During the slowly unfolding end of a paradigm, which in our case more than a few commentators have referred to as the crisis of hyper-capitalism, there is typically a good deal of unpredictability, undirected developments, speculation, excitement, cyclical resurgence of the supposedly forgotten and obsolete, bizarre adherence to the old despite unmistakable signs of its end, numerous calls, both for a tabula rasa as well as for reforming the old, almost clichéd repetitions of history, old acquaintances in new roles and quite a more few bizarre twists and turns. (...)

(...) At a time like this, he headed off to track down some of those speculations, bemusements and parentheses. For this he uses a medium that at this time was known as Art or, somewhat more generally, Aesthetic Practice, and is thereby interested above all in specific manifestations such as installation, video, sculpture or also something that could be referred to as ambiance or environment. In rooms maintained specifically for the presentation of art such as museums, art halls, art centres, galleries or clubs, project rooms and off-spaces, among other places, he shows what he has amassed regarding phenomena that appear to him to be relevant, remarkable or unclear. (...)

(...) These presentations were called exhibitions and the activity, exhibiting. By these exhibitions it was important to create suspense between content-related purpose and formal design. In this way, one hoped to create a new perspective on entities or correlations that were supposedly fixed in social-cultural context with corresponding value attributions and functions. A new perspective such as this and the renegotiation of the attributions of relationships, things or actions it enabled, bestowed a certain political potential on the practice of art. He was interested more in the adventurous disorientation between different thinking and doing, and subjects or gestures, and the completely unforeseeable situation and perspectives that could arise therefrom. (...)

(...) For several months, he has lived in relative seclusion in a community on the roofs of two former residential towers. Their quasi-autonomy was probably due, on the one hand, to the hiddenness of the very diffuse accesses, which were regarded as unsafe, under the large residential ensemble, and its already very angular architecture. On the other hand the lifts, which had been made unusable, the barricaded stairwells and the fallen concrete parts, as well as the repeated threat to detonate the explosive charges which had been installed throughout the building and thus raze half the district to the ground, had their effect and prevented most people from disturbing the newly won idyll. And the reputation of the residential complex too, which dates from the 1970s and is now known to its residents merely as the Land of Iz, K2, Beachtown or the Fortress, scared off possible intruders. This was where above all so-called autonomists, left-wing radicals, weirdos, New Age travellers, refugees and dropouts, who have been streaming into the Fortress for about 10 years, lived and got together with the last remaining residents. He really enjoyed this seclusion high up in the two towers, connected only by suspension bridges. Nothing was lacking: there were gardens, a school, enough people to ensure entertainment. Sun, water and plenty of time. (...)

(...) He spent his time there above all looking after an ant colony and his two children. Occasionally he descended to street level and wandered through one of the nearby street bazaars. The alleys of such a bazaar, filled with small improvised stands, were flanked by different establishments such as juice bars, small stages, amusement arcades, e-technology and motor workshops, weaving mills, mushroom farms and other rooms, primarily specialised in unusual functions and activities. Here he was able to rustle up everything imaginable and unimaginable that he liked. He loved listening to the hyped-up stories of why he absolutely had to purchase this thing; where this part that he set his eyes upon came from; what these new and very-difficult-to-get substances would do with his body; what new unthinkable technological-biological hybrids the bricoleurs in the South had come up with and eavesdropping on other rumours. (...)

(...) From the roofs of the residential towers, he also had a good view over a wasteland between two blocks in which a new-ecclesiastical amazon community with a penchant for festive get-togethers had pitched their tent camp. Particularly the self-discovered rituals that were held there very regularly, had impressed during that time. One of them, inspired by the premodern sun dances of indigenous North Americans, consisted of riding an e-scooter tied to a pole driven into the ground for as long as possible in circles, without being pushed off the vehicle by the wildly jeering female warriors standing around with sticks. This is accompanied by very loud, rhythmically percussive and monotonous music; the entire scene is enveloped in colourful mist that escapes, hissing, from small machines on the ground. (...)

(...) If his forays took him further away from the immediate surroundings of his rooftop refuge, they often took him to department stores, some still functional, some no longer. He was particularly attracted to one of these still functional and very large houses, which had specialised in technological aids and toys and alluded to cosmological connections with its name, The Saturn. He spend many hours there in front of the screen walls, between cramp decked racks and shelves, in the canteen or in front of the live stage, studying the ways and means in which the goods were presented, the logistic of the building, the habitus of the seller, the clients, the security services, the cleaning teams, the tramps, the homeless, the busybodies and the researchers. (...)

(...) In another even larger, no longer functional and already relatively dilapidated shopping complex that one of his close friends had discovered, they had set up together their own version of a sales presentation for a while, in other words, a so-called exhibition. However, they did not offer any goods for sale; rather, they presented the things in another context, exaggerated presentation forms, put things together that actually didn’t go together, misappropriated displays, de-contextualised film sequences and arranged them together in such a way that new or sometimes more/sometimes less distorted stories were created, or simply switched on machines and let them perform their function, without them ever being able to fulfil their purpose. (...)

(...) Before this time, he had lived with two babies, his girlfriend and the queen ant, who was really very young at the time, in a garden colony. There, after getting the old ceramic kiln going again, they had fired out-of-fashion clay consumer fetishes for a while and sold them on the street or sometimes at a street bazaar. After they had enjoyed a certain amount of success, other people began to spew out similar forms using their old 3D printers. From this point onwards, the work with the kiln wasn’t worth doing any more. (...)

(...) There was a park very close to this garden colony, that belonged to a couple of rich oligarchs from England. During his regular walks, he got to know the park gardener and the two of them gradually became friends. After he told the gardener about his passion for arrangements of things and deliberations, the idea of cultivating an old pool house in the park that was no longer in use, arose. Together with a few friends, they shovelled many sacks of sand into the former swimming pool and raked in the lettering NUR DIE HAR TEN (‘ONLY THE HARD ONES’) there – to the great pleasure of the gardener. Above the sand-filled pool, they also hung a video projection fed from the security camera, in the hope of getting feedback about the different soils and their arrangements. Since then, small groups have been increasingly meeting up there, some tending towards cybernetic life-reformation; others oriented towards apocalyptic- redemption-fanaticism. At certain times, extremely inspiring discussions took place there. (...)

(...) Alongside a video of adolescents who, at the beginning of the 21st century, gave advice to their future, 20-years-older selves – in which it was unclear whether he himself was among these adolescents who wished to remain open and positive for the future and always trust in the power of good – which can be seen in the appendix to this report, several no longer clearly assignable fragments of so-called messages had been found in the computer memories of some communicators:

“in the meantime, Ebay Classifieds have become my main medium”
“oh really, why?”
“it is less noisy, I simply can’t cope with these masses of people any more”
“[emoji]”

“Suddenly we were surrounded by cheap Kippenberger rip-offs, full of this nasty irony and everything we had hoped for beforehand was immediately destroyed.”
“[emojis]”

“the smoking thing is for me somehow the background ambience, if someone blusters about war and the fight for survival.”
“I have started again”
“[emojis]”
“[even more emojis]”