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

Maël Renouard

On Memory Atrophy

How can we remember the way we used to remember? OPEN
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Digital disrupture

Dieter Mersch

The machine remains alien to any mechanical limitation. OPEN
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Marcus Quent

Belief in the world is what we most lack.

Is it possible to regain a lost belief? Is it possible to do as we will with belief? OPEN
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DIAPHANES No. 11
DIAPHANES Magazine No. 11

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

On Gestational Communism

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

Marie Glassl, Sophie Lewis

Surrogate Abolition

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

The Disobedience of the Word

“He always read Priam instead of ‘prime’.” OPEN
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Sina Dell’Anno

Punk / Philology

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

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"

“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

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)

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

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

Upending meanings and rewriting sanity

When it all burns you’ll know – a writer was there at the first… ABO DE FR

A. L. Kennedy

What is an Author?

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

Towards a Theory of Magic Materialism

Becoming the translator rather than the careless exploiter of nature might be the ad­venture of humankind in the years to come. OPEN
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Claire Fontaine

Towards a Theory of Magic Materialism

Subjectivation and Authenticity

It is human selection that turns a machine selection that is meaningless because of its compilation criteria into a (potentially)... ABO DE

Felix Stalder

Feedback as Authenticity

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

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

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

When life’s hard, time’s a motherfucker going slow

In his photographs and texts, ­Calcutta-based Soham Gupta forces the tension that arises between fiction and real-life conditions in as... ABO DE FR

Soham Gupta

Angst

He would say “Never work!”

Old-school publisher, avant-garde dandy, undisputed expert on the global history of Dada: Raphaëlle Milone paints an intimate but unsparing portrait... ABO FR

Raphaëlle Milone

Dachy Alive

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

The yoke of being, noteworthy dis-position

It wasn’t nature and its dangers that forced domestication and enabled the economic shrine. Temple and funerary cult, sacrifice and distribution of the meat—for Homer all sacrificial animals were still hieria, holy creatures—and the containment of wildness led to symbolic and socio-cultural change, which became the vector and motor of... OPEN
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Andreas L. Hofbauer

Yoke

Be Jack!

Like no other actor, Uma Thurman bears a face as a trace of itself. The most recent emanation of this... OPEN
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Michael Heitz, Hendrik Rohlf

Uma’s Face—Thurman’s Voice

“Can you imagine something like that?”

The curators were probably worried that someone would stumble carelessly up the stairs while looking at the exhibits—could I simply have gone past the first object at the bottom? Number 1, “Formless Veil, curtain …” Must have been attached to the wall just between the entrance and exitus … “My... OPEN
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Axel Dielmann

The Dressmaker

Blood!

Thérèse ayant douleurs menstruelles could be a beginning. OPEN
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Ines Kleesattel

Art, Girls, and Aesthetic Freedom Down Below

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

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

So many egoists call themselves artists…

“So many egoists call themselves artists,” Rimbaud wrote to Paul Demeny on May 15, 1871. Even though that is not always obvious, ‘I’, the first person, is the most unknown person, a mystery that is constantly moving towards the other two, the second and third persons, a series of unfoldings... OPEN
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Maria Filomena Molder

The Alms of Time

Ζένοι και Zah και Zuh

Ξένος extraneus του έξω όχι του μέσα (intraneus) όχι της οικίας unheimlich όχι του heim όχι της εστίας της άλλης πλευράς της πόρτας – fores, foreigner όχι υπερβολικά στον ρυθμό, odd όχι κανονικός όχι συνήθης σπάνιος ιδιάζων seltsam παράξενος besherat γενναίος κομψός απρόβλεπτος στραβός verschroben λοξός αναπάντεχος εξαιρετικός εκπληκτικός   Είναι εκπληκτικό... OPEN
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Jean-Luc Nancy

Zah Zuh

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

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

DIAPHANES NO. 3
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 3

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

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

Facebook’s Just a Nail Studio

I noticed this pattern for fingernail decoration four years ago in the window of a “nail studio” in Salisbury, south-west England. Nail studios had begun to interest me because I supposed them to be something like sociological indicator plants. How dumb or despairing must a women be to want to...

Barbara Basting

Der Algorithmus und ich 3

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?

Drag-nets

Luc Meresma

Drag-nets

DIAPHANES NO. 2
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 2

Humanity is a metahuman concept.

We are bodies. It makes no sense to debate this. OPEN
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Rolf Bossart, Milo Rau

On Realism

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

About ‘how we treat the others’

“There is something deeply humiliating in such a situation.” OPEN
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Artur Zmijewski

Conversation on “Glimpse”

Twenty-four hours in state of unconsciousness

Now the dead will no longer be buried, now this spectral city will become the site for execrations and lamentations, now time itself will disintegrate and void itself, now human bodies will expectorate fury and envision their own transformation or negation, now infinite and untold catastrophes are imminently on their... ABO

Stephen Barber

Futurama Nights, October 1978

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

DIAPHANES No. 1
DIAPHANES MAGAZINE No. 1

The Transversal Shelf of Printed Books in Times of Accelerated Opaque Media

Raucous time capsules, rare jewels, and indispensable bulky goods from all epochs, languages, and genres.

The Transversal Shelf of Printed Books in Times of Accelerated Opaque Media

Paradox I: That all things kill themselves

To affect yea to effect their owne deaths, all living are importun’d. Not by Nature only which perfects them, but by Art and education which perfects her. Plants quickned and inhabited by the most unworthy Soule, which therfore neyther will, nor worke, affect an end, a perfection, a Death. This...

John Donne

Paradox I

I remember

Following Georges Perec’s Memory 480: "I remember… (to be continued…)"…

Je me souviens

A fast trip through the American night

Mike Wilson’s literature is a fast trip through the American night, drawn in melancholy images of great beauty. ABO

Mike Wilson

Rockabilly

Track the clouds

heal slowly… when the deed is done… when coming back is nowhere… we slide our hands through sloping fountains… ABO

Julien Maret

IN EXTREMIS

 

LISTMANIA

DIAPHANES is collecting lists: conceptually sensory bills of fare, enumerations and selections in the serenely fatal undertaking of classifying an unclassifiable present, of orienting ourselves through the stringing together of self-determined entries. The freely associated registers (including unequal and redundant items) are a call to attention or simply the excursive (as every list is potentially infinitely long or short) inventory of taste or consciousness.

25 WAYS TO MAKE LOVE TO THE EARTH

Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, 03.07.2017

1. Tell the Earth, “I love you. I can’t live without you."

2. At first you may feel embarrassed...

SCHÖNE WORTE FÜR ABSCHEULICHE DINGE IN ZUFÄLLIGER REIHENFOLGE

Natascha Bub, 03.07.2017

Plörre
Smegma
Ohrwurm
Schlamassel
Kummerspeck
Weltschmerz
Gesöff
Fernweh
Lotterbett
Spelunke
Scharmützel
Donnerwetter
Schabracke
Mumpitz
Spatzenhirn
Lustmolch
Kaschemme
Spinatwachtel
Popanz

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CLOUD NAMES

Dorothee Scheiffarth, 24.03.2017

Cumulus tuba ;
Cirrus cumulonimbogenitus ;
Wallcloud ;
Bannerwolke ;
Föhnfische ;
mother-of-pearl cloud ;
Altocumulus translucidus ;
Stratocumulus...

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
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Magazine Special

Stephen Barber

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.

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.

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English

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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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