Comrades

I apologise first for absence of news & i apologise for writing collectively
because my energies are delicate, too delcate in this moment

The news though is good, even exceptional – the situation in nantes rests on
the precipice but there are clearer paths & the film have helped me to see
those paths

The voyage to my collaborator thomas harlan was long voire very very long
for this battered body of mine but once there the ‘mission’ became as clear
to me as if it was crystal

Thomas, this revolutionary, this revolutionary film maker & revolutionary
novelist which has shaken germany, who is my collaborator & comrade is ill
very ill & immediately it relativised my own - & the need he expressed – is
to me not only a duty to a fellow communist but something i want to do for
my own health. It was an exceptional moment for me & i know anne got some
very good sequences for her film – he spoke so clearly, so powerfully really
it was like breathing new air – air that shook me

It was a moment where what was natural, what was organic became so clear to
me – i did not sleep – i was with thomas nearly all the time – feeding him,
holding his hands & talking talking talking – he most beautfully & soundly &
me a little in a demential energy – it has been one of the most powerul
experiences in my long volatile & violent life

When we came back to nantes anne & georgia spoke to every public figure here
of importance, the leader o the socialist party in the assembly nationale
who is also the mayor, the president of the region, the adjoint of culture
who is an old friend & fellow writer with louis althusser spoke of my
marxism leninism not as something to be demonised but something that has
anchored me to working amongst the dispossed – you can see in the rushes how
proud they are of what i have done & that i have stayed – they all spoke in
suchhigh terms that it moved me in a way i did not expect – it was
personalised

& them speaking is not nothing – this are essentially public declarations &
they are not naive –they know that collectively it is of use to me

So what i will try to do is to take a sabbatical of three months to be with
thomas in berschtesgaden, i will take care of him in day to day ways, help
feed him, take him for walks – i will be there for him & i will also at the
same time adapt his amazingnovel ‘Heldenfriedhof’ into a libretto for a
performannce work

This last year has had a deadening effect on me – to be surroundedby my own
sickness – to give to thomas makes me feel alive in a way i have not for
some time – that is not anyone’s fault, perhaps there is a little neglect on
my part but i think with the whambam thank you mam of insulin dependant
diabetes, followed by heartattack followed by fears of pancreatic cancer
would overwhelm anyone – when we were with thomas i was in the clinik itself
& it is clear that being there would also help me

It will be complicated but the interviews with the politicalelite here offer
me some strategic space so that i can demand a sabbitical from nantes & the
work without threatening the life of the association, other comrades of
thomas are seeking in these days a fellowship for me to be there & they are
very influential gals & fellows

The medical situation because of my beed for more examination, the pure
volume of my medicines are a more complicated question but i think when they
see the results of being there in gerlmany – they will see well enough to
bend a rule here & there - & because of thomas’s influence it seems the
clinik is more than happy to treat me

It will take time, but also the time is short but it must be done

I thank you all for your efforts in pushing me a little further on this path

I will die here – that much is clear but there is much to be done while i am
capable of doing it

You have been good friends & comrade

You are in the heart of my texts

Force et tendresse
Christopher

Still steel

t is difficult to describe what happened in berschtesgaden but it was as if
being dead fr a moment i became alive, quite alive

I have of course been able to do my work here but it has been without
invention because i am overwhelmed by the concerns of my body – the pains,
the suddenness of it all -- & i have become a mere reproducer of what i have
done before

Thomas was a great deal worse than when i had seen him before but his
clarity was so present – amazingly so in the film - you could witness his
whole body working on his thoughts & when they came they came with great
force

It was not without criticism – he wants me to work on my own writing – he
believes i am the only person he believes in in english & i ought to honour
that

He really wants me to be with him & i want that – because the humanity is
obvious to me but there is something about giving in this sense which has a
transcedental quality - it is self evident to me

& when the political people , the appareil spoke – they spoke with truth &
force & some even lyrically – they honoured me in a way i have never
beenable to tell – it became obvious in their real understanding of what i
do & this is a silent culture & these people never speak witout
understanding consequences

They have given me a strategic space to take time from this work – it would
be stupid even suicidal not to do so – it will be complicated no doubt but
if i do not do it i think the deadeningwill encircle me & finish me off

remembereringgiap,

What an extraordinary post! It is good to hear from you, and I must say your words are electric and alive. Very good, and very exciting.

May the powers that be see your path is made clear to do the work you need to do. I've got my juju working... it's good to hear hope in any post, but in one of yours I take it as a good sign, a very good sign indeed! It means there must be a sea change a coming.

Peace and good health to you.

