A long, narrow bridge stretches across a raging river; it is so narrow that only one person can cross it at a time. Two men step onto this bridge at exactly the same time on opposite sides of the river, and they meet in the middle. Both soon realize that one of them is going to have to turn back in order to let the other cross.
What could happen next can be summarized as follows: the first option is that the stronger of the two men slays the weaker one and throws him in the river; the second is that the two men have a brief discussion before the stronger one slays the weaker one and throws him in the river; and the third is that they negotiate and one man offers the other something that persuades him to turn back.
If Roland Schappert and I had met in the middle of that bridge and, instead of immediately slaying me, he had negotiated with me and offered me a sheet from his series of word-based pictures in return for going back along the bridge, I would probably have gratefully and happily given way to him. Once I had finally managed to tear myself away from the image of a young woman with beautiful large eyes, my choice would have fallen upon a portrait-format sheet with the word LONELY written in large letters over a not immediately legible body of text. My attention drawn by this lament, I then read the following lines on the second, underlying level:
HEUTE DARFST DU MICH KÜSSEN, MORGEN FIKCNEN, ÜBERMORGEN DAFÜR NUR KUSCHELN, MONTAGS DANN MEINE HAND HALTEN, DONNERSTAGS SCHLAFE ICH DANN ALLEINE BIS 11 UND NÄCHSTEN MITTWOCH BIST DU MEIN KULTURATTACHÉE
(TODAY YOU MAY KISS ME, TOMORROW FCUK ME, BUT THE NEXT DAY YOU MAY ONLY CUDDLE ME, THEN ON MONDAY YOU MAY HOLD MY HAND, ON THURSDAY I’LL SLEEP ALONE TILL 11 AND NEXT WEDNESDAY YOU’LL BE MY CULTURAL ATTACHÉE)
This is not, therefore, a matter of one person providing valid reasons (because clearly there are none) for the other to retreat from the halfway point of the bridge. In the end it is not a question of understanding: it’s not about attaining comprehensibility – it’s about coming to an agreement and communicating the incomprehensible, the incommensurable. In our case, the solution to the problem comes in the form of a word-based picture with a beautiful, enigmatic language and grammar that is more convincing than any seemingly rational argument. In a curious way that cannot be easily explained, the letters and words which have been scored into the copper panel seem plausible. And, as in this particular sheet with its suggestive title LONELY – which can also be read as LOVELY – it is often the fragmentary nature, disjointedness or puzzling structure of a sentence or word that attracts and holds the viewer’s attention.
Sometimes these texts seem like truths that have been gathered up from the wayside, rising and falling – sometimes gently, sometimes heavily – between the surface and the ground. But perhaps Roland Schappert is not a gatherer but a hunter: perhaps these are not found items at all, but actually hunting trophies. Because there are supposed to be people who purposefully – and only for that reason – walk past others in order to catch snippets of what they are saying.
I believe that Roland Schappert is one of these people who capture words and phrases. Many of his sentences and terms oscillate between barely tolerable triviality, spiteful provocation and unassailable truth. They could have been overheard at a bar, for example, or in some other place where people will casually chat about whatever they feel like and enthusiastically converse about everything under the sun. After a few beers, some people get a bit carried away and come out with stronger remarks and bold assertions.
But you won’t be given something for nothing at the bar either: you won’t get to hear anything unless you join in and have a drink. You have to immerse yourself and devote your full attention to the people, the situation and the surroundings, but without getting completely absorbed or losing yourself in a world that is not your own. You have to be aware of this risk of losing control and realize that you are going to have to cross the border twice, to get in and back out of the situation. The temptation to overstep boundaries and break taboos is usually stronger than the accompanying fear, however. If we find a situation so enticing that we want to transform ourselves in order to leave our own world behind and enter the alien environment inhabited by these other people without being detected, we first of all have to find a way of gaining entry. Once we have done this, we can forget who we are and where we have come from for a time. We can disregard where we are and immerse ourselves completely, not only with our eyes, in surroundings that were alien to us just a moment ago but have now become real. But we cannot stay here very long – our artificially generated configuration is too unstable for that. Sooner or later our true self will call us to order. Then we must inconspicuously go back across the border through which we gained entry a short time ago.
