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Alphaversions

Author: Liesl Ujvary
Translator: Ann Cotten, Anna Dinwoodie

 

966
This is my body. I am currently in this place. I have certain perceptions, ideas, feelings. I am doing this and that. I am the cause and the controller of my thoughts and actions. I am talking about myself and thinking about myself. I have a conscience. I am the person I was yesterday.

1068
Scientific research repeats, confirms, and expands earlier insights. As if I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. The food looks bright and fake. Around the station, the ground is bare, the area has been burned off and sprayed with long-lasting herbicides. The zone is reminiscent of the empty space between a fortress and the outer wall, the shooting range. The burnt ground crackles under my feet, the leaves whisper in the wind. The riverbed is as lush as a summer garden. They will surely kill me at the next opportunity. The gardens are paradise: orderly, calculated, organic, and precise. A straw I must grasp at.

1069
Reality does not hate you. But her intimacies are ominous. This is not an interactive program, nor is it a virtual reality… Real breezes play with the leaves, real shadows darken the ground in the forest. And death is lurking outside. Real death. I am trained for this. You know how to work this sensorium, right? Remain basically alert, and keep an eye on the screens. The weapons are terrible, the defense genius. I can hardly be seen in the wet twilight. The danger is obvious, screaming at the sky. There follows a reorganization of my knowledge and my inner life, in a way I have not been programmed for. I am afraid of the details.

1070
We are soldiers at war. We see each other die. It is chilly tonight. A shroud of cirrus clouds the sky. This contradictory mixture of feelings: fear of the future and at the same time a nervous high-spiritedness, a sweet whiff of freedom. I am alone, shivering, naked in a forest I have never seen the likes of before. I climb out of the water, up the mossy riverbank. The black earth is soft under my feet. The boulders are overgrown with velvety green herbs. I don’t know how I got here and how I am supposed to find my way back. My heart is racing.

1071
They have me surrounded. I do not recognize them, but they recognize me, I have no doubt. I close my eyes and think about the stubbornness of life, the universal desire to melt and unite. Caustic substances, some extremely aggressive and decidedly toxic. I touch my nose and stare in surprise at my fingertips, drenched in bright red. So this is death?

1072
Alarm level 1. I am not alone in the woods… but I feel alone, especially after midnight. Being alone does not scare me. Other things scare me. The systems are insufficiently adapted to the biosphere… the wind in the trees… depthless, uncanny. Oh, it’s nothing physical. My border surfaces are intact. The forest glistens in the night rain. The water flows from step to step, from the full depressions of the leaves into the overflowing chalices of the flowers. The light west wind stirs up mold spores, a fine, sticky dust. Today the forest is peaceful, no predators in measurable distance. Delve deeper into the biosphere? Am I brave enough? I will be careful.

1074
Emotions are not a luxury, we cannot live without them. But how can emotions be described in the language of neurobiology? They are complex collections of chemical and neural reactions, triggered in the brain, forming specific patterns. They depict the state of the body and guide it at the same time. Emotions thus use the body as their stage – its chemical processes, its organs, and its muscles. Their regulatory activities are supposed to create situations which are advantageous to the individual. It’s not that I am feeling bad. Quite the contrary. At the moment I feel surprisingly fit, walking through the sunlight and swinging my arms like I haven’t since I was a child. The path follows a low chain of hills to the east. The chain of hills becomes a rocky plateau, clusters of green plants nest in the earth between the stones. I call uo the weather report; nothing has changed since this morning: no clouds, no wind.

1075
Same genome, same organism. But expressed in a radically different way. Reacts to the environment. My only advice: Keep your eyes open. Keep your back free. You do what you gotta do. What you have been trained to do – training gains ground on panic. There they are! There they are! The dreams are terrible. But isolation has so many faces. Am I still the same person I was three months ago? Am I feeling better or worse? I no longer sleep properly. I am moody. There is no safety. Every day is a risk. Outside, the air is fresh and humid. Outdoor lamps flare up and blind me for a moment. I take a deep breath. Inside and outside, the systems break down.

