Un proyecto para Atlántica de Ralf Schmitt : ‘Docu-Soap’ = A project to Atlántica by Ralf Schmitt

              Ralf Schmitt "Docu-Soap'
"Expertos/eruditos autóctonos discrepan acerca del grado de belleza
y validez de un delicado tejido amerindio hecho en Taiwan..."
This quotation is not coined by Mr. Jorge Antelo Urdininea', who was a senator for agriculture in Solivia in
the 80ies, a position which involved many official joumeys around the world and also to Taiwan. No, this is
the title of a painting done in 2001 by the Solivian artist Roberto ValcárceP (*1951) which I bought in his
"Creative Autonomous Zone" in Santa Cruz last year when travelling with my wife Stephanie Jünemann
through Solivia and Perú from March to April 2002.
Sefore starting our travel I auctioned by ebay
a single-record "Ein Indiojunge aus Perú"
(El niño indio del Perú) from 1973 by singer
and actor Karin Katharina Witkiewicz (*9th of
March 1945 in Girlachsdorf/Schlesien) who got
famous under her stage ñame Katja Ebstein'
(titled after a street in Berlin where she was
once living: Epensteinstrasse, 13409 Serlin).
On the backside it plays the song "und Dein
Zug der geht in 5 Minuten" ("Tu tren saldrá en
cinco minutos ").
One year before she was engaged in the
Günther-Grass initiative during the election
campaign of Willy Srandt for Chancellor of
the Federal Republic of Germany.
orig. single-cover
The original Germán tcxt of the song was
written by Christian Bruhn/Gcorg Buschor.^
(Label/Nr. United Artists (UA)/35 635 A; Si;
GER 1973; 3:02):
De todas formas su suerte buscó,
mas la fortuna jamás encontró.
Los malos amigos le hicieron dejar
aquel buen camino que quiso empezar.
En las montañas un niño nació,
allá en el cielo su estrella brilló.
Y junto a su madre
aprendió a caminar,
después, al crecer
se marchó a la ciudad.
El niño indio del Perú
vivía como tú, mas la puerta
de los sueños se cerró
para el niño indio del Perú.
Pero piensa que tanta desgracia
para siempre no puede durar.
El niño indio del Perú
vivía como tú, mas la puerta
de los sueños se cerró
para el niño indio del Perú.
Yaidaidaidaidaaa
El niño indio del Perú
vivía como tú, mas la puerta
de los sueños se cerró
para el niño indio del Perú.
Yaidaidaidaidaaa
The original reason to go to Bolivia and Perú was knot to prove and verify the form of my thesis which was
based on a digital transcription - produced for the Bolivian scientist Carmen Beatriz Loza' in 2001 - of a hand
drawing from 1894 by the Germán archaeologist Max Uhle'' showing the 3 quipus' of a shepherd from
Cha'lla, Titicaca-Island. It ended in the conclusión that these three knots probably record the interface of the
first International floating metro in world history between the boundaries of present Bolivia and Perú.
So we had to go to Cha'lla on Isla del Sol to experience and update this "metrothesis".**
Semana Santa in Cocacabana 2002
On 30th of March early in the moming we left
our hotel in Copacabana and took a boat to the
northem tip of the island to Cha'llapampa
where we started hiking towards the beach of
Cha'lla; on this trip going up and down at an
average height of 4.000 metres with fabulous
views over the water and the island we met a
few children on the Inka trail. I asked the
Indians whether 1 might take some photoshots
of them posing with my single-record which I
was carrying in my backpack all the time with-out
really knowing what for.
They agreed if being payed; I promised to give them a few Bolivianos; and so we started...
Just besides the beach of Cha'lla we tried to get
a room in the hostel "Posada del Inca" also call-led
Alojamiento Juan Mamani which was
recommended by the recent Lonely Planef
guide; unfortunately, the owner who was prom-ised
to be an excellent source of information
was not at home. So we entered the small villa-ge
of Cha'lla, the site of the island's secondary
school; just opposite the church there was a
public telephone cabin. The strange thing was
that its cable leading to the telephone receiver
was
knotted
with
a
figure
8
knot.
