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Facebook’s Just a Nail Studio . . . . . Bang Bang Baroque . . . . . . . . . . Marcus Quent . Verrinnen der Zeit und Glaube an die Welt . . . . . Maël Renouard . The Twilight of Classi­fication? . . . . . Maël Renouard . Modifications infimes et considérables . . . . . Corporate Love . . . . . Maël Renouard . Fragmente eines unendlichen Gedächtnisses . . . . . . . . . . Lieber Paul 3 . . . . . After This Comes That Before That Comes This . . . . . Stephen Barber . A War of Fragments: World Versus America . . . . . Elena Vogman . Dynamography, or Andrei Bely’s Rhythmic Gesture . . . . . I say . . . . . Dieter Mersch . Digital Criticism . . . . . Dietmar Dath . Your Sprache Never Was . . . . . Drag-nets . . . . . BELISAR by François Gérard . . . . . Dietmar Dath . Your Sprache Never Was . . . . . Dieter Mersch . Digital Criticism . . . . . Marcus Quent . Elapsing Time and Belief in the World . . . . . Stephen Barber . Krieg aus Fragmenten: World Versus America
Web Magazine
An immodest proposal

Stephen Barber

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. OPEN
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Dietmar Dath

Do you want to believe in language?

The index calculates everything. Announcements of awards, mostly false, light up then die. His dopamine balance feeds the list. Limbic structures support it. Brain means house, should have windows. OPEN
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Digital disrupture

Dieter Mersch

The machine remains alien to any mechanical limitation. OPEN
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DIAPHANES No. 11
DIAPHANES Magazine No. 11

On Gestational Communism

“If you love your family, you want family abolition for them!” ABO DE

Marie Glassl, Sophie Lewis

Surrogate Abolition

Pregnancy is the weirdest condition

The seahorse is the chosen metaphor for pregnant trans men ABO DE

I.V. Nuss

The Love in the Convex, in Absolute Roundness and the Sluttification of All Men West of the Bosporus

Bang Bang Baroque

On the first gaze the works of Emma Waltraud Howes seem incongruously out of time. Visiting her studio, one enters... ABO

Emma Waltraud Howes

Questionnaire Emma Waltraud Howes

DIAPHANES No. 10
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 10

It was another 75° day in LA.

Where do you go when you disappear? OPEN
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Kim Gordon

The Pitch

I remember

I remember during the frozen Tokyo winter of 1997: I took long walks in the dead of night through the Shinjuku Kabuki-cho district of endless bars, subterranean clubs and abandoned cinemas with Donald Richie, the American writer and film-maker, already in Tokyo for over forty ­years at that moment and...

Johanna Went

I remember (Johanna Went)

“Fuck that thing.” That’s all punk needs.

“The thing about punk is that you’re allowed to talk about anything. Kids can talk about whatever they want. There’s... OPEN
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Donatien Grau, James Spooner

Afropunk Philology

Sex creates love and love creates sex

“I don’t believe in progress, no.” OPEN
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Dennis Cooper, Donatien Grau, Richard Hell

"I’d rather live in a book"

The abandonment of the centrality of the subject

Philology keeps it possible to open a space for the minority. OPEN
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Donatien Grau

A Life in Philology

DIAPHANES No. 8/9
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 8/9

The sexual asylum story

Successful asylum claims generally require generating a racialist, colonialist discourse that impugns the nation-state from which the asylum seeker comes. While to impugn the asylum seeker’s place of origin may well be a necessity for the purpose of asylum, it is problematic if it serves to confirm the moral and... OPEN
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Mengia Tschalaer

Queer Spaces

Each showroom has a couple of “managers”.

Do I really know the person I’ve watched every day on screen for months? I know many things, like where... ABO DE

Present.Perfect.

Ecstasy of inauthenticity

The question of authenticity and I go back some way; we’re old sparring partners – frenemies. It’s been a fraught relationship, shot through with paradox and misconstruing. My first novel, Remainder, does turn around its protagonist’s obsession with becoming ‘real’, inhabiting his era or his city, building, skin, movements and... ABO DE

Tom McCarthy

Toke My Asymptote – or, The Ecstatic Agony of Appearance

Artificial and Other Intelligences

Facebook’s picture tumbler is currently reminding me of my first visit to China a year ago. I was impressed: so many skyscrapers, so many people, so much technology! And such wonderful noodle soups! I put a few impressions on my Facebook timeline, even though Facebook is blocked by China’s Great...

