Saturday, 27
the old Swiss - German story:
I've been living in Switzerland for thirty two years. But when we are sitting together in a group and I fall into a canon about the weaknesses of Swiss society, for example about the referendum on Sunday and I speak about how difficult Switzerland for Gambians can be, they immediately switch to German conditions how badly refugees are treated there. I wasn't even talking about refugees, but about our life. Or they tell me this or that I would never find in Germany. Or they tell me how cheap are things in Germany. And so on. Why they never talk about other countries? Spain or France or Italy? I love these countries. No, when I am present it has to be about Germany. The only thing I can repeat then: I don't know about Germany, even I grew up there, because I've been living in Switzerland for long time. I tell you I am very tired of that and I am very happy to move.

Friday, 26
a dream: someone I adore too much sent a parcel to me that contained on one hand plush toy animals (which I commented with: ah, that's humanity...) on the other hand there was a box with hanging file folders, where every work like art historical theses or philosophical essays of Master students about this someone were filed. I woke up quickly.

Monday, 22
Sometimes fear arises in me and I ponder if I really can manage life in rural Africa, fears of the unknown. Far from my friends and a comfort zone I am used to and I take for granted. Again and again I heard people telling me how courageous i was to do that move. i always wiped away their objections of a socalled courage as something overvalued. Like it was a natural step i had to do. Hasn't it been in my mind since long? It has and finally the excitement for my idea of a life in Africa outweighs my doubts.

Thursday, 18
interesting... now that I am finally leaving Switzerland and moving to Gambia - a project I've been pursuing since long - people around me are kind of start dancing with me. They make changes as well, straighten up their houses deciding what they want to keep and what they are about to throw or moving houses having a different life in prospect.

Wednesday, 17
There are parents who help their children and are happy when they get stronger than themselves. Then there are parents who are jealous that they have the demanding role of the elders, have to look for their offspring and obliged to resign in favour of their issue. They are jealous that they probably die earlier than their kids. They cannot accept the bliss they are not able to share and want get something back. Of course those who got support they have a better and easier life than those who are more or less despised. The latter are endlessly and futilely asking for approval, show their abilities, but even when they perform miracles they are condemned to humiliation. Them, they are the real poor whether they got money or not. They are poor in their self conception. Indeed, they are crucially limited in materializing their visions and are bound to the art of improvisation.

Tuesday, 16
The question of guilt. Protestants are heavy concerning their relationship within a lustful life. Of course here and then they sympathize with joy, but how could you transform a composition by the rake Beethoven and call it Song of Joy? Latin vitality played off the dry German pseudo seriousness. Germani walked with their icebound masks of grimness, whereas Mediterranean based people knew how to play long before the Teutons could think. Then they (Luther, Zwingli and friends) invented the deep source of a good conscience - what was right and what was is wrong. No more chance to go for a priest and confess, but just an inner struggle to find eternal salvation.

Monday, 15
all I've eaten today was mussels with garlic sauce (lunch) and fried shitake (dinner), hmm... so nice

Saturday, 13
attention please: my show is still on - Arrival

Friday, 12
Someone says it seems like life means always a fight for me. i don't like it. And it is not the first time somebody describes my modus vivendi as militant in terms of the way how i perceive our society we are living in. In other words I have to change my attitude towards people. Being softer, more sensible and open minded in regard to whoever it is.

Thursday, 11
About competition
Competition can only take place when rules where to relate to are defined. For example within a beauty contest beauty must be defined by certain design parameters. Any other competition (in daily life) is just an emotional game of the ego to crop strokes in benefit of an imaginary power play to feel stronger. I know daily life competition mainly from women who scrutinize the counterpart (in terms of material things like shape, skin, hair, nails, age, dress, jewelry, shoes and so on) in order to be sure she won't be a dangerous antagonist (taking the better appreciation of men). Will she fight me because she thinks she looks better and therefore has the right to suppress me or the other way round: is she jealous because I look better than her today? What often is answered by venomous remarks that target the subconscious what means I only realize the intoxication too late. I tell you, all of this I feel pestered and distracted and just work on a bearable condition to be established as soon as possible to continue my life in peace.

