A GUEST + A HOST = A GHOST - (Marcel Duchamp)
The hard thing to bear about a legacy is that it does not make things easy for us. No more than the name one was given, it cannot be appropriated; yet, in difference to a name, it must be passed on. It lands in our laps, demands transmission and, insofar as it demands a response, it brings responsibility with it. When I want something then I want to make it mine, it is true, yet it must also remain other to a certain degree, for me ever to be able to want it. What cannot ever be fully re-appropriated is the meaning of this very process of appropriation, which pulls in two directions. My experience of dis-appropriation (Derrida) forces me into appropriation, yet I know at the same time that the latter will never, cannot ever be complete.
A surge of homesickness becomes noticeable here, one that will grow all the stronger the more brutally and violently technological expropriation and de-localization progress. Yet this double(d) law – the double bind – proves even more unrelenting wherever we find ourselves dealing with something whose provenance is completely unknown to us, and must remain so. This holds true both for our own self, which creeps up on us as our double, during this process of dis-appropriation, as well as for all that which is allegedly alien and remote, to which we turn in expectation of finding some things in common. The hospitable relations we maintain with these ephemeral creatures and shadowy beings are permeated by something that is about to vanish. It cannot be retained. Were it to remain, it would itself become the spookiest guest of all. If we expose it, we annihilate our own selves.
THU 02.02. › 17:00 › HAU 3
RESPECT SPECTRE I
International Necronautical Society (UK), Moderator: Andreas L. Hofbauer (AT)
THU 02.02. › 19:00 › HAU 3
RESPECT SPECTRE II
"Phantom Love", film by Nina Menkes (US), 2007, 87 min.
SAT 04.02. › 19:00 › HAU 3
RESPECT SPECTRE III
"Ghost Dance", film by Ken McMullen (UK), 1983, 100 min.
FRI 27.01.–SUN 19.02. › 12:00-19:00 › Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien
RESPECT SPECTRE IV
"The Crystal World Open Laboratory, a project by Martin Howse, Jonathan Kemp, Ryan Jordan (UK) and Ralf Baecker (DE)
FRI 27.01.–SUN 05.02. › 12:00-19:00 › Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien
RESPECT SPECTRE V
"Spectral Transistor" by Laura López Paniagua (ES)