1 | Do you want a hug?
3-way conversation between Brother Nut 坚果兄弟, UBERMORGEN and The Third Sister
坚果兄，
今天早上我特别需要一个拥抱来感受连接。我要去抱一个人，然后按照凯文·贝肯的“六度分隔理论”，这个拥抱会触发一连串的拥抱，而那其中一个间接就会是我们之间的拥抱。
维也纳，寒冷但阳光明媚。屋顶上几乎太亮的边缘刺入我的眼睛，让我在用笔记本电脑时很难享受阳光……我同时感到悲伤又愉快，而我的多动症今天格外猛烈，我在公寓里东一头西一头地乱撞，从一件事跳到另一件事……
不用“必须做”，而是“可以做”或“不做”，这种自由的满足感真是奇妙。
我常常想起你，想起我们的交流，想起深圳，想起那种在炽热中并肩行走、几乎晕厥的感觉。
自从见到你后，我感受到一种强烈的连接，虽然我也觉得我们可能根本无法真正理解彼此的现实，甚至没有概念或语言去描述它，但作为自闭又敏感的人，我们是懂的。而且我是个浪漫主义者，我甚至相信，作为人类，我们确实有连接。
还有那种通过我们发声的作品，一种通过实验展现人格与开放意图的方式。
我不知道所谓的价值是什么——当我们在追寻某物时，我们究竟相信什么。
我们认为哪些社会或政治结构能运作、值得追求，我也不知道，也不想知道，因为我不认为那是我的职责去拥有“观点”。
我的职责是追随好奇心。
在私底下，我有时会有观点，我想诚实地面对自己的人性，忠实于自己的缺点，并承受那些可怕的矛盾与痛苦。
这一切都很复杂——有时快得让人喘不过气，有时又慢得令人痛苦。
我想尽量和情绪待在一起，至少一小会儿。因为到头来，这关乎生活中什么才有意义，为什么我们每天早上起床做这些事，又如何在夜晚入睡。
我常常不知道。
我常常离不开帮助才能入睡。
我需要时间——几个小时、几天、几周、甚至整段时期——从那种流动、忙乱与加速中抽离出来。
我努力为自己雕刻出无聊的时刻，制造强烈矛盾的情境，然后观察生活在其周围流动。
这正是我想通过这些“书信”与你探讨的东西——一种极其古老、庄重的慢反思形式，一种耗时的交流方式，不便的沟通，一种慢节奏；几乎让人觉得有点无聊。
我热爱我们这个高速的娱乐—行动世界。毫无疑问，活在当下是有趣的，但我在其中需要一个更慢的内在空间，用以对抗我内心更高速的疯狂。
而这个空间不必是智性的、理论的、理性的或历史性的——我其实更希望能更直接地面对我们的现实、感受、痛苦与根本性的问题。
我害怕未来。
我害怕死亡。
有时候我想，也许我最害怕的是世界的巨大与冷峻的事实——那个被称作“我的现实”的东西。
承认我这一生只能活一次。
承认我所做的会带来后果。
承认我对他人的影响可能被滥用，而我确实使用这种影响力，同时努力不去滥用它。
我努力用一种奇怪的责任感和对社会规范的遵守来平衡我的机会主义，同时又怀着一种令人恐惧的害怕——害怕直接的冲突，害怕如果我表达不同意见就不被爱。
那是一种可怕的、被植入的、人工的愿望和冲动——想为他人、为系统“做对的事”。
好在我是个永恒的乐观主义者，这是看世界的一种很美好的方式。
我也是个朋克，但感觉在我成长的路上，那股朋克能量似乎丢失了……
这也让我间接地想到我想与你开启的另一个层面：系统、基础设施、制度。
你常与人、与物、与物理性的毒素、权力结构以及那些现实场域中的冲突打交道——在那里，身体、水和尘埃都在吸收决策的结果。
这些“场景”和“装置”都与更大的利益相关——政客、商人——以及更大的实体：公司、算法、政党、非政府组织、建立并维持权力与基础设施的机构。
我想与你分享在这些结构之中、与这些结构共作的艺术经验。
如今许多人期待阴谋论，但更多时候，那只是为了特定目的而建立的基础设施，后来漂移、脱离了初衷，变成自身的目的，或追随别的目的。
社交媒体平台及其算法是这样的系统。
博物馆也是。
资助机构、供应链、我们自己的工作室、团队，甚至私人配置，当它们开始主导我们时，也一样。
我现在先停在这里，因为我希望我们的交流是可持续的、规律的、轻盈的。
不是每次都要写他妈的一篇论文，或变成一项沉重的行动任务。
它可以是轻快的，只要跟随一个冲动、一条简短的消息、一种感觉。
此刻我赤身坐在暖气前。
阳光刺进我的眼睛。
安静、孤独、又美好。
我一边喝热巧克力、绿茶、加奶的咖啡，一边感受到一种奇异的怪异与舒服。
写信给你的冲动，就像天气一样袭来，而我想顺其自然地跟随它。
你想要一个拥抱吗？
UBERMORGEN（卢齐乌斯）
_
Brother Nut,
This morning I need a good hug to feel connected. I will hug someone and by Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon this one hug will trigger a chain of hugs that will indirectly be a hug between us.
