Serpentine Streamer Texts

The main portion of this book is a reissue of the texts Annette Wehrmann compiled in her self-made publication in the 1990’s. The publication was produced in a small edition for which Wehrmann chose the format of an 18 x 21 cm spiral bound notebook with a plain, red-orange cover. Her booklet contained a total of 38 single-sided photocopied pages of text whose introductory title page bears the heading LUFTSCHLANGENTEXTE 1+.[1] Only a handful of copies survive, some of which can be found in her estate, some of which were gifts to artists and friends. Annette Wehrmann produced a slightly smaller 2nd edition of her publication, this time with 22 pages of text and a transparent plastic cover revealing a prefixed page printed with a variation on the title LUFTSCHLANGEN-TEXTE. Wehrmann also used compilations of her texts—and translations—for group publications with artist friends, some examples being the 1996 volume Touristenklasse – Große Freiheit, oder; ich bin Türke, ich habe Keller oben (‘Tourist Class—Big Freedom or I am Turkish, I have basement upstairs’) one of a series of artist publications put out by the Hamburg Project Group (PBK Hamburg), and Neid (‘Envy’) magazine.The name LUFTSCHLANGEN-TEXTE refers to the performative context for which the texts were originally conceived. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, Annette Wehrmann participated in a large number of projects with her performances where she read passages  typed out on serpentine streamers, inching along the colorful winding strips she’d placed throughout the room. Michaela Melián and Ort des Gegen e.V. have released an audio CD through Materialverlag featuring recordings of two performances, both of which took place in Hamburg: the performance at Rialto as part of the series Intermediate (2003) and the performance at B-Movie as part of events put on by the artist group Too Special (2000). Transcripts of those two performances complement the texts from Annette Wehrmann’s DIY publication in this collection.
[1]      This refers to the SERPENTINE STREAMER TEXTS which make up the bulk of this collection.