Starbuck Holger Meins auf dem iBook gesehen. Sofort wieder diesen Ekel vor illustrativem historischem Archivmaterial empfunden. Diese vollautomatischen Stimmungsheber-Sequenzen immer: Enteignet-Springer!-Demo, Schah-Demo, Ulrike-Meinhof-Talkshow-Schnipsel, dazu die vollautomatische Stimmungs-Musik, Progrock, Gitarrenläufe. Ach ja, und die Bombenteppiche auf Vietnam durften auch wieder mitspielen. Obwohl das ja ein Film ist, in dem Farocki und Bitomski interviewt werden. Oder ein Transparent auftaucht, auf dem der Name Chris Markers geschrieben steht. Also hätten die es ja wissen können. Und kein einziges Mal die Idee, dass so ein Film eine Untersuchung sein müsste. Kommt nur Guido Knopp raus. Dieselbe verdummte Propaganda, dasselbe Emotions-Marketing.
alter bekannter, der mann, immer noch dämlicher als erlaubt. damals beim stern habe ich ihn blacklisted, weil er, sich als vom stern beauftragt ausgebend, bei plattenfirmen anrief, um interviews einzutüten. was nicht so gut kam, wenn wir einen tag später bei plattenfirmen anriefen, um interviews einzutüten...
If all this seems too unrelentingly grim, too sorrowful, too—let's face it—German, don't despair, 'cause girlfriend, Erin Cosgrove never forgot the misshapen love triangle she discovered underneath the Clash's couture statement. Having studied with conceptual guru John Baldessari, she produced such work as "The Big Dick Contest," in which she placed a personal ad in a Berlin newspaper inquiring "why the men in Germany all act like big dicks, but fall anatomically short," then exhibited the scores of photographs and letters she received in response. Cosgrove has now embarked on her most audacious piece, "Seven Romance Novels." "Erin Cosgrove," her bluntly named alter ego, is the author of The Baader-Meinhof Affair (Printed Matter, 245 pp., $14.95), the first to be published. She is not a "writer" but a "romance provocateur," the novel is not a "book" but a "romance manifesto," and you are not a "reader" but one of the "uninitiated participating in extended aesthetic anti-agitprop enhancement." And if this is all sounding perilously German again, take heart—the whole thing is a "satire," albeit a complex, sometimes morbid one. Mock-ups of all seven "novels" are featured in the "Pulp Fiction" show at the Brooklyn Museum, through August 31. Cosgrove and cover-god Fabio are fetchingly Photoshopped for such titles as Sycophant Love and The Two-Timing Two-Stepper, contemporary riffs on the original Depression-era magazine artwork in the exhibit. Fabio, that broad slab of sensitivity, donated his services for all the Romance Novels, a canny career move exposing him to a downtown demographic no doubt previously immune to his charms. (The Baader-Meinhof cover also boasts faux wrinkles and dog-ears, as if it's been carried around in a freshman backpack for half a semester; footnote dingbats consist of hammers and sickles, and portraits of Lenin and Che.)
[...]
Cosgrove's soap opera characters are trapped in the art house: Mara, the petite, curvy heroine, is the new girl at an exclusive New England college, where she's immersed in serial killer studies. Enter Regan, the tall, passionate co-leader of the campus Baader-Meinhof reading group. She seems like Mara's friend, but is it all an act? (Hint: Her name is pronounced like the "former puppet president.")
[...]
As Penny says of her surgically enhanced bosom, "If these are fake, then everything is fake. And then what do we have to live for?"
[...]
The real Cosgrove was born in '69, an auspicious year for a love commando, but also a time when the idealism of protest seemed concrete. Now, with the harsh boot of fascism replaced by the velvet fist of the G-8, her characters seem like stand-ins for those whose days of dissent are behind them. When Mara muses, "From RAF to NPR, maybe that's what it means to grow up," the satire is biting, and it's not a love bite.