DaveS

cher christopher: your dedication to the great work humbles me again and again. as sarah tells j.b.: blow on the coals of the heart, and we'll see, by and by. i wish you light and strength every day, every night.

christopher, i am looking at the lights of a town you've never seen in a country that has used a warped version of your political beliefs as an expedient boogeyman to further the most destructive common denominator humans have ever known: greed.

that we have come to the same work and share conversation in the virtual ether is a personal delight to me, the value of which can never be copywritten or commodified.

through whatever grace placed me where i am i am seeing community from the ground up and this perspective offers me daily struggles and daily revelations.

in the spirit of our collective endeavor i offer the following poetic image (from dennis brutus) that we believe need not exist in such inequitably lavish/squalid times.
__________________________________________
TRAIN JOURNEY

Along the miles of steel
that span my land
threadbare children stand
knees ostrich-bulbous on their reedy legs,
their empty hungry hands
lifted as if in prayer.
__________________________________________

Rememberinggiap, your lines are powerful as ever. Your compassion speaks volumes about you, a sincere and steadfast companion your friends have the privilege to know. I believe healing as a process is promoted as much by the well being of one’s emotional state as it is a matter of medicines. With you having spent or are spending time with your friend, you probably aided his (and he your) convalescence more than some quack pushing pharmaceuticals.

I wish you and Thomas all the strength needed to get through this time, and then some more. Berchtesgaden in winter, especially as freezing as the one gripping Germany at the moment, must be as beautiful as it is cold. I hope you guys have enough firewood to see you through and plenty of Hans Soellner tapes. I am not sure if you’ve heard of him, a singer/songwriter who grew up in Berchtesgaden, and maybe even still lives there today. Here a translation of one of his songs, titled "Hey Staat", meaning in English "Hey State", from his 1989 album with the same name.

_______________

Hey State!

I go to school and learn only what you think I need to know, if that is of interest to me is of no interest to you, you couldn't care less
From the beginning, all you are trying to do is to bend me the way you need me, I let it happen thinking that you probably know what's right
Then I go to work and I slog 8 hours every day in my damned job, and from the money I earn you deduct straight away two thirds
And the few bucks I am left with just about pay the rent, gas and light, and I need to go into debt so not to freeze in winter time

Hey State, hey State, hey State,..... today I tell you about all the tings I do for you, and then you tell me what it is you do for me

You tell me what I should wear, how to cut my hair, my education and my job. Even my religion you prescribe, and I fool pay although I don't even have a god.
The one who points his finger at me, I am meant to respect and honour him! The one who has killed entire people or converted over the barrel of a gun.
Buying your drugs, beer and schnaps, but you reprimand me when I take'em, discriminate against me because I smoke, hey you are the state, its you who earns.
You are well off because of people like me, for that you should actually be grateful
that we sustain you, pay you, for your blah blah, your insults and lies.

Hey State, hey State, hey State,..... today I tell you about all the tings I do for you, and then you tell me what it is you do for me

Oh man, I am not good enough for your daughters, before others you are ashamed of me
You call me a ferral and dumb, should be glad that there are still dumb ones. Only through the brownnosers can you live, through the ones who don't complain and who hold their hands before their mouths when they talk
For thirty years I played along, and did what you told me, but now, that I stand up and stick up for myself, coz' I finally feel that enough is enough, yeah then you call me a grouch and criminal, wishing you could line me up against the wall.

Hey State, hey State, hey State,..... today I tell you about all the tings I do for you, and then you tell me what it is you do for me

And today we are standing at the Odeon's Square and are singing "Blowing in the Wind", with thousands of other peaceniks are we standing here,
Three thousand who show you that protests can be peaceful and responsible, but on TV you show forty skinheads on a rampage somewhere.
You show run amok rioters in Wackersdorf*, how bricks and bottles are thrown
But not the protesters who in sympathy care for your police.
Yeah I am ashamed of the people who fired shots at the Startbahn West protest, but its you who makes sure that everyone believes that all of us are like that.

Hey State, hey State, hey State,..... today I tell you about all the tings I do for you, and then you tell me what it is you do for me

You also should be ashamed sometimes, hey state, maybe for the little kids who are dying on leukemia and their parents who are holding their hands and cry.
Your time is up, just like mine, and in the end it won't touch me all that much, but my son has sixty years ahead of him and I'll do everything so that he'll make it.
You are no role model anymore for me, you got obese from all the money that others had to earn with sweat, and even the hunger in this world
is good for your laughs and profits, with which you run a genocide
oh man none of us voted you in to pull that crap.