Barbara Basting

Der Algorithmus und ich 7

Critique of generic rationality

The programs “sense” how the clients function, but not because AI is becoming more human—rather because clients now function as... OPEN
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Zoran Terzić

The Grand Generalization

DIAPHANES No. 6/7
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 6/7

How could Dante be avant-garde?

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Philippe Sollers

What is the Meaning of the Avant-garde’s Death?

Based on a brilliant trick

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s closeness to fascism has put him in a dubious light. Barbara Basting tells of her personal fascination... ABO DE

Barbara Basting

Marinetti Detox

Why should this be art?

I Hate the Avant-Garde. When an artist as self-ironic and self-reflective as Yuri Albert makes such a statement about art, then skepticism is called for. Like his overall series Elitist-Democratic Art, the title deliberately plays with simple affirmations and negations, and at the same time exhibits the inherent receptive dilemma... ABO DE

Sandra Frimmel

I Hate the Avant-garde

Everything new is a pose in the alcoves of capital

In the late nineteenth century Alfred Jarry created a prototype of the modern wannabe in his pot-bellied Père Ubu, a figure that raises entitlement to a high art. Ubu doesn’t want to be king; others urge him to it. But he is also the others. And when he does become... OPEN
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Zoran Terzić

The Tautomaniac

Guy Debord was the avant-garde’s Christ.

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem looks back and ahead in the light of the spectacle of aesthetic capitalism, which has become even... ABO FR DE

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem

Tomb for Guy Debord

DIAPHANES NO. 5
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 5

What does “emancipatory” mean today?

Pretending one more time that the world can still be saved and asking whether art contains an emancipatory potential can be a meaningful endeavour only if illegitimate attempts at appropriating this emancipatory potential are thwarted. Its usurpation, which amounts to its abolition, must be prevented. Critique that deserves its name... ABO DE

Alexander García Düttmann

Cold Distance

350 000 000 photographs onto Facebook everyday

The idea of making the world more open and connected has degenerated to a business concept. OPEN
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Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck

What we don’t see

Drag-nets

Luc Meresma

Drag-nets

Charlemagne Rides through Paris

Facebook’s algorithm has served up memories of my Turkish travels often enough, but now it’s taking countermeasures and suddenly presenting quite different entries from my so-called timeline. For example, this blurred photograph of an equestrian statue of Charlemagne, unfortunately barely visible, with vassals. I had noticed him a few years ago...

Barbara Basting

Der Algorithmus und ich 6

Nothing is at home

Philosophy is found wanting. It is considered anachronistic, some say dead. The tradition is in ruins. ABO

Phenomena in Exile

DIAPHANES No. 4
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 4

I really should not have hired him…

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... ABO DE FR

Jochen Thermann

The Assistant Chef

Boutiques on the Bosporus

I’m no longer very happy with Facebook. Recently the algorithm seems to be taking the platform into total despotism. And on top of that it’s continually being altered. Just when I’ve gotten used to the comforting stream of souvenir images, Mr. Zuckerberg decides to do away with them. Or is...

Barbara Basting

Der Algorithmus und ich 4

Your story begins with a tunnel.

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... OPEN
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Angelika Meier

Who I Really Am

Why the Backwards Smile?

To what extent can a revolution of the inner world impact the external, material world surrounding us? OPEN
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Slavs and Tatars

Reverse Joy

Honoré Daumier: Don Quixote lisant

Miguel Tamen

Don Quixote lisant

DIAPHANES NO. 3
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 3

I say

Nicole Bachmann’s latest work, I say, has the performer practice a text, sense a word in the mouth, calling it... ABO

Nicole Bachmann

Questionnaire Nicole Bachmann

Ornamentation is the body of our thought

With Bely, a continuum is continuously produced between visceral organic states, political states of society and meteorological states of the... OPEN
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Elena Vogman

Dynamography, or Andrei Bely’s Rhythmic Gesture

An immodest proposal

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... OPEN
ACCESS DE

Stephen Barber

A War of Fragments: World Versus America

On Memory Atrophy

Externalized memory had always proceeded by contractions, summaries, reductions, selections, breaks in flow, as well as by organization, classification, boiling down. Card catalogues reduced thousands of works to a few key notions; tables of contents contracted the hundreds of pages in a given book. The sign itself was the first... OPEN
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Maël Renouard

The Twilight of Classi­fication?

