This is not a podcast. This is also not a pipe. Not a question of what is, but rather what becomes. The process started by revisiting Deleuze and Guattari’s (D&G) ‘Rhizome’ chapter of A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Next, we engaged in a series of dialogue sessions – on that chapter and other theorists’ texts that followed – to tune into D&G’s genuine rhizomatic approach and find new connections to our respective (research) contexts. The project titled schizopodcast: podcast is a podcast is a podcast is, perhaps, the monster child, or in less malign terms, an attempt to continue the DADA in D&G (Faber 2009).
We, that is, Pablo Ruano and Petra Klusmeyer.
On the context of this project: This work is an experiment. This experiment is part of the exhibition titled ‘Material Girls’, curated by the artist Ulrike Brockmann and friends. The invitation to partake in this show extends back to 2020. Then Corona hit, and the world turned upside down. Conceptually, the pandemic does not play into the making of this work, unless we consider D&G’s rhizome to be a type of viral thinking. SARS-CoV-2 forced us to work online – both, a curse and a blessing – which ...
The project is an experimental sonic artwork with a dadaist slant that embraces the concept of the rhizome and explores the idea of a sonic narratology or what I will call sonic fictioning through a generative podcast, using a methodology that incorporates close reading and dialoguing, art writing and autotheory, employs sound design and composition, as well as web design and JavaScript coding. Through this exposition, I aim to offer a glimpse into the project’s ideation and formation, including the ensuing structure of the podcast comprising various elements such as audio narration and quotation, recorded dialogue, sound signals, music, and composed soundscapes. However, I will not delve into the technical aspects of web content programming, as that falls within my collaborator’s expertise.
A few words on the collaboration between myself and Pablo Somonte Ruano: I am an artist, theorist, and educator who teaches theory-led and practice-based MA courses at the University of the Arts Bremen. I supervised Pablo’s postgraduate thesis in Digital Media. As a nascent artist interested in the subject, he participated in a series of my seminars on ‘sound and research-creation’, which explored sonic thinking through artistic practice and philosophy. Our collaboration took place outside the university setting; at the time, I was not acting as Pablo’s instructor. I invited him to work with me on the commission because we had common research interests, and I hoped we would create an experiment sustained by the curiosity of two: ‘Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 3) – the more the merrier! We joined forces during a period when shared ‘fun’ seemed to be the proper antidote to a pandemic slump.