August Langbein

About August Langbein

The time of heroes is over. The epic space of pronouncements that we love to say and hear, which speak to us of what we could be but are not, has disappeared. The irreparable is now our being-thus, our being-nobody. Our Bloom-being. And it is from the irreparable that we must depart, now that the most ferocious nihilism holds sway even in the ranks of the rulers. We must depart, because “Nobody” is Ulysses’ other name, and because no one should care to go back to Ithaca or to be shipwrecked.It is no longer time to dream of what we will be, what we will make, now that we can be everything, now that we can do everything, now that all our power is granted us, with the certainty that our forgetting of joy will prevent us from making any use of it. This is where we must get free or let ourselves die. Humanity is indeed something to be transcended, but to do so we must first listen to what is most exposed and most rare about humanity, so that its remains are not lost in passing. Bloom, that pathetic residue of a world that never ceases to betray and exile him, demands to go out armed; Bloom demands exodus. But most often he who departs never rediscovers his own, and his exodus becomes exile once again.All voices come out from the depths of this exile, and in this exile all voices are lost. The Other does not welcome us, it sends us back to the Other inside of us. We abandon this world in ruins with no regrets and no pain, pressed on by a vague feeling of urgency. We abandon it like rats abandoning a ship, but without necessarily knowing whether it’s moored to the pier. Nothing “noble” about this flight, nothing grand that can bond us to one another. In the end, we are alone with ourselves, because we haven’t made the decision to fight but merely to preserve ourselves. And that’s still not an action; it is but a reaction.Indeed—a crowd of people fleeing is a crowd of solitary people.

Experience

1. Editorial Contributor

   Laleh Vazhgun

   Jan 2024 — Present · New York, NY, US

   Contribution to research and editorial direction within Noether Group.

Education

• Manhattan School of Music

  Bachelor's Degree, Jazz/Jazz Studies

  2014

• Université Paris 8

  Master of Arts - MA, Architecture and Critical Infrastructure Studies