Poliglocia

I just translated a tale of wolves and humans, of men and women, of nature and spirituality. In it, characters all too often "find themselves" on the road. Driven by instinct, one starts doing things before knowing it. Some claim it's the subconscious or the social performance. I don't think anyone else can know what it is, it's just stuff that happens. I happen now to find myself as a pagan, celebrating solstice and Walpurgis, trying to keep my body in touch with a cycle that should never end. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in Europe I am at last in touch with a cycle that actually makes time visible, in which nature interacts with time. You don't get much seasons in a city which is damp and cloudy all year, but in which it never rains. On the other hand, you do. I did write something about that: La calurosa navidad debería en verdad ser una gran celebración, una bacanal que glorifique el término del ciclo junto con la aparición de las...

I believe Tale of Tales recovers the subversive potential of fairy tale. The synopsis for the movie in Germany presented it as "Fantasyfilm". It may be useful to know that the German word for fantasy is actually spelled "Fantasie", whereas the English word has come to be used by Germans what the rest of the world tries to make sense of as "high fantasy" or "swords and sorcery", thus covering the wide range from Conan to Harry Potter. But should this cover fairy tales as well? Opinions may differ. Although professor Tolkien would argue that all folk narratives, from Beowulf to Briar Rose , have a particular though anonymous author, some poet, behind them, I prefer to believe in collective creation (as posed by, for example, Levi-Strauss) that shapes a tale bit by bit like the ocean shapes a round stone. Of course, such unconscious processes can't be considered to be fantastic. I'd rather follow Stephan Frings, who claims that fan...

Last weekend, the Short Film Festival in Oberhausen took place for the 61st time. In this case it had clearly a central figure: Ito Takashi was featured not only as a special guest presenting a long retrospective of his masterpieces; he was also included in the special program about 3d film and space, and even participated in the competition with his new film "Saigo no Tenshi". He also won two major prizes. This first post, therefore, will be mainly about his work. I hope to get to write about the many other amazing experiences of the festivals in a later entry. A frame is a frame is a frame: The works of Takashi Ito 1977-1985 It is hard to believe that a movie can be so shocking without anything happening in it: Flashes, intersected pictures, a wildly, frantically moving camera - is the camera moving, or is movement but a composition of static, separate images? All of Ito's works are clearly modern art in the sense of Ortega y Gasset's dehumanization: they don...

Lihito Kamiya - "Travelogue" Preformancevideo Ein nackter Körper durchwandert karge Landschaften und sucht Schutz in instabilen, beweglichen Behausungen. Doch trotz seiner langsamen, tastenden Bewegungen, steht er zu den Elementen, die ihn umgeben, in einem ständigen Kampf. Karten sind der Versuch, sich vor dem Chaos der Umgebung zu bewahren, sich in einer vermeintlichen Ordnung zu bergen, die doch nur das Äußere und Innere invertiert. Obwohl nichts ihn fassen kann, trägt er doch endlich einen Anzug und Schuhe in den Händen: der Weg selbst wird zum Zeichen der Person, das Laufen ist etwas, was man sichtbar mit sich trägt. Und dann, nach dem langen Weg, wieder ein nackter Körper: trotz allem, was er auf sich nimmt, ist in seiner Mitte nicht eins der durchwanderten Orte und Begebenheiten, sondern die Abwesenheit davon. Der Körper, in seiner Trennung vom Raum, in seiner Heimatlosigkeit, bleibt, in sich selbst, nackt. Tanzfuchs: "Dis_Order - eine objekti...

I know I'm late to the party, and probably most of what I'm saying has already been said anyways. I just want to get it off my chest. I think it is only fair to judge a work by the goals it declares itself to have. Pacific Rim declares through the voices of its narrators and heroes, to attempt to unite the different peoples of the earth against the disasters that are threatening to destroy its planet. Disasters that take the shape of giant monsters, but which are a product of pollution and environmental destruction. The first half hour of the film also seems to step towards its goal in a qu ite exciting way. The very fact that characteristically Japanese genres as kaiju, mecha and tokusatsu is being respawned by a Mexican director in Hollywood into such a self-conscious tribute is already of notice. Whereas other productions would turn it into a cheap parody, Del Toro treats the topic with unusual detail. Even in Japan tokusatsu and kaiju have always had a certain "B-S...

Introductory paragraph to an assignment in a class about "Transnational Literature" whith a professor who is also keen in discussing "Ethnic Literatures" as opposed to non-ethnic, "normal" literature. When addressing the question whether a writer does or not present colonial traits, we must at all times remember to be open to either of the possible answers. Deterministic materialism very often assumes that all writers born in a first world country will necessarily be doomed to write in the name of the empire, even if they claim the opposite. If this was so, we would already have the answer to the quality of an author's work before reading it. Any literary discussion on the contents of his writing would be pointless, since the outcome is already predefined. In the best of cases, we would only look for details that confirm what we already know - but we would not be open to whatever the text might actually bring forth itself. This attitude is frequent ...

Ich habe mir vorgestern den den ersten Band vom Manga "X" von Clamp besorgt, aus zweiter Hand. Viele gute Mangas kriegen wohl nicht so oft neue Auflagen, wie dagegen die amerikanischen Comics sie haben. Man findet viel mehr haufenweise Schuhlmelodrama die erst neu erscheinen aber schon seit Jahrzehnten das gleiche erzählen, und kriegt den Eindruck, dass soll eigentlich alles sein, was der Manga zu bieten hat, wehrend nebenan Monster wie Allan Moore und Neil Gaiman stehen. Ist natürlich Quatsch. Das Manga blätter ich erst oberflächlich durch, so ganz nebenbei, und versuche erst mal schnell durch die Story zu wandern. Plötzlich sehe ich, dass ein einziges Panel eine ganze Doppelseite übernimmt. Papierverschwengung, denk ich erst, und blättere weiter. Ist dass überhaupt noch ein Panel wenn es von nichts abgegrenzt wird? Ich blättere nochmal zurück und sehe jetzt, dass es doch eigentlich im rahmenlosen Bild mindestens zwei Perspektiven gibt, denn so wohl Kotori wie auch Kamui sch...