Wednesday, 10
I overheard the following: You are positive, You never go under. You are not with blind people.

Monday, 8
I ask myself why it happens that certain people have suicidal tendencies knowing that I am one of them. What makes us give up the struggle to survive? No hope but faith in death? Of course a psychological reason underlies that phenomenon which could be easily analysed. An abandoned existence that had to dive into humanity as a social worker, a servant to those who didn't fear getting lost in rarefied fields. For me it sometimes means a last open door when all others seem to be closed. At that very moment the idea of suicide gives me strength to consider life even when it looks futile and pointless to be the better option to death. A self determined decision in favour of life as a committed operation.

Thursday, 4
The problem is, or let's say something I have to accept, as soon as I start to know someone I am about to separate, because the dream of being the same yields finally to its utopia and reveals everybody's sovereignty.
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What understanding begins to do is to make knowledge available for use, and that's the urgency, that's the push, that's the drive. Audre Lorde, "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich", 1981

Saturday, 30
Sue Williamson (from who i actually got the idea of this diary at a time when ARTTHROB was my favourite website. On ARTTHROB I liked especially the artists listing, where you got a good overview about the artist's work) mentioned that when she was traveling she would step into bad mood if there was no paper or sketchbook around to be able to make sketches or notes and she went as soon as possible to get some. Inspirations atWork. I've experienced the same, but sometimes I try to keep things in mind what definitely is only possible by repeating them often. A saying I used to apply was what didn't stay wasn't worth it. But that is a weak excuse for forgetting things.

Thursday, 28
artist's talk: Gary Hill in conversation with Chantal Pontbriand

Wednesday, 27
My mother, in the past, always valued the man over the woman. I was the first-born child that should have been a boy. She would have preferred a boy, how she told me, and, I hadn't been planned. She hadn't longed to get pregnant still in her medical studies. Things she probably has deleted as tempi passiti. At first her parents denied my father as the wrong man for her. They married secretly. But, finally they grew together as one. We were a more or less well functioning, middle class family. I always tried to convince my mother of my qualification as a serious someone. Not easy, because all famous artists and composers and writers were male. I tried hard to persuade her that women could be strong too. Though she would never completely agree and forget the man's advantage. A more historically thinking generation. Here and then my father helped, but as soon as I got a healthy self conscience he dropped me. They never wanted me to become really great like I could have been an intimidation for them, for our family. Then, there is my sister, who inherited the part of the real woman. She didn't argue with my father like I did, but diplomatically tried to keep his mood. She worked hand in hand with my mother not looking for aloof perceptions. She stayed and got a child, who got a child as well. My brother left. To Africa. He took the benefit of economical chances. Business. He was the predestined to rescue our family to succeed in terms of material demands.

Monday, 25
Steve McQueen said in an interview with The Guardian about what you need apart from talent to be successful in your career: Bull-headedness and drive. It was sink or fucking swim wasn’t it? For me, you looked down at where you would go if you didn’t keep on climbing, or hold on, or keep on pushing up. There were police to arrest you and there were prisons to keep you. So many people to help you go down. When you want to go up, there’s no one to help you. And I tell you, in a conversation with my father yesterday I said the same: there is no one who helps me. But, this morning reading the interview and thinking over that very statement of McQueen and me I come to the conclusion to think nobody helps you doesn't help at all. One should rather be positive about other people's sympathy and believe in their ability to tickle the best out of you in their and your own interest. Not a One-Woman-Show, but a team's work.

Sunday, 24
you know, or maybe you don't know. what i always hated was when people were watching out for the failures of others to make themselves feel better. of course i catch myself doing the same... to find a mistake in him to make myself feeling more. though, at the same time i hate myself for depreciating him.

