Raising Flags

As a writer, when I hear the German word for flags, Fahnen, to me it is the other meaning, galley proofs, that spring to mind. They represent the final phase before a work goes to print. Publication is just around the corner. The issue date is approaching. Nerves are frayed. A work that you have spent who knows how long agonising over has now been converted into a layout the publisher considers appropriate and printed out. The sentences are now in a format that corresponds to all the books published by the particular publishing house.

What I have fabricated now lies before me, crammed into the costume in which it will be presented to the world. It is as if the audience has already come in and taken their seats, as if the dress rehearsal were already set to fail. Since I am sparing in my use of words, every sheet is printed on both sides. There is no turning back now. Although, if truth be told, you can always turn back. And yet it is precisely this always, that somehow makes each now less significant.

Someone else has had a hand in my work. But joint processes like editing and proofreading aside, hands don’t have a great deal to do with it. It was really about putting my thoughts about this or that escapade down in writing. But now these lines no longer look like they are just mine.

To give an example, if I am standing in my kitchen preparing artichokes, I can still convincingly explain how preparing this thistle-like vegetable has something to do with a particular episode in my family history. Once that artichoke with its leaves and heart are on the plate, all ready to eat, then the main question instead becomes what it tastes like. Now the only way to tell how much heart and soul was invested in the preparation is to take a knife and fork to it. To serve up what I have carefully crafted means delivering it in a new wider context.

It is only when I come face to face with the galley proofs that it really sinks in that right from the outset, the text was never meant just for me. I tend to forget that in between, even though, from the very first word being written down, it was clear that what it marked the beginning of was never going to be read just by me in my study – in light of my vulnerability – or in my living room – in light of my irritability. A whole host of people were going to withdraw into themselves to delve into it in their isolation, discovering something similar to me in themselves, recognising that my voice is talking about something that wants to make itself heard by them. This thing lying in front of me in the form of galley proofs makes them my readers.

When I use the so-called first person perspective in my work, it is not because I want to talk about me. What I have in mind is something like a camera setting, with the lens acting as the eye of the absent beholder. However, I have to accept that readers will identify characteristics (if they know me personally) or, more frequently, convictions (if they have never met me) held by one of my characters as being my own. And since, once my works are published, they no longer belong exclusively to me, my opinion on these matters is little more than one among many. Of course what I have to say about it is true, but something else may also be true.

In order not to lose credibility in my own eyes, over the years I have got into the habit of endowing the protagonists in my works with one or two facets that I borrow from my own life history. Then, if someone takes me for one of my characters, I can calmly respond that that is not so surprising, though it is inevitably a case of mistaken identity.

And this, or at least something along these lines, is how I behaved with the protagonist in my novel “Der Schmetterlingstrieb”. I invited him to move in with me while I was telling his story. My flat thus became the stage for his experiences. And even though the idea behind it was that I know myself best in my own home, obviously in doing so, I also invited in (mis-)interpretation.

Since my protagonist was allowed to bring with him whatever he needed to illustrate all the things that befell him, I advised – among other things – a painting by Jasper Johns: Target. Allegedly the “favourite picture” of the protagonist of my text. In the case of Jasper Johns, I find that very hard to believe. So for a while, Target hung above my character’s dresser and therefore also, at the same time, in my living room.

As the plot of my work unfolds, I try to be as cooperative as possible. It does not bother me if something doesn’t turn out to be exactly what I would have chosen. After all, it’s not really about me. Had I not allowed my protagonist in “Der Schmetterlingstrieb” to make his own decisions, then while he was living with me, it would have been Jasper Johns’ Flag (and I mean the original version from 1954) that was hanging on my living room wall – my “favourite picture” by this artist. I mention this because the subject of this painting fits better in this context. I am cooperative.

What fascinates the protagonist of my novel about Target is that – and I quote – “a target is already an object in its own right, whose function is indicated by the design on its surface. Quite like a flag. A target can also be two-dimensional like a painting. The only thing that makes a painting of a target different from a target is precisely that it isn’t actually a target. Confusing, but simultaneously enlightening.”

Pursuing this line of thought, the idea of choosing a flag as the subject of a painting, as Johns did a few years earlier when he painted Flag, fascinates me even more.

A flag – in the case of Flag the so-called Star-Spangled Banner – is a piece of material that takes its identity (and with it its significance) from the design on its surface. What makes Johns’ Flag different from a flag is not just the fact that in the case of Flag it is a painting. If you were to take the picture off the wall and turn it around, you would be looking at the back of a panel of wood on which the year 1954 is written. I saw that in a book – in other words, within the conditions of the world in which the protagonist of my novel lives.

