Progress perhaps?

Grounds for optimism

 

 Since mid-April those of us who regarded Café Schwabing as an extension of our domestic living space, our sociable lounge, have been forced to migrate to other nearby establishments for the duration of the building work. None of the alternatives have been found more than tolerable at best.

Hence there has been some trepidation as to what might become of the premises at the corner of Kurfürstenplatz. We were assured that it would not be degraded to become a MacDo or other fast-food outlet. One watched as the interior was gutted, hopeful when the arched openings in the facade were enlarged to accommodate floor-to-ceiling windows. Now a local newspaper reveals that the new identity will be Brasserie Schwabing. Promised is the proper 'brasserie' combination of restaurant, bar and café which is something of a relief.

Now my speculations centre on the question of the décor. Will the Munich brewery opt for an anonymous  contemporary look? Will they go for a 'faux French' approach, like the Balthazar in New York?  I suppose that an even more pressing question is whether an aging Sandlander earning pitifully little from translation work will still be able to afford to patronize the new establishment!

Evening plans

'Public viewing' in Paris is wonderfully captured in the photo,isn't it? The old man in the foreground adds a poignant touch.

Here in Munich this old man will probably for the first time watch a full World Cup match. On the one hand, it should be fun to watch with supremely optimistic Germany fans. On the other, it is noteworthy that the USA squad is coached by Jürgen Klinsmann, who also had a stint guiding the destiny of Bayern München for their very successful 2008 and 2009 seasons.

It also happens that a kick-off at six o'clock fits perfectly with my preferred routine. I hope the game will be a good one. As for the outcome, in any case Bavarians will have reasons to be satisfied..

The standing sun

It is not that the summer solstice has lost its meaning for me, not entirely. It is not as awe inspiring as it was when I spent summers in the far north of Germany, on the island of Sylt. There tonight the sun will only drop below the horizon a few minutes after ten o'clock, and dawn will break just before five.

At Cap d'Agde,much further south, the longest day will be about an hour and a half shorter, although this is where I enjoyed the solstice most, since holidays in the naturist complex meant being out of doors most of the time...'indoors' took the form.of my little caravan (suitable dedicated to the sun deity of the ancient Egyptians).

More recently there have been long midsummer evenings spent pleasurably in one of Munich's beer gardens. But strict austerity means that this year such an indulgence is to be disallowed. And in any case, advancing age means that I tend to feel sleepy after my reading session and ready for bed... even if there is still light in the sky outside! This leads to feelings of unaccountable guilt. Hence the fact that from now on it will progressively be darker at an earlier hour comes as something of a relief.

Tonight! As an exception I will heed the call of the nearest equivalent of a beer garden, just for old times' sake.

A hundred days...

 

When there are only a hundred days before the Scottish referendum and you are living in Munich, what gesture might seem fitting? It so happens that round the corner from my flat a little shop, BierVana, has opened with no less than 270 craft beers on offer. A few of them are brewed in Scotland. Although I was reminded by the knowledgeable shop owner that the very dynamic Aberdeenshire firm, BrewDog, is the leading Caledonian contender, I opted for the Belhaven Ale with the flag prominent on the bottle neck. With a 5.2 percent alcohol content it is almost as strong as a Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest beer. Father and daughter found it very tasty indeed! Here's tae us, wha's like us? Gey few, and they're a' deid. It should be noted, however, that the six bottles shown above do not indicate our consumption yesterday evening on the balcony. We shared a single bottle of Belhaven before moving on to our usual preferred beverages.

Apart from reflecting on the hundred days ahead there was another way in which the evening was noteworthy. Finally, after years of tenancy of my Munich flat, the very narrow balcony was put to use for the first time ever..

The view is quite without interest and I never wanted to be seen as one of those ancients who sit outside alone, spying on the goings on of a perfectly average neighbourhood. But subsequent to my well-documented 'spring cleaning' efforts the flat is now quite welcoming, a fact that Jessi felt moved to verify! Fear not, I shall remain the curmudgeonly misanthrope I have become since returning from the Sandlands, with the occasional exception proving the rule. By the way, Belhaven Ale is brewed not for from North Berwick which is an important setting for my novel Intransitive State, my speculative story of the eve of Scottish independence. I most sincerely wish that in the coming hundred days there might be one or two brave souls willing to read it!

