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finsterhund · 3 years

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A comprehensive guide to Heart of Darkness lost media. Fake, and real

a forward: there appears to be some sort of conflict between Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir. Things Eric speaks about, Fred denies. However Eric generally has proof to support his side of things but Fred never provides such.

I will edit this as I go along. I intend to source things as best I can. I will not post it to a better website until it is adequately sourced.

I’m not currently planning to include press material, promotional renders, alternate releases of the final game, etc. here (yet!! that may change)

The Movie

What we know is true:

Dreamworks was interested in adapting Heart of Darkness as a feature-length computer animated movie. Predominant parties at play were Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. They invited several of the devs including Eric to the Dreamworks studio in LA, showed them Prince of Egypt storyboards, and toured them around. The movie was never made and development was never started.

According to Eric, the head of Virgin Interactive, Martin Alper repeatedly went to Paris to bother and harass him to abandon all work on the game and give the movie rights to Katzenberg. Eric didn’t want to throw away all that work and wanted to release the game first. Alper abandoned the team and project soon after, dooming the game to years of development hell as they needed to find a new publisher. Fred claimed that “half of the article (in which Eric discussed this) was incorrect” but never went into detail as to how or why

Rumors:

Even though George Lucas was interested in HoD’s display at several expos, he did not involve himself in any film ideas. It is believed he may have stolen ideas of alien monster designs for use in the Phantom Menace but this can easily just be coincidence and is unfounded.

The movie was not going to be live action despite some fan speculation.

The Pilot Animation/character test

What we know:

In Eric Chahi’s biography he mentions that a small animation studio did contract work of some animation concepts for Heart of Darkness. They were ultimately replaced with what Amazing would go with. This may or may not be associated with the same concepts as when they briefly thought to make the cinematics with 2D bitmaps but it is unclear. Eric states that this pilot was made however and in a demo reel from the studio they mention working with Virgin and Amazing Studio.

Rumors:

Fred said it wasn’t a thing but didn’t clarify.

This might have been the opening cutscene in 2D, or it may have just been character models and test animation. It is currently lost entirely with no actual stills of the thing itself.

Blood

What we know:

Someone untrustworthy but people latch onto this sort of shit said the original version of the game has blood in it. We know from tradeshow footage, digging through the final game’s code, an early build of the game, etc. that if anything the original versions were LESS violent. There is no evidence there was ever blood. Anymore than there’s evidence of the poison berries (which we will get to later)

The Gameboy Advance port

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was going to be ported to the Gameboy advance. According to Frederic Savoir the project was quickly canned due to cartridge costs that Nintendo didn’t want to pay for.

Rumors:

Someone claiming to work on this port said that Infogrames founder Bruno Bonnel wanted the game to have an Adidas promotion and change Andy’s shoes. Fred says this isn’t true, and there’s no evidence that this was ever an actual thing.

The Jaguar Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was briefly considered to be published on the Atari Jaguar. There are internal letters discussing how good of an asset it would be for the console. That’s as far as it ever apparently went.

The fake developer copypasta:

A copypasta of obviously fake ideas that were potentially given from Amazing to this apparent Jaguar dev has been passed around since 2014. This included poison berries that would make Andy explode, fan-theory sorta ideas about how other children perished in the darkland, a magic mirror, and what is very clearly just the maggots from spiritual successor “Limbo”. This individual provided no proof and his story was far from convincing. And no evidence that someone other than the Amazing team themselves having access to official development code from the game has ever been brought forward.

The Saturn Version

What we know:

Before the game ultimately came out for Playstation, it was going to be a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn with Sega purchasing an exclusivity from Virgin Interactive. This fell through due to Virgin intentionally (according to Eric) throwing a monkey wrench in things and the Saturn was not viable when they were finally able to publish the game after getting picked up by Infogrames.

There is an incomplete playable demo of the first level and first two story cinematics in English and Japanese from the 1996 Toy Tokyo Show. In it there are slight programming differences such as a screen sliding transition animation, the inability for spectres to eat Andy, features cut from the final game involving the shadow dogs that are still mostly present in the final game’s code, and some slight graphical differences.

Frederic said the Saturn was easy for him to program on, and he finished things quickly so it was likely fully playable but no complete copy has been found.

Rumors:

It is unknown if there is a full build of this version of the game for Saturn. The Toy Tokyo Show build is the only publicly known one.

Based on footage from other events it appears to be from after changes were made to spectre sound effects and some behaviors. So this may have been a build from after the game was altered to be “easier” as mentioned by Eric Chahi at the time.

The Phillips CDI Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was offhanded mentioned a handful of times in a few CDI magazines in 1996. But there is no actual evidence the game was actually in development for the console and it was never confirmed in more trustworthy publications. CDI has less evidence than the planning letters of the Jaguar version. A supposed slipcover of a Heart of Darkness CDI CD was supposedly in existence but the guy claiming to have it couldn’t or wouldn’t prove this, with the only evidence appearing as convincing as a fake mock-up photoshop job and CDI websites discussing the final version of the game in full despite providing no evidence development for the console existed in the first place.

The most likely explanation is some idiot at Virgin said “CDI” when discussing this at-the-time secretive project because it would have had to be on a CD-based console and there weren’t that many of them yet at the time and this slip up briefly spread.

The iMac Version

What we know:

There was discussion of a Mac OS version of the game being developed, but nothing about the final product has surfaced online.

There was a page titled “imac” on the official website but the image files weren’t archived.

Heart of Dakness: The Return of Shados

What we know:

A scam artist on indiegogo pretended to be affiliated with Amazing Studio by using stolen assets and copying the kickstarter campaign of a different indie game in an effort to scam HoD fans out of money.

Both Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir collectively agreed that this was a big fat scam.

It got taken down in under 24 hours of its discovery after I personally called the guy out on being a scamming piece of fucking shit and tattled to Fred.

As it was a scam with its only “evidence” being stolen text and doctored fan art and concept art from the original game, it’s very obvious nothing about this mess actually existed.

Delicious meal.

Merchandise (various)

What we know:

There are photos of merchandise, there have been real items show up, and there have been rumors or discussion of potential merchandise. Real confirmed ones include:

The Vicious and Amigo action figures. Given away for contests, at trade shows, sold on the infogrames store, and potentially included as part of a special box set of the French version

The Japanese big box version came with a mousepad. It is different than the round mousepad that also exists. We do not know where the round mousepad originated from. Potentially tradeshows or contests like the other items here.

Playstation controller and memory card. A memory card was sold separate in the UK, and in France a controller and memory card set were sold. Only photo of the set is in Eric’s collection. Memory card has shown up several times online. I own a complete sealed one.

The hat. Given away at press events, potentially worn by team members, and a version was also available on the infogrames store. Only physically existing version documented has the VIRGIN logo on it however so there’s definitely variations

Skateboard and t-shirt. Discussed in contests. Photos in magazines. Have never shown up so far. skateboard may have been available on infogrames store.

Photos exist of a backpack and fanny pack. Eric has these, the only known ones to exist, in his collection. Fred said they were officially released but they have yet to show up.

Rumored Merch:

A blanket. Briefly mentioned as if it genuinely existed on a French forum

Probably more tbh but my memory is shit. As I am writing this it is 2AM

#text post #long post #heart of darkness #lost media

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worldcakecakecake · 5 years

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The Angel of Venice

Ludwig is an archeologist who gets a big assignment of researching a recently discovered statue. As he is doing his usual inspection with his touches against the stone, he ends up breaking part of a curse that turns the statue human.

Feliciano was cursed long ago, why and how he does not know, continuing to suffer transformations from stone to skin. Ludwig intends to fix this and find answers. Together they will traverse Europe looking for clues, stories and even an adventure that would help them solve the mystery and break the full curse before it’s too late.

Will this be the last chapter before a hiatus? I really don’t know, there’s still some more in the draft page that PERHAPS could make it for an extra chapter, but I can’t make any promises. I’ll probably make a post here in this blog later in the day if it does go into hiatus. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Chapter 4

When Ludwig woke, the first thing he noticed was Roderich, sleeping his oddly unkept position, body in a weird array with hands extending uncomfortably, no glasses and hair standing in unreasonable ways. He chuckled, a movement that had another stirring…and that’s when he noticed that he had Feliciano resting on him, taking a good side, his entire being one of comfortable bliss. If it wasn’t for the shock, Ludwig would have admitted he looked beautiful.

“Feliciano…” he called, slight this time, not wanting to disturb anyone in the room.

“Mmm…” Feliciano moaned out, uncaring.

“Feliciano…what did I tell you about sleeping in my bed…”

“Mmm…something about…not doing it,” and yet he cuddled more into him.

“Mhm.” Ludwig could only respond, hoping the other could notice…yet they remained as they did. To his embarrassment, this was the exact moment Roderich decided to awaken, startled at what his hazy vision saw, quickly going for his glasses, cleaning them well before placing them on his face. Ah…he thought it was worst. Ludwig could notice him trying to hide a hard laugh, smirking and getting crazy ideas over this. Ludwig in turn glared, hoping he understood that he didn’t want a single word.

“Can we still go to see flowers, Ludwig?” Feliciano dared ask, eyes still shut, yawning and stretching, but his hold always coming back to the large blond.

Ludwig rolled his eyes and Roderich had to continue to hide whatever burst that wanted to be free.

Mostly because Ludwig and Roderich loved the view, they settled heading on foot to Piazzale Michelangelo. On the way, Ludwig could make the necessary calls that got him his ex’s number again…and actually calling her, and Feliciano could see and pick all the flowers he wanted, a quite gorgeous bouquet in his arms as they moved. While Ludwig talked to her, exuding a lot of stress, Roderich had to remind him to breathe and Feliciano thought he could help by placing a white lily on his chest pocket.

As Feliciano’s bouquet grew lager and he realized he couldn’t hold it fully in his hands, he began giving to many of the passerby, being working men, tourists, groups of friends on a stroll, even small little children that shyly laughed as they accepted. In part, Ludwig and Roderich wanted to scold him, but in another, it was indeed something sweet that they ended up accepting. By the time they reached the heights of the Piazzale, Florence shown in all it’s beautiful red between these gorgeous mountains, did they take seating in one of the steps to relax, for Ludwig to finish his call and for Feliciano to fix the now remaining flowers in his bouquet.

“…ja, ja…thanks, thanks a lot,” Ludwig hanged up the call, releasing a deep breath of relief, hanging his head and trying to settle himself well again.

“Ludwig, are you all right?” Feliciano questioned, nearing well, ready to offer his entire bouquet if it made him feel better.

“Yeah, yeah…I’m fine, in fact, I have really good news.” He raised his head in a more positive outlook. “The sketchbook…she has it.”

“She does?” Both Roderich and Feliciano surprised.

“Yes! It’s been in the archives in Brussels for centuries, she’s part of a research group that’s been trying to find the artist for decades.”

“That’s wonderful! Now all we need to do is head there right now and take it back!” Roderich suggested.

“Yeah…we can’t do that.”

“What?” Roderich was indignant.

“Isn’t it…supposed to be mine?”

“Well…yeah, it is, but things are complicated now and she can’t just give something that the archive owns and is worth thousands of euros to just some random boy I’m going to bring over, no matter how we try to explain it. Once they find out who the artist is, they plan to exhibit it in a museum. The best she could do is let us see it and look through it.”

“What did you tell her?”

“About what we found out here. Told her about the statue and how I think it’s the same artist.”

“Do you want me to get copies of the documents we found?”

“It would be best. I’m also trying to see how I can explain Feliciano.”

