Mercator-Journalist in Residence in April 2025
Juan S. Guse is a writer and sociologist.
His novels Noise and Forests (2015) and Miami Punk (2019) were published by S. Fischer. His most recent work from the same publisher is A Thousand Times as Much Money as Now (2025), which straddles the line between literary reportage and sociological study. He has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the 2026 New York Fellowship from the German Literature Fund. In his sociological research, he focuses primarily on the organizational dimensions of evaluating human performance. He teaches at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.
Project
At ZEVEDI in September, he will pick up on some loose ends from his research on “A Thousand Times as Much Money as Now” that have not yet reached their analytical conclusion. The book is about men who have experienced a socio-economic leap in class through speculation on crypto-assets; however, it tells not only their individual stories but, above all, the techno-social promises associated with blockchains. During his stay in Darmstadt, he will once again sift through his ethnographic material—which forms the empirical basis of the book—and develop a typology of all the utopian narratives circulating among small-scale crypto investors. The goal is to find a more generalizing approach to the material, for which there was only limited space in the book due to its narrative form.
The Residency – Output
■ “Warum Kleinanleger selbst im Crash an Bitcoin und Co. glauben” – Eine Typologie der Rechtfertigungen, DIE ZEIT, March 25, 2026.
■ Reading and discussion: “Tausendmal so viel Geld wie jetzt– Reichtum, Tränen, Utopien: Vier Männer und ihre Kryptowährungen”, Centralstation Darmstadt, September 10, 2025.
Further information on the programme and application procedure can be found on the German language website.