Hi, welcome to the Nightline of the Church of Ignorance. The Nightline is the moment when we shift from the theoretical or philosophical and sociological inputs from the afternoon now to performances and concerts and party outside. The nightline starts with a performance by Miriam Stoney called I Just Can't or I Can't Just. It will be followed by a concert of the Pataphysical Orchestra featuring the Linzer Seniorenchor outside. We'll then continue with a DJ line from Foot Fighters and will then be commenced with a late-night performance and live drawing by Quatsch mit Sosa. Miriam Stoney, who will perform now, is a writer, a performer, a translator and a visual artist and she also does other things. For example, last year she was invited to curate a bookshop in Berlin. It's called the About Bookshop and the topic she curated the bookshop to was nicht wissen, so non-knowledge or non-knowing, so it only made sense to invite her here and if you need book recommendations you know who to get to. And this performance, I can't just or I just can't, will also be followed by a workshop tomorrow in the afternoon at 5 p.m. called You Can't Just. And it will be based on this performance, but it's not necessary to have been here. So if you want to come, please come again. And if you want to, please also bring friends who are not here at the moment. I think that's enough said. The performance will last for about half an hour. It's called I Can't Just or I Just Can't. Enjoy. You can hear me, right? Right. enjoy it you can hear me right right so i had this idea okay um i was just going to prepare everything beforehand and then just and then just press play so i'd have written this text and then I would record it on a recording device as best as I could like I hadn't written it but it was just a real stream of consciousness and maybe I'd even follow the slips of my tongue see where they take me into an abyss I dug out just for me, myself. So I wouldn't edit out the mistakes. I mean, I'd just let them play, intersperse within the words I was really speaking. But the mistakes are the only real thing. And I want the real thing. I think that's what everyone wants. And I want the real thing. I think that's what everyone wants. Unfortunately, whenever I try to record my own voice speaking, it just sounds like one continuous mistake. And I thought for a minute, I can't just get up in front of an audience, presuming there is an audience, and press play on an audio file and let this mistake play out in its entirety. But the fact is I can. So, I am. I had this idea and the idea wasn't bad. But when I say bad, it sounds like there's an anti-ideal, a yardstick I'm referring to. And this yardstick has two ends because if something can be bad, it could also be good. There would be an ideal, a counterpart to the anti-ideal, which would be something that, I don't know, fits a certain purpose or something. This is a fairly simple way of forming a judgment without falling back on some metaphysical, aesthetic or moral framework. Good would fit the purpose. Bad would not fit the purpose. Things that are simple are tempting, though not nearly as seductive as things that are complicated. So assuming the situation is this. I am here in front of an audience, and the audience, for one reason or another, comes with a set of expectations, and who knows what they might be. And because it's me in front of the audience, I would, well, since the audience has defined itself as an audience, or because I have called this group of people an audience, then it would follow that there would have to be a performance. It would be me be a performance. It would be me who's performing. And this performance, this would be my task. The task by way of which I fulfill a certain purpose. And hence this performance would either be good or bad, depending on the purpose. And the purpose is clearer to some than others. I've been given plenty of warning and time to prepare myself for this moment, on this stage, giving this performance. And it's also not such an anomaly. It's not like it's out of character for me to stand in front of an audience and do this, a performance. But recently I haven't quite felt like standing in front of an audience. And lately I haven't quite known what my purpose really is, on stage or anywhere really. It became clear to me that the purpose of all this, this staging or performing and the rest, well, the purpose of this is really to be determined. And perhaps you could say I lack determination. And there may well be people, members of the audience, who would profess to know me and they would probably protest since anyone who knows me knows that I determine all sorts of things and I am determined, Anyone who knows me knows that I determine all sorts of things, and I am determined, whatever that might mean. But at some point, it became apparent to me that I've never really known what exactly a performance is. And there's one way around this, which is to say that everything is performance. But I don't know if that's true, because if it were, then nothing would be true. And I don't like to get too caught up in questions about what is true and what is untrue. But as I put these words together, and sometimes slip on them as I speak out loud, I feel that there is one thing that is unequivocally true, unequivocally