NICK CURRIE’S FOURTEEN RUMINATIONS ON TORTURE Article
Authors
Marc-Stefan Andres
https://www.ag-text.de/
Marc started out in journalism in 1991 as editor of a music fanzine. For the last 20 years he’s been a freelance journalist, writing for magazines like brand eins, Süddeutsche Zeitung, doing conceptual work and storytelling for companies around the world. He fulfils his musical ambitions with his band Brandt.
Aida Baghernejad
https://aidabaghernejad.tumblr.com/about
As an award-winning freelance music and food writer, Aida eats and listens to music for a living. She’s also currently (and forever) working on her PhD on “identity as a commercial project”. She fights for a better world in her free time.
Maren Barton
Maren has been a translator and proofreader for nine years. She lives near London and frequently works for big publishers like Campus Verlag in Germany as well as for a number of universities, translating and proofreading academic publications.
André Boße
https://www.ag-text.de/
André, based in Cologne, was editor-in-chief of interview magazine Galore from 2005 to 2009. Since then he has been a regular writer for magazines and newspapers like Musikexpress, Rolling Stone, Mint, Visions, Spiegel, Süddeutsche and Berliner Zeitung. He also works as a lecturer.
Cameron Cook
http://www.cameronedwardcook.com/
Cameron is an American arts and culture journalist based in Berlin. His empirical opinions on music and film have appeared in Pitchfork, Noisey, High Snobiety, and others. Half of the Noughties he acted as editor of the influential SUP Magazine.
Nick Currie (Momus)
http://imomus.com/
Nick is responsible for over thirty albums of electronic folk music, six novels, and an apparently endless stream of cultural journalism. He believes that “everyone will be famous for fifteen people” and that “every lie creates the parallel world in which it’s true”. He lives in Berlin and is writing a memoir for Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York.
Bill Drummond
An ex-gardener; ex-milkman; ex-steel worker; ex-lunatic asylum nursing assistant; ex-apprentice trawlerman; ex-chippy; ex-fly poster; and sometime van driver and publisher of printed matter. And full-time serial father.
Adi Englman
https://www.marcel-art-projects.org/team
Adi is an art curator specialising in modern and contemporary art. She was born and remains based in Tel Aviv. Adi is founder and artistic director of Marcel, a nonprofit organisation that initiates and produces special artistic projects and products. She is also co-founder and co-editor of the visual arts periodical Picnic Magazine.
Wolfgang Frömberg
Wolfgang is a freelance writer from Cologne. He was an editor for magazines SPEX and Intro and has published two novels – Spucke and Etwas Besseres als die Freiheit – and a collection of stories, essays and poems called How to Play Fußball. He also hosts readings under the name of “Literatur zur Zeit”.
Peter Gaide
https://www.ag-text.de/
Peter began playing electric home organ at the age of 10. Back then he admired Franz Lambert, who played an impressive white electric organ. Today, Peter listens to recordings of Jimmy and Johnny “Hammond” Smith while he sips booze in the gloomy jazz bars of Tokyo, carrying out research for CHART.
Kerstin Grether
http://www.kerstin-grether.de/
Kerstin is an author (“Zuckerbabys”) and pop culture journalist. Since her early teenage days, she’s been writing for German music magazine SPEX and is known as one of the originators of pop feminism in Germany. She is singer and songwriter of the chanson rock band Doctorella alongside her sister Sandra Grether.
Britta Helm
https://medium.com/britta-helm
Britta writes about pop music. Her work has appeared in Visions, Galore, Die Zeit Online and Missy Magazine, among others. She lives in Berlin.
Olaf Karnik
http://www.olafkarnik.com/
Olaf is a freelance journalist and author for Neue Züricher Zeitung, WDR 3, Spex, Deutschlandfunk and more. He has published articles, radio features and books about Hauntology, Library Music, Reggae in Germany and Afro-American Pop. He has been working as an university lecturer and as curator for club events. Olaf hosts the online radio DJ show “Do The Wrong Thing” on 674FM.
Jan Kedves
Jan is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. He writes on pop culture, fashion, art and anything in between, mostly for Süddeutsche Zeitung and occasionally for magazines like Fantastic Man or Glamour. From 2010 to 2012 he was the editor of German pop culture magazine Spex.
Lydia Lunch
Lydia is closely associated with the No Wave scene of Downtown New York of the late 70s/early 80s, acted in the early movies of Richard Kern alongside Henry Rollins and shared stages with everybody from James White over Glenn Branca to Richard Hell. She is still always on the run for readings and concerts.
Alexander Mayor
Alexander is a writer and musician based in London. He has written for The Independent, Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and Intro, publishes short stories and produces British pop music under the name Alexander’s Festival Hall.
Severin Mevissen
Severin moved from Hamburg to the United States as a correspondent for German magazines in 1992. His work has been published in Geo, Merian, Spiegel, Stern, Musikexpress, Rolling Stone and many others. He currently lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he spins records at his wife’s vinyl bistro “Bunny” whenever he doesn’t write.
Eric Pfeil
http://xn--dierealitt-y5a.de/
Eric is an author and singer/songwriter based in Cologne. In 2014 he was awarded the Rocco Clein Award for his monthly column „Das Pop-Tagebuch“ for Rolling Stone Magazine. As a musician he has just released his third album 13 Wohnzimmer, a LP entirely recorded in 13 different living rooms.
Eugene Robinson
Eugene is a journalist, author, novelist, actor and singer who has won awards for at least one of those things. He recently published records with his bands Oxbow (“Thin Black Duke”) and Buñuel (“Boys to Man”) and toured pain- and joyfully through the USA and Europe.
Anja Rützel
Anja writes about popular culture, TV, travel and animals (and everything else, really, even about soccer and the secrets of successful marriage dodgers). She just published her third book, an essay in defence of loneliness called “Better to be alone than having no friends at all”.
Johann Scheerer
https://cloudshill.com/
Johann is a music producer from Hamburg. He has worked with artists like Faust, Peter Doherty and At the Drive-In. Since 2005 he has run the analogue recording studio Clouds Hill Recordings and its related indie label, Clouds Hill.
Annett Scheffel
Annett is a freelance journalist who writes about music, film, feminism, contemporary culture, and the political in the personal. She’s based in Berlin and works, among others, for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Musikexpress, Radio Eins and Dummy Magazine.
Thomas Venker
Thomas, based in Cologne, acted from 2000–2014 as editor-in-chief of Intro magazine. He runs the electronic label onitor as well as the art imprint Edition Fieber. Since 2015 he has been publisher and editor-in-chief of Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop, he also works as an lecturer and manages DJ and producer Lena Willikens.
Henrik von Holtum
http://www.henrikvonholtum.com/
Henrik is a musician and author. Since 1994 he has been the MC and producer of the german hip hop band Kinderzimmer Productions. He studied classical music, started working as a radio producer and journalist in 2006 and has been teaching at the Folkwang University since 2014.
Patrick Wagner
Patrick is godfather of the band Gewalt, Germany’s most expressive art thing. His back catalogue lists involvement in the labels Kitty Yo and Louisville and the band Surrogat. He is an expert for children’s soccer and visionary producer of Berlins “FuckUp Nights”, a monthly event, where people talk about their business failures.
Klaus Walter
Klaus, born in 1955, lives in Frankfurt a. M. He began working as writer and DJ in the late 1970s. Since 1984 he has been a DJ for public radio in Germany. He also works for the internet radio station ByteFM. He regularly writes for various newspapers and magazines like Süddeutsche Zeitung, die tageszeitung and SPEX.
Illustrators/Artists
Dennis Busch
https://dennisbusch.tumblr.com/
Dennis lives and works as a freelance artist, illustrator, musician and crystal/lightworker in Bremen.
Geoff Grandfield
http://geoffgrandfield.co.uk/
Geoff is an illustrator, having worked on series such as the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. This assignment was a welcome opportunity to illustrate a live conversation. He is currently working on a graphic novel exploring mind control.
Lewis Khan
https://lewiskhan.co.uk/
Lewis is a visual artist from London, working with still and moving images. His portrait-based work is a study of emotion, relationships, and identity. Lewis’ practice has taken him further afield, shooting projects across Europe and the Americas. His project “Theatre” is published by The Lost Light Recordings.
David Markey
David Markey is a self-taught filmmaker and musician. His work is noted as documenting the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s, growing to find a larger audience in the 1990s while continuing to produce work throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Markey has worked with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, The Ramones and more.
Anna Möller
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Tobias Trost