Merhaba sag' i'

One of our local 'red-top' newspapers surprised me with the cover story a couple of days ago. The Abendzeitung went out of its way to extend a welcome to Arab visitors to Munich.

As well they might. This year from January through June there were 637 thousand visitors from the lands of Araby recorded, a rise of twenty percent over the same period last year. Even if we assume that fewer left home during Ramadan (although the heat in the Sandlandy may have been found by some inimical to fasting), the year could end with over a million having made their way to our city.

They are welcome because their stays are longer than those of tourists from other countries. They spend daily between EUR 500 and 1,000, which compares well with the measly average of EUR 192 for other visitors.

The newspapers notes that in 1997 only 8,000 visitors to Munich originated from Arab nations. How very few there must have been in the mid-eighties, when our home was in the district named Arabella Park. But even then there were enough hijabs and luxuriant beards to be seen in the area, noted for its big hotels and private clinics, that we joked about the tourists having mis-read the name of their local destination... Arab El Apark! 

Post-privacy

The poster caught my eye earlier last week. The visual reminded me immediately of the preceding months during which I took a close interest in the research Jessi was doing for her thesis sub-titled From the Panopticon to Surveillance Art. Taking a closer look I saw that the symposium would take place close by in my neighbourhood, at the Akademie der bildendnde Künste, the Academy of Fine Arts. This institution was founded in 1808 and is housed in a beautiful complex built in Venetian Renaissance style, competed in 1887.

The third session of the all-day conference was titled Netz und Kunst, Web and Art, and there were presentations by creative activists whose exploits reminded me of the quote from Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club cited by Jessi in her paper:

“We need to develop a ‘let’s have fun confusing their system’ culture that plays with the inherent imperfections, loopholes, systematic problems, and interpretation errors that are inevitable with large scale surveillance. Artists are the right company for this kind of approach. We need a subculture of ‘in your face, peeping tom’… exposing surveillance in the most humiliating and degrading manner, giving people something to laugh about must be the goal.”

The couple of hours we spent at the event brought no eureka moments, as such. I did, however, pick up a flyer issued by IRISS, the acronym standing for Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies. One hardly expects mischief from the instigators of an EU research project, the allusion to the eye’s central component, the iris! No this is a very serious piece of investigation, with the universities of Edinburgh and Barcelona among the academic institutions participating. The local partner is the University of the Federal German Armed Forces (Universität der Bundeswehr), which in the present climate gives pause for thought. The research goal is an evaluation of the concept of privacy in a networked world.

And thus my thoughts are once again focused on ‘privacy’, ‘secrecy’, ‘publicness’ and ‘art’. I find myself still hooked on the issues my daughter dealt with in her paper. And I am surely not alone, with the astonishing Edward Snowden story still developing almost hour by hour.

And yet more and more I am wondering what all the fuss is about. As one of the inalienable human rights surely universal individual privacy is a rather bizarre addition to the list? And it is an addendum we owe largely to Anglo-American thinkers, and a concept which sets English and North American cultires apart even from Western European cultures such as French or Italian. Many languages do not have a specific word for ‘privacy’. Such languages either use a complex description to translate the term (such as Russian combining the meaning of ‘solitude’, ‘secrecy’ and ‘private life’) or simply borrow from English. To the extent that the term was in use prior to the Middle Ages, the connotations were of ‘seclusion’, ‘mystery’ and even ‘conspiracy’.

Is it entirely whimsical to return to the Genesis story and those hastily grabbed fig-leaves of privacy? I think not. I also cannot imagine the notion of privacy as having any reality in the societies of earlier centuries. In tightly knit communities little could remain hidden from the elders of the tribe or the leader of the clan, and even their own secrets could be revealed by conspirators or even just by gossips. Can it be said that the Church of Rome placed value on privacy? Certainly not for the unschooled faithful, whose lives were transparent in the most intimate detail thanks to the discipline of the confessional and the peer pressure of the community. Surely for the longest time there was much which was darkly ‘secret’ but little that was lauded as ‘private’? Modesty and circumspection might be seen as virtues but was it not ‘in private’ that many dreadful sins could 

be committed?