Just like Target, for which you can find the design recreated in different colour combinations and formats, there are also many versions of Flag. There is even one with no colours at all. But unlike targets, which can at best be made more attractive by the choice of colours, in the case of flags, the colours and their layout is essential to their meaning. The Star-Spangled Banner speaks to a particular nation – to all other nations too, of course, but in that case as the others, so to speak. If a flag (Flagge) tells a particular story, it becomes a special kind of flag (Fahne), like a banner of significance. In this way, a piece of printed material takes on an identity. (I cannot help but wonder whether one reason behind the fact that in English the same word is used in both cases is that flags that are linked to a particular story have names – the Star-Spangled Banner, the Union Jack, the Jolly Roger.)

Whenever I look at Johns’ Flag – and I only know the work from pictures of it – within a very short space of time Jimmy Hendricks’ version of the US American national anthem starts playing in my head. The anthem shares its name with the flag – the Star-Spangled Banner.

Hendricks performed his version at the close of the legendary Woodstock festival in 1969, and the way he interpreted this to most people already very familiar (possibly in many different ways as a result of their life history) melody was seen as a political statement, primarily because of his use of various feedback effects and a distortion pedal fitted to his guitar. Many saw in it a statement on the then hotly disputed deployment of US American troops in Vietnam. When I think of how Hendricks released his notes into the atmosphere, in my mind’s eye, Johns’ Flag starts to move, probably because it too is to be understood as a statement. One is less aggressive than is generally assumed; the other, less static than it first appears.

The festival grounds in Woodstock were filled with people who had bought a ticket (and according to the reports, at the time of Hendricks’ performance this was just a relatively small remainder of the original crowd), but Hendricks’ musical monument is also meant for everyone else, and that means us too. It was recorded for posterity and I can play it in my living room, a place where Johns’ Flag has never hung. In fact, this work did not occupy even the tiniest portion of my protagonist’s mind, and he would go and choose Target instead. But then, he has a mind of his own, and it should not be confused with mine.

According to my protagonist, it was I who first introduced him to Jasper Johns and the particular reason why I did that was that the artist and I share a birthday. (Bullshit!)

Deciding on a particular work from Johns’ oeuvre for himself was then a way of expressing at least a modicum of independence. If I like, I can interpret the target that Target not only depicts but in some way even represents as an expression of controlled aggression. Fine by me! It’s high time to change the subject anyway.

Employing flags as a medium for an image and, in the case of the German word “Fahnen”, as the body of an artistic work, fits well with a concept like that followed by museum in progress, which provides works of art with unconventional yet brilliantly suited showcases. Firewalls, the pages of a daily newspaper, billboards, theatre curtains and many more have been and will continue to be used as mostly temporary exhibition spaces for works of visual art.

Used as an image medium, a piece of cloth can become a flag, and a pole, to which this flag is attached via its short side, a part of a frame, while the wind, in whose performative power it lies to present what the flag is printed with in an ideal manner, becomes the perfect version. The location also takes on as important a role as the conditions under which a picture is exhibited in the galleries of a museum. If this is a work of art, the flag becomes a banner of significance, and in order to get the best impression of what is being expressed in words, symbols, photographs and ornaments, you need to be in the right place at the right time. If you happen to see it during a lull in the wind, you will see the flag, but not what it has to say. Luckily, in this case everyone can find out for themselves what there would have been to see in the comfort of their own living room. For every piece of work, comprehensive documentation, including statements, is available on the museum in progress’s website. This can also take you to digital contributions from some of the people involved, who (in most cases) then set in a wider context what the flag they designed has to say.

What all contributions to the raising flags project have in common is that they represent a position. True, they do not do it in the same way as so-called national flags or those flags that mark out a company’s premises do. As works of art, they are subversive. They are unpredictable. How they are to be read will be determined in part by the reader.

My image of flags was shaped in my youth by seeing lots of national flags with an impassioned hole in the centre. Their history, but more than anything else political developments, had endowed them with symbols in that spot – ironically ones that were once employed to overcome the nation state. Until the holes were filled in, only to set off once more on the path to hopelessness, we gorged ourselves on the vibrancy of hearts that had been ripped out. In fictional stories, however, it was the flags on the pirate ships that I was drawn to, announcing the crew’s identity as among those who were unwilling to abide by the laws of the day.

For me there was always something fascinating about the barely comprehensible inclination to employ the very same insignia as were used by those you regarded as prisoners of a morality that was being imposed upon them. Prepare to be overboarded!