Standing Outside the Modern Matrix

At the start...

Windows tune goes off, the sound of monopoly rings across the empty room and the moment arrives, the piece will be written. The idea has been carried around for days, the plans laid, the form structured and then the moment comes, the moment when all those thoughts, plans, unconscious actions, all the bloody work will find its natural path to realization, then...STOP! Nothing happens...I hate the empty white word doc paper.

I think that the frustrations of the people that moved into Micro-town when they turned 18, left their parents and girlfriends behind, plugged their brains into their dream. The dream to become immortal. To connect their fate to that of the biggest, most powerful monopoly in the world. MICROSOFT. And when the dream is shattered, when they have given 18 hours a day for 4 years, when their brains refuse to work overtime anymore, when the joy has gone, when the pressure sets in, when the deadlines loom and when the next generation of 18 year olds are knocking at the door, that's when it happens. That is when they install the virus into the data stream of WORD, and then quietly leave through the backdoor (along with their stock option portfolio, the remains of the dream), never to enter the sacred grounds of the firm again. But their legacy is left behind. The legacy of the living dead. Then we sit with tears in our eyes in front of the PC screens struggling with getting our idea to the cold silver screen and don't understand why nothing happens. Not realizing that we are participating in the ever growing circle of Hippocratic mind-nummingness.

Maybe there is justice in the world!

Or...

Fuck them! I will write despite their mindlessness and misuse.. What has their plight to do with me? I have a job to do and my WORD makes it possible. Yeah, erase their image from my mind, like I erase the image of the children that made my shoes, the Chinese workers that made my H&M cloths affordable, the Vietnamese single mothers that made this computer and perhaps lost their right thumb in the stamping machine. Forget that when she complained to the (illegal) union about the lack of benefits for her missing limb, she was thrown out, along with her children to take shelter in the over crowded suburbs of the formerly communistic Saigon. This all I forget, this all I HAVE to forget because I have a mission. I'm going to write about radicalism. Fully dressed in a comfortable cafe in the most expensive area of Berlin I'm going to turn my mind radical and talk about the horrors of the capitalistic system and how it's turning art into another medium of their slow but steady march to ultimate power.

Fuck them, I will embrace my Hippocratic stance and write like I'm getting paid for it.

Actually I want to take you on a short journey, just to get us into the right mood, the right mindset so to say. We are going to try to talk together about big things, things that are not so easily put into words, that few readable theories touch upon...the slow death of the human spirit. And through that, the inevitable struggle of the art world.

So the journey...

We are standing on a small but beautiful square in the center of Berlin. The square is surrounded by statues of the masters of German Theatre. They stare at you from their immobile monuments, challenging you to go in. To go a witness the magic that once was theatre.

You make your way through the crowd into the theatre proper, the German national Theatre. Everything is white and grand, marble and rich carpets (made while there was still something produced in Germany). You try not to notice that you are the most poorly dressed person in the room, that the HUGO BOSS shirt the good looking young German standing next to you has on, is the true standard of this room. (Not to mention the impact from the fact that HUGO was the firm hired to design the coolest and most feared clothing in history, the costume for the Gestapo, later MATRIX). To escape you take the stairs to the second floor. History meets you half way when you realize that these steps were put in especially for Hitler (which never visited the theatre) and then another steps of stairs leading to the upper balcony. History turns everything around, in the days of Shakespeare the rich would sit in the upper balconies but now that is the place for the poor students and the other non-desirables.

I find my seat, cursing when I see the stage that I did not have to imagination to by a pair "made in Poland" binoculars when I realize how far away the stage is.

We wait for the last people to take their seats, and then the lights dim. The show is about to start. The darkness that descents is probably the most democratic act that will happen that night, since it reduces all to the same place. One warm body per seat, the outer identity disappears, the HUGOS and the ARMANIS, the GUCCI and the LAGERFELDS, become one with the TOP SHOP's and OUTLET's of this world. By a switch of a button electricity has done more for Marx in that moment than Lenin did to destroy him 3 generations earlier.

The play is Faust. THE German classic. The ultimate masterpiece about human greed and suffering.

We are facing a black wall, deviated with horizontal- and vertical lines dissecting the wall into 9 vertical squares. Light comes up and in the central square stands Faust himself. A man squared by his world, a man that will in the end break free of his bondage and fight destiny itself. A true capitalist!

And now, not to waste your time, let me just say that the theatrical magic became sour. For over two hours we watch the journey of this ultimate squared-up capitalist from greatness to misery without ever feeling that there is drama involved, characters come and go in slow motion while never losing their high cultureness. The actors speak their lines in such a way that you wonder why they did not just give you a CD in the ticket office with instructions about going home, opening a bottle of red wine (Preferably something French and old), sit back and listen to the text spoken on your "made in INDIA" home surround system.

And make no mistake about it, as the curtain fell and the actors came one after another to the front stage to receive their costumery applause, the crowd responded with enthusiasm. They loved what had been done for them. The RALPH LAUREN and the VALENTINO crowd loved the soft hands of the message being presented. They loved the lack of challenge that had been set to them.