n this issue, zweikommasieben once again collects numerous suggestions for how one can arrive at other perceptions of the world and make use of them. The many artists, musicians and contributors in the magazine before you tell of other ways of seeing and hearing, other ways of experiencing. Artists are experts at developing new perceptions. For example, when new contexts for performances or presentations are sought—like Gerben de Louw for the Dutch label Queeste, or Philip Müller in relation to his DJ Heroin project. Meanwhile, performer Sue Tompkins emphasizes how different contexts and locations can serve as catalysts for other occasions. For DJ Lycox, the move from his hometown of Lisbon to Paris was crucial for gaining a new perspective on and relation to music. And Melika Ngombe Kolongo, alias Nkisi, not only has another view of the world, but chose the very possibility of looking at other worlds as a pseudonym—since Nkisi are ritual sculptures from precolonial Congo that are capable of giving us the possibility of looking into the underworld, while in exchange getting access to ours.

Bogomir Doringer has been able to develop another view in the modern sense of media technology: he hangs cameras from the ceilings of clubs and festival tents, in order to look at the dance floor from a bird’s-eye-view. He observes dancers as if through a microscope aimed at a petri dish—and suddenly the vocabulary of cell biologists is most relevant for describing what occurs on these dance floors. Here, a new way of seeing turns into language—just like a new way of hearing sounds can fuel new writing. Thanks to the mineral sounds of producer Lechuga Zafiro and composer Catherine Christer Hendrix, Alexander Iadorola succeeds in developing a linguistic-associative review of their works—and a review that seems poetic.

Poetry and language’s possibilities of becoming poetic are also of interest to New York musician Eartheater, as she notes in an interview for this issue. Similarly, Simian Keiser, who is continually looking for new connections between sound and word for us in his poetry column “Soundtexte,” guides us on this search. Dagmara Kraus, presented in this issue’s column, is a prime example of how language and its sound can occupy space and allow new approaches, new listening and understanding.

Co-published with Motto Books.

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