• CONTINUE TO  "C"

So far my expression isn’t adhering to the reality it should be capturing at all. I don’t know why, if we were talking together, maybe I’d be capable of saying more – through timbre, emphasis, tone, gestures. This discourse is uttered silence. Or rather silence enhanced by words. When I get stuck, I have a drink, now I grabbed an apple, I’m eating. I’m sitting in a chair writing and the round table is chafing my elbows. The apple’s from Billa, sweet, due to the earplugs I took to isolate myself from my surroundings at least a bit I can clearly hear the crunching the teeth make by grinding the pulp, I can hear how I’m swallowing it. I can even hear the difference between biting through the skin and just chewing the soft, white flesh. Adam and Eve. When I eat it, I bolt it down. I don’t know how to eat properly – take a bite, chew, swallow – no, I have to keep biting off pieces of apple until my mouth is nearly stuffed and then I quickly chew everything at once and swallow it. Quickly is the key word. Actually that’s how I do everything – I have to take everything in all at once, until I almost choke, and only then do I swallow. Whenever I have to think about something, pretty much the same thing happens – either I have an empty mouth and can’t say anything, or it’s so full that I want to say everything at once. It doesn’t work. I can’t say anything that way. The piling principle doesn’t apply and sorting is beyond me. I have to force myself into it, to plan, to try out, to anticipate, to translate, to create, try out other combinations, break it down into particulars and reassemble it bit by bit. No, if I had a bigger mouth, I’d open it wide and try to swallow it all whole. Otesánek had the good fortune to vomit in the end. Or not? Didn’t they actually kill him and slit his stomach open. I’m not sure anymore. I also have to confess that this thinking and ruminating is getting boring, it doesn’t wear me out, but it’s a constant production of words in logical and superficial order which doesn’t allow me to move onwards. I could go on like this forever or at least to the point where I finally answer the question you asked me last time. But let’s set it aside for later, I’d rather try to sever this line now, to stop thinking about what I want to say because due to how slowly I think, how slowly I piece everything together – because together, “to gather”, I try to piece everything and I can’t do it at once and so I sit empty-handed next to the spot where the pile should be and that spot is empty. I’ll try something different:

Step by step, bit by bit, dumping out

the jigsaw puzzle from the box, piecing together the picture

whose template was concealed from me and maybe nobody ever knew it anyway,

just

that the box is prepared for pick up

was known, recipient: Ondřej Buddeus

born 1984 in Prague to a twenty-year-old

primipara,

whose birth

imposes on her

more maturity

than she desired and until his 28th year

and maybe even after that doesn’t cease

to be

amazed at how it all

came about so quickly and why so

suddenly

one world ended and another started

(even if

over time

another emerged, a third one

the third narrative, and the second one

which started with the birth of a son,

turned

into a memory, the memory into utopia

and

utopia into consolation? Don’t think

about

it, empty the box and pick up

the first piece with your hand. B for blue,

the eyes of a dead

tuna fish in a market in Catania, of

course, the sky, classic,

the denim jacket of a boy who just walked

by

me and which reminds me of the one my

mom

got from the pastor’s wife at a time when

I appeared in the first narrative as the

son, it was 80s fashion and mom was

a young

woman and wanted to be beautiful

because

she was afraid – and she would always be afraid – that she isn’t.

How did

this fear appear in our family that we

inherit

generation to generation. Great-grandma

suffered from nervous shock during storms. Grandma was afraid in the car in

every

turn and I hated her hateful

“ssssssssssssssss” and

didn’t understand

and I never managed to

shake it off.

COLOPHON

 

Ondřej Buddeus — A me

 

Is part of Ondřej Buddeus‘s participation in the Adaptation.

 

“But the need to adapt, uncoordinatedly, individualistically, without any authority, leader and order, to changes we initiate ourselves. Adaptation signifies now (asynchronously) and here (various places) an affinity with Utopia, which remains a non-place. Adaptation to conditions of reality which the collective dialectic of individuals without leader and order themselves create.“

 

Babi Badalov, Hafiz, Lia Perjovschi, Loulou Chérinet, Ondřej Buddeus, Ruti Sela, Shady Elnoshokaty, Vít Havránek, Xu Tan, Zbyněk Baladrán.

 

 

Curatorial Consultant Visual Arts:

Anne Faucheret

 

Translation: © Tereza Novická, 2013.

Graphic design: www.mutanta.com

 

We would like to thank all participants of the festival who took part in the project.

 

We would also like to thank

the following individuals:

Hana Buddeus, Věra Krejčová,

Antonín Mareš

 

Published by Steirischer Herbst Festival

GMBH Graz 2012 in collaboration with

tranzit.cz

 

 

© Ondřej Buddeus, 2013

ISBN: 978-80-87259-18-4

 

steirischer herbst festival gmbh

Sackstraße 17 / 8010 Graz / Austria

 

Supporters:

Land Steiermark Kultur

Stadt Graz Kultur

Bundesministerium für Unterricht,

Kunst und Kultur

Programm Kultur 2007-2013 der

Europäischen Gemeinschaft

Graz Tourismus

 

Sponsors:

Legero / con-tempus.eu

Steiermärkische Sparkasse

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