 

Liesl Ujvary, Alphaversionen 966-1137 (Digital edition, 2003).

The Igel Flies Tonight

For the launch of no man’s land # 5 on November 24, 2010, we presented ROTTEN KINCK OHNE, a reduced edition of the format known as the ROTTEN KINCK SCHOW. Here is the German-English audio-visual-textual documentation.

Under the title “THE IGEL FLIES TONIGHT” the NOVEMBER RKO enlightened the dark corridor of language. Language as in English and in German, corridor as in Buñuel. The whole drudgery of translation came into play: Hypnosis-Cabin, Etym-Oubliette, Hackepeter-Hedgehog.THE RKS and RKO try by all (epistemological) means possible to produce ANSCHAULICHKEIT. Associations are eo ipso arguments. Nothing is simplified – even though it can get rough sometimes. Things will be used.
+*#+#’*’#*#*#**”’#+’+#’
#’ THEIGELFLIESTONIGHT *#
*##*”*#’#+*#’#*##’*”#*

I TOLD YOU LIKE IT WAS: THE IGEL FLIES TONIGHT
GERMAN-English RKO – with Ann Cotten, Monika Rinck,
JUST THIS ONCE WITHOUT Sabine Scho

HYPNOSIS-CABIN

THE HEGELATOR

MENTAL RADIO

BOTTOM, THOU ART TRANSLATED!

THIS LAND GIVES BEAUTY TO THE LAZY

DOOMSDAY for the TRANSLATOR
(Exorcism or: BRIDGE of VOMIT)
GENERAL KNUSEMONG – en general que nous aimons
WATTHAPPEN? IDONNO IWILLASCK

ENSUITE: .. The ERROR-stretch of imagination — the dark shaft of details .. the psycho-physio analogy of vis inertiae .. work performance of natural beings … land ownership comme competence … expelled from the circle of juices .. pièce de resistance .. auri sacra fames .. exculpation par sameness of conditions .. The centripetal and the centrifugal tendency in schmantz .. the blessing of being with very close people the veiling nivellement of kludge. — the rhythm in the rolling of indifference.. “On the Terminology of the Sales Tax in Switzerland”