“We have time to think of something. For now, we need to plan our trip to Brussels immediately-”

They conversed on about plane tickets and places of stay, all unknown things to Feliciano, so he distracted himself with the wonderful view, enchanting, taking his breath and letting himself the moment to just gaze.

It was indeed a beautiful city, a shame that he could not remember it well, especially when he had once been raised there. He extended his gaze through every street and building he could spot, as if mapping a route deep into the city, deep into searching, to finding. Suddenly he remembered as the streets were once, he remembered walking them in known steps, greeting familiar faces and taking practiced shortcuts, confident and as joyous he knew he had always been.

And then there was him, reaching his hands and welcoming to what would surely be a lover’s embrace. Feliciano remembered that moment fondly, running and accepting those arms to be wrapped around him, laughing and caressing this man’s long blond and rowdy hair.

And from devotion, came poison.

Despite how beautiful the memory, Feliciano felt evil now, a reach to let go, to scream at his past self to get away from him.

Those past green eyes burned in a magic that was to harm. It was the heat enough to get him back, to breathe heavily, standing and even letting the flowers drop to the steps.

“Feliciano?” Ludwig worried, standing alongside him, placing a hand on his shoulder hoping to steady him.

“What is going on?” Roderich asked then, noticing the depth of fear in Feliciano’s eyes, as well as how his body easily moved along with every harsh intake of breath.

“I saw him…” he managed to utter, although still as shaken.

“You saw who?”

“The man…the man that did this to me.”

“Did you get a name? A description? Anything he said that could give us a clue!” Ludwig rushed them to the airport gate.

“I already told you, all I got was a memory, something from when we were in Florence together,” Feliciano answered, readily carrying his own bag, comfortable and sure in his teal buttoned shirt and jeans.

“Blond, green eyes…doesn’t really give us much, Feliciano,” Roderich commented.

“I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t remember him that well,” he saddened.

“How did you even know if he was the one that gave you that transformation?”

“I don’t know…I just…felt like he was. I was really scared and I really…wanted to get away from him…”

Boarding began, the three moving together forward.

“Hopefully the sketchbook in Brussels can give us more information.”

“This is it,” and she gently placed the old sketchbook on the table, before them, the woman using gloves for any kind of movement or opening.

Feliciano didn’t get why Ludwig was so scared about coming to see her. Laura, as she had been introduced to him, was a beautiful young woman, graceful, kind, yet with optimism in her eyes and even in the red of her lips. She had been smiling to the three of them ever since they arrived, without any of the menace Feliciano was expecting after Ludwig’s worries.

“Can we look through it?” Ludwig had already asked several times. Laura sighed, but maintained her calm, her true kind exterior.

“Yes, you can, just be careful, and gloves at all time,” she warned, pointing with command to the pairs she left for the three on the table.

Feliciano was the first to wear his, wanting to already be reminded of more with surely all the pieces that book held.

It was small, could easily fit in any small bag, but it had a plentiful amount of pages, surely giving it weight. Its cover was made of leather with a beautiful encrusted border like that of the vines of a flower. Simple, nothing of strong reminder, but Feliciano could already feel a strong sense of belonging, of sensing himself in it.

Laura did the favor of opening, revealing the first blank pages, in one there was smudge, unintelligible, but Feliciano then remembered that it was where he had long ago written his name, claiming its belonging to him. Nothing else was mentioned when the first drawing showed itself, a beautiful view of old Florence. Feliciano took a wondered breath, remembering then the tall building he had sat on to get this perfect image, how he had to sneak in, later getting into huge trouble when he had been found out. He smiled, remembering then the harsh scolding he got from his grandfather, mother and brother.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Laura had seen his grin, guessing it to be one of interest to the image drawn.

“Yes…yes it is,” he admitted, Ludwig and Roderich agreeing, just as taken with the first of the drawings.

Laura continued on the passing of pages, showing them ones of old bottles of wine, a feast with drinks, quarrelling lovers, a sophisticated noble lady, a poor gypsy woman, then flowers and flowers and flowers.

Yes, Feliciano knew it was his, but none of them sparked enough for him to remember something so full. He still couldn’t remember drawing any of these.

Both Roderich and Ludwig could tell it wasn’t working. They had come to learn the kind of gaze Feliciano would take when he did.

“Are you guys…looking for something in particular?” Laura wondered as she noticed the somberness they all took.

“Is this…the only book you have with these kinds of drawings?” Feliciano wondered.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s pretty unique, and trust me, I’ve tried hard to find other squares and paintings to compare…but nothing,” she was truly disappointed at that, as were the rest.

The three newcomers thought on about what they should do next, where should they head and what other direction could any of Feliciano’s newest memories at least give them. Feliciano kept on caressing the old pages and leather tenderly, as if petting a small creature to life again, a life that could return to his mind and alight everything.

“Is it possible to have a copy?” Roderich asked, not wanting to lose something that was still too precious to Feliciano even if it didn’t end up really helping. There was still the chance it could later evoke something though.

“Sure! We already have some scanned files in the archive computer. We can send it to one of your e-mails.”

“Thank you, I appreciate-” they spoke on other matters that Feliciano didn’t feel like paying attention to, instead focusing on the sketch of a child, a girl playing between flowers, a tender smile that seemed somehow familiar. He remembered how easily she would laugh and enjoy any simple game Feliciano brought here, even explaining these codes- codes? What codes? He asked himself.

He then remembered…this girl, pointing and giggling to a page in his sketchbook…on this very page, a game between the flowers and the very girl’s smile. A code…a code…he taught her that, she began doing her own because he taught her…and yet now, in his mind, he followed a path she had made in his memory, unlocking, feeling, until he could read a message perfectly.

This time, she taught him.

“Remember to go to Amsterdam in twenty nights. Papa got a painting,” he read aloud, interrupting whatever chatter went out between them.

“Excuse me?” Laura raised her eyes to him.

“Amsterdam…Amsterdam…” suddenly it clicked, suddenly he felt the jolts of that reminder. “Amsterdam! I have to go to Amsterdam! It’s something about my papa! About papa!” Feliciano shouted, jumping from his seating to head over to Ludwig, hands on his shoulders, gently trying to pull him to join him already in a hurry to the place.

“Fel-Feli-Feliciano! Calm down!” Ludwig was startled by the suddenness, taking Feliciano’s wrist in quite a gentle hold, looking into his eyes and passing over that serenity that had Feliciano easily stilling.

Laura took well notice of this, questioning.

“Why this sudden mentioning of Amsterdam?”

“I remembered something! There’s a code! A code throughout the whole sketchbook!” Feliciano had no problem with admitting loudly.

Roderich sent a gaze to Ludwig to let him know that they should be careful with what Feliciano admitted right now, especially in Laura’s presence.

“A code? How could you find a code?” Laura wondered, Roderich and Ludwig alerting, figuring it was already too late and they had to be quick to make up something.

“I believe we should be leaving now!” Roderich suddenly stood, hurrying over to the door hoping the other two followed. Although slow and surprised, Ludwig stood as well and began dragging Feliciano out.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Laura called and they did well to stop, hoping she wouldn’t question on.

“Don’t worry, it’s something of ours that we can manage with,” Ludwig tried to distract.

“It seemed to do with the sketchbook…” Laura then noticed the heavy and even caring hold of hands Ludwig and Feliciano kept. “I must know as well if it’s to do with it. Please, let me hear about this! I might be able to help!”

The three gazed between each other, Feliciano confident and happy to tell, but Roderich and Ludwig were always as skeptical.

“Finding out more about this sketchbook means a lot to me, and anything that can bring more light to it, makes years of searching and studying worth it. I’ll repay back with my own service and knowledge.” There was such a plead in her tone and voice that the other two men were falling weak to.

They did need all the help they could get, but for now, as Ludwig sighed, it was best they talked to Feliciano by themselves and then speak about what limits they were willing to give Laura about what was really happening.

“We have to go right now anyways,” Ludwig worded for all, “we can meet up again tomorrow if you wish.”

“Leuven, right in the midafternoon,” she had declared sure, almost scolding.

“We will be there then,” Ludwig promised, then having the three leave.

Laura noticed that Ludwig didn’t let go of Feliciano’s hand for a moment.

“Having that cup by the bottle of milk is a reminder that I was supposed to get some ceramics for mamma,” Feliciano pointed to the computer screen, where the scans of the sketchbook were presented.

This design was of an old abandoned garden, yet Feliciano added that reminder with those sudden details. Ludwig admired how he made them fit in with colors and light even if there were rather odd items to have in such a place.

“And this one,” he clicked so they could have the next page, “was a reminder to go to a ball I was invited to. The time was seven, for how the people are placed, and the date was the 10th of January with the positioning of the walls of this room.”

Ludwig was truly impressed, continuing to have Feliciano discuss and tell him all kinds of messages spread throughout this sketchbook.

“Do you think anything here will tell you about the person who did this to you?”

“If there is, I haven’t been reminded.” They had begun to go through all the sketchbook again. “No…I don’t think I mentioned him.”

“The Amsterdam appointment you had though,” Roderich wanted to remind, “why was it so important that you got like that?”

“Because there was a painting I had to get from papa!” He agitated as before, even raising himself from the hunched position he had over Ludwig’s head as if he was to go that instant.

“Yes, you’ve made it clear. Please, sit down, we’re not leaving anytime soon,” Roderich scolded, bringing him to a seating in his hotel bed.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…I remember that I had been planning for that trip for a while before I…was here!” He raised his arms around him.

“With your dad?” Ludwig had been wondering.

“Yes!”

“I thought you didn’t have any contact with him and you hadn’t mentioned anything about him till now,” Roderich questioned.

“Well…to be honest, I still can’t remember anything else,” he deflated, “but I know it’s important! I feel it! And maybe through this painting we can figure something out!” He had a point there, Ludwig and Roderich exchanging glances, surely deciding if they were now to take that trip to Amsterdam to find this painting.

“Where would we look for such an old painting in Amsterdam? If it’s even still there,” Roderich already exasperated.

“Laura!” Feliciano glowed.

“Laura? What makes you think she’ll know?”

“She studies these kinds of sketches and paintings, especially my sketchbook! Maybe she can help us find a connection!” He stood once again in excitement.

He was right, one that Roderich and Ludwig wished they didn’t have to agree on. They gazed to one another, making that choice.

“Should we let her know?” Roderich decided to word.

“I don’t know…should we?” Ludwig decided to leave that on Feliciano.

He was desperate and he was willing give and tell anything if it meant sure answers. “She seems trustworthy, I think we can tell her,” he decided.

Ludwig and Roderich sighed, already hating the explanations they would have to give her, as well as her point of decree of marking them crazy.

Ludwig practiced what he would say under his breath, while Roderich helped Feliciano with the suit he decided on.

“Isn’t that a little too much to meet up with Laura?” Ludwig questioned, although admitting how well it hugged his forms, the dark and unique colors making him vibrant and surely a beacon for many to stare.

“I always have to look presentable in front of a lady, especially one who we will tell something very important and she to us.”

“Feliciano, we’re not entirely sure she’ll have this information.”

“And are you trying to woo her?” Roderich glared, halting his help, clearly in refusal if this was the case.

“Oh no! Laura is a beauty, but I am not in pursue of her like that. I just want to be presentable.” His smile was honest.

“All right. Just behave, be careful what you tell her, don’t shout, calm down and-” Ludwig was dealing with the keys, getting the door for them, when his words were interrupted by a familiar blinding light. As always, when Ludwig and Roderich would recover, Feliciano’s lively presence was gone, instead, he was a statue again, in its known grace, now both just sighing, beginning to get used to it. “-or just…turn and…we don’t have to deal with Laura,” Ludwig smiled, relieved, ready to take off his coat and settle with staying in the room.