Already in 1965 Konrad Klapheck's'" painting "The Voice of Conscience" told us something about the exis-tence
of a knotted telephone cable. Keeping in mind Leland Locke" this figure-8-knot'' is also one of the
typical knots used in the quipus. In 1994 the anthropologist Gary Urton published his article "A New Twist
in an Oíd Yarn: Variation in Knot Directionality in the Inka khipus"", proving that there are two types of spin:
S- and Z-shaped knots. By tying the fígure-8-knot into the telephone cable friction losses are generated
during the transmission of the information; i.e. the user will need some more time in case of constant amount
of information:
he has to make longer phone calis, thus the stock of the telecommunication service provider ENTEL'"
(Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones) associated since 1995 with Telecom Italia will rise.
Konrad Klaphcck "The Voice of Conscience", 1965 illustration of quipu knot types by Lesiic Leland Lociíe, 1923
So going to Cha'lia did knot verify our metrothesis; instead of this we heard another voice of conscience:
After the former national telephone company Entel had held the monopoly over long distance, domestic
and intemational telephony services for a long time, it was privatized by the deregulation" of the Bolivian
market in November 2001; the global management consultants discussed the new situation and decided to
use the knowledge of the scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, artists, ethnomathematicians etc. They
chose a local quipu-knot going to be tied into each public telephone cable of their company all over the coun-try
which keeps a low profile in order to make more money out of each cali. Therefore a special team of most-ly
indigenous workers has been trained in crash courses for the ease of assembly since early 2002. They are
low-paid and forbidden to talk about their job. Conspicuously Entel was also one of the major sponsors of
the Akakor Atahuallpa 2000 Expedition'" which strengthened the belief in a Bolivian Atlantis called "La
Ciudad Submergida" north of Isla del Sol...
We left Cha'lla and hiked southwards to Yumani where we spent the night.
Virgen María Como Desatadora de Nudos'
When coming back to Copacabana we took the
next bus to La Paz, the city where once Miguel
Cervantes de Saavedra vainly tried to become
mayor; instead of that the rejected candidate
stayed in Spain and wrote Don Quixote. At Café
Alexander in La Paz on 2nd of April 2002 the
British anthropologist Denise Arnold'' and the
BoHvian Hnguist Juan de Dios Yapita'" introdu-ced
the Aymaran artist Elvira Espejo Ayka*' to
us; Elvira was born on lOth of December, 1981,
in ayllu Qaqachaka (prov. Abaroa, depto. of
Oruro), Bolivia. Surprisingly she brought with
her a self-made quipu. Elvira said it is a Kipu
(or Quipo) of War. She made it in 2001 for a
forthcoming exhibition of her work...or should I
say for a forthcoming war against Iraq in 2003
It was already in 1998 when the Germán artist
Carsten Holler tried to solve knotty situations
with the help of the ''Mother ofKnots" as he in-structed
the players in game no. 5.5-^ in his poc-ket
book. And if you enter the church St. Peter
am Perlach in Augsburg in Germany, you will
fínd an unusual illustration of the Virgin Mary
in the right aisle. The oil painting on canvas was
done about 1700 A.D. by Johann Melchior
Schmidtneris titled "Mary Untier of Knots".
And in China gentlemen of the Chou Dynasty
(1112-256 B.C.) carried an often jade-made
tooF' tied to their waste sashes which is called
a "As/" for loosening knots. The Shuo Wen, one
of the earliest Chínese dictionaries, describes it
as "a device to untie knots, part of aduh attire".
Carsten Holler CJame 5.5. "Mary Untier ofKnots" 1,10 x 1,88 ms.
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People who don't believe in God and the Holy Virgin Mary can instead believe in the report of Mirko Lauer^"
On lOth of April 2000 the Civil Society Collective (CSC), a group of visual artists and art critics gathered
around the fountain in the center of the Plaza de Anuas in Lima, Perú. They started an artistic action called
""Wash the Flag". The ritual consisted of scrubbing the nation's flag in a washtub (the recommended soap
brand was Bolívar, named after one of the country's 19th-century liberators) and then hanging it out to dry
on a clothesline. The "Lava La Bandera "-Fridays were bom when people queued up to soap from 1 to 3 pm.
This public action spread to other squares throughout Perú and also took place abroad. It lasted for seven
months until November 2000, when dictator Alberto Fujimori escaped from the country.
iitt*i«áMii
Sumerian soap recipe, ca. 2500 B.C.
Historically the oldest soap recipe we know was
carved in Sumerian cuneiform writing in a shale
píate dated back to the 3rd millennium B.C; it
was found in the small city of Tello in Meso-potamia;
this habitat is located in the south of
present-day Iraq."
The "Multicultural Power of Soap Operas" as
described by Kimi Eisele-'' in the Pacific News
Service on November 25, 2002 has been proved.