Portrait: without seeing
Looking like the police
Jauntal Crossing

Author: Peter Waterhouse
Translator: Ann Cotten

Portrait: without seeing

Being alarmed
and being armed, being like an arm
how armful am I, to my right and left,
I lift the arm, I lift my alarm.
Being broke as an arm. My armies
turned into my arms. I am harmed.
Elbow? But more a bent
like the knee kneels and cracks and knots. Do arms ell?
Ell your arm straight. She held her arm straight.
Or to lie with bending arms on the bed, on the belly.
Red as well. Maybe soft too.
Or was hit. Or he hit. Or she hit it. Beat it.
Bare. Ow. Shit. Outer. Who released the arms? Alarm.
Who’s been loosening, mobilizing the trees, what’s afoot,
the birches born, the pears born, the rivers being human,
the beans bent, the elbows ellbent, from horse beans to freeways,
from tomatoes to automatons, speech lent from speechlessness, worlds from woods,
trains out of rainforests, the branches cleaned,
leaves allowed to leave, who alarmed the trees,
top hits out of heat, tophitlers, grass turned to grass,
the folded mountains faltering in to asphelt, unfurling, the sea increased,
winter turned to “did he win”, shine to coin,
the tulips tuned, applied, wired, why
amplified, the tulips wham,
why is the land called America, why not I am Erica,
Erica not in shape, but: the Critical States of America,
from beak, speak, from go to home, from creep home to
secret, from secret regress, promises turn to premises,
from thaw to thought, first deuce then Deutz,
first the valley, then Italian,
first nought, then oughtn’t I,
first elder, then older,
how can I bud, can I still rain,
can I still snow, I am freezing and can’t be
frozen. I’m turning without rotation
and I know, I don’t snow,
I don’t tiger, don’t snake,
I can no longer fly and lay eggs,
I have no porpoise,
I will, have no wool,
am a rival, no river, not fluent
am birthday child but no child,
my name’s Mister, have no master,
have heart, am not called heart,
have house, am not called house,
have shoes, am not called shoes,
I don’t run away like the animals,
live in the rainforest not,
I’m not iguana, nor mouse, nor mole,
I can only molt, not like a bird molts, more like
Mauser: wham, M 98,
the fingerprint, bent on the trigger,
wham, ow, over,
I’ll conquer thee, stern shore,
my body is more mili and anti,
rather terro, very mistic,
very extre-optic, mentalistic, oscopic,
embedded in armour, nalistic, jour-istic
and the vocabulary is filled with is, I full of is,
I am not, but I is,
jaguarless, unamuled and non-milky,
and the isthms, but I don’t seem like flower,
I don’t taste like eucalyptus and no longer say
masjid but mosque, not tisu but tissue,
not tigasegi but triangular, I say telescope
instead of teropong, tunnel instead of terowong, I say
see, view and war, in Malay expressed by
one word, I no longer say tempoh but calm and quiet
but tempoh is the very quiet and
I don’t say telpon but telephone,
I no longer say susu and suasana and sisi,
not orang but human,
not bola but ball and shot,
I have the words in love and the word I
and in Malay I and in love are both sayang,
no longer puisi but poetry,
no longer pensel but pencil,
not nyamuk but gnat,
no longer nanas but pineapple,
no longer earth surface muka bumi but our faces,
our faces like surprised territory,
the nose and the heights of the eye overrun with visions,
the eyes rolled over, the face occupied,
no longer meriam-meriam but cannons,
target and death and name one and the same word
and I speak the arctic lands and places
Queen Mary Land King Gregor Land
Sabrina Land Wilkes Land
Belgica Mountains Wohltat Massive
Amery Ice Shelf Wegener Inland Ice Shackleton Range
New Swabia Joerg Plateau English Coast
Ellsworth Highland Zemlya Aleksandra
American Highland Ingrid Christensen Land
but I no longer speak Pada malam yang gelap-gelita
itu dia memasang sebuah lenterna yang sangat gemilang.
Triggered and transposed and portrayed.

Shall I now portray or prohibit,
support or oppose.
I hold the world against me
it is more tigerly and a- and unicorn and unarmed
and scared as the scorpion.
All words armed?
Armed to the teeth and words?
Is there the other expanse than that from head to foot?
Who can unshow the woods and the animals,
costume, prohibit the animals,
dress up the trees, leaf the flowers, garden them, tempest them?
Am I still able to rain? Able to tiger the tigers?
I am no longer tigered, but my children tiger round me.
I am not striped, only the poet’s eye strips earth and sky,
I am no longer touched.
The cats don’t see me. Was I fauna
and the cats saw me?
Was I incorporeal? Can I touch, be attached?
The jaguar doesn’t attack, it approaches on paws, bites.
In the kitchen the apple is bitten, not attacked.
Do I have a body? Why doesn’t the tree have a body?
Do elephants have not bodies but elephants?
And do apples have apples?
And my cheeks have two cheeks?
Am I not, quite clearly, eary?
Doesn’t the finger hang together with everything?
Am I animal after all?
Am I footless, though I have two feet?
Have I lost my head, right inside my head?
Could nothing more occur to me?
Do the animals walk incorporeal through the forest and are invisible
and are animal and I have no enemy?
The animals don’t live in the woods, they whoosh in the rainforest?
The unshown souls? There in the bushes,
there in the tree tops, there in the nettles, under the leaves
and in the rain and in the mole hole and there on the lips,
there on a cheek of an iguana,
there inside the elbow