?Zur Zeit Maler und Dichter? ? DER DOPPELTE GEORGE GROSZ: INTERMEDIALE BEZÜGE ZWISCHEN GROSZ? LYRISCHEM WERK UND AUSGEWÄHLTEN ZEICHNUNGEN

The following thesis examines the poetic oeuvre of George Grosz in relation to selected drawings from the same period of time. A survey of the research on George Grosz shows that the scholarly focus has so far mainly been on his work as a visual artist, whereas his published poems have not been treated with as much attention. Furthermore, there exists no in-depth analysis of possible intermedial relations between his poetic and visual works, although titles of poems and drawings, editorial characteristics of the publication of poems and drawings respectively, and the themes of both suggest a relation between the medially different artefacts of Grosz?s work. The goal of this thesis is to analyse and interpret intermedial relations between Grosz?s poems and drawings and thus affirm their existence as a constituent element of his work. Following Jan Mukarovský?s suggestion of the dual character of content/theme and structure in every artefact, the thesis is subdivided into two separate analyses of content and structure of poems and drawings and their respective intermedial relations. The methodology used to analyse Grosz? work as an intermedial phenomenon draws from the theoretical background of both semiotics and intermediality. Of eminent importance for the methodology are thus Umberto Eco?s works on semiotics and Roland Barthes? works on semiotics in general and on the semantics of visual language in particular. Fernande Saint-Martin?s Semiotics of Visual Language (1990) serves as reference work for the analyses of the structural characteristics of Grosz? drawings and Roman Jakobson?s and Jirý Veltruský?s works on semiotics shed light on the structural differences between verbal and visual language. Furthermore, Irina O. Rajewsky?s systematic introduction to the field of intermedial research, Intermedialität (2002), provides an apparatus with which to categorize structural relations between poems and paintings. The content analysis of poems and drawings focuses on certain recurrent topoi. These are the topoi of the big city, America and (circus) artists. The analyses show intermedial relations and are valuable for the (re-)interpretation of certain topoi, especially when it comes to the evaluation of the Americatopos. The most prominent and dominant topos in both media proves to be the big city. Overall, the analysis of thematic relations mirrors semiotic theory: poems as verbal artefacts are able to provide more content-information than the visual language of the drawings. The structural analysis focuses on certain modes of visual representation as employed by the drawings, and sets out to show intermedial reverberations of the visual structures in the poems and how the verbal structures succeed in evoking certain structural characteristics of visual language in general of and Grosz?s drawings in particular. Whereas there is a semantic advantage of verbal language in the intermedial relations of the contents of the artefacts, the structural analyses show that it is visual structures that govern the relations between poems and drawings. Again, this can be put down to semiotic characteristics: visual language is less strucurally regulated than its verbal counterpart. The conclusion tries to merge the results of the separate analyses by stating that intermedial relations exist and encompass the dualism of content and structure that makes up the artefacts. The specific character of the intermedial relations mirrors the characteristics of the two semiotic systems employed by drawings and poems, i. e. visual and verbal language. Finally, it is suggested that thematic and structural relations are mainly governed by the topos of the big city, which hence can be seen as the thematic and structural paradigm of the analysed poems and drawings by George Grosz and of their intermedial relations

