tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91170887837332038302024-03-14T00:19:31.519-07:00Gratitude for TechnologyMimeolography and Navigable Narrative <br>
for the Manifestation of the Human Origin of Things <br>
in the work of Digital Media<br>
<br><br>
a book by Baruch Gottlieb<br>
the blog thereofBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-12364318818010101322012-05-24T14:58:00.000-07:002012-05-24T14:58:20.422-07:00Biographical Chronicle of Industrial ProductionI haven't put together a live performance work since Habeas Corpus in 2008, and the theme hasn't really changed, but the approach and scale have. On Sunday in Berlin, with up to 100 performers we will present the "Biographical Chronicle of Industrial Production", a labour model of the creation of the building we will be performing in front of.<br />
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No lights, no speakers, no microphones, only a small mass of humanity, a few instructions 5 or 6 analogue clocks and handfulls of ballpoint pens. Come and join in (arrive around 1pm) or come just to watch (arrive at 3pm).<br />
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Here's an introduction in German (with thanks to Ruth and Christine)<br />
“Biographische Entstehungschronik”
von Baruch Gottlieb<br />
für das “Oral Syndicate”<br />
produziert von Francesca Ciardi<br />
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Eine Performance-Veranstaltung für 100 Darsteller
Die Performance beschäftigt sich mit der uns umgebenden und von uns geschaffenen Wirklichkeit. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet ein beliebiges Industrieprodukt - in diesem Falle ein Gebäude - und 100 Menschen, die durch ihren Arbeitseinsatz an dessen Entstehung beteiligt waren.
Die Bühnenauftritte der einzelnen Darsteller bemessen sich proportional zu der geleisteten Arbeit ihrer darzustellenden Figur und variieren zwischen drei Sekunden und drei Minuten. Dabei wird der individuelle Arbeitseinsatz durch Gesten, Töne oder rein pantomimisch auf der Bühne dargestellt. Die übrigen Darsteller erzeugen hinter der Bühne eine kontinuierliche Geräuschkulisse indem sie einzelne Töne singen, sprechen, mit den Füssen scharren, aufstampfen oder auf der Stelle treten.<br />
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Die Performance soll eine Erkundung der (Entstehungs)Geschichte eines industriellen Erzeugnisses sein, welches wir normalerweise nur in seiner physischen und gewöhnlichen Form wahrnehmen. Sie soll die gesamte Komplexität eines Enstehungsprozesses vermitteln, d.h. das Unermessliche, das Ungelöste, das Verstrickte: Beziehungsgeflechte verschiedener Individuen, deren Anstrengungen und gemeinsames Streben.<br />
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Here is the English call as seen on FB:<br />
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Baruch Gottlieb and Francesca Romana Ciardi are looking for 100 people interested in becoming a part of a unique site-specific and monumental performance, manifesting the living history of industrial architecture. Set in the unusual and suggestive setting of exRotaprint, a former printer factory in Wedding, the Biographical Chronicle of Industrial Production retraces the stories of the people who produced the world we live in today. Using a model of the construction of the ExRotaprint factory, participants will re-present the workers originally involved in the construction of the building over 60 years ago by appearing 'on stage' for a time proportional to the the historical person they are representing. This time 'on stage' will generally be quite short, on the average 5 seconds at a time...The rest of the participants, when not on stage or getting ready to go on stage, will produce background sounds 'back stage' for the performance. The sounds will consist of physical sounds like shuffling feet and vocal sounds like whispering, murmuring and humming. The performance will take place on the outdoor grounds of ExRotaprint in Wedding, on May 27th 2012 at 3pm and will finish at approximately 330pm.<br />
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Participants are requested to arrive on location two hours before the showing, at 1pm, for a run through. No previous performance experience necessary but a genuine desire to be part of a unique project that daringly traces the collective histories and memories of people and their labour. If you want to be part of Biographical Chronicle of Industrial Production please follow <a href="http://www.mpa-b.org/4/post/2012/04/call-for-100-participants-with-or-without-performance-experience-biographical-chronicle-of-industrial-production-may-27th-exrotaprint-wedding.html">this link</a> and fill out the online form on that page:
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<br />Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com5ExRotaprint, Berlin, Germany52.519171 13.406091252.209997 12.7743772 52.828345 14.037805200000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-22642388161108544862011-09-18T00:30:00.000-07:002012-08-06T01:47:59.288-07:00In Istanbul and Karlsruhe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2w69LdyBKXPgGxL0USMHKhYiIbR17rc4g47yQm5lGbNbRMRJBlp3rBCkxI928df4LPDnfWjZHChdyRUTfeWfTnWknWqbxXAwndRZojrb33QNFSU2NueTr5pic5U7oLXvBZhFncgMs-U/s1600/IMAG1050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2w69LdyBKXPgGxL0USMHKhYiIbR17rc4g47yQm5lGbNbRMRJBlp3rBCkxI928df4LPDnfWjZHChdyRUTfeWfTnWknWqbxXAwndRZojrb33QNFSU2NueTr5pic5U7oLXvBZhFncgMs-U/s320/IMAG1050.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Two ancient capitals, one burning and teeming with life, the other sedate, wealthy and provincial are the sites for the installations of two projects through which I express my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981997279/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0981997279">Gratitude for Technology</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=&l=as2&o=1&a=0981997279&camp=217145&creative=399373" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Imine/121281044599378">iMine</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39997374052">le Laboratoire de Deberlinisation.</a><br />
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<a href="http://i-mine.org/">iMine</a>, the experimental art-app in <a href="http://i-mine.org/?lang=tr">a new Turkish version </a> is presented as a site-specific installation using tape, posters, video, and found objects, at<a href="http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/"> ISEA2011 Istanbul</a> in the back court yard and ground floor of the <a href="http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/other-event/nuru-ziya-isea2011-lounge">NURU_ZIYA lounge</a> in Tophane from September 14th until September 21st, 2011.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyHTZx1Zr_YX07K7fhugefJAqYjY0u9FfjcDz1HUu-LJhSXNqMZ1MlQdePcPwwYgE98ir52mQcvGj8x6ww3G6Za6NvJ7P1eVC4mG3YTcuPa-PGKZtpKcKRi6bYScGiIoALujhCNGEA30/s1600/IMAG1056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyHTZx1Zr_YX07K7fhugefJAqYjY0u9FfjcDz1HUu-LJhSXNqMZ1MlQdePcPwwYgE98ir52mQcvGj8x6ww3G6Za6NvJ7P1eVC4mG3YTcuPa-PGKZtpKcKRi6bYScGiIoALujhCNGEA30/s320/IMAG1056.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.deberlinisation.de/">Le Laboratoire de Deberlinisation</a> is presented and performed as part of the <a href="http://www.global-contemporary.de/">Global Art & the Musem (GAM)</a> show opened Friday at<a href="http://www.zkm.de/"> ZKM in Karlsruhe</a>. I made the videos, the 'speculative geography' maps of Africa, most of the other work is collaboration between myself and Mansour Ciss It will run until <span class="date">February 5th, 2012. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUKbRFhMu1_yk8FGpQeviUtJPOWGszhSuOvJ7rA2Y6KS6uYEfQM3rN2giuS0DuXJcHsOATEPBx7BJm8aFc6YW6HPfTOjDSTdj8H06dPp6jYD6FNkT2sffPDL_R68jI8jXGztPu0hCzNc/s1600/IMG_0031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKUKbRFhMu1_yk8FGpQeviUtJPOWGszhSuOvJ7rA2Y6KS6uYEfQM3rN2giuS0DuXJcHsOATEPBx7BJm8aFc6YW6HPfTOjDSTdj8H06dPp6jYD6FNkT2sffPDL_R68jI8jXGztPu0hCzNc/s320/IMG_0031.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-69381878302654364782011-08-12T17:33:00.000-07:002011-09-05T10:15:51.318-07:00On the Persistence of HardwareIn the <a href="http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/persistence-hardware">paper I will give next month at ISEA</a>, I am exploring the oft-espoused notion that technology is neutral. My book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gratitude-Technology-Baruch-Gottlieb/dp/0981997279">Gratitude for Technology</a> argues that every manufactured thing is a record of the life-times of the people who made it; that an archaeology of the surfaces of modernity is in order to articulate the real human relationships which produced them. Through this archaeology we must come to comprehensively acknowledge the legacy of these relationships, fair and unfair, respectful and exploitative, recorded in the surface. <br />
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Because the surface on which this text appears is technical material, and all technical material is a record of human relations, it cannot be neutral, because relationships are not neutral. I would not argue that these relationships are so many and infinitesimal that they 'even out' into a generalizable history. I want to be '<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844671216/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=1844671216">Infinitely Demanding</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=&l=as2&o=1&a=1844671216&camp=217145&creative=399373" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />' with Critchley, applying some of the highest <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_histoire">Nouvelle Histoire</a> ambitions of the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_School">Annales</a>' school, and attempt to attend to each one of these minute fragments of real relationships coherently, in a sort of poly-biography, or anthropology of technology. I hope this will support my central contention that since the technical material is a prerequisite for anything which appears on it, the values recorded therein frame, shape and colour every experience of it. Finally I will claim that such effects are fathomable. <br />
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Vilém Flusser does not explicitly discuss the materiality of the digital surface, but he analyzes what he calls the 'technical image' as a projection from the level of code. He exhorts us to learn about how this written code functions to generate images, or else become enamoured of the digital image and mere subject to its power. He warns us not to delude ourselves about how much agency we actually have when we are imagine ourselves as 'being creative' with technical images. <br />
<blockquote>"the first photographers had no idea what they were doing. They had no idea that it is the apparatus that takes the images. That the photographer is not necessary, that you can make automatic cameras, that it is so to speak technology, and science itself that makes images."<sup>1</sup></blockquote><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fZXgFhPWacU" width="400"></iframe><br />
