Dieter Telfser

Very seldom have I regretted more not bringing my camera than yesterday when I attended a few lectures at TYPOBerlin, specifically the artist Dieter Telfser’s lecture which he delivered in a latex outfit, and with a live eagle* on his head. A stolen low res screen cap from the Typo Videoblog:



The delivery of a speech with an eagle on one’s head should do something to, eh, the creation or perception of meaning, shouldn’t it? Well yes, indeed it does. There was a certain urgency to everyone’s attention, especially as the eagle took off a couple of times, and flew rounds in the huge, beautiful congress hall of Haus der Kulturen der Welt. It ended abruptly when the eagle flew head on into the wall and fell down. Luckily it didn’t seem injured. Unsurprisingly, the event didn’t go down without protest from the audience.

The title of Telfser’s presentation was «Achtung—Ächtung», something like «Attention–Condemnation». I’m really not able to try a summary, even of the parts I think I understood. I couldn’t even tell you if I thought the speech was interesting, I don’t know. But the performance certainly was. The text, and some debate can be read here, in German.

*UPDATE: Adam T. points out in the comments that it in fact was a golden eagle, not a falcon, as I originally wrote. Sorry about that. The text is corrected.