when Ous came back home, i was deep into Water on Fire. i had been immersed in Tarek El-Ariss's philosophical reflection on rebellion and autonomy, lingering over a sentence on page 203:
I wanted to live philosophy and challenge morality and norms. The pain of the existentialists and of my war years had to be transformed into a force that knows no master. I wanted to practice the rebellion that Camus wrote about in The Rebel, scanning the canon of literature and philosophy for the voices and acts of contestation.
i was still somewhere in that thought when Ous arrived. i asked him whether his bicycle was alright now. he had taken it for repair.
"Yes," he said. "It wasn't even a hole. The mouth was leaking."
his wording sounded poetic to me. i imagined a human mouth that was leaking — a mouth that had perhaps been talking too much, so that something was spilling out of it.
from there my associations went further. i thought about the strange intimacy of technical language. since i was young, i have often felt uncomfortable with the way mechanics, plumbers, electricians and other technicians speak to me about machines and their parts. mechanical objects and human bodies seem to slip into one another: mouths, throats, breasts, balls, male and female parts, penetration, fitting, leaking. the vocabulary of machines is full of bodily metaphors, while bodily language can itself become mechanic. we use the human body to understand machines. even valve comes from the Latin valva, a folding door, something that opens and closes.
perhaps this is why the little sentence stayed with me. Ous's language can be very flowery, while i tend to reach for the precise technical word. he lets the object speak in the language of the body, while i reduce it to its proper part. between his metaphor and my precesion, the bicycle becomes more than a machine by showing how language can either animate an object or devide it into functional parts.
and this brings me back to something deeper in myself. i am sometimes afraid of being the poet, the person who is looking for another reality behind the practical one — when there is, after all, a house to manage, money to organise, plants to water, journeys to arrange, etcetera. perhaps i learned early that poetry was not particularly useful when reality demanded to be dealt with.
thinking back to my family, my mother did not support that side of me. she preferred the down-to-earth and realistic one. except for the times when she was in good spirits and had the opportunity to break out of her real life. then she showed a playful side and allowed for unusual things. but on the whole, flowery language could not impress her, whereas a bunch of real flowers could.
perhaps i learned to distrust my own flowers — the ones that grow in language, associations, metaphors — while knowing that real flowers, held in my hands, were unquestionably more real and appreciated.
Friday, 25
i sometimes wonder how my diary might be read by people who are inclined to read me negatively — people who, consciously or unconsciously, are looking for reasons to reduce me, contradict me, or place themselves in a stronger position in relation to me.
one thing that could easily be used for this is the fact that i do not write every day.
there are gaps. i may write intensely for several days and then not write at all for a while. someone could interpret this as inconsistency, unreliability, selectiveness, or even as evidence that what i write cannot be trusted.
but a diary is not a daily record of reality. it is not a logbook, and it does not claim to document everything that happens. i write when something becomes meaningful to me, when an experience continues to work in me, when i need to understand something, or when a thought connects with another thought. the gaps are therefore not omissions that need to be explained. they are simply part of the form.
of course, what i write is subjective. i can misunderstand things. i can be unfair, emotional, contradictory, or change my mind. i may remember one aspect of an experience and leave another aside. but none of this makes the diary dishonest. on the contrary, allowing myself to see my own contradictions is part of why i write it.
someone who wants to find a reason to diminish me can probably find one almost anywhere. if there is a gap, the gap can be interpreted. if i write a lot, that can be interpreted too. if i question myself, it can be taken as weakness; if i don't question myself, as arrogance.
however, i can leave the diary open to ambiguity without leaving myself open to being defined by someone else's interpretation of it.
Thursday, 24
back in Tintinto — a rainy day that seems to slow my mind down. so far, i haven't even done any further reading, although this would be exactly the kind of day for it.
at least we had an interesting conversation about the invisible walls between people — and about the walls that every single person surrounds themselves with.
now i'm in the studio, following the live coverage of the Dakar Biennale, where the participating artists are being announced.
the sound of the broadcast is very difficult to understand; only the moderator comes through clearly. perhaps it doesn't really matter, with only about twenty to thirty people watching online anyway.