“No! Ludwig, someone has to go talk with her still, even if without Feliciano. We already established a time and meeting spot and it would be awfully rude to leave her waiting,” Roderich scolded.

Ludwig wore an angered expression, but followed his words and opened the door ready to leave. “Then come on, let’s go.”

“I think I’ll stay here instead and watch over Feliciano. I’ll leave everything to you,” Roderich still managed to excuse, finding hard to hide his smirk, because he’ll be leaving Ludwig alone with his ex.

Ludwig let him his opportunity, fierceness in his eyes but deciding on heading on.

“If Laura finds everything hard to believe, you know where to find us.”

It was a beautiful, shinning day. Deep blue sky, a sparse cloud to decorate, shinning flowers, plentiful people and surrounding architecture and art to shine. Brussels was indeed enchanting for a stroll today. It made Ludwig wonder how Feliciano would react to the colors of the day, to the pastries in the windows, the statues, even the people that joined for dessert and coffee at cafes. He groaned and scolded at himself for wondering…even missing him in such moments, decided then on just repeating the words he would tell Laura about his mission.

He reached the Leuven exact, Laura expecting Ludwig to do so, waving at him from the nice table she chose outside to enjoy from the lovely day.

“Where’s Roderich and Feliciano?” She instantly wondered.

“They stayed back at the hotel. We’ll…probably join them later.” He took his seat comfortable, looking over the menu of small artisanal coffees this café held.

“Join them?”

“We came here to talk, didn’t we?” Ludwig wanted to hurry.

“Learn to relax a little, Ludwig, order your coffee, breathe, we can talk about this calmly and without hurry.”

The waiter then arrived with her coffee, Ludwig taking his order, giving her time to enjoy from a drink, letting a plentiful silence settle that to be honest, did make Ludwig feel more at calm.

“I do have a curious question you don’t mind me starting with.”

“What is it?”

“Feliciano.”

“What about him?”

“Be honest with me, is he your new lover?”

Ludwig’s eyes widened in such a comical way Laura feared of spilling her coffee, stopping at mid sip.

“He…He…oh my god, he…uh…” whatever nonsense he was to continue with was stopped with his own coffee arriving, not paying attention to its presentation and aroma when we was still thinking how he was to answer. He hadn’t planned or prepared for this. “He…he is not!” He managed.

“You two seemed really taken…not even in our relationship did you ever look at me the way you did at him.”

Ludwig reddened, tapping his fingers on the table rapidly, a habit he tended to present when he was nervous, surely with countless of things rampaging around his mind.

“Your judgement was mistaken. Feliciano is just a friend.”

“Are you sure? Just a friend?” Laura still questioned, for now not buying it. “You can tell me, you know I won’t have a problem. Feliciano seemed really sweet and you two actually make a very cute couple,” she smiled trying to establish that confidence and trust.

Ludwig was touched by it, but he had to deny, yet again. “Yes, he is just a friend helping me…in a particular way with this assignment.”

Laura raised an eyebrow, “In what particular way?”

And so Ludwig neared and began to tell. Laura was patient enough to sit and listen well through his whole speech, only reacting in the contours of her expression, Ludwig knew unbelieving and skeptical for now, but at least she didn’t laugh and make any instant accusations. There was an intimidating silence by the time he finished, Laura, of course, not at all convinced.

“I…never took you for such a storyteller, Ludwig,” she admitted, leaning back, somewhat disappointed.

“I expected you to say something like that.”

“Then why tell me this? Why can’t you tell me what’s really going on with the statue? I don’t think coming up with these wild tales is helping both our causes here.”

“I told you because it’s true, because we know you can give us the help you offered.”

“Ludwig, please, just-”

“I am prepared to prove it to you. Come with me and you’ll see.”

Laura sighed, but decided to entertain him, standing, paying for their drinks and settling way to the hotel.

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#the angel of venice #gerita #gerita fanfiction #gerita fanficiton #gerita fic

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rasoir-national · 4 years

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That time smart people found the dumbest reason to oppose gay marriage

Ah, I remember, when gay marriage was voted in France... I was such a fresh young face, nursing my burgeoning depression while going through prep school.. The minister of justice sponsoring the bill happened to be a black woman, so catholics would protest in white togas by throwing banana peels everywhere, weird guys were distributing pamphlets preaching virginity outside high schools... At that time, I honestly believed that anyone who opposed gay marriage was either too dumb or too bigoted to make a convincing argument.

But then, I grew up, I switched from business to law, and then I discovered something : you could be extremely “smart”, and still be bigoted as fuck and make an extremely unconvincing argument that just happened to sound smart if you didn’t think about it for more than 0.3 seconds.

So today, as a special treat to celebrate the end of my exams, let me take you on a magical journey to that one time supposedly the smartest people found the dumbest argument against gay marriage.

So, it wouldn’t be a RazRant (patent pending) if it didn’t start in an unexpected place, right ? This time, we start in the wonderful world of Civil Registration.

What is civil registration ? Well, it’s that thing that keeps track of the population. Here in “developed” countries, it’s a completely integrated part of society : you are born, you marry, you have children, you die, all of this is recorded in the civil registry. In general, cities are in charge of those, and you’ve probably been there at least once if you’ve ever been in a city hall.

But if you’re reading me, you’ve most likely been gravitating around the frev fandom, so you know it’s taken a long time to arrive here : it was only toward the end of the middle ages that churches started being able to somewhat faithfully keep track of their flock. It wasn’t rare for entire archives to be lost or destroyed, and there are entire parts of history that we won’t be able to recover due to this loss.

Pretty much since it was created, modern administration has been paranoid about losing documents, especially those that help keep track of the population. For that reason, civil registration has long worked a certain way : by changing and destroying as little as humanly possible. When something changes in someone’s life, you don’t scratch it or make a new document. You make a note in the margin. Nothing must be erased, or modified so you can’t keep track of what happened. Even nowadays, the only legal case in which a document is “erased” is when a child gets a full adoption (one of the two types of adoptions in french law) : in that case, they get a new civil statute with their new name on it. And EVEN THEN they don’t destroy the old civil statute. They just put a black cross on it like it’s got the plague or something.

New times brought new mentalities : after the second world war, the question of the difference between “legitimate” and “natural” child started garnering attention. Jean Carbonnier, hallowed be his name, who was tasked with rewriting the Civil code, and happened to be a protestant - the reason i’m specifying this is not clear to me, but it seemed very important to every teacher i’ve ever had so - therefore tried to think of ways you could minimize the number of natural children. Let’s be clear, that meant minimizing the ways men could avoid recognizing children. His big idea was this : we need a way we can presume a child is yours, and it’ll be up to you to prove it’s not. Thus was born the presumption of paternity : what it means is that if a woman is married, her husband is presumed to be the father of her child. If he wants to prove otherwise, then he has to obtain a DNA test, instead of the woman having to prove that he is indeed the father. This way, children were more likely to be born with two legal parents instead of one, which meant more rights and more protection.

And all of this went on to be recorded in the civil registry, because that’s really what’s important : to keep track of it all.

Fast forward to a few years ago, the idea of gay marriage is starting to gain traction. Most of the people opposing it are weirdly ultra-religious weirdoes or just bigoted for the sake of it. But wait ! For on the horizon, new heroes appear ! And they’ve brought logic and legal theory with them ! And some of them are my future teachers !

And so they go on to make their own version of THINK OF THE CHILDREN ! Get this : if we let people of the same sex (gender was barely a thing at the time) marry, then what happens to our beautiful presumption of paternity ? How are we supposed to deduce who fathered who, when these two people couldn’t possibly have produced a child together ! [side-note : yeah, i know it’s false, trans people are real*, suck it terfs, unfollow me, yada yada, you know the drill]

Calm down, said, well, everyone. No one is thinking the presumption is going to be destroyed. No one is being delusional : when people of the same gender have a child, the parent(s) who did not give birth to the child will just recognize them (NB: if you’re the birth parent, recognition is pretty much automatic, you have to really go out of your way to remain anonymous). Simple, right ?

“Noooo, that won’t do” said the very smart people.

“Why ?” asked everyone, bemused.

“BECAUSE IT WON’T MAKE SENSE ON THE REGISTRY !”

Yes, believe it or not, this wasn’t so much about thinking of the children than it was thinking of the registry. That poor piece of paper. If we let something that doesn’t make “biological sense” get on the registry, then how is any family going to make sense ? How is a child going to know their origin ? How will people even know if they are related ?? (Fun fact : such a registry exists in Iceland, because the population pool is so small you legitimately have to check that you’re not related to someone before getting with them)

So, because things would be harder to track on paper, people of the same gender shouldn’t be allowed to marry. That was a real argument some real people actually made.

Let’s pretend for a minute this “argument” isn’t bigotry masquerading as concern trolling rolled in bad faith for a moment and explain why this is bullshit.

First of all, I know it may be hard to understand for some people, but the world has changed. We are not at risk at losing the entire department archives if a church burns anymore. Everything is on multiple servers on top of the paper version. Even if we have to modify, rectify or re-do a civil statute, it doesn’t mean a person is suddenly going to be legally erased.

Second of all, and this is really what gets me, the very point of a civil registry is to serve the people. Not the other way around. That goes for all of law and that’s something I see my teachers and fellow students routinely forget : law is not a given truth, it is not “logic”, or “common sense”, it’s a system, a way of framing the world, in order to solve problems. Rules exist not because they are self-evident, but because they serve a purpose. The minute we forget that and think the rules we created should command the way we live simply because they are rules, it’s gone horribly wrong. The way the world and mores change doesn’t and shouldn’t be constricted by the logic of what a law can envision. The fate of every law is to eventually be obsolete. Even incredibly evident, intemporal rules have to be rewritten to fit the times. So what if the way we see parentality is now incompatible with our way of tracking population changes ? It’s that way that has to change, not us. We build laws to structure the world, the same way a house needs solid foundations, but if the family gets too big for your house, you don’t cut your children in half : you rebuild the house.

Law is fascinating. Despite how frustrating it can be, I hope it comes across in those long posts of mine how much I love what I do and how much I believe in what law can do for people. But ultimately, law is a tool. It doesn’t control us. Falling in love with the beauty of law for the sake of itself is a dangerous thing. A theory can just as much be a prison if you spend too much time inside to remember that it’s, in the end, just a construction of the mind. Justified only by its usefulness for enforcing what a society may consider “good” and “reasonable”. I’ve seen some beautiful theories get utterly destroyed by one new jurisprudence, and it’s devastating, because you know you’ve just lost a powerful way to make sense of the world. But the law is not made to be a theory set in stone ; it’s made to be the changing mirror of ourselves, both the idealized and the guiding image of what society aspires to be. So it comes down to this : ultimately, what do you want to preserve ? The rights of a couple and their child ? Or the rights of a piece of paper ?

*if you’re the speculating type, yes, you are correct, the registry argument is the exact same one that they opposed to trans people who wanted to change their birth marker on their civil statute - especially since in France, a potential employer can ask for a copy of it. The way it works is that the correct gender is noted in the margin so the original mention remains untouched. And yes, you are right again : it’s complete bullshit. And a great example of how legal pearl-clutching has very immediate and real consequences on people’s safety.

#law stuff #gay marriage #and now i'm going to sleep #cw homophobia #cw transphobia

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loreholdlesbian · 3 years

Text

Strixhaven Draft Booster Challenge

Hey everyone! For a few sets now, I've been replicating this challenge from GDS3, where you choose a set and have to make a booster pack of custom cards that could be from the set. It's taken a while, both because I've been dealing with the end of school and because I'm a mess of a person. I also don’t have the proper watermarks to put in the images, but I’ll not them in the description when needed

So let's get into it!

