Werke des Jahres 2003: "Fluss"

Texte des amerikanischen Filmemachers (Gummo), Schriftstellers und Malers Harmony Korine (geb. 1973) sind eine wirre Sammlung von kleinen Dialogen, Kurzgeschichten oder einfach statischen Bildern. Trotz seiner offensichtlichen Neigung zur Darstellung des Absurden, des Brutalen, werden diese nie zum Selbstzweck. Korine ignoriert die konventionelle Logik des Erzählens; in scheinbarer Hilflosigkeit wird das Pornografische mit Alltäglichem und das Komische mit Banalem durcheinandergebracht. Die Momente des Schocks verlieren dadurch ihre narrative Funktion und etablieren sich gleichzeitig als autonome Objekte, als Standbilder, die zugleich ergreifend und distanziert wirken. So wie z. B. in Bildern des ukrainischen Fotografen Boris Mikhailov wird auch hier die Grausamkeit des Alltags durch scheinbare Indifferenz ihrer Darstellung zum Ausdruck des Universellen.

Diese Mischung aus Körperlichem und Abstraktem bzw. der Versuch, das Hypersubjektive durch die Art ihrer Entfaltung zu verfremden und so überdeutlich wirken zu lassen, all das sind die Techniken, die auch ich in Bezug auf Klänge zu verwenden glaube.

Einerseits ist jeder Klang, den ich komponiere, Ergebnis der Bewegung eines Spielers; eine isolierte, oft sehr expressive, körperliche Aktion. Andererseits werden diese Aktionen in eine Syntax einbezogen, in der ihre Expressivität schon durch Gleichmäßigkeit ihres Erscheinens relativiert wird. Dazu wird am Anfang des Stückes das kontinuierliche Tempo des Sprechers von zwei anderen imaginären Temposchichten überlagert, wodurch ein neues, gemeinsames Tempo entsteht. In der Mitte wird dagegen ein gemeinsames Tempo als Quersumme von schnell wechselnden Tempi der kleinen, dicht aufeinanderfolgenden Abschnitte in der Wahrnehmung des Zuhörers konstruiert.

So werden die Techniken des literarischen Erzählens (mehrere parallele Sujetlinien können nur nacheinander verfolgt werden) mit den synchronen Techniken der Musik (d. h. mehrere Prozesse können sich simultan entfalten) kombiniert und im Sinne eines gemeinsamen Ziels verbunden, nämlich eine Form zu schaffen, die zugleich nachvollziehbar und widerspruchsreif ist.

Was meinen Umgang mit dem Text betrifft, könnte man weniger von einer Vertonung, sondern vielmehr von einer Serie der instrumentalen Kommentare und phonetischen Übermalungen reden. Der Text wird durchs Sprechen verschwommen, deformiert; das Ensemble wird dagegen zum Filter, zum Echo des Gesprochenen. Das rhythmische Verhältnis zwischen Sprecher und Instrumenten pendelt zwischen vollkommener Synchronie und einem auskomponierten Nachhall, der sich langsam verselbständigt und neue rhythmische Strukturen erzeugt.

1.

My mother was a manic-depressive. She used to sleep for weeks at a time. There was plenty of pain in my life. But that is nothing special. Everyone has it: children, dogs, pets, lawyers; it isn't special. Hurt is universal, so is making people laugh.

2.

The lights in the shop blinked on and off three times in order to inform the Christmas crowd that the store would soon be closing. I was in a hurry to buy a used record player that I had just found, in perfect condition except for a missing needle. In the toy section, near the front register, a small boy with an amputated arm was playing with a plastic pirate hook and a broken walkie-talkie. He was wearing a gray scarf and Velcro sneakers. When I asked my sister if I could borrow her camera in order to take a photo, she looked around the store and told me to forget it, that the light was too dark and her flash wasn't working properly.

3.

A thirty-year-old black woman is standing in front of an apartment building. She is holding a white towel around her hips with one hand. She is a bit chunky and her breast is sagging. She has a large pair of glasses on. Her hair is short and cropped. She is also wearing large silver earrings. She looks a bit pregnant. There is a tree behind her in front of the building.

An old man with no shirt on is sitting on the hood of a small red car. He is holding a broken vial of lipstick. He has a flat chest and a large stomach bulge/beer gut. He has two teeth on opposite sides that are sharp. He has a messy gray ponytail that is being held back by checkerboard bandanna.

A fifteen-year-old boy who is completely naked except for a ripped T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops is standing in a kitchen. He has red curly hair and a very small patch of public hair above his penis area.
He has one leg propped on the kitchen table. A woman old enough to be his mother is sticking her ring finger up his asshole. The woman is wearing a crappy green flannel night-gown. Her legs are up and you can see her panties. She has a very serious look on her face like she is hoping to find something. The boy is holding a toothbrush in one hand.

A bunch of teenage black girls are beating up an overweight white girl. Her shirt is torn and one of her breasts is scraping on the pavement. They are in a crowded parking lot. A few people are standing on their cars watching. All the black girls are wearing Elton John T-shirts.

4.

This fat kid with Down syndrome came running through my front yard with a stolen bike. He was wearing two different kinds of shoes and although he looked young he was almost completely bald. He got on the bike and rode it directly into a tree. I watched him do this over and over again. After about half an hour he was completely bloody and cut up. When my father came home from work he called the police, and nearly an hour later they showed up with the kids parents and the people whose bike he had stolen. His father walked up to the boy and grabbed him real hard by the back of the neck. The Boy started screaming nonsense out at his father.

5.

All he would be was an observer. He waited with serenity. Life had never been good enough to him for him to wince at a destruction. He told himself that he was indifferent even to his own dissolution. It seemed to him that this indifference was the most that human dignity could achieve, and for the moment forgetting his lapses, forgetting even his narrow escape of the afternoon, he felt he had achieved it. To feel nothing was peace.

aus: Harmony Korine, A Crack-Up at the race riots – A Novel Setting about The bastard wisher, Tropen-Verlag Köln 1999.