CÉRÉMONIE DE DÉVOILEMENT DE LA SÉLECTION DES ARTISTS RETENUS POUR L'EXPOSTION OFFICIELLE
Tuesday, 22
my interest in the intellectual background of art began even before the academy, particularly with the Surrealists, whom i encountered in art classes at the gymnasium. later, at the art academy, i deepened this intellectual side of art by spending a lot of time in the library and attending lectures. i remember trying to apply what i was reading to my own art, somehow.
my father did not encourage this intellectual side of me. i remember talking to him about art from my point of view, on one of my compulsary sunday afternoon visits. and he would respond: "Rede nicht, Künstler, schaffe!" (don't talk, artist, create!) it was not that i was neglecting my artwork at the time. i was simply talking about art in a way that genuinely interested me. his sentence diminished that part of what i was doing — namely thinking — as if thinking and talking about art were somehow less valid than making it.
i remember that i lowered my head and said nothing. i felt myself sinking. i did not argue with him or try to explain myself. his authority was enough to make me doubt what i had just said, and to make me feel that i was somehow worthless. he had the power to make me feel small without having to say anymore. i felt discouraged.
yesterday, in writing my blog entry, i arrived at a quick answer to the question of where the feeling of wanting to be seen came from. but my comprehensive uncertainty at the core of my sense of self is so deeply rooted that it cannot be explained in a single sentence.
today i watched a very interesting video, the first step towards the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2027, with its curator Kader Attia.
at the beginning of the video, he mentioned the Myth of the Perfect that the colonisers brought with them — the idea that what they encountered was somehow incomplete or imperfect, and therefore had to be transformed. the repair should be perfect.
and this is where Attia's thought became particularly interesting to me. he seems to begin with the question of how we perceive what is already there. his idea of repair does not simply point towards an ideal, perfected state. the wound remains visible even after the repair, and this is not something we have to fear, but something we can embrace. not something that repels us, but something that involves us in the process.
Meet the Curator l Kader Attia l Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2027-28
Monday, 21
it is a beautiful morning. not too hot yet. it has been very hot lately.
i have taken some extra time out in Kololi to get over a cold i have been dragging around with me for more than a week. yesterday evening, before going to sleep, i started reading a book that a friend had recommended. it immediately inspired me. this morning i am sitting comfortably on the sofa, reading. finally, reading again.
then Amie calls to say she is at the gate. had i been in Tintinto, i would already have gone to open it. that particular responsibility i don't have to deal with here. but the call triggers something.
now, as i read, thoughts keep interrupting me, asking whether i really have no obligations, whether i should not be doing something instead of simply enjoying my book. fortunately, there is nothing i need to do. but i am no longer as relaxed as i was before.
then my eyes wander towards the ceiling fan. it is already getting warm again, and i can feel the first flush of sweat coming on. already yesterday i talked about wanting to clean the fans. they have turned quite brown with dust, and they often make me cough. so i stand on a chair and clean the blades. a five-minute job.
my Kindle library keeps getting bigger. at this moment, i find myself wishing that someone would express a desire to look through it — not simply out of curiosity, but from a wish to know more about me.
a strange dream.
i wonder where this longing to be seen comes from. maybe from my childhood, when i loved having the adults watch what i was doing and occasionally comment on it. however once, i overheard them talking about me in the third person, saying that i was not good at entertaining myself. my heart sank. i was sad because i had imagined giving the adults pleasure.
perhaps it is this lost feeling of being at the centre of someone's attention that i sometimes long for. but the moment i become conscious of it, the desire to be seen has already passed. now i am looking forward to enjoying the book.
Sunday, 20
my memory goes back even further now, to the time when i was on what was then called the social trip. i bought only second-hand clothes, was dead set against luxury, and detested anything that cost a lot of money. i hitchhiked and, whenever possible, slept outdoors in a sleeping bag. i distanced myself from anyone who loved money and who, in my view at the time, spent it on unnecessary things.
that has changed over the decades. while luxury still doesn't interest me, that fundamentally hostile and highly emotional attitude has shifted into indifference. how people spend their money leaves me cold. it's none of my business anymore.
Saturday, 19
MALOLA, and Les Rita Mitsouko
Catherine Ringer passed away a few days ago. since then i have been reading about her life, watching fragments of performances, listening again to Les Rita Mitsouko. i had liked their music, but i had never followed Catherine Ringer's life particularly closely.
in the beginning, people sometimes compared MALOLA to Les Rita Mitsouko. i remember feeling flattered by it, though. i didn't really know them that time in the mid eighties. there was something exciting about being seen in that way: a man and a woman, both artists, making music and performances together, with something slightly weird and difficult to classify. at the same time i knew that we were not like them. and, i wanted to be respected for who we actually were, not absorbed into a comparison that made us more spectacular than we felt ourselves to be.
