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Home > Journal > Issue Nine > Extension to the Nietzsche Archive

Extension to the Nietzsche Archive - Martin Henchion
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'God is dead' announced the philosopher - before going on to abolish himself.

Envious contemporaries who smeared Nietzsche with the mark of madness came closer than they knew in characterizing a philosopher in whose though ambivalence approximated to disintegration of the self.

Yet while the nineteenth century's coherent, consistent systems of certainty would come crashing down at the first touch of the twentieth, Nietzsche's disjointed discourses survive.

Today his work seems more contemporary than ever, his various voices speaking compellingly to an age for which paradox is truth, plurality is consistency and fragmentation is integrity.

It is however precisely this fragmentary quality that has repeatedly allowed people to re-invent Nietzsche to their own purpose.

One of the best reasons for doing competitions must be the introduction they afford to new locations, programs and people.
The 3-4 week competition cycle is the best of our profession condensed into a manageably sized bite: you make intense acquaintance with an interesting place/program and propose radical changes to it.
And the competition offers something seldom experienced in regular practice: closure; three days sleep after hand-up: bliss.
This is particularly true of this competition entry from 2001 for an extension to the Nietzsche Archive in Naumburg, Germany, which is housed in Nietzsche's mother's house, where both his mother and sister nursed the philosopher after his final collapse in 1889.

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