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<sup>1</sup> from an interview, made in München, the 17th of October 1991. This written text is based on the edited tape entitled The Philosopher of Photography, broadcast by the Hungarian Television in May, 1992. (45 min, FRÍZ Production, directed by Miklós Peternák, András Sólyom, Producer: Judit Kopper)Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-20836452769962677782011-06-05T02:23:00.000-07:002011-09-01T15:26:47.363-07:00McLuminations!What follows is a short introduction to the <a href="http://mcluhan2011.eu/mcluminations-1-screening-and-discussion/">McLuminations series of video discussions</a> officially inaugurated last weekend at the<a href="http://mcluhan2011.eu/berlin/"> Retouching McLuhan Centennial Weekend event</a> at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. Future McLuminations are planned for October in Berlin and at the Frankfurt Book Fair. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br />
</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1gaM5Cx5R2KldFfQRhG8moJ-MqgQbgdJbNjQhgUZsvmTX4spCdm3_IXEMGVc6NjRl-i12xqbdXLtIKcQCwtfxgKS5QqMVxd0YtES15DxCrAUy3SikeUCDz_yChWqlTjW9DOGHrIK_O0/s1600/5771729184_36cf821abd_b.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge1gaM5Cx5R2KldFfQRhG8moJ-MqgQbgdJbNjQhgUZsvmTX4spCdm3_IXEMGVc6NjRl-i12xqbdXLtIKcQCwtfxgKS5QqMVxd0YtES15DxCrAUy3SikeUCDz_yChWqlTjW9DOGHrIK_O0/s400/5771729184_36cf821abd_b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5614838564428385394" border="0" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">photo Dmytri Kleiner</span><br />
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">"At another level we have seen in this century the changeover from the debunking of traditional myths and legends to their reverent study. As we begin to react </span><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">in depth </span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">to the social life and problems of our </span><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">global village</span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">, we become reactionaries. Involvement that goes with our instant technologies transforms the most "socially conscious" people into conservatives.<br />
When Sputnik had first gone into orbit a schoolteacher asked her second-graders to write some verse of the subject. One child wrote:</span></p><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">The stars are so big, The earth is so small, Stay as you are.</span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">" M. McLuhan Understanding Media, Reversal of an Overheated Medium, Signet, New York, 1964 p. 49</span><br />
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Marshall McLuhan famously conjectured that the era of instantaneous electronic communication was going to bring about an experience of the world he termed a <i>Global Village</i>. Many interpreted this optimistically, as though, through the sense of universal togetherness engendered by electronic media, people around the world would shed their chauvinist antipathies, and engage together as equals. This condition of egalitarian global exchange, is, to some extent, observable today , however it is unlikely that this is much due to the prevalence of electronic media, rather, it can be seen as only a contemporary manifestation or mutation of an internationalist tendency among educated elites which has prevailed since time immemorial, which has always appropriated the latest technology. On the other hand, McLuhan's <i>Global Village</i> has also a dark, cautionary connotation. Rather than being a place of joyous togetherness, the <i>Global Village</i> may be a nightmare of intrusiveness and irrational violence.<br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">McLuhan's work articulates a pivotal development in the consciousness of humanity, that of alphabetic literacy, which began with the Greeks, and exploded with the Gutenberg press. McLuhan often divides history, and peoples into the categories pre-literate and literate and extrapolates a period of post-literacy emerging with electronic communication. </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">McLuhan and Vilém Flusser coincide in their understanding that literacy generates in the literate causality, which bursts literate people out of a tribal, circular sense of time, into a linear historical sense of time. ”<span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">There is the stream of events, as it is perceived by historical consciousness. Everything flows, nothing ever repeats itself, every opportunity lost is lost forever, and</span></span><span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> everybody is within that stream of events. </span></span>”<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote1sym"><sup>1</sup></a></sup> Once linearity is accellerated sufficiently by industrial technology (functioning themselves based on causal rules) what McLuhan calls the era of the <i>tribal drum</i> is inaugurated again with satellites and television. Flusser refers to this as a recurring mythical period where we are dominated by the power of images (inaugurated with the photograph) .<br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">McLuhan's <i>Global Village </i>is a retrieval of tribal structures of society, where the increased satisfaction of an intimate horizon of meaning (all phenomena have meaning within tribal consciousness) occurs under the absolute tyranny of taboo and orthodoxy, where dissent is sanctioned through social exclusion (e.g. Excommunication, exile) which, thereby deprives a dissenter of any access to the only community in which he or she has any meaning. Excommunicated into the netherworld between communities, the <i>Global Village</i> Exile is practically what Georgio Agamben refers to as a <i>homo sacer</i><sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote2sym"><sup>2</sup></a></sup>, a person without any rights, who may be killed by anyone without fear of punishment.<br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">McLuhan died at the dawn of the internet age, so he did not experience the Massively Multi-Channel communication possible today. His vision of an all-inclusive pervasive sphere of electronic information enrobing the earth was largely that of a hegemonic effect. The public was imagined in the position of receptors and interpreters of the light-speed stimula. His praise for the experiential modes unearthed in the electronic communication was then always qualified with a cautionary barb. One example of how McLuhan bemoaned its alleged anti-intellectual , anti-literate effects is in his many critiques of how jokes had changed from more narrative jokes to the then current one-liners (which today have become even one-worders, e.g. 'meh') McLuhan exhorted the audience of his day to understand how the media worked and find a way to 'turn it off', or at least slow it down long enough that we may establish some agency within the onslaught.<sup><a class="sdfootnoteanc" name="sdfootnote1anc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote3sym"><sup>3</sup></a></sup><br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">But the internet, for all its whirring back and forth, is still what McLuhan would have considered a cool, low-resolution medium, therefore one which requires much physical effort (instinctively, internally, unconsciously on the part of the sensorium) in order to interpret stimuli into meaningful messages. The users of the internet are physically exhausted by this and thus have no energy for sustained reflection. </p><br />
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">McLuminations, the event series, emerges out of the experience of watching television, which McLuhan described as <i>in depth</i>. When McLuhan said that people experience television <i>deeply,</i> he did not mean that they methodically explored the subject matter at hand with regard to its context (the common contemporary notion of depth we have from the phrases 'deep understanding' or 'deep reading') the depth McLuhan referred to was an emotional one. The images of the war in Vietnam, he said, would not fit on TV because the audience experienced them too <i>deeply</i>. This emotional <i>depth</i> is an intuitive unreflected one, a holistic one which is not subject to rational reflection. However, slowing down the deep process of television reception, we may observe that the emotional engrossment, this <i>in depth </i>experience is actually propelled along by infinitesimal bursts of rational reaction, each never quite having the time to emerge into an actual thought because of the intense pace of the communication taking place. Therefore the frustrated rationality of the viewer becomes transmuted into physical, emotional energy which, accumulating, disrupts the concentration necessary to develop arguments, thus contributing to the anti-literate, tribal effects of electronic media.<br />
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The interest with McLuminations is to develop a discursive form which would provide us the consumers a little more time to allow each individual reception-reaction to have its space and time, to allow each reflection to unfold, so that we can come to better <i>terms</i> with our <i>in depth </i>experience of electronic media <i>Global Village</i>. By pausing the video at our leisure and need, and freely scratching the video McLuhan back and forth purely as our contemplations compel us to, we may open a space out of our time (as McLuhan proposed), where what today are slightly reactionary approaches toward rational (linear and causal) reflection on the electronic media object may be cultivated. In McLuhan's terms, McLuminations is warming up the cool media of video, in order that themes ordinarily incompatible with video may be addressed<em> in extenso.</em></p><br />
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<div id="sdfootnote1"><p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote1sym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote1anc">1</a> Flusser, Vilém, from <span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>On technical images, chance, consciousness and the individual, </b></span></span><span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Interview in München, the 17th of October 1991 (38’) </span></span><span style="font-family:Garamond, serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>A shorter version of this interview was broadcasted by the Hungarian Television in 1992. (FRÍZ Production, producer Judit Kopper)</i></span></span></p><br />
<div id="sdfootnote2"><p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote2sym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote2anc">2</a> see especially chapter 6 "the Ban and the Wolf" </p></div><p class="sdfootnote"><br />
</p></div><br />