true, unequivocally true, and that is failure. So I thought I'd show you failure. And whether one can really perform failure, well, that isn't quite clear to me. So I'll just show you failure, and maybe we can leave this thing called performance to one side for a moment. There's a point about representation to be made, about the means of showing something like failure. And it's an important point, because the act of recounting is a practice. And it's a practice that requires certain techniques and competencies. And it's a practice that requires certain techniques and competencies. So, I can't just spin you a yarn and tell you how I didn't manage this or how that went catastroph battling here where I want to tell you audience why I'm not fit to speak in front of you and why it is of utmost importance that you see me first and foremost as lacking inadequate weak, before you see this performance as something virtuosic, by someone with something to say or someone worth listening to. I just can't make it plain enough how unimportant I am, but I will try and hope that you get the message. Let me be clear. This is not a confession, and ordinarily I wouldn't speak so specifically about myself. Usually there would be Robert tinkering with technologies, and usually there would be a subject, something specific I'd be talking about. something specific I'd be talking about. And usually there would be an other. But this time I knew it would just be me, though I didn't know how to make up for that lack, that hole left by Robert's absence. So I thought, I'll just have to keep myself company. Make something or someone out of nothing. Split my voice from my body and let the antagonisation begin. Let me be clear, I'm not going to be doing anything dilettantish. I won't be trying anything out. I won't be surpassing boundaries to new planes of potential. boundaries to new planes of potential, new planes of potential that I didn't know I could enter until now upon trying. I'm going to do what I always do. I'm going to write. I'm going to talk and I am going to exist on the stage and present myself to you, the audience, in the guise of a performer doing a performance. because there are a few things that I can do, and that's not the problem. The problem is that there's very little else. I can typecast myself onto this stage and perform the personage, personage? Personage. Personage. The character expected of me. the personage, personage, personage, personage, the character expected of me. And nothing I would do would serve to dispel that image because I am too physically me to be anything otherwise. Fairly well-spoken and eloquent, polite and well-mannered, assimilated and integrated in the city, in the situation, where, unlike others, I choose not to stand out and in doing so make a reputation for myself, a good one as well. And I don't mean that I'm especially unique though just to qualify uniqueness as though there were degrees of it only goes to show how ready I am to let language get the better of me I'm just saying that everything I have to say will fall within the tidy parameters of the predictable or the expected, the permissible and the fine. Because in spite of the fact that I have a hundred things to say about the absolute depravity that defines my existence, the total incompetence that steers my every decision, the corruption of all significant relations by the thirst of my ego, I can't just let loose, go really hard on myself because that's not why we're here and you don't want to hear it either what difference would it make anyway if i were to tear myself down in front of an audience if I were to tear myself down in front of an audience? When everything that happens in front of an audience counts only as a performance anyway. Would that be catharsis? And for whom would that be catharsis? And for whom would that be catharsis? Because that sounds to me like the work of a stand-up comic, insofar as the point of tearing myself down would be to be able or permitted to tear down those around me as well, including you audience, including you. But I don't want to. And if I exist within the performance as a pile of rubble, then I can't throw stones. And if I don't throw stones like I'm supposed to, well, then nothing much else will happen. And the only possibility for me would to become a ruin rapidly on stage. But there are worse things to be than a ruin. I should know because I've been them. And there are worse things than being worse things too. And I should know because I've been better and it was worse. Today, my mother wrote me that what looked like my blessing had in fact always been a curse. And then she followed up this strange message with something equally perplexing. And I quote, You always had to be first. And therein lies the limits of truth, because she didn't actually say the second thing. And I refuse to quote the first statement directly, so there's something fictional or maybe even untrue about it. But in any case, it doesn't matter what my mother says about me because she's not well-placed to pass a judgment that would bear any interest to an audience like you. Just like when she says that I should be kinder to myself, and well, perhaps, perhaps I should. But being kinder to myself, well, I don't really know what that would look like. You know, I would actually