Promise No Promises!

“A Place Where There Are Not Words” is episode 27, emerging from one of several encounters with Elin McCready in Tokyo. Besides researching language inside and outside of academia, she's a member of the collectives WAIFU and SLICK. I met Elin during my first few weeks in Japan. I also remember the nuance Elin made regarding safe spaces. It is not the same to say “a safe space to” or “a safe space from.” She would also tell me that identity politics are one thing and personal interactions are quite another. The way in which these contradict each other is something that comes up in many conversations with friends. It often reminds me of an idea by val flores, which I saw expressed in Tokyo with a vivid image of snow on a cherry blossom tree. We must learn to live with contradictory instructions. Our conversation for this podcast started with the Fueiho Law. It was introduced in 1948 to police nightlife in Japan, banning dancing at specific hours. The club scene in Japan is all about music, as Elin says. Dancing does not mean the same thing in every city, venue or moment in life. A rave is political if its ravers do political action. The same goes for art. Editing the podcast of someone who is so conscious of language, created even more questions. Each voice is a collection of many others. I also believe that we have many voices within us, even contradictory ones.

“Finding along the way” is episode 26, which follows a conversation with filmmaker Zheng Lu Xinyuan and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. Xinyuan said she wasn't too worried that Western audiences wouldn't understand her films because they were made for Chinese audiences. Thinking about her comment, Sonia watched some of her films with the feeling of missing something very important due to different cultural sensitivities. Meanwhile, she experienced what we so often feel: the understanding of something without fully comprehending it. Cinema evokes memories and feelings that have been forgotten or hidden for a long time. At the same time, a film can show some emotions while producing different, even contradictory ones.     Sonia’s questions for the interview were more about feelings than cinema-making: how feelings help us to feel belonging. As Xinyuan recounts, belonging can also be a sentient situation in which the body feels pleasure or comfort. When talking about loss of control, anxiety appears. This feeling is also part of the process of making a film. As Xinyuan says, “finding along the way” is what matters when making films.     Following Xinyuan's words, “it should not be artists who are afraid of censorship”. Those who censor are the ones who are afraid, but they pass this feeling on to those who are censored. It is not only about your own voice but also about those who accompany and support you so that your voice can speak and be heard.

We lost the plot, episode 25 of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series, follows a two-instant conversation with artist Ella C Bernard and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. The two speak about the cultural art scene in Berlin and how political identity has almost become more important than artistic practice, patronizing attitudes, censorship and Ella C Bernard’s personal account of having a Nazi grandfather.    While Germany talks a lot about its Nazi past, it tells very little about it. Perhaps because it is often Germany that speaks, not Germans speaking in the first person. Unlike many other Germans, Ella C Bernard does not hide her personal and emotional connection to the aftermath of Nazism in German society. As she says, taking responsibility starts with speaking in the first person. And doing so without guilt or shame for a past that is given and not chosen. We can try to be critical individuals and not compliant roles within given plots and scripts.     A part of censorship is having to measure our tone and our wording, like it is often the case when talking about Israel and Palestine in Germany. As Sonia Fernández Pan says, she feels that moral arrogance, among many other things, is also part of the puzzle. Meanwhile, Ella C Bernard is critical of the state's manipulation of both concepts: culture and remembrance.     “Listening to Ella talk about her relationship with art, I wonder if the same thing is happening to art that happened to Germany: that we repeat an official narrative that is not really ours.”  —Sonia Fernández Pan

A point of contact, a common ground is episode 24 of The Tale and the Tongue podcast series, following a conversation between music journalist, booking agent, event promoter, and translator Yuko Asanuma, and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. “In the last few years, I have seen Yuko in different places in Berlin, often in music-related environments but not only. Yuko Asanuma says, the places where we are willing to go to, we recognize each other as part of a different type of community. Although there may be music, it is something else that brings us together.  I attended the first Setten series of events, part of the agency Yuko Asanuma runs. ‘Setten’ is a Japanese word meaning both ‘point of contact’ and ‘common ground.’ It is also an invitation for people to meet and amplify each other. There is something slippery about partying, about being together in one place at one time. Even when all the elements seem to be perfect, we may not feel fully present. Other times, unexpectedly, we feel totally connected in places where we don't seem to belong. As Yuko states, you can't really anticipate the energy that an event will create. While most of the institutional and mainstream cultural contexts are co-opted to remain silent, it is in other venues that the most relevant things and conversations are happening. And here I understand relevance as a question of common struggles and ethics in times of censorship and escalating state violence.” Sonia Fernández Pan

Where does from scratch start? is episode 23, which developed after a conversation with artist Jesse Darling. While I believe that ideas are never entirely our own, there is something very personal in how we express them. Especially when they are joined by life stories, as in Jesse's case. Following Jesse's words during our conversation, the things we do or think come mostly from life experiences. Listening to Jesse, it does not seem accidental how capitalism keeps us strategically busy and tired. Yet, we keep imagining and doing, with what we have and with what we don't have. Perhaps the question is not only how we work, but for what or who we work for. A question I asked Jesse was when does "from scratch" start? The compass is the search for an origin, a beginning, or a starting point. But when the source is multiple, a single origin is quite impossible.