HH Exhibition

The exhibition to HH was nice with different styles of art [ ?! ] having been exposed. 

Nan Goldin’s slideshow was something special with a clear message to the visitor. Her life with all ups and downs [ such as drug addiction...] has been presented in an authentic and uncensored way.

The overall message may be - even as an example for American life - that life has got two sides; on the one hand that of ”good days” [love] and on the other ”bad days” [drug addiction].

All in all this slideshow was something special because of its uncensored presentation taking from real life.

Review of “Moon Palace”

Is it possible to create a plot out of coincidence and the moon? Yes, it is.
Paul Auster manages to do so in his novel “Moon Palce” published in 1989.
The novel shows the initiation of Marco Stanley Fogg and his self-finding process in the city of New York in the late 60’s. Motivs and events of the this time accompany him on his way.

Marco’s mother has died early, his father has never met him and the only persons caring for him is his uncle who dies too.
With no person left to refer to, Marco lets himeself go to the life of chaos.
After having been rescued by an Asian girl when he was about to die in Central Park, he decides to start new and discovers by chance and guided by the moon family relationships and his roots.
The reader is able to identify with the suffering of Marco because of Auster’s linguistic abilities. To point out the changing society as well as influences by technical progress of this time, Auster refers for example to the celebrated moon landing – ironically the protagonist is about to die in Central Park on the same day-, the New York blackout and casually the Vietnam War.
Furthermore movies, art and motivs of American history (Frontier, individualism…) back Marco’s journey and are mentioned to describe the time of the late 60’s ;the story is not stated “postmodern” without cause.
However, it’s confusing and difficult to overlook the plot because flashbacks and the use of foreshadowing are applied quite often.

The complexity makes this book even better and more interesting. So i can recommend this novel for everyone, who is fascinated by exciting emotions and stories and for people who liked “Forrest Gump” because paralles can be recognised without any doubts.

“Landscape With Moon” by Blakelock

The landscape painting “Landscape with Moon” by Ralph Blakelock of the late 19th century made out of oil and exposed at Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee depicts the power of the sublime and untouched wilderness.
The viewer sees an unclear and distant landscape.The left area shows some trees painted in quite dark colours, such as green and black. In the centre a dimly lake can be found with its bank in the distance, where more trees and bushes are visible. On the right side there are more trees being illustrated brighter than the left one. Above the lake the moon gleams hidden behind some branches of a tree in shining yellow colours as a contrast to the dark plants in the front. Its shine even lightens up the water surface.
With the bright and gloomy moon on the one hand and the dark nature on the other hand a surreal, dreamlike and even mysterious mood comes into being.
The moon seems to be a very powerful object in the wide and sublime wilderness of nature.

Mr. Effing – the sentimental rowdy

Mr Effing is neither a “normal” man nor a “monster”.

He is rather a hyrid with trends to the good.
Although he turns out be blind, to have rude manners and a despotic behaviour towards other people (especially in Marco’s job interview), he seems to have an keen intellect and a broad knowledge. Moreover, he is even able to have pity with Marco’s family situation and wants him to speak about it (he suffered the same fate).
Important is the fact Effing wants Marco to write down his life story, which seems to be more than a mark of confidence.
The rude side of Mr. Effing may have come into beeing because of his old age or the turbulent life he has had with several accidents e.g. his father or the death of his friend in the desert etc.
Generally, through the entire chapter Mr. Effings character traits are mixed so that there is an effect equallising his two sides both the rude and the good.

The Aftermath Of 9/11

Since 9/11 a lot of things have changed in America due to the unexspectedness of the attack. People are not able to feel save and invulnerable anymore and were reminded of the evil day some months ago when a gas pipeline exploded in New York. In order to foil those attacks in future, many laws and bills were passed by the Bush government partly invading and restricting the personal freedom and rights of the US citizens. In addition to this, the security standards have almost everywhere been tightened to let possible terrorists not enter the country. For proving the willigness and determination to fight terrorism – or at least seem to do so to convince and appease his voters -, Bush ordered the US troops to invade Iraq in 2003.

A further aspect beside the prior mentioned is the growing mistrust towards Bush. People don’t trust him anymore as he was not able to foil the attack and behaved wrongly in the aftermath of 9/11.

So all in all the changes after 9/11 can be summarised as an increased mistrust and threatening fear among people as well as a stricter bearing in political affairs.

Presentation

Susann, Malte, Felix and my humble self are/were working on “Where’s the love” by the Black Eyed Peas.

Where is the love? – Obviously not in the USA…

The Black Eyed Peas deal with a lot of issues relating to the ideas of the “American Dream” in their song. As this song can be understood as an anti-war pacifist anthem because of its release just after the Iraq invasion, it deals with topics like terrorism, egoism, the wrongdoing of the US government etc. However, its central issue is racism and human values like tolerance and love that have nearly vanished from society.

Below some commented extracts from the song:

“But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you’re bound to get irate, yeah”

Racism is being expressed in violent/humiliating methods nowadays.

“As I’m gettin’ older, y’all, people gets colder
Most of us only care about money makin’
Selfishness got us followin’ our wrong direction”

Materialism is getting more common. Making money seems to be the most important thing in people’s minds now.

“Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema”

It seems that the youth are easily influenced by the media. This leads to the rise in juvenile crime and violent acts.

All in all this song points out the problems of living in multicultural countries like the USA, where the principe of individualism being linked to the American Dream can easily lead to greed among people and differences in the standards of living. Furthermore – even years after the abolotion of the race segregation – black people are often disadvantaged in life making them commit crimes.
In order to guarantee some people – especially the rich – the fulfillment of their individual American Dream, some people have to suffer from this so that a bit more of love and tolerance in the world would not be out of place since hate and anger can be found quite often…

| Lyrics of the song |                | Further information |