Sveamaus sends countless sloping novel figures through a poorly ventilated hell. It may never be more funny than in “Image”. A book review, an interview.
You know it, it is an almost banal outgrowth of the present time: some bright meme accounts are flushed in your own news feed, sometimes you are thrilled, you will keep you, maybe you will somehow really fan. But before it really really Solid can become, these accounts with the strange names also disappear from their own field of vision, imploding or dreary on a distance. At the end of 2022, however, I was so in love With the content of Sveamaus that I tried to contact this ominous person (maybe there were several?). At the time, I was seriously surprised that this was really successful. Even the crazy internet name-Sveamaus-turned out to be a sustainable anchor into the real world: the artist who moves pictures with punch lines is in truth and in the phone book Svea Mausolf. Nanu!
The fascination of the memes of Sveamaus has not been explained at this point. You all have the Internet and already guarantees a very good idea of why @sveamaus is an exciting humor channel. For all late born and my parents, a few memes from her at this point. See for yourself.
Sveamaus commanded a postmodern ghost train and has now also written one of the most entertaining novels of the decade with “Image”. It should be about the latter here. Because you can’t just let it fall into your feed like a wet apple, you somehow have to get it in real.
When I held “image” in my hands, it actually felt a bit strange. At her tear -off calendar for the office, “yes boss am on”, she simply made the digital jokes paper. Stable and logical. But now … a real book? Can the Wahl-Kölner actually write? After all, more than one (half) sentence rarely fits on memes, not exactly much. The whole thing did not become a short story collection, but the novel-some contemporary social media stars have already caught this (list I send on request / via dead mailbox). But “image” does not shy away from this case, on the contrary …
I wanted to write a book review for a long time, now the time seems to me. Literature critic – my new life XXL!
Svea Mausolf
“Image”
(Gutkind Verlag)
The protagonist of the book is Peggy Brinkmann, a rather desperate stroller, who sacrifices her last lover and is so worried in money that she has a greasy pick-up artist, who labels himself as a feminist, as a sub-tenant on the neck or in the apartment. So far, so manageable. But Mausolf quickly fans the staff of her history. We slip into all possible main characters, as well as in side figures. “Image” becomes a facet eye and constantly brings us closer to new poor souls. All struggles, many are dehydrated, on the edge of the nervous breakdown, but always lovable. Sometimes at least. After you have been led around a little in the world of the novel, conflicts and complications appear and at the end of the end of so artfully and pointed that you can hardly believe in being here in the debut novel of an Internet phenomenon. But even those who find Sveamaus from the toxic meme glamor to this book will be rewarded more generously than with a Novoline gun strand. Because the figure inventory is noticeably feeding from the popular @Sveamaus-Instawelt: hygienically challenged hippies, egocentric parents, behavioral public transport inmates-as well as a lusty enclosed facility drawing (with nineties). Reading this book feels as if you had landed in a Sveamaus meme via virtual reality glasses. It muffles, human and hooks at all corners. You don’t even know where you should first look in horror and fascinated. Mausolf apparently felt similar to writing. Finally she was able to make her Hilarious short gags a much -headed epic. A lot has thawed, you immediately notice. Certainly one could have guessed that Mausolf has it. With the vehemence, as the book captivates, at least I didn’t expect now. This has the power of Strunk’s debuts “Meat is my vegetables”. Only “image” is a chronicler of the here and now – and is only bursting with current world holding. Spoiler: Finally, a central figure in history is killed. At the latest when the book also comes to an extremely satisfactory “Revenge porn” …
Sveamaus in an interview: “You can’t do that anyway”
From the meme to the novel – the approach differs significantly. It was difficult for you to switch between the formats?
