(s)training strangewords
[1]The Other in a Lévinas-understanding invites to think about this term and relate it to the strange, e.g: „Die Infragestellung des Selbst ist nichts anderes als das Empfangen des absolut Anderen.“ Emmanuel Lévinas: Die Spur des Anderen, Freiburg/München 1998, S.224.
 It’s strange to speak or read or write about strangeness. It’s perhaps also strange to invite strangers to come and visit an exhibition where they – perhaps – encounter strange artworks, or something they wouldn’t call artwork, because it is utterly strange to them.
Luckily, phenomena of the strange flee from giving answers while they put up a landscape of question marks. They seem only to be seizable in the un – in what they are not: not from everyday life, not from here, not I. There are people asserting that they cannot imagine anything so strange that it could surprise them. Other[1] people primarily beat up strangers because of---; nobody knows exactly why, such behaviour is ‘quite strange’, isn’t it? It is a behaviour that actually is not strange; it is unhuman, dangerous and anachronistic in a way. Those people obstruct human progress, violating on several levels: above all, it is a violation of the Other - but it is also one of words. Thanks to those people, nobody wants to be a stranger anymore and the common heading becomes sameness. Odd, bizarre, weird, un-usual and -common, fremd. These words are neither insults nor simply words but performative determinations[2] and social categories, preserving treasures of communities. Strangeness may be the opposite abroad, my stranger is not yours. But what would it be like in a land of strangers?		 [2]See Judith Butler and her concept of performative act. It would be of interest to read this concept in the stranger’s context, with the provocative parallelization of ‘gender’ and ‘strangeness’: strangeness “is no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is […] an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.” Judith Butler: Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory (1988), in: Sue-Ellen Case (ed.): Performing Feminism. Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, Baltimore/London 1990, p.270-282, here p. 270. Also Erika Fischer-Lichte invites to read her text with strange eyes, in putting ‚identity’ on a level with strangeness: strangeness “als körperliche und soziale Wirklichkeit – wird also stets durch performative Akte konstruiert.“ Erika Fischer-Lichte in: Ästhetik des Performativen, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, S.37.
[3]Roland Barthes: L’Empire des signes, Genève 1993, p.18.
 „Aussi, à l’étranger, quel repos! J’y suis protégé contre la bêtise, la vulgarité, la vanité, la mondalité, la nationalité, la normalité.“[3]
It is imaginable that someone might be afraid of such a loss of secure frameworks, as Roland Barthes’ statement may be interpreted here. He focuses on the experiences in strangetokyo praising his vacation from the known and the ordinary. All those ordinarities (bêtise, vulgarité, and normalité as a climax) are risks of the known, of the familiar space. Normality lives in habit, in repetition, in the intended and in a continuity of sameness. Normality also lives in (pre-)determined categories, which mostly tell stories of/about authorities. Thus, to dive into strangeness requires curiosity and courage. Moreover and basically, the strangediver who travels into the extra-ordinary needs to be susceptible to strangers. And there is a need for knowledge of the present scale of normality and strangeness. Sometimes all this seems to be nothing but subjective; strangeness also appears in disguise of a private and a personal matter; mystrangeryourstranger.
Wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann?
Niemand!
Und wenn er kommt?
Dann laufen wir![4]		 [4]Not to forget: the ignorance for and the fear of the unknown, xenophobia and the tradition of inventing and treating “exoticism”. This has built up a variety of discriminating and fascist categories, practiced in songs, games etc.
What is to be done, when the stranger comes? To run does not prevent him from coming – staying and devouring him is much more dangerous to his existence. If he is meant to remain a stranger, he must not lose his capacity of an intruder. Jean-Luc Nancy reflects on the intranger and his explanations sound like a manual, tips to save the last members of an endangered species.
[5]Jean Luc Nancy: L’Intrus / Der Eindringling, Berlin 2000, S.6.
 „Une fois qu’il est là, s’il reste étranger, aussi longtemps qu’il le reste, au lieu de simplement se ‘naturaliser’, sa venue ne cesse pas: il continue à venir.“[5]
The formula simplement se naturaliser stresses a simplicity/an easiness to make oneself at home, to move in and fit in, to simply make same (mimicry?)[6] . It seems not to be simple to maintain the qualities of an arrival-to-come, even if a stranger’s stay is extended. A stranger’s presence contains continual arriving but actually never celebrates his very arrival. His existence brings a present absence. [6]Vgl.: „Simplement se naturaliser scheint hier jedoch ein Hinweis darauf zu sein, dass es leichter ist, sich einem Ort einfach nur anzugleichen, sich einzubürgern und den Ort zur alltäglichen Gewohnheit werden zu lassen als sich einen fremden Blick zu bewahren, auch wenn das Ankommen schon längst passé ist.“ Eva Holling: Ist alles gespielt?, Marburg 2007, S.29.
Tanze Samba mit mir,
Samba Samba die ganze Nacht.