Saturday, 23
Cinema: The Danish Girl

Friday, 22
Anyway, today is museumsnacht in Basel where you still can admire my work as well as my Performance as a cashier at Skulpturhalle.
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If anybody missed a coherency between my pictures I would say that I was a DADA grandchild. I very much like things displayed in a way you can't find an obvious interaction, I like them independent and confidently imparting the mysterious, like the surrealists proclaimed as far as I remember of Magritte about who I had given a lecture in high school. In my eyes there are already too many nettings and lace making in which we are likely to be trapped. Call it a small world where every spot is defined by a progressive scientific differentiation. I take every possibility to break the premise of an incarceration evoked by a brutally canned cognition.

Thursday, 21
Clarifying the Table
When i was young and I got a work to do to earn money I felt a certain importance of being part of a production process that was able to generate money. To have an insight into the machinery of the people's systems. However, I learned quickly that there wasn't any concern about my person as a deliberate human, but only about implementing a task that was detached from my personality. Though, as I am an artist from my heart and from my profession, I always tried to stay self conscious and not let people put me into a coat that didn't fit even they tried hard to sharpen my appearance. What at times brought problems and I had to leave, because there was no way to mix well. Moreover, I am not the one who enjoys to smooth-talk. Actually, it never has been my favourable cast to tell what people wanted to hear. I preferred addressing a crudity as in my eyes an urgent necessity to evaluate. One of my most pressing topics is that everybody should have the chance to develop and get information whether in a menial or in a superior position to enable an illuminative look into the entity of things and their coherences and contests as well as a humanist respect from the group surrounding and the one facing.

Friday, 15
During my translation I encounter the following part: While they were having a party at Farafina, Sékou came to sit next to Moïse and said: Vous, les intellectuels, il faut toujours que vous inventiez des problèmes. Si la vie est simple, vous n'êtes pas contents. (p159) That is a common prejudice against intellectuals, because they are sceptical, they don't see things through rose coloured glasses and they mince matters.
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Something I mentioned yesterday at the talk when somebody asked me why I had to improve my technic to be able working faster. I answered because the money job wasn't satisfying at all but rather demeaning. To get my selfrespect back I had to produce my art in form of a material manifestation for being able to tell my self: that is a fine work you did.
Further we discussed the comfort zones. We talked about it's connotation, which was not at all clear. I would say the majority thought of comfort as something positive, welcoming. For example feeling comfortable in something at first sight not looking comfortable. In other words, being comfortable in an uncomfortable situation what they finally used to withdraw the original idea of the quote. My statement was that by moving to Gambia I am leaving my comfort zone of economic security which my current employment provides.
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memories: At art academy Hamburg in a conversation with a classmate I asserted that by listening to music (walkman) I liked my pictures better as I entered the classroom looking at them. Music made them more beautiful. He was surprised and I felt he couldn't comprehend, because he didn't reply anything. At the stage of classifying our belonging to a certain group of artistic qualification I thought he probably couldn't empathise, because he wasn't a painter but a minimal conceptual artist.
One of my teachers, Jörg Immendorff, told me I should use frames. Most of the time I had used found material like brown wrapping paper, cardboard or waste paper to paint on. Then I did like he told me. Later I was really good at producing stretcher frames, stretching cloth (discarded sheets from my mother) over them and grounding them. I enjoyed the sound of the stapler while sticking the linen. After being confronted with the white, empty canvas imminent like an insurmountable challenge oftenly depressed me. To overcome I grounded again but with a colour to give a start. To prove the quality of a picture I paradoxically imagined it among garbage or on a dumping ground to see if it would make a dent instead knocking out the background within a white cube.

Thursday, 14
Today my artist's talk at Skulpturhalle Basel for everybody who wants to know about my work of which I will give a short overview, but more crucial will be our conversation about what art can achieve apart from economic questions and how can we shake the trees of the global comfort zones (Raw Material).

