#Männerlesen

Habe vor ein paar Wochen, als mir die 100. Analyse zu Putin/Krieg in die Timeline gespült wurde, bei einem Bekannten auf Facebook ironisch-polemisch kommentiert, in etwa: “Call me IdPol, aber ich hab heut früh beschlossen, erst wieder so’nen Text zu lesen, wenn er nicht von einem weißen Cis-Mann kommt.”

Kommentiert hab ich, weil ich zwar einerseits dankbar für die ganzen Texte bin, die ich dank meiner Timeline zu lesen bekomme, es aber andererseits mehr als auffällig ist, dass einige Männer so gut wie ausschließlich Texte von Männern teilen – ohne das irgendwie seltsam zu finden. Mich nervt, wenn die kritische Theoriebubble es nicht mal wahrnimmt, dass mit ihrem aufklärerischen Selbstverständnis irgendwas faul sein könnte, wenn sie auch im 21.Jh immer noch so ne dampfende Herrensauna ist, die anscheinend für andere wenig einladend ist zum Mitdiskutieren.

Ich sprech das immer wieder mal an, denn Ausschlussmechanismen zu benennen und sichtbar zu machen ist weiterhin unangenehme Aufgabe derer, die ausgeschlossen werden. Diese Kritik als Identitätspolitik abzutun ist einer dieser Ausschlussmechanismen. Und absurd: Ich kritisiere die identitätsbasierte Bubblehaftigkeit und meine Forderung danach, sie aufzubrechen wird als identitätspolitisch kritisiert?

Ich glaube nicht an das, was gemeinhin als identitäspolitisch kritisiert wird: an geschlechter-essentialistische oder neoliberal-feministische Weltverbesserung, also: dass alles automatisch besser liefe, wenn nicht mehr nur weiße Cis-Männer am Tisch säßen. Aber es ist der Standardvorwurf, der dir heute entgegenschallt, wenn Männern der Ausschluss-Vorwurf nicht schmeckt.

Mir geht es bei der Kritikum ein Aufbrechen dieses uralten Kreislauf des gegenseitigen Schulterklopfens und Anerkennens, in den so viele weiße Cis-Männer nun mal so verstrickt sind, dass sie ihn nicht mal wahrzunehmen scheinen. Wie Stefanie Sargnagel mal zum Thema Frauenquote in der Kultur schrieb: “wieviele mittelmäßige männer pushen sich die ganze zeit gegenseitig? wieviele fade 0815 typen wurden da letztens schon wieder eingeladen?” Teilhabe ist der Punkt. Es geht nicht drum, dass der Diskurs automatisch besser wäre, wenn er diverser wäre.

Und kommt mir nicht mit dem Qualitätsargument, denn egal wie mittelmäßig das ist, was Männer schreiben, es finden sich immer Männer, die sie empfehlen und dieses gegenseitige Empfehlen ist wie ein geschlossener Kreislauf, der nicht so leicht zu durchbrechen ist. Es kostet Mühe. Dafür müssen sich Leute in ihrem jeweiligen Bereich etwas aktiver darum kümmern und suchen, ob es nicht andere Stimmen dazu gibt, und sich immer wieder bewusst machen: Es ist kein Zufall, dass gerade kein Text einer Frau oder eines nicht westlich geprägten oder queeren Menschen dazu kursiert, sondern es liegt an lange gewachsenen Netzwerken und Gewohnheiten und Traditionen.

Sich aktiv um Texte von solchen Anderen zu bemühen ist Arbeit, die meist an denen hängen bleibt, die, manche mehr, manche weniger, unter Ausschlussmechanismen leiden und das bedeutet: Sie opfern dafür Zeit und Arbeit, während andere sich einfach zurücklehnen. Ich merke das persönlich. Es ist Zeit, die mir fehlt, um mich um die Themen zu kümmern, die mich eigentlich interessieren und in die ich mich eigentlich tiefer einarbeiten will. Ich bin dessen auch immer wieder mal müde und will auch einfach gemütlich auf die bestehenden Kreisläufe zurückgreifen. Aber wenn dann eben wieder mal zu einem aktuellen Thema fast ausschließlich Texte von Männern weiterverbreitet werden, und das von Leuten, die sich als aufgeklärt und emanzipatorisch sehen, packt mich wieder dieser Ärger und ich überwinde mich, dass zumindest als Missstand zu kommentieren.

