Matthias Wittmann

The experimental writing project “Salto Desorientale”—positioned between research and critical imagination— aims to disorientate various Orientalisms focusing on places that have acquired the reputation of being gates to the Orient (“porta Orientis”). Involving various writing techniques of entanglement that confront perspectives with counter-perspectives, the “Salto Desorientale” re-tells orientalist imaginations (travelogues etc.) as transcultural stories of asymmetrical exchange, recursion, resistance – and contagion, not least by media technologies. How are transcultural microhistories layered in texts and textures, places and contact zones, aesthetics and materials, social practices and bodies? Along which trade and travelling routes do they criss-cross each other? A special focus will be on the history of Orientalism as a history of travesty (between appropriation and counter-appropriation) and on the notion of “sojourn”, “a notion which has its administrative correspondent: residence.” (Roland Barthes) The Orientalist “in residence” is no longer a tourist, but she/he does not want to become a naturalized citizen either. Thus, the project particularly reflects on “sojourn/residence” as an Orientalist lifestyle, and challenges this desire for an “alternative life” with counter-perspectives from the point of view of those who do not have the privilege of becoming a “sojourner”.