Hey State, hey State, hey State,..... today I tell you about all the tings I do for you, and then hey state, I tell you what I think you represent to me.

________________

Hans is a musician who calls a spade a spade, who expresses in his bavarian dialect a sentiment that I initially just understood, but progressively more and more share. He is not afraid of naming the worst politicians and showing society a less than polished mirror, for which he naturally cops plenty of criticism and hostility from various sides, and is victimized by the so called authorities, you know people with uniforms and mustache. In reality, with their narrow- mindedness, obvious to everyone else but seemingly unbeknown to them, they simply confirm that he is spot on with the musical pictures he paints, that it is a self-righteous community of hypocrites he lives in.

Anyway, I am grateful for his spine and prose, as it helped me put in words my own impression of planet earth, this being that many, if not all governments are predominantly made up of people with very little regard for a just society. On this note comrade, keep well and shine on.

* Wackersdorf - small town in Bavaria where in the 1980's the German government planned and half build a plant for reprocessing nuclear fuel. Massive protests over years wore the government down and they abandoned the project in 1989.

Juan-

Thank you for sharing the words to Hans Soellner's catchy number. He calls it like he sees it don't he?

DaveS

Merci beacoup Christopher pour tes nouvelles, je me faisais, périodiquement, dans le bus, oui le bus, ailleurs, face à la neige, les nuages, du soucis. Un mail sans réponse, et so what, le monde tourne encore, les petits signes sont juste cela, petit.

rgiap, it sounds like it’s all fixed, maybe another little inch of pressure, and yer on yer way

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

from S. Beckett, chosen motto for the month

yr post helps me to remember the necessity of Art and galvanizes, yes: more or different or just bloody something - thanks.

all wishes and best hopes for the next months, best best

it will be a delciate business

i wanted to say as blackie has inferred - everything in the world i witness, i witness through the sickness & that has beenthe case for some time now

haiti & honduras enter my blood so easily - the madness of this world touches me as it always has, deeply

paradoxically, i have become tougher, not by cynicism or by distance or my melting a metaphysic from misery but from understanding the touch of other human beings

i am still in a very delciate situation in nates - the measures taken by my association to make it stronger have made myself, its artistic direcot & my administrator - weaker - we have had to do work where i have little enough energy for my proper work

but i think the film & i think it will be a great film have changed the circumference of the globe a little - t is the first time all elements of the political class have spoken & they do not do so innocently - & this is the first time in my 20 years here - they have spoken out & spoken out in such a way that i believe it offers me a strategic space to demand - a rest, time to write, time to reflect on what i have done here

they know i am not going to run away,i will die here, i will return to this work with new energy & already as lizard had noted - the people in an absolutely terrible situation has grown especially in these last 2 years. unbearably so

thomas my comrade has always insisted that i must nourish my own writing - that my service to the poor should not also mean a renonciation of what i am, a writer but as people know well enough here - that inside the crisis of capitalism - you fight any way you can

& i know too that my thoughts of this world have been very dark, very dark indeed & it had opened a door to a kind of negligence - i have let my body go in a way i cannot afford, that the people i serve cannot afford & it is a resolvable situation & i will resolve it

i can use as an excuse the fact that i have been under tha hammer of a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which keeps on shifting but at this point i am taking very strong medication that attacks precancerous growth - but for the last 6 months or so the doctors have not been so free in sharing their information - i can mark this from the point when i had doctors saying i neededopen heart surgery & others saying no but not really sharing their reasons for doing so

in that moment i went from partner to victim

& that is how it has been until we opened the door of thomas's room in the klinik when his first words were 'plan sequence' - & from this moment i swa that a comrade required me to be there to help others more deeply, more powerfully, more sublimely to match my service with my art

i have not felt so alive as in this service - i felt things i have been dead to for some time - something as precious as desire has returned though there is no object, as yet - it matched the wonderment i already feel luckily with something more muscular

it will be a delicate manouevre becausei do not want to leave my association threatened by my absence, i have to forestall catastrophe - but the political class have given us something that can help us in this situation

the filmmaker was resolute in her demand & i think this class of people already elogious started to understand the depth of my renonciation

the second will be evenmore delicate - to have the acceptance of the doctors here to my plan & that is not so evident but i am not without influence there having worked with hospitals here since i began work & the klinik where thomas is in berchstesgaden i think will accept responsibility for me physically

my death is close enough, i am not running towards it & if i did it would have been so easy in the darkest of my moments - just a slight increase in my insulin would have done that - i have absolutely no reason to do so, none at all - i am not greedy for life but there is acertain lust

the other aspect is to have a fellowship to write with & for thomas - & there are people already attempting that

i oncewrote in a poem decades ago that 'struggle' was oneof the most beautiful words in our language - that love always transformed it into 'resistance' - i still believe that, even stronger this night