https://einsdreiundsiebzig.de/
Tobias runs the independent design office Einsdreiundsiebzig in Berlin, a one man dog and pony show set up in 2003. Since then he’s been taking care of the design part of all kinds of printed matters while his drum kit gathers dust in the cellar.
Photographers
Julia Baier
https://www.juliabaier.de/
Julia works as a freelance photo­grapher in Berlin. She likes to travel – one of her favourite adventures as a photographer was a trip around the world with a German orchestra. She’s also very much into diving and underwater photography.
Giulia Bruno
http://www.giuliabruno.com/
Giulia is a Berlin-based artist working with film and photography. Her artistic and photographic research focuses primarily on the interaction between space of identity, space of technology, pragmatical space and contemporary contradictions.
Jonathan Forsythe
http://www.jonathanforsythe.com/
Jonathan is a Canadian photographer living and working in New York. He has published a book called Ngorongoro Smells Delicious with photographs of his cat Ngorongoro.
Stephanie Füssenich
http://www.stephaniefuessenich.de/
Stephanie is based in Paris. She works for magazines like Neon, Nido, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit as well as for big companies like BMW.
Mikael Gregorsky
http://www.mikaelgregorsky.com/
Mikael is a Swedish photographer based in London. Working on commissions and exhibiting, his work is found in various museum collections throughout the world.
Brian Guido
Brian is a Los Angeles based portrait and documentary style photographer.
Matthias Haslauer
https://matthiashaslauer.com/
Matthias is a freelance photographer based in Hamburg. He was born in Emsdetten in Westphalia, now he’s traveling the world. Since 2007 he works for various magazines like Zeit Magazin, Der Spiegel, brand eins, Vice, Neon, 11 Freunde, and DOGS. At the age of 16 he played drums in Uterous Ungerous, officially the worst band in Germany. Since then he’s collecting records of other great bands.
Tanja Kernweiss
http://www.tanjakernweiss.com/
Tanja studied photography in Munich from 2002 to 2007. She visited Arno Fischer’s master class at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. Her favourite part of the job is to make portraits of faces. Tanja’s photographs get printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Die Zeit, Vice Magazine and Neon. Tanja lives and works in Munich.
Marco Krüger
Marco’s main profession is his work as a sound assistant (“boomoperator”) on movie sets. For Christian Petzold’s movie Transit he also shot the stills. He only shoots on film. He lives in Berlin.
Sannah Kvist
https://sannahkvist.se/
Sannah is a Swedish photographer and artist who collects animal bones and soviet memorabilia when she is not driving big trains across the country. She just bought a small house to live in waiting for the apocalypse.
David Markey
David Markey is a self-taught filmmaker and musician. His work is noted as documenting the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s, growing to find a larger audience in the 1990s while continuing to produce work throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Markey has worked with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, The Ramones and more.
Ye Rin Mok
https://www.yerinmok.com/
Ye Rin is a Los Angeles-based photographer. She has shot portraits and interiors for Apartamento, Dwell, The Telegraph, WSJ among many others.
Anna Möller
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Jacob Park
http://texturedetroit.com/
Jacob is the lead curator and a resident DJ of “Texture Detroit”, an event series focused on cutting edge house and techno, featuring mind-bending spatial installs. He spends his time travelling, usually with a camera in his hand.
Charles Peterson
Charles is renowned for his documentation of the Seattle grunge scene. As a photographer, he’s gone on to do everything from a book on breakdancing to documenting an art museum. These days his kids are muses for a project titled “Child’s Play” that evokes the universal child in all of us.
Katharina Poblotzki
http://katharinapoblotzki.com/
Katharina is a photographer, restless traveller, native of Cologne, legal alien in New York City, terrible morning person and lover of fall.
Katja Ruge
https://www.katjaruge.de/
Katja is a photographer and Dj based in Hamburg. She loves the music of synthesizers and the work of musicians and other creative people. Her photo exhibition “Ladyflash” at kulturreich gallery Hamburg focused on women in rock and pop.
Armin Smailovic
https://www.arminsmailovic.com/
Armin studied at the “Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie” in Munich. His documentary work focuses on post-conflict societies and political issues. He is a founding member of the „Fotodoks“ Festival in Munich and was a co-curator until 2017. Since April 2017 he has taught documentary photography at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld.
Kathrin Spirk
https://www.kathrinspirk.de/
Kathrin is a Hamburg-based photographer for newspapers and magazines. However she likes to ride with her bike through the busy streets of London, humming songs from PJ Harvey’s album "Let England Shake".
Matt Veal
https://www.mattvealphotography.co.uk/
Matt is a London-based photographer and videographer. His work includes documentary, portraiture, still life and travel. He is currently working on a project that is documenting the world of female boxers.
Lisa Wassmann
https://www.lisawassmann.com/
Lisa is a photographic and video artist based in Berlin. Her work has led her to collaborations with Dazed & Confused, Zeitmagazin, I-D, Vice, Pitchfork, and Stella McCartney among others. She is currently working on her new book "Don’t you cry".
Erik Weiss
https://www.erikweiss.de/
Erik is one of Germany’s leading ­music photographers. His portraits of artists such as Jared Leto, Kendrick Lamar, Muse, Beastie Boys, Green Day and The Black Keys have been published in Rolling Stone, Q Magazine and NME, amongst others.
Staff
Marc-Stefan Andres [Editor]
https://ag-text.de/
Marc started out in journalism in 1991, as editor of a music fanzine, and has been a freelance journalist for the last 20 years. He writes for magazines like Brand Eins and works on branding and storytelling for companies around the world. He fulfils his musical ambitions with his band Brandt.
Maren Barton [Translator]
Maren has been a translator and proofreader for nine years. She lives near London and frequently works for big publishers like Campus Verlag in Germany as well as for a number of universities.
André Boße [Editor]
https://ag-text.de/
André, based in Cologne, was editor-in-chief of Galore Interview Magazine. Since then he has written for magazines and newspapers like Musik­express, Mint, Visions, Spiegel, Süddeutsche and Berliner Zeitung. He also works as a lecturer.
Alfred Bradford [Translator]
Alfred invented Punk at the tender age of six. Then – by an absolutely unexpected stroke of genius – also invented Post-Punk shortly thereafter. He has now retired to an 18th century windmill in the Westphalian countryside and lives off the royalty payments.
Matthias Haslauer [Photo Editor]
https://matthiashaslauer.com/
Matthias is a freelance photographer based in Hamburg. He was born in Emsdetten in Westphalia, now he’s traveling the world. Since 2007 he works for various magazines like Zeit Magazin, Der Spiegel, brand eins, Vice, Neon, 11 Freunde, and DOGS. At the age of 16 he played drums in Uterous Ungerous, officially the worst band in Germany. Since then he’s collecting records of other great bands.
Joe Kroll [Translator]
Joe is a freelance editor, translator and writer. An intellectual historian by training, he has contributed to publications including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Times Literary Supplement. His translation of Hans Blumenberg’s “Rigorism of Truth” is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.
Alexander Mayor [Lector]
Alexander is a writer and musician based in London. He has written for The Independent, Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and Intro, publishes short stories and produces British pop music under the name Alexander’s Festival Hall.
Anna Möller [Editorial Consultant]
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Johann Scheerer [Editor, Publisher, Managing Director]
https://cloudshill.com/
Johann is a music producer from Hamburg. He has worked with artists like Faust, Peter Doherty and At the Drive-In. Since 2005 he has run the analogue recording studio Clouds Hill Recordings and its related indie label, Clouds Hill.
Maria Seidl [Proofreader]
Maria is a translator, editor and proofreader based in Berlin. She proofreads the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung and translates fiction and non-fiction from English to German. Waiting for George RR Martin’s “The Winds of Winter” occupies much of her spare time.
Tobias Trost [Designer]
https://einsdreiundsiebzig.de/
Tobias runs the independent design office Einsdreiundsiebzig in Berlin, a one man dog and pony show set up in 2003. Since then he’s been taking care of the design part of all kinds of printed matters while his drum kit gathers dust in the cellar.
Thomas Venker [Editor]
Thomas, based in Cologne, was edi­tor-in-chief of Intro Magazine from 2000 to 2014. He runs three electronic labels – onitor, Scheinselbständig and Cereal/Killers – as well as the art imprint Edition Fieber. He is the publisher of Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and works as lecturer at universities.

