I was at the gate — uncertain.
Was this here? Diego said he was on his way.

I looked at the wall, crawling with signs, this is the style Berlin sports since the fall of the wall. And I whispered : give me something to work with. Building, what are your building bricks ? I got GHOST — and then, goodness gracious, I got BONTÉ.

GHOSTs I can work with — I had just come back from Aby Warburg's house in Hamburg. Didn't he call his wondrous Bilderatlas Mnemosyne a "Gespenstergeschichten fur ganz Erwachsene" ?

I loved that expression.

Ghost stories for grown-up.

Playing make-believe and seeing what comes out of it.

BONTE or BONTÉ was another thing entirely. As in "bonté divine" — the French equivalent to "goodness gracious". And to murmur "goodness", in this world, is a silent prayer, facing the lack of it.

But I had met kindness before. Quite a spectrum of it.
I wanted to look for some in that building.

And then Max Ernst was activated.
Oh Kindly Ones! "Nous sommes embarqués..."

wasn't the first time either — BONTÉ had made its entrance, like a mantra, a year earlier, near rue Jules Verne, in Paris. But that's another story, like, entirely ?

prompting research in manifesto & manifestation

"collage as a sismograph to measure the world's happiness". Gotta love Ernst — he was by far the most inspired of them all, Surrealists.

Ernst, master of the occult, by the mirrored script of the canal.

Endlich ist es ernst bekommt

Une Semaine de Bonté would be the codename of my stay in this Special Agency. They wouldn't let me take scissors on the plane : this needed remediation.

At Modulor, I hurried to find tools for plane section and interplanary intersections. Paper depth — hauling back treasures and secret combinations, unlocked by care, whim, plan and chance. A collage inquiry of the matters at hand.

Ernst who turned the illustration of the early XXth century upside-down.
All those woodprints high on acid :
etched and sketched,
drypointed into imbroglios of intaglio.

Aqua Forte all over again again.

Letting the tide rise,

submerging them with dreams.

Wild menagerie of sacred beasts' heads,
local prophecies, oneiric logs,
so accurate and ever so inspiring.

Remix : an amplitude of sampling.
Seamless sewing — raptures and bilderaptors.

He borrowed figures, like a god-thief,
and taught us the way of the scissors.

Berlin is a city that was cut down and patched up again. A patchwar or work.
Zur Erde : adorning stones, sheets and coins we tried to make it a little more whole. And felt filled, fuller, by doing so. In cafés, parcs and fertile grounds, reefs and rooftops. Making collage of our own.

Du récit aux récifs

Until that final touch, when Dmitry glued his parachutist levitating above the road. Falling to another planet's core.

And that was the end of the week.

May you land safely.

Deep in the folds of our heart, in the absorbing palms of our hands, we always find a parachute.

A WEEK IN BERLIN

with the Korus,
or the art of using street-tags
as the city's runic pressure points
and (in)visible meridians
to build semiotic and adventurous
rafts & drafts.

And how reminiscent of Ernst these parachutists seemed to me.
Absolutely serene — as if they were dreaming
sleepwalking over a cliff.

Sleepwalkers with a plan B.

Skydiving into the pavement,
into pigments,
asphalting that bitumen, man.

The city is packed with signs, ghosts stories for grown-ups, names and words to activate like power-ups and whatnots.

Knots and runes for the taking.

To slalom between semiotic traps :
a bit of street hermeneutics.
It's easy.

Skipping stones and tags.

This week ended up with a sway.

to be continued.


Agent NRKHT
5 A.M. and due to dreamland.