My thoughts are with you, my friend. Getting to know you at MoA and at this bar, has been a great privilege; you are never far from my thoughts. All the best to you.

i believe all the comrades i have come to know from the whiskly bar, then the majestic moon of alabama & now at le speakeasy - are people, human beings whom i cherish, dearly

i think my talent with ateliers d'écriture - writing workshops is the capacity to listen, to notice the difference in breath & to hear the voice, the singular voice - the more i am still the more clearly i can hear that vocie & help it along its way from the well of richness most people possess

copeland, your voice too is precious

i hope everything works out for you on this, r'giap, for it sounds most inspiring. i still have wandersplitter on my list of dvds to keep an eye out for but have yet to see it to learn more of thomas. i can't find anything here in the states, at least in my local bookshops. is there a specific text (or film) that you might recommend as an introduction?

stay well, amigo

there are three films all which are now available at

http://www.edition-filmmuseum.com/product_info.php/language/en/info/p58_Thomas-Harlan---Wandersplitter.html/XTCsid/1a814b1215b3ad2c070e4110efe8baca

there is
wundkanal - a docudrama using an actual war criminal to indict germany of the present & past (which has a robert kramer making of film)

torra bella - a document of the portugese revolution

souvenance - a sublime meditation on haiti

wandersplitter - thomas speaking on his films & books & life

& there is a new film that i think is called - in the shadow of jud sus - a doc on the children of veit harlan (the nazi filmmaker) where christine harlan (stanley kibriks wife) honours the efforts of thomas to undo all the bad his father had done

all the films have english subtitles

thomas's books are only available in germany but they are like block of tnt - & i am honoured to appear - in his 'heldenfriedhof' - where thomas includes an extrait from my poem 'the tears of nicos poulantzes'

i have a feeling that wherever there is a goethe institute thomas's works are available

ah, christopher, it is good to hear you so alive again. this film seems to be an endeavor with a wide and deep impact. i hope it is possible for you to go to be with thomas for an extended period - good for your soul and his and i expect not just improved health but also substantive work will come of this.

on another note, i saw jerome this evening. he is here in nyc for the weekend and a group of people from dkos came together to meet him. we spoke warmly of our respective meetings with you. it was good to meet another moon alumnus.

keep breathing and writing, christopher. your words shine with clarity and it brings me joy to read them.

sharon

i was telling a friend from dkos who lives in nyc about your work. she and i were talking in the context of an excellent diary at dkos about trauma and the haitians (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/20/827919/-Some-Notes-on-Trauma-in-Haiti). i am about to lend her the anthology of writings from your workshops that you gave to me when i visited. i would like to also give her your contact info with your permission. she is a professor at nyu and in her words:

I'm a literary theorist and associate director of Trauma and Violence Studies at NYU. I work on representations of trauma and violence in literature and philosophy and other discourses. These days I am working on a project on literature and human rights, and another one excavating the metaphysical assumptions that lurk in various clinical approaches to understanding and treating trauma.

Thanks, once again, to Christopher (RGiap), for showing what solidarity means in practice, and giving us an example to emulate.

you are free to give my contact to anybody to whom it is useful - i trust you but yo already know that

love
c

Que grande eres, camarada Christofer!

Rudolf-

Loved the shakespeare quote... very good, very good indeed!
Also yours:

it is clear to me today & it has been clear all my life is that we comrades are able to nourish each other's energy without falling into happy mutual infantalism because i have always presumed that the others here are also leading delicate lives made more delicate by the times we are living in

it is surprising that the butchery of this world hasn't sent me to the asylum but fortunately that is one of the sicknesses i do not have - except the depression created by the medicaments - insulin etc & thos for my heart

on that level i think the existence of this virtual community has been of critical importance - balancing our wings as we go like icarus into the f(l)ight

Comrades

I think the film will become a special document, i know it is early days but i feel the other doco’s made here reflect only on the hatred i feltfor the fatal shore & for imperialism – in the other docos i did not allow anything personal, indeed anything intimate

Only john c has that on film & that because he is both tender & rigorous & something it seemseasy for australians to underestimate & they underestimate it at their own loss because without people like you australin film would be nothing other than the work of a colonised culture of colonised minds

Resistance takes many forms & it is harder within a culture where white skin privilege remains the most total

It is easier here to take your side because the oppressor is very clear & the growing number of the dispossessed are also obvious, evident clear if you have your eyes & ears open