The idea of “CHART – Notes to consider” is to publish a magazine totally outside of the conventional business circle. The high-class roundabout 200 pages magazine won’t be sold at stores. And it won’t be given away thoughtless. We have established a distribution model based on partners: Every partner of CHART will get up to ten copies. The person is then requested to give away these copies to ten people she or he identifies as readers. This model guarantees that chart won’t be a waste of paper, won’t be a magazine in the dirt or in the shelves. It really will wander from hand to hand. With a circulation of 2,000 copies. Published in English. Given away by partners from all over the world.

 

The first issue of CHART came out 2017 and dealt with “silence”. It was followed by the 2018 edition about “pain”. The newest issue of 2019 deals with “money”.

 

For CHART, our writers and photographers met with people like Little Simz and Jenny Wilson, Japandroids and Holly Herndon, Omar Rodríguez-López and Dieter Meier, The Mekons and Robert Forster. Other artists like Momus, Lydia Lunch or Bill Drummond of KLF wrote for us.

 

Please enjoy selected CHART stories on this homepage. If you are interested in getting the newest or the next issues, please contact us: editors@notestoconsider.com. But please be aware that the printed issues are strictly limited.

 

 

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Notes to consider
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h) ProcessorProcessor is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller.

i) RecipientRecipient is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or another body, to which the personal data are disclosed, whether a third party or not. However, public authorities which may receive personal data in the framework of a particular inquiry in accordance with Union or Member State law shall not be regarded as recipients; the processing of those data by those public authorities shall be in compliance with the applicable data protection rules according to the purposes of the processing.

j) Third partyThird party is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or body other than the data subject, controller, processor and persons who, under the direct authority of the controller or processor, are authorised to process personal data.

k) ConsentConsent of the data subject is any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.

2. Name and Address of the controller

Controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), other data protection laws applicable in Member states of the European Union and other provisions related to data protection is:

Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG
Billwerder Neuer Deich 72
20539 Hamburg
Germany
Phone: +49(0)40 98260501
Email: US@cloudshill.com
Website: https://cloudshill.com

3. Cookies

The Internet pages of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG use cookies. Cookies are text files that are stored in a computer system via an Internet browser.

Many Internet sites and servers use cookies. Many cookies contain a so-called cookie ID. A cookie ID is a unique identifier of the cookie. It consists of a character string through which Internet pages and servers can be assigned to the specific Internet browser in which the cookie was stored. This allows visited Internet sites and servers to differentiate the individual browser of the dats subject from other Internet browsers that contain other cookies. A specific Internet browser can be recognized and identified using the unique cookie ID.

Through the use of cookies, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG can provide the users of this website with more user-friendly services that would not be possible without the cookie setting.

By means of a cookie, the information and offers on our website can be optimized with the user in mind. Cookies allow us, as previously mentioned, to recognize our website users. The purpose of this recognition is to make it easier for users to utilize our website. The website user that uses cookies, e.g. does not have to enter access data each time the website is accessed, because this is taken over by the website, and the cookie is thus stored on the user’s computer system. Another example is the cookie of a shopping cart in an online shop. The online store remembers the articles that a customer has placed in the virtual shopping cart via a cookie.

The data subject may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies through our website by means of a corresponding setting of the Internet browser used, and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. If the data subject deactivates the setting of cookies in the Internet browser used, not all functions of our website may be entirely usable.

4. Collection of general data and information

The website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG collects a series of general data and information when a data subject or automated system calls up the website. This general data and information are stored in the server log files. Collected may be (1) the browser types and versions used, (2) the operating system used by the accessing system, (3) the website from which an accessing system reaches our website (so-called referrers), (4) the sub-websites, (5) the date and time of access to the Internet site, (6) an Internet protocol address (IP address), (7) the Internet service provider of the accessing system, and (8) any other similar data and information that may be used in the event of attacks on our information technology systems.

When using these general data and information, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG does not draw any conclusions about the data subject. Rather, this information is needed to (1) deliver the content of our website correctly, (2) optimize the content of our website as well as its advertisement, (3) ensure the long-term viability of our information technology systems and website technology, and (4) provide law enforcement authorities with the information necessary for criminal prosecution in case of a cyber-attack. Therefore, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG analyzes anonymously collected data and information statistically, with the aim of increasing the data protection and data security of our enterprise, and to ensure an optimal level of protection for the personal data we process. The anonymous data of the server log files are stored separately from all personal data provided by a data subject.

5. Subscription to our newsletters

On the website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, users are given the opportunity to subscribe to our enterprise’s newsletter. The input mask used for this purpose determines what personal data are transmitted, as well as when the newsletter is ordered from the controller.

The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG informs its customers and business partners regularly by means of a newsletter about enterprise offers. The enterprise’s newsletter may only be received by the data subject if (1) the data subject has a valid e-mail address and (2) the data subject registers for the newsletter shipping. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address registered by a data subject for the first time for newsletter shipping, for legal reasons, in the double opt-in procedure. This confirmation e-mail is used to prove whether the owner of the e-mail address as the data subject is authorized to receive the newsletter.

During the registration for the newsletter, we also store the IP address of the computer system assigned by the Internet service provider (ISP) and used by the data subject at the time of the registration, as well as the date and time of the registration. The collection of this data is necessary in order to understand the (possible) misuse of the e-mail address of a data subject at a later date, and it therefore serves the aim of the legal protection of the controller.

The personal data collected as part of a registration for the newsletter will only be used to send our newsletter. In addition, subscribers to the newsletter may be informed by e-mail, as long as this is necessary for the operation of the newsletter service or a registration in question, as this could be the case in the event of modifications to the newsletter offer, or in the event of a change in technical circumstances. There will be no transfer of personal data collected by the newsletter service to third parties. The subscription to our newsletter may be terminated by the data subject at any time. The consent to the storage of personal data, which the data subject has given for shipping the newsletter, may be revoked at any time. For the purpose of revocation of consent, a corresponding link is found in each newsletter. It is also possible to unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time directly on the website of the controller, or to communicate this to the controller in a different way.

6. Newsletter-Tracking

The newsletter of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG contains so-called tracking pixels. A tracking pixel is a miniature graphic embedded in such e-mails, which are sent in HTML format to enable log file recording and analysis. This allows a statistical analysis of the success or failure of online marketing campaigns. Based on the embedded tracking pixel, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG may see if and when an e-mail was opened by a data subject, and which links in the e-mail were called up by data subjects.

Such personal data collected in the tracking pixels contained in the newsletters are stored and analyzed by the controller in order to optimize the shipping of the newsletter, as well as to adapt the content of future newsletters even better to the interests of the data subject. These personal data will not be passed on to third parties. Data subjects are at any time entitled to revoke the respective separate declaration of consent issued by means of the double-opt-in procedure. After a revocation, these personal data will be deleted by the controller. The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG automatically regards a withdrawal from the receipt of the newsletter as a revocation.

7. Contact possibility via the website

The website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG contains information that enables a quick electronic contact to our enterprise, as well as direct communication with us, which also includes a general address of the so-called electronic mail (e-mail address). If a data subject contacts the controller by e-mail or via a contact form, the personal data transmitted by the data subject are automatically stored. Such personal data transmitted on a voluntary basis by a data subject to the data controller are stored for the purpose of processing or contacting the data subject. There is no transfer of this personal data to third parties.

8. Routine erasure and blocking of personal data

The data controller shall process and store the personal data of the data subject only for the period necessary to achieve the purpose of storage, or as far as this is granted by the European legislator or other legislators in laws or regulations to which the controller is subject to.

If the storage purpose is not applicable, or if a storage period prescribed by the European legislator or another competent legislator expires, the personal data are routinely blocked or erased in accordance with legal requirements.

9. Rights of the data subject

    • a) Right of confirmationEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller the confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning him or her are being processed. If a data subject wishes to avail himself of this right of confirmation, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.

 

    • b) Right of accessEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller free information about his or her personal data stored at any time and a copy of this information. Furthermore, the European directives and regulations grant the data subject access to the following information:
      • the purposes of the processing;
      • the categories of personal data concerned;
      • the recipients or categories of recipients to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed, in particular recipients in third countries or international organisations;
      • where possible, the envisaged period for which the personal data will be stored, or, if not possible, the criteria used to determine that period;
      • the existence of the right to request from the controller rectification or erasure of personal data, or restriction of processing of personal data concerning the data subject, or to object to such processing;
      • the existence of the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority;
      • where the personal data are not collected from the data subject, any available information as to their source;
      • the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) of the GDPR and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject.

      Furthermore, the data subject shall have a right to obtain information as to whether personal data are transferred to a third country or to an international organisation. Where this is the case, the data subject shall have the right to be informed of the appropriate safeguards relating to the transfer.