After This Comes That Before That Comes This

Wolfgang Plöger

After This Comes That Before That Comes This

DIAPHANES NO. 2
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 2

The last philosopher. The zen-queen.

– In what way are you a communist – since we need to define this: someone who is convinced that a totally different form of organization of communal life would be good for the human race, –   – Isn’t that equally true of monarchists and leaders of sects?   – ...with a focus... OPEN
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Ann Cotten

Dialogs

A for Anomie

A for Anomie The idea that terrorism and other forms of political violence are directly related to strains caused by strongly held grievances has been one of the most common explanations to date and can be traced to a diverse set of theoretical concepts including relative deprivation, social disorganization, breakdown, tension,... OPEN
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Eric Baudelaire

Abecedarium

Mama Say Make I Dey Go, She Dey My Back

The key to survival will lay in female hands. OPEN
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Jelili Atiku, Damian Christinger

Venice, Lagos, and the Spaces in between

A Questionnaire: Tom Kummer

I got to know Tom Kummer in 2006 while editing his book Blow Up in nighttime telephone calls to Los...

Tom Kummer

Questionnaire Tom Kummer

Is drama out cold? Is theatre?

Can contemporary theatre recognize itself in the boxing ring so that its fist, the fist of the past, strikes a... ABO DE

Alexander García Düttmann

Can There Be a Society Without Ceremony or the Critical Question of Theatre

DIAPHANES No. 1
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 1

American English

»The thing is, I don't see these things on my shelf. I just stare at them.«

Hendrik Rohlf

Richard Prince (Book)

Exodus. Gods and Kings

But why Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, from 2014? You will have had your reasons, and you’ll have to... OPEN
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Trmasan Bruialesi

Lieber Paul 1

BIG BUGS

Forever! Star Shame! Cheat War Wedding Psych Suicide Dying! Love

Beni Bischof

LISTMANIA: BIG BUGS

12 Feb 2011 — 12 Feb 2017

Facebook recently wanted to make merry with me. To this aim it posted an entry on my notice board, which is actually closed to others. Because of the trolls. But for the FB people this barricade apparently doesn’t apply. Must be in the small print. The post I’m now sharing... ABO

Barbara Basting

Der Algorithmus und ich 1

Part Dieu. The Painting of Francisco Sierra

You have to imagine Francisco Sierra as a cheerful painter. ABO DE

Michael Heitz

Another New God in Parts

 

Questionnaire

Bang Bang Baroque

Emma Waltraud Howes, 08.06.2023

On the first gaze the works of Emma Waltraud Howes seem incongruously out of time. Visiting her studio, one enters another world: meets mushrooms and corals, glass artichoke-hand grenades, the...

I say

Nicole Bachmann, 11.12.2017

Nicole Bachmann’s latest work, I say, has the performer practice a text, sense a word in the mouth, calling it forth, and another, repeating, hearing, interrupting, and another, beginning again,...

This is not your blood.

Aya Momose, 11.12.2017

The project space CORNER COLLEGE in Zurich’s 4th district has for some time now been giving invigorating impulses to both art and ­theory, and can be recommended to every visitor...

A Questionnaire: Tom Kummer

Tom Kummer, 04.07.2017

I got to know Tom Kummer in 2006 while editing his book Blow Up in nighttime telephone calls to Los Angeles. We met for the first time at the book...

Other columns
Magazine Special
Ornamentation is the body of our thought

Elena Vogman

Ornamentation is the body of our thought

With Bely, a continuum is continuously produced between visceral organic states, political states of society and meteorological states of the world.

OPEN
ACCESS
Magazine Special

Maël Renouard

On Memory Atrophy

How can we remember the way we used to remember?

Externalized memory had always proceeded by contractions, summaries, reductions, selections, breaks in flow, as well as by organization, classification, boiling down. Card catalogues reduced thousands of works to a few key notions; tables of contents contracted the hundreds of pages in a given book. The sign itself was the first abbreviation of experience. An epic stitched of words was an abbreviation of the war, the long years of which were reduced to a few nights of recitation; the written text that recorded the epic was a contraction of the oral narration which pushed aside its sensory richness, melody, life in a thousand details. In accumulating, every level of abbreviation reconstituted an infinite flow, a new dilation that would be contracted in its turn. From the plurality of pages to the index and the table of contents; from the plurality of books to card catalogues.

The abbreviated elements were further arranged, situated...

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»Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.


Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: DELINE THE MARE.


Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. BASTA! I will see if I can see.


See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.«


James Joyce

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