Script: The Swiss Psychotropic Gold Refining
HD video, 21:13 min, © knowbotiq 2018
Concept, realisation, montage/animation: knowbotiq
Script: Nina Bandi (Script: A Molecular Listening Session mit Fred Hystère und Nina Bandi), knowbotiq
Sound: DJ Fred Hystère, knowbotiq
Voices: Nina Bandi, Sally Schoenfeldt, Jord/ana Rosenberg, Romy Rüegger, Paolo Caffoni, Stef Huber, u.a.
with quotes from: Karen Barad, Josef Tanner, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Rohit Jain, Audre Lord, Paul B. Preciado, Michael Taussig, Imelda Marcos, Gloria Wecker, Paul Wilmott, Nina Simone, Junglepussy u.a.
Performer: Teresa Vittucci
Thanks to: ifcar, ZHdK Zurich, DRAFT/Christoph Schenker, Gitanjali Dang, Rohit Jain, Dimitrina Sevova, Anna Frei, u.a.
0- Ghost
A ghost never dies
1 – Value bearing
Fit to molecularize
Conjure the jinn in the pot [text inserts]
The production of a second nature
The way in which the body gets caught up
New forms of derivativisation
And the way the body gets caught up on a molecular level
but it has still always been the case
that in order to produce capital accumulation
it had to move through the faces of capital production
Nothing is just value-bearing in itself not even gold
Everything is a matter of doses, of melting and crystallization points, of the rotary power of the molecule, of regularity, of milligrams, of the form and mode of administration, of habit, of praxis
J’ai éffrité ma substance, ma substance [French: I have eroded my substance, my substance]
2 – Stone Witnessing – i need you, Rock!
Stone witnessing, stone witnessing, stone witnessing.
In order to withstand the weather, we had to become stone.
Stone witnessing, witnessing, for a stone, as a stone, as a state of consciousness
Is meant to be using in its widest, most inclusive sense,
as well as in its deconstructive rich, as a form of testimony in the feminist struggle.
Becoming soil
It is this related notion of the between, between space, between what can bear witness
We had to become stone, and what cannot be born witness
Becoming soil
So that rather than nearly pointing the witnessing outward
We had to become stone
The movements simultaneously point inwards
The here there, and the elsewhere within here,
all at once, we had to become stone
Who’s speaking? who’s listening? how? when? where?
With whom? and with what?
Becoming soil
In order to withstand the weather, we had to become stone
I said rock – what’s the matter with you Rock?
Don’t you see i need you, rock!
I need you rock, i need you rock, i need you rock!…
——— A Report to an Academy [text insert]
What do we care? What do we care? [German in the original]
3 – Blue Mantra
Switzerland, a country of purity, precision and prestige.
Provided all services for the perpetuation of the apartheid regime [German in the original]
We are not discussing where all this Gold is coming from!
Switzerland
Today three quarters of all the world`s gold in circulation is refined in Switzerland
Memories, re-memories are written into the materialities of the world.
Valcambi SA, Via Passeggiata 3, Balerna
Where all this Gold is coming from?
All seven mines send gold to Togo, where Lebanese merchants buy it up.
They send it to Switzerland by air freight. [German in the original]
Valcambi SA, Via Passeggiata 3, Balerna
Since 2012, 37.5 million tonnes to the value of 1.5 billion Swiss francs have come from Togo to Switzerland. [German in the original]
Where all this Gold is coming from?
China, Australia, Russia, United States, Peru
The Swiss banks CS and UBS continue to finance mining projects worldwide. [German in the original]
Where all this Gold is coming from?
They are no longer directly the owners of the refineries, but they are still creditors of projects, which come into being or not. [German in the original]
Yanacocha, (…) South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Ghana, (…) Cadia East,
Pamp SA, Via alle Zocche 1, Castel San Pietro;
Columbia, Philippines, Chile, Democratic Republic of the Kongo, Burkina Faso, Sudan
Connections between the Swiss connective imaginary of gold, gold…
Ontologies of Switzerland, gold,
Postcolonial amnesia, Switzerland’s postcolonial amnesia,
Swiss collective imaginary
Postcolonial amnesia
Dominican Republic, Mongolia, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, New Zealand, Iran, Mauretania, Finland, Nicaragua, Japan, Senegal, Sweden, (…)
4 – Buying Beauty (Swiss Gold-Refinery Pamp)
Everything seems refinable in the disguising landscape [text insert]
Like a revenant, I feed you
You, apparently without memory of all the Demons, Jinns and Guis
Occupying your archives and your pores [German in the original]
Everything seems cultivable in the unseen laboratories [text insert]
Everything seems excusable in the arranged privacy [text insert]
Interviewer: How did you manage again to get so many extraordinary lovely things?
Imelda Marcos: Well, my husband was a lawyer of gold mines and also a gold trader.
And he loves gold so much.
He would always tell me: Sweetheart, it is hard to earn money earnest and properly. But harder to spend money properly. And You would be the one to spend!
And then I said: why?
And then he said to me: All you buy is beauty.
