JENNY SCHÄFER

Ungracious

Ungraciously I stare at the unwrapped present. A gold-beige corduroy pillowcase, 50 by 50 centimeters, made of 100% polyester. On the spot I know that the present will land directly in the exchange box. I look up, offer warm words of thanks, and ask myself whether she notices that I am lying. That I don’t want any of this. I wonder if she really cannot tell.

She once said that she simply no longer wants to think about the old times, back when none of this was available. That she wants to treat herself, to buy, have, and own the things she can afford now. That she cannot really consider everyone else, that she’s just happy she made it through the reunification period unscathed—work, retraining, change of governmental system, house, money. Not a whole lot, but enough that she can always buy herself shoes at Deichmann if a pair catches her eye. And every year he gives her a Pandora pendant as a symbol of his love for her. They love each other. They love com-
modities. They just want to be full and satisfied. Free from depriva-
tion.

Ungraciously one judges, until she is dead. Then one is faced with all this junk. So we say. Poor design, low-quality manufacturing. People are moving in. They want to tear everything out and redesign the whole place. They went to college and have money. It will be renovated to fit to the times, they announce. The stairs need to be modernized, the bathroom can maybe stay in, but the kitchen has to go.

Ungracious is the Maco furniture store receipt that we happen across. In 2002, she paid 10,000 euros for this kitchen (to the cent).

Ungraciously I am sitting on a balcony. People in my peer group are talking about the new lamp standing on the table. I am pondering how long one can talk appreciatively about a lamp that is only worth appreciating because it has a classic design, because it was rereleased with touch functionality. 455 euros for just a simple object, as the nods of my peer group affirm. I think the lamp looks outrageous, and that it is outrageous to spend 455 euros on a table lamp. This time I garner the courage to ask: “What kind of lamp is that?” My question is met with friendly replies. Still, I note a tinge of astonishment. I ask myself if this is the moment. The “child of the working class” moment.

Text contribution in Camera Austria International 166/2024, pp. 9–20.

TAOUS R. DAHMANI

Echoes of Activism

Born 1993 in Moscow to Bolivian and Algerian parents, Daniel Mebarek embarked on a journey that led him to Paris in 2012. Initially, he pursued a degree in political science at Sciences Po Paris before studying photography at Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis. In his new and ongoing photographic series Radicalis, initiated in 2020, Mebarek explores the mythical past of the Paris 8 University and the present state of student activism on campus. The university, originally known as the Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes (Vincennes Experimental University Center, 1969–80), was created in the aftermath of the May 1968 movement with the aim to be a “university open to all,” regardless of class and status. Through Radicalis, Mebarek navigates the complex interplay of atmosphere, people, and words. In this dialogue with Taous R. Dahmani, the discussion delves into the core concepts driving the project as well as broader issues around the photographic representation of political struggle.

TD Upon discovering your new project, it prompted me to reflect on the fundamental purpose of universities: For whom do they exist?

DM Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu famously argued that educational systems contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities. At first sight, it would therefore seem that universities exist to maintain the power of those at the top. It is interesting to note that Bourdieu developed his theories in France, a country known for its elitist educational system and so-called Grandes Écoles establishments. This is precisely why the ideas of the Vincennes Experimental University Center were so revolutionary when it first opened in 1969. There is a poster (p. 22) that I found during my research that I feel perfectly encapsulates the ethos of the experimental university. The archival image shows a tree with the words “foreigners,” “non-high school graduates,” “blue-collar workers” shaped like roots. The message is clear: higher education should be open to all these people, and to everyone with the “desire to learn.”

TD Vincennes opened at the same time as The Open University at its original site, situated at Alexandra Palace in North London. A few years thereafter, the renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall joined the latter institution as a professor of sociology. Reflecting on this history evokes John Dewey’s 1916 book Democracy and Education, where he posits that education transcends mere preparation for life. Dewey argues that the survival of democratic societies hinges on a particular form of education. This perspective sheds light on a broader implication: the state of our educational system offers profound insights into the health of our democracies, hinting at a correlation with their apparent decline.