      If a data subject wishes to avail himself of this right of access, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.

 

    • c) Right to rectificationEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, the data subject shall have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.If a data subject wishes to exercise this right to rectification, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.d) Right to erasure (Right to be forgotten)Each data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay, and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay where one of the following grounds applies, as long as the processing is not necessary:
      • The personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed.
      • The data subject withdraws consent to which the processing is based according to point (a) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR, or point (a) of Article 9(2) of the GDPR, and where there is no other legal ground for the processing.
      • The data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(1) of the GDPR and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for the processing, or the data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(2) of the GDPR.
      • The personal data have been unlawfully processed.
      • The personal data must be erased for compliance with a legal obligation in Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject.
      • The personal data have been collected in relation to the offer of information society services referred to in Article 8(1) of the GDPR.

      If one of the aforementioned reasons applies, and a data subject wishes to request the erasure of personal data stored by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller. An employee of Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall promptly ensure that the erasure request is complied with immediately.

      Where the controller has made personal data public and is obliged pursuant to Article 17(1) to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform other controllers processing the personal data that the data subject has requested erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data, as far as processing is not required. An employees of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will arrange the necessary measures in individual cases.

 

  • e) Right of restriction of processingEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller restriction of processing where one of the following applies:
    • The accuracy of the personal data is contested by the data subject, for a period enabling the controller to verify the accuracy of the personal data.
    • The processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes the erasure of the personal data and requests instead the restriction of their use instead.
    • The controller no longer needs the personal data for the purposes of the processing, but they are required by the data subject for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
    • The data subject has objected to processing pursuant to Article 21(1) of the GDPR pending the verification whether the legitimate grounds of the controller override those of the data subject.

    If one of the aforementioned conditions is met, and a data subject wishes to request the restriction of the processing of personal data stored by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, he or she may at any time contact any employee of the controller. The employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will arrange the restriction of the processing.

    f) Right to data portability

    Each data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator, to receive the personal data concerning him or her, which was provided to a controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. He or she shall have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided, as long as the processing is based on consent pursuant to point (a) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR or point (a) of Article 9(2) of the GDPR, or on a contract pursuant to point (b) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR, and the processing is carried out by automated means, as long as the processing is not necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

    Furthermore, in exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to Article 20(1) of the GDPR, the data subject shall have the right to have personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible and when doing so does not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.

    In order to assert the right to data portability, the data subject may at any time contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.

  • g) Right to objectEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to object, on grounds relating to his or her particular situation, at any time, to processing of personal data concerning him or her, which is based on point (e) or (f) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR. This also applies to profiling based on these provisions.The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall no longer process the personal data in the event of the objection, unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject, or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.If the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG processes personal data for direct marketing purposes, the data subject shall have the right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her for such marketing. This applies to profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing. If the data subject objects to the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG to the processing for direct marketing purposes, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will no longer process the personal data for these purposes.In addition, the data subject has the right, on grounds relating to his or her particular situation, to object to processing of personal data concerning him or her by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG for scientific or historical research purposes, or for statistical purposes pursuant to Article 89(1) of the GDPR, unless the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out for reasons of public interest.In order to exercise the right to object, the data subject may contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG. In addition, the data subject is free in the context of the use of information society services, and notwithstanding Directive 2002/58/EC, to use his or her right to object by automated means using technical specifications.
  • h) Automated individual decision-making, including profilingEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her, or similarly significantly affects him or her, as long as the decision (1) is not is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between the data subject and a data controller, or (2) is not authorised by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject and which also lays down suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, or (3) is not based on the data subject’s explicit consent.If the decision (1) is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between the data subject and a data controller, or (2) it is based on the data subject’s explicit consent, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall implement suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, at least the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express his or her point of view and contest the decision.
    If the data subject wishes to exercise the rights concerning automated individual decision-making, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.
  • i) Right to withdraw data protection consentEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to withdraw his or her consent to processing of his or her personal data at any time.If the data subject wishes to exercise the right to withdraw the consent, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.

10. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Facebook

On this website, the controller has integrated components of the enterprise Facebook. Facebook is a social network.

A social network is a place for social meetings on the Internet, an online community, which usually allows users to communicate with each other and interact in a virtual space. A social network may serve as a platform for the exchange of opinions and experiences, or enable the Internet community to provide personal or business-related information. Facebook allows social network users to include the creation of private profiles, upload photos, and network through friend requests.

The operating company of Facebook is Facebook, Inc., 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States. If a person lives outside of the United States or Canada, the controller is the Facebook Ireland Ltd., 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet website, which is operated by the controller and into which a Facebook component (Facebook plug-ins) was integrated, the web browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download display of the corresponding Facebook component from Facebook through the Facebook component. An overview of all the Facebook Plug-ins may be accessed under https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/. During the course of this technical procedure, Facebook is made aware of what specific sub-site of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Facebook, Facebook detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject—and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site—which specific sub-site of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Facebook component and associated with the respective Facebook account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Facebook buttons integrated into our website, e.g. the “Like” button, or if the data subject submits a comment, then Facebook matches this information with the personal Facebook user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Facebook always receives, through the Facebook component, information about a visit to our website by the data subject, whenever the data subject is logged in at the same time on Facebook during the time of the call-up to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the data subject clicks on the Facebook component or not. If such a transmission of information to Facebook is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she may prevent this by logging off from their Facebook account before a call-up to our website is made.

The data protection guideline published by Facebook, which is available at https://facebook.com/about/privacy/, provides information about the collection, processing and use of personal data by Facebook. In addition, it is explained there what setting options Facebook offers to protect the privacy of the data subject. In addition, different configuration options are made available to allow the elimination of data transmission to Facebook. These applications may be used by the data subject to eliminate a data transmission to Facebook.

11. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google AdSense

On this website, the controller has integrated Google AdSense. Google AdSense is an online service which allows the placement of advertising on third-party sites. Google AdSense is based on an algorithm that selects advertisements displayed on third-party sites to match with the content of the respective third-party site. Google AdSense allows an interest-based targeting of the Internet user, which is implemented by means of generating individual user profiles.

The operating company of Google’s AdSense component is Alphabet Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, United States.

The purpose of Google’s AdSense component is the integration of advertisements on our website. Google AdSense places a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. The definition of cookies is explained above. With the setting of the cookie, Alphabet Inc. is enabled to analyze the use of our website. With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and into which a Google AdSense component is integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject will automatically submit data through the Google AdSense component for the purpose of online advertising and the settlement of commissions to Alphabet Inc. During the course of this technical procedure, the enterprise Alphabet Inc. gains knowledge of personal data, such as the IP address of the data subject, which serves Alphabet Inc., inter alia, to understand the origin of visitors and clicks and subsequently create commission settlements.

The data subject may, as stated above, prevent the setting of cookies through our website at any time by means of a corresponding adjustment of the web browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such an adjustment to the Internet browser used would also prevent Alphabet Inc. from setting a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. Additionally, cookies already in use by Alphabet Inc. may be deleted at any time via a web browser or other software programs.

Furthermore, Google AdSense also uses so-called tracking pixels. A tracking pixel is a miniature graphic that is embedded in web pages to enable a log file recording and a log file analysis through which a statistical analysis may be performed. Based on the embedded tracking pixels, Alphabet Inc. is able to determine if and when a website was opened by a data subject, and which links were clicked on by the data subject. Tracking pixels serve, inter alia, to analyze the flow of visitors on a website.

Through Google AdSense, personal data and information—which also includes the IP address, and is necessary for the collection and accounting of the displayed advertisements—is transmitted to Alphabet Inc. in the United States of America. These personal data will be stored and processed in the United States of America. The Alphabet Inc. may disclose the collected personal data through this technical procedure to third parties.

Google AdSense is further explained under the following link https://www.google.com/intl/en/adsense/start/.

12. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google Analytics (with anonymization function)

On this website, the controller has integrated the component of Google Analytics (with the anonymizer function). Google Analytics is a web analytics service. Web analytics is the collection, gathering, and analysis of data about the behavior of visitors to websites. A web analysis service collects, inter alia, data about the website from which a person has come (the so-called referrer), which sub-pages were visited, or how often and for what duration a sub-page was viewed. Web analytics are mainly used for the optimization of a website and in order to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of Internet advertising.

The operator of the Google Analytics component is Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, United States.

