The experiment with symbols is seriously disturbed with the information that from the point of view of neuropsychology Asymbolie as the result of wrong or none functioning of the posterior parietal lobe  (caused by brain injury or tumors) leads to inability to bring together symbolization with the item meant by it. Even if this description is indisputable from a psychological and neurological point of view it does not apply from a cultural point of view because Asymbolie is also the case if there is over-demanding of the psyche or an over-stimulation of the senses which happened through an event (shock, trauma). In an alleviated way this also applies to an excess of information that is given through an unknown  circumstance, a strange thing or a provocative art work and  cannot  -or cannot yet-  be restrained by signs and symbols.

Furthermore Bahlke-Meisel quotes Frances Yates, the specialist for the development of occidental sign and symbol language, who refers to Sokrates who noted that the trust put into symbolizing by writing would also  influence the memory. He meant that the more power is given to signs to retain experience and memory the ability to remember once own would be neglected. With this is implied that the system of signs is regarded as a collective accomplishment by which the dependencies of the individuum are already noticable.

It is about experiences and memories that are latent as long as they have not been put in shapes, novels, poems and so on, so that each one for himself experiences the deficit emerging from something not-understood and inaccessible, and has to find out the absence. It is about the the parts of the world which are not or insufficiently objetified  by writing, words and pictures.


6. Crisis of representation

Momentously bears the crisis of representation on the arts where failures occur that are more significant than the changes of paradigm announced in ever shorter intervals.
After reading Sigmund Freud's Das Unheimliche** (The sinister) Julia Kristeva* notes that according to Jentsch*** magic, animism or - more prosaic - <intellectual uncertainty> promote the formation of the sinister (page 202).

"The symbol ceases to be symbol and takes over 'the full power and meaning of what is symbolized' (S. Freud, pg. 267).  In other words: the sign is no longer experienced as arbitrary but adopts a real meaning. As a consequence the material reality that the sign is commonly meant to characterize disintegrates by and by in favor for the imagination which is merely 'the overemphasis of the mental reality in comparison to the material reality' (S.Freud, ibid)'". (Kristeva, I.c.)
The signs are loosened from their symbolic function, they get "reified" by which they start to lead their own lives. This sign of de-symbolization as an indicator for a destruction of linguistic instinct. Benjamin**** already noticed  as a sign for scripture to become independent in "Trauerspielaufsatz" which he saw given in the case of baroque theatre by the introduction of the majuscule.

In these basics is a key for the linguistic experiments by Hugo Ball as well as the
Lettrists and the Cut-up experiments by Brion Gysin. Here writing takes visual character and looses its function as a means of communication. The interest is trained on its object character and it is made the object of visual experiments. One only has to think of the numbers and letters worked into paintings and sculptures by pop artists (for example Robert Indiana). The crisis of representaton in which picture, object, body, symbol, writing and speech become interchangeable was not least expressed  in the decision by the Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (a German organisation representing book editors and book dealers, organizing the yearly Frankfurter Buchmesse / book fair as well) in 2008 to present Anselm Kiefer with the Friedenspreis (international prize given once a year by the a.m. Boersenverein to personalities who have engaged in peace support in the field of science or art) - a painter who averts sensitivities by putting on canvases amounts of stuff and substances interfuced with terms and names.

In reversal the things and bodys that are to be symbolized achieve sign character. This is the case for a number of paintings by Bahlke-Meisel like "Hand und Fuss' (hand and foot) 2007 for example, a spiral with a foot sitting at one end and a hand on the other, and for "O.T'  2006, the motive of this exhibition GesprŠchsfessel 2008, (conversation shackle), the spiral, which winds themselves from a pot/a muzzle out-steps and up to the lower contour. The gesture of both arms that appear from below the pot/muzzle and  arch over the spirale make the spirale to a picture of a dress. A body does not exist, it is illusion that has emerged by the assembly of signs and color. The body is a picture, a phantasm, a mass phenomenon that is put together by the on-looker from the picture information given.