J.G. Ballard’s self-declared ‘Immodest Proposal’ for a global war-­alliance to exact the destruction of America demonstrates the provocatory zeal of his last fiction plans, as well as their enduring prescience. As Ballard emphasises several times in the World Versus America notebooks, he is utterly serious in his concerns and visions.
Although the Ballard ­estate declined permission for any images of pages from the World Versus America archival notebooks to accompany this essay, any member of the general public interested to do so can readily visit the British Library and view the notebooks in their entirety in the freely-­accessible manuscripts collection there.

I’m standing in my perfectly fitting uniform with its freshly-pressed swastika armband in a long line at an American office. I’m waiting to submit my Application for Total War. Then, after standing in line for hours, the friendly clerk tells me that I need The Application for Foreign Aggressions in the next office over. Since I’m a depressed fascist, I don’t keep my chin up for long—despite my spiffy brown uniform—so I decide that’s enough for today and to try again tomorrow. The very next morning, I’m valiantly standing in the correct line, but then I’m missing some paperwork for the correct submission of my Application for Total War. Besides a birth certificate (the original, no copies allowed!), I’m still missing two recommendation letters from American citizens. Five are necessary. But—I thought just three… No, five in total! With a smile, the clerk raises her right hand, her fingers spread...

I really should not have hired him, but he seemed like he could fill in for my regular cook. Schneider had called in sick it seemed like it could drag on, so I took him on without too much fuss. He was a stocky, small man who could speak only broken German. At the end of the day, business had to go on, and the guests were hungry.

The complex relationships that you maintain often are unclear, even to yourself. So too the code that goes along with them. It is hard to decipher. It is only when things go off the rails that you recognize how well the self-regulation mechanisms were working: how Schneider would organize his purchases, how he would talk to the staff, how he put together the ingredients, and how truly he was interested in keeping business humming.

On the surface, the assistant chef worked in the same...

• urbanism
• contemporary literature
• Venice
• obsession
• short stories
• avant-garde

• theory of architecture
• community
• poetics
• architecture
• spatial turn
• fiction
• South America

After the self-abolition of this performance as an art work in the 3rd phase, we comprehend the work as an artistic means, a methodological tool which we wish to share with contemporary dance and performance artists, who are willing to reflect their contexts and public work and with all who have something to say about the structure of the global World of contemporary dance and performance.

We would like to invite you to join us in this research and to develop your own “private bio-politics” – thinking about which other stories could be told about symbolical ownership over history and concepts, about the monopolizing of the global dance and performance scene, and about the patronization of “the backward” and “the always late (comers)”.

We would usually propose to start with a discussion or an after talk moderated by a (local / present) theorist, artist or in this case by you on the spot....

• performance
• Eastern Europe
• contemporary art
• performance art
• body