The Desire to Sacrifice mySelf

There was once a (pre-)teenage girl in a land far away (North-Rhine Westphalia) and she was full of desires for things that would only come after the suburban upbringing. She is our protagonist, the Lyrical I that we feel through, she is Charlotte Rohde™ (but not the artist Charlotte Rohde). Her girlhood, meaning her age, and also her good-girl-training in manners, restricted her wildly to explore these desires. So she developed the habit of thinking of herself in the third person. She imagined her future self, she made an image of herself; adult – not a girl, definitely a woman – and free to give in to all desires felt.The desires played on multiple levels. There was the desire to be professional™ and celebrated for her achievements – it was a self image of being a Successful Business Woman™, always busy, always realizing stuff. She created folders of fashion design sketches, texts, fictional hotel management, and she invented a language. Another, maybe more adult desire represented the opposite, calm mornings in empty apartments, limbo, adventure, the absence of responsibilities. She pictured herself in empty grandiose apartments filled with only a mattress and sunlight, moving in slow motion. Picturing herself in what she thought the life of an artist would be. So the little girl started writing her desired future: She desired both to become her image, but also the image her image would create.

23.07.2010
Ich will nicht dich, ich will dein Begehren.
I don’t want you; I want your desire.

When the artist Charlotte Rohde graduated from high school, her class made a publication in which every student wrote a text about another student. Rohde was written by her high school bestie Nora S., who shared her passion for desire™ and philosophy™, and their passion for rendering themselves as philosophic. Nora S. wrote a speculative Wikipedia-Article for Rohdes future Lyrical I, set ca 20 years ahead, about how she had become an artist and a published author, a femme fatale and a professor. Then, during a magical opening night in Paris, Rohde would suddenly disappear on her way up to the top of the Tour Eiffel. Sometimes, the artist thinks about how most of the things that Nora S. wrote about her life have become true. How she became that image that Nora S. painted with her words. She grew into the lore that Nora S. created for her. Coincidence? Co-authorship? Collective écriture féminine?
Can lore-making – both prior or post to the real, to be lore-yfied event – function as a feminist practice? (for once because most great stories™ are written by men™ about men™). It creates precedence for new models of female™ lyfe. Looking at the lore-y tears of Bella Hadid, that might or might not be real, we can see that in a utilitarian sense, they anyways do open space for public vulnerability. And even if they are fake – it’s never really lying (hence morally wrong) because the concept of lying only exists if there is such a thing as truth™ (or any essential authenticity at all). It is not lying, it is more that we turn ourselves into a signifier, into a myth that we want to be part of, something that we want to stand for. A scam is only a scam (hence morally wrong) if the damage becomes effective. Otherwise it’s just a good story. Could this be a new form of martyrdom? Women™ writing women™ into lore even if their story isn't fully true™? Sacrificing themselves for the image, the myth, so others can strive for it? Becoming a Vor-Bild? A myth can only work if the Actual I is fully sacrificed for the Lyrical I.

The Lyrical I certainly loved writing herself and she also loved being written by another Woman. Now she found her place in Rohde’s first publication, “You Loved An Image”. Rohde longs to use her own story of becoming a woman (™) as a medium of a collective experience: being lost in the intricate image-to-reality-pipeline™. She now knows desire. She now knows what it’s like to be a woman™. And through the artist's writing and image-making, The Lyrical I has now become larger than Rohde herself.
And now the Lyrical I manifests herself at Grotto, co-written by the Weeping Designer (Tatjana Stürmer) warmly invited by Marketing Barbie, the public image of Leonie H, where they will do what the girlies do: put their heads together and serve curated imagery for others to curatedly perceive them.

Text by Charlotte Rohde

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