For the web analytics through Google Analytics the controller uses the application “_gat. _anonymizeIp”. By means of this application the IP address of the Internet connection of the data subject is abridged by Google and anonymised when accessing our websites from a Member State of the European Union or another Contracting State to the Agreement on the European Economic Area.

The purpose of the Google Analytics component is to analyze the traffic on our website. Google uses the collected data and information, inter alia, to evaluate the use of our website and to provide online reports, which show the activities on our websites, and to provide other services concerning the use of our Internet site for us.

Google Analytics places a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. The definition of cookies is explained above. With the setting of the cookie, Google is enabled to analyze the use of our website. With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and into which a Google Analytics component was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject will automatically submit data through the Google Analytics component for the purpose of online advertising and the settlement of commissions to Google. During the course of this technical procedure, the enterprise Google gains knowledge of personal information, such as the IP address of the data subject, which serves Google, inter alia, to understand the origin of visitors and clicks, and subsequently create commission settlements.

The cookie is used to store personal information, such as the access time, the location from which the access was made, and the frequency of visits of our website by the data subject. With each visit to our Internet site, such personal data, including the IP address of the Internet access used by the data subject, will be transmitted to Google in the United States of America. These personal data are stored by Google in the United States of America. Google may pass these personal data collected through the technical procedure to third parties.

The data subject may, as stated above, prevent the setting of cookies through our website at any time by means of a corresponding adjustment of the web browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such an adjustment to the Internet browser used would also prevent Google Analytics from setting a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. In addition, cookies already in use by Google Analytics may be deleted at any time via a web browser or other software programs.

In addition, the data subject has the possibility of objecting to a collection of data that are generated by Google Analytics, which is related to the use of this website, as well as the processing of this data by Google and the chance to preclude any such. For this purpose, the data subject must download a browser add-on under the link https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and install it. This browser add-on tells Google Analytics through a JavaScript, that any data and information about the visits of Internet pages may not be transmitted to Google Analytics. The installation of the browser add-ons is considered an objection by Google. If the information technology system of the data subject is later deleted, formatted, or newly installed, then the data subject must reinstall the browser add-ons to disable Google Analytics. If the browser add-on was uninstalled by the data subject or any other person who is attributable to their sphere of competence, or is disabled, it is possible to execute the reinstallation or reactivation of the browser add-ons.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Google may be retrieved under https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ and under http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html. Google Analytics is further explained under the following Link https://www.google.com/analytics/.

13. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google-AdWords
On this website, the controller has integrated Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a service for Internet advertising that allows the advertiser to place ads in Google search engine results and the Google advertising network. Google AdWords allows an advertiser to pre-define specific keywords with the help of which an ad on Google’s search results only then displayed, when the user utilizes the search engine to retrieve a keyword-relevant search result. In the Google Advertising Network, the ads are distributed on relevant web pages using an automatic algorithm, taking into account the previously defined keywords.

The operating company of Google AdWords is Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, UNITED STATES.

The purpose of Google AdWords is the promotion of our website by the inclusion of relevant advertising on the websites of third parties and in the search engine results of the search engine Google and an insertion of third-party advertising on our website.

If a data subject reaches our website via a Google ad, a conversion cookie is filed on the information technology system of the data subject through Google. The definition of cookies is explained above. A conversion cookie loses its validity after 30 days and is not used to identify the data subject. If the cookie has not expired, the conversion cookie is used to check whether certain sub-pages, e.g, the shopping cart from an online shop system, were called up on our website. Through the conversion cookie, both Google and the controller can understand whether a person who reached an AdWords ad on our website generated sales, that is, executed or canceled a sale of goods.

The data and information collected through the use of the conversion cookie is used by Google to create visit statistics for our website. These visit statistics are used in order to determine the total number of users who have been served through AdWords ads to ascertain the success or failure of each AdWords ad and to optimize our AdWords ads in the future. Neither our company nor other Google AdWords advertisers receive information from Google that could identify the data subject.

The conversion cookie stores personal information, e.g. the Internet pages visited by the data subject. Each time we visit our Internet pages, personal data, including the IP address of the Internet access used by the data subject, is transmitted to Google in the United States of America. These personal data are stored by Google in the United States of America. Google may pass these personal data collected through the technical procedure to third parties.

The data subject may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies by our website, as stated above, by means of a corresponding setting of the Internet browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such a setting of the Internet browser used would also prevent Google from placing a conversion cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. In addition, a cookie set by Google AdWords may be deleted at any time via the Internet browser or other software programs.

The data subject has a possibility of objecting to the interest based advertisement of Google. Therefore, the data subject must access from each of the browsers in use the link www.google.de/settings/ads and set the desired settings.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Google may be retrieved under https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

14. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Instagram

On this website, the controller has integrated components of the service Instagram. Instagram is a service that may be qualified as an audiovisual platform, which allows users to share photos and videos, as well as disseminate such data in other social networks.

The operating company of the services offered by Instagram is Instagram LLC, 1 Hacker Way, Building 14 First Floor, Menlo Park, CA, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which an Instagram component (Insta button) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to the download of a display of the corresponding Instagram component of Instagram. During the course of this technical procedure, Instagram becomes aware of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Instagram, Instagram detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject—and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site—which specific sub-page of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Instagram component and is associated with the respective Instagram account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Instagram buttons integrated on our website, then Instagram matches this information with the personal Instagram user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Instagram receives information via the Instagram component that the data subject has visited our website provided that the data subject is logged in at Instagram at the time of the call to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on the Instagram button or not. If such a transmission of information to Instagram is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she can prevent this by logging off from their Instagram account before a call-up to our website is made.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Instagram may be retrieved under https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388 and https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/privacy/.

15. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Twitter

On this website, the controller has integrated components of Twitter. Twitter is a multilingual, publicly-accessible microblogging service on which users may publish and spread so-called ‘tweets,’ e.g. short messages, which are limited to 280 characters. These short messages are available for everyone, including those who are not logged on to Twitter. The tweets are also displayed to so-called followers of the respective user. Followers are other Twitter users who follow a user’s tweets. Furthermore, Twitter allows you to address a wide audience via hashtags, links or retweets.

The operating company of Twitter is Twitter, Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which a Twitter component (Twitter button) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download a display of the corresponding Twitter component of Twitter. Further information about the Twitter buttons is available under https://about.twitter.com/de/resources/buttons. During the course of this technical procedure, Twitter gains knowledge of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject. The purpose of the integration of the Twitter component is a retransmission of the contents of this website to allow our users to introduce this web page to the digital world and increase our visitor numbers.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Twitter, Twitter detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site which specific sub-page of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Twitter component and associated with the respective Twitter account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Twitter buttons integrated on our website, then Twitter assigns this information to the personal Twitter user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Twitter receives information via the Twitter component that the data subject has visited our website, provided that the data subject is logged in on Twitter at the time of the call-up to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on the Twitter component or not. If such a transmission of information to Twitter is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she may prevent this by logging off from their Twitter account before a call-up to our website is made.

The applicable data protection provisions of Twitter may be accessed under https://twitter.com/privacy?lang=en.

16. Payment Method: Data protection provisions about the use of PayPal as a payment processor

On this website, the controller has integrated components of PayPal. PayPal is an online payment service provider. Payments are processed via so-called PayPal accounts, which represent virtual private or business accounts. PayPal is also able to process virtual payments through credit cards when a user does not have a PayPal account. A PayPal account is managed via an e-mail address, which is why there are no classic account numbers. PayPal makes it possible to trigger online payments to third parties or to receive payments. PayPal also accepts trustee functions and offers buyer protection services.

The European operating company of PayPal is PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. & Cie. S.C.A., 22-24 Boulevard Royal, 2449 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

If the data subject chooses “PayPal” as the payment option in the online shop during the ordering process, we automatically transmit the data of the data subject to PayPal. By selecting this payment option, the data subject agrees to the transfer of personal data required for payment processing.

The personal data transmitted to PayPal is usually first name, last name, address, email address, IP address, telephone number, mobile phone number, or other data necessary for payment processing. The processing of the purchase contract also requires such personal data, which are in connection with the respective order.

The transmission of the data is aimed at payment processing and fraud prevention. The controller will transfer personal data to PayPal, in particular, if a legitimate interest in the transmission is given. The personal data exchanged between PayPal and the controller for the processing of the data will be transmitted by PayPal to economic credit agencies. This transmission is intended for identity and creditworthiness checks.

PayPal will, if necessary, pass on personal data to affiliates and service providers or subcontractors to the extent that this is necessary to fulfill contractual obligations or for data to be processed in the order.