Catherine Ringer was extroverted, theatrical, uninhibited. Christian and i were both rather quiet people, although Christian was more straightforward than i was. we did not have that expansive quality that Les Rita Mitsouko seemed to possess, that ability to throw themselves completely outward.
and yet the comparison was not entirely wrong.
like Les Rita Mitsouko, we were a couple whose love and artistic work became inseparable. in our case, this happened almost immediately when i moved from Hamburg to Basel to live with Christian.
i had studied at the HFBK Hamburg, but i was in a difficult period and did not really know how to move forward. Christian had been at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel, in the Malfachklasse. it was the time of punk. he had painted the Arp Column that stood in the courtyard of the school as an act of resistance. it was a destructive act against an artwork, and it resulted in his expulsion.
perhaps i was attracted to that kind of resistance, although i would not have described it that way then. i was in love with him. he gave me a feeling of safety.
i had carried the urge toward music with me for a long time. once i moved to Basel, there was no question that we would work together. we were both artists. music and art were not separate areas of our lives; they were simply what we did.
Christian played guitar from the start. at first i only sang, but later i learned to play bass. the music was central, but it was never simply music. it was part of the larger field of our artistic work, just as our relationship was never simply a private relationship.
that is perhaps what i recognise most strongly when i look at the Rita Mitsouko now.
not the experimenting. not the sexuality. not the stage presence, but the merging. the peculiar condition of being in love with someone and at the same time making something with that person — something that belongs to neither of you individually. you begin with two people, but the work becomes a third thing.
for Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin, this lasted for decades. their children grew up inside it. their music grew out of it. their identities as artists became impossible to separate from their identity as a couple.
these days, i have also found myself wondering what happened to Les Rita Mitsouko after i lost track of them. i had not followed their development since the early nineties. i did not know how their music had changed, or how Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin had continued working together, and that he died already long ago.
but primarily, Ringer's death has brought back the memory of the beginning of MALOLA, the fact that MALOLA really did belong to a particular world: two young artists falling in love, moving into a life together, which they jointly dedicated to art and music.
Thursday, 17
Returning Home: Beya Gille Gacha on Curating NZƏNDA for the Cameroon Pavilion
an interview by Suzette Bell-Roberts
Tuesday, 15
just to give some kind of interim update on my current attempts to create something:
The Framed Flower
Saturday, 12
about two years ago, while i was in Lisbon, i started a small notebook. i began making these drawings: lines that simply flowed. no preliminary sketches. they were small and spontaneous. i didn't think much about where they would lead. i was simply recording something in a notebook.
then, about a year ago, i began to develop the idea further.
for many years, i had worked with photographic enlargements. over time, i had developed a particular way of working, almost a system — the A4 grid. when i moved to gambia, i wanted to break away from it.
but wanting to work differently is easier than finding another way of working. life here — building and maintaining the house, and everything else that comes with living — kept me so occupied that i couldn't really create the space to search for a new method, even though i had built myself a spacious studio.
it was only two years ago, after my month in Lisbon, that i started hammering nails into the wall again, as i had done before in switzerland. i had rebuilt up my specific kind of canvas. however, i made just one enlargement: Kadikadi -->.
my urge to get away from the old pattern was still there. so i began drawing lines without guidelines, within my familiar A4 grid, though, and then filling the resulting areas with colour. the outcome reminded me of visual noise, so i called it Noise -->. i made another, larger piece, though still smaller than the first work: Noise II -->. after that, i turned to smaller formats.
in the beginning, it was fantastic.
what excited me was that i didn't know how the final picture would look like. one line could determine the next, and one colour could alter the meaning of what came before it. i didn't have to work towards an image that already existed as a photograph. the process was not tied to a specific image, but to premises.
there was a particular kind of freedom in that. i knew the conditions i was working within, but not where they lead me. i could make decisions without having to realise a preconceived idea.
however, the randomness that initially felt liberating is beginning to bother me. at first, not knowing where the work would lead seemed to be the point. now i'm wondering whether not knowing is enough. i find the results somewhat boring because they seem arbitrary.
so what am i looking for now?
not a predetermined image. i think i'm looking for something that has a kind of necessity — something that could not simply have been replaced by another line, another colour, another decision. something that tells a story, perhaps not in the literal sense, but carries the traces of how it came into being. still something that leaves certain facets open.
i am aware that the motivation has to come from within myself. nevertheless, stimuli and inspiration from outside my own world play a crucial role. they give me something to respond to, and this is what the work currently lacks.
