Defining a self, an identity. So often it is a construction in relation to an outside, to people, objects, ideas, categories and orders surrounding us. Sometimes, a tiny shift creates a huge difference in how we define our surroundings and therefore ourselves. I guess, at the end of the day, it might not make that big a difference if I sort my library alphabetically, by color or by genre. However, it does inform me of my priorities. Maybe I should consider sorting the library by size of the respective volumes, the number of pages, the date of publication or the store I bought the book in. All of these options follow some sort of logic and result in an inherent order.

JOHNNY

Yes, that was fun. Now we could start applying this idea to other things. There’s this bug in Australia, which often mistakes broken beer bottles for their mates and tries to breed with them.
I guess to nobody’s surprise, it doesn’t effectively result in any offspring. I wonder if the limita- tions in perception, the categories deemed relevant by and for myself, in some way reflect back on
a self-understanding, on how I place myself within the broader context of things. Am I the sum
of things surrounding me or are the things surrounding me the sum of my perception, my order,
my categories? I mean, how do I actually position myself in my environment? Or the other way around: where or what is this „self“ without its demarcation from a or the whole? Maybe this is too straight forward or banal or blunt, but maybe I’m even considering our possible inexistence without the world.

JENNY

Johanna Kotlaris nudges me, pushes me just so far that I can’t ignore my understanding of order, of categories and my limitations in interacting with the world in accordance to these preconceived structures of thinking about the res extensa. Here it is: the shift. Then again, to which degree may I separate myself, my identity, my physicality from what I am surrounded by? I know even less now than I did before and frankly, I’m pretty happy with that.

Danai Rossalidis & Clifford E. Bruckmann