In der Mitte des Lebens

Verliert sich die Neigung zur Faulheit

An der Zither.*

Being in the midst of ones life,

the inclination towards doing nothing

gets lost

at the lute.

This sounds funny because something that tends towards nothingness gets lost at something that does not implicate by itsself something, but only when it is played. So something nothing achieves more nothingness by something that does not exist properly. This is something.

Zitiert nach Tanizaki Jun’ ichiro: Über die Faulheit. In: Merve (Hrsg.): Hannes Böhringer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag. Berlin: Merve, 2008.

I = shit (Dieter Roth)

I = something that matches (misst) itself with the gods not unluckily (Friedrich Hölderlin)

I = ?

8.

The naming of Hannibal’s elephants.

*

They strode out of the Atlas,

flat-headed, fan-eared,

fighting with tusk and trunk,

smelling bad enough to drive the horses mad.

Historians, naturalists, archaeologists fussing

over a single Carthaginian coin.

Snow, and black

trumpeting rock.

*

Names invincible enough.

Names with war in their throats

and a dying hunger.

Spearheads entering flesh.

Mountains being scaled.

*

Only one survived.

Surus, the Syrian.

Indian elephant reaches Carthage from Syria via Egypt.

Names the colour of flint.

*

Their mouths turned blue.

In their brains the names still whirred,

thirty-seven bar one,

whispered by poets

in the form of birds that fell.

The gasp of the last big secret.

7.

I could call you Q, she said.

Like Q for quill, or Quasimodo.

Almost like you, that name.

Or that other, that supplier of miraculous gadgets.

“Nice to know old Q can still surprise you…”

There’s a line worth having, second only to

“If he’s Q, does that make you R?”

*

Renaming him rapidly,

she falls from consonant to vowel,

a white-water rafter

kayaking from fear to exhilaration at the speed of a sudden shout.

*

Between Q, and A, no questions, nor answers.

Just this summoning, simple

as only one syllable can be.

(Abir Karmakar: I Love Therefore I Am, 2006-07, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm ( 12 x 12 inches))

Erst Else “sprechen”: Das nagt
am Band, Ballast periskopisch
es sei Partisan
sein Projektil sollst stillen
du Husten aber dass es
der tot tritt die
Spange lebt in deiner Hand
aus Schotter
mangelt dem Projektil
du Else: bare Ballustrade
als Ast verdengelte
deine glatte Leib-
din minigliche
bohrt es Ohr anders
las “spitze Pessare”
als schläfe
durchschlag

A wet sucking tongue leaves traces during the act of counting, fragile unreliable traces, momentarily traces, keeping memory for a short moment, a moment which lasts longer than a breath or a sound, a moment which is shorter than the timespans memorized by scratching, carvings and written letters. Karmakar puts Descartes into question. He puts Descartes into question, perhaps because he is a painter and perhaps painting puts generally logic and speech based reasoning into question.

Painting puts the light of reason into question. Not any light, but the specific light of mathematical reasoning, which Descartes made famous. It is a light, which is fighting contradiction. It is the light of either or nor, of right or wrong.

Painiting cannot be right or wrong. Painting is about intensity, about grades and shadows gradually dimininishing light or emphasizing light.

Painting is about continua. The logic of wether or not is not about continua. It is about discreteness. Karmakars paintings are not discrete. They are intense. Painting Karmakar creates an intensity which spans from attraction to repulsion, from coition to cognition. Thus his paitings, thus painting in general becomes a challenge of any discrete distinction. It throws us into the mesmerizing abyss of conflicting extremes.

Nils Röller New Delhi/Sanskriti Kendra

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