Too many questions. I think of the boy in the firing range in Mirror who, charged by the commander to perform an about turn, turns a full 360 degrees, unlike all the other cadets. The instructor asks him why. ‘In Russian, "about" means a 360 degree turn’. He will be sent back to his parents, says the instructor, angry at his insolence. Another cadet’s voice: ‘he lost his parents in the siege of Leningrad’. And the boy says quietly, ‘What parents?’ And then, ‘What firing position. I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t understand’ – until the whole world is what is not understood. But the world, now, is not the space in which it is possible to choose and act. ‘I don’t understand’: helplessness that gives the world as what it is not. Space of disengagement, time without possibility.
Lars Iyer's Blog 