EPB 008: Weird Scenes

Performer and choreographer Louis Falco (1942-1993) took pictures. But it was clear at the outset—as a teenager—that his efforts were much more than casual. And as he matured, as he established himself as a world renowned dancer and, later, a notoriously engaging choreographer, his photography, amongst other things, can be seen as a notebook for his staging ideas. Poses, movements, atmospheres—he saw raw material for onstage composition everywhere. And the members of his company were always on hand to inspire him.

Cultural exchange is essential for a vibrant, organically evolving society. It is also my profession as I am the director, since 2023, of the Goethe-Institut here in Johannesburg, South Africa. The institute is a cultural arm of the Federal Republic of Germany promoting cultural exchange, education and societal discourse.

For me, the most beautiful, rewarding, and promising aspect of cultural encounters is not rapid agreement, but productive misunderstanding. How poor would the history of modern art be if Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had not misunderstood the meaning and function of African masks in such a fruitful way? I confess that I am also a vehement supporter of cultural appropriation. Ask any Black blues musician (unfortunately, you can no longer ask Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, or Muddy Waters) whether it hurt or helped him that the Rolling Stones stole his material: it helped everyone, the composers, the Stones, the cultural history of the West in general, and me in particular as an adolescent in Bavaria. But one step above the value of cultural misunderstanding lies that of sheer incomprehension and mystery. However, neither should be taken for granted. After the initial moment of enjoyment, incomprehension needs to be carefully nurtured. It must be guarded and protected from the threat of understanding, which ultimately leads to the futility of meaning.

I don’t know how long I can maintain this lack of understanding, the often-bewildering behaviors I come across and engage with here in South Africa. Still, it is exhilarating and I would like to remain a stranger here and marvel as long as possible, avoiding the zero-sum game of meaning as property.

Habit covers all phenomena like a cotton blanket,
rounding off all the corners of the phenomena stored
beneath it.
—Vilém Flusser: Taking up Residence in Homelessness

For me, one of the most beautiful things in life is arriving somewhere, understanding nothing, and getting lost, exposing myself to unfamiliar signals and meanings that I cannot read because I lack the code for them. But the risk of learning, of understanding, always lurks around the next corner. Humans are trained to decipher the semantics and semiotics of the world, of signs created by other humans as quickly as possible. It is a necessity for survival. But isn’t the result boredom? And prejudice? Once you think you know what something is you stop paying attention to it as you had before.

Stories that you understand are only poorly told,

writes Bertolt Brecht in his play, Baal. He is right. I very much hope that I have at least partially succeeded in preserving and conveying my amazement at Johannesburg and other African places in the following texts.

—Andreas Ströhl, Johannesburg 2026

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