NEWS
March 2022
The APRA Foundation Berlin is pleased to announce the selection of its Multi-Disciplinary Fellowfor 2022
WAHLKAMPAGNE:
Eine Kunstaktion zur Bildungspolitik.
Denkbare Möglichkeit:
Ein dreiteiliges Kunstwerk, das spätestens am 1. Januar 2021 (also im Jahr der Bundestagswahl) eröffnet, und solange andauert, bis jede Klasse auf jeder Stufe, in jeder Schule und Universität, in jedem Fachbereich, in jedem Bundesland das 15:1 maximal wirksame Studierende/Lehrer*in Verhältnis erfüllt.
The Multi-Purpose Model
Finally figured out what to do with
all that toilet paper I’ve been hoarding.
The new, stylish, Casper-The-Friendly-Ghost look
This is not the first time I have regretted rejecting my mother’s offer
to teach me how to use a sewing machine.
I regret firms that price-gouge the protective masks they could produce
gratis and en masse even more.
STICK ‘EM UP!!! Just like in the Wild West.
I understand that gun sales in the U.S. are skyrocketing.
Here in Europe, we don’t need guns.
We just need to take out our hankies and use them.
Patanjali
Compiler and editor of the Yoga Sutra
A Personal Best
I started learning the Yoga Sutra by heart in late 2012. For a serious yoga practitioner, this is a small but important part of the process by which you program your mind to be in the right place at the moment of death. If you fail to do this, you might come back as a cockroach. If you succeed, you still might come back as a cockroach, if you have failed to prepare in other ways. The Yoga Sutra explains systematically what you have to do, why, and how, in order not to come back as a cockroach. Actually it explains what you have to do in order not to come back at all. That is the ultimate goal. Learning the text by heart is only a precondition for understanding the road map. And I am only in the beginning stages even of that much. At this point, I’m happy to report, I can recite all 195 sutras in sequence, beginning with Book I, Sutra 1, and ending with Book IV, Sutra 34. That is, I can do this on a good day. On a mediocre day, I can do it for Books I and II, but my mind wanders around the middle of Book III and I discover I’ve forgotten my place in the sequence when I try to bring it back. Or I lose my focus and allow the reoccurrence of a word or phrase from a previous sutra to lead me off on a detour in which I end up repeating that word in the earlier sutra and several of the sutras that follow it, before realizing that I’ve already been there. On a really bad day, my mind both wanders and also gets stuck in the endless loop for several seconds before I realize I’ve lost my place in the sequence. At that point I have to just go back and read the text out loud. Happily, that is always a pleasure rather than a punishment. Daily repetition instills the correct sequence more deeply, increases the occurrence of good days, and decreases the occurrence of mediocre or bad days. Perversely, my concentration on Book IV is still relatively good, precisely because I started learning it most recently and so have to be more present for it. So I’m still having mostly good days with this one. But I can’t yet pull just any sutra out of sequence and recite it. And I can’t yet isolate a sequence of sutras and recite them. That comes later, when I resume studying the commentaries. At the beginning, you’re not supposed to worry too much about what the sutras mean. You’re just supposed to focus on the sound and rhythm of the words. Because I taught them before I began to learn them, I mostly do know what they mean. But I don’t let that get in the way. At this stage I’m more concerned about my atrocious Sanskrit pronunciation.
The APRA Foundation Berlin is pleased to announce a new section of the APRA website offering a comprehensive scholarly resource for museum studies specialists and other interested researchers working on Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions 1965-2016. It offers in-depth information about key personnel and statistics, selected installation shots, a walk-through video of the installation, a detailed architectural floor plan, symposia video documentation, publications, and selected reviews.
Adrian Piper, Immanuel Kant, 1980. Pencil drawing on paper, 9” x 12” (22.86 cm x 30.48 cm). Collection Albert Landau. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
Adrian Piper, Das Ding-an-sich bin ich, 2018. Eight mirror cubes, each 180 × 60 × 60 cm (70.86” × 23.62” × 23.62”), each housing concealed sound system; eight 8-minute audio files; floor-wide grid of 60 cells each 60 × 60 cm (23.62” × 23.62”). Room dimensions variable. Installation view Akademie der Künste. Photo credit: Constantin Schroeder. Collection and © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
With the kind support of the Cologne Kreissparkasse which funds the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne.
Photo credit: Chris Tan
PUBLICATIONS
Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 2018. Catalogue. New York:
Museum of
Modern Art.
Essays by Christophe Cherix,
David Platzker, Connie Butler, Adrian Piper.