 

I think three factors contributed to placing a new value on the idea of privacy. The first was the democratization of knowledge after Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the second was the Protestant Reformation which followed and the third was the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. If the Founding Fathers of America promoted a right to privacy (if not in word then at least in spirit) they must have found themselves treading very carefully. Their intention was not to facilitate sin hidden from sight, after all! I suspect that there was already talk of the virtuous having no need of concealment. The uncurtained windows characteristic of Holland to this very day, recalling a Calvinist suspicion of what draperies might mask, proclaim the readiness of the inhabitants to be subject to the gaze of equally upright fellow citizens.

In this perspective we can see ‘privacy’ as a concept which we have fetishized in very ambiguous ways for no longer than a couple of centuries which are now irrevocably over. We are again as comprehensively ‘known’ both to the organs of the state and to each other as in earlier times. We must no longer line up in front of the confessional, it comes to us as we walk along the street, surf the web, shop online, register our details or update our status on social networks and our shriver exacts digital penances.

 

This was a week which started (as noted here) with an exploding egg. Two years ago the interactive art project caught my fancy, allowng me to participate in ways which were more facetious than profound. Lissie Pötter, the artist behind the Broken/Unbroken venture, happened to pass through Munich mid-week and it was a pleasure to have drinks with her and her husband and to discuss future performance art plans.

‘Performance art’ is quintessentially post-private, an interdisciplinary performance presented to an audience. It may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media. The performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements… time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

Post-privacy we are all performance artists, each time we post a ‘selfie’ online or upload a clip to YouTube, we benefit from what the writer Hille Koskela called  ‘empowering exhibitionism’, making reference to the webcams used at home, to complicit candidate participation in voyeuristic television shows and to the use of the camera function of mobile phones.

The future may not be without modesty and circumspection but I feel that privacy will be the exception and not the norm. And I am convinced that we shall learn to live with that quite well.

Chapters end

 Indecision about whether the word 'chapter' should have an apostrophe or not! Chapters do end, hence I'll let the headline stand. Although the genitive would also be very apposite as the first half-year of 2013 recedes into the past. Google Reader is a chapter closing. My first RSS tool was Bloglines, but I very quickly switched to the Google service. At the end of 2006... as this post indicates... my morning perusal of the feeds was a precious routine as soon as I had checked the overnight emails at the office in Abu Dhabi. At one point I had about 140 subscriptions, although these have now been reduced to half that number.  

I felt that the combination of reading RSS feeds and writing this blog was perfectly adequate for my communication needs. Facebook never held any real appeal and since I am probably by nature anti-social, subsequent developments like Twitter were of little interest. When Google decides that Blogspot has had its day... and I am well aware that anything digital is by nature ephemeral... I dare say there will be alternative which will present themselves, much as Feedly will now be the means by which I shall satisfy my hunger for the latest news on the interwebs.

Back in May 2011 I wrote... "For my daughter and I have for many, many months been accustomed to having the Skype messaging window permanently open when we are both online. It is for us like sitting at opposite ends of a long, long desk stretching from Maastricht to Munich. The Long Desk is a comforting form of 'telepresence'..."

It was not only comforting but a pure joy! But that is another chapter now ending now that Jessi's three years at Maastricht University is over. The upside is that for the next few months she will be back here in Munich where her internship looks as if it could be very interesting. And when again there is a geographical hurdle to be overcome... if she takes up the internship she has been offered at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C... we'll extend the Long Desk across the ocean. 

For many, many years when I was working in the Sandlands and she was in school in Munich the ritual contact was a short telephone call to her before she left home in the mornings. It was at the time very important for both of us. But the 'always on' Skype window is incomparably better, enabling both of us to feel present during each others' daily lives.

Another chapter ends this weekend. For two and a half years I have been doing daily translations for the German automotive-themed media group Motorvision.But now they have decided that my services are no longer required. Admittedly I have found their international strategy to be somewhat inconsistent and so the termination of my contract came not so much as a surprise.