Vienna, cold but sunny, a almost too bright edge over the roofs that touch my eye and make it difficult to enjoy the sun while using a laptop screen... I feel sad and good at the same time and my ADHD is raging today, i trip trough my apartment from one thing into another… It is very satisfying not to have to do but to have the option to do or not to do.
I often think of you and our exchanges, and of Shenzhen, and of walking side by side in the burning heat almost passing out.
After meeting you I feel a strong connection, although I also feel that we might not grasp the reality of the other, not even have a concept or a language for it, but as autistic and sensitive people we do know, and i am a romantic, so i even believe that as humans we do have connection.
There is also the work that speaks through us, a formulation of personality and open intention through experimentation. I do not know about values, what we believe in when we seek for something. What social or political structures we think can work, or are worth aspiring to, i don’t know, i don’t want to know because i don’t see it as my job to have an opinion , my job is to follow my curiosity. Privately i have opinions, sometimes, and i want to be honest about my humanity and be true to my shortcomings, and to endure the horrible contradictions and pains.
This is complicated, and it is fast and overwhelming, or slow and painful. I want to try to stay with the emotions, at least a little bit, because in the end it is about what makes sense in life, and why you get up in the morning and start doing the things we do, and how to go to bed and be able to sleep.
Often I don’t know. Often i am not able to sleep without help. And I need time, hours, days, weeks, whole periods, to step out of the flow and the hassle and the speed.
I try to carve out times of boredom and situations of hard contradiction and watch life move around it. And that is something I want to talk with you through these ‘Lettres’, this very very old and established form of slow reflection, tedious exchange, inconvenient communication, slowness; almost boring one could think.
I love our high-speed entertainment-action-world. It is fun to live today, no doubt, but I need a slower room inside it to counter-act my even higher-speed inner madness. And this space does not have to be intellectual, theoretical, rational and historical, i’d actually prefer more direct confrontation with our realities, feelings, pains and fundamental questions.
I am scared of the future. I am scared of dying. Sometimes I think I am most scared of the enormity of our world, that clean hard fact called ‘my reality’. To admit that I live my life once. That what I do carries consequences. That the way I affect other people can be abused, and that I do use it and try not to abuse it.
I try to balance my opportunism with a strange responsibility and conformity to social norms and a terrorizing fear of direct confrontation, of not being loved if i tell you that i disagree, a terrible implanted artificial wish and urge to do it right for others, and for our systems. Good thing is that i am an eternal optimist, that is such a nice way to look at the world. And a punk, but it feels as if the punk energy got lost on my way to growing up...
This indirectly brings me to another layer I want to open up with you: systems, infrastructures, institutions. You often work with people and direct objects and physical poison and power structures and confrontations in actual places where bodies and water and dust absorb decisions.
These ‘scenes’ and ’dispositives’ are tied to larger interests—politicians, business people—and to larger entities: corporations, algorithms, parties, NGOs, institutions that build and maintain infrastructures and power.
I want to share experience about working as artists inside and with such infrastructures. Today many expect conspiracies, but often it is just infrastructures built for certain purposes, and then drifting, disconnecting from the initial purpose and becoming their own purpose, or following other purposes. Social media platforms and their algorithms are such systems. Museums too. Funding bodies. Supply chains. Our own studios, crews or private configurations when they start to run us.
Now I will stop here because I want to keep our exchange manageable, regular, light enough to lift. Not a fucking essay each time and a huge duty to action and work. It can be fast and light, just following an impulse or a short message with a thought or a feeling.
Right now I sit naked in front of the heater. The sun cuts into my eyes. It is quiet and lonely and nice. I drink a hot chocolate, green tea, coffee with milk, and it feels weirdly weird but nicely good.
The urge to write to you arrived like weather, and I want to follow it.
Do you want a hug?
UBERMORGEN (Luzius)