The Flat White Dimension: Except for the roar of the death machines & those annoying panic attacks, a perfectly caring place to drink coffee & practice yoga!!
This was written in July 2024 as an introduction for two articles that will be translated to Spanish by Mario Morales for his updated collection of texts called The Radical Imagination, tbr 2025.
This introduction is to present a combination of two articles "Anxiety is Nature Defending Itself" and "Care (defined as neglect in financialization)" that were merged and translated to Spanish by Mario Morales, written throughout 2022 and 2023 with the support of many people including Mikkel Franzen, Max Haiven, and Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova. The two articles were both written before October 7, 2023 and so I wanted to frame them with some more up to date information about The Flat White Dimension. This introduction was written with support from Amanda Priebe and Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova. All the images included here are from Ghadir, a friend I mention below.
In the days just after October 7, I stopped sleeping. You could find me in my Berlin apartment next to a dear friend, sobbing wildly while they looked at me with total confusion and awe. Though I had been to Palestine before, and I knew about the long term attack on Palestinian life by Israel (with the backing of the US and Germany—my two official homes), I felt deeply that the new war on Palestine was a turning point in the world that would change everything in ways we could not predict.
As I am writing this introduction note now, in July 2024, we still do not know the breadth, width or depth of the multi-faceted effects of the genocide(s) we are experiencing right now. I fear what we will see in a few years in our retrospective glance and I hope for something better than total erasure of a culture. I hope for something better than a strengthened network of rich war obsessed far right governments. I wish for something better than the removal of more indigenous people from their decimated land. Beyond that, I fear living in a world where there is no trust. I worry that whatever trust that racial capitalism didn’t steal from us before October 7, will now be taken away from us through the realization that people have absolutely no power over our governments, no access to justice on a massive scale, no reliable information, and no solutions to a world equally on fire and run by profit-obsessed idiots and their AI replacements. I fear that we have no way to shift things in a different direction even when we try really really hard, and that is a reality that is hard to trust.
When I initially wrote the articles below, I was writing from a place of fearful waiting. I felt like I was sitting in inclement weather: a pregnant sky ready to blow down my house made out of very cute colorful index cards. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but I expected the worst and knew it would probably not happen directly to me. I was stuck in a dimension of false safety in the apocalypse, where I was so protected by my white American privileges and education that I was helpless and useless in a world on fire. Inside my comfortable cage everything I hoped for also felt impossible and I lost more and more energy for the world. I drank more and more strong coffee imported from places that may not survive due to climate change, poverty and war, and did more and more rigorous exercise. Only with the manipulation of my energy and hormones could I ignore the demons I saw when I squinted at the clouds, or the ones I saw crawling out of the cracks in the sidewalk. In 2022 I named this experience of the apocalypse the Flat White Dimension, and the articles here were part of finding a way to articulate the governing principles of this subtle dimension.
After October 7, something shifted in my perception of The Flat White Dimension– perhaps the contradictions were heightened to a state of un-ignorability. The pressure got so high that even my most pretentious friends went to demos to take their silent screaming out of the house. We went to demonstrations to take on the German state with our bodies, for its support of Israel to decimate Palestine. At these demos, many of my friends were beaten by the police, especially my friends who do not appear white or conform to gender norms. Many people in my network got arrested or had their houses searched, their electronics confiscated. I’m quite sure the protests did not slow Germany’s fiscal support for Israeli weapons, but we have built a small local movement in support of Palestinian Liberation and global solidarity. As the protests multiplied, they became almost a daily practice of catharsis for many friends. And to be honest, most times I stayed home. I felt I had too much to lose, even though I didn’t have very much. The revolution was taking place and I was stuck in the Flat White Dimension fearing my German taxes.
As a white artist with a freelance visa who hypothetically earns enough money to pay a proper amount of taxes I am quite aware that I am a part of a cash cow fundraiser for Germany and the city of Berlin. As such, I prepared myself to pay heavily for two years living in Berlin. I did a rough estimate of two years of back taxes and realized that I would owe 10-15k. That was also my life savings from a quarter century of undervalued work. I thought about paying Germany all my remaining money and I wanted to choke. I asked around to find out if there was a history of German War Tax Resistance like there is in the US; I was told that I should not ask that question very loudly. Withholding taxes for any reason is considered terrorism to Germans, even on the left.
I appreciate the collective commitment to the German social welfare state. Hypothetically, a state that redistributes money so that everyone can be cared for equally is ideal. Unlike the US, I understand that my German taxes do go to social services and the upkeep of a state that accepts (not enough and not well) immigrants. But it also goes to support police that kick my friends in the face when they are on the floor, or who follow me on my bike for wearing a keffiyeh. It also goes to fund Israel’s weapons that are killing my friends and disappearing an entire culture. It also funds art, or accepts migrants, but only if you declare your allegiance to Israel.