Adrian Piper: A Reader, 2018. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Essays by Jörg Heiser, Nizan Shaked, Kobena Mercer,
Diarmuid Costello, Elvan Zabunyan, Vid Simoniti.
Adrian Piper, Escape to Berlin: A Travel
Memoir, 2018.
Berlin: APRA Foundation Berlin.
“Expansive and invaluable … Piper has expanded the very definition of political art, making this
retrospective feel superbly acute.”
The New Yorker
"Takes on the urgency and and melodrama of a psychological thriller"
– The New York Times
"Brilliant and harrowing" – Artforum
"Brilliantly lucid, entirely engaging, destined to become a classic
American memoir"
-- Hyperallergic
In 2005
Adrian Piper secretly emigrated from the United States. Several months passed before anyone
realized she had disappeared. She resurfaced in Berlin and has lived there ever since. Piper has
consistently and firmly refused to return to the U.S. or explain why she left. Many assume it
was because she discovered her name on the U.S. Department of Transportation Security’s
Suspicious Travelers Watch List. Others point to Wellesley College’s forcible termination of her
tenured Full Professorship. Yet others speculate that George W. Bush’s presidency, or American
racism, or the invasion of Iraq compelled her to leave. All of these conjectures are groundless.
ESCAPE TO BERLIN: A Travel
Memoir is a gripping autobiographical narrative that provides a full
account of the facts.
Adrian Piper, The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3, 2013-2017.
Installation + Group Performance. 3 grey walls reaching from floor to ceiling, 3 golden
circular desks, golden embossed letters, 3 lecterns, 3 lean stools, computer system, 3
receptionists (one behind each desk). Detail: The Rules of the Game #2. Photo Credit:
Anonymous. Collection Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. © Adrian Piper Research
Archive Foundation Berlin.
Vor genau zehn Jahren kam ich heimlich und uneingeladen am Flughafen Berlin-Tegel an, während Orkan Katrina an der Golfküste der USA wütete. Im Flugzeug sahen wir sprachlos die Bilder an. Mit Katies Hilfe brachte ich die zwei Katzen Ginger und Kali in der Flugkabine mit, und sendete alles übrige in drei großen Containern per Schiff. Ich hinterließ nichts. Während der ersten acht Wochen in Berlin, hatte ich in meiner kleinen Dachwohnung buchstäblich nur ein Dach überm Kopf. Ich wollte bloß weg, aus der Schußlinie entkommen, mich in Sicherheit befinden und in Ruhe gelassen werden. Seitdem habe ich doch fast keine Ruhe gehabt, sondern das beste Jahrzehnt meines Lebens, das mit so vielen Momenten reiner Freude und Befriedigung erfüllt worden ist, wie ich es mir hätte nie vorstellen können. Zahlreicher Frust und Hindernisse sind mir auch begegnet, aber daraus habe ich eine Lektion gelernt: nämlich, Ihr Deutschen seid verrückt, ewig hin- und hergerissen zwischen eurer enormen nach vorne strebenden Naturenergie, und euren findigen Strategien, sie zu hemmen und zu kanalisieren. Es ist mir ein Privileg dabei zu sein, um bezeugen zu können, wie sich eine abgesonderte Gesellschaft ohne das Gift von Rassismus allmählich wieder vereinigt; und durch die Verarbeitung ihrer Vergangenheit ihrer Zukunft sichert. Ich bete, Ihr werdet die neulich in Deutschland angekommenen Flüchtlinge mindestens demgemäß behandeln. Denn ich war auch mal einer, und Ihr wart gütig zu mir. Dadurch habt Ihr mir vor allem viel beigebracht, von dem Land, das ich hinter mir ließ. Schade, daß es euch nicht auch gelungen ist, mir eure verfluchte Sprache beizubringen (bei diesem Text hat mir Robert geholfen), während ich mein Englisch allmählich verliere. Nun müßt Ihr dafür büßen, durch die Qual, meine nun zweiseitig furchtbaren Sprachkenntnisse erdulden zu müssen. Auch Schade. Hauptsache ist aber, Ihr habt es für mich möglich gemacht, derartiges Leben zu führen, das meinen tiefsten Werten entspricht. Das hätte ich nicht geschafft, wenn ich die Entscheidung nicht getroffen hätte, hierher permanent einzuwandern. Ich riskierte alles dafür, und es hat sich gelohnt. Ich habe heute also sehr viel zu feiern. Auf das nächste Jahrzehnt bei euch freue ich mich riesig.
ADRIAN PIPER
THE
PROBABLE TRUST
REGISTRY
THE DESTINY AND INTERPRETATIONS OF THE WORK ARE PART OF THE WORK.
May 3-31