I think anna attacked the fim in a way i thought at first a violation of my intimité & then day after day hour after hour – a bit like my own texts – they have to live their own hostiry & i believe my texts & my being can sustain all forms of attack

I cannot describe here how much i have been reduced by illness – illnesses that at turns docteurs & professeurs describe as limit or terminal – there is not an enormous field of hope there yet during this process i found enough to know that i am at another turning point, at another crossroads where the demands of work have to be higher, are obligated to be higher

As i have sd it is going to be difficult – the situation for my association is delicate but it’s long term future is assured & that was made clear in the very elogious & even elegeic interviews with the political class – i don’t know if that will be able to resolve our short term crisis, or my short term crisis to be more precise. My administrateur returns from senegal where he was applying my method & as you all know i am not the easiest person to work with & i would be surprised if this possessor of two master’s degrees does not think of other options – he has devoted his energies to my work over the last decade & has honoured the details that constitute what i do

Today my doctor gave me a months arret from work & he says quite clearly i am suffering cumulatively from gross fatigue & the disequilibrium in my diabetes is of great concern to him, normally this would mean that i would be in a position to leave work for the three months but since sarkozy it has now become more complicated – i is already complicatedby the oncologue not being definite & not taking me off what is essentially very heavy medication which has created more exhaustion than i would normally feel

My own doctor can see that a stay in berchtesgaden has had a profound affect on my will to deal with the disease & he supports such a project – yet on the medical level it is not as simple as that – as i have sd i have friends within the medical model here so i don’t feel i will become a victim of their vanities but at the same time they will not give up their authority on this particular subject

Thomas reminded me ina very real & fundamental way what the word is to me – when it is written – when it is spoken & while i do not regret the work i have done here, far from that & i will return to it after ‘being’ with thomas - but it is clear i have left the texts to live their life in scandinavia & elsewhere without contributing to it & even the writing itself has suffered simply because the work i do is all encompasing & thatthe situation of frenchsociety has required artists like me to be there or there would beno one

Even today, there is in France only a dance company led by maguy marin & a few group of painters & videoworkers working with the people in permanance –for a culture which has such a revolutionary history – the bourgeois artis in all his forms reigns supreme

In the little of the interviews i have seen of the political class – their pride in my work is evident but so is their shame when confronted that i had a history before being here – one of them becomes quite flustered when taking account of the level of my renonciation – anne fought bravely to make her point & it was one made quite distinct from my own wishes

That is to say – the film will be its own vision – sycophancy would have served neither mine, nor hers nor the culture’s interests – to paraphrase brecht we do not need heroes but weneed men & women who can discover their own complexity, the complexity & truth of method in working with people deprived of almost everything

You often think that as you get old the battle becomes easier or you see less of it & for me the contrary has been the truth – as far as i am concerned – that as a poet & as an ‘actor’ within french society – i am still at war & that war does not look like ending any time soon – no matter the bullshit hope that comes out of politicians mouths

Thomas says in the fim what will be his legacy & he replies with halted breathing, “effort” - i know that is as true for me

& i respect the efforts that anne & georgia made to construct their film in a time that is less than easy for me

& as i sd i think it will be a quite important film – not because of me but the geography – that that self has become for others
Force et tendresse

christopher

DaveS, yes, amazing, is almost as you can send a message to shakespeare@hotmail and ask him about the quotes

when i heard Slavoj Zizek talking about the Commons, in digital and material and marxist terms, i couldn't avoid the link

tovarich Christopher,
the asylum: i came to the conclusion that we are Free Mad Humans
the docus: yep, seems more than right, enough of dissecting the hatred
the f(l)ight: looking forward your work with Thomas

saludos 2 all,
rodolfo

This is most probably more than you wanted to know but before anne came outside of my work, with my public with collaborators & to interviewers – i live an essentially hermetic life & i live in what must seem to others like col kurtz cave except there re neither congolese nor mnong tribesmans head on stick – but other than that it is not so far removed

So this intimite even perhaps intimite in a certain squalor was not something i wanted to share – because all my work here cannot be reduced to the condition cumulative maladies have concocted

So i was at first unwilling to share myself & i did not want any work to be done in my studio – but i understood & mostly through the rigour of anne & georgia & the wisdom of thomas that everything had to be opened

But yes i was frightened that a film would focus on my current difficulties which have essentially been brought on by chronic illness to reduce the work i have done here for 20 years & elsewhere for the rest of my life

