{"id":19340,"date":"2023-01-18T12:40:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T11:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/en\/?post_type=stsp_text&p=19340"},"modified":"2023-01-24T17:10:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T16:10:40","slug":"visitations","status":"publish","type":"stsp_text","link":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/text\/visitations\/","title":{"rendered":"Visitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Even to the barbarian with no gods, the guest remains sacred.<\/em> [Die Nibelungen]
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

But in order to enjoy time away from home or work with less domestic or financial worries, a renter or owner sometimes makes a temporary pact with an unholy guest: the house-sitter or studio sub-letter left up to her host\u2019s devices. Because an absent host is unable to graciously muffle her guest\u2019s thoughts and desires at every turn and an idle mind is the devil\u2019s amusement park, the guest will gradually forget her manners.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A perk of being an absent host is not having to talk to your guests, but regardless of how well guest knows host and whether or not host knows it, the two will become closer when the latter leaves the former to it or it to her, removing any need for the guest\u2019s ceremonial validation of the way the host lives. Unburdened of its function as setting for performances such as The Perfect Hostess<\/em> or The Frazzled Hostess<\/em>, her world asks for nothing and does not need to be seen.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

An absent host’s possessions are self-satisfied monads waiting faithfully for the return of their owner\u2019s touch, keeping some secrets covered and speaking plainly of others with no hint of either pride or shame. The good guest\u2019s task is to live among them stealthily and to preserve their untouched look and feel. An absent host trusts an unholy guest to snoop with love, if she must.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A good house-sitter is a stand-in for someone who looks and feels at home. She doesn’t even have to play a whole person \u2013 just move around regularly between bed, kitchen and bathroom, leaving behind traces of life realistic enough to convince house-ghosts they are being lived with. You\u2019re always a little something more than home alone in someone else’s home.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The satisfaction on the side of being the long-term guest of an absent host is the sweet little power high of knowing that if an old lover stopped by your own apartment today or tomorrow or next week, you wouldn’t be home.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Part 2
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The unholy house-guest delicately hosts her host’s absence with discrete devotion, purposely impersonating her imperfectly because a living space returned to its rightful owner in too flawless a state could be interpreted as an unsolicited suggestion for improvement to the absent host\u2019s home life, which may as well be an unsolicited suggestion for improvement to her personality.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A good studio sub-letter differs most from a good house-sitter when she sits in as long-distance studio assistant to her absent host, fulfilling various un-guest-like functions from meticulous proof-reader to impartial storage unit manager who can be called on without hesitation to open a garment bag containing various intimate remains of a life left behind in Berlin, fish out the right pair of gloves for October in Paris and get them in the mail on the same day.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s assistant as studio sub-letter covers her tracks out of reverence for her absent host: the established artist. She will appear to put her assisting duties before any unholy tendencies that might surface in her host\u2019s absence, but in fact, a solitary sojourn in a superior\u2019s sanctuary makes the most unholy guest of all. As she was never a whole guest to begin with, the assistant has no problem offering up a limb to serve as acting arm of the studio by ghost-signing contracts, books, certificates and small works. An extra thumb and two fingers at the artist\u2019s disposal from noon \u2018til night. The house-sitter makes substitute gestures as a favor, but the assistant cum forger performs commissioned identity theft for a price.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

This impersonation of the unavailable artist started out harmlessly, the assistant accepting a package in the artist\u2019s name or posing as the artist on phone calls with government agencies who, in an insulting refutation of the trusted assistant\u2019s status, refuse to reveal financially sensitive information to anyone but the artist herself. These early games of sonic play-pretend were sanctioned in the eyes of God if not necessarily decriminalized under the law by the artist\u2019s attentive ear just a few feet to the left of the seat from where the call was conducted.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

But when the artist leaves home and takes up the role of absent host, what began as an innocent lark becomes a deception of a larger and more lasting scale, shifting from a real-time time-based vocal assurance that the artist is telephonically there now to a time-stamped assurance in ink that the artist was<\/span><\/p>\n

(sign) <\/em><\/span>here: \"\"then<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now the unholy guest is put to the test. All her gratuitous exercises in stealth pay off in this flick-of-the-wrist fabrication of evidence that will prove to a curator and a few collectors that the artist was present on November 17th of last year. The assistant supersedes her house- and studio-sitting functions as dutiful overseer of personal belongings by becoming the most powerful secret of all: an undetected body leaving a single intentional trace to be attributed to another, all while remaining entirely traceless herself. For a moment she holds the artist\u2019s fate in her hand. She imbues the work with a high value, but any flaw in her camouflage renders the work worse than worthless: counterfeit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile the assistant\u2019s own professional merit as keeper of crucial falsehoods rises in direct correlation with how smoothly she conducts value between the artist\u2019s mind in Paris, her studio in Berlin and her solo show in Madrid. Committed willingly and with permission, a flawless sin means that everybody wins.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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