prefer, I would much rather chop onions all day, with no real purpose but to cry uninhibitedly instead of trying to find solace in the little winds. When finding solace in the little winds means merely moving my attention from the real issues, the flaming failures of a life poorly lived. Because no restaurant dinner will satisfy the greed in me. And I don't know what to do with this greed, but spew it out here and analyse its contents. So this was my idea. And I thought I ought to give myself something to do on stage. So all being well, I'll have been chopping onions for the duration of my speaking. And the funny thing is, to me at least, the funny thing about it is that you know better what's happening now than i do and isn't that always the case in a performance of any kind of contingency that it's conception it's um kind of the idea behind it gives the audience a kind of kind of the idea behind it gives the audience a kind of omniscience that the performer could never attain. So, like, I could have tried to anticipate your expectations and what you want from me and what you desire and fulfill that. And I guess to some extent I am doing that or I have done that in the past at some time and of course there are some things I won't say like I can't count how many times I've written the words piece of shit in this document and then deleted them. So many times that the backspace key is getting a bit rickety. The backspace key is getting rickety. Because I don't think anyone wants to hear the words piece of shit, but what do I know? I can't just come on stage and start calling people a piece of shit, can I? But what if I want to? And I just can't bring myself to say it. I can't say without shame and without cockatrie, how do you pronounce that? Cockatrie? No, cockatrie. no, coquetry, coquetry. I can't say without shame and without coquetry, boy, I should look that up. I can't say without shame and without being coquette that I am a piece of shit and I'm really, really fine about it. And I'm really, really fine about him. So I'll just speak of my desires instead and hope that you get the picture. I will speak of this desire of mine to crumble and rot, and to be left to do so without any imperative to be fine, to be better, to be good. I would like to let my words melt into a cocktail of mismatched metaphors and fantasy disasters. Abandon causality to the tips of my fingers and leave the cognitive mind alone for a minute. the cognitive mind alone for a minute. I would like to not know and I'd like you to not know and for us to sit with that, not knowing, and hold first. I'd like to be misunderstood and misplaced. To find myself in another situation entirely than the one where I am speaking, out of this body beheld into a microphone unheard, to remain in Pandora's box, with hope, to pin hope down and make sure it cannot escape. To make my bed with hope. To cling to and thus incapacitate hope. So that we would waste away and most likely go unmissed. To imagine the wrongdoings of those unspecified evils that escaped Pandora's box. To imagine their wrongdoings is taking place outside of our container where I cannot be held responsible anymore. I'm not good. I'm not good. I'm not good enough. I am not good. I'm not good enough. I am not good. I'm not good enough. I am not good. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good. I am not good enough. I am not good. I am not good. I am not good enough. I am not good. I am not good enough. Let it be so. Let me be. let me be let me be unfit for purpose and still part of the program I'd quite like a platform upon which I could say nothing and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep until someone lowers the curtain and escorts me off stage. But I can't just. but I can't just I just can't so so goodnight okay so the question is now whether whether i go back over this recording and try it again maybe shut the window so i can't hear that child um no i don't think I will. It's kind of annoying, though, how you kind of think that you're going to do, that you're going to make all these mistakes when you're talking. And then actually the only words that you stumble on are the longer words. Antagonization. Antagonization. And I still don't know how to pronounce coquetry. Coquetry? Shouldn't use words that you don't know how to pronounce when you're writing. I wonder how many onions I got through. Yeah. Yeah. I guess maybe that's enough. Maybe I don't have to over-egg the pudding. I... Yeah. No, nothing comes to mind. I think... I think that might be enough. I got kind of like wrapped up point and would now be the moment to like thank people or like no I think that would be a bit strange um yeah I mean this is I've still got a bit of time I was very generous with myself before not especially good at timing these things nobody really wants to sit around for longer than 30 minutes so yeah I mean I've got a couple of minutes and nothing in particular to say I wonder what kind of and nothing in particular to say. I wonder what kind of style of onion cutting I went for. Or I will go for, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it could have been a bit more punchy. I'm not feeling very punchy at the moment, though, so I suppose it is what it is. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok Спасибо. you you you