It is very difficult to gauge in advance what those who poach on unfamiliar territory will be able to use of their catch in their own world. The chances of making a good haul improve with time and practice, however. Roland Schappert is clearly adept at dipping in and out of different worlds to gather inspiration for his poetry and pictures, for example from his forays into the realm of those who prop up the bar. WUNDERMÄDCHEN (WONDER GIRL) and TRÜMMERFRAU are the kinds of terms that crop up in old men’s stories, as is the phrase SCHEIS... SPIEL DAS ÄLTER WERDEN (GODDAMN GAME OF GROWING OLD) or the observation MÄRCHEN MÄDCHEN SPIELEN DAS DUNKLE LIED (FAIRYTALE GIRLS PLAY THE DARK SONG). No subject is taboo, however what is asserted so vehemently in the heat of the moment usually only holds good for that particular moment, such as the statement LOVE IS NOT THE END or a categorical NIX FIKCEN (NO FCUKING).
Other sentences appear to have more weight; their wording seems more deliberate and to derive from a much more complex context. The reproach WIE DER PAUSCHALURLAUBER SPIELST DU ZIEMLICH SCHAMLOS (LIKE A PACKAGE HOLIDAYMAKER YOU ARE A PRETTY SHAMELESS PLAYER), for example, is aimed directly at someone and appears to be an insult, while the following chorus-like four-liner could have been composed by a fatalist:
CHECK EIN, CHECK AUS
CHECK ICH EIN, CHECK ICH AUS?
CHECK EIN, CHECK AUS
CHECK ICH EIN, CHECKST DU AUS.
(CHECK IN, CHECK OUT
AM I CHECKING IN OR OUT?
CHECK IN, CHECK OUT
WHEN I CHECK IN, YOU CHECK OUT.)
So this is how it might have been. Or it may have been completely different. This is probably due to the fact that hearing and reading always involve mishearing and misreading, because the text always communicates something beyond what the author originally meant, even if he or she wasn’t intending anything in particular. And to cap it all, there may also be a text concealed within the text.
In the end it is likely that the most we can hope for is for the other person to understand a little bit of what we think we have said. So even if Heinz von Foerster was right and it is generally the listener and not the speaker who determines the meaning of an utterance – even if, at the end of the day, nobody is interested in the meaning of what is said, and it is only a matter of beauty and truth – even then, Roland Schappert’s text-based images evoke meaning and significance. It is enough, therefore, for them to exist and conjure up strong impressions and lavish images for some people, while for others they may seem to offer no scope at all for deeper interpretation.
Many a well-meaning person who is determined to find a particular message in the written text might think that it always revolves around love. But even if that were the case, we would be dealing with a subject which is teeming with unanswerable and not particulary pleasant questions.
So why all the effort? Why do we even concern ourselves with such things? “Overwhelmingly unanswerable”. Which again is a quotation, only this time not from Roland Schappert, but borrowed from a poem by Gottfried Benn:
Everybody has heaven, love and the grave
We won’t concern ourselves with these things
The culture vultures have worked them all over.
What is new, however, is the question of sentence structure
And it is pressing:
Why do we express something?
Why do we rhyme or sketch a girl
Or doodle on a hand’s breadth of drawing paper
Countless plants, tree tops, walls,
the latter as fat as maggots with tortoise heads
Pulling themselves along uncannily low
In a certain order?
Overwhelmingly unanswerable!
It’s not the prospect of a fee,
Many starve to death over it. No,
it is an impulse in the hand,
Remote controlled, a brain condition,
perhaps a belated saviour or totem animal,
A priapism of form at the expense of content,
It will pass,
But for today sentence structure
is primary.
“The few, who thereof something really learned” – (Goethe) –
of what, in fact?
I assume: of sentence structure.
NO MAN’S LAND, Katalog, Hardcover, 64 Seiten, mit ca. 45 Farbabbildungen und Texten von Andreas Bee und Thomas Wagner, deutsch/engl., Salon Verlag, Köln 2010. ISBN 978-3-89770-365-0