The data subject has the possibility to revoke consent for the handling of personal data at any time from PayPal. A revocation shall not have any effect on personal data which must be processed, used or transmitted in accordance with (contractual) payment processing.

The applicable data protection provisions of PayPal may be retrieved under https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full.

17. Legal basis for the processing

Art. 6(1) lit. a GDPR serves as the legal basis for processing operations for which we obtain consent for a specific processing purpose. If the processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party, as is the case, for example, when processing operations are necessary for the supply of goods or to provide any other service, the processing is based on Article 6(1) lit. b GDPR. The same applies to such processing operations which are necessary for carrying out pre-contractual measures, for example in the case of inquiries concerning our products or services. Is our company subject to a legal obligation by which processing of personal data is required, such as for the fulfillment of tax obligations, the processing is based on Art. 6(1) lit. c GDPR.
In rare cases, the processing of personal data may be necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person. This would be the case, for example, if a visitor were injured in our company and his name, age, health insurance data or other vital information would have to be passed on to a doctor, hospital or other third party. Then the processing would be based on Art. 6(1) lit. d GDPR.
Finally, processing operations could be based on Article 6(1) lit. f GDPR. This legal basis is used for processing operations which are not covered by any of the abovementioned legal grounds, if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by our company or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data. Such processing operations are particularly permissible because they have been specifically mentioned by the European legislator. He considered that a legitimate interest could be assumed if the data subject is a client of the controller (Recital 47 Sentence 2 GDPR).

18. The legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party

Where the processing of personal data is based on Article 6(1) lit. f GDPR our legitimate interest is to carry out our business in favor of the well-being of all our employees and the shareholders.

19. Period for which the personal data will be stored

The criteria used to determine the period of storage of personal data is the respective statutory retention period. After expiration of that period, the corresponding data is routinely deleted, as long as it is no longer necessary for the fulfillment of the contract or the initiation of a contract.

20. Provision of personal data as statutory or contractual requirement; Requirement necessary to enter into a contract; Obligation of the data subject to provide the personal data; possible consequences of failure to provide such data

We clarify that the provision of personal data is partly required by law (e.g. tax regulations) or can also result from contractual provisions (e.g. information on the contractual partner).

Sometimes it may be necessary to conclude a contract that the data subject provides us with personal data, which must subsequently be processed by us. The data subject is, for example, obliged to provide us with personal data when our company signs a contract with him or her. The non-provision of the personal data would have the consequence that the contract with the data subject could not be concluded.

Before personal data is provided by the data subject, the data subject must contact any employee. The employee clarifies to the data subject whether the provision of the personal data is required by law or contract or is necessary for the conclusion of the contract, whether there is an obligation to provide the personal data and the consequences of non-provision of the personal data.

21. Existence of automated decision-making

As a responsible company, we do not use automatic decision-making or profiling.

22. Data protection provisions about the application and use of YouTube

On this website, the controller has integrated components of YouTube. YouTube is an Internet video portal that enables video publishers to set video clips and other users free of charge, which also provides free viewing, review and commenting on them. YouTube allows you to publish all kinds of videos, so you can access both full movies and TV broadcasts, as well as music videos, trailers, and videos made by users via the Internet portal.

The operating company of YouTube is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, UNITED STATES. The YouTube, LLC is a subsidiary of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which a YouTube component (YouTube video) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download a display of the corresponding YouTube component. Further information about YouTube may be obtained under https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/en/. During the course of this technical procedure, YouTube and Google gain knowledge of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in on YouTube, YouTube recognizes with each call-up to a sub-page that contains a YouTube video, which specific sub-page of our Internet site was visited by the data subject. This information is collected by YouTube and Google and assigned to the respective YouTube account of the data subject.

YouTube and Google will receive information through the YouTube component that the data subject has visited our website, if the data subject at the time of the call to our website is logged in on YouTube; this occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on a YouTube video or not. If such a transmission of this information to YouTube and Google is not desirable for the data subject, the delivery may be prevented if the data subject logs off from their own YouTube account before a call-up to our website is made.

YouTube’s data protection provisions, available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/, provide information about the collection, processing and use of personal data by YouTube and Google.

23. Use of web fonts from Google™ LLC

This website uses web fonts provided by Google™ LLC 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA for graphical representation. When you visit the website, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display the corresponding fonts correctly. If your web browser does not support the web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer. Further information about Google™ Web Fonts can be found at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in the privacy policy of Google™ LLC: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

24. Use of web fonts from Monotype GmbH

External fonts from fonts.com are used on our website for graphical representation. This is a type service of Monotype GmbH, 61352 Bad Homburg, Werner-Reimers-Straße 2-4. When you request a page of our website, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache so that textscontents and fonts are displayed correctly. The browser you use must therefore connect to the servers of the web font provider (see above). If your browser does not support this feature, your computer will use a default font for display. In the interest of a uniform and informative presentation of our website, the web fonts are used. This represents a special interest within the meaning of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO. More information about Fonts.com can be found at https://www.monotype.com/legal/privacy-policy

This Privacy Policy has been generated by the Privacy Policy Generator of the DGD – Your External DPO that was developed in cooperation with German Lawyers from WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, Cologne.

NICK CURRIE’S FOURTEEN RUMINATIONS ON TORTURE
TEXT & DRAWINGS
Nick Currie (Momus)

Torture takes many forms. It might be the hot poker brandished by one of Hieronymus Bosch’s devils, or an earworm pop song that dominates every café and club. It might be the degradations of a porn film, how schoolboys bully each other, or a biopsy at an eye hospital. Nick Currie – who records a form of Vaudevillian, electronic folk chanson as Momus – ponders and illustrates this tricky topic from fourteen different angles.

1

I’m in a branch of Ikea in Kuala Lumpur. The reason I’m here is complicated, but has something to do with the fact that I’ve just arrived from an extended stay in a wonderfully medieval land, and I want to use Ikea as a kind of cultural decompression zone, a place in which to remember both the bad and good things about the 21st century. But Ikea is feeling somewhat 20th century today: they’re playing a song I vaguely recognise, something about “the rains down in Africa”. It’s from the 1980s, and I’m pretty sure it’s by Toto. I’ve been forced to listen to this song many times over the last four decades, without ever having endorsed or chosen it. I’d definitely say it qualifies as a kind of torture, especially for a professional musician.

None of my own songs have entered the rarefied jetstream of toxic pop which licenses an “evergreen classic” to be inflicted on people in public places forever. But (and this is another curse, another torture) as a musician I can’t ever entirely filter out background music. A part of my brain is critiquing the bassline, or wondering how the keyboard hook relates to Van Halen’s “Jump”. The worst thing is that this song about Africa and rain will now gnaw its way into my brain like an amoebal infestation.

I dream of a parallel world Ikea where they play Alvin Lucier’s “Music For Piano With Magnetic Strings”, then remember that I have earbuds with me and can dial up the Lucier piece on YouTube and listen to it as I walk around the store. This turns out to be an odd experience: Lucier’s drones blend with the ambient background pop like a shaft of sonic shadow jutting across a sunny scene. I feel as if I’m in a horror film set in a branch of Ikea. A tired employee hangs his head, and it seems to me he’s planning a massacre. Each mock-up room I enter threatens to reveal a corpse. But I’m starting to feel better: instead of Ikea murdering me, I am murdering the store. I recall that its founder died recently and almost feel personally responsible.

2

For the masochist – which is to say, the self-torturer – the day begins with perplexing complexity. He likes a cold shower in the morning, so he takes a hot one. But no sooner has he stepped into the steaming, carefully-regulated jet – which might seem to resemble the shower normal people all around him are taking as they begin their normal days, but is obviously quite a different proposition, calculated for glamorous self-defeat, shocking self-frustration, delightful self-harm – than he realises that what he really wants is a hot shower. So a hot shower will never do.

He twists the hot tap to the off position and relishes the icy water against his skin. Pain! Pleasure! But, catching himself in this enjoyment – so characteristic of his kind, so horribly unoriginal – he realises that his best instinct was his first after all: to take, this morning, a hot shower. To be like everyone else, and yet know himself to be inwardly different. Nodding sardonically to himself, like a man with a secret, the masochist twists both taps to the off position and steps out of the shower, clean and ready for work.

3

Someone kidnaps you, holds you hostage, threatens at some point to kill you, but doesn’t. Oddly enough, your gratitude swells to such an extent that, at the end of the siege, you part from your captor like an old friend. “I was very well treated,” you say, a warm note of gratitude trembling at the edge of your voice. This, as you know, is called Stockholm Syndrome. It operates around a recalibration of expectations: as soon as I realise that a lawless person has taken me hostage, I expect atrocities to be visited upon me.