<div id="sdfootnote3"><p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" name="sdfootnote3sym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote3anc">3</a> "I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what is happening because I don't choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Now, many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you are in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Everything I talk about is almost certainly to be something I am resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it and then you know where to turn off the button." Marshall McLuhan, from a TV interview with Robert Fulford, May 8th, 1966, available <a href="http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/media/topics/342/">here</a> </p></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-35636178911127041442011-05-16T03:55:00.000-07:002011-05-16T04:15:11.939-07:00Into the real...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtP8xVPj0i2TZVvy74QSw3I6rW-zlfxnHEHDvBWYbeMXeXKjFP8RTIYWiHstSY6TX7XgJevPIrzEuZVT74VDczKrBuGNlbOTBYqsozEdrlpQ-tgLNhmQKHsLZ3ccOniXAuMIlshsMeUI/s1600/IMAG0557.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtP8xVPj0i2TZVvy74QSw3I6rW-zlfxnHEHDvBWYbeMXeXKjFP8RTIYWiHstSY6TX7XgJevPIrzEuZVT74VDczKrBuGNlbOTBYqsozEdrlpQ-tgLNhmQKHsLZ3ccOniXAuMIlshsMeUI/s400/IMAG0557.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607269294875561394" /></a><br /><br />Just a short update with a couple of photos from my collaboration with Mikala Dal and Francesca Ciardi at the 'Work-show' last weekend at <a href="http://www.leapknecht.de/">LEAP</a>. It was built from a coincidence of premises, emerging from the three of us: the <a href="http://newmedgot.blogspot.com/2008/06/obsolescence-of-flesh-part-1.html">(obsolescing) notion of human scale</a>, <a href="http://manovich.net/2011/04/23/new-article-trending-the-promises-and-the-challenges-of-big-social-data/">information overload</a>, digital <a href="http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=133">speed </a>and the limits of the body, <a href="http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v1/framed/theall.htm">relationship between text and speech</a>, the subconscious connections of different text to each other. The resulting 3-channel work was surprisingly watchable, funny, and gripping. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYNEbq5Zl13zwcky7-ph_gy9ZfrM_f-hHpn20IFb-rCb_gSA3RcPT8tPzNI6HIYcsZ020XjIrejkb1G7HwPmbP4LCJNRd2_rtttV316-HKuZkau7p6yjqob54VlPB-z871NJCnjXzvs3Y/s1600/instview.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYNEbq5Zl13zwcky7-ph_gy9ZfrM_f-hHpn20IFb-rCb_gSA3RcPT8tPzNI6HIYcsZ020XjIrejkb1G7HwPmbP4LCJNRd2_rtttV316-HKuZkau7p6yjqob54VlPB-z871NJCnjXzvs3Y/s400/instview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607269179782705378" /></a>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-80718564427656904202011-05-01T17:12:00.000-07:002011-05-08T03:12:09.230-07:00avant garde for every one?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN1rE8ehlCIYFZix0S2B2ITbhG1AWvP2HGgnVgU7YNJSVoUlYw-sHfo9in9ynFbZQOsohabbDWOZEUvt-lHQ5a5LqA-9I_QgpK3YzaB-RnfpgWz37SV7jYTcpIjfMg9ZsOTyMelZGunOg/s1600/GT_cell.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN1rE8ehlCIYFZix0S2B2ITbhG1AWvP2HGgnVgU7YNJSVoUlYw-sHfo9in9ynFbZQOsohabbDWOZEUvt-lHQ5a5LqA-9I_QgpK3YzaB-RnfpgWz37SV7jYTcpIjfMg9ZsOTyMelZGunOg/s400/GT_cell.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604119056611823874" /></a><br />What? an update? Where have the last 6 months gone? Well, financial exigencies had to be assuaged in the form of a media facade project for a 24-floor office building in Seoul. It is a beautiful building with an unusual curved black glass curtain facade designed by Edgar Bosman and Peter Couwenbergh.</br> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgarbosman/5450357637/" title="2007-X003-2915-0015 by Edgar Bosman, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5098/5450357637_9f88a329db.jpg" alt="2007-X003-2915-0015"></a>.</br><small>photo by Edgar Bosman</small> <p><br />While I was in Seoul, I also got to show <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.126948044032678.19374.121281044599378">iMine</a>. It was pretty well received by the digital sophisticates out there on the peninsula, and even got some <a href="http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/arts/201012/wk20101230105930105130.htm">sympathetic press</a>. <p><br />At the transmediale, there was <a href="http://www.transmediale.de/de/node/17090">Global Village Idiots</a>, a prototype for <a href="http://www.transmediale.de/content/mcluminations-1-screening-and-discussion">McLuminations</a>, a three-part series I will do at the Canadian Embassy here this year as part of the <a href="http://mcluhan2011.eu/">McLuhan Centennial celebrations</a> going on everywhere. At <a href="http://www.pixelache.ac/helsinki/festival-2011/">PIXELACHE</a>, thanks to Susanne Jaschko, I had a chance to present a fleshed-out concept paper for my <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/08/congo-confluence-proposal.html">Congo Confluence project</a>. PIXELACHE was an inspiring experience, especially getting to know so many luminaries I had only read before, and unexpectedly having my sensibility opened through encounters with Bartaku and the people from <a href="http://http://fo.am">FOam</a>. Bio-diversity was a very prominent theme at this year's PIXELACHE, some projects, like <a href="http://marin.cc/">MARIN</a>, seemed to be preparing for the techno-necessities of a post-apocalyptic condition, whereas Bartaku's <a href="http://libarynth.org/luminous/phoef">photoElectric Digestopians</a> project with its edible explorations of micro-voltages was playful and provocative poetry.</br><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://libarynth.org/_media/luminous/110310-tped-pixelache_071.jpg?w=360"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 450px;" src="http://libarynth.org/_media/luminous/110310-tped-pixelache_071.jpg?w=360" border="0" alt="" /></br><small>photo by Bartaku</small></a><br /><p> <br />After PIXELACHE, I immediately went to Amsterdam to meet Bas van Abel of the <a href="http://fairphone.com/">Fairphone</a> project. Bas is a designer trying to do the practically impossible, researching the problematic sourcing of mineral raw materials for electronics and trying to find "fair trade" sources in order to produce a phone using materials which are extracted under 'fair' conditions, that the people responsible for exhuming the materials get an adequate wage for their work, or even that they get a communal share in the value of the minerals they extract. Those of you who have read this blog before will know about <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/holocaust-by-design.html">this problem at the heart of our electronics.</a> </br> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://fairphone.com/sites/default/files/congo_blog_03."><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px;" src="http://fairphone.com/sites/default/files/congo_blog_03." border="0" alt="" /></a><br />I asked Bas for some tips to get funding for my Smartphone Teardown<sup>6000000</sup> project (more about this imminently). In Holland, it seems, even the banks are concerned with conflict minerals, Bas got a lot of funding and support from Rabobank, I, on the other hand... still looking....<p><br />Next week is Operative Performances with the good people at <a href="http://www.leapknecht.de/">LEAP</a>. It is finally a chance to get back to performance-grounded work, human (and, of course other) scale, real (and, of course canned and hyper-) time, maybe even a little <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/serfikon/2233260547/in/set-72157603828103634/">mimeolography</a>. Hopefully I can be more prompt about putting up the next update.</br><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/serfikon/2233259981/" title="crash1 by serfikon, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2352/2233259981_a0945d7c9a.jpg" width="360" alt="crash1"></a> <p><br /><br />To tide you over in the meantime here is the brilliant art historian Boris Groys with a lecture on the role of the art avant-garde in soviet Russia, with speculations on what could be considered avant-garde today. I was a bit confused by seemingly contradictory contentions in this lecture. Groys declares that the Avant Garde is always unpopular (because it assumedly makes people uncomfortable, forcing them to confront themselves in unaccustomed manners) but, at the end of the lecture, Groys speculates that people posting (art?) on Facebook might be the current avant-garde. Who doesn't like facebook "art"? The most popular works at transmediale (cutting edge? avant-garde?) the last two years have engaged with facebook: FAT lab's <a href="http://fffff.at/facebook-resistance-workshop-at-transmediale/">face book resistance</a> and Cirio and Ludovico's <a href="http://www.face-to-facebook.net/">Face to Facebook</a>, I wouldn't say those works were very unpopular at all. On the contrary, they went viral, and were generally applauded. It may just be that our society has reached such a degree of militarization that the avant garde has become popular. Readers of this blog will know <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html">my position on this</a>.<br /></br><br /> <iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/hecBgdbXSwI.html" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#hecBgdbXSwI" style="display:none"></embed>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-41950737553364967882010-11-21T17:10:00.000-08:002010-11-21T17:42:58.568-08:00iMine!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLReSm9ESLAsFXR9UMMHwMap38l3sDbuHysJs3y_JVUEP4gGA61VT8j1TfGqrT8Jde920UF_1J02O63MVjQ6slX-tpZ4I-NYODpS7Rh3doY_a4gvPPUlczcV7BxeC58jFVkuC3qlZ_eiE/s1600/install.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLReSm9ESLAsFXR9UMMHwMap38l3sDbuHysJs3y_JVUEP4gGA61VT8j1TfGqrT8Jde920UF_1J02O63MVjQ6slX-tpZ4I-NYODpS7Rh3doY_a4gvPPUlczcV7BxeC58jFVkuC3qlZ_eiE/s400/install.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542183197278711426" /></a><br />I am just back from a wonderful few days in slightly, yet sweetly dilapidated Gijón where I installed the first public demonstration of <a href="http://i-mine.org/">iMine</a>, a new experimental art-app for Android and iPhone.<br /><br />What is iMine? It is digital art, in the particular sense that (as readers of <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/04/all-new-media-is-political.html">other articles on this site</a> will know) explores the materiality of the digital. This app, and the associated web resources is designed as a sort of portal to vast realms of real and possible research into the real material conditions of the origin of digital media, that is, in the material of the hardware which has its genesis in the minerals of the earth. This is accomplished through a game interface, which is itself a dramatization of these conditions.