Ich tu das ganz gerne ironisch und scherzend, weil das oft eher ankommt und nicht gleich als Angriff verstanden wird. Das Problem an Ironie ist aber, dass sie nur für die erkennbar ist, die meine Position kennen, sowie eine Anspielung auch nur für die funktioniert, die wissen, auf was sie sich bezieht. Das ist etwas, was ich in Kauf nehme, weil mir sonst das Diskutieren und Kommentieren fad werden würde.

Was aber ein Problem ist, sind Leute, die sowas bewusst in Bad Faith Kritik eskalieren. Es ist eine uralte Propaganda-Taktik um die Position der unliebigen Seite anzweifelbar zu machen und Fronten zu verhärten. Dazu werden verschiedenste Mittel verwendet, von Strohmann-Argument über Red Herring bis zu Pseudo-Logik oder Bothsideism (Hier ist einer von vielen Texten im Netz, die das erläutern).

Es werden gezielt Aussagen gesucht, die extreme Klischees verstärken, im Fall meines Kommentars, den ich eingangs erwähnte, ist es das das Klischee der crazy woken identitätspolitischen Feministin, der ihre Achtsamkeits-Yoga-Matte-von-Feminismusverständis wichtiger ist als dass hier gerade Menschen in einem Krieg sterben. Totally lost und wohlstandsverwahrlost halt.

Es gehört zur Methode, dass Aussagen aus dem Kontext und Tonfall gezerrt und weitergeteilt werden, um anderen zu zeigen, dass was dran ist an den Klischees, und so langfristig ein Feindbild zu verhärten, keine Nuancen zuzulassen und vor allem solidarische konstruktive Diskussionen zu verhindern. Es geht dabei nicht um das Verstehen der Gegenseite, es geht nicht um Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema, sondern um Ablenkung, um Eskalation und/oder um das Verstärken von Feindbildern.

Mein hier eingangs erwähnter Kommentar war natürlich prädestiniert dafür, weil ja auch wirklich nicht sehr konstruktiv. Ob ichs deswegen verdient habe, darauf die Entgegnung “hab Sex bitte” abzubekommen, wie ein random Mann mit ‘lustigem’ Fakenamen dann drunter kommentierte? Weiß nicht. Immerhin zivilisierter als das gute alte “du gehörst mal richtig durchgefickt,” dieses Ehrenabzeichnen jeder Frau, die sich öffentlich feministisch äußert.

Natürlich war ich neugierig, und hab, um ein bisschen Kontext zu kriegen, sein Profil angeklickt. Dort hat er ganz stolz meinen Kommentar als IdPol-Screenshot-Trophäe zum Aufheizen seiner Follower gepostet, die sich in knapp 90 Kommentaren einen drauf runterholten. Von traurigen RAD-Gestalten über Hot Takes-Journo von der Groove bis zu essentialistischen TERFs, alles dabei. Sichtlich Leute, die sich Verächtlichmachung und Freude an Eskalation zum Hobby erkoren haben.

Hab kurz überlegt, “triggered much?” drunterzuschreiben, weil es mir als so absurde Überreaktion erschien, wie sie sich da reinsteigerten, aber durch diese Art meme-hafter Kommunikation hatte das Problem ja angefangen. Deswegen schreibe ich das hier auch erst heute zu Ende. Ich hatte diesen Text schon kurz danach angefangen, aber es ist eine schmaler Grat zwischen Aufklärung und Verstärkung in unserer aufmerksamkeits-fokussierten Social Media Diskursöffentlichkeit. Vielleicht hilft es, dass jetzt ein zeitlicher Abstand dazwischen liegt, und die Edgelords mich längst vergessen haben.

Ich hatte jedenfalls schon so lange nur ziviliserten Austausch auf Social Media, dass ich ganz vergessen hatte, wie sich so ein Hetz-Post anfühlt. Auch die Verstärkung durch solche Plattformeigenheiten, wie dass du auf Facebook zentral gemeinsame Freund*innen angezeigt bekommst, kann dich in so einer Situation ganz schön runterziehen. Wider besseren Wissens fühlt es sich in solchen Momenten so an, als würden all diese schweigenden gemeinsamen Freund*innen die Meinung dessen stützen, der dich verächtlich zu machen versucht. Das ist wohl etwas, was alle berührt, die nicht komplett verroht sind.

