The kiosk
Do you want to go to the kiosk at the market square (“Trinkhalle am Markt”)?
Nice, we can go there together. Pay attention to traffic lights, cars and ant crossings. When you reach the end of this sentence walk to the kiosk at the bus station (“Trinkhalle am Busbahnhof”)—on Hallostrasse—and when you get there position yourself two metres in front of the sales window. Only then should you continue reading.
The kiosk triggers something in you. It’s so obvious, so crude, and at the same time so real. Do you see the photographs in your mind’s eye? You know the ones I’m talking about. The entire black-and-white series about the Ruhr area. Every kiosk is the same—yet different. Everywhere the same people, with the same life, yet each one for themselves. Their biographies are only similar from the outside—inside everyone feels unique. But that’s a different project. It has a place here, though. I say that no kiosk stands alone. They can exist only in their network of interchangeability. Always recognizable, maintaining the perfect illusion: every kiosk is special. What was that? Can you remember the last time you were at a kiosk, a bodega, a standing café, a refreshment stand? What word comes to your mind, from your experience, to describe this place? Can you remember the people behind the glass? Did you sometimes, way back when, in a different time, get a free lollipop?
Go there and see how your memory compares to this kiosk. Walk up to the window and say “Anna Kpok sent me here.”
Then meet me on page 18.