<div><br /></div><div>iMine ventures back to the humble and often primitive conditions where the minerals which will become this technology are originally exhumed. It is an assertion of the human facts at the mine head, the actual workers who actually laboured to bring forth the minerals which frazzle and fritz inside circuits and chips to maintain this text so seamlessly legible on the surface of your display right now. </div><div><br /></div><div> This art-app is dedicated<a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/holocaust-by-design.html"> all the human beings who have been sacrificed for digital technology</a>. </div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-74487674483771043372010-11-12T20:44:00.000-08:002010-11-12T20:54:50.450-08:00No Ethnic Cleansing without PoetryBack with a bang with a video of an appearance of a certain noted Slovenian thinker ruffling up the hastily cobbled together surface of our global citizen identities. I don't like his militarism, but he was actually in the military and I wasn't so maybe he knows something I don't (which makes me wonder what it would be like to be a soldier in his army), but I think we agree on at least one essential point, that the future of the left is not "liberal capitalism with a human face" but <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html">something radically different</a>. <br /><br /><br /><object width="320" height="162"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YIpiXJW3dYE?fs=1&hl=de_DE"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YIpiXJW3dYE?fs=1&hl=de_DE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="162"></embed></object>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-54661458199070610332010-07-01T14:04:00.000-07:002010-07-31T13:54:15.116-07:00The Nature of Calculations at the Speed of Heat<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> If the computer understands nature it will understand it only in a way understandable to other computers. Computers may someday become so sophisticated as to understand us, too, but they will only be able to communicate this understanding to other computers. </span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;"></span>This is a review of<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/etrerk/rheo.html"> 'Rheo' a media performance by Ryoichi Kurokawa</a> on three vertically hung HD projections with 5.1 sound around 9pm on June 29th 2010, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Since all of his images are copyright, I have not posted any here, please go to his <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/etrerk/5horizons.html">site</a> to get a good notion of what I am discussing below.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What I saw:</div><div><br /></div><div>The last 15 minutes or so, to be honest, but I think I got a good sense of what was at stake. </div><div><br /></div><div>The image quality is pristine, exquisite digital photography of natural phenomena, waves, stony crags, etc go through a computer process which eventually disintegrates them into clouds of swirling vectors. In HD every one of these vectors retains its sharpness, yet the sheer numbers of them and their erratic motion produce a noise-like blur. In all, the HD resolution is very well exploited. The visuals have a certain rhythmicity, and this is reinforced, or propagated by the soundtrack. The full range of the audible spectrum is mined with precision for strong sensory effects. There is a lot of high frequency noise and sine waves, loud bursts of noise crackling the speakers like fireworks, always in synchrony with a corresponding burst of activity or abrupt cut on the screen. Other sections are more pastoral, exquisite computer simulations of waterfalls (created of the same incredible sharp and fine vectors), accompanied by field recordings of birds and, well, fields, drawn out with <a href="http://www.asza.com/isho.shtml">Japanese Sho</a> contributing<a href="http://www.gagaku.net/index.ENG.html"> a noble art pedigree</a> to the event. Sometimes the photography would be used in rapid successions, flipping through a database labeled "Nature" at the speed of heat.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>What I thought. </div><div><br /></div><div>For all it's mastery, the result was flat. Sonically, graphically, however, there was nothing to reproach, the timing of the ebbs and flows the darks to lights and louds to softs was impeccable, the sounds chosen to synchronize with visual events were all finely sculpted. Yet, the work showed me <a href="http://newmedgot.blogspot.com/2008/06/obsolescence-of-flesh-part-1.html">something I wrote about 2 years ago</a> is still the case. It is difficult for artists who work only with digital media to transcend the flattening that makes digital media so marvelously malleable and transmutable. I have noticed this particularly among the digital artist of Japan and Korea. <a href="http://www.ryojiikeda.com/datamatics/datamatics/datamatics+[prototype-ver.2.0]/">Ryoji Ikeda</a> is another good example where there is an attempt to warm up the screen by submitting it to a barrage of content, reams of image information are reflected at the viewer at ecstatic rates, the fineness of the detail allows up almost to be able to see the detailing of time itself. This is art of the nerves, it is a flat art of electronic impulses of stimuli without (need of) emotional response.</div><div><br /></div><div>What I think I saw was the computer struggling to encapsulate the complexity of the Nature in a photograph of Nature, extracting hypothetical surfaces from something that has already once been flattened. (Nature is flattened by digital photography into an array of data, the image we see on the screen apears much more coherent that the streams of homogenous bits the computer is attempting to understand). The computer's calculator flutters over the image attempting to distinguish light masses from dark, contingent forms. The algorithms of its automated interpretation is designed in this case to be purposefully over-cautious and inefficient but it works at near light speed. These inefficient algorithms are principle artistic elements of the work, slowing down and exaggerating the computer's interpretation of the image so that we may experience it aesthetically. In this approximate understanding of the image, the computer creates medial images where the areas of more certainly begin to blur and merge. </div><div><br /></div><div>At this juncture where the original image is imperceptible behind clouds of approximating vectors, Kurokawa will usually reverse the process. This indistinct, overanalysed nether image is morphed to an advanced vectorization of another image, and from here, the ecstatic approximations work now (imperceptibly) in reverse until a new photographic Nature-vignette inexorably comes into startling clarity and detail.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is truly art of the state-of-the-art. As the computer struggles to make sense of the empirical data, Kurokawa struggles to make sense of the computer. The conclusion of the performance is, unfortunately, a cop out. Kurokawa attempts to understand the computer by setting before its calculating sensorium the figure of Nature. At the end of the show, the medial 'nether' image, instead of coalescing into a photograph of Nature, coalesces into one of a city. A city neither ominous nor luminous, a city pictured in the same exquisite HD sharpness as had been Nature. City as a natural encrustation produced by Homo Faber, itself a natural phenomena. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nature is calculated into the form of the city, but is the city the end of calculation? The city is the site where calculations converge exponentially. The expectation is, following <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law">Moore's Law</a>, that quantum computing is imminent, a form of simultaneous automated calculation capable of the complexity of human mental process, and beyond. The city will be calculated into the <i>excity</i> where matter is constantly reorganized on the atomic level in realtime, and<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity"> human beings will be transfused with automated processes on the atomic level</a> (<i>atomatons</i>?). The promise is that all disease will be curable, <a href="http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/16-04/ff_kurzweil">even death</a>. All that matters is to keep the computers going.</div><div><br /></div><div>The possibility that somehow an 'energy crisis' may cause the current feeding these automated processes to be interrupted, makes this a race against time with the computers indefatigably calculating the solution. Part of the solution is, of course, the improvement of computers which will be used to calculate the solution. Eventually the computers will know some solutions, and they may even know that they know some solutions and even know that they should communicate such results to us. It is likely that their solutions will only be able to be carried out by computer-designed automated processes. The only solution will be to trust the computers. </div><div><br /></div><div>The drama of the computer attempting to preserve our species is an indifferent one. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was made immediately palpable as I left the auditorium into a wonderful and unfamiliar sound. The public areas of Haus der Kulturen der Welt are contiguous, from the doors at the ticket booths through the immense foyer up to the auditorium, along the mezzanine, down along the cavernous coat check area all the way back to the cafe and the office areas, it is one uninterrupted space. For the <a href="http://www.art-action.org/site/en/prog/10/berlin/prog_opening.php">Rencontres Internationales digital arts festival</a> at which <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/etrerk/rheo.html">Ryoich</a>i Kurokawa performed for the opening, the organizers were prescient enough to install a massive screen in the foyer for those who wanted to take a break from the high culture to catch some of the World Cup. What I had heard on exiting the auditorium was the sound of about a hundred football watchers reacting to a near miss in the game between Spain and Portugal. The sound had traveled around 50 meters bouncing across all manner of surfaces to reach me, in the process it had become a brief passing cloud of excited human voice.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(thank you to SA for the quick read-over and suggestions)</span></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-83839707160841301262010-05-31T05:34:00.000-07:002010-05-31T07:38:25.481-07:00Processual Art Between First and Second Nature<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglFKiVDHet3cVgICpAOrx2TmT_Y7WfO6du8hO-LujXcUXEkIcH0FKyYbKtjG_uIOeTtJjg698OLYB7Qq_lBNNqlkDwmd91gQQWFO5GAA7BxgWIdAnQCElDnwwGfGxRNsY_Fgx4Q6xILhw/s1600/lifesupport.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglFKiVDHet3cVgICpAOrx2TmT_Y7WfO6du8hO-LujXcUXEkIcH0FKyYbKtjG_uIOeTtJjg698OLYB7Qq_lBNNqlkDwmd91gQQWFO5GAA7BxgWIdAnQCElDnwwGfGxRNsY_Fgx4Q6xILhw/s400/lifesupport.