Als ich dann auch einen Screenshot davon machen wollte, war das Profil des Users weg und ist es bis heute, ich hab grad noch mal nachgesehen. Bei so einem Edgelord ist da mein erster Gedanke, dass ihn wer wegen Fakenamen gemeldet hat, um ihn zum Schweigen zu bringen. Das wiederum ist etwas, was ich niemandem wünsche, weil Facebook halt für viele ein zentrales Kontaktmedium ist, und es sich übel anfühlen kann, wenn man da plötzlich rausgeworfen wird. Kenn ich aus eigener Erfahrung. Deswegen blocke ich lieber als zu sowas zu greifen. Ausschluss fühlt sich halt immer scheiße an, ob durch patriarchale Verhältnisse, oder ob durch eine Plattform. Und gerade bei solchen Leuten trägt sowas am End noch zur Radikalisierung bei. Oder er hatte zufällig gerade zu diesem Zeitpunkt die Nase von Facebook voll. Kann natürlich auch sein.

Anyway. Die Unmöglichmachung der Kritik an patriarchalen und rassistischen Ausschlüssen mit dem Totschlagargument, das sei identitätspolitische Wokeness, und das Aufhetzen von Netzfollowern sehe ich derzeit vor allem als neue Variante des alten Spiels, Progressive mundtot zu machen, die an traditionellen Netzwerken kratzen. Im Fall meines Posts: Sexistische Ausschlüsse werden zur Nebensache erklärt, über die zu sprechen angesichts der Hauptsache der Kriegsrealität unangebracht sei. Als würden wir nicht konstant solch große Dissonanzen aushalten und mit verschiedenen Problemen mit verschieden schweren Konsequenzen jonglieren müssen. Der Rückzug ins Zynisch-Destruktive ist für manche halt zur Form des Eskapismus geworden, den ich zwar nachvollziehen kann, aber dem ich hoffentlich nie so verfallen werde.

Und was tun mit der männlichen Dominanz in (linken) Theorietexten? Nicht müde werden, das ist das Wichtigste und Schwierigste. Nicht müde werden, das Missverhältnis anzusprechen. Im Idealfall erklärend und diskussionsoffen (außer bei Leuten, denen es sichtlich um Bad Faith Disput geht). Diese Kritik außerhalb der eigenen Wohlfühlbubble tragen. Gezielt gute Texte von anderen als den üblichen Verdächtigen suchen und weiterverbreiten, auch mal bei Multiplikator*innen drunterkommentieren. Es gibt auch Aktionen wie auf Twitter #Frauenlesen, was ein werter Ansatz war, aber es blieb dann doch arg exklusiv und ich hätte vielleicht lieber sowas wie #nichtnurweißewestlichecismännerlesenbroplz…? Manchmal wär mir auch danach, einfach immer nur bei allen, die nur Texte von Männern posten, #Männerlesen drunter zu kommentieren. Ach, ich weiß ja auch nicht.

Ich schließe mal mit einer Vortrags-Empfehlung: Julia Ingold zum Thema “Warum ich keine Männer mehr lese – eine Autopsie der Ermüdung” am 30.6.22 im Balthasar in der Reihe “Freie Uni Bamberg.” Wenns keinen Zoom-Stream geben sollte, überleg ich mir grad tatsächlich, den Ausflug dorthin zu machen.

