• CONTINUE TO CHAPTER  "1—2"

Hi Jan, when you asked me to write something real good, since I’m a poet and all, I can assure you that my first response was to set this request aside and not write anything.

And that’s exactly what happened.

I don’t feel like being the thing that makes me obliged to do what I want to do freely. I’m sitting here in an irregular quadrangular room, a group of spectators is drawing near from the left with a guide who is explaining to them with the air of an all-knowing babbler the reason why this and that artist is a part of the exhibition, where he’s from, how to understand what he’s created and what field he’s in. I’m not sure if Hafiz would actually agree with this, and I just dread the moment when the whole group is going to come here and the young lady will start to describe me and what I’m doing here and how it should be

understood. Description should only capture which interpretation should be set aside. I didn’t want to start my writing this way, I don’t want to philosophize about the sense and nonsense of what I’m doing here. I’ll rather go back to that description because you can set it aside later.

The visitors are sauntering from left to right and then they’ll come here. They’ll walk through to the next room, the farthest they can, and go back again. Once again they’ll catch sight of this incomplete installation where I’m sitting and writing, the text is being projected onto the wall and they can’t understand a thing because they speak German.

Germans

were dumb, they were Jerries, hill people, as the Czechs say.

The xenophobic frankness of Czech makes you laugh a bit. I remember meeting this Russian woman on the street in Prague. She wanted to chat. I chatted with her. She wanted to tour Europe, but ended up staying in the Czech Republic. When she was in Dresden, she realized that she didn’t understand a single word. “They didn’t speak Humanese, you know, I couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread there, so I went back.” The boundary of her language, or rather, the boundary of her communicative abilities, was the boundary of her world. I just wanted to show through this simple parallel that here, in this very room, in this language, is a boundary that nobody who doesn’t know the language I’m writing and thinking in can cross. The cluster of visitors halted at the boundary of my room and didn’t go on. A few words and several sentences. I’ve realized that to think in words is to think without images. I’m accumulating notes. Did you picture that Russian woman I described to you? She had a pompadour hairdo and was draped in gold with a white blouse, smallish, in her sixties with a slightly faltering, but overall confident and loud bearing. Laughter constantly kept interrupting her words. Actually, she didn’t really want to chat, she just wanted someone to tell her story to. She discovered the edge of her world, measured it out with language and was satisfied. This is where I am, this is where I stand, I set out from here, this is where I arrived and I won’t go further because I don’t want to. She spoke at me in Russian and I in Czech.

We only half-understood each other, we understood the words the other used just barely. But the little I could catch: go on, I said to her. I have to, she said, I can’t help it. A word, occasionally some sense, laughter as the padding. Laughter like gravy that makes you lick your chops. Mozart. Hesse. Or maybe David. Actually, even you. You can find so many funny things that I can’t help being amazed.

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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