Re: telematicsheepskin

Johannes H. Birringer (j.birringer@nwu.edu)
Wed, 05 Mar 1997 03:06:56 -0600

Hallo small/growing list?

here's a shareware/semi-open letter to a swiss friend currently visiting
Atlanta and soon Chicago. It's my "audience" test or speaking into the wind
but addressed as an ongoing hypercorrespondence with one and more friends
pasted in as speakers or citations. Disregard this if you have no time or
don't feel like audience or interzoners.
ciao,
Johannes

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telematic topic: sheepskin

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I am going crazy (doing taxes). As distraction/hallucination, a short
shareware version of my letter to Heiner, who conducts workshop-research on
"Theories of Fashion and Nudity" in Atlanta, on visit from the Swiss
mountains. Hoping you speak a little german.

____________________________________________________________________________
____________

I just ALMOST finished the bloody tax return declaration, after getting
stuck in something (everything) that doesn't interest me at all, how many
percent or pennies I can write off my taxes by estimating the exact
"depreciation" of my car that I use for work/driving. I need a what do you
call them,"TreuhŠnder"....?

well, I figured it out, I can write off 79 dollars or something like that. I
stopped doing the higher mathematics (the bureaucratic explanations of the
US Tax forms are virtually amazing and truly stunning, I have no idea who
understands that), when I came to think/reflect on the term "depreciation"
(what is that, Wertverfall ? Abnutzung, Verlotterung, Abtritt, Aging?
Verrostung, Verrottung ......)

Autofetish
Kšrperfetish
Sex fetish
rote Schuhe

Loecher am Auge
und Schatten
auf den Schultern

youth fetish
promotion fetish
lueckenbuesser fetish
intellektuellengeistfetish

art fetish
media fetish
music fetish
klingelingeling

clonefetish
[Dolly smiles at us from the title pages of all the magazines]

did the brave scotsman who cloned the sheep
know he would be a media star, and thus named the
clonesheep after a busomy blonde actress (Dolly Parton)
so his patent whould be a special media fetish?

klingelingeling
dum dilli dum dum dum
bam

"can we clone humans?"
the Newsweek asks sincerely
and earnestly,

and the Prez, concerned,
has ordered a federal
bioethics panel to
investigate
whether the US should
regulate human
cloning or ban it

klingelingeling

I hear the bioethics debate
running through all talk
shows and
soap operas tomorrow
and the day
after

and biotechnology is
big business, multibillion dollar business
caring little about the little president
and his bioethics panels

klingelingeling

then there will be
something else

to keep the reader/audience occupied
and the scholars convene for
culturocritico panel

and the scriptwriters and
performance artists are whetting
their lips

soon we will see sheep on stage,
and on the interNet
Dolly and Franky

and one gay sheep, Dil (transgendered/transcrossed)

what a crying game
klingelingeling ding ding

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********

I am becoming obsessed with genetics. It's because I was reading Donna
Haraway's new book on the ""Modest_Witness@Second-Millenium.FemaleMan
(C)_Meets_OncoMouse (TM)"

I wonder whether Leni Stahlgewitter was lesbian or a butch type. She looks
like it now, in the/her 90s, scubadiving and filming the dangerous fish
under water. What a dame. I am sure fashion will change, and in the 201-
there will be massive retrospectives of her stunning work in Allemagne,
honouring an important filmmaker pioneer of the previous, primitivist 20th
century, when fascism needed armies and brown clothes. Now it's easier to
have a little fascism with a friendly face. But filmmakers are always
important, for the aesthetics of the politics, naturally, and the spectacle
part of cultural eugenics.
No eugenics without advertising and parades down Broadway.

You must look at it. It's a fine book, the one on the FemaleMan.

I thought about the OncoMouse and the DollySheep, and my taxes and the
depreciation of my car.