Wednesday, 13
Their gaze on me, which shoes do I wear today, how do my hair look like, are my clothes clean and inconspicuous, my eyes, are they open, my voice is it clear enough to give sufficient respect, my movements, don't them disclose a free body? No, they do own me. There is no me, individuality not on demand, but total adjustment for an endangered entity to keep alive. (diary of a worker)

Tuesday, 12
Moods are like filters. They cover your view on the world with a certain feeling. One moment you have a sensitive view on a situation or a person, then a romantic, the other day a more distanced one. The importance of an occurrence changes with time. If you want to keep a perception staying the same you have to retrieve that very viewpoint into consciousness continually.

Friday, 8
Susan Sontag, 1976 (p 401)
It is not "natural" to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little, have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups it is more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given rather than invented (individual) speech.

Thursday, 7
Yesterday, a visitor who I had already talked to some time ago, a lady from Zurich, almost 80 how she told me, appeared again at the museum where I work. I recognised her, because she is a woman who can talk, about everything, why she hadn't put her beanie on, why she took a train later than she had planned. Most of all, she loves travelling. Last year she travelled to 26 places staying at least two or three nights. About her husband who died from cerebral tumour, that is why she missed the exhibition Das Gold der Traker, a catalogue she bought for five francs. It is like you open a barrel and can't stop it from running. She is a very spirited and cheerful woman talking like a book. When I showed my pictures to her she felt flattered meeting the artist, so she said. After a while she examined me sort of and emphasised that she didn't like buying clothes. She preferred visiting museums. I agreed, because that is also not one of my favourite occupations. Then she supposed that I would style my clothes by my own what is not true. She wasn't good with her hands, did she assure. Leaving, she wished everything fine for my Africa project (what is not always the fact. One guy sized me as too old, in my age people would go back. But the majority adores my step. Actually, I am surprised that they evaluate moving to Africa so extraordinary.) What struck me was the way she conveyed her anxiety to forget things, in the sense of not remembering every exhibition she had visited. To me it is clear that only a certain amount of memories survives. She even proposed we should have a computer in our head, so nothing would get lost. I told her our brain makes us human, but she didn't really listen.
. . .

Yes, I brought a beautiful bunch of flowers, because I had disappointed her. She invited me home for dinner together with some other people I already see often, so I told her, why? What is behind that meeting? For me it looked like I would be playing a role, a role she would like to see me in, a role I played long time, but a role I don't like to play any more. I told her I don't have time, I really have to prepare my project and cannot waste time for matters that concern those who already profit. She liked the flowers, but she still considered me too selfish.

Wednesday, 6
Doppiozero: Out of Africa: A conversation with Wole Soyinka
We usually speak about Africa in relation to what it has been for Europe. For some, Africa remains an object of desire. For others, it is an indefinite landmass of countries in perpetual development. For several more, it is an inextinguishable source of natural and economic resources ready to be exploited. Most recently, for almost everybody it coincides with the faces of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean, landing on our shores in search of a refuge, democracy and better life conditions.
The Rich Also Cry

Tuesday, 5
Never apologise for your studio Artist, Anonymous
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Poem by Chuma Nwokolo on fb
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if
you
cannot
speak your
truth against the
herd's wisdom, what
you have is not a voice.

it is an echo
===================================

Monday, 4
wow - TRUST THE PROCESS - very nice, something I'd love to keep just for myself
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Here and then I think about how I will look after have been living for a while in Gambia. My skin will be sun tanned and wrinkles come easy, my clothes will be my own dernier cri. In terms of beauty defined by the society I am living in now I won't be adequate any more, I guess. They will look at me as an alien. But I tell you I very much look forward to my new life and I don't care about how to be recognised by the in-crowds - here or there. I am me.

Saturday, 2
big New Year's Eve party at Platanenhof. Oldies Music - nice to listen again to Frank Zappa's Bobby Brown and Radar Love and many others. Good DJ's, nice Vibz. Yeah, that was a decent start for the coming year that will bring a lot of changes. Welcome to 2016.

Happy 2016