Wednesday, 9
when i feel down or lonely, i listen to reggae music. it offers comfort without advice, a kind of emotional shelter. somehow it is healing.
it changes the atmosphere around me. the rhythm, the bass, and the voices create a feeling of being accompanied.
there is something about the way reggae moves that makes loneliness less absolute. the bass settles in the body, steady and patient, while the rhythm keeps going with confidence. it does not rush to solve anything. it simply remains there, creating a space where i can breathe.
what makes me feel home in reggae is also the music community itself — the sense of shared history, shared resistance, shared joy. i feel the mixture of melancholy and strength, the refusal to surrender to what is given, the warmth, the humour. reggae carries the feeling of people gathering together. the music does not demand that i explain myself or become cheerful. it allows me to arrive exactly as i am.
i cannot claim the history from which reggae emerged, still it becomes a place of belonging for me. ONE LOVE
Monday, 7
my German passport expired at the beginning of the year. since then, i've been considering renewing it. some time ago, i went to the German Consulate in Senegambia, where i received an information sheet outlining all the necessary steps for the renewal process, including an eventual visit to the embassy in Dakar.
in October, i'm flying to Hamburg to visit my mother. so this morning, i asked the AI to help me find out whether i could renew my passport during those two weeks. it said that this should generally be possible and drafted an email for me. i sent it to the immigration office, using the correct email address it had found for me.
as always when dealing with authorities, i feel a little apprehensive. i'm afraid of having misunderstood something, filled in the wrong box, or somehow not looking or behaving like the person they expect to find on the other side of the desk. perhaps that has something to do with having spent most of my life going my own way — as an artist and moving between countries. there is a particular vulnerability that can come with being outside conventional paths, especially when encountering a system that tends to value conformity, formal requirements and clearly defined categories. bureaucracy — or the people representing it — is not very good at recognising or handling vulnerability. it knows how to process documents, but not how to perceive the people behind them.
Friday, 4
recently i watched an interview with Yuval Noah Harari, The Operating System of Civilization just changed. towards the end of the interview, the interviewer, Tom Parker, asked him: How difficult is it for our generation and future generations to even know what is true? Or does truth even matter?
i found Harari's answer fascinating because he was not simply talking about truth as a moral or philosophical principle. he described something more fundamental: the human relationship with truth, and why truth has always had a disadvantage in its competion with fiction.
The truth of course matters very much. It's the basis for everything. The problem throughout history is that in the contest between truth and fiction and fantasy, fiction has inherent advantages.
to find out what is true requires time, energy, investigation and fact-checking. truth is costly. fiction, though, is cheap You just write anything you want.
The truth has another problem, which is that it ends to be complicated. Fiction can be as simple as you like it. Finally the truth is often not just complicated, it's also painful.
reality doesn't necessarily make a good story. fiction can be as simple as one wants it to be. and it can be flattering, reassuring and pleasant. it can arrange the world into a form that makes sense and gives us a satisfying place within.
truth does not offer such a comfort. it demands something from the person who wants to find it.
and yet human beings have made extraordinary efforts to overcome this disadvantage of truth. over centuries, institutions have been created for precisely this purpose. science, journalism, research. systems of investigation and verification. a great deal of civilisation can be understood as an attempt to build structures that compensate for the fact that reality itself does not make things easy.
and the effort has worked. human beings know an astonishing amount about the world today that people thousands of years ago could not have imagined. the accumulation of knowledge has transformed what can be understood, predicted and changed.
however, the more human beings discover, the more complicated the world becomes.
Harari points out that an average hunter-gatherer 50,000 years ago may have understood their own life better than an average person today. the hunter-gatherer knew incomparably less about the universe, biology, history, technology etc. yet the world in which they lived was directly comprehensible to them. they could have much more immediate sense of how things worked, where food came from, what threatened them, who belonged to their community and what was expected of them.
consequently, the longing for truth cannot be confused with a longing for simple answers. truth does not promise simplicity. quite the opposite. it may leave a person with more uncertainty, more complexity and more questions than before.
what it offers instead is a relationship with reality that is not entirely dependent on the stories one happens to prefer.
Tuesday, 1
with Johannes Grützke's Der Künstler schläft (the artist is sleeping), the six years of Work of the Month at the Art Space are complete. (see all works of the month -->)
the collection of works by Griffelkunst artists that belonged to my parents arrived at the Art Space in Kerr Serign in June 2020. four months later, in October, i began selecting one work each month to present. what started rather spontanously has continued for six years.
for this month, i had actually intended another work to become the September Work of the Month. the artist had made considerable efforts to help make the work available, and i was touched by his generosity and his wish to support the House of Culture Tintinto. but the practical reality of transporting an artwork from Nigeria to The Gambia turned out to be too expensive.
Grützke's lithograph belongs to a series of six works entitled Die Kathedrale des Künstlers (the artist's cathedral). in the series the artist is fed, eats, washes himself, is offered a model, sleeps and finally leaves. after his departure, the painting is painted over.
Art Space Work of the Month
Johannes Grützke (1937-2017) "Der Künstler schläft" (the artist is sleeping)
lithograph over a tone plate on handmade paper, 1997, 42 x 29,5 cm *