What a pace: Only a year ago, the Basel signatory to Jan Bachmann published his comic debut about Erich Mühsam, German anarchist and free thinker, who was around 1910, in the West of Switzerland for the cure. And the left out in his diary about how all the mountains were to take the point of view and how his bowel movement was ordered, while he tried to distinguish between sexual adventures as a Poet. Bachmann won the guaranteed tour of this Bohemian a high degree of scurrility, by he put the diary text, with bright colours, bold perspectives, and a fine ironic dialogues below.
Bach’s second string is based on similar curious facts: “the mountain of The naked truths” plays in 1900, ten years before the Laborious- Comic , and it comes here also to a Culture Clash: on the Monte Verità Vegans (or vegetabi reasons lists, as they were called at the time) a municipality, in which one moves like naked, what attracts foreign tensioner. Below Ascona to come while the young German anarchists, and the poor villagers in the way. And then also a Baltic liquor Baron staggers through the streets, the should not get married in order to be disinherited; anyway, he raves about the local laundress, but would like to refrain from alcohol in any way.
nerds so, wherever you look – which seems to turn out to be Bachmann’s specialty, and yet, one wonders if the author as a Central figure chooses, of all things, a talking goat, which climbs from Ascona from the hill: “I just wanted to look at once, what are you morons up here,” says animal and Gustav “Gusto” Gräser, one of the municipalities, co-founder, whose actions (a little) and opinions (commenting a lot) you now. With good reason: In the valley below, the goat would be a mess just.
riot because of a cheese rind
But above an uproar: is there only because the local authorities founder Henri Oedenkoven has found a suspicious cheese rind, and make the sinner to find addiction. On the other, because lurking anarchists suddenly throw with walnuts, as the vegetabi lists-think-tank Ida Hoffmann admits that you live here Yes just by the money of the rich industrialist parents, “to a bunch of quitter Finance a couple of years”. The addressed Gusto (which is read later in a cave to Losone hausen and there with Hermann Hesse, Lao Tzu) replied cool: “What makes me a viable economy, I’m not allowed to sit?”
In the case of all the Comedy and absurdity: Here the Comic is exciting, as he tells of a time in which it is quite conceivable seemed to be that in addition to the capitalism and the communism, a third belief may form that emanated from such alternative movements. Bachmann holds because, once again, close to the sources, several times reference is made, for example, Harald szeemann’s exhibition catalogue to the famous Monte Verità exhibition, 1978.
expression dances instead of money
And the goat? The arms of the village population is calling for, of course, pay for the animal, whereupon Gusto, strutting merrily in the village of Church in, to make it known that the goat was come voluntarily to him. He then offers a trade that baffled even the priest, Instead of money that has Gusto, offers a self-choreographed sun dance on the square, whereupon it comes to a Fight in the Church. And the goat is to be remarked, thoughtfully: “So, Jesus, in Preaching, he is not straight!”
Whirl in the forest: Gusto Gräser is considered the founder of modern expressive dance. Photo: Edition Modern
at least here it is not clear how Bachmann only graphically, but also in its narrative strongly reminiscent of Joann Sfars Comic classic “The cat of the Rabbi”. There, in the case of Sfar, debated the eponymous cat-like on the subject of religion in General and Judaism in Particular. In the case of Bachmann, the goat taciturn remains; for shaping and Bachmann turns the body of humans and animals on so adventurous a nature that one imagines oneself to be in an expressionist fairy-tale world. At the same time, we are part of a society that appears to be as serious as laughable in their efforts, from the pre-gradients of life to depart.
“I would describe my relationship to this community, as a critical solidarity.”The goat on the vegetabi lists on Monte Verità.
In this regard, “the mountain of The naked truths” is a unique experience. A pity only, that some ortho reduce graphical errors the reading pleasure. And it’s a pity that the narrative breaks off after 80 pages already, and instead of a long epilogue follows, as of the German banker (and later Nazi) Eduard von der Heydt in 1926, Monte Verità acquired. It is better to have the views of the goat (“I would describe my relationship to this community, as a critical solidarity.”) a little longer listening.
Jan Bachmann: The mountain of the naked truths. Edition Moderne, Zurich, 2019. 112 p., 30 Fr.
Created: 03.11.2019, at 14:05