5 – God`s Money (Swiss Gold-Refinery Valcambi)
Gold is money made by God.
Is money made by God.
Money made by
It is a combination of the sublime and the ridiculous
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
A lots of that is beauty, beauty
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
Beauty is: having the right level:
Complexity, but not too much
“Is it a problem, that I don’t understand most of what you are trying to explain me!”
“You don’t?” (Black Screen)
6 – Refining the Beauty (Swiss Gold-Refinery Argos Heraeus)
Refining the Beauty [text insert]
7 – Unmasking Knowledge
An ignorance militant, aggressive, not to be intimidated,
An ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go quietly
Not at all confined to the illiterate and uneducated
But propagated at the highest levels of the land,
Indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge
As know-ledge
It is the knowledge of the powerful, the mighty, of white male supremacy,
that has determined the course of this place, our place “Schweiz” and many others
Unmasking this knowledge as utterly ignorant does not suffice
To oppose the epistemology of ignorance with an epistemology of knowledge is not possible:
We need a different one.
The Creole Filigree [text insert]
Unmasking and masking knowledge as social processes of knowing, not knowing,
encountering, accepting, embracing, covering / uncovering, intervening.
Go and see, look for it, search for it!
Listen carefully to what you can sense, trace.
Smell it! Taste it! Touch it!
In the public space, in the aesthetic undergrounds, in the materialities,
in the dust, the smoke, the shines that surround us.
Not a blending of separate parts or a blurring of boundaries,
but in the thick web of its specificities
What is at issue is its unique material historialities and how they come to matter?
Elsewhere, within here
Superpositions
I imagine it would be like a huge bubble surrounding us all.
Some more than others maybe and the bubble has a shiny golden surface,
It all looks fine, well.
So well done.
We are all well, aren’t we? Here, in here?
And then I imagine that there is a needle,
a golden needle to use to bring the bubble to burst.
However, the bubble doesn’t burst.
The needle may touch our skin, our senses, but does it touch the bubble?
Or is the bubble of a different texture?
8 – Shining Josephine
As such, I want to begin by re-turning
not by returning as in reflecting on or going back to a past that was,
but re-turning as in turning it over and over again.
Iteratively intra-acting, re-diffracting, diffracting anew.
In the making of new temporalities.
Spacetimematterings
How to intervene into this shining amnesia of gold?
Do we need to counter, to oppose it?
To resist it?
Or to make it visible, in order to make other things invisible,
transparent or hidden?
There is no moving beyond, no leaving the ‘old’ behind
There is no absolute boundary between here-now and there-then.
There is nothing that is new; there is nothing that is not new
Matter itself is diffracted, dispersed,
threaded through with materializing and sedimented effects
of iterative reconfigurings of spacetimematterings.
9 – Healing Amnesia (acupuncture, meditation, inhalation)
Swiss Gold Refinery VALCAMBI -Balances Harmony and Perfection [text insert]
We want to be healed but there is no healing from the past.Rather, healing involves an entangling of what is now, of what has been, of what we think, of what we have thought, feel, of what we have felt, do, of what we have done, speak, of what we have spoken of/whom we have spoken to; an entangling of hidden stories of violence and oppression, of histories we do not want to confront because they are unbearable.
Swiss Gold Refinery PAMP – The Art of Precious Gold Transformation [text insert]
Swiss Gold Refinery ARGOR-HEREAUS- Valuable to us [text insert]
“Refining / Transformation – for a long-term industrial vision.” Argor Heraeus [text insert]
“Together with governments, international organizations, and bodies that govern the industry, we work to ensure a safer, more transparent, more responsible value chain.” Argor Heraeus [text insert]
“Seeking Maximum Purity” Argor Heraeus [text insert]
“Our commitment and responsibility extend beyond company limits.” Argor Heraeus [text insert]
You can find it when you face the sun, close your eyes
and watch the coloured lines dance.
Follow them, follow the heat
and you’ll get there like I did.
Once it’s melted down, gold can belong to anyone [German in the original]
10 – Dancing the Chelopech Pit
Bling bling bitch do my own thing bitch
Fuck a wedding ring that thing a ling was just a fling bitch
Go to the next level of molecular extraction [text insert]
Bling bling bitch do my own thing bitch
Fuck a wedding ring that thing a ling was just a fling bitch
Extraction Politics [text insert]
The Chelopech Mines are everywhere [text insert]
11 – Bioleaching Gold
Here is how the process works:
All tailings are delivered to a flotation plant.
During this process a concentrate is produced, containing sulphide minerals and metals.
The bacteria split the toxic molecules and consume the silver.
So that iron and arsenic become water soluble.
This liquor now moves to the thickener where solid liquid separation sends gold and silver in one direction and the liquor with iron, arsenic and any base metals in another direction.
Gold and silver are pumped to a conventional metals recovery plant.
From this process the company delivers our priced precious metals.
The bleaching process continuous until the tailings have been reclaimed and neutralized
And the project area has been returned to nature.
12 – Traumatizing Landscape (The Pit Tsar Asen)
13 – Ghost
A ghost never dies, it remains always to come and to come back