I wonder what the difference is between a free agent in basketball and an
independent researcher? UnabhŠngiger Forscher oder Hacker, oder Laborant,
wie der Keith Canmpbell in Scotland (das ist der Clone Forscher)

[Ÿbrigens, meine Gay Newspaper in meiner Nachbarschaft ist entrŸstet Ÿber
die Bombe, die man in Atlanta in eine lesbische Bar warf - hast du
rechechiert? Was weisst du? Ich werde sicher bald gefragt, wenn ich
erzŠhle, das mein alter Hausfreund aus alten Zeiten jetzt aus Atlanta
anreist, man will sicher von dir wissen, was die politische Reaktion ist?}

Du merkst, tonight I am very concentrated and organized in my thought play,
my needle, my laser beam, my rotation, my drum and bass.

I think we should use more music metaphors (I listen on the headphones to my
current favorite cassette music, Jungle aus London, du weisst sicher), since
the genetics researchers seem to know what they are talking about when they
clone cells:

I quote from Professor Campbell ((bitte beachten: a Freudian Slip, der
Family name des Schotten, he belongs to Andy Warhol's gang and the Soup
Silkscreen Serie, is probably himself already cloned and only pretends to be
himself and Scottish, but then again, Andy's great grand-father is from
Scotland, and "I shot Andy Warhol" forgot to make the working class
connection between Valerie Solanas and Andy.

We definitely need more Manifestos,

about our Geister
and our Abtritte

nice ironic and agressively
pathetic manifestos.

Newsweek tried a week metaphor:

"Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?"

Wer hat denn das gesagt?
Blake? Carlyle?

Ÿberhaupt, du bist ja schon so weit in der depreciation dass du den Benjamin
nur noch vage erinnerst und umschreiben musst und dich dabei komisch vorkommst,
aber ich spasse (it's the drum/bass in my head making the neurons jingle and
the synapses woggle), und ich denke mir,

das mit der depreciation ist doch a fantastic theme for a conference
conference or a website, couldn't you arrange that with your heremeneutics
friends, that we concoct a nice Philosophy and Art/Kulturkritik Exercitium,
preferably not in the mountains bot down low (Toscana), MŸller does the
organization, and Derrida speaks on opening night (or Baudrillard reads his
Vegas rap poetry), and then we take over, and at the end (post-session) we
invite the lacanischen und freudianischen und kleinianischen und
winnicottinischen und jungianischen und die postfeministischen (Finger
Licking Good)
analyserinnen ein.

"my t o n g u e o n y o u r t h e o r y"

so nannte ich mal eine version of my "languages of the body" workshop, mit
halb-pornographischen Bildposter an meiner BŸrotŸr, was mir RŸge vom
Departemento Jefe eintrug.

Jetzt ist doch der Fujimori tatsŠchlich zum Comandante Fidel hingeflogen,
das Bild in der NY Times sieht lustig aus (die Helden bei der
MilitŠrparade). Aber it's stupid to assume the Tœpac Amaru guerrillas want
to go to Cuba, what gave Fujimori this idea?
Is everyone crazy?

Gibts MilitŠrparade in der Schweiz wenn Fidel kommt? oder andrer
Statsbesuch? Machen die strammen …sterreicher das noch, die heute ja gar
keine gute Presse hatten wegen der Alibi-Anheuerung einer LŸckenbŸsserfrau
an der Harfe in den Vienna Philharmonic GralsbrŸderschaft? The Gralsritter
claim that it's disturbing the emotional and soul textures of the Klangbody
of the male orchestral hormones. The femaleMan is alien to the cells of the
brothermusicmakerstrings.

I think my taxes have confused my mind with abstract pure mathematics, I am
getting my aliennation effects all mixed up, metaphorologisch gesungen, but
I want to conclude my free jazz improvisation with a quote from Newsweek
about Dolly, not without having refered you to the critical biographical
literature on appreciation of ghosts:

[ICH CLONE JETZT WIEDER EIN HYPERTEXTFRAGMENT AUS DER
DER LAUFENDEN/NICHT-SYNCHRONEN UNTER-SCHREIBUNG MIT
UNSERER KOLLEGIN AUS NORDTEXAS, TERESA:]

<I'm reading a novel called SANTA EVITA by an Argentinian now at
Rutgers, Tomas
Eloy Mart’nez. It's based on years of research on the Perons.
Did you know that her body was embalmed after her death?
Evita the corpse is arguably more interesting than the "live"
version? It was
displayed at the Worker's Palace for several years until Peron was
overthrown
by the military coup. The body as icon was even more powerful after the
military "diappeared" it. But the really weird shit is the bizarre
relationships
between Evita the corpse & her numerous military (male) caretakers.>

Ja mein Liebling, so gehts den Helden, Lenin und Evita.

