[ 06.2015 | Kreuzberg ]

when explor­ing the sur­round­ing nature I usu­ally gain great­er bio­logi­cal/­geo­graphic/­ecologi­cal knowl­edge (– some­times even com­bined with a lit­tle time trav­el into his­tory) and am simul­tane­ously con­duct­ing a self-aware­ness train­ing for the intro­vert in some sort. where­as when I visit cities – no mat­ter how big &diverse – it appears to be more of a rather modern inter­disci­pli­nary ex­cur­sion for the extro­vert: find­ing out the partic­ular social/­eco­nomic/­polit­ical struc­ture of the frame­work I’m invad­ing. in both con­texts a basic sur­vival strat­egy is es­sen­tial. naturally.

one of my trips through Ger­many’s capital in 2015 led me to one of those side streets that are typi­cal for big cities. those corners that seem to be for­got­ten are – in my eyes – the real face of the par­tic­ular district. I was happy to find cats’ faces on a crea­tively designed wall in Kreuz­berg. again (compare le chat/­Paris 01.2014). on the spot, the name (not title) of my work of art sprang to my mind’s eye. it had to be some­thing with ‘place’ and ‘cat’ – until I real­ized I didn’t even have to invent a word. as loCATion already exists.

Tom &Jerry is a US-American series of short ani­mated comic films that were pro­duced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1940. the episodes center around the two epon­ymous heroes: the house­cat Tom try­ing to catch the brown mouse Jerry. the un­equal rivals almost always end up having ludi­crous wild chases and absurd fights in which – more often than not – the pre­sumed infe­rior mouse stands out as the quick-wit­ted winner against the duped cat. the slap­stick comedy series – created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera – became popular inter­nation­ally; and as seven epi­sodes were awarded an Oscar (– further 6 nominated), Tom &Jerry is one of the most dis­tin­guished cartoon series.

why battles &rivalry when mostly we dream of is peace &toler­ance? so, there is Inter­national Toler­ance Day on No­vem­ber 16th. in 1996, the UN Gen­eral As­semb­ly declared in its reso­lution 51/95 to generate public aware­ness of the dangers of in­toler­ance. Secre­tary-Gen­eral Ban Ki-moon em­pha­sizes the idea of bring­ing the Dec­la­ra­tion of Prin­ciples on Toler­ance into be­ing by dia­logue, social cohe­sion and mutual under­stand­ing. #DearTomcat…

sources: historyinworld.blogspot.de | un.org