 |
| John Knight, The Right To Be Lazy, Berlin, since 2009. |
The first thing I do upon arriving in
Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin, is to check
out my favorite piece of art (for more current news on this piece, click here and even more current click here). It is in the courtyard and it changes
all the time. It goes unnoticed by most visitors because, at first
sight, it is very common. The installation of the piece took place in
2009. I was present when the Californian artist John Knight had a
simple request for the gardener: the grass in the rondel had to be
left untouched from that moment on. The piece is then also titled The
Right To Be Lazy. It is inspired by a 1883 manifesto by Paul
Lafargue. Lafargue, who was the son in law of Karl Marx, wrote his
manifesto as a protest against the dominating working ethics,
including Marx'. Only in laziness, so he argued, ideas can come and
culture can exist. Therefore Lafargue pleaded for the 3-hour
working day: also the worker has a right for his/her
own culture.
In Berlin John Knight's The Right
To Be Lazy has found its perfect setting. In the city there are
still many of these in-between-places that are not invested in. Yet
Hamburger Bahnhof's environment shows that things are changing
rapidly. The no-man's-land around it has turned into a happening
place with a high-rise building and a new station that features in
futuristic crime thrillers such as Tom Tykwers The International.
In the 1920s Martin Heidegger taught at the Humboldt University in
Berlin about boredom as a philosophical issue. The train station was
according to him the place par excellence for getting
bored. In the new Hauptbahnhof such boredom is hard to
imagine. Waiting rooms are non-existent, benches are rare. Instead
there is time to consume. The Berlin cultural critic Siegfried
Kracauer wrote about this culture of distraction in the upcoming
metropolis of the 1920s. Nobody as boring, Kracauer stated in his
1927 essay Langeweile, than those who are never bored. During
the day one goes to work – business - and at night one is kept in
the state of busy-ness in the cinema. The kind of boredom that
originates out of this culture of distraction was addressed by Andy
Warhol in his Do-It-Yourself paintings, also on show in
Hamburger Bahnhof. No talent is needed for this “painting by
numbers”, own ideas are not necessary. The result is predictable, yet
there is a feeling of satisfaction upon finishing it.
 |
| what is the name of this yellow flower? |
I can reminiscent for hours on John
Knight's The Right To Be Lazy, expanding on topics such as the
beauty of the German word Langeweile, immigration debates
about the economical value of a person, Valeska Gert's
proto-performance Pause, Marcel Duchamp's reluctance towards
the art market, the pressure to perform. Yet, The Right To Be Lazy
can also be admired for its pure aesthetics. Each season brings a new
beauty to it. Yesterday I met another admirer standing at The
Right To Be Lazy: Mark from Hamburger Bahnhof Walther König
bookstore. The Right To Be Lazy is an ideal place to practice
the art of observation. I mostly check in vain if the Californian
flower seeds that I threw in last spring are showing up. Yet Mark has
a better eye. He pointed out an Asian plant and called it a pioneer
species: pioneer species are the first to colonize previously
disrupted ecosystems. Mark elaborated about biodiversity in the city,
the mono-culture of the countryside, singing birds and their new
urban melodies.
 |
| Pioneer species |
By the way: today is a great day for
The Right To Be Lazy. Sunday is an institution and, according to
Kracauer, one should take the opportunity “to rouse oneself into
boredom.” Here is his suggestion (the rainy wetter of today will
make this easier):
On a sunny afternoon when everyone
is outside, one would do best to hang about in the train station or,
better yet, stay at home, draw the curtains, and surrender oneself to
one's boredom on the sofa. Shrouded in tristezza, one flirts
with ideas that even become quite respectable in the process, and one
considers various projects that, for no reason, pretend to be
serious. Eventually one becomes content to do nothing than be with
oneself, without knowing what one actually should be doing –
sympathetically touched by the mere glass grasshopper on the tabletop
that cannot jump because it is made of glass and by the silliness of
a little cactus plan that thinks nothing of its own whimsicality.
Frivolous, like these decorative creations, one harbors only an inner
restlessness without a goal, a longing that is pushed inside, and a
weariness with that which exists without really being.
If, however, one has the patience,
the sort of patience specific to legitimate boredom, then one
experiences a kind of bliss that is almost unearthly. A landscape
appears in which colorful peacocks strut about and images of people
suffused with soul come into view. And look - your own soul is
likewise swelling, and in ecstasy you name what you have always
lacked: the great passion. Were this passion – which
shimmers like a comet – to descend, were it to envelop you, the
others, and the world – oh, then boredom would come to an end, and
everything that exists would be ...
Yet people remain distant images,
and the great passion fizzles out on the horizon. And in the boredom
that refuses to abate, one hatches bagatelles that are as boring as
this one.