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5477433286147821634" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">image from NASA (hope they don't mind)</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: center;margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">This is a response I contributed to a mailing list </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2010-May/thread.html#start"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">discussion on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">processual</span> art</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> initiated by Susanne <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Jaschko</span> and Lucas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Evers</span> as an extension of their exhibition </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/701-concept"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Process as Paradigm</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">. Almost all the works I refer to here were presented in that show. The catalog for the show is freely <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">downloadable</span> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/714-catalogue"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">here</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">.</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As far as I have understood it, with </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art, we are in a position of referring to the contemporary condition of our civilisation having reached a point where one might almost be able to declare that it is dependent on automated processes. I think there is a central question here.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This amazingly sophisticated "</span><a href="http://els.jsc.nasa.gov/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">life-support system</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">" we have created with the technical arts, layer upon layer of physical and virtual infrastructure (so many, so elaborate and so diffuse that we can no longer speak of layers), which engages and traverses our individual lives in so many ways, has truly become a "Second Nature" with its own </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">meterologies</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and flows, as fascinating (at least in as far as it is made manifest) as the "First Nature" we used to wonder at, and fear.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The added plus with the "Second Nature" is that we have the sense that, since we built it, we can control it. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I think </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art addresses this situation in a few ways.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a) producing analogies (literally analog counterparts) to "Second Nature", as a kind of homage to the "Second Nature" and, simultaneously, a kind of adieu to (obsolescent notions of ) "First Nature". This position I call "Surrender". E.g.van </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Abbema's</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> bacterial work (see image below), and </span><a href="http://www.washington.edu/dxarts/profile_research.php?who=kudla&project=decorative_growth_pattern"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Kudla's</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> leaves</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><a href="http://www.realsnailmail.net/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Boredom Research's snails.</span></a></span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmZIY8ATXOZBP_70UJELOiI_6zJO7bdw8HYLBEQFkXgBpZ6VPvoHpctKf-L_vHMZ0FBo4bZ7Zzofr_bbskC9VlX5ipj3IbIXnYaIA5dXqiz2gcrHWE4YAsVJzWi1HLB4SpgYFWDw3_Ua8/s1600/vanabbema.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 274px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmZIY8ATXOZBP_70UJELOiI_6zJO7bdw8HYLBEQFkXgBpZ6VPvoHpctKf-L_vHMZ0FBo4bZ7Zzofr_bbskC9VlX5ipj3IbIXnYaIA5dXqiz2gcrHWE4YAsVJzWi1HLB4SpgYFWDw3_Ua8/s400/vanabbema.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5477421952899879026" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmZIY8ATXOZBP_70UJELOiI_6zJO7bdw8HYLBEQFkXgBpZ6VPvoHpctKf-L_vHMZ0FBo4bZ7Zzofr_bbskC9VlX5ipj3IbIXnYaIA5dXqiz2gcrHWE4YAsVJzWi1HLB4SpgYFWDw3_Ua8/s1600/vanabbema.JPG"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Symbiosis (2009) by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Jelte</span> van <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Abbema</span> </span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:x-small;">paper imprinted with bacteria which grow over time.</span></div> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">b) producing generative models which allow our still-flesh-and-bones-and-eyes-and-ears meat-world beings to appreciate and enjoy the complexity of the "Second Nature". This is the </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">aestheticising</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> position of mastery and control. E.g. </span><a href="http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/ConversationMap/index.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Sack</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><a href="http://rybn.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Rybn</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial-BoldMT, sans-serif;"><span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"><a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/evolvedxxw/xxw1.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Driessens</span></a></span><a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/evolvedxxw/xxw1.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> & </span></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/evolvedxxw/xxw1.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Verstappen</span></a></span></span></span><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:Arial-BoldMT, sans-serif;"><span><span style="font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><a href="http://gratin.org/stillliving/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Schmidt</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and many others in the show</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">c) a reactionary approach which emphasises the aspects of human experience which cannot (yet) be </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">technologized</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. This is somehow the position of identification with First Nature itself, integrating Humanity with all its talents and capacities as part of Nature (and more specifically terrestrial Nature)) I think of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.w----e.net/edia.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Willy Lemaitre's work</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> here for some reason, and maybe,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> my own</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">...?</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">d) others... (I hope these categories may be useful...)</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">again, if I understand it, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art exists where we consider the interstices between First and Second Nature, between the Life Support System and good (?) old-fashioned 'Life'. Further, I would like to ask here if the process we are monitoring in </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art is that of our dehumanisation. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If we pretend to take the scientific rigour with which the machines around us are constructed so that they run so reliably and efficiently, and attempt to apply that kind of rigour to our ethics, we must contend that until there is a certifiably</span><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/who-will-be-the-first-fair-trade-tech-company-moving-beyond-green/1361"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> "fair-trade" computer</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,697296,00.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">there will be no legitimate critical position in technological arts. </span></a></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So few people really want to go back to the old texts through which the foundations of our notion of humanity has been developed. Do we believe that our automated systems have, programmed into them, the humanism which enabled the science which created them? Are we in a position of letting automated processes determine what is better or worse for us as a species? Because we do not trust the individual position? (inherent in this is the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">stepping back from the claim of authorship</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">). </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This may be one of the central questions of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art. If machines can decide better than we can, and</span><a href="http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/database-soup/never-say-crowdsourcing-34331"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> it is only our responsibility to feed the machine enough data to process into enlightened instructions</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, we have invested in the mesh of automated processes, the 'life-support system, or Second Nature) all the agency we used to invest in worship. We will have become pagans in a polytheistic world of</span><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/190134/apple_ipad_will_beat_netbooks_with_magic.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> techno-magic</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and of mystical terror.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivdsmda15M7ucB0DbhepIolxw3rLxMOj-hkLBFyLRkqF3qnu6p-Oo-pGwWy2lxRLu6rmjRVosa5zM1EsKUZLJ1_UrokyhQifaQOz5mtZra1j9EHMxRlJF42xJCuIFIypUCql4KXeC-b0Y/s1600/jobs.jpg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivdsmda15M7ucB0DbhepIolxw3rLxMOj-hkLBFyLRkqF3qnu6p-Oo-pGwWy2lxRLu6rmjRVosa5zM1EsKUZLJ1_UrokyhQifaQOz5mtZra1j9EHMxRlJF42xJCuIFIypUCql4KXeC-b0Y/s400/jobs.