Waiting room

My life has turned into waiting. Again. I can do things, sure, I can write, there is some work I can do but what has been the main content of my life for so many years is in a pause position. Again. No concerts, no club nights, no live music events that bring people together. I am okay with it because the pandemy makes it necessary. I am not okay with it because so little is been done to bring the infection numbers down in other areas: People have to go to work and risk infection there. It is nerve-wrecking for so many people around me and the patience gets thinner. I am still trying to just accept the unavoidable and sit this out without getting crazy but then I already had my mental problems before the pandemy. This situation does not make them better. Shutting down my energy to stay sane seems to come with the price of shutting down social life, shutting down thinking, shutting down enthusiasm. I am a person that loves to think. Enjoying things usually means that I automatically dissect them, not because I want to, it is just how I tick. I savour all their little bits and pieces and see connections or similarities to other things and how they are in certain contexts and so on. It is how they are alive to me. In this way for me enjoying things melts into making sense of the world and getting inspired, growing new ideas and projects that I try to realize or tell others about and try it together. The pandemy has changed that, especially this year was hard. Especially since it became clear that our government will not act in any way responsible and fast and the cultural sector will once again have to hit the pause button. Last year I was like, yeah, well, then let’s do some livestream stuff and we did. This year even the thought of it makes me feel exhausted. So instead I have turned to escapism. I drown myself in stories: literature, tv series, games. I did that as a child too. It was the best escape in the age when you can’t get away from your troubled home in other ways yet. But when back then it provided a needed outlet now it sometimes really feels like drowning. I am tired of having become so passive and I am tired of being constantly exhausted and down. I am not a patient girl. Not sure if I got the guts to change yet but hey, soon it is Midwinter, and once more I want to believe that we are halfway through the darkness on more than a seasonal level.

#MakeAmazonPay

#MakeAmazonPay and build alternatives. I’m all for the movement to support their workers and to make Amazon pay all kinds of taxes instead of doing some charity of their choice and at the same time I believe consumer shaming isn’t the way.

Especially the ongoing pandemic season with lots of lost income and more need for working notebooks and tablets for anything from communication to homeschooling is not the time to shame people for doing some cheap online tech shopping.

btw my impulse for writing this comes from seeing a local initiative going all “repair, swap, recycle, etc. instead of Amazon” today. As if those were in any way alternatives to the massive infrastructure Amazon has built. Such initiatives to go local and LoHaS (and at worst: offline, back to nature etc.) are not exactly what we need to bring on the massive international alternatives we need. They often are escapist at best and elitist at worst.

What we need is not withdrawal but more (internationalist) politics and activism to strengthen workers’ rights and build the huge tech infrastructures we need and want for our shared future (or expropriate Amazon and the likes, but then we still would need the skills to keep such an infrastructure running and updated and looking at public sector’s tech skills… well, pardon my scepticism that this would work. 😉 ).

I’m breathing Carla today

? Carla’s new album.

“We can say that Quieter began when Carla lost her hearing “completely (temporarily) in 1 year” on tour in 2014. She describes the state as “strange,” “every nite like falling,” “and boy, it was freaky,” “QUIETER,” “very like thrashing through the air.” Quieter, for instance, than her own sound, but so as to be closer to it; quieter is then the sound of distance erased in soft, intimate touch. Quieter is the blurring of sound with its source.” Evan Coral for tinymixtapes
my, i feel this. sudden hearing loss is quite an experience. i had it once as a child and once again after my mom’s unexpected death. once hearing nothing at all, once like walking through a snow landscape where every sound, every thing sounds muted, muffled, every human being sounds so far far away even when they stand next to you. world feels far away. my physical loss of the ability to understand held the mental one in a cold embrace and both didn’t want to break the hug as it felt at the same time scary and strangely safe. cold but safe. the second hearing loss changed my whole relationship with music (and people) in ways i still don’t fully understand. a dear friend that betrays you of course leaves its traces and what else is sound to me. the beauty of watching thin white cracks spread over a dark blueish green lake’s frozen surface and of course you don’t turn back because you are suddenly sure that it’s only there and when smoking that one cigarette too much at the end of a night that was filled with loud music and with people that you can breathe freely. i like this album very much.

ORCHID at Zentralcafé: This is our last dance.

ORCHID poster by eve massacre

I have made you a poster for the last ORCHID at Zentralcafé.

Being driven out, driven underground, out of the eyes of the casual visitor, has a bitter taste for a queer night that has celebrated loud and fabulous visibility of all kinds of queers in the very heart of this city for 10 years now.

I am heartbroken to have to give up this room that is so much more than just a venue. It is a challenging, living and breathing social safe space for citizen culture. A space in which you can experiment, a place in which people have each other’s backs, help each other out to make ideas become real.

