At the German Aphorism Conference
Posted on January 8, 2009
Filed Under Aphorisms | 5 Comments
A report from the Third German Aphorists Conference—Wit, Image, Sense—held in Hattingen from Nov. 6 – 8, 2008, by Jurgen Wilbert:
“The theme of the third meeting of aphorists at Hattingen/Ruhr, near the towns of Bochum and Essen, was the three different aspects of the aphorism: wit, image, and sense. The conference again took place at the Stadtmuseum (town museum) of Hattingen, organized by the German Aphorism Archive (DAphA, founded by Friedemann Spicker and Jürgen Wilbert) and the Stadtmuseum (Petra Kamburg). This convention was more international than the preceding meetings in 2004 and 2006. In her opening address, the Mayoress of Hattingen, Dr. Dagmar Goch, particularly welcomed the participants from other countries, which included Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, the U.K., Israel, and Finland.
From Jerusalem came Elazar Benyoetz, the famous German-language aphorist. His profound reading/lecture was a highlight of the opening program. The musical cabaret by the duo Faltsch Wagoni on Thursday evening delighted and inspired the audience. During Friday and Saturday, a series of lectures explored the three facets of the aphorism. James Geary presented his lively juggling aphorisms performance, with many autobiographical and literary remarks.
On Friday morning, a dozen aphorists traveled to six secondary schools in Hattingen and vicinity to present introductions to this shortest of literary genres, using lots of entertaining examples. On Friday evening there were special readings at three different locations in the center of town: the Mayas bistro, the Refugium wine bar, and the Napp (Mirhoff & Fischer) bookshop. The topics of these readings included aphorisms and medicine, aphorisms and philosophy, and aphorisms and eroticism. All venues were filled to capacity. The workshops an Saturday dealt with the central questions of the conference – wit and aphorism, image and aphorism, and sense and aphorism. There was also a workshop on how to present and perform aphorisms. At the end of the meeting, the audience was enthusiastic about Markus Jeroch, a fantastic word juggler from Berlin. Thus, the conference came to a really thrilling finale. You can read all about the conference on the German Aphorism Conference website, and the results will be included in the forthcoming book based on the conference, due to be published in June.
The next German Aphorists Conference will take place in 2010, the year that the Ruhr region is the European Capital of Culture. Certainly this meeting will be even more European, because one of the fundamental subjects will be the question of how to translate aphorisms into other languages.
For more information, visit German Aphorism Archive or contact juergen.wilbert@web.de
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* It’s not enough to get into history, you also have to get out alive. Leonid S. Sukhorukov
Aphorisms and Medicine. Hippocrates began it all: “Life is short, Art long….”
This last part reminded me of working Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Paris where businessmen were predicting the EEC as the rightful return of Europe to the conter of world power, while worrying about English becoming the de facto lingua franca and Germany overlording it economically over the rest of the EEC. I am quite happy to have returned to the US where we have our first Hawaiian president with African and muslim heritage, even if our de facto language is also English and there are more german descendants than British Isles ones here on this famous European land grab. At least we hyphenate our populace, Chinese -American and so on – hope you get around to having German-Turks or French-Moroccans or British-Pakistanis, in government, one day.
And bankers, financiers and stock marketeers everywhere have to prove themselves human much less world citizens anywhere at the moment.
How many women spoke and performed rather than sat in the audience and applauded by the way? I have had many arguments lately in the Art World lately by the way about Saint simon’s original idea of the avant-garde, in trying to concieve of the French Revolution and a society afterwards he said the artists (meaning writers mostly) and scientists (including academics in soft sciences presumably) would be the advance guard for society. I have stated that the Democratic primaries here with Clinton and Obama are the new avant-garde, and congratulations Germany for having Angela Merkel, but as I stated above its just one step. Political representation, in Saint Simonian terms, has perhaps been the only progressive force we can still try to hope for, however my aphorisms I prefer the most are political, and the sense they make is to hopefully sting a little awareness into this climate blackened with a cloud of gnats in the form of slogans sound bytes memes and received ideas of all kinds, and a lot of the aphoristic activity here as well makes that kind of sense as well, think of them as little armed mosquitos aimed into the great gnat cloud of niggling at people”s confused verbage (thank you Sarah Palin for that neologism) and hope they hit home somewhere..