30 years after Frank Traveller's First Flight Tokyo-Lima it was Friday 12th of April 2002 at 9.20 p.m.
when we both had to depart from Jorge Chávez Lima-Callao International Airport...
takcn from "Franz.Ost: Politics of Dada and Data". 2002/03 B.erlin/C.halla"
Notes
[ 1 ] http://www.congreso.gov.bo/libros/compilacion_83_84.htm
[2] Cp. Valcarcel, Roberto: "Colonial archangels in contemporary Bolivian art: not as absurd as it sounds.
From: "Themes, motifs, clichés and obsessions - an artist's personal view". In: Arcángeles actuales de
Bolivia. Ed. Galería Arte Único. Casa de America. Madrid 1995.
[3] http://www.katja-ebstein.de/
[4] In 1974 Hispavox published the Spanish versión of this song: UA, 45-1109, 3'10".
[5] Cp. Loza, Carmen Beatriz: El modelo de Max Uhlepara el estudio de los quipus a la luz de sus notas
inéditas de trabajo de campo (1894-1897). In: Indiana 16, Separatum, Berlin 1999, pp. 123-158.
[6] Cp. Uhle, Friedrich Max: Die Partikel Wéi im Schu-king und Schi-king. Leipzig 1880.
[7] Cp. QUIPU Y YUPANA, Colección de escritos. Ed. Mackey, Carol/Pereyra, Hugo and others. Consejo
Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología Ministerio de la Presidencia CONCYTEC. Lima 1990.
[8] Cp. Schmitt, Ralf: "Politics of Dada and Data". In: In Recognition ofHistory. Ed. Centro Atlántico de
Arte Moderno, Ediciones del Umbral. ATLÁNTICA No. 30. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2001, pp. 88-94.
[9] Cp. Swaney, Deanna: Bolivia. Lonely Planet 2001, pp. 265 f.
[ 10] http://www.artnet.com/library/04/0468/T046802.asp
[11] Cp. Locke, L. Leland: The Ancient Quipu or Peruvian Knot Record. Ed. The American Museum
of Natural History. New York 1923, p. 13.
[12] William J. Conklin distinguishes between the two variations - "over" and "under"- of the figure-eight
knot. Cp. Conklin, William J.: "A Khipu Information String Theory". In: Narrative Threads, Accounting
and Recounting in Andean Khipu. Ed. Jeffrey Quilter, Gary Urton. Austin 2002, p. 77 f.
[13] Cp. Urton, Gary: A New Twist in an oíd Yarn: Variation in Knot Directionality in the Inka khipus.
In: Baessler-Archiv. Berlin 1994, N.F., Bd. 42, pp. 271-305.
[14] http://www.entel.com.bo/
[15] http://www.lucent.com/press/0701/01071 l.nse.html
[16] http://www.akakor.com/english/atahdia-uk.html
[17] http://www.bolivianet.com/kmO/carvalho/
[18] Cp. Rivera, Mario H. Ibertis: La Virgen María Como Desatadora de Nudos, la verdadera historia.
Buenos Aires 2001.
[19] Cp. Amold, Denise Y. y otros.: El rincón de las cabezas. Luchas textuales, educación y tierras en los
Andes. Coedición: Colección academia número nueve. Carrera de Literatura y Facultad de Humanidades,
UMSA e ILCA. La Paz 2000.
[20] http://www.ilcanet.com/c2-p-river.html
[21] Cp. Ayka, Elvira Espejo: Jichha naparlt'a: Ahora les voy a narrar. UNICEF y Casa de las Américas.
La Paz 1994.
[22] Cp. HoUer, Carsten: Carsten Hóller's Spiele Buch. Ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Koln 1998.
[23] Cp. Chen, Lydia H. S.: "The Art of Chínese Knotwork: A short history". In: History and Science of
Knots. Ed. J. C. Tumer/P. van de Griend. Singapore 1996, p. 104.
[24] Mirko Lauer is a political columnist for the Lima daily La República, a poet, a detective novelist, an
editor of the Lima literary magazine Hueso Húmero, and the founder and co-editor of the Lima book
publisher Mosca Azul: http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200108_Public_Art/200109Lauer.htm
[25] http://www.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/Anorganische_Chemie/Pfitzner/demo_ss02/wasch.pdf
[26] PNS contributor Kimi Bisele is the managing editor of 110 Degrees, a magazine about urban culture
produced by teenagers: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StorylD=14608
[27] http://www.foerderkoje.de/stk_unterseiten/knots.html