schmiere

Episode 35

2012-01-29T07:14:00.001-08:00

"Every encounter comes along with effects of materiality", Shorl added to the conversation. Gwendolin and Franz agreed.

Episode 34

2012-01-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

"But consider friendship, it's a form of production", Gwendolin continued. - "What do you mean?" - "It constructs worlds, histories, geographies, climates, and deserts." - "Yes, friendship, it assembles and congregates, it transgresses the gaps."

Episode 33

2011-09-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

"I'm cold." said Franz trembling. And Gwendolin advised him: "I studied biology of anxiety at Duke. So I know that to be freezing doesn't necessarily mean that it's winter. If you are not a serendipity machine the concept of freedom can also be a form of coldness. Beware of non-committal alliances and take one tablet of mercury every day."

Episode 32

2011-09-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

"Funny how everything is breaking down while we are moving within the fragmented machinery."
"But why does every move we make need to be traced in networks? We'd rather not... we would rather refuse to be deducible from our traces, tend to become invisible... leaving an undetermined realm for coincidences, leaps, and fractures."

Episode 31

2011-05-07T02:31:00.000-07:00

"It dances, it lightens, it thinks. It can produce traces and invert the disremembrance. It's a movement within a movement" said Franz. "Please, make us enter a BitTorrent routine - with collapses of rationality in between!" Multiple voices of unclear origin arose all around him.

Episode 30

2011-04-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

"I'm crawling on gaping grounds, nestling to the margins."
"Realize that the vacancies can be used as a desire machinery producing bizarre realizations and crazy concepts. But the vacancies need to be multiplied. You have to propel them incessantly." Shorl and his economic wisdom were suddenly back.
"Yes, you are right. I can skip and hop and dance. Moving within the fragmented machinery."

Episode 29

2011-04-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

"Non-conducting, I can only see my shift. I know nothing but the vacancies generated by this shift. The aggregate is an economy of vacancies. Crawling on shattered and gaping grounds."

Episode 28

2011-04-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

"I need to get these tools. I want to generate vacancies and break downs."
"But why do you want to produce a collapse? Why do you need a machinery to disrupt the swarmings? Why do you have to deterritorialize the desires? Why do you need politics?"
"There is a very simple answer to your question: because there is pain, a pain that runs through the swarmings."
"Do you think that the swarmings might reappear in a rearranged shape?"
"I have no idea. As yet, I don't know anything but the collapse."
(...noises of disruption...)
"Lost all the words; no possibility of communication. No knowledge of the aggregate."

Episode 27

2011-03-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

Suddenly Shorl interfered again: "I can offer you a device for activating the non-conductors in order to bifurcate and re-direct the swarmings."
"How does it work?" Franz was interested.
"It paralyzes the passive passions and thus potentiates the active passions. Emerging from a moment of nowhere, it disrupts the shared spaces."

Episode 26

2011-02-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

Schmiere contribution to: Naturgeschichte für das 21. Jahrhundert. In Honor of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, MPIWG (ed.), Berlin 2011 (online appearance by courtesy of the editors)

Episode 25

2011-02-08T14:31:00.000-08:00

"Still, my emerging body is a pack. It is an aggregation and a desire. It constructs an arrangement. And the re-arrangement of my aggregate effectuates the shift of my desire. It generates the possibility of a novel body, the possiblity of a counter-agency."
"Teach me to encounter your shift", Franz asked Gwendolin.
Gwendolin remained absent. "Why?" she mumbled after a while, thereafter falling silent again.

Episode 24

2011-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

"When giving without receiving, a body emerged. The body appeared to be my property and I made use of this property as the currency of my aggregate. This turned out to be a way to advance and even more a possibility to destroy my appropriations. Having a body as my property turned out to be a way of encountering the non-identical body of today's bourgeoisie, a mode of possessing its non-identity," Gwen soliloquized.
Franz and Shorl had no idea what she was talking about.

Episode 23

2010-11-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

And Shorl asked: "Have you ever considered entering web-two marketing?"
And Franz asked: "Have you ever abused the art scene upside down?"
And Gwendolin asked: "Have you ever fucked the bourgeoisie?"
"I have never been able to locate it since today's bourgeoisie appears to be non-identical to itself." Franz was hard-boiled in this regard.

Episode 22: Shorl

2010-07-17T06:34:00.000-07:00

"Making money is easy in the underground networks of Schmiere. Don't feel silly if you don't know what blackhat is. Blackhat marketing uses little-known or little-understood ways to produce an income online," said Shorl, a new character in Schmiere world. "Follow me!"

Episode 21

2010-04-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

"Being poor is quite expensive," he said when returning from his terpsichorean trance having wrong colours on his mind.

Episode 20

2010-04-20T13:58:00.001-07:00

Dancing he had the impression of reaching a new kind of understanding of the unseizable: the complex and multiply interrelated webs of the all-encompassing economy. What was his own part in these webs? What was his status and his effect? Could he ever reach an uncomitted perspective of the processes around him? How could he ever connect "the things" and "the words" without developing a language by producing differentiating repetitions? Wasn't understanding connected to playing one's part in these interdependencies?

Episode 19 - Musick

2009-11-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

"We should listen to some music in order to get a clear head." - Only now they realized that Bambi's father had all the time been there.

"We need to develop reasoning powers that are distinct and at the same time passions, a style of reasoning that is counter-related to the rational as well as emotional lives of every day and every body." He appeared to dance while talking - so luminous, almost indistinguishable from anybody else.

