Being Aboriginal

Today, in this modern world, we could optimize ourselves all our lives and we would still have a feeling that something crucial is missing.

Where … are the roots?

Ich komm aus der Wüste
aus Stahl und Glas
ich komm aus der Wüste
aus Angst und Hass

„Durch die Wüste“, Ton Steine Scherben

I grew up in a Platte in Hoyerwerda. As a child, I always wanted to be an „Indian“ and crawled through the bushes with a bunch of sticks. I had read die Söhne der Großen Bärin and das Blut des Adlers, which describe the life of the Dakota, and many other books that are still in my mother’s bookshelf. I was inspired by the idea of someday having my own teepee, a real bow, a horse and a lot of nature around me. I even wanted to have long, straight, black hair! But when I realized at 15 that I had curls and my hair was very thin, I still wanted to hold on to the idea of that different life. I asked my parents as a schoolchild: when can I finally do what I want? Go to school for 12 years and then I have to work like you? All the way until I retire?!

This „seriousness of life“ didn’t ever enter my head. If the First Nations people of America were able to live in close contact with nature, why can’t we do the same? Don’t we think ourselves to be so advanced?

When I moved away from home, I wanted to “change the world” and so I threw myself into a design course in multimedia and VR, because the “new media”, that could teach us to be better people, seemed to me to be just what we needed. But then at some point, when I was 25, I was disappointed. I realized that anything that bridges direct, interpersonal communication, can also seriously mess with it. A medium, a game, even a work of art, must be judged by its effect, not by its intention. A few chat messages can destroy friendships. Today, social media platforms even jeopardize entire democracies. Once we get into it, we can no longer see through it, even if we think we are super-duper-smart. The matrix has us.

But if the communication media no longer do what they are supposed to, how do we relate to each other?

Yes … how?

Well, maybe we should live less comfortably and spend more time in the streets, in communal spaces? Maybe we should spend more time in the same room again, to smell, see, hear and feel each other, with or without masks? Maybe we should talk shit out, instead of voting our rights away? At least, that’s my go-to answer.

My hair has been falling out for over 10 years now, but this year I realized, that the things I describe and conjure up with my art, are also basically the idea of community. Because it is in a „Gemein-schafft“ that is being commonly-created and re-created, that life makes any sense at all. My desire to be a First-Nations son of the Plains was actually a longing for a culture that would simply let me be a native of Earth. Picking up an instrument let’s me be in accord with it.

Hier bin ich geborn
So wie ins Wasser fiel der Stein
Hier hat mich mein Gott verlorn
Und hier holt er mich wieder ein

„Hier bin ich geborn“, Gerhard Gundermann