I know the illnesses especially the insulin dependant diabetes have ripped into my life – also at the level of my spirit – strangely not the heart attacks so much – those you understand that the end is just a rhythme away & then this terrible last 12 months where i have been under the hammer of chronic pancreaitis/sharp pancreatis & then this possibility of pancreatic cancer which has not been lifted

I think in a certain way i gave up – though of myself as dead, anyway

Except for the work(& even in that with great difficulty but their necessities are so profound i was able for moment to forget my own pain) for all essential purposes i considered myself dead & given that all the doctors here speak in dark diagnosis – it just seemed the sentence was missing

& for someone whose life has been based on a form of exemplarity – i found myself in a situation i fight against with my participants – neglect – not melodramatic but day to day neglect – if you like hermetic neglect

& i suppose the aura that i have here as a certain kind of genius didn’t help because i keep even those close to me – relatively distant

Then this film which accentuated that – the meeting with thomas that awakened me & the interviews with the politcal class- that while rgarding me as a genius – they respected much more the day to day struggle i have maintained here in this work for two decades

& while i would normallly regard my renonciation of a part of my art as exemplary i saw now that it also had the character of neglect

Because there has never been any question in me about my art, it is something that i never doubt, not in the least, i am proud even of the most small exercises –i know it has its own life & i know it is that distinct, that pure, if you will that sometimes i hve not even bothered to finish it – relegating that task to those who follow me & today i see the arrogance of that, not in the art, that is appropriate – no the fact that in my heart i was leaving very difficult work to others who are struggling with this world & the demands of art themselves

It is strange but the collaborator of the marxist composer christopher cardew – keith rowe who has also lived in nates for 20 years also wants to speak to me on this matter

The film which i genuinely believe has greatness within it precisely because there is a distance & perhaps even a certain incomprehensibility about this life of mine does not protect me from my negligence but on the contrary pushes me beyond it

I know this world has never needed exemplary communist as it does now

I will try in what time is left to honour that

Force et tendresse

Christopher

stillsteel

comrades all

i write this as the empire & its minions commence their failed operation mosharek in afghanistan – that it will be succesfull as slaughterhouses go but they are further from exposing their impoverished ‘grandeur’ as they have ever been & they will of course be defeated & that will come as no surprise given that we live in an era of stupidity, incomprehension & murderous misreading

i have been placed on an arrêt maladie for a month which is likely to be extended but which does not allow me to go to germany – under sarkozys watch – the sick are included in the enemies of the rich & of the state, evidently

i spent this week with the doctors & while they are optimistic generally – there are inevitable examinatins & surgical interventions in the coming months – i hope there is a window of opportunity for me to work/be with thomas but i also await a visit from an old comrade nicholas & there is much to discuss


so i am using this time for research which is in fact what i would normally be doing – outside of the ateliers(workshops) i read, enormously & i watch films – documentaries mainly from the internet & i was this week watching some films made for the museum of contemporary arts from sydney of a number of the people who i am supposed to consider as contemporaries – one, jackie redgate who i know better than the others – fiona hall & julia rrap

of course i am witnessing them out of context & i amseeing them from very far away & i am seeing them from a country whose own arts practice is nothing to write home about especially in painting & to a degree in photography

but in watching these short ‘films’ i meditated on what beauty is without struggle - & for me it is nothing, an arrogant artifice which hides the horror of what really passes for social life – as i was noting these things i saw that the federal welfare in australia is going to control the finances of people in much the same way as they have done to the aboriginal people – in fact there is no end to their demonisation of the working & under classes. There is nothing but pure hatred of these people – of these classes & this hatred is only possible where has committed the sins of complicity & it would seem to me from here, that it has

beauty formed by struggle is quite another matter because it is not involved in individual error but in the tumult of contradictory & conflicting relations, & because instead of building edifices & monuments – it is destroying them

it is what i mentioned with thomas harlan – he has taken the german language – high german & turned it in on itself & what has been created is transcedental beauty – that is to say – living & that there have been the profoundest risks to get there & that is most obvious in the films - there are many wonderful moments in ‘torra bella’ where the fragility of hope are evident

& to construct that beauty you have to do a very great violence to your form & your theoretical base – that violence is not only inevitable but absolutely necessary & especially in a historic moemnt – these last 40 years where inequality of opportunity has been taken to obscene levels &where the suffering humanity has been enlarged – in fact. I see it every day here but countries like australia pretend that it doesn’t exist so it carries amed interventions into aboriginal communites backed by the race hatred that rupert murdoch seems to successfully sell, the hatred of the underclass is practiced through geogrphical deportations to the useless cities of capitalism on all coasts & then wen these people are full of fury against this – anti social orders created by social democrats in england are transformed & used against them & then to add insult to injury – whencapitalism falls to its final collapse – this crisis is not blamed where it should be on corrupt speculators & their allies in government but of course it is blamed on the poor. How long this violence can be perpetrated against them – is to me a question of central importance