DM Indeed, Vincennes University was created as a site of experimentation and intellectual avant-garde. The project not only sought to make tertiary education accessible; it also proposed an innovative curriculum and new pedagogical approaches. For example, the university was one of the first higher education institutions to have cinema and photography departments.

Text contribution in Camera Austria International 166/2024, pp. 21–32.

REINHARD BRAUN

A Field of Mind

“Colonialism, it becomes strikingly evident in the context of [South] America, is also, first and foremost, an epistemic project where the Indigenous was ranged in the same category as the passive, irrational, and nonsignifying entities constituting the abundance of resources to be discovered, measured, named, cultivated and used.” – Ursula Biemann¹

German-speaking countries celebrated the 300th birthday of Imma­nuel Kant in April 2024. At a commemorative event in 2016, the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Academy of Sciences and Humanities) already asked: “Which of Kant’s questions and ideas can help us identify new approaches to contemporary challenges? What impulses for the future can the philosopher from Königsberg give us?”² Well, one of the answers to these questions might emerge along the lines of the observation that Kant “. . . de­veloped his aesthetic of the sublime in differentiation from the ‘uncivilized inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego,’ his anthropology originating from the superiority of the white ‘race.’³ This demarcation not only creates an unbridgeable gap (more on this later), it also ignores the contribution of Native Americans to the critical examination of European concepts of society, social hierarchies, the role of their institutions and, above all, the idea of freedom, a contribution that had a significant influence on the formulation of the European Enlightenment (see, for example, David Graeber and David Wengrow, who in their book The Dawn of Everything focus on the role of Native Americans in this shift in the central values of European thought). The philosophical-historical figure of Kant could thus become a new starting point for destabilizing the racialization and colonization of the universalizing thought of the Enlightenment and modernity and hence limiting its power to continue defining policies and techniques of governing.

1 Ursula Biemann, “The Poetics and Politics of Worlding,” in Becoming Earth, 2021, https://becomingearth.unal.edu.co/home.
2 https://www.bbaw.de/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung-300-jahre-immanuel-kant.
3 Ulrike Bergermann, Nanna Heidenreich, eds., total: Universalismus und Partikularismus in post_kolonialer Medientheorie (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), p. 17. (Trans. A. K.)

Text contribution in Camera Austria International 166/2024, pp. 33–44.

ILIJA MATUSKO

Portraits of Self-Empowerment

Kevin. The name is written hundreds of times in lines carrying down the forearm of a girl leaning on a table in a pose resembling a teacher bending over her students. Is it her own name we see repeated in a kind of incantation, or that of a friend, a crush maybe?

The image calls to mind scenes of after-school punishment where a pupil has to write something on the blackboard hundreds of times over. There’s no face to the image, no person, just this self-adornment, like a tattoo. Quite possibly a sign of boredom, written in a mood of school-induced exhaustion and resignation. Something to fill the emptiness.

A wiped-down blackboard, leaving patterns of chalk residue.

Colored pencils snapped in half.

An ink cartridge wrapped in scotch tape.

A teenager with paint splattered on his work jacket, running his fingers through his hair.

Hands with ultra-long fingernails holding a plastic bottle of Sprite.

Rows of orange chairs against a white background.

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin . . .

Again and again, I study Susanne Keichel’s photographs. I skip over images I initially immersed myself in, while new associations come to mind with others I thought I’d grasped quickly the first time. I see details I haven’t noticed before. Crops, fragments, close-ups, references. What stands out at first is that the pupils are never seen in a group or together with anyone else, but only individually, in seeming isolation, entirely on their own.

When I think of school, I think of tables with rounded corners, chalky fingers, peer rivalries at recess, phys ed in the gym, smoking at the rear exit, blistering summer afternoons, dozing off, feeling numb, day-to-day avoidance of tasks, tiredness without end, graffiti on the walls, and the fear that you might see your own name written there.

The fear of being outed as poor: being exposed.

Text contribution in Camera Austria International 166/2024, pp. 45–56.