Birgit Kempker

Übung im Ertrinken. Iwan steht auf.

«Jeder weiss, dass wir aus Wasser sind und, was uns tötet, Liebe nennen, wenn wir ins blanke Messer rennen.»

In 1998, Birgit Kempker caused a bit of a scandal with her book «Als ich das erste mal mit Cornelius Busch im Bett lag» (When I was in bed with Cornelius Busch for the first time). Cornelius Busch was offended and sued the author. She took revenge a year later with the sentence: «Bis ein Mann, der mit einer Frau im Bett lag, weggeübt ist, vergeht viele, für das Üben unerspriessliche Zeit». It is from the audio drama „Iwan steht auf“. Iwan experiences with his own body that getting up is an effort suitable for «giants». Iwan ducks out, he doesn’t want to get up like grown ups. Nevertheless, Birgit Kempker’s verbal garlands put him on his feet. Iwan’s getting up is preceded by an «Exercise in Drowning»: A word play in English and German against the fear of Hitchcock’s birds and sharks, but also of love and its loneliness.

Birgit Kempker is an audio-poet who loves playing with paradoxes, quotations and twisted phrases. Her pieces for voices and sounds create their own linguistic patterns which substitute an associative sensuality for the production of sense. The two texts in this book and CD were conceptualised for the radio and therefore have a stronger effect when one listens to them. The audio version does not follow the script exactly. What is a dispersed print space in the book is staged as a sound piece for several voices on the CD.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Exercise in Drowning. Iwan Gets Up

Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 1970

ISBN: 3-9521258-3-0