Tanze Samba mit mir,
weil die Samba uns glücklich macht.
Liebe Liebe Liebelei,
morgen ist es vielleicht vorbei,
tanze Samba mit mir,
Samba Samba die ganze Nacht.
[7]The concept of the Fugitif is mainly Charles Baudelaire’s : „La modernité, c'est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l'art, dont l'autre moitié est l'éternel et l'immuable.“ Charles Baudelaire: Le peintre de la vie moderne, in: ders.: Œuvres complètes, Paris 1968, p.553.
 If someone therefore loves a stranger, this seems to be no easy loving, since it has to be a falling in love with the fugitif[7] or with a never-to-have-completely which is even more powerful than the one of usual relationships. A stranger creates an open space by not occupying any space in his always implicit absence. There is much that (s)he is not. Thus, (s)he gives the loving one the opportunity to fill that space with hope, fantasies or fears, wishes, possibilities of proximity. In a strangelove, you get the opportunity to bake the components of your lover (and baking a cake is always an option). On the other hand, your lover for his part has not to satisfy these dreams or ideas of yours, (s)he will not be simply naturalized in your love story. But (s)he can – perhaps – teach the qualities of arriving, so that the gaze and all the other perceptians are invited to a workshop: practice of perceiving II, seeing normality through the eyes of a stranger. With the strange(r) as a confederate, training the viewpoint is possible, and this is also a training of susceptibility.
„Die Person ist dort zu Hause, wo sie sich in der Rhetorik der Menschen auskennt, mit denen sie das Leben teilt. Daß man zu Hause ist, erkennt man daran, daß man sich ohne Schwierigkeiten verständlich machen kann und ohne langwierige Erläuterungen Zugang zu den Denkweisen seiner Gesprächspartner findet.“[8] [8]Marc Augé, Orte und Nicht-Orte, Frankfurt a. M. 1994, S.126.
Marc Augé focuses on language and rhetoric when he describes the attributes of Zuhause, the home, and its comprehensibility without difficulties. The strange lover would surely like to question this easiness – and to enigmatize that rhetoric effectively.
knock,
knock
Bertolt Brecht seems to have an affair with one of those strangelovers, at least he did attend to several of these strainigs given by strangers, because he knows a lot about troubling a rhetoric of home. The outcome is to be found in his writings and in concepts for an aesthetic practice, honouring his beloved by dedicating to him the V-Effekt.
„Eine verfremdende Abbildung ist eine solche, die den Gegenstand zwar erkennen, ihn aber doch zugleich fremd erscheinen läßt.“[9] [9]V-Effekt / Verfremdungstechnik. Bertolt Brecht: Kleines Organon für das Theater, in: ders.: Gesammelte Werke, Bd.16, Schriften zum Theater 2, Frankfurt a.M. 1967, S.680.
[10]„Die Wiederverzauberung der Welt“. Erika Fischer-Lichte in: Ästhetik des Performativen, Überschrift zum siebten Kapitel, S.315ff.
 The strangelover in return would most likely call it the s-effect: to strangen your life. The term recognizing in Brecht’s setting shows that the home rhetoric has to leave traces in the strangened sight of the ob(sub)ject. A link to the known exists in the material that is to be or has been strangened, since every stranger needs material to execute the strangening. Nothing-but-strangeness doesn’t exist.
Erika Fischer-Lichte seems to know the passion for strangelove too and she also dedicates a concept to it. She names her output reenchantment of the world (Wiederverzauberung der Welt [10]) and in this delicate vocabulary, she points at a fundamental loss where the strangeness can help - the loss of magic.
[11]Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetik des Performativen, S.313f.
 „Wenn Gewöhnliches auffällig wird, Gegensätze kollabieren und die Dinge sich in ihr Gegenteil verwandeln, dann erlebt der Zuschauer die Wirklichkeit als »verzaubert«.“[11]
[12]Brechts „Vorahmung“ als Gegenentwurf zur Tradition der Mimesis, der Nachahmung in der Geschichte der Theaterpraxis. Erdmut Wizisla: 1898 Bertolt Brecht 1998. »… und mein Werk ist der Abgesang des Jahrtausends« 22 Versuche, eine Arbeit zu beschreiben. Ausstellung in der Akademie der Künste, Berlin 25. Januar bis 29. März 1998, Ausstellungskatalog, Berlin 1998, S. 171.
 These are only two documented meetings with strangers. It is not by chance that both of them speak of experiences in the context of practicing art. Vorahmung[12] of life in theatre or seeing an aesthetic experience as „liminale Erfahrung”[13] hint at a discipline that deals with questionning  the how-it-is and the what-to-do-with-it. This may happen to be a journey into a pathetic world of words. Art is strange.
[13]Fischer-Lichte: Ästhetische Erfahrung als Schwellenerfahrung, in: dies.: Ästhetische Erfahrung. Das Semiotische und das Performative, Tübingen/Basel 2001, S.347 ff.
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