To push a collective that focusses on giving weird and critical, noisy and silly, wild and feminist, hard-rocking and tender-hearted, urban and marginalised pop culture a platform, like Musikverein im K4 does – ORCHID thanks you! -, well: To push this kind of culture out of the heart of K4 / Künstlerhaus two floors down under ground *is* nothing less but a cultural-political decision. It is a decision against our visibility and against low barrier access to our kind of culture.

In this it is an act of marginalization that is not to be excused by technical pragmatism. It is a decision that I find especially hard to forgive in times when the conservative current and the noisy far right scum have grown louder once more and would love to make us disappear from public space, if not from the face of this planet.

Nevertheless: We will party on, we will be seen and heard! Let’s make our goodbye to the Zentralcafé the loud and fabulous night this special place deserves! Glitter on, babes: This is our last dance.
?  ? ? ? ?

ORCHID poster by eve massacre

missing friction

This ‘making of’ of Burial’s Untrue takes me way back. Soundforge, Fruity Loops and Wavelab – loved them. What they couldn’t do and what was hard to do with them was were the creative process started for me. Took me years to realize and accept it and not see it as failure and deficiency of mine. Using software that restricts you was exactly my thing. Even before I went digital: Not the perfect dozen of effect pedals but one mediocre effect pedal and making music fighting against its restrictions. Same with software. Ableton Live’s endless possibilities made it so much harder and more boring for me to make music. Which is the problem with so much frictionless, seamless design. It kills certain creative spots, you can’t rub against it, it’s less sensual, everything slides into place so easily. It’s that battle against the “right” way of using something where things get interesting and you can set a foot and build / find your way. Using tech against what it was intended for, at least in smol ways, this ‘how not to do it’ has become harder with new tech. Wish there was more rough design out there. Maybe I should start using beta or alpha versions of everything. ^^

Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (Boscastle, UK)


Isn’t it sweet that Google Photos shows me this picture when I search for selfies of mine on my haunted Android machine?!

Last weekend the great IMPAKT Festival took place. I sadly had neither time nor cash to be there so I’m really thankful that there was a livestream and I am slowly starting to watch my way through all the talks. I wholeheartedly recommend doing the same. You can find the videos here and the program here. In the opening speech Tobias Revell introduced the theme: ‘Haunted machines and wicked problems‘, an investigation of the relationship between technology of culture through the medium of myth, magic and monsters. He said:

“We live in a world of complex intractable entangled incomprehensible problems that exceed the bounds of human understanding. Things like austerity, climate change, migrate crisises. So having alternative frameworks and ways of thinking through those problems might give us some power. The first witches were persecuted because they were perceived to possess outside knowledge, knowledge that fell outside the bounds of what was considered the hegemony of capitalism and rational science. They were early feminist activists in that sense, and I think there’s a real need now, in a world of wicked problems, a political need to seize radical ways of thinking through the world, to seize technology really as an emancipatory framework and as something that can build better empathy between ourselves and others in a world that is increasingly anti-globalist, anti-intellectualist and anti-progress.”

I tought it is an appropriate intro to a collection of photos I took a few weeks ago on a UK holiday at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle and which I of course have saved for posting on Halloween.

#metoo

 

Me too.

“If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Please copy/paste.”
#YesAllWomen

—–
The #metoo hashtag started by Alyssa Milano is making the rounds on social media, now in the heat of the coming outs of famous women about being harrassed by Harvey Weinstein, Roy Price and Lars von Trier and less well-known women who have come out about harassment by The Gaslamp Killer.

My problem with #metoo is that if men haven’t trusted statistics on this or haven’t recognized #everydaysexism and similar efforts to make it visible – why would they now? It’s no secret that there are large parts of our society that still ignore harassment. Many of us women* have been and still are educated to suffer it silently. So the point is not to make it known, the story is not the sensational revealing of omg how many women’ are harassed.

The point we have to make is that so many people take it for granted, shrug it off, ignore it, and don’t support victims if they get harassed. And I’m not just talking anonymous strangers, I’m also aiming this at many men* I know. It’s why the “safe space” culture so many have started to complain about is so necessary. It’s not to “coddle” people, it’s about starting an effort to normalize consent culture. To inspire the courage to speak out against everything you’ve ever been taught. I think safe space culture makes many people feel uncomfortable because it puts a finger into a wound that we all know is there but are used not to mention. If you need a name for it: rape culture isn’t the worst you could use.