& there is an art so obsessed with its formal beauty – that for me they are essentially complicit in these crimes – their formal advances are not only empty but are full of the violence done to men by men & this was what was perverse to me in the work of these three women – it is easy to understand accomplishment & even excellence but to think that this is seperate to social relations constitutes the crime & the callowness of much arts practice – i’m sure my comrade nicholas will disagree with this but he is closer to that art practice in australia than i am

i am proud that my instincts were as developed as they were to connect my technological innovation with the movement of the oppressed which i have done here – what i have learnt as a writer – i have learnt from them – it has not diminished it rather it opened it up in a way that benjamin instructed

surely anne, georgia & thomas are correct that i havenot been as attentive to the life of that writing outside of my studio & consecrated my time to the day to day struggle of a people that i identify with totally

& in the midst of my sicknesses – i do not blame them or myself – but the fact at we are not buddhas – capable of synthesising all – something has to give & it would seem with me that it is my body which has given up the ghost – i once thought it would be my mind & am surprised in the middle of all this suffering my mind has never been clearer

& i say from here australian seem to me especilly complicit, australian artists – who allowed the economic rationalists to dominate the discourse, that they witnessed the effacement of working class life & culture, they allowed the criminality that was centralto the government of howard – its criminal reaction to refugees, its criminal detentions, the onslaught against the aboriginals, the poor & the dispossessed in ways that were very public & it seems fromhere that my contemporaries were more concerned with their careers than the crimes carried out in their names

i know that you i am writing too here acted against the illegal & immoral invasion against iraq & afghanistan, that you have opposed the criminal action of the aust govt in trying to intrude in the life & plitics of micronesia/polynesia, i know that you have actedaginst the nazi like work choices whi are as dark a day in australias industrial history (a history which is full of beautiful & i mean beautiful moments documeted by john hughes - but also moments like the general strike for clarrie o’shea) but in the end something terrible has happened in australia hidden by an open ness which is not open but closed & closing

corruption has been central to australian political life since the beginning – throughout the gangsterism that allowed hoods like peter abeles, frank packer & his idiot progeny, murdoch & his idiot progeny, james hardie & the hundreds of ‘developers’ who have destroyed civic life in australia & it would seem forever but today seems such an open comapce between govt & those criminal entities that ought to be a shame but are reported aas badges of hope by the fairfax press on line – indeed on line – there seems to be absolutely no difference between business, success & crime

when people ask here what they should read about the hollowness at the heart of this criminality i suggest that tome – poor fellow my country but also the novels of peter temple who seems to hit home very precisely – it is a source of sadness to me that an ex maoist shane maloney is somebody who wants to hide very far from the crimes of our time

i write this & i admit that i do so from a centre that is melancholic in nature but how could that be otherwise in our time where even the words change & hope have been tarnished almost irretrievably, & in the middle of sicknesses that seem to encercle me but i want to say to you that – lives are full of turning points & i think of this film as a turning point & i look forward to that with considerable hope knowing i have been built for battle

avec force et tendress

christopher

i’m sorry for all the typographic problems but whn i write these emails i have to fight to do it – even if they are not marx’s these on feurbach – they are my humble attempts to communicate a little of me to you all

love
venceremos

my friend, you are right to call the last communique ‘ill-tempered’ because i think it was – perhaps it comes through the slough of despond where the body’s breakdown breaks apart – the sentence structures i have already detonated – but as i sd in the last email –it was written after an intense 24 hours where i watched the language of murder being altered on al jazeera & french tv – kinetique – each month these ‘communicators speak in a vulgar toungue – i had watched some videos from the mca in sydney – that they happened to be women was an accident & the charges i made could be levelled at the greater part of that world especially those of my generation & there was a confluence of reading peter temple’s truth & the stenography on the failure of the police corruption charges in melbourne

