Ästhetik des Prekären: Uwe Timms Rom

Instead of taking an erudite look at art in his Römische Aufzeichnungen (1989, Roman Notebooks), Uwe Timm registers broken objects, imitations of classic sculptures, and the deterioration of buildings. He critically approaches the instability of signs, the difficult forms of life, and the muddle of interpersonal communication. He neither praises Rome as a place of sacralized antiquity, nor builds around its chaos a myth of spontaneity and plentiful life. In contrast to Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (Rom, Blicke, 1979) who is not interested in experimenting with the Other, Timm designs a patchwork of perceptions, memories, and multimedia fragments of knowledge by using literary and ethnological techniques and codes. He thus creates an ‘aesthetics of precariousness,’ of sensuality and labor which enables him to come to terms not only with various Rome clichés, but also with his own, German history.