The force of the sign. Terrorism as a symbolic phenomenon

Seit der radikalen Änderung der weltpolitischen Lage durch das Selbstmordattentat islamistischer Terroristen auf die Supermacht U.S.A. am 11.9.01 versucht die Weltöffentlichkeit, dem Phänomen des Terrorismus durch die verschiedensten Erklärungsstrategien Herr zu werden. Man führt den Kampf der Kulturen oder Religionen an, verweist auf die Ausbeutung der Peripherie des kapitalistischen Weltsystems durch den Hegemon U.S.A. oder pathologisiert bzw. dämonisiert die Taten der Terroristen. Uns scheinen diese Erklärungsstrategien den Machtkonstellationen der postmodernen Gesellschaften nicht gerecht zu werden, da sie ein zentrales soziales Phänomen der vergangenen Jahrzehnte nicht beachten: das Unbehagen an der pluralistischen Gesellschaft und der konsensuell-repräsentativen Demokratie. Um dieses Unbehagen angemessen beschreiben zu können, wollen wir uns ihm aus einer zeichentheoretischen Perspektive nähern, die soziale Formationen nicht durch (kooperative) Arbeit determiniert sieht, sondern durch die Instanz des Codes. Für Jean Baudrillard ist die Wahl des Ziels der beiden Türme bedeutend, die sich wechselseitig reflektieren und das System nach allen Seiten hin abschließen. Mit ihnen wurde das neuralgische Zentrum des Systems getroffen, das sich auf einem binären Code gründet. Die Twintowers bedeuteten nicht nur das Ende jedweder originalen Referenz, sondern auch den Abschluss des Bezeichneten durch die Wiederholung des Zeichens. Der Code führt eine symbolische Verteilung der gesellschaftlichen Körper durch und zielt auf eine möglichst genaue Übereinstimmung der Gemeinschaft mit sich selbst gemäß eines arithmetischen und geometrischen Kalküls. Die integrative Kraft dieses auf dem Identitätsprinzip basierenden Systems scheint immer häufiger nicht mehr in der Lage zu sein, das negative Potential antagonistischer Strategien binden zu können, die in Form von zivilem Ungehorsam, Politik von Minoritäten oder terroristischen Akten die symbolische Ordnung der westlichen Gesellschaften unterhöhlen. In diesem Tagungsband diskutieren wir das Ausmaß der Krise der konsensuellen Demokratie und ihrer Institutionen. Die Aufsätze behandeln folgende Themen: • Die Krise der pluralistischen Gesellschaft: Wie verständlich ist das kulturelle, politische und religiöse Unbehagen am westlichen Wertekanon? • Die Funktion der Medien in der konsensuellen Demokratie; die gesellschaftliche Wirkung der medialen Reproduktion terroristischer Akte; das Bild des Terrorismus in der Populärkultur • Ästhetischer Terror: Die Vernichtung von Sinn und Bedeutung in der zeitgenössischen Kunst und Kunsttheorie • Die politische Logik des Terrorismus (Ziele, Bedingungen u. Legitimität des Terrorismus in Abgrenzung zu alternativen politischen Ausdrucksformen wie z.B. dem zivilen Ungehorsam; die Bedeutung des terroristischen Opfertodes) • Geschichte des Terrorismus (speziell der Terrorismus der RAF) • Terror als irrationale Gewalt (der ontologische Status des Terrorismus)Since the radical changes in international politics caused by the suicide attacks on the USA by Islamic terrorists on the 11th of September in 2001, the world public tries to grasp the phenomenon of „Terrorism“ through different explanatory strategies. These include referring to the clash of cultures and of religions, to the exploitation of the periphery by the capitalist system incarnated by the USA, or pathologizing as well as demonizing the deeds of the terrorists. All these explanatory attempts do not seem to do justice to the actual constellations of power in postmodern societies, because they do not take a widespread social phenomenon of the past decades in consideration: the discomfort with the pluralistic society and with the concurrent-representative democracy. In order to describe this discomfort adequately we would like to approach the phenomenon from a semiotic perspective which does not consider social formations as determined by cooperative work but rather by the authority of the code. For Jean Baudrillard the target was meaningful since the two towers not only reflect each other but also completely close the system. With them the neuralgic center which is based upon the binary code was severely hit. The twin towers not only meant the end of every original reference but also the completion of the signified by the reduplication of the sign. The code conducts a symbolic distribution of the social bodies and aims at an as accurate as possible identification of the community with itself corresponding to an arithmetic and geometric calculus. The system which is based upon the principle of identity does not seem to have the ability to integrate antagonist energies properly. So these antagonist powers undermine the symbolic order of western societies in terms of civil disobedience, politics of minorities or terroristic acts. In this conference transcript we discuss the degree of crisis of consensual democracy and ist institutions. The essays cover the following topics: • The crisis of the pluralistic society: How comprehensible and justified is the cultural, political, and religious discomfort with western values? • The function of mass media in democratic systems: What is the impact of the reproduction of terrorist acts on society? How does popular culture deal with terrorism? • Aesthetic terror: the destruction of sense and meaning in contemporary arts and art theory • The political logic of terrorism (aims, legitimacy of terrorism as opposed to other forms of opposition like civil disobedience; the meaning of the terrorist self-sacrifice death) • History of terrorism (e.g. The German terrorism of the RAF) • Terrorism as an irrational power (ontological status of terrorism