The Return of Schizo-Culture
40 years of Semiotext(e): Book Launch, Film Screenings & Bus Tour
In celebration of the book launch “The Return of Schizo-Culture” and the 40th anniversary of the publishing house Semiotext(e), Pro qm and Merve Verlag host an evening in honour of the still potent legacy of “Schizo-Culture”. The evening will open with a conversation between Semiotext(e)‘s Sylvère Lotringer and art theorist Gerald Raunig at Pro qm. A shop window exhibition curated by Semiotext(e) will be on display. After a bus ride to Merve Verlag – the publishing house that inspired Lotringer to found his own – screenings will be shown: amongst others a sequence from “Second-Hand Hitler”, Lotringer’s fictional arrival in Berlin in 1983, that also features Peter Gente and Heidi Paris at Merve Verlag. Also on view will be Mary Patten’s contemporary video work “Panel”, drawn from the transcript of a discussion between Michel Foucault, psychiatrist R. D. Laing, mental health activist Howie the Harp and political activist Judith Clark.
In 1978 the periodical Semiotext(e) published an issue under the title “Schizo-Culture.” The journal’s pages fused the radical writing of key figures of post-1968 French philosophy with the chaotic creativity of an emerging New York downtown art scene. The collective behind Semiotext(e), led by general editor Sylvère Lotringer and colleague John Rajchman, had previously engineered such a combustive meeting in the flesh, at a three-day conference held at Columbia University in 1975 under the same title. This now infamous event formed around divergent responses and antagonisms towards a society of control, flourishing in the wake of 1960s counterculture. It introduced the theories of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and Félix Guattari to a New York audience and staged alongside contributions from activists, thinkers, patients and ex-cons specifically addressing the challenge of penal and psychiatric institutions. The resultant fighting and confusion exemplified the paradoxical potentialities of schizo-culture, a breaking down of old lines, and an exuberant rupturing of politics, theory and culture.
The publication of a slip-cased edition of “The Book: 1978”, a facsimile reproduction of the original “Schizo-Culture” publication and “The Event: 1975”, a comprehensive record of the conference will mark Semiotext(e)’s 40th anniversary year. This addition assembles many previously unpublished texts, including a detailed selection of interviews reconstructing the events, and features Félix Guattari, William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michel Foucault, Sylvère Lotringer, Guy Hocquenghem, Gilles Deleuze, John Rajchman, Robert Wilson, Joel Kovel, Jack Smith, Jean-François Lyotard, Ti-Grace Atkinson, François Peraldi, and John Cage.
*40 years of Semiotext(e), many years of Merve & 15 years of Pro qm*
6 pm at Pro qm: Book Presentation of “Schizo-Culture”: Sylvère Lotringer in conversation with Gerald Raunig. Shop-Window Installation by Semiotext(e)
7:45 pm bus ride with sound track from Pro qm to Merve Verlag (The Bus is fully booked)
9 pm at Merve Verlag: Screenings of films by Sylvère Lotringer and Mary Patten.
Drinks & Music.
Locations:
Pro qm Buchhandlung, Almstadtstr. 48-50 in Berlin-Mitte
Merve Verlag, Crellestr. 22 in Berlin-Schöneberg