Link to the full booster

Link to the reddit post

[All Images are the card described below it]

Common #1

Ancient Mentor 2W

Creature- Spirit Advisor

7, Exile ~ from your graveyard: Put three +1/+1 counters on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.

3/2

This is a card intended to mix the main two white draft strategies. Lorehold cares about graveyardy shenanigans (and spirits), while silverquill cares about +1/+1 counters and the more aggressive stats. And yes, I realize this is just scavenge.

Common #2

Song of Reiteration 1W

Instant

Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control and each other creature you control, and each other creature you control with the same name.

One of my complaints with silverquill is that they really didn't feel englishmajory. Their magic was verbal magic, unlike the other schools, and so I thought a names matter subtheme would be a good fit for them. I also think it's good with the way tokens work in this set, since each school has one token so you're going to have a lot of similarly named creatures running around. I wanted it to work with the existing cards for silverquill, so +1/+1 counters seemed like a good fit.

Common #3

Sudden Shielding 1U

Instant

Target creature you control gets +0/+3 and gains hexproof until end of turn.

Create a Treasure token

WM: Prismari

Since Prismari tends to be a bit of a longer, slower gameplan I wanted to make a defensive card for it. I made it use treasure to make it a bit more prismari. I am worried about the overlap with Beaming Defiance though, I’ll admit, but I couldn’t find a card I liked better to fill this slot.

Common #4

Azra Alchemist 1B

Creature- Azra Warlock

Magecraft- Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, ~ gains deathtouch until end of turn.

2/2

Yes I realize we haven’t seen whether the plane has Azra but I feel that if any plane other than Kylem does, Arcavios is a good shot so why not? This is intended as part of a monocolor magecraft cycle at common since I found it odd that, outside of one card, we only got the pledgemages at common when it comes to magecraft. This originally had lifelink instead of deathtouch for witherbloom synergies, but that had a lot of overlap with existing cards like Leech Fanatic and Silverquill Pledgemage, so I went with deathtouch which also makes bluffing with this card fun.

Common #5

Private Instructor 2R

Creature- Human Shaman

When ~ enters the battlefield, choose one-

Learn

Return target Lesson card from your graveyard to your hand.

3/1

This was originally an uncommon, and it’s possible that would have been a better decision. I like what this does for lessons though, increasing your available toolbox to include cards already spent.

Common #6

Burrog Mage-Student 1G

Creature- Frog Druid

When ~ dies, create a 1/1 black and green Pest creature token with “When this creature dies, you gain 1 life.”

2/1

WM: Witherbloom

This is a card mainly for the witherbloom deck, working with its sacrifice theme and using its pest tokens for lifegain.

Common #7

Ruthless Bully WB

Creature- Vampire Cleric

Whenever another creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it dies, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.

2/2

WM: Silverquill

I would have loved if I could have gotten more of the name-matters theme onto this card, but I think this version works really well with existing silverquill cards and any names-matter rider I added would probably make it too much for common so oh well.

Common #8

Geometric Harmony 1GU

Sorcery

Create a 0/0 green and blue Fractal creature token. Put a +1/+1 counter on it for each token you control.

WM: Quandrix

This card plays up both quandrix’s slight go-wide aspect, as well as the overall token theme of the set. Originally this only counted your Fractals but I like this version better. Much less parasitic.

Common #9

Lorehold Tome 3

Artifact

T: Add R or W.

1R/W, T, Sacrifice ~: Learn.

I wasn’t able to really fit any hybrid into the booster, since most of my cards are common and strixhaven already had three hybrid cycles at common, I didn’t have much room, so this card allowed me to sneak in a bit of hybrid. I also wasn’t able to fit in as many cycles in the booster as I’d like for a multicolor set, but here’s one that I think would be a good fit for the set.

Uncommon #1

Chair of Shamanics 3R

Creature- Minotaur Shaman

2: Scry 1, then exile the top card of your library.

Whenever ~ attacks, until end of turn you may cast instant, sorcery and Shaman cards exiled with ~.

3/3

Each color has its own spellcaster type, and in strixhaven each spellcaster of that color was that type. So I thought it would be cool to have a cycle of tribal cards for those. They’re not a big focus of the set though, which is why it doesn’t hugely encourage playing a ton of Shamans. (Also yes, the flavor of this is that there’s an after school Shaman club).

Uncommon #2

Check Your Work 3G

Sorcery

Choose up to one target card in your graveyard with an even mana value, and up to one with an odd mana value. Return those cards to your hand.

Exile ~.

I was really surprised we made it out of quandrix without a single odd/even card, so I made one. I wish I could have worded this as a “choose one or both” modal card, but with the exile clause this needed there wasn’t really a good way to do that.

Uncommon #3

Fund Raiser 1UR

Sorcery

Create two tapped Treasure tokens.

Draw a card.

This card plays into the prismari theme of playing really big spells by helping you get the mana to do that. I like that this can jump you from 3 mana to 5, since 5 is the mv needed to turn on a lot of prismari cards.

Lesson

Declaration of Study 5

Sorcery- Lesson [U]

Choose two colors. Look at the top six cards of your library, then reveal up to one card of each of those colors from among those cards, put them into your hand, and put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

I really like the colorless instants/sorceries, so I wanted the lesson slot in the booster to be one if I could. This plays into the two color theme of the set, and I think works well as a card a lot of the decks could benefit from.

Rare

Tenure Lich 1B

Creature- Zombie Warlock

Lifelink

~ can’t block.

Magecraft- Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, if ~ is in your graveyard, you may pay 5 life. If you do, return ~ to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter.

This is a bit of a risk/reward card. 5 life is not an insignificant amount, but this card can help you get that back and a recursive 3/2 is definitely nice to have around. I like how this plays with both the witherbloom and silverquill themes

Mystical Archive

Ancient Rite 2GUU

Sorcery [R]

Reveal the top two cards of your library. Put each land card revealed this way onto the battlefield tapped, and the rest into your hand.

Retrace

I wasn’t sure what I should do for the mystical archive, but I decided that making a card that, had it been printed at some point in magic’s history, would make a good mystical archive. I wanted it to be a card that you couldn’t expect to see in standard, and to work well with the set themes. I have a strange love of retrace, and this felt like a good place for it so I went for it. Normally retrace card draw cards are kind of dangerous, because of the way they can fuel themself by drawing you into more lands but this sneakily gets around that.

There we go, that’s all 15! Let me know what you think. Also, let me know about any formatting mistakes I made cause I’m sure I did. And I’ll see you all next time!

Previous Challenges

- Zendikar Rising [Reddit Link, this was before I started posting them to tumblr, I should probably upload it at some point just for consistancy’s sake here]

- Commander Legends [Yes, Stormtide is my alt account]

- Kaldheim

#original post #custom mtg #custom magic #booster challenge #strixhaven

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smallpersiankitten · 7 years

Text

Monster Lover

Read the archive link here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12195630

(Before we start. Hi! This piece is heavily inspired by Piers Anthony's "Zombie Lover." If you haven't read any of his books about the world of Xanth, I really suggest you do. They're delightful and witty and probably some of the first few books I read that legitimately got me into adult literature (Classic literature doesn't count).This isn't technically part of the Must Love Animals Universe so you could read this without reading those stories. I hope you enjoy.)

You couldn’t believe how exhausted you were as you continued to hike in the forest. It was really pretty, you had to admit and you had plenty of time to admire it as you took many stops to catch your breath. You probably would have been more rested had you not stayed up super late chatting with your crush.

You hadn’t planned on it but the minute he asked you if you were free for a video chat later this evening, you just couldn’t say no. As soon as you got home, you had spent your entire evening with your head in the girly magazine you had stolen from work. You highlighted and circled all the beauty and seduction tips. And then spent the last 45 minutes before the call putting on extensive make up but at the same time trying to make it look as natural as possible to get that “just woke up look.” At 8:30 at night.

He was impressed or at least he said he was after being 15 minutes late to the video call. But hey! It’s the thought that counts. You flirted and he flirted back and by the time you were making plans to meet up again, it was nearly 1am. One of the last things he did say was how much he enjoyed girls taking photos in nature.

Hence why you were here. In the forest. He invited you to a get together with some friends in the woods and what perfect way to surprise him than to take a forest photo of your own. Or at least a better one than Brittany.

She had posted one of her sitting on a tree, her hair braided finely into a handmade necklace of daisies and lilacs as she looked out at the rising sun. She was just so fucking perfect and even though you were straight, you couldn't help but feel a slight girl boner for her. Even after she hashtagged it with #soblessed.

Your crush had not only liked it, but wrote “You're so cute! Can't wait to see you 2nite!” Argh! You know you were being ridiculous and it was probably due to the fact that you were about to start your period. Damn you hormones for making you so emotional. Why did you wear a skirt?!

You were getting sidetracked. You only had a few hours left before the party at the cottages and you couldn't risk showing up without having posted one nature photo of you. You scouted for the perfect spot.

You really didn't want to climb a tree. It would look like you had copied her. Plus you didn't want to get sap in your clothes. You walked past a particular opening only to stop and double back. “Woah.”

You almost didn't see it at first as the low hanging willow leaves acted as almost a veil to the small opening before you. You gently pushed it aside to enter. Moss covered rocks surrounded by a collection of brightly colored wildflowers existed before you. It was rather quiet as you wandered inside, the only other sound was the crunch of wood as you stepped on a broken, weathered sign.

You pulled out your phone and broke out into a smile. There was just the right amount of natural light filtered by the leaves, to set you up for a perfect shot. You spotted a rock large enough to be a bed that was covered in thick moss.

“Maybe I could go for a like sleeping beauty motif thing here,” you contemplated. You climbed onto the rock and lied down, expecting the surface to not look as soft as it appeared.

To your surprise, it was. “Oh, this, this isn't actually too bad.” You settled in before pulling out your phone. Right. Photo time. You posed and smiled as sweetly as you could before snapping a bajillion photos. You flipped through them deleting almost all of them until you found a few that were the closest to what you wanted. Looking innocent and naughty at the same time? Yeah, that was kind of physically impossible.

Not that you weren't a little bit of both. Sure you had taken dicks and gone down on more than a couple of them but you hadn't taken any up the butt so did that make you slightly innocent still? Yes? No? Fuck it, you were so going to get a better photo than Brittany if it was the last thing you did.

Finally, a lucky photo was snapped and you were soon choosing a filter for it. You paused on one that looked like it put a colorful crown of flowers on your head and quickly tapped it. Well, well, look at you. You were starting to look like quite the forest princess there. Your eyes lit up and darted to the little description box. Yes. Forest princess had a nice ring to it. You tapped eagerly on your phone’s keyboard, fitting the caption “Forest Princess” just underneath your shot before posting it online.

You waited, constantly tapping the refresh button. You went to hit it for the 27th time when you stopped. He had liked your photo. Your crush had liked your photo You let out a muted squeal and scrolled down. He left a comment! A comment.

“You’re so beautiful! Tonight can’t come fast enough. <3”

You unmuted your squeal and kicked your legs in the air girlishly. “Ahhh!!! He said I’m beautiful! He put a heart next to it!” You clutched your phone to your chest. “This, this is the best day ever!” It felt like you were in high school all over again with butterflies in your chest and your voice jumping an octave or two into unintelligible jumble.

