Dasa Drndic: Leica Format

So says Thomas Bernhard. If he were alive, I’d propose to Thomas Bernhard, I’d propose, I’d say, Thomas, stay close at hand, Thomas, I like your fugue, show me how one goes away, and I’ll bring you little boxes for breathing.


Sometimes curious coincidences occur, those coincidences have nothing to do with this town, they are general coincidences, existential coincidences, overlappings, crisscrossings, chance happenings never fully resolved, little cosmic earthquakes, that is, neglected time, melted time, resembling literary fabrications, elusive.


Sixty years after the war, conscience was still carrying out a search of its own hiding places, it couldn’t rest, it dug through the archives and dossiers, through the memories of the survivors. Medical faculties and institutes, factories producing glass, cars, medicines, steel, banks, churches, museums, cemeteries throughout Austria and Germany hide the rotten corpses of historical remains, submerged in the muddy depths of the past, worm-eaten and deformed. The past refuses to sink, it floats on waters that spread a stench, but keep flowing on, here, there, throughout the world; the past attacks the memory, digs through recollections, endeavours to clean up its rubbish, the great junk heap of the world. This pathetically late effort, this nauseating human aspiration to obtain forgiveness for unforgiveable sins committed, this longing for purification from unpurifiable sins, is carried out in a whisper, with downcast eyes, half secretly, unwillingly and cravenly.


As far as experiments are concerned, why did history latch on to us, S.S. members? We had models to learn from. The Japanese, the Americans, multinational companies. Pharmaceutical factories all over the world are still carrying out experiments on people, they are producing new biological weapons. In the name of the future. In the name of progress.