Sveamaus: going from Memes to the book, I found that not so problematic – but who knows, maybe the way back will be more difficult … I was aware that it will work another. For me it differed in the return flow. If you look out on Instagram slides, you get a resonance directly. Of course, this channel is missing when working on a larger text. You are alone with your material and it starts to boil: “Is it really so cool here now?” You have to make that out with yourself or put aside. As usual, you don’t get your dopamine released immediately and that I had become a bit addicted afterwards, I cannot point out of the hand. However, it also gave me great pleasure to look beyond the short form and plot a joke over several pages, really stagger it, to provide a tension, to be delayed – to the whipping area.
Was there feedback from your publisher in the process?
Yes, it was also a risk of working with someone where you do not know whether all of this is in the long form. We had therefore agreed that I always send chapter successively. I have to say that as a artist that cost me a lot of overcoming. The finished product is often shown, but to be looked into the process was already a blatant to make yourself. I had to dare to do that at a point where I didn’t know exactly where the trip was going. Because I had no prepared manuscript in the drawer. Due to my experience in the visual art, I swore to myself not to work again free of charge. That is why I only started signing the contract to get involved in the novel.
Your book organizes a variety of characters, but seems very safe – you never have the feeling that you can no longer capture your story. Have you already had writing experience?
Not really. I was happy to write at school – and when the task was “writing”, I always felt rather beautiful than terrible. I also had journalistic ambitions later, but of course you get the same way when you study art and not come from a rich family home, said that that was breadless, you can’t do that anyway.
But then you decided on such an artistic studies.
Photography, yes. As a kind of compromise, because with that I could at least have become a crime scene photographer. At least that’s how I made it tasty to my police father. In any case, writing had something very distant, there was always this aftertaste: you can’t do it. That is why it has always been a sidequest.
With several scenes and figures, you get the feeling that this could now be one of your memes that breaks out of the one -dimensional format and grows into a story. What role do the memes play for the novel?
Memes have their own mechanics of storytelling. Things become clichés that make it possible to recognize yourself and others in characters. So it is also a kind of template. A type of person who keeps appearing in my memes is the novel figure Martin, for example. Priming as an asshole, I have already worked out a lot on such people. So a guy who scolds feminist, but is extremely misogyny and ultimately only uses this attribution as a hunting technique to get as many women as possible. So someone can always be found in my memes, but ultimately only remains superficial picture. But there are also stories behind it and they can now be told in the novel.
Your Instagram fame is still based on the memes-i.e. static pictures. How do you experience that the platform now wants to push everything too moving picture? That affects you?
I still keep my numbers on Instagram, which surprises me. After all, I also notice that many believe that the algorithm has long since been transformed to reels and the square picture is no longer worth anything. Fortunately, I cannot confirm that, my account still has a constant growth. I seem to have conquered the algorithm with my stubbornness. [lacht] For me it is more of a problem, which otherwise happens to the platform. At the latest when Mark Zuckerberg postulated his shitty video, in which he postulates his machisms for Meta, my vomit also came up. In the end, this is also a billionaire that I would like to put on the guillotine and I watched with horror how great the desire was to migrate from there. Then I thought that people are busy for two weeks now and in the end they stay anyway – of course I am ashamed of such thoughts. But my economic existence also hangs on my account. Most recently I read about the term “digital feudalism” – and I found it very much in it. I now have a virtual piece of land, leased by Zuckerberg – and of course I want to continue ordering it. So this year I only hoped that everything on Instagram is not even more unbearable – at least not until my book comes out. In what kind of dependencies you have got … and I am still too selfish to be selfish to just pull myself out, even if I consider myself a left and it is about redistribution, shitty situation. In any case, these are conflicts that I do in myself. But one should always be aware that Instagram will eventually end up in the cemetery of the internet platforms.
> More O-tones from Sveamaus, the humor guru of the present time? In the next print edition of the MusikExpress, the highly interesting Wahl-Kölner woman opens her record cabinet and presents a commented list of her ten favorite albums. Even more about herself and the work on the debut novel “Image” she tells us humans in the summer edition of the L-MAG.
What has happened so far? Here all pop column texts at a glance.
