DUMMY lab

(Chamäleon, 19 July 2015)

The city is suspended, waiting for the world to end. Work takes the mind off the wait. Work provides for weekend amusements, to while the wait away. Conformism blunts anxiety. Conformism gorges on the grim attire, beer, and the semblance of uniform thought. The numbed emotions do not court art, but are pervious to the kind of engineering that can smuggle in art---circus, for example. Engineering delivers the promise of order and hence hope.

In circus, the audience enjoys violence by proxy. Contortion looks risky, painful. (In ballet, by contrast, extreme movement looks natural, relaxing.) Enter technology and the artist's technique, and with them, the promise of insurance against the risks, maybe even against the world's end.

The warm summer breeze bounces against the walls of Hackeschen Höfen, brushes against the diners' cheeks and ruffles their hair, penetrates the open window of the dressing room, and envelops the glowing skin of a dancer aroused by the exhilaration of the just-concluded performance and the colleague's ambiguous embrace and stripped down to her black underwear and a cigarette. This is all there is to it.