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5477434307022266194" style="cursor: pointer; width: 366px; height: 400px; " /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">For our own good, and for the survival of the species, we increasingly see the convergence of, one one hand the improvement of automated processes and, on the other, the adaptation of human behaviour to be compatible with these. I am not sure if this is what</span><a href="http://web.uni-weimar.de/medien/wiki/GMU:Processual_art:_Life_sciences_and_the_social/political_agenda"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Ursula </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Damm</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> refers to when she describes </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">processual</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> art as </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">pre</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">-politically activist.</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> But certainly, from a </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Flusserian</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> point of view, this situation is decidedly apolitical. </span></span></span> </p></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-5105808932662361202010-05-08T19:44:00.000-07:002011-06-05T10:03:38.293-07:00on Artistic Freedom, Friendship and Peace<span style="font-size:78%;"><em>"You call yourself free? Your dominating thought I want to hear, and<br />not that you escaped from a yoke. Are you the kind of person who had the right to escape from a yoke?<br />There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude.<br /></em></span><span style="font-size:78%;"><em>Free from what? What does Zarathustra care! But brightly your eyes should signal to me: <span style="font-style:italic;"><strong>free for what?</strong></span> "</em></span><p><span style="font-size:78%;"><em>-F. Nietzsche "On the Way of the Creator" from Thus Spake Zarathustra </em></span><br /></p><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjxpZr05HpcQqGNThpYNy1kvFFmIxlEN5kA8RX6cKBNnsFICFUDhIaY1tHToFCd2bPhytm4IlV4NlOrHlebCoHz92tkMpBLqvXnzxt68z_JmiZYr4d6UJU5fu7KgQ3j8GjLa5yUmsZPM/s1600/alexanderpl.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjxpZr05HpcQqGNThpYNy1kvFFmIxlEN5kA8RX6cKBNnsFICFUDhIaY1tHToFCd2bPhytm4IlV4NlOrHlebCoHz92tkMpBLqvXnzxt68z_JmiZYr4d6UJU5fu7KgQ3j8GjLa5yUmsZPM/s400/alexanderpl.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469100753315702322" /></a><br /><div><b>On the Expression of Freedom</b></div><div>(an artist talk for the exhibition <a href="http://g4t.info/dienst.htm">DIENST</a>, May 8th, 2010)</div><div><br /><div><br /><div>If only I were free to express myself. Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.</div><div><br /></div><div>We know there are limits. This is not what you came for. There is a breakdown in the system, in the grammar of the event, of the society itself. But don't worry, despite this being a zone of artistic freedom , you are still protected by the police. And this is no Artaudian poesis, this is the freedom of gentlemen as Jose Ortega y Gasset said we "delight ourselves in our own magnanimity and gratify ourselves by playing fair". <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(from History as a System, W.W.Norton, NY, 1961, p.131)</span></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=free&searchmode=none">free </a>(adj.) </div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">O.E. freo "free, exempt from, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">not in bondage,</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">" also "noble, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">joyful</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">," from P.Gmc. *frijaz (cf. M.H.G. vri, Ger. frei, Du. vrij, Goth. freis "free"), from PIE </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">*prijos "dear, beloved"</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> (cf. Skt. priyah </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">"own, dear, beloved," priyate "loves;"</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> O.C.S. prijati "to help," prijatelji "</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">friend</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">;" Welsh rhydd "free"). The adverb is from O.E. freon, freogan "to free, love." </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">The primary sense seems to have been "beloved, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">friend</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">, to love;"</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> which in some languages (notably Gmc. and Celtic) developed also a sense of "free," perhaps from the terms </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">"beloved" or "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">friend</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">" </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">being applied to the free members of one's clan (as opposed to slaves, cf. L. liberi, meaning both "free" and "children"). Cf. Goth. frijon "to love;" O.E. freod "affection, friendship," friga "love," friðu "</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">peace</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">;" O.N. friðr, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Ger. Friede "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">peace</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">;" </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">O.E. freo "wife;" O.N. Frigg "wife of Odin," lit. "beloved" or "loving;" M.L.G. vrien "to take to wife, Du. vrijen, Ger. freien "to woo." </span></span></b></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>There are limits to freedom, no-one will deny this. One may wish to do many things but one is restrained from exercising this wish because of social or moral injunction. </div><div>If we look at the this etymology related to <i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">Freund</span>,</b></i> and <b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">Frieden</span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"> </span>we see there is a pact within which freedom operates... it is not freedom in a vacuum there can be no freedom without context and this context must not be free. </div><div><br /></div><div>Freedom as a pact means I voluntarily sacrifice my instincts in order that the pact may continue, so something in this notion of freedom is the understanding, that I by curtailing my freedom am allowing you to have more freedom, built into the notion of freedom is a social pact where individual freedoms are curtailed so that all may have more choice to curtail their freedom. </div><div>And this is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>Peace</b></span>, freedom, where everybody voluntarily, in love, curtails their own freedom. </div><div><br /></div><div>We have here a frontier where the culture and nature may be delineated. It is not a line, because it is not visible, it is an injunction, but it is not a written one, it may not even be a spoken one, the bond, the pact of freedom requires taboos.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-mafHPYSsUzKjMVjz9XYJ_RsuqCYgWJWPiTb3nNMDUrqOG8BPEhXOh8X1tremBeZ-mkauBWvUXD-lnvL-XqXNMTcqGV-BIZTdcsqegZ4mq1XcVeI2Cp-hT9hJhyIw9ARZDTBjM7_j1vg/s1600/historia.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-mafHPYSsUzKjMVjz9XYJ_RsuqCYgWJWPiTb3nNMDUrqOG8BPEhXOh8X1tremBeZ-mkauBWvUXD-lnvL-XqXNMTcqGV-BIZTdcsqegZ4mq1XcVeI2Cp-hT9hJhyIw9ARZDTBjM7_j1vg/s400/historia.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469101351752996770" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>We can see that freedom of expression is not freedom anymore but freedom of a very small constituent of human activity, expression, which means what exactly? ex-press , aus-drucken means to press out what is inside. This can be a word or a burp or a fart or even a shit, the implication is that it is a word, however we can see even here that the notion is problematic. Freedom of expression is an oxymoron because freedom is always contingent and voluntary and some expressions are involuntary.</div><div><br /></div><div>But we mean here meaning-ful expressions...what is meaning? </div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">O.E. mænan "to mean, tell, say, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">complain</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">," from W.Gmc. *mainijanan (cf. O.Fris. mena, Du. menen, Ger. meinen to think, suppose, be of the opinion"), from PIE *meino- "opinion, intent" (cf. O.C.S. meniti "to think, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">have an opinion,</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">" O.Ir. mian "</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">wish, desire</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">,"...</span></blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>Meaning requires a counterpart in order to validate the meaning. Meanings must have a social resonance, and that is the contemporary meaning of meaning. Something which has no social effects is meaningless. And meaning is less freedom of expression and more expression of freedom. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anstatt Meinungsfreiheit oder Äusserungsfreiheit:<b> Äusserung der Freiheit</b></i></div><div>Instead of Freedom of opinion or freedom of expression : <b>Expression of Freedom</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Again, freedom exists within a bond, therefore freedom articulates the bond. And such is the freedom of the artist that it is the freedom to do something which may injure the social bond in the interest of preserving the bond. What is unacceptable is art which aims to destroy the bond.</div><div><br /></div><div>With my expression of freedom, by definition, I express my love for the society, my <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">friend</span></b>ship, which is also my desire for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>peace</b></span>. I think this notion of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>peace </b></span>as love or <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><b>friend</b></span>ship, all residing within the word 'free', is particularly fortuitous, since we know, neither love or <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">friend</span></b>ship are easy or static, we have a paradigm for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>peace </b></span>which is not a culmination but a process. </div><div><br /></div><div>But art has no monopoly on such expressions of freedom, indeed, in the expanded abstract society of the electronic age, almost every human interaction is an expression of freedom. Only we are no longer sure what it is we are loving with our freedom. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is only not an expression of freedom when it distinctly aims to annihilate the social bond. But you know the old expression 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger' it is hard to determine what expression is not freedom, and that is why it is written in the<a href="http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/rechtsgrundlagen/grundgesetz/gg_01.html"> Grundrechte of the Grundgesetz</a> that<i> "(3) Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei.</i> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Art, and Science, Research and Education are free)</span></div><div>However</div><div><i>Die Freiheit der Lehre entbindet nicht von der Treue zur Verfassung" </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(The freedom of Education does not exempt one from constitutional obligations)</span><i>.</i></div><div>Can we have such dangerous freedom and still have social cohesion? Yes, because we know, if the disruptive effects of freedom grow too strong, a greater power will intervene. And this power is not free. This is the power of the text of the law incarnate. The police. </div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTpdoFiUbCs8wnHXK24jEFrMXnaz-w9h0RivYNajQR_Arf_FRoKCeEiiwoURGxp4QoL2HZmYAW7bgfrh5ozAghJV3CrWnYFNQzzQHMwtMEvAz6Ejs6n9Tn0i-nrCucTQQJD-pgkFwQFC4/s1600/richtaxt.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTpdoFiUbCs8wnHXK24jEFrMXnaz-w9h0RivYNajQR_Arf_FRoKCeEiiwoURGxp4QoL2HZmYAW7bgfrh5ozAghJV3CrWnYFNQzzQHMwtMEvAz6Ejs6n9Tn0i-nrCucTQQJD-pgkFwQFC4/s400/richtaxt.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469100303154370466" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Judges swords and axe used in the court of Medieval Berlin</div></span></div><div><br /></div><div>So the society is protected from the freedom of the artist by the police. And it works inversely, the police also protects the artist from the freedom of the society. The police, the physical manifestation of the technology of language in law is the least free human, while they are in uniform, they may even be less free than a prisoner in jail. They are not free because they are the physical manifestation of the law. In uniform everything they do is law itself, and not their personal will. </div><div><br /></div><div>The freedom of the citizen cannot be conceived with reference to the, perceived lack of freedom of the prisoner, or, as it is often conjured, the that of the citizen of a foreign despotic nation. Such freedom, which defines itself in opposition to a concept of bondage, is not true freedom since it derives too much of its meaning from the bondage it rejects. </div><div><br /></div><div>We all know the feeling, in German they call it <i>Entlastung</i>, but it is also 'License' as in poetic license, a freedom to disobey laws. This kind of happiness which comes when one contravenes the conditions of a bond without any adverse consequences. Yet this form of freedom requires that the laws continue to function outside of the happiness, this happy freedom comes in the voluntary temporary self-determined exemption from social sanction.</div><div><br /></div><div>In our society, we allow for a certain amount of this "temporary self-determined exemption from social sanction". We know that the culture needs antithesis in order to renovate itself. This form of anti-thesis is not an alternative, it is not a fundamental challenge to society, it is part of the renewal of the society. This is why the artists coexist happily with the hegemony that protects the space where they can create freely. </div><div><br /></div><div>The much-vaunted freedom of artists in Western culture is predicated on the hard un-free regimented systemic shell of the military which protects the space and the police lines of sight which traverse it. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>refrain</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Wars are the "temporary self-determined exception" of the state which afford the freedom of the artist. "No sacrifice is too great for our democracy, least of all the temporary sacrifice of democracy itself" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(Rossiter, Clinton Lawrence,Constitutional dictatorship: crisis government in the modern democracies, Princeton University Press 1948, p. 314).</span> We must admit that<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, as advanced as it may claim to be</span>, </i><a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html">the avant garde of art is the front lines of a cultural crusade. </a></div><div><br /></div><div>We advance towards <b>the other</b> parading our cultural values. Avant garde, seeming to disrupt the culture is simply regenerating and reinvigorating it from within. The paradigm of respectful encounter between one culture and another is still today accomplished through offensive confrontation. Transfigured by our inability to accept the<a href="http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/themes/other.html"> otherness of the other</a>, we have armed ourselves beyond recognition. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, the bitter joke is that as we, in full avant garde regalia, with weapons blazing, see our culture engaged with <b>the other </b>in a confrontation of mighty armies, just as it was 1000 years ago, we are standing before the reflective membrane which is the frontier of our freedom and only threatening and frightening ourselves. </div><div><br /></div><div> The avant-garde provides no true alternative to this militarization of art. if we are truly confident in our desire for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><b>peace</b></span>, there is only the possibility to, little by little, <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html">baisser la garde!.</a></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-71093558423500020182010-05-06T14:05:00.000-07:002010-05-10T08:24:14.986-07:00Holocaust by Design<div><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262631873?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0262631873">Hamlet on the Holotaph</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0262631873" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br /></div><div><br /></div>Central to my inquiry into the materiality of the digital image is the discovery of the human fact of this materiality, one aspect of which is the ongoing global tragedy of the so-called 'Conflict Minerals' Trade.<br /><br />Last year, <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_minerals_trade_act"> a bill was introduced to the US Congress</a> which has the intention of mitigating, and hopefully ending this tragedy. Though the provisions in the bill for auditing companies doing the secondary processing of conflict minerals, transforming them into the alloys and other refined materials used in the electronics industry could easily be abused, <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4128/text"> the bill itself, especially Section 2</a>, is valuable in that it officially acknowledges the scope of the problem in some painful detail.<div><br /></div><div>One of the consultants on the bill was Danish documentary filmmaker Frank Poulsen who managed to personally visit and even film in one of the mines and come back to tell about it. </div><div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><object width="400" height="240"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3HFwi8uL5Zg&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3HFwi8uL5Zg&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="240"></embed></object></div></div><br /><br />His film project <a href="http://bloodinthemobile.org/">still needs funding and support</a>. The problem, however, is deeper and more intractable than one film will be able to solve. <div><br /></div><div>There is something endemic to our globalist economic system built on ever increasing debt which necessitates permanent economic growth. We are blackmailing ourselves into the future. And the the over-hurried, harried material result of this is not only bad design, which is obsolete with in a couple of years, but a design philosophy which does not take into account where the materials that must be mined to create the design on a globalized scale will come from, and what potential disruptions this new sourcing paradigm may cause on the local level. </div><div><br /></div><div>What we see in North Kivu province of the Congo was partially caused by an<a href="http://www.rohs.eu/english/index.html"> 2004 EU declaration </a>that solder used in electronics should no longer contain lead. Though this was ostensibly a good idea, the legislators far away in Brussels did not consider that the sudden jump in value of the suggested replacement material, cassiterite, was mostly to be found in a desperately poor and unstable part of the world, and that the gold rush there might have terrible consequences. According to US Congress figures over <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4128/text?version=ih&nid=t0:ih:19">6,000,000 people have died as result of the conflict minerals trade.</a> When we look at the materiality of the digital image, we have a <i><b>holocaust </b></i>at our fingertips. </div><div><br /></div><div>Or, rather, to be precise, because, here, out of respect for the murdered, we should be as precise as possible, the term holocaust is not accurate. 'holo' means 'all', 'caust' means 'burnt' which also means that the word holocaust is not entirely accurate to describe the nazi institutional genocide. And the murdered of the Congo were not burned, but were, at least, one would expect, buried, so perhaps a construction such as holotaph be fitting. We have a <b><i>holotaph </i></b>at our fingertips. </div><div><br /></div><div>When it comes to mass-production on the global scale, good, conscientious design is a moral imperative. Bruce Sterling put a damper on the techno-giddy audience at his talk at a Vodaphone MoMo Mobile Monday event in November 2008. In his trademark sneer he cut to the core of the matter, design matters, but waste is good for business. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><object style="background-image:url(http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/n24RZBdtdHI/hqdefault.jpg)" width="400" height="246"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/n24RZBdtdHI&hl=en_US&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/n24RZBdtdHI&hl=en_US&fs=1" width="400" height="246" allowscriptaccess="never" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><br />I have treated the issue of conflict minerals periodically <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/07/murderous-mineral-trade.html">previously on this blog</a>. <div><br /></div><div>On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the opening of the <a href="http://www.holocaust-mahnmal.de/en">Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe</a>, on the site of the former Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin, let us also remember the millions whose lives and bodies have been sacrificed for the imagineered idealisms of today's globalist social networks.</div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-88187709315800272122010-05-01T19:14:00.000-07:002013-07-18T17:09:11.858-07:00Baisser la Garde!!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjcfKluNWc41EguhzwvqDPeky-PZx25IW5LAHe89rtf02Bj5u8BFwxmq1sj0ys6kCkl7iDKrVypWhwqHdGYWuMf9oVhynGje_vGOiaGpj8JgJFDMJdQPEzaaWzeyo6Zn3XCwSPDjmT-Oo/s1600/COA.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466507480071793602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjcfKluNWc41EguhzwvqDPeky-PZx25IW5LAHe89rtf02Bj5u8BFwxmq1sj0ys6kCkl7iDKrVypWhwqHdGYWuMf9oVhynGje_vGOiaGpj8JgJFDMJdQPEzaaWzeyo6Zn3XCwSPDjmT-Oo/s400/COA.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 293px;" /></a><br />
