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| Valeska Gert's advertisment in Aller Lüste Anfang. Das 7. Buch der Werbung, 1971 |
Yesterday I
met my friend Elias on the street, who was waiting for his pizza to
get ready. He was a little tired but satisfied. During a few intensive weeks he had been working on the advertising of a chocolate bar,
which had brought him enough money to last for a while. Sweet. I
offered him my own creative writing in case he needed a one-liner of
some sort. Something about soccer was coming up, he said. I refused,
of course, I could not imagine having to think about soccer for a
minute. Still, advertising has its attractions. I never watch it on
TV and I'm not, at least consciously, looking at it on the internet.
But I do love Mad Men, the American TV-series about a 1950s
New York advertisement agency. Since those uptight 1950s, advertising
might have become more broad-minded (although, also that is to be
doubted). Yet without the daytime whiskey, cigarettes and
secretaries, the fun must be gone.
Another
reason for my interest is that a few of my favorite artists have
worked in/on advertising. Of course, the first one that pops to mind
is Andy Warhol. The profile of my blog reveals that I'm a die-hard
fan who caries a bag with on it straps the famous quotes “I've
never met a person I could not call a beauty” and “In the future
everybody will have 15 minutes of fame”. It is amazing how Warhol
can entertain and be extremely funny, and at the same time be so
acute and accurate. Saying that, I'm stealing the promotion pun on my
edition of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back
Again) (such a great subtitle!). It's by Truman Capote: “Acute.
Accurate. Mr. Warhol's usual amazing candor. A constant entertainment
and enlightment.” It does happen rarely that the combination of
humor and critical analysis occurs in art - especially in German art
seriousness seems to be equalled with in-depth analysis. The quality
of Andy Warhol's art and writing is that with an essentially simple
image or with just a few words, written always in a playful way, he
is able to express the most radical critique. Most people need an
overload of paint or a whole book and even then they have a hard time getting the
message across.
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| Dieter Roth, Advertisments / Inserate, 1971-1972. |
Also Dieter
Roth was fascinated by advertising – at least by the advertising
pages in the newspaper which he called “ein grosser Schrotthaufen”
(“a huge heap of junk”). In 1971 he decided to advertise 220 of
his own invention - short sentences that made no sense, signed as
“DR”. He only made it to 130. The newspaper refused to publish
any more, having received too many angry reactions from its readers.
Recently I learnt that another favorite artist of mine participated
in advertising. Wolfgang Müller showed me his newly acquired book,
also of 1971, entitled Aller Lüste Anfang. Das 7. Buch der
Werbung (Emeriten-Press). In this mockery on advertising the
Berlin dancer and performer Valeska Gert is presented with the
sentence: “Jeder Käufer von zwei Sargen enthält als Zugabe einen
Kindersarg.” (“Each buyer of two coffins gets as a bonus one
children coffin for free.”) Valeska Gert had a way of leaving
people speechless. Her work still does, as I noticed a few weeks ago
when I showed her performance in the W.G. Pabst 1929 film Tagebuch
einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl) to an acquaintance
/ art collector . I have not heard from my acquaintance since. No
doubt, if Valeska Gert had stayed in New York in 1945 instead of
returning to Berlin, she would have worked together with Andy Warhol.
She herself thought so. This fall Karl Lagerfeld is republishing one of her four autobiographies: The Beggarbar of New York
(the first one Mein Weg (My Way) was republished in
Wolfgang Müller's Valeska Gert: Ästhetik der Präsenzen).
Valeska
Gert's one-liner advertisement reminds me of the shortest story I
ever read. It's by Ernest Hemmingway: “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never
Worn”. I heard about it from Colleen Becker, who is a
flash fiction writer herself. Flash stories are five hundred to one
thousand words short and as such the narrative depends mainly upon the reader's
imagination. Also Valeska Gert had a flashy dance style: she danced the jump only in its offset, leaving it up to the audience to
fill in the rest. In 2009 Colleen Becker participated in a Shortness conference that was organized by
Tate Modern "tackling topics ranging from aphorisms, text msgs and short attention spans to nanophilology, sampling, ephemeral relationships, punch lines, short narratives and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion)". On the occasion Colleen Becker read one of her
flash fiction stories titled “B&I”. The short piece was also
published in the anthology Tales of the DeCongested. Here
it is:
B&I
When
I lived in Chicago I shared a house with five other people: four
Scorpios and a Pisces, all artists. Our place was spacious, but we
spent most of our time in separate bedrooms to avoid conflict. When
we needed to communicate, we would do so via ESP, sending each other
psychic messages to "please get your crap out of the living
room" or "please stop eating my food". When that
didn't work, really bad things would happen. Like maybe you would
walk into the bathroom to find all of the silverware in the toilet.
I
rarely saw or spoke to my flatmates, with the sole exception of B.
The two of us were very social. After work, B and I often sat
together on the front porch swing; I made up fake blues songs while
he played the guitar until one of our flatmates would psychically
tell us to "please shut the hell up". One day B took apart
the television and connected it to our stereo. Instead of looking at
the boring stuff that's generally on TV, we watched the colored lines
that are usually hidden inside of your television move around to the
music. We did this for hours at a time.
B
and I eventually moved into our own place. We lived on the third
floor, which meant that when we sat on our back porch, we had a great
view of all of the crime in our neighborhood. As we watched the
crime, B told me stories about the Rosicrucians and bear
constellations that were actually really scary.
Later,
this stripper from New Orleans named Poppy moved in with us, and
although the number of kitchen fires increased dramatically after she
became our flatmate, B was still
psyched
that she was around. I moved shortly thereafter, but I left her my
mattress 'cause it seemed like she needed extras. I later learned
that B had been sleeping with her in secret the entire time.
Tales
of the DeCongested is published by
Apis
Books
Flat
9, 50 Roman Road
Bethnal
Green
London
E2 0LT
ISBN
0-9552538-3-7 / 978-0-9552538-3-6
Contents
© the individual Authors, 2008