Episode 18

2009-10-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

"The currents of information and economics are crashing but we will surrender to the global network of society by ways of sympathy." Franz disaffectedly read out one of the messages which appeared on his screen.

Episode 17

2009-10-13T04:53:00.000-07:00

"The ersatz turn towards the irrationality which defines the relations of social strata and their development is thus not a fundamental replacement of political actions. It is to be treated as an information based originator of transformation, a corrective of social margins towards a dynamic society." Bambi was enthusiastic about its theoretical brilliancy. Gwendolin and Franz remained silent, busy checking the viscosity of the critical masses on their electronic networks.

Episode 16 - The Return of Bambi

2009-08-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

"But how can we regulate the social processes when the legal structure cannot perceive the endless variety of possible economic manoeuvres?" asked Gwendolin. - "We constantly would have to reintegrate the exceptions and individual cases into the ensemble of the economic structure in order to realize the idea of a progressive common system." Bambi was back from his absence of the discussion.

Episode 15

2009-07-25T05:14:00.001-07:00

"But maybe the current economic situation is simply not yet enough rational to be precalculated. Maybe the economic currents are all haunted - by hysteria, paranoia, depression. Maybe we need to further rationalize the circumstances in order to regulate and handle them", Franz contemplated setting up a routine to organize the needs and deeds of institutional and individual actors. "A commonly achieved wealth would also give more continuity and security to all the involved economic agencies", Gwendolin agreed.

Episode 14

2009-07-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

Searching for a solution how to regulate and benefit from the current situation of complex hybrid derivative markets, they approached GOLD COUNTRY Self-Help Association in order to purchase an economic model they could apply to the given conditions.

"We should buy a model that takes account of the recursive agencies in increasing and decreasing developments," said Gwendolin. "The problem will be to find a way to factor the changing preferences that regulate the elasticity of the market."

Episode 13

2009-02-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

Although Schmiere's history was indeed repeating itself those days, there was no return to a former way of life nor to a former living standard. Although an expert team of mathematicians, economists, historians and philosophers was able to understand and explain everything happening in this process, none of them was able to precalculate the future developments nor to take appropriate steps. Also Gwendolin and Franz could just observe and follow the processes that were happening in the interrelation of all involved agents and actions. "We do not have sufficient information about all the numerous conditions interacting in this situation!" Franz was angry about his powerless situation. "We need to know every preconditioning coordinate in the interplay of acting powers!"

Episodes 11 & 12: From Princess Lulu

2009-02-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Episode 10

2008-07-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

“I want to build up a worldwide nation of information customers, a nation of completely free traffic of knowledge. I will create a new kind of democracy: new choices for a new kind of voting public.”
"But what about social security beyond national frontiers?” asked Gwendolin eating her FEBO Burger. “How can you build up an international system of labor legislation? How can democracy effect the working class comparing to the needs of everyday life?”

Episode 9

2008-07-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

...and off they went to the other side of Schmiere in order to explore the possibilities of going beyond the scope of national engagement.

Episode 8: Body language

2008-07-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

"This potato will be the symbol for my business project" said B. "It might be heart or bottom. When you eat it, it's gone."

Episode 7: Dancedancedance

2008-06-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Then they were dancing the whole night and B. was excessively sweating while flinging his arms and feet.

„Nobody is showing the whole image of what is going on, an image of our everyday lives. It would be most important that the media is giving an impression of the relation of politics and social conditions – it might have a mutual impact on both, professional politicians and citizens living under these conditions”, said B. while the music was shut down and the lights in the Wurlitzer bar went on.

Franz: “Gwendolin and me, we are dealing in information – we came to Schmiere for our business. Maybe we can help you build up a stage for singing the current melody of social conditions to the establishment in order to install a new world order. How much capital could you mobilize? We could feed you with information and introduce you to some of our most important customers.”

“Let’s go to my apartment to discuss your suggestion”, said B. “It sounds indeed very interesting.”

Episode 6: Singing songs

2008-05-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

After the sun went down, B., father, Franz and Gwendolin changed to the Wurlitzer bar close to the beach - they wanted to play their favourite songs to each other. They continued an intense discussion on mimetical effects in Western economy and pop culture. "I would like to make the ossified conditions dance by singing them their own melody. It might create a better society" said B.

"In order to affect all different cultured classes you should be able to transfer your idea into a kind of supermarket atmosphere with hidden pedagogical effects. This might also involve that you are creating a big profit-making business market. How would you reinvest your gainings?" asked Gwendolin.

Episode 5: New friends

2008-05-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

At the beach, B. and its father met two friendly and interesting strangers: Franz (whom you can see on the right) and Gwendolin (below). All the four of them decided to spend the day together. Sitting under the sunshade having a pink grapefuit cocktail, Franz and Gwendolin told B. that they were coming to Schmiere in order to do trading business - however they did not specify which goods they were dealing with.

Episode 4: A day at the beach

2008-05-24T01:34:00.000-07:00

Equipped with new shoes - B. finally got the yellow ones - they decided to spend the whole day at the white sunny beach of Schmiere world.

Episode 3: Shoe shopping

2008-05-23T15:36:00.001-07:00

When B. and its father went to the shoe shop next to their home, B. prefered the yellow ones - his father however suggested to buy the grey ones since he thought they were more reasonable.

Episode 2: B. and father

2007-03-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Bambi and its father are the first inhabitants of schmiere world. Visit them on the incredibly white and untouched rubbel behind the window that protects them.

Episode 1: Schmiere world

2007-03-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my small world of Schmiere