Perhaps I have dreamed of the things I, as a captor, would do to people I hate, or people I desire (lovers who rejected me with a sneer, consigned to bloody revenges). And yet this projection fails to describe my actual captor, whose motives are probably much more pragmatic: political or commercial exigencies, entirely rational. Rather than relishing my pain or discomfort – a matter of indifference to him – my captor is simply thinking of the best way out of the situation, the resolution which fits his political or financial goals. My gratitude, therefore, relates to Christ’s injunction to “do as you would be done by”. Since I – in my darkest fantasies of capture and torture – act much worse than my actual captor has done, I am pathetically grateful not to be my own victim. My captor has not done as I would do. I realise that, of our two hearts, mine is the darker.

4

There are certain Japanese bondage films which are effectively over before they’ve begun. No matter how inventive and intricate the subsequent pinnings and tortures become, nothing will match the erotic power of the first gesture: the slap. It happens in a situation in which the girl – the victim, the star of the film – is in everyday dress, in normal lighting. She has come to an interview, perhaps. She is treated respectfully; she is still a citizen, with rights. She is still a woman who should be respected.

We don’t quite know what to expect, but we know that there must be a transition: a move into darkness, into pain, into intensity – a tumble into the dungeon, a slip into the lurid, cubist irrationality of sex. Our hearts beat faster as we anticipate it. The shibari master approaches the girl, who is smiling, dressed in her everyday shoes and stockings, skirt and blouse. He takes her by the hair, tilts her face up towards him. She smiles awkwardly, making the best of it. Then comes the slap, a calculated insult which seems to say: “And now you will be treated differently, roughly, humiliatingly, and your pain will feed the pleasure of others.” A single tear wells up in the girl’s eye and trickles down her face, beginning to spoil her make-up. Everything that follows, down in the torture dungeon, is unfortunately programmatic, boring, gloomy and stereotypical. As Howard Devoto once put it: “They all sound the same when they scream.”

5

Machiavelli probably says it somewhere: torture is a shabby business which fails the moment it really begins. In terms of maintaining power over someone, the important thing is not torture itself – a mere last resort – but the rumour of torture. When I was at boarding school in Scotland – undoubtedly the hardest and most miserable experience of my life – there were rumours of something called “the treatment”. It was a horrific kind of initiation ceremony conducted in the showers.

As far as I know, nobody had ever actually experienced “the treatment”, and that was part of its terrifying mystique. Who had devised it? What sins did it punish, and where was the code by which they could be known in order to be avoided? Was it influenced by the Ludovico Technique described in A Clockwork Orange (then recently filmed by Stanley Kubrick)? Would boys have their eyes pinned open as they watched its terrible violence? Which henchmen carried it out, and on whose behalf? Into what did it initiate one? A respite from violence, membership of an order in which one could bully others with impunity? These questions could only be answered by speculations which were, finally, Kafkaesque: a great organisation was working unseen around us, and some of us were members of it, enacting a kind of endlessly-postponed, endlessly-present day of judgment. And all this happened – or didn’t happen – in the boarding house shower stall, an apparently-ordinary place where one rinsed away the sweat generated by a game of rugby.

6

At school I was a weed, a weakling – in fact, the one time I got in a physical fight with someone, it was with the second-weakest boy in the school, and we were fighting to determine who really was the weakest. The loser in this case was the winner – the boy there was absolutely no point picking a fight with, because the result was a foregone conclusion. I didn’t mind occupying this position, because my school wasn’t entirely Hobbesian in its organisation: even away from the classroom you could win respect for knowing about cool books and music, or having a certain visual or artistic flair.

When, despite the status this cultural kudos had won me, people still occasionally attacked me, I found myself dreaming that I had a similarly mental way to retaliate. It would take the form of electric shocks, administered to my aggressor simply by the force of thought. Like a short circuit, the attacker would have his hostile energy zapped back at him immediately in the form of a brief, painful shock. In the classical Pavlovian way this would soon prevent him from even being able to formulate negative thoughts about me. I recognised something similar when, later, I saw The Man Who Fell To Earth. Thomas Jerome Newton, the extra-terrestrial played by David Bowie, can apparently defuse hostile impulses the moment they’re expressed, turning them into remorse and empathy. What he lacks is what I had (or dreamed I did): the power to bounce hostility back as a strong, flesh-singeing bolt of pure electric pain. Perhaps that’s why he ends the film as a drunk and a loser.

7

In my late thirties I developed a serious eye infection caused by an amoebal infestation of my contact lens case. In the course of the treatment I experienced something you might compare to a torture scenario. I was being treated in London by a dapper ophthalmologist called Mr Larkin, a small man with a Dublin accent and a neat moustache. In order to decide how to treat the eye, he needed to send a small piece of my cornea to the lab at Moorfields Eye Hospital for analysis.

The biopsy was conducted without anaesthetic. I lay flat while the tiny Mr Larkin straddled me, a scalpel in one hand, a powerful swivel lamp in the other. I closed my good eye, but the bad one – stretched open mechanically – still had a kind of blurry vision, and with this I saw the green-masked surgeon bending closer and closer, his sharp instrument millimetres from my eye. Soon it made contact and began cutting the transparent jelly of the surface. The pain was excruciating – a stab, a bolt, a tearing burn – but Mr Larkin assured me that it was nothing out of the ordinary, and would soon be over. For me, it was out of the ordinary: the needle of my personal pain-o-meter was deep into red decibels. I lashed about, making Mr Larkin’s task much more difficult. The cutting seemed to go on forever, despite the surgeon’s assurances that “just one more incision and we’ll have enough”.

After this, I was always operated on under anaesthetic; Mr Larkin could see that I was a sensitive plant. I was also put on a regime of immune-suppressants and steroids which beefed me up and changed my personality. I became gruff, macho, short-tempered, nasty. My eyebrows grew bushy, my cheeks churlish and puffy. I found myself snapping at people, lashing out. It was as if Mr Larkin were trying to usher me – in spirit, at least – from the ranks of the hurt to his own group, that happy clique: those licensed to hurt.

8

In Struwwelpeter Heinrich Hoffmann tells us the tale of Cruel Frederick: this thin-lipped little monster in a green cap kills birds, pulls the wings off flies, whips his nurse and throws the kitten down the stairs. He meets his match, however, when he flays the dog Tray, who bites him so severely that Frederick is hospitalised. You might expect a wishy-washy resolution: Frederick, healed, returns to sign a pact of non-aggression with Tray, perhaps, and both renounce their former violence. But no! Frederick never heals, and the dog simply replaces him, sitting in his chair, wolfing down his soup, pies, and puddings, and – presumably – continuing the reign of terror over the kitten.

A similar twist occurs in Tales from Kammu, a book of Laotian folk tales I was reading recently. One tale concerns a governor and an orphan. The governor says he’ll tell the boy stories if the orphan massages him, but falls asleep and fails to deliver his side of the deal. This happens several times, and draws the ire of the spirits, who take the boy’s side. They promise to destroy the governor, and try three times, using a city gate, a fig tree, and snakes. But each time the orphan saves the faithless governor by, for instance, chopping up the snakes. Blood from one of the snakes is accidentally smeared on the bare breast of the governor’s wife. Now the orphan worries that he’ll be blamed for touching her sexually. So with his tongue he laps the blood off her. Unfortunately, the governor catches him at it, assumes the worst, and takes the orphan to court.

There the true story emerges: the boy, who has suffered injustice and yet defended the governor against the spirits, is believed and vindicated. In a wishy-washy European fairy tale the governor might now offer his eldest daughter as a reward. But the Laotian tale has an oedipal ending: the orphan kills the governor and marries his wife. As in the Hoffmann tale, there is no moral high ground to be taken. Or, rather, there is moral high ground, and we can see where it would be, but we’re rather amused and relieved that it isn’t taken – that the tale, in other words, is not trying to improve us. To be ushered towards unrealistic and unreachable visions of moral perfection is, in the end, to be bullied.

9

In the 21st century America embraced its dark side. It’s not that the Americans didn’t use torture before that, or support brutal and repressive regimes in nations all around the world. It’s just that such activities were covert and mostly went unacknowledged in a public discourse which focused on rights and democracy. What happened in the 21st century – post-9/11, and spurred on by a sense of victimhood and a vague popular desire for some sort of generalised revenge – is that such things were more willingly accepted, tacitly or explicitly, as official policy. Suddenly government officials were offering defences of torture, despite the fact that military experts often doubted its utility. “When they are in pain,” one FBI special agent told Time magazine, “people will say anything to get the pain to stop.”