This #metoo thing is fine, as a reminder and for making us feel connected, making us feel that we’re not alone with this. But: It won’t change anything if we don’t build on it, if we don’t call out harassers in the moment, and if we don’t build alternative structures in which our jobs, our reputation and even friendships don’t rely on taking harassment for granted. We need to shift the attention from “it happened to me too” to “this person did this to me and it’s not okay, it’s not harmless, it’s not funny, and it undermines my position how you stick together in looking away” – we need to hold men* accountable for what they do. There is a kind of masculinity that is build on rape culture, that feeds from every moment we don’t counter it.

#metoo gets attention and attention is power but if you don’t use that power, don’t build on it it will just burn out. The trick will be to not let this ‘omg soooo many women* get harrassed?!’  wave fade back into everyday normalcy but to connect it to our everyday lives until not only the sensation of a big number but every single act of sexual harassment counts for itself.

DRAMA

I have made a quick little mix last night while picking music for my little DRAMA night.
“Little” means: not as much decoration etc. as with my ORCHID party, so it’s a bit less nervewrecking and a bit more careless fun for me. ^^
If you’re in Nuremberg tonight, come over! It’s at Zentralcafe, my second home, of course, 23-5. And I have the pleasure of djing with my dear mate MAUNZ. We will play electronic club music from Grime to House.

Here’s the DRRRAMATIC mix and the playlist (you can hear that after having managed to avoid spoilers for weeks I am now pretty excited to start watching the latest Game Of Thrones season tomorrow!):

Zomby – Get sorted (GoT The next time you rise a hand to me edit)
TRC & P Money – Dun Know
Leikeli47 – Two Times a Charm
Lizzo – Coconut Oil
Rustie x Lilly Allen – Bad Lilly (edit)
Eaves – Victim
Kodie Shane – Drip In My Walk
BenZel & Cashmere Cat – Just a Thought (feat. Ryn Weaver)
Double S – Style & Flows (feat JME)
Sudanim – Floor lock
Murlo – I Swear
Prodigal – Showa Eski Riddim
poolboy92 – Lick
GRRL – Kawaii Yeezus
Admin – Pink Gloves (Slick Shoota remix) (GoT You know nothing Jon Snow edit)
GIL – Onset
Lafawndah – All that she wants
Arca – Piel
Alien Alien – Sambaca
Autarkic – Rotation Rotation (Red Axes Remix)
Il Est Vilaine – Surf Rider
Lor – Factories 1984
Permanent Wave – La Maison des Horreurs (Iñigo Vontier Remix)
Jlin – Black Origami (GoT A girl has no name edit)
Jamie XX – All Under One Roof Raving
Lianne La Havas – Lost And Found (Matthew Herbert Remix)
Moscoman – Mexican Cola Bottle Baby
Throwing Snow – Paint By Numbers
Blondes – Clipse
Four Tet – Sing (Extended mix)
Bambounou – FFWD
Photay – Screens
Temple Funk Collective – Game Of Thrones (Aldo Vanucci Re-edit)

 

Suburbs – Home of possibilities and horror

There are those kinds of essays that I save for days because I’m so looking forward to reading them that I don’t want to do so rushedly – like, whenever David A. Banks writes a new essay on urbanism and structures of power. His latest is ‘The Authoritarian Surround – The suburbs have incubated authoritarian sympathies as well as revolutionary restlessness” and it is good and it also got my thoughts drifting off a bit into my own – rather post-nazi-german tinted – suburbian memories.
Which is why you get this blog post.
To me the suburbs have always been a place that stood for home of possibilities and horror.

I have never totally got rid of liking the idea of suburbs as working class garden city areas. An idea that tried to establish affordable housing with a little more space than the crammed city centre, and with the possibility of small-scale agriculture, a rural urbanism, if you like. Co-operative housing that was supposed to avoid real estate speculation. It tried and failed and mostly has been turned into a kind of urban ruralism (either status symbol or refuge from the city instead of part of the city) – but the ideal still rings in my head.