So I didn’t attend many protests because I was "doing" my taxes, which actually looks like worrying about my taxes, avoiding my taxes, basking in the irony of paying my taxes, and crying because I felt so useless and ashamed. In June, after months of back and forth with the only accountant I could find, I learned that I owed an immediate payment of 11k in euros, plus more in penalties. How was I supposed to go to a protest when I was going to lose all the money that made me feel secure, to the exact force we were fighting? How was I going to go and get arrested or beaten up when I didn’t know how I would pay rent? How was I going to go if I was having anxiety attack after anxiety attack due to the irony of it all? Other people do it with much less security. I imagine the network of Resistance in Palestine that fights against the largest military on earth, young people in flip flops waiting in tunnels to stop the settler colonial apocalypse. What is the line that divides some of us from full submission to struggle on behalf of all? The Flat White Dimension has a membrane. I'm pushing up against it. Someone from Palestine messages me on Instagram, she asks me how I am.
I say fine. She says fine. She sends me her GoFundMe. I look at it. She needed the same amount as I owed in taxes— 11k left to raise for her campaign and her whole family would get evacuated from Gaza, to Cairo. The tension of choosing to pay Germany when I could contribute to a family's survival became an obsession. My friends told me I was crazy not to pay my taxes. I looked at hundreds of GoFundMe’s from Palestinians trying to fundraise for an evacuation.
I was frozen. I didn’t give anyone money. I didn’t protest. I went to meetings to organize direct actions and left after the introduction rounds. I tried to be supportive of my more active friends, and felt unsure if that was enough. I went to yoga classes and drank coffee and avoided social media. I was dreaming of the police coming to my door because I didn’t pay my taxes. I did not dream of Palestine. I became obsessed with the money I held onto with my life. This money protected me like an invisible membrane. I could save a family or I could pay taxes from within the membrane to the people funding the war. I could secure my life in a place where my friends live or I could secure the existence of four people. I looked at the GoFundMe of the woman who wrote to me every few days as it grew by 20 euros or 15 euros out of the total 20k they needed to move 4 people across the border. I waited for my accountant to tell me when to give my savings to the state.
I wondered if my new instagram friend was real— maybe they were the products of a very good Artificial Intelligence. I remained in the Flat White Dimension, unable to discern, not going outside, seeing a flat line where my energy used to be, holding a lifesaving amount of money that is also a potential contribution to a death machine, knowing I would make the conservative choice and hating myself for it. When the accountant told me to pay my taxes in July, I was too tired to fight it and instead I felt relief for the pressure to subside. I transferred the most money I’ve ever had. I couldn’t afford to hold it anymore.
In July, two months after Israel's attack on Raffah and the closing of the border, I stopped reading the news and began to speak more with the woman who had written to me. She shared photos of where she was staying in the Nuseirat camp, the bombs going off in the night, and her sick children. Her instagram profile became something I checked every morning and every night to see if she was ok. I woke up at 3am a few days after paying my taxes and she was online sending me pictures of a blasted building with tons of people standing around it. She writes to me of the spreading shadow of death. I realized that I would only like myself if I helped her.
The next morning I made a promise. By the end of the day I would make an attempt to help my new friend to get the remaining 11k needed for her and her family to escape. In 25 caffeinated minutes I hacked together a scheme where I could offer consulting or mentorship for money to contribute to the GoFundMe. I also made a proposal for the collective I helped start, The Hologram. 25 people voted to send 7k. In a week, I had raised the same amount of money that I spent on taxes to support the family to exit Gaza, from my sweaty anxious bedroom.
I researched what would happen if we got people money while the border was closed. I found out, they cannot escape, but they can get on an evacuation list. If I had given them my tax money when we first met, before the borders closed, they could have left. I did what I could.
I don’t know if or when the borders will open, when they will escape, if they will be a part of a massacre. I write this on the second of the two hottest days in recorded history. I congratulate my new friend for being able to join the evacuation list. She thanks me. I hope we will meet for tea one day. I have temporarily stopped drinking coffee.
The Flat White Dimension has changed since I wrote the articles that come next. It felt possible or cute to acknowledge The Flat White Dimension while reproducing it before we entered the current phase of the apocalypse. Somehow it was still possible to maintain a series of illusions that allowed us to pursue life as usual before October 7. But today the illusion of the Flat White Dimension is losing power. There is almost nothing to see when you zoom into the image, so now we have to look past it to see what it was concealing: profit, military, empire. Detaching from our big illusions is hard work, because we have to let go of our beliefs and ways of living to do so. But, we were already working so hard to unsee the violence that allowed us to live comfortably inside a death machine. My friend Amanda Priebe says, "What I see in the last 9 months is The Flat White Dimension being obliterated in front of our eyes, daily – isn’t this what we were fighting for all along?"
August addendum: Ghadir and her family were bombed. They survived with minor injuries. They can't leave Nuseirat Camp, and they used all the money we raised to buy a ticket out of Gaza when the borders open. So if you want to donate to help them get very expensive water or to pay rent, we would appreciate it so much. https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-help-me-and-my-family-we-have-forgotten-ho