You felt yourself grow sleepy as the excitement began to ebb over you. You had a few hours before the party. It wouldn’t do you any good to stay up and get there early only to pass out. Maybe a tiny nap here wouldn’t hurt. No one said there were bears in this part of the forest. And you were pretty secluded so you doubted anyone would jack your shit. You snuggled into your mossy bess and felt yourself drifting off to sleep to the sounds of the birds and nature.

~~~~~~

You awoke to the feeling of suffocation, sending you into an immediate panic. You resisted the impulse to flail as you woke up fully. You opened your eyes only for them to widen in surprise. Something was on top of you, pressing you against your makeshift bed. Oh my God. Was a bear trying to eat your face?! The absence of pain and the prolonged pressure against your lips clued you on to the fact that you weren’t being eaten. You were being kissed.

Who was kissing you? And why weren’t you stopping them? Maybe, it was a kinda nice kiss, maybe not as soft as you liked but for teeth, you really couldn’t complain...hold up, teeth? What in God’s name were you kissing? The realization that it was something inhuman propelled you to act. Your hands quickly shot out and pushed your “attacker” off of you.

You sat up and quickly felt yourself over. Your clothes were still on. Good. You turned your attention to the intruder. “Hey, buddy, what the fu-fuck…?” Your words died in your throat as you stared at the figure in front of you.

The first image that came to mind was a prince. A prince in shiny armor. Of course, the image was shattered the second you realized that the prince was nearly 8ft tall. And he had no skin. You probably should have stated that second fact first. It just seemed the more disconcerting of the two. Holy shit, it was a skeleton.

The skeleton cleared its throat and attempted to speak.

“WHAT ARE YOU?” You beat him to it.

The skeleton stopped and grinned. How did a skull grin? “I’m a skeleton.”

“No shit,” you gasped. “Why were you kissing me?”

“Oh!” The skeleton appeared to blush. How did he do that? “Well, I figured that would be the best way to wake up my future bride!”

“You don’t wake up total strangers with-BRIDE?” You croaked.

He nodded. “Well, yes, I must admit, I was really worried when I came here that I was going to find some really frumpy looking Monster but this is a pleasant surprise indeed. Even though you are human.”

“I-uh, what? What’s wrong with me being human?” You asked.

“Oh! Nothing. Well, not to me. Maybe to others that could be a problem! But definitely not to me! I just don’t meet many humans, much less a member of royalty!”

“A member of royalty?” You echoed.

“I assumed being a princess meant you were royalty?”

“I-what makes you say that?”

He nodded and pulled out a cellphone. “This is your royal portrait, yes?”

You looked at the phone. “Is that my cell phone?! Give me that!” You snatched the phone from his grasp and stared down at the picture. It was the photo you had taken for your crush. Now shared over several different mediums. The words “Forest Princess” taunted you back as the skeleton continued.

“Yes, your majesty. Your followers really love you. You have at least 500 likes.”

“500? Did you say 500 likes?” You echoed disbelievingly, scrolling down. “I’ve never gotten that many likes before,” you muttered.

“You are quite popular. I don’t see your crown anymore. Is it made of magic?” Your picture had spread like wildfire. There were people you didn’t even know commenting from everything to compliments to phone numbers to links to their own pages. And the number was continuously growing. You shook your head. Focus.

“Hold up, no, no. I’m not...There must be a mistake. You must have me confused for someone else.”

“You were sleeping here in the Grove of Love, weren’t you?”

“Well, uh yeah, just to take a nap.”

“So you understand.”

“Understand what? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you read the sign?”

“Sign?”

“Hmm. Let me see if I can-there it is! It must have fallen off the entrance.” The skeleton realized, reaching down and freeing the wooden sign you had stepped on earlier. He cleared his throat (again, how) and read outloud: “When a woman wants to marry, she sleeps in the Grove of Love. Only a being of good appearance, character and breeding can enter. If he chooses her, he kisses her awake.” He chuckled.

Your eyes widened. “Marry?” You quickly stood up and ran your fingers through your hair. “This-this was a huge mistake. I didn’t see the sign! I was just taking a nap!”

“Oh. Well, live and learn, I suppose. Now come along. We have a lot of planning to do.”

“No! I can’t marry you!” You tried to slide toward the exit only for him to step in your path.

“I will marry you and make you Queen of the Monsters.”

“Queen of what?”

“Monsters. What I am.”

“I thought you were a skeleton,” you couldn’t help but add.

“Well, yes, but a skeleton is a type of Monster.”

“I’m confused,” you admitted.

“Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of time to learn all about our customs on our honeymoon,” he assured you, attempting to place an arm around you.

You dodged that fucker like a snake. “No. There won’t be a honeymoon! Because we’re not getting married!”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Once you have decided to let someone marry you, you can’t just back out of it. That’s very rude.”

“I didn’t decide to marry anyone! You forced yourself on me!”

“A peck on the lips isn’t forcing myself on you.”

“It is when they’re unconscious!”

“I-ah, I suppose you’re right. I’m still getting the hang of this true love kiss thing. Here let me try again.” Before you could react, he pulled you into another kiss. And this time it was smoldering, not smothering. You felt your knees grow weak and you unconsciously clutched his shoulder to steady yourself as you saw fireworks. By the time he pulled away, you were practically dazed.

“Woah.”

“I was hoping to hear that. Now come along.” He swooped you up bridal style and walked gingerly out of the grove and into the forest.

You blinked. “Wait, I don’t-we can’t just plan a wedding like that!”

“Sure we can. I have lots of hardworking subjects!”

“What would my parents say?”

“They can come too!”

You were running out of immediate arguments. “I don’t even know your name!”

“Wow, how awkward. I really should introduce myself before I start passionately smooching beautiful women. I am the Great Papyrus, King of the Monsters!” He nuzzled the side of your neck. “We are going to have quite the adventure!”

No doubt about that.

(I originally planned for this to be a one shot, but if you guys like this, I could probably continue it)

#undertale #papyrus #fanfic #story

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ephillipsresearch · 4 years

Photo

Museum & Exhibition design/methods of display for archival material (1) Imperial War Museum Manchester, Daniel Leibskind 2002 (2) Juanan Requena http://www.nodetenerse.com/index.php?/expo/2017-warmth-on-paper/ (3) Song Kun, Hammer https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2007/hammer-projects-song-kun (5) Atelier Michael Rothe – Conservation (6)Lynne Fellowes http://www.cecilia-letteringart.com/papervic/lynneF_dra.htm

I had originally planned to turn the collection of paintings into a book to mirror the original recording Britain. This would solve the issue with lack of space in the studio to present the works. This would also give the work an object hood that sits well with the archival theme. However i could find few other reasons to justify using this form. I am not aiming to make a modern copy of the original Recording Britain, which situates each print alongside a text that locates the images and gives context to where, why and by whom it was painted. In my own paintings, these questions are either obvious or happily ambiguous. The source imagery for the collection is varied - some photos were taken by myself, by friends, or acquaintances sent to me upon request, others were taken from a random street view generator online, or screenshot from video footage. There is therefore no one true source and some of the locations (though all in Britain) are unidentified. An accompanying text for each painting therefore seems unnecessary and counteracts my attempts to create the illusive ‘genius loci’ or sense of place. To sign post each painting would seem to spoil this magic, as well as my attempts to explore the links between watercolour and national identity. Having no accompanying text would make the book visual only which felt too dry and seemed pointless when the could just as easily be displayed on the wall. Having them displayed together would also allow them to be better read as a collection rather than looked at separately in the pages of a book. I considered creating the book digitally with scans of the works but when printed the paintings lost their vibrancy and textural detail, and this didn't seem worth it financially. I have outlined some other considered modes of display below with my final design.

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biometricbits · 5 years

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For the purposes of this presentation we’ll be looking at the painting titled “grep” which was painted in February of 2018. The title itself was taken from a Unix operating system command. Unix is basically an early Operating system which was developed at Bell labs. It was later given to a bunch of universities and companies which then could write programs for it to do a variety of things. The term “grep” basically means to search, and in this case I found it to be an apt name due to the fact that it’s also similar to the word “grip” and “grasp” . Looking into the etymology of the word, it comes from graspen which meant “to touch”. Other variations of this would be grab and grope. So, to grep to me always was synonymous with the idea to search. With a bit of research I’ve found out that the term actually stands for “globally search a regular expression and print” , and there was actually a guy who came up with the term. His name was Ken Thompson. So, back to the painting. The painting itself comes from a first person perspective. I used to make paintings of the first person shooter game Counterstrike. I started playing counterstrike in a cyber cafe in Prague. You could buy drinks there, and everyone was smoking. One time two police carrying AK47s came in to the cafe and played with us. They used AKs in the game as well. After they were finished they got their guns and went back to their jobs. So this painting was done in a tradition of my previous paintings from counterstrike. Except in this case there was no gun in the avatar’s hand, but instead they were reaching out in a forest. Trying to grasp something amorphous and digital. Something which looks like an organ of some sort, but which is also composed of pixels.

In this piece I divided a panel into 8 different sections, and I approached painting it in a highly systematic manner. I would print out an image which was the same size as the area which I was painting, and I would work copying it as closely as possible every day. This was in stark contrast to how I normally make a painting, which is one reason why undertaking the painting in this manner was appealing to me. Normally, I would approach painting in a very gestural and spontaneous manner, in fact, I’m working on a large abstract which also develops throughout the course of these videos. Speaking of videos, I make a lot of them. Throughout the last year and a half I’ve made 106 videos documenting my progress painting . Documentation has become really important as it relates to the making of my work. I am constantly taking short videos at the end of my studio sessions, and these can be useful to reflect upon. I upload everything to Youtube because then everything is clearly timestamped and I can’t lose it. I’m not interested in generated some sort of following on this channel. I’m also someone who is constantly posting articles, inpirational photos, videos, and everything else on my blog. By compiling all of these different things into one space I can make more sense out of what’s important to me, and what isn’t. Sometimes I’ll just see a small corner of a painting which interests me, or a specific technique, and being a visual person I need an archive that I can pull from. In the case of this painting in question. I just used two photos. One of a deciduous forest, and the other of my hands reaching out, first person style. In this respect I guess it’s the first of this series of works where I used my real hands as opposed to those from counterstrike. I wanted to see what a first person shooter game would look like, when the character wasn’t carrying a weapon, but rather searching in the forest. It was to be more akin to a snapshot of a simulation of reality, rather than a game where you had to shoot anything. It’s interesting to note that the guy who came up with the term “Grep” also created a game in 1969 called Space Travel. The game was a simulation of a spaceship that was going through space, and the only objective was to land on planets. The graphics weren’t the first concern, but rather simulating the gravitational pulls of various planets. Most people are now familiar with the most popular form of these, which are flight simulators. So this painting conceptually, kind of operates similarly to a simulation game.

