Again
Again — softening the line between once was and what insists on returning; what renews secret desire for repetition; what breaks time away from replication, allowing it to speak. Again, again again, again… each attempt writes a new version of what we thought we knew by heart. A fragile rhythm, a pulse of endings and beginnings that never quite coincide. Maybe “again” is the most human word of all: the sign that we are still searching.
Plan
📍Ilsenhof 7, 12053 Berlin - Doorbell "Rios"
📆 Wed. 01.04.2026
⏰ 18:30 - 20:30
Again
Rust, frost, dew
cracking, creaking,
pressing through
and forward
old joints finding
old movements, new.
What makes “again” recognizable? How can one carve something out from its background of relations if it does not have a limit? It may be that, rather than limits, again has only thresholds. Thresholds that may be different for each person, for each event, for each intuition, for each repetition… Thresholds that cross both the subjective and the personal, that make them fold and unfold, again. If thresholds do not delimit, if they do not set boundaries of denotation, of distinction, but rather of perception and of expression, what do they mark? Rather than understanding “again” as a limit, perhaps it can be considered a liminality, a place of knots and ambivalences where, while things come together in an expression that leaves an impression, an impression upon an impression, nothing overlaps perfectly, nothing covers-up the other impenetrably; again is porous, again is surplus, again as liminality.
Perhaps this is a useful way to distinguish between again and related concepts, such as repetition, more, re-presentation, reflection... There is a liminality that inheres to again that is absent in concepts who are structured as duplications or imitations—processes that unfold and are evaluated on the basis of congruency, that it matches or should match. The should is important, it shows the presence of a normativity within the other concepts that, if we were to choose, would not be so strict or rigid in again, if there at all. “I don’t like echoes, that’s not me.”
How is one, then, to judge again? How can again be judged? Again, enough; again, not enough; again, expectation; again, confrontation. Usually, we say, “Again!”, a command, a prediction, an anticipation—”Again, but more!”, “Again, but less!”, “Again! I hope…”, “Again, I fear…”: Again! But different! How does one judge in respect to again’s liminality? Close the gap between this and the last, or this and the next, and that’s it! Again disappears. Watch the gap widen, foster it, feed it with interest, desire, expectation, again! Just as again may arise as a contrivance, a bunt command that hovers above, obscuring but certainly not quenching our desires, again keeps one tumbling. “I will never ‘again’ again!”
What would it be like for again to come as a surprise? A realization? A retrospection? Again as a reflection, not as if in a mirror, but through a loop, a spiral, a turning-inward that sucks outside in, that flips inside out, that warps both into a meshwork of events that are never quite the same but always similar, taking again, as a looking-glass, a way to see into the past, rather than attempt to control the future.
Reaching the final step of the café, for the first time, we traced paths backwards, each tracing their own as its contours became defined by the contours of others. It is not so important, whether or not our paths converge, whether or not I convince you to abandon yours, or you convince me to abandon mine. H e r e, w e d o n o t f o s t e r a g a i n ( s t ), b u t r a t h e r a - g a i n. Philosophy as the walking of many paths. “Don’t convince me. Lead me down your path; show me where you’ve walked.”