When I say “home of possibilities” I mean home for possibilities. Not home but more like a homebase, a place that gives you a bit of peace and space to think, but that also keeps pushing you out. A place in which you can just rest enough to get your thinking, your writing, your struggling going. A cozy place that keeps you restless. Every person has a different level of unrest they need to keep them going. For me, city centres are too busy, they make me passive and boring. They are too natural an environment for how I tick. Suburbs and small town life instead are the kind of challenge that unnerve me just enough, that keep me going.

I think Jelinek wrote it, or was it a Bachmann poem? No, it must have been Jelinek, I think in ‘Lust’. Anyway, there was a passage that perfectly captured the blandness of the horror behind suburbian walls behind well-trimmed lawns. Growing up back in the 1980s suburbs stood for the daily effort of keeping up facades, and for the constant bitter anger boiling underneath because the facades wouldn’t stay up. They needed constant work. The suburbs were not just a place, they were something people performed. Never mind social media publicity these days – any bloody detail of those lives back then also was about well-policed performing for others and for oneself. I could write books about that. I would love to write books about that if only had the time. ><

Part of this performance was the art of ignoring domestic violence. To me, suburbian life in the 80s stood for the sobs of a friend getting beaten up by her father just one wall away. Suburbs stood for old men’s hands shamelessly resting a bit too long on nieces’ and daughters’ burning skin. Suburbs stood for the daily straightening of a pretty bedspread over the scene of marital rape. I’m bitterly aware of being from the first generation in germany in which marital rape is considered a crime. I was 17 when the law was passed and knew even back then that it still would take years for many women to find the courage to actually sue, because of the social stigma and lack of trust. Same with violence of any kind against kids: So much stigma, so much taboo. The things you don’t talk about. The looking away. As a teen in that time it had always felt like the echo of the looking away that so many people had practised in nazi germany. It was not the shocking visit to a concentration camp nor school lessons or books that made me understand how nazi germany was possible. It was this “looking away” – practised by people you knew – that made it relatable.

So, growing up to me suburbs have always stood for people who look away. Not the anonymous looking away of the busy city centre, not anonymity-turned-non-solidarity. Not the urban looking away, like when people move faster if they see a beggar on their way or when a person gets abused a few metres away from them. The suburban “looking away” was a fundamental part of performing the suburb. That your neighbour, your brother, your father was an abusive asshole simply didn’t fit the picture you wanted others to see. And so many of them were, apparently just because they could, just because it was a ‘normal’ thing to do. To criticise it openly, to show that pity, would have destroyed all the work of keeping up “the suburbs”. Anonymous ignorance I was ablet to understand. People knowing the people for years who hurt other people for years and still managing to look away for years – I wish I was religious so I could believe in a special kind of hell for that. Laughing, talking to each other over their hedges while watering their gardens, for years, consciously, actively ignoring, accepting the violence.

It fills me with a happy calmness whenever I realize that this whole generation of suburban family patriarchs and enablers is slowly dying out now. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say domestic violence is dying out but this level of common acceptance has shrunk. Give me suburbs full of young fair-trade-shopping bee-keeping liberal families over that horror any time.

With this background, of course, tales of the (suburbian) blandness of horror have always stuck with me, if it was in literature – I’m currently struggling with T.C. Boyle’s ‘Tortilla Curtain’ – or in real cases like Fritzl/Amstetten or the Kampusch abduction, or in films like Haneke’s work, that always seem to bear traces of that, from Funny Games to The White Ribbon.

Somehow even all the 80s US teen horror films seemed to echoe the suburbs as a place where neighbours do not notice the horror that happens behind closed doors, while also dealing with the alien intruding into a “safe” world: Poltergeist, Fright Night, The Lost Boys, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween etc. (which had already had a revival with films like The Hole, that spins the domestic violence thing into the supernatural). But also films like Romero’s (RIP) Dawn of the Dead with it’s working class suburbian mall zombies. Oh, or A l’interieur (Inside), which even put it’s potential for being read as social comment on a tv screen in the film itself: the suburbian riots in Paris 2005. And then of course there is Babadook in which suburban fears of the unknown intruder get overcome.

Anyways, go and read David A. Banks great ‘The Authoritarian Surround instead of hanging around on this blog! 🙂
And when you’re done read his other work on how the urban is political: True-ish Grit and The Edifice Complex.