It’s also an instance where I painted a lot more illustratively than I normally would. I was always cautioned against being “illustrative” while I was at the Lyme Academy. It was seen as a kind of bad word. Like you weren’t using the paint in a way that was painterly. This painting was about as paint by numbersy as one could imagine. When I made the first video of my progress on it, I entitled it “Ditch Digging of painting” which comes from a Wayne White quote who talked about the “ditch digging of painting”. Basically I think he meant that often painting is just a laborious task. You’ve got to knock in a bunch of clouds, or whatever, and it’s simply going to take some time. This type of work makes sense. But a more difficult question which this presentation seeks to investigate, is how we get our ideas. What sort of outside influences come into our lives that we may unconsciously be ignoring. Upon researching the question a bit I stumbled upon a study by two Israeli scientists who came to the conclusion that “Developing an original and creative idea requires the simultaneous activation of two completely different networks in the brain: the associative -- "spontaneous" -- network alongside the more normative -- "conservative" -- network” . I was kind of amazed to read this, because I had basically been engaging in very conservative, and “normative” painting, alongside more expressive and improvisational painting. And these two disparate styles have manifested themselves in my paintings that I now create. Often I’m collaging various styles into one painting. There are slow and cartoony outlines, right next to expressionistic abstraction, which sits next to modeled flesh and meat. These paintings are a conglomeration of all of these styles. And who was I looking at when these two very different paintings were created? Thankfully, since I’m such a maniac about documentation I can see very easily. By digging into my archive for my research blog I could see that I was actually creating this painting at the exact same time that I posted a video of Jim Shaw being interviewed. I may not have known it at the time, but I was probably emulating these Jim Shaw paintings to some extent now that I look back on them. It’s kind of a chicken and egg sort of scenario. Did I find Jim Shaw because I was interested in these ideas? Or did I become interested in these ideas because I was reading, and listening to Jim Shaw talk about painting? It’s obviously pretty hard to say. That’s what the whole subconscious is all about I suppose. It’s this giant blob that follows us around but we never clearly see. Even with all of these clues it’s still difficult to say just how this painting came to be. That, to me, is part of the magic of painting. Often those creating them have little recollection of their exact inspiration at the time. Looking back, perhaps we can get a better glimpse. In the case of the painting “Grep”, it was about searching for something which was digital, but couldn’t be touched or grasped. The person in that painting inhabits a world similar to that of any sort of creative. It’s a space where we are constantly searching for meaning, for some sort of logical explanation to things. Personally I can’t help but continue to go back to how James Elkins talked about painting in his book “What Painting Is” . The book postulates that painting is an act similar to alchemy, where the participant isn’t fully aware of the outcome, but continues trying endlessly anyway. Alchemists create, and many were aware that there was no chance they were going to make gold, but they continued to search for other answers by being involved in the pursuit. We’re constantly grasping for meaning , without needing a definite answer. Perhaps this search is more important than the final result.

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lineatura · 7 years

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Issue #12: Sebastian Mayer

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Sebastian Mayer is a photographer with an unruly, curious eye. He is well-known to magazine readers all over the world for his portraits of musicians. However, it was his RANDOM series what really caught my attention. A juxtaposition of two seemingly random photographs which attract and repel each other at the same time, causing a wonderfully provoking, eye-opening tension each time you look. A sublime visual blast of a two-verse haiku: anachronistically honest and disruptively up-to-date. I met Sebastian Mayer in his apartment in Wedding to talk not only about the concept behind the RANDOM series, but also about his personal detours and the experience of time in his photographic oeuvre.

Sebastian Mayer. Photo: P.K.

Peter Koval: What was your most beautiful detour?

Sebastian Mayer: It was when I didn’t fly back from London to Berlin but instead, went to Rio de Janeiro and then stayed on the road for the next nine years.

PK: That’s almost an Odyssey!

SM: [Laughing.] I wouldn’t compare myself to Ulysses.

PK: How did it feel returning back?

SM: For a while I felt like I was encountering echoes from my own past. I lived in Berlin from the beginning of the 1990s until 2005. That’s a relatively long period. I take many pictures on the streets and the city didn’t really change much during my nine-year absence.

PK: How was Tokyo different from Berlin?

SM: Tokyo is an enormously dynamic city. It’s almost like an autonomous organism which constantly changes. You step out of a subway station in a neighborhood you haven’t visited in three months and you don’t recognize the streets anymore because everything was demolished and newly rebuilt. As a photographer, that makes Tokyo much more interesting than Berlin. Berlin is very rigid in comparison. When houses are built in Berlin, they are supposed to stand for the next 300 years or even longer. In Tokyo they may last 30 years. In Tokyo you see something new each day, there is almost no repetition or monotony in the cityscape. The city appears to me like an organism – incredibly fascinating but also quite monstrous and dangerous – not because of violence in the streets but because of the enormous dimensions. You are at the mercy of its dimensions. The city threatens to swallow you, it will literally absorb you. For me Berlin was always a city of concrete, of cobblestones and unfettered growth. Tokyo is rather like quicksilver. It’s amazing to look at it, everything glitters, everything moves, nothing is inflexible and everything is surface. But if you get too close, it can be extremely toxic.

PK: Photography records a moment of presence, which automatically makes looking at photography an act of retrospection. You worked a lot with your archive during the last year. What was that like?

SM: Of course, in the moment you press the shutter release button, it becomes sentimental. You can go mad if you think of the past too much. It was for a good reason that Susan Sontag described photography as a melancholic medium. When I go through my pictures from 2006, I recall many situations I am personally attached to. When I look into my archive for too long, I lose contact with the now. You shouldn’t dig too deep into your archives, otherwise the danger is that you will live only in a photographic copy of your own past without being able to perceive the present. It’s quite narcissistic to stick your nose only in your own past. That’s another problem with the essence of photography.

PK: In this regard, the archive seems to be very similar to all the selfies, which are hurrying ahead of us.

SM: In Beijing or Shanghai, I often observed people who are taking selfies all the time. But also in Venice, you often see people walking through the street with a selfie stick in their hand without really seeing anything from the town. Some of them carry their GoPro cameras or smartphones on a selfie stick in front of them like an antenna – the camera pointing back to them. They look all the time only in the camera, while the display is turned to them so they can watch themselves walking through Venice. They aren’t really present. They see only their own mirrored video image. Theoretically, they could walk in front of an empty projection wall and the images of Venice or any other random place could be copied into the background. It wouldn’t make any difference. For me, that’s absolutely crazy. It can’t be more narcissistic.

PK: During your last exhibition one of your pictures received quite a bit of interest.

SM: Oh, that one with the ass!

PK: Yes, that one. The longer I look at the picture, the clearer I see that it withholds something, that there is something I’m not permitted to see.

SM: Yes. There are only three visible faces, and their expressions allude to the reaction of those who are out of the frame. You can only guess what’s going on there at the moment. The photography leaves many questions unanswered, which makes it interesting. On the other hand, it’s totally pop and direct: a naked ass. I believe the picture was received that broadly because it’s at the same time very direct, almost obscene and yet it doesn’t show everything the viewer wants to see.

PK: And how do you create that allusion as a photographer? How do you show that you hide something?

SM: In my pictures, the concept of a gap plays an important role. My whole RANDOM series is based on the gap between the pictures. It’s not about what you can actually see on the photographs but rather about what happens between them. For me, that’s sometimes even more interesting than working directly with the images. But even when I’m working with the individual images, I would say that a good image always bears a secret – something you can’t immediately see or understand. It’s this secret – the inexplicable – that makes us wanting to look at the picture again and again. The image continues to interest us because you don’t really know what’s going on, because you can’t really get to the bottom of the picture, because it remains at least partially inexplicable.

I have a portrait of a friend which I took on the street in Nakameguro Tokyo. He is standing with an umbrella, his eyes pointed to the right, to something out of the frame. In the background, a couple people are crossing the street. For some reason, this image has a magic attraction to me. It’s a quite simple image, but I can’t get it out of my mind. The more I look at it, the more I try to understand why I’m so drawn to this image, why I’m so fascinated by it. Is it because of the lines, the colors, the look or maybe the composition? I just can’t figure it out. That’s why it remains interesting for me. Some pictures contain this kind of magic. Even after you look at them thousands of times, they still want to be viewed and they will remain interesting.

PK: Where do these gaps come from?

SM: I can’t really tell. When I’m holding the camera, I’m not looking for the gaps. They emerge later, while viewing the pictures. Here is one photograph, which I still consider to be one of my best portraits. It was taken from a bathroom wall from a 5-cm distance. It’s a little sticker, that somebody tried to tear off. That’s why the context is missing.

The facial expression of the man is distorted, one arm is pulled up, it looks like he is falling or about to lose consciousness. But because half of the picture is torn off, we can’t really see what’s going on there. Was the man just shot down? Is he on drugs at a rock concert and is about to flip out? This information is missing so we simply can’t know. At the same time the tear has a form of wings, which gives the man on the photo an angelic appearance. For me, that’s something very interesting because it opens a meta level for interpretation. But the image was just there and I took it with me. I took many pictures from books, magazines or billboards. Actually, I don’t really care where the images are from. When I take a photo of them, then they also become my images. It’s the art of appropriation; Prince sends his regards.

PK: But the RANDOM series is based on a different concept.

SM: It’s a juxtaposition of two seemingly random photographs which, if upon closer inspection, have an associative relationship. That can happen either through the content or the form. But sometimes, two pictures just “click” without an explicit reason why the combination works or why the tension occurs. The individual pictures aren’t so important here, but the mere fact of the juxtaposition. Here is for example a combination with the photo we were already talking about:

