Every
Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere
A little potpourri by
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Artist
Guenther Friesinger
Department of Philosophy
University of Vienna
Formato PDF
Every day, the snuff picture sites on the internet display pictures
of people, and sometimes animals, who died in the most unusual
circumstances. In this gigantic photo depot I also discovered
an image of the remains of the head of an American who, after
a short morning visit to his office, left his workplace in order
to leave a trail of carnage at a nearby supermarket and finally
to kill himself. Somehow the police photo landed on the website,
and below it was a commentary unobtrusively written in Times
New Roman font: “Maybe his inkjet printer had a paper
jam.” Who knows? In office space no one can hear you scream.
The first album by the German punk group Abwärts, released
in 1980, carried the wonderful palindrome KOMA/AMOK as its title.
This antithetical pair outlined two approaches for the punk
movement’s reaction to the capitalist system and its pressure
to succeed: either against oneself, or against others. The alternative
culture magazine Slam writes: “Maybe the world seemed
and seems no longer to be changeable, save that one withdraw
fully into a depressive waking coma or that one let out –
in the extreme case – all of one’s pent up aggressions
in a hypertrophic burst of violence.” If one opts for
one of these two alternatives, the solution of passive autoaggression
is far more common. The probability that a man in Germany will
run amok is around 1 million to 1, while for women the probability
is 20 million to 1. Running amok is a male-hegemonial problem.
[note: In the German-speaking world, the expression amoklaufen
(to run amok) is used exclusively in the context of violent
incidents like the one described above. Interestingly, English
usage has diluted the impact of the Malay word for a “murderous
frenzy” by applying it metaphorically in a host of everyday
situations. This text uses the term in its original context
of extreme outbursts of violence.]
It was on 11 September 2001, of all days. On the day that more
than 3,000 people died in New York as the result of a terrorist
attack, a young man in Erfurt (Germany) finally received his
long awaited sport shooting license. His name: Robert Steinhäuser.
Only a few months later the nineteen-year-old would achieve
woeful