& it is true to say here in France that the plastic arts have gone into the sea & seem to never come back – it would seem sensible to change & teach the arts plastiqué which they could learn from the corsicans in a half hour & the poverty of thinking is well explained by one ofthe anderson boys – perry i think but it could be the other, benedict

in europe you can start to see a movement – with the greeks teaching us praxis again where the people refuse to be criminalised for the crimes of the elites – while the elite uses all forms of its media to spread the guilt around but to attack without limit – the social programmes here which constitute & qualitative difference from the english speaking world & even in italy there is a civic life, a community life which has been the only bulwark against a full frontal assault on the humanist elements that are still alive within political life

but the degradation of political life makes fascism – a very real threat - & what are blai & brown’s politics except a forlorn form of fascism that want to keep capital & its hand midens withing a happy mutual infantile grasp

when it is most clear that people need complex responses to the crude crisis of capital – they are being fed constantly simple solutions that will destroy us all & it is no mistake here that one part of the media has made a considered & cruel attack on those of us who would defend the poor with all our energies – we are called the bien pensants by these brutal barkers bought & sold by capitalists who would not be out of context in the novels of zola. They sell hatred by the page & i suppose that is one of the reasons why people don’t buy them & they are in such crisis but the more they are irrevalent – the more they bark for their masters

pity France, that she does not have althusser, deleuze, foucault, deridda, lyotard, etc to guard her against herself

the nonentities who shriek say nothing with bhl & glucksmann leading the charge into nothingness

in poetry here we can speak of one true voice in the last 50 years & his poems were created firmly in struggle & which escape commodification – rené char – after him the deluge

what i was attempting to argue in my modest way is that art is only created by struggle & without that as its central element – it becomes casuitry, beautiful casuitry maybe but empty

& i think this can even(though i am well aware of lukacs)without class conciousness – i think one of the most beautiful documents, a film by peter tammer, ‘journey to the end of the night’, possibly the greatest anti war movie ever made & beautiful to boot was made by a person unaware of its ampleur, of its profundity. I am not saying peter was stupid but i am suggestingthere was a naiveté within him, an instinctual naiveté which did not allow him to see furthere than his large nose - & that the film as a document benefits from that & that what it has in common with the confessional novels of australia is its unbelievable fury

tammer or the novelist would not have claimed that poitics was at the heart of its enterprise but it was – how could it not be so – australia was the partner in crilme to the murder of over a million indonesians, it was also complicit in the murder of over three million indo chinese – over & over again – in the concoction of crime which is particularly ‘australian’

& what have my contemporaries in the practice of art done & here is a paradox some of the best thinking about arts practice comes from people like anne marsh, lesley stern & curators like nicholas tsoutas – but the actual arts practice itself is impoverished as impoverished as the banalities that flow so easily from the mouths of a john mcdonald or even a david marr

what is missing in the darkest sense – is resistance except in bourgeois individualist( adam cullen) forays into the meaning already bought & sold in the marketplace where brecht sd he sold his lies like any other

& it is onl in film where resistance seems to have taken place. The first task of resistance in cultures as dying as our own – is to remember, remember & remember because if we know anything about dominant culture its axis – its most important axis – is forgetting

forgetting has allowed australian to participate as lackeys in one imperialist war after another, forgetting has allowed us to forget that australia was borne in crime & has dwelled in that criminality for over 200 years, forgetting has allowed the greatest levels of inequalities to exist in australia since i was a boy from plympton park in adelaide in the 60’s who was one of the few in massive suburbs that could go to university – no the criminal neglect of the poor is only possible in a culture of forgetting

& i suppose i am reminded of this in the relentless work as film maker & writer of my comrade, thomas harlan who devotes his life to remembering at the price of his broken body – the wife of kubrick kristine harlan was right to suggest that thomas spent his whole life trying to repair the damage his father the nazi film maker veit harlan had done

& what i see is the exemplarity that that old steelworker maoist charlie mccafrey told me about when he spoke of communists & their higher calling – that could have beenn metaphor & elaboration but it never was for me nor has it ever been even in my darest moments

drunk as a lord or dulled by drugs in the seventies never hid the fat that history’s machinery was working beside & within me, that there could be no escape from it in the culture of forgetting & perhaps the principal reason i have been living here for over 20 years & working here for nearly 30

& marcus i suppose that is what i was suggeting about australian art is the machiner which moves on endlessly is forgotten by the practitioners of art who have pretended systems to replace it but have only pulled the hessian off the cogs that are biting into our skins,collectively & individually

force et tendress

christopher

marcus – how does the slow train of tenure move at this moment & you must understand that in the absence of creation, scholarship must take up the empirical work of hat the tougher call living

i demand pardon for the fact that these meditations are so intermittent but i feel like i am a small train going from hospital to hospital here & the quiet focused times are not many - so i try to do what i can

they are a little messy & are in fact written telegrammatically to the film makers, artists, scholars & other engaged persons who have supported the film project of whici i am only the subject

but given the fact that nothing is local or everything is local i have understood that some specificities here - are just as specific for you as they are for me

venceremos