>erschuettert
>ohne durchgaengige ironie.

so geht das nicht, ohne Ironie schon gar nicht (wie sehr tief ernsthaft war
ich doch, und war auch getroffen, und hab den Mund gehalten, und mal mich
innerlich untersucht, war doch dieser TanzWorkshop on "Connected Bodies" vor
2 Jahren in Amsterdam meine erste ernsthafte Konfrontation in der
physischen/organischen Arbeit mit "BodyMind Centering and Experinetial
Anatomy" - ja, ich musste meine Ironische Skepsis ganz zurŸcknehmen, und
erst mal die ganzheitliche Kšrperarbeit miterleben, am eigenen, im eigenen
Leib, und es hat mir Augen und Ohren gešffnet, obwohl ich darŸber auch
kritisch sprechen kann, interessiertt mich, was mein Leben und die
KunstwerktŠtigkeit betrifft, halt mehr was da vor sich geht, eigentlich, in
diesem Kšrper aus den Millionen Zellen und dem Konzert des Zellbwusstseins
und der Stršme in uns, und das ist, was ich meine mit der Kultur i n uns,
und inside us, as intelligent body)

as intelligently depreciating, dying, aging body.
aging and re-creating
recreating and aging
stumbling

it's not intellectual, it's intelligent, the body is very intelligent,
and it doesn't lie
and it lies.

also about who we think we might want to be.

now finalemente, ein Hypertext fragment aus dem kolossalen zeichnungswerk
des toten und verrŸckt gewordenen Artaud, gekoppelt (URL link) mit Sheep
Genetiker.

LE VISAGE HUMAINE

le visage humain
n'a pas encore trouvŽ
sa face


le visage humain
porte en effet une espece
de mort perpetuelle
sur son visage....

(*)

[mein schreibbrett hat keine frz. accents mehr Ÿbrig, excuse, es ist auch schon
depreciated im internationalen sinne]

Campbell knew that once a cell has decided what it's going to be when it
grows up -
part of bone, nerve, skin or any other organ - it's like a CD album that
will play only a single track.

Although every cell in every body, from liver cells in a person to udder
cells in a sheep, contains the complete blueprint for making the entire
person or the entire sheep, only the genetic melody for the liver cell or
the udder cell is actually played.

The other tracks - instructions for the complete organism - have been silenced.

Campbell, however, would have none of that.
Even though everybody said it couldn't be done.

The key, he thought [this is written in narrative mode by Newsweek, I guess,
ready for the filmscript for Hollywood), as he pondered his messy office,
was to figure out how to get adult cells to sound each and every one of the
genetic notes required to make a complete animal.

The key was to to make the cell "quiescent" or inactive. [Aha !!]

In that state {could it also be called "silenced",
"immobilized","anaesthetized"?], all of its genes have the potential of
being played [ aha: dream state, Freud might say],
Campbell realized.

All that was needed was the player.

And Campbell had found it: a sheep oocyte - egg cell - contains special
proteins that
turn on [arouse, as in sex or foreplay] genes, playing all the tracks, one
after the other, like the laser beam in the CD player.

******

Turn on the music, baby,
kill faster, pussycat,
klingelingeling
dum da da bum bum

Unfortunately, my CD player stopped working last week, I think I used it too
often, or need to clean the beam, somehow it goes click and stops at O.
That's that, all tracks covered mathematically zeroed, depreciated and
slightly dysfunctional like Antonin near the end when they administered
electroshocks for his recuperation.The French Prez didn't order a biotethics
panel, and the Nazis were busy working in Dresden on the eugenics programme
and the depreciation of inferior species such as Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals,
and Asocials and Cripples, in the museum where I performed "Lovers
Fragments" hanging upside down from my friend's body reciting my pathetic
but ironic memory of my lover stroking my naked body and I fall asleep in
deep pleasure, around me deep blue deep blue.

herz-lichst

Johannes

(zurŸck zum Taxi)