in one picture it’s obviously raining, while on the other, there is a cut-off fish head. There is no obvious connection in content or form. However, something happens here. It’s like putting together two words. Each word is nice and can stand by itself, but already two words can produce a tension that goes far beyond the meaning of each word. I am very fascinated by this poetic tension. [Lights a cigarette.] I like to work with sequences. Narratives were always very important to me. I believe it comes from the fact that I began my artistic career as a comic artist.

PK: Tell me more about your comic art.

SM: During my first years in Berlin, I spent almost all my time at the drawing board. I couldn’t really talk to people and I apparently suffered under a severe social phobia or a communication disturbance. I still know how it felt to get palpitations each time when I wanted to buy cigarettes at Café Westphal at Kollwitzplatz, because I couldn’t stand the looks of all the people there. I was so scared of them. Each time I entered the room, I felt all the eyes were staring at me, but I had to cross the room because the cigarette vending machine was at the opposite corner. That’s why I went out among people as rarely as possible and was only drawing for several hours a day for three or four years. But I didn’t really want to tell a story with the comics back then. It was more experimental – taking some fragments, putting them together and watching if something would happen. It’s a little bit like William Burroughs’ Cut Ups, even I wasn’t working with scissors. I like to think that I am strongly influenced by the Cut-Up idea, especially when I’m reviewing my RANDOM series.

PK: How do you take photographs?

SM: Quite simple. I take my camera, I go out and start making photographs. There are many photographers who have to make a plan first, who first try to develop an image in their head, let’s say of a person they want to portray. They think a lot about how they are going to take the picture, how they want the person on the picture look like or which light should they use. These photographers often become very nervous during the photo shooting. They can’t control everything or the person doesn’t want to fit into their imagined picture. I try to be as open as possible. Especially while working on assignments where I have actually only a couple of minutes to shoot the photo – for example when I portrait musicians for Spex. In such situations, it’s almost impossible to implement your own idea. Then the best thing is to focus on the person from the first second on and to take what you get. I think it’s also more honest and direct. I have nothing against arranged or well-designed photos and I’m actually quite good at implementing planned pictures for commercial clients. However, in my artistic works I’m interested in as direct and authentic a picture as possible.

PK: The camera window is a frame. You can’t put everything into that frame.

SM: Yes, you leave things out. The framing cuts automatically everything else away.

PK: That’s a quite violent act, isn’t it?

SM: I wouldn’t call it “violent”, ideally it’s more like a chirurgic incision. But there are ways to be “violent” with photography. Last year I made an experimental installation. I took all the pictures that I made during my last trip to Japan and projected them all in one sequence in a brutal speed of 60-70 images per second. I consciously didn’t leave anything out. It was around seven thousand pictures, some of them just random snapshots of room ceilings or flash tests. Literally everything I had. It was absolutely hypnotic to watch the “film”. The images weren’t planned as a stop-motion animation. They were all meant to be viewed as individual pictures. At the limited speed of perception of the human eye, by the time some pictures made an impression, they were already being overlapped by ten subsequent pictures.

PK: The duration of looking is related to the depth of the photography…

SM: I have to think of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up when you say that. The longer you look at the picture, the more you can interpret into it. Photography is like a document. That’s what makes it so interesting. A two-dimensional reflection of reality that took place. Photography is standing still. That makes it an object of investigation. The more you look, the more you will find.

PK: You can decide not to take a picture. Sometimes you leave your camera deliberately at home. How about deleting pictures?

SM: I never delete a picture! I can’t do it. I would rather buy another four Terabytes of external storage to keep also all my black underexposed photographs in RAW format. I was on the road with just one suitcase for nine years. I really have no problems getting rid of things I don’t need or which aren’t functioning any more. To the contrary. But when it comes to photographs, that’s different.

PK: What is so different about photography?

SM: Five years ago, I exhibited the RANDOM series in Tokyo for the first time. I went through 15 years of my photographs and I chose some pictures I liked in the moment when I reviewed them. I’m sure I would chose different pictures from the same archive today because my perspective has changed and will also change again in the future. Different time and different context allows us to see different images in the same photographs and also to discover new connections between them. I have so many blurred photographs or photographs that seem insignificant – with just a big toe on a beach or so – and I often ask myself if I should keep them or not. In the first moment, you might not be able to really see anything meaningful in the photograph, sometimes it’s just blurred or totally underexposed and black. But it could be that when we look at the picture for the 500th time, then we finally will find something we couldn’t see before.

It’s also a question of technology. Recently I read that it should be theoretically possible to reconstruct the sound of ancient spaces from the pottery found by archeologists. The bristles of the straws which formed a vase hundreds years ago also made grooves, and as the straws were vibrating, excited by the sounds around them, they must have recorded the sounds just like on a vinyl record. With appropriate technology, the grooves could be played like a gramophone, allowing us to hear the sounds of the original environment. I’m not sure if it’s really possible to extract these sounds, but the idea itself is immensely fascinating to me! I see it similarly with my black underexposed photographs. Maybe one day, we will have techniques which we cannot imagine today, which can extract a properly exposed picture from an underexposed RAW file. That’s why I still keep all my completely black pictures. Maybe there is something interesting on them that I just can not see yet.

So I’m sitting on the whole mountain of pictures and I have to step down at a certain point to find the people, because I have something to say to them. I don’t know exactly how many pictures I have by now. I guess around one million: 700,000 digital and 300,000 on negatives. And how many pictures do I need to tell a story? Three? Ten? A million? [Laughs.]

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Sebastian Mayer continues to work on his book until he believes that it’s finished. His photographs will be on exhibit in KM Galerie (Mehringplatz 8, Berlin) as a part of a group exhibition titled “Changing and Growing”. Opening on 17.06.2017.

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Credits

Interview & photo of Sebastian Mayer: Peter Koval

English editor: Elle Peril

Did you know that you can support Lineatura Magazine by buying the very original Lineatura notebooks? Get the same notebooks that all our interviewees use for their creative ideas and read more inspiring interviews in the future!

INTERVIEW MIT SEBASTIAN MAYER

Der Blick des Fotografen Sebastian Mayer geht unter die Haut. Seine Musikerporträts dürften Magazinlesern auf der ganzen Welt bekannt sein. Mein Interesse weckte er aber erst mit seiner RANDOM Serie. Das sind immer Zwei, als ob zufällig nebeneinander gestellte Fotografien, die sich anscheinend nichts zu sagen haben. Erst bei näherer Betrachtung entfaltet sich vor dem Auge des Betrachters zwischen den zwei Bildern ein Gespräch. Das Faszinierende daran ist, dass dieses Gespräch jedesmal, wenn man die Bilder betrachtet, anders verläuft.

Ich traf Sebastian Mayer in seiner Wohnung in Wedding, um mit ihm nicht nur über das Konzept der RANDOM Serie zu sprechen, sondern auch über seine persönlichen Umwege und über die Bedeutung von Zeit in seinem fotografischen Werk.

Sebastian Mayer. Foto: P.K.

Peter Koval: Was war dein schönster Umweg?

Sebastian Mayer: Nicht aus London nach Berlin zurückzufliegen, sondern nach Rio de Janeiro und dann neun Jahre unterwegs zu sein.

PK: Das ist ja fast eine Odyssee!

SM: [Lacht.] Ich würde mich nicht direkt mit Odysseus vergleichen.

PK: Wie war denn die Rückkehr?

SM: Ich hatte eine zeitlang das Gefühl, auf ein Echo meiner eigenen Vergangenheit zu stoßen. Ich lebte von Anfang der 1990er bis 2005 in Berlin. Das ist eine relativ lange Zeit. Ich mache viele Bilder auf der Strasse und so radikal hat sich die Stadt während der neun Jahre meiner Abwesenheit nun auch nicht verändert.

PK: War Tokio visuell ein so starker Kontrast zu Berlin?

SM: Tokio ist eine enorm dynamische Stadt. Es ist fast wie ein eigenständiger Organismus, der sich dauerhaft ändert. Du steigst nach drei Monaten aus einer U-Bahn Station aus, die du eigentlich gut kennst und plötzlich kennst du dich nicht mehr aus, weil der komplette Stadtteil um die Station herum abgerissen und neu hochgezogen wurde. Das macht Tokio für mich als Fotografen wesentlich interessanter als Berlin. Im vergleich dazu ist Berlin sehr starr. In Berlin baut man Häuser, die für die nächsten 300 Jahre oder sogar noch länger stehen sollen. In Tokio sind es vielleicht 30 Jahre. In Tokio sieht man jeden Tag etwas Neues, es gibt kaum Wiederholung und Monotonie im Stadtbild. Dadurch wirkt die Stadt wie ein Organismus – unglaublich faszinierend, aber auch monströs und gefährlich. Aber nicht etwa wegen der Gewalt auf den Straßen, sondern einfach wegen des ungeheuerlichen Ausmaßes, dem man als Einzelner ausgeliefert ist. Die Stadt droht einen zu verschlingen, man wird von ihr regelrecht einverleibt. Berlin war für mich immer eine Stadt des Betons, der Pflastersteine und des Wildwuchses. Tokio ist eher wie Quecksilber. Es ist wahnsinnig toll anzuschauen, alles glitzert, alles bewegt sich, nichts ist starr und alles ist Oberfläche. Aber wenn man dem Ganzen zu nahe kommt, wirkt es extrem toxisch.

PK: Fotografie hält einen Augenblick der Gegenwart fest. Das macht jede Betrachtung der Fotografie automatisch zum Rückblick. Du hast in der letzten Zeit viel mit deinem Archiv gearbeitet. Wie war es?

SM: Klar. In dem Moment, in dem man auf den Auslöser drückt, wird es sentimental. Wenn man zu viel über die Vergangenheit nachdenkt, kann es einen wahnsinnig machen. Susan Sontag hat nicht grundlos Fotografie als ein melancholisches Medium beschrieben. Wenn ich heute durch meine Bilder aus dem Jahr 2006 gehe, dann sind viele Situationen dabei, die mich persönlich betreffen. Wenn ich zu lange durch mein Archiv schaue, dann bewege ich mich bald nur noch in meiner eigenen Vergangenheit, dann verliere ich den Kontakt zum Jetzt. Man darf nicht zu tief ins Archiv sinken, sonst wird die Gefahr groß, dass man nur noch in einer fotografischen Kopie seiner eigenen Vergangenheit lebt, ohne das Jetzt noch wahrnehmen zu können. Es ist auch tatsächlich ziemlich narzisstisch, seine Nase nur in die eigene Vergangenheit zu stecken. Das ist noch ein weiteres Problem mit dem Wesen der Fotografie.

PK: Das eigene Fotoarchiv unterscheidet sich in dieser Hinsicht gar nicht so sehr von den vorauseilenden Selbstbildern auf den Selfies.

SM: In Peking oder Shanghai habe ich sehr oft Leute beobachtet, die ständig nur Selfies machen. Aber auch in Venedig sieht man häufig Menschen, die mit einem Selfiestick in der Hand durch die Stadt laufen, ohne was von ihr wirklich zu sehen. Während diese Touristen durch die Stadt gehen, sie sich also bewegen und nicht stehen, tragen manche ihre GoPro Kameras oder Smartphones am Selfiestick vor sich her wie eine Antenne – die Kamera von vorne zurück auf sie selbst gerichtet. Sie schauen die ganze Zeit nur in die Kamera, während der Bildschirm ihnen ebenfalls zugewandt ist und ihnen ihr eigenes Bild zurückspiegelt, wie sie gerade durch Venedig laufen. Die sind gar nicht mehr da, die schauen sich nur noch ihr eigenes Video-Spiegelbild an. Sie könnten theoretisch auch vor einer leeren Projektionswand laufen und die Bilder von Venedig oder auch von jedem beliebigen Ort könnten dann einfach im Nachhinein tricktechnisch in den Hintergrund kopiert werden. Das würde wahrscheinlich kaum einen Unterscheid machen. Für mich ist das verrückt, narzisstischer geht’s nicht mehr.

