month and then coming back to graduate? I don't know. I am repeatedly addressing you my doubts and the limits of my understanding, of my knowledge, only because they are a function of my beliefs and my actions, the oscillation of my awareness through the gap in between the two. I feel now a too big difference between holding a speech and writing a text addressed to an absent »you«. I wish to meet you. Again or for the first time, to discuss everything again.