This didn’t prevent American prison warders from torturing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Photographs emerged in 2004, including the famous image of Ali Shallal in a crucifixion pose, black-hooded, apparently wired up, and draped in a dark blanket. The most widely-commented painting in the 2006 Whitney Biennial was Richard Serra’s crudely-brushed version of the Shallal image, daubed with the words STOP BUSH. The image managed to evoke both Christ’s crucifixion and the silhouette of a Ku Klux klansman, suggesting subliminally that the US had become a white-supremacist version of the Roman Empire.

By the time of the 2016 presidential debates, torture had become simply a matter of keeping up with a less-scrupulous other: “Can you imagine these people, these animals, over in the Middle East that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding?” asked Trump. “We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding … It’s fine, and if we want to go stronger, I’d go stronger too. Because frankly, that’s the way I feel.” Torture is now … the way Americans feel. It feels right. It feels just. It feels real. Can you feel it? How do you do it? With water, with power, with steel? When you do it, what do you feel? Do you feel mighty, do you feel real? Does it feel like you? Does it light you up like a bulb? Do you wear a spangly suit when you torture? With what kind of shadow, what kind of silhouette? In a cape and pointy hat? How do you sleep? Very well, thank you, in a golden bed.

10

One of my books was up for a prize, but got pipped to the post by a work of Sick Lit. Sick Lit is a booming genre in which the author talks about the struggle with a life-threatening disease. In this case, it was a book by a middle-class English lady who’d beaten cancer. The prize was for the first book by a Scottish author, but the fact that this lady had beaten cancer impressed the judges so much that they overlooked her place of birth. It would of course be churlish of me to complain. The successful battle over poor health is certainly a compelling scenario, only to be outdone by books by sick people who haven’t overcome their maladies.

In this category I would cite Denton Welch’s excellent A Voice Through A Cloud. Welch was struck by a car at the age of twenty, and died of his injuries at 33. The accident made him a writer, and a very good one. The received wisdom of Sick Lit is that illness is, if not in itself character-building, an apprenticeship in literary greatness. As Virginia Woolf put it in a stupendously hyperbolic sentence: “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm chair and confuse his ‘Rinse the mouth – rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us – when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”

But my question is, couldn’t all the same arguments be made for torture? Because torture has – in addition to all that dramatic delirium and discomfort – the compelling angle of a human perpetrator. Illness is, after all, unsatisfyingly random: something nebulous, a battle with shadows, a catalogue of mere technical malfunctions. Torture comes with characters, lurid human demons lit up with malign intent. Your pain was planned, and can be attributed to something, someone. Much more satisfying, surely? Who would choose to traverse the grey lagoons of Sick Lit when they could have the Elizabethan swagger and splash of Revenge Tragedy?

11

There’s a dangerous concept known as “microaggression”. It’s considered by some to be a microaggression if, for instance, a Japanese person compliments me on my use of chopsticks – the implication being that I’m an idiot foreigner who ought not to be so skilled. The trouble with “microaggression” is that the idea potentially turns every social transaction into a conflict. The glass is always half-empty, not half-full. We all become misanthropic psychoanalysts, sniffing out the aggression hidden just below the surface of even well-intentioned statements and gestures.

I can imagine a similar idea: microtorture. The term would be a slippery slope in which all sorts of things – the piping of earworm pop music into cafés, for instance – might be seen as low-level forms of torture. It might be amusing to roll one’s eyes and say: “Oh God, I was microtortured today by Lady Gaga. For hours.” But, like attempts to make more and more things into forms of rape, this re-definition does a disservice to actual torture. If everything can be torture, the word loses its power, its strong association with an unacceptable criminality.

On the other hand, I’m okay with using the metaphor from time to time. Once I was in the shrubbery at Battersea Park, my fingers pushed up inside the bra of a Japanese girl. “You’re torturing me!” she shrieked. I didn’t stop; I knew she was describing a kind of pleasure, and that “torture” in this case was purely metaphorical. The last thing someone would say if you were actually torturing them is: “You’re torturing me!” A more likely conversation, in that situation, is the one James Bond has with Goldfinger: “Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.” But, just as in my example I’m not actually torturing, so here Bond is not actually dying. The verb is always one step beyond the context, up ahead, imagining.

12

Since the 1980s I’ve been – as Momus – a piece of semantic machinery sitting at the edge of the music industry, shooting out songs that answer to the spirit of the times. I trawled my complete lyrics online for use of the word “torture” and came up with some interesting results. First, I should say that “torture” is a strong word, an accusing word used by activists. It therefore tends to reduce any song it’s used in to a protest song. I’ve used it fairly sparingly through the decades. And the results do divide up by decade; I found two instances in the 1980s and two in the current decade. In 1988’s “The Charm Of Innocence” I speak of my boarding school, saying:

It began at a school that turned boys into gentlemen
Then turned them on to debauchery
I was forced to my knees in front of those gentlemen
If I refused they would torture me

A year later I’m describing a Conservative MP in a song called “How Do You Find My Sister”:

Her next conquest was Finlayson, Tory whip from Woking
His eyes were icy blue, he was impeccably well-spoken
He caught her with his daughter and he got her under torture
To confess she’d taught her poker
And spanked them both until his pants were soaking

In both cases I’m responding to a reactionary British world which has both formed and repulsed me. During the next two decades I escape that world by moving abroad. Torture as a theme only returns in my last couple of albums. In “Art And Design”, a song on 2016’s Scobberlotchers LP, I sing:

When the world is a mess and children are strapped to
the torture machines
And dictators clamp down, sending their troops to the centre
of things
That’s when I turn to art and design, the only two things
I can truly call mine

The same record features a song called “Little Girls”, based on the imagery of folk visionary Henry Darger:

The public loves severity, the cutting-off of tongues
The torture of the foreigner, the rattle of the guns
But little girls, little girls will save us

What interests me about these results is not that torture is present in my songs, but that it’s absent for so long. It’s there at the start, and it’s back now. Things seem to have come full circle; there’s a brutality abroad in the 1980s, apparently, which I’m finding again. Torturers are back, by public demand. What might have looked like atavism or anachronism in the 20th century seems, now, more like an eternal return.

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Anyone who wants to look at torture just needs to google “Hieronymus Bosch”. The 15th century Dutchman delighted in depicting hellscapes and the harrowing of sinners. The interesting thing is that Christianity hasn’t been very programmatical in its elaborations of hell, the devil, and eternal punishment. It’s been left to poets, preachers and painters to fill in the gaps, often using relics from the pagan religions that preceded Christianity, or inventing their own cosmologies. Hence Dante and Milton, hence Bosch and Goya.

Of course, it’s always possible to claim a redeeming function for depictions of hell – they keep us on the straight and narrow – but it’s also impossible to deny their sensationalist and sadistic appeal. It’s also worth saying that the moment we can depict bodies, we can show them being eviscerated and destroyed, and that this can satisfy Sadean impulses, but might also be related to the Enlightenment rationality that begins to appear in later Dutch painting, like Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

If you’ll forgive me a little intellectual flight of fancy, I’d compare the evolution from Bosch to Rembrandt to the development Melanie Klein describes the infant undertaking as it moves from a “paranoid-schizoid” attitude to the breast towards a more mature “depressive” orientation. The first stage is marked by the baby’s fear and fantasy – splits in self and breast-object, destructive rages, a sense of omnipotence or impotence, the dread of utter destruction – and the second by a more realistic understanding that other people are real and whole, with their own needs and reasons for acting the way they do. At this point, Klein tells us, our fear of being destroyed by the other is replaced by a fear of, ourselves, destroying it. We go, if you like, from a Boschian scenario of bodily apocalypse for the sake of punishment to a Rembrandtian one in which we dismember only the better to understand.

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And so we return to our masochist and his shower. He’s a fundamentally unstable being, because he likes what he doesn’t like, but then doesn’t like it again, and therefore likes it, and therefore dislikes it, and so on, forever. He might look like a dog chasing its tail, but I think he can also stand as a symbol for something hopeful and practical: as humans, we can find it in ourselves to enjoy just about anything. “Homo sum,” as the playwright Terence had one of his characters say back in the second century BC, “humani nihil a me alienum puto”: I’m human, so nothing human is alien to me. That level of empathy might not always be a virtue, of course. As Howard Devoto put it: “My mind it ain’t so open that anything could crawl right in.”