PK: Während deiner letzten Ausstellung wurde eine Fotografie breit rezipiert…

SM: Ach, die mit dem Hintern!

PK: Genau die meine ich. Je länger ich sie betrachte, desto klarer sehe ich, dass sie mir etwas vorenthält, dass ich etwas nicht sehe.

SM: Ja. Die Gesichtsausdrücke der Menschen sind nur an drei Gesichtern angedeutet. Man kann nur vermuten, was da gerade passiert. Die Fotografie lässt Vieles offen, aber dadurch wird sie erst interessant. Auf der anderen Seite ist es total pop und direkt: Ein nackter Hintern. Ich glaube, das Bild ist auch deswegen so breit rezipiert worden, weil es gleichzeitig sehr direkt ist, fast schon obszön, und trotzdem nicht alles zeigt, was man als Betrachter sehen möchte.

PK: Und wie macht man das als Fotograf? Wie zeigt man, dass man etwas nicht zeigt?

SM: Bei meinen Bildern geht es oft um die Lücke. Meine ganze RANDOM Serie basiert auf der Lücke zwischen den Bildern. Es geht nicht so sehr darum, was auf den Fotografien zu sehen ist, sondern vielmehr darum, was zwischen ihnen passiert. Das ist für mich manchmal sogar viel interessanter als unmittelbar mit den Bildern zu arbeiten. Aber auch wenn ich mit Einzelbildern arbeite, auch dann würde ich sagen, dass ein gutes Bild immer ein Geheimnis birgt – etwas, was man nicht sofort sehen oder begreifen kann. Es ist dieses Geheimnis, dieses Unerklärliche, das dafür sorgt, dass man sich ein Bild immer wieder anschauen kann und will. Es bleibt interessant, weil man eben nicht wirklich weiß, was los ist, weil man es nicht ganz und gar ergründen kann, weil es bis zu einem Teil unerklärlich bleibt.

Ich habe da ein Bild, ein Portrait von einem Freund, das ich auf der Strasse in Nakameguro Tokyo aufgenommen habe. Er steht da mit einem Regenschirm und schaut mit den Augen nach rechts aus dem Bild heraus, im Hintergrund laufen ein paar Menschen über die Strasse. Aus irgendeinem Grund übt das Bild eine magische Anziehungskraft auf mich aus. Das ist ein ganz einfaches Bild, aber ich komme davon nicht los. Je öfter ich es anschaue, desto mehr versuche ich zu ergründen, warum ich so zu diesem Bild hingezogen bin, warum es mich so stark fasziniert. Ich finde es aber nicht heraus, ich kann nicht sagen: Es sind die Linien, die Farben, sein Blick vielleicht oder die Bildkomposition. Ich finde es einfach nicht heraus. Genau dadurch bleibt es aber für mich interessant. Einige Bilder haben so eine Magie, das sind die Bilder, die auch beim tausendsten mal draufschauen immer noch angeschaut werden wollen und immer interessant bleiben.

PK: Woher kommen die Lücken?

SM: Das kann ich so nicht beantworten. Wenn ich die Kamera in der Hand halte, dann suche ich nicht nach den Lücken. Sie tauchen meist erst später, beim Betrachten der Bilder auf. Hier ist eine Fotografie, welche ich immer noch für eines meiner besten Portraits halte, und das obwohl ich es von einer Toilettenwand aus 5 cm Entfernung abfotografiert habe. Es ist ein kleiner Aufkleber, den jemand versucht hat abzureißen. Dadurch fehlt der Kontext.

Der Gesichtsausdruck dieses Menschen ist verzerrt, eine Hand ist nach oben gerissen, er wirkt wie im Fall oder als würde er gerade ohnmächtig werden oder als wäre er von irgendetwas getroffen. Dadurch, dass das Bild aber zur Hälfte weggerissen ist, sieht man eben nicht, was eigentlich los ist. Wird der Mann gerade erschossen? Ist er auf Drogen auf einem Rockkonzert und rastet gleich aus? Diese Bildinformation fehlt, man kann es nicht wissen. Der Riß hat aber gleichzeitig eine Form von Flügeln und das verleiht dem abgelichteten Mann etwas Engelhaftes. Das finde ich sehr interessant, weil sich dadurch eine Meta-Ebene öffnet. Aber das Bild war da und ich nahm es einfach mit. Ich fotografiere ohnehin viel aus Büchern und Zeitschriften oder von Werbetafeln ab. Mir ist es eigentlich egal, woher die Bilder kommen. Wenn ich sie abfotografiert habe, dann sind das auch meine Bilder. Das ist dann wohl Appropriation-Art; Prince lässt grüßen.

PK: Die RANDOM Serie ist aber anders konzipiert.

SM: Das sind immer zwei, als ob zufällig nebeneinander gestellte Fotografien, die bei näherer Betrachtung einen assoziativen Bezug erkennen lassen. Das kann entweder über Form oder über Inhalt passieren, aber manchmal “klicken” zwei Bilder auch einfach, ohne dass ich einen Grund finden kann, warum die Kombination funktioniert, warum da auf einmal eine Spannung entsteht. Die Einzelbilder selber sind dann gar nicht so wichtig, sondern allein die Tatsache der Nebeneinander- oder besser Gegenüberstellung. Zum Beispiel hier, eine Kombination mit demselben Bild über das wir vorhin geredet haben:

Auf einem Bild regnet es offensichtlich und auf dem anderen ist ein abgeschnittener Fischkopf, da gibt es keinen offensichtlichen Zusammenhang im Inhalt oder in der Form. Trotzdem passiert da etwas. Es ist, wie wenn man zwei Wörter zusammensteckt. Jedes Wort für sich kann schön und interessant sein, aber bereits zwei Wörter nebeneinander erzeugen eine Spannung, die weit über die Bedeutung der einzelnen Wörter hinaus wirkt. Eben diese poetische Spannung fasziniert mich. [Zündet sich eine Zigarette an.] Ich arbeite gern mit Sequenzen. Narrative und Zusammenhänge waren immer sehr wichtig für mich. Ich glaube, das liegt daran, dass ich als Comic-Zeichner angefangen habe.

PK: Erzähl mal!

SM: Während meiner ersten Jahre in Berlin saß ich nur am Zeichentisch. Ich konnte nicht wirklich mit den Menschen reden und litt anscheinend unter einer starken sozialen Phobie und Kommunikationsstörung. Ich weiß immer noch, wie ich, immer wenn ich Zigaretten im Café Westphal am Kollwitzplatz geholt habe, Herzklopfen bekommen habe, weil ich die Blicke der anwesenden Menschen im Lokal nicht ertragen konnte; sie haben mir furchtbare Angst gemacht. Wenn ich den Raum betrat dann fühlte ich mich von allen Seiten angestarrt, es war grausam. Ich musste aber durch das ganze Lokal gehen, weil der Zigarettenautomat auf der anderen Seite des Raumes stand. Also habe ich nur gezeichnet. Drei oder vier Jahre lang, mehrere Stunden täglich. Bei den Comics ging es mir damals allerdings nicht so sehr darum, eine Story zu erzählen, sondern vielmehr darum, Fragmente zu nehmen, zusammenzukleben und zu sehen, was passiert. So ein bisschen wie William Borroughs Cut Ups, auch wenn ich nicht mit Schere gearbeitet habe. Ich glaube sowieso, dass ich ziemlich von der Cut-Up-Idee beeinflusst bin, gerade auch bei den RANDOM-Arbeiten.

PK: Wie gehst du beim Fotografieren vor?

SM: Ganz einfach. Ich nehme meine Kamera und gehe los. Es gibt viele Fotografen, die zuerst einen Plan machen, die ein bestimmtes Bild, zum Beispiel von jemandem, den sie porträtieren wollen, im Kopf entwickeln. Sie denken viel darüber nach, wie sie die Person fotografieren wollen, wie sie auf dem Bild aussehen soll, oder welches Licht sie gern verwenden würden. Solche Fotografen werden dann beim Shooting oft sehr nervös. Weil eben irgendetwas nicht stimmt, oder weil sich die Person in das vorgestellte Bild nicht wirklich fügen will. Ich versuche es immer so offen wie möglich zu lassen. Gerade bei kurzen Terminen – wenn ich etwa Musiker für die Spex porträtiere –, da habe ich manchmal wirklich nur einige wenige Minuten, um ein Foto zu schießen. In solchen Situationen wird man nur schwer eine eigene Bildidee umsetzen können. Dann muss man sich am besten von der ersten Sekunde an auf die porträtierte Person einstellen und das nehmen, was man kriegt. Ich finde das auch ehrlicher und direkter. Ich habe nichts gegen “gestellte” oder “konzipierte” Fotos und ich bin tatsächlich auch sehr gut in der Umsetzung von geplanten Bildern, wenn ich für kommzerzielle Kunden arbeite. Aber bei meinen künstlerischen Arbeiten interessiert mich das meist nicht, da soll das alles so direkt und unmittelbar wirken wie möglich.

PK: Die Kamera ist ein Rahmen. Da passt nicht alles rein…

SM: Ja, du lässt Dinge weg. Durch die Ausschnittfindung schneidest du automatisch alles andere weg.

PK: Macht das nicht Fotografie manchmal zu einem ziemlich gewalttätigen Akt?

SM: Es kommt drauf an. Letztes Jahr habe ich als Experiment eine Installation gemacht. Ich habe alle Fotografien genommen, die ich während meiner letzten Reise in Japan aufgenommen habe und habe sie dann bei einem brutalen Tempo von 60-70 Bildern pro Sekunde hintereinander projiziert. Ich habe ganz bewußt nichts aussortiert. Es waren etwa sieben Tausend Fotografien, teilweise nur Schnappschüsse, irgendwelche Zimmerecken, Blitztests… Einfach alles. Es war absolut hypnotisch, dem "Film” zu folgen. Die Bilder habe ich ja nicht als Stop-Motion-Animation geplant, sondern wirklich nur auf Einzelaufnahmen geachtet. Bei einer Geschwindigkeit, die gerade so fassbar fürs Auge ist, blieb immer wieder ein ganz bestimmtes Bild scheinbar zufällig für einen ganz kurzen Moment im Kopf hängen, während es in der Zeit bereits von weiteren zehn Bildern überlagert wurde.

PK: Die Dauer der Betrachtung hängt mit der Tiefe der Fotografie zusammen…

SM: Dabei denke ich sofort an Michelangelo Antonionis Film Blow-Up. Je länger und je näher man hinschaut, desto mehr sieht man und desto mehr kann man auch hinein interpretieren. Eine Fotografie ist wie ein Dokument. Das macht sie ja richtig interessant. Ein zweidimensionales Abbild einer stattgefundenen Realität. Die Fotografie wird dadurch, dass sie still steht, erforschbar und betrachtbar. Je näher und länger du hinschaust, desto mehr findest du.

PK: Du kannst dich entscheiden, ein Foto nicht zu machen. Du lässt manchmal auch ganz bewußt die Kamera zu Hause liegen. Wie ist es mit dem Löschen?

SM: Ich lösche nichts! Nein. Ich kann es nicht. Dann hole ich mir lieber weitere vier Terrabyte Speicher, damit ich auch all die schwarzen unterbelichteten Bilder im RAW-Format behalten kann. Ich war neun Jahre lang nur mit einem Koffer unterwegs. Ich habe wirklich kein Problem damit, Sachen, die ich nicht unbedingt brauche oder die nicht mehr funktionieren, wegzuwerfen. Ganz im Gegenteil. Bei den Fotografien ist es anders.

PK: Was ist bei den Fotografien anders?

SM: Vor fünf Jahren habe ich die RANDOM Serie zum ersten mal in Tokio ausgestellt. Damals habe ich durch 15 Jahre meiner Fotos geschaut und habe bestimmte Bilder ausgewählt, die ich in dem Moment der Betrachtung gut fand. Ich würde heute aus demselben Archiv bestimmt ganz andere Bilder auswählen, denn meine Perspektive hat sich geändert und wird sich auch weiterhin ändern. Eine andere Zeit und ein anderer Kontext lassen uns in denselben Fotografien immer neue Bilder, immer neue Zusammenhänge entdecken. Es gibt ganz viele verwackelte und verschwommene Fotografien oder solche, auf denen man vielleicht nur seinen großen Zeh am Strand sieht und man sich schon fragt, ob man das Bild behalten will oder nicht. Man sieht da im ersten Moment nichts, alles ist unscharf oder einfach nur komplett schwarz und unterbelichtet. Es kann aber eben sein, dass man auf dem Bild, wenn man es zum fünfhundertsten mal betrachtet, doch etwas findet, was man zuvor nicht sah.

Es ist auch eine Frage der Technik. Neulich habe ich gelesen, dass es theoretisch möglich sein müsste, von alten gedrehten Tonvasen Klänge herauszufiltern, die von den Borsten der Halme, die vor hunderten von Jahren den Ton geformt haben, dort in den feuchten Ton geritzt wurden. Man könnte so den Klang des Ortes rekonstruieren, alleine anhand der winzigen Schwingungen der Halme im Ton. Das ist doch faszinierend! So ähnlich sehe ich das mit meinen schwarzen Fotos auch. Irgendwann wird es vielleicht Techniken geben, die wir uns heute noch gar nicht vorstellen können, die aus einer schwarzen unterbelichteten RAW-Datei ein ordentlich belichtetes Bild extrahieren können. Daher behalte ich auch meine ganzen komplett schwarzen Bilder. Vielleicht ist ja dann doch etwas Interessantes drauf.

Also sitze ich auf diesem riesigen Berg von Bildern und muss doch irgendwann heruntersteigen, um den Menschen zu finden, weil ich dem was zu sagen habe, weil ich damit etwas zu erzählen habe. Ich weiß nicht genau, wieviele hunderttausende Bilder es mittlerweile sind. Ich schätze ungefähr eine Million: 700 000 digital und 300 000 auf Negativ. Und wieviele Bilder braucht man, um eine Story zu erzählen? Drei? Zehn? Eine Million? [Lacht.]

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Sebastian Mayer arbeitet derzeit an einem Buch. Seine Fotografien können demnächst im Rahmen einer Gruppenausstellung unter dem Titel “Changing and Growing” in der KM Galerie (Mehringplatz 8, Berlin) betrachtet werden. Die Vernissage findet am 17.06.2017 statt.

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Interview & Foto von Sebstian Mayer: Peter Koval

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