For the third episode, the collective artiCHOKE has selected excerpts from Lisa Jeschke’s poem “Immer noch: Wann schafft Deutschland sich endlich ab ??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!/()=%)&/%§&% (/)(/)&/%” and Laurel Uziell’s latest book “T”.

Jeschke’s text yearns for a transitional theory. Against the set of hegemonic gender-identities and duties of reproduction it posits “robot girls” who are happy to abolish themselves in their past and in their present form to find a tender proliferation of mutant and unnatural bodies.

In their most recent book “T” Laurel Uziell takes apart the oppressions of legal and linguistic mechanisms of subjectivation which are dealt out against trans-people on a daily basis and turn their bodies into stages for legal trials and media spectacles. “Real life” write Uziell, “is obviously fucking horrible” and proposes we “make nature out of our feelings” and “scoop out the exterior”.

°°°°

Lisa Jeschke (*1985) is a poet and performer based in Munich, where she is co-editor of the chapbook press Materials/Materialien (London/Munich). Together with Lucy Beynon she has created the plays David Cameron [A Theatre of Knife Songs] (Shit Valley, 2015) The Tragedy of Theresa May (Tipped Press, 2018), and The Decline and Fall of the Home Office (2018). She is also the author of The Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women (Materials, 2018), which was published in an expanded German version by Hochroth München (2019).

Laurel Uziell lives in London. They have published Instant Cop Death (Shit Valley Press, 2017) and T (Materials, 2019). Their poems have featured in Believer Magazine, Datableed, and they have given numerous poetry readings.

Every day, from 10 to 8 p.m., the text collage is played on a 5-metre-long LED display that can be seen from outside.

Still: When will Germany finally abolish itself??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!/()=%)&/%§&%(/)(/)&/%

Lisa Jeschke

 

Why so eternity in this world? Why so no theory
Of transition? Why so no theory? Where the horizon?

The kingdom around us – still organ, a biomensch.
And we?

And we?
We are the robot girls.

Robots like to get rid of themselves
As they are as they were.

Robots don’t mind.
Robots are NEEDY.

Robots are HAPPY.
ROBOTS HAVE FEELINGS.

I, for example, just a simple robot girl
Among many, would feel

As I am as I was, quite empirically,
Super-liked to do away with,

As one of my best robot friends
Carefully and gently

Disassembled and found that very nice,
And told us fragments to calm us down…

About how it was and how it will be, talked incessantly
Talked hard, for example, fingers and teeth

Exchanged with others,
Connected with others freshly, who also wanted to get rid of themselves

Abolish themselves, they have
Re-formed mouths that disclose,

How it was, to disclose, how it was.
Would only the kingdom,

That wraps itself around us, the robot proteins,
Would also abolish itself,

Would the kingdom abolish itself,
As it is as it was,

It could also finally become robots,
And even in this case, as with my robot friend,

Would every speck of dust in history remain visible,
Because, abolition is the opposite of annihilation,

So even the most disturbing details of then (now)
Would remain visible,

That robots were allowed to hand-mold,
But could not simply remodel themselves without permission,

That the robot fetuses and robot embryos
In their metal abdomens, could not simply

Could not just build them out, without consultation,
That assembling robots into folded,

Contradictory, their wounds showing leaking
Artificial mass systems, if that’s what they wanted,

Could not be done just like that,
And that in many places in the evening and on Sundays the

sidewalks had to be folded up because so little was going on.
Was – did WE ever give permission in this respect?

These details from the wilderness we would always
Explore again, not nostalgically,

but to dissect them,
While we, with cheesy music in the background.

– So corny,
That it hurt -,

Towards the horizon,
The robot horses at our side.

 

T
(excerpt, translation by Lisa Jeschke)

Laurel Uziell

 

Real life really sucks: Real men, real women, real abstraction, real economy, real socialism, real sex, real hair, real hip bones, real TV, real extensions of our real limbs, real pronouns, real cohesion, real terror, blatant real threats, real information, real desire, real jobs, real family, real citizens, something really real, the fake real, the real world where all real and all fake things face each other back to back real glued (metaphor! ), clear