New Museum

I was cruising the city when she accidentally met an old professor with whom she had a dramatically good conversation. For three weeks she had given up speaking and connecting to the faint wauweling and selling of people that possessed nothing but, blinded by the shining of gold and soaked up by sticky possessions, through a funnel of apartments, decoratively smiling invited her into hell.

She and the professor didn’t drink coffee but spoke of how big musea were being built as supermarkets of culture for those who rely on public opinion to spend their day off. Ten smaller musea had been closed down and a selection of the art was shown in this impressive new building. People could come and see the best off all in one day. Spenders were expected to come from around the world, impressed by the landmark of dared architecture, that told them ‘we are economically valid’, a clever welcome in times when public debt have never been greater, when monumental financial constructions are failing and bureaucratic constructions and other wauweling could not remain unquestioned for much longer.

The building was impressive like a medieval tower and created electoral employment and amusement, prestige for decision makers and master builders (though they could only be accredited with the assembly of parts, built in huge, anonymous, underpaid Chinese workshops).

It was erected in the middle of a city area that was supposed to start booming. Expensive apartments and restaurants were already built. Prices were up. Moneymakers had invested heavily in old buildings, speculating they would turn into a posh location, as happened elsewhere in the city.

There was really nothing people could do but to accept what was being given to them. Everybody visited the new spectacle and for a moment enjoyed the view from the rooftop. The building would soon become boring, not in the least for those who had a more profound interest in the arts displayed and who paid a third or a fourth visit. But for a much longer period it would remain a surprising ruin and a worthy gravestone to society that paid for it. The master builders’ sons were already looking forward to the construction of another new building to gain valuable experience in their profession, the lucrative business of designing and controlling environment. And they were deeply convinced that this future project as well, whatever it would be, would create a unique opportunity for the worlds small people to make some small money.

If you met the city's decision makers, you would be surprised by their plainness. They were the kind of people who would never use a single ill-placed word but who would go on a holy war to be able to buy a car that isn’t smaller than their neighbours’. They were radical in their plainness. They were like all of us, except for the loose edge. They were the embodiment of our rules, like the dukes of earlier ages. They seemed like precisely these dukes, having swapped their aristocratic uniforms - with exaggerated contrast designed to attract and manipulate the eye –for huge machinery that their image passes through before being distributed.

Antwerp, 28 october 2011

Indignados

Today people calling theirselves the indignant ones, marching their way from Spain, arrived in Brussels. It struck me how they didn’t have a speaker and were unable to produce a clear point of view. Each interviewee projected personal experiences on the flag and allowed the television reporter to join these in an image of his choice (a cheerful gang of confused and utopian youth was what redaction made out of it).
One of them recalled: 'suddenly tens of thousands of us were together in a square and things to do were clear'. But then day after day living outdoors in foreign countries, the group got smaller and diminished to fifty by the time they reached Brussels. 
This gives a good impression of a medieval war (call the indignado's experimental archaeologists): based largely on good moral and food catering (no wages, training or specialised equipment).

In broad society the clear insight now exists that everything functions based ónly on money. And it does, because nature works on hierarchy. It’s tight hierarchy that makes some groups more successful than others and brings advantages to both its leaders and its followers. 
Those who don’t like this perfect functioning based only on money can’t do anything about it except maybe survive. And sure they should protest, but not too seriously. However large the protest will always be downsized by the media (properly paid and stressed people) to a cheerful prank.


For a while, my favorite news channel kept covering people checking out the market place. With bodyparts and painted signs ancient protestors animated the newer arrived who lended ears and disposed smiles to improvised speeches under a stretched flag. (If you visit Europe, watch out for any 'parties', events were people gather out of a related feeling of feastlessness!) 
Times were hard and evening television programmed with dilluted, uninspiring stuff, so people stayed on the street, waiting for the camera to turn, through which to offer theirselves to a visionary, Martin Luther King-like leader who persisted in overwhelming absence.

People craved for good speakers, even regardless of good governance. A pantheon of lousy ideas that were sold with eloquent speech testified to that, from conquering Europe to buying mystical business with other people's money. But let's not overstretch this conversation, humble and beloved readers and writers, but sleep on it and get together for more and better ideas.

Antwerp, 7 november 2011