A shock, nevertheless, since now I must urgently seek a new source of income.

I wonder if this means that my professional activities will no longer revolve around automobiles? For the five year from 2005 to 2010 'the cars were the stars' of our GearOne television channel uploaded from Dubai Media City. Now in 2013 I can hardly imagine anyone who has never been in possession of a driver's license who is better informed about motoring matters than I am! Were a lottery win to enrich me I think I might go for a 2005 Ford Thunderbird 50th Anniversary Edition, a car so beautiful that I think I would have no difficulty finding willing drivers. 

Yes, chapters of all kinds come to an end, even if dreams persist. 

Amusing that this is Sandlander post number 2013!

Found in translation

It was just over a year ago that on this blog I shared with you in this post my delight at having discovered the work of the Munich novelist, Oliver Pötzsch. The GoodReads website notes...

",,,he is a writer and filmmaker. After high school he attended the German School of Journalism in Munich from 1992 to 1997. He then worked for Radio Bavaria. In addition to his professional activities in radio and television, Pötzsch researched his family history. He is a descendant of the Kuisle, from the 16th to the 19th Century a famous dynasty of executioners in Schongau."

A couple of days ago this...

Amazon Publishing has announced that Oliver Pötzsch... whose Hangman’s Daughter series includes The Hangman’s Daughter (2010), The Dark Monk (2012), and The Beggar King (2013)... has become the first Amazon Publishing author to sell one million copies in combined print, audio, and Kindle English language editions worldwide.

Amazon Crossing is the imprint introducing readers to emerging and established authors from around the world with translations of foreign language books.

 I think this is an admirable initiative. The fact that it is a Munich author who has achieved this success is, of course, gratifying. The city is known for superlative football, amazing automobiles, the world's best beer and now for storytelling which seems to have found in translation the readership it deserves,

Monocle on Germany

For six months at the beginning of last year I subscribed to Monocle Magazine. Each issue was so packed with fascinating content that I only finished the June edition in mid-September.

Of course I absolutely do not belong to their targeted readership demographic. I am a senior citizen with minimal disposable income, damn lucky to have work and be able to support myself.

And Monocle is not only an expensive periodical it also implies that the reader will be interested in and able to afford a lifestyle which is globally mobile, intelligently discerning, culturally progressive but... alas... far from cheap.

But since the March issue promises many stories about my adopted homeland I shall fork out the cover price and consider it a present to myself for my 73rd birthday.

Breaking habits

I readily admit to being a creature of habit. Not that I am inflexible. When I tire of a habit I drop it easily and move on to another one.


What I do not like is being obliged to give up a habit!


No, I am not suddenly faced with the abjuring Marlboro Gold or Chateau Tetrapak, heaven forfend!


But for many a year now I have fed my two-paperbacks-per-week habit at Hugendubel, Munich's excellent English-language bookshop. Today they close for ever and I made my last purchase of 'booky books' there yesterday. Browsing the Kindle store is not the same.

Yesterday also heralded the end... for a good while... of another  precious habit. The Long Desk is what my daughter and I call our Skype-enabled communications mode. We both have our chat window open as long as we are online and it is as if we are in the same room, working on our own stuff at opposites ends of a desk. 


Her second year of studies in Maastricht came to an end yesterday. No more speculations about what Baudrillard, Foucault or Bentham really meant... no more snarky comments about the hypotheses of Sherry Turkle or Naomi Klein... no more sudden realizations that yet again Danah Boyd has got it about right. Not to mention spontaneous exchanges of raunchy music videos or silly cat pictures.


No 'phwup' alert when she goes online in the morning... or whenever she wakes... given that her coffee machine and her iBook are fired up more or less simultaneously.


All that I shall sorely miss. Although having her back in Munich for some summer weeks will be a big compensation. Hugs will no longer be little Skype avatars but real for a while.


And then in the autumn the 'Long Desk' will be a habit once again, then bridging the kilometres between Munich and Barcelona.


By then I may even have become accustomed to Kindle.