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<b>Baisser</b><b> la </b><b>Garde</b><b>! </b></div>
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towards a true demilitarization of art</div>
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(an artist talk for the exhibition <a href="http://g4t.info/dienst.htm">DIENST</a>, May 1st, 2010)</div>
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an art without violence</div>
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an art without oppression</div>
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an art without tyranny</div>
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an aesthetics of tedium?</div>
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Violence, oppression, tyranny, not in our daily lives please except in our art. We enjoy, desire being oppressed by art, controlled by art, manipulated by artists. Art is an excuse to take a vacation from civic responsibilities and to submit ourselves to a higher power. </div>
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And any excuse will do, we know, we do not enjoy true freedom. We enjoy freedom only within strict systems of rules. And even more so, we only enjoy freedom when we can be free not to be free if we choose to, to delegate responsibility, to allow others to make most of the decisions for us.<br />
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99% of the time we do not want democracy, we want democracy only the 1% of the time <b>when </b>we want it, otherwise we would prefer not to be bothered with the functioning of the state, <span style="font-weight: bold;">informed </span>perhaps, yes, but <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">compelled </span>to act democratically. </div>
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But we must be free to exercise our democratic powers during that 1% of the time we may so desire, whenever we so desire. A society that allows us to decide when we would like to exercise our freedom is what we call democratic. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwOdJNrZjOZdLbRYS1QqEVzRTNwxd4dB0lIgfojaLRkHMf1hWH-ZgUWKG5s6kmac468021JQ-Oquixzk9R_a4vTi6jCKJ79xd5h2Fkseo6tph8ndGf0kBmljhAcT0KfgWLjU3bezcWkM/s1600/DSC03447.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466491993614502962" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwOdJNrZjOZdLbRYS1QqEVzRTNwxd4dB0lIgfojaLRkHMf1hWH-ZgUWKG5s6kmac468021JQ-Oquixzk9R_a4vTi6jCKJ79xd5h2Fkseo6tph8ndGf0kBmljhAcT0KfgWLjU3bezcWkM/s400/DSC03447.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
photo © 2009 Dorothee Robrecht</div>
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Yet we believe that art can be free and that art makes us free. Though all freedom is contingent on structures which are not free In this installation we have the soldiers which guard the place of free expression of art, even of the anti-social statement, which can only pretend to be antisocial in the meta-social context of a hegemonically protected space which allows for the exercise of anti-sociabilitiy as a generator of culture.</div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0748639888?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0748639888"><span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span>, the term, is from the frontlines of the battle.</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0748639888" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /><br />
Garde, to guard, to protect, and to forge ahead. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> is by definition the colonizing juggernaut of our Humanist agenda: invading all corners of the world, disrupting and de-legitimizing traditional or alien structures, infiltrating everything with our notion of right and wrong, our values. </div>
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<a href="http://www.cer.org.uk/articles/issue14_delors.html"> The avant-garde defines the freedom of the future hegemony of our culture's dominion,</a> it is not fundamentally challenging our culture's values, it is innovating and renovating them. The avant-garde in Western art is the colonial agenda of what today we call Globalism. </div>
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The media art work displayed here is not avant-garde. This is more of a challenge than may seem since 99% of media art exists to sell more computers, screens, cables, memory, electricity, etc. the whole automated way of life of the extended mind we have come to expect in the developed world, the so called 'state of the art'. It is not that this work of digital media purports to be against new media, that would be folly, however it is a work which is specifically designed as a productive deceleration of the techno-globalist juggernaut. </div>
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<i>Baisser</i><i> la </i><i>garde</i><i>,</i> lower the garde carefully, extremely slowly allowing us to experience all the tiny eruptions and chain reactions of of future undefined pleasures and potential interpersonal connection, which could be afforded by carving out for ourselves a tiny decelerated space, wherein the pleasure of the present, incoherent, may be be accessed. </div>
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Ranciere describes modernism in Politics of Aesthetics<i> "trying to make clear-cut distinctions in the complex configuration of the </i><i>aesthetic </i><i>regime of the arts."(p.25) </i>The digital age brings about not-post-post-modernism, but hyper-modernism, an intensification of modernism's categorizing agenda. The apparent cross-disciplinarity of digital media only reveals the primacy of the state of the art over ancient artistic practice. The split-second calculation and correlation of minutely categorized facets of any phenomena, results in the illustion of cross-disciplinarity, it is, in fact, hyperdisciplinarity. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3bTi4pogEoXeBvg45xeCYkVKgSXGeVMHy8AcufUM4kq-Odn-t4-NgcKUW-FN_stx1twpTpJC9_BK8Wd9r9iBaqaxERzuVcN3PHjVmRKqgKpLuhsBtJyNBoItYbElTMkLSAQCHA2zt3GU/s1600/triple.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466494853035875330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3bTi4pogEoXeBvg45xeCYkVKgSXGeVMHy8AcufUM4kq-Odn-t4-NgcKUW-FN_stx1twpTpJC9_BK8Wd9r9iBaqaxERzuVcN3PHjVmRKqgKpLuhsBtJyNBoItYbElTMkLSAQCHA2zt3GU/s400/triple.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 275px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">The state of the art is the military avant garde applied equally to foreign adversaries and civil society alike. </span>Baisser</i><i> la </i><i>Garde</i>, by introducing the figure of the soldier, human manifestation of the hegemonic structure of the state, asserting it's centrality to the creation of art, aims to bring in to relationship the schizophrenia of the contemporary state which wages unjust wars to promote humanist values. It is an acknowledgement of the mutual dependence, organic symbiosis of military and police hegemony in the service of protecting a space for the Humanist principles of the emancipation and flourishing of the individual to be performed. It is the manifestation of the given, assumed, and almost unspeakable unfree military precondition and ingredient of any cultural activity produced within its protective shell. </div>
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<i>Baisser la Garde</i> is also not about conventions of arts, it is not conservative, it is not guarding conservative traditions and values, it is incrementally, not too fast, almost imperceptibly, lowering the guard, it is exposing the weakness of the discourse, it is clogging the computer processor core with too much relevant information. </div>
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Geert Lovink asked "How to Undermine the Instant Globalization of Fear? Close our Eyes and Ears? Overcome Realtime Media? Dismantle the Collective Armors?" I answered "DDoS", but instead of the insistant repetitive message of conventional DDoS, I advocate to overload CPUs of society with relevant information. </div>
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The problem with information today is that it is increasingly digital, brute force, simplistic, goal-oriented, i.e. hypermodernist). What is relevant for the computation of society must be more broadly defined (if it must be defined at all). My artistic position is to strive for a luxurious information economy of inefficiencies, of frictions, collisions and encounters. </div>
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In this installation, the extraneous essential is factored in as a necessary precursor to the art work created in Germany today. We need protection here we need the hard shell, just as we need the hard strict rules of structural mechanics to hold up the walls around this space of freedom. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOkhRhyYRd6kspbeo1PsbWKRXqWuRm65AA7t1F2X40K1scUEsXfUX3aT7jo8rMpAS_tTZlqgJvo1_qJxyLee00G8f_N4PfD9FW7nzc2gyzrGBPsUXlgis7SpSTggRNLtPz-fvA-8HO7M/s1600/torres_2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5466506920024315538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOkhRhyYRd6kspbeo1PsbWKRXqWuRm65AA7t1F2X40K1scUEsXfUX3aT7jo8rMpAS_tTZlqgJvo1_qJxyLee00G8f_N4PfD9FW7nzc2gyzrGBPsUXlgis7SpSTggRNLtPz-fvA-8HO7M/s400/torres_2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
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The exquisiteness of art depends on strict rules and on the freedom constrained by these. But 99% of the time, one is not straining, one is resting, preparing. This work suggests to redistribute our interest and appreciation for culture a little more evenly over the story of production. That the overblown colonial renommé given to that culture which purports to wish to destroy the constraints on the citizen, be appreciated on the level of that which emerges from within it. It is an aesthetics which accommodates tedium and surrender as being as necessary as the rarefying execution of hegemonic dominion.</div>
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The landscape painting on a canvas frame was once <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span>, then through modernism's rarefactions and abstractions we have an <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> art of market systems. In world which promises a culture of creativity, every possible marginal identity: queer and transsexuals, Islam, Favella chic is quickly made <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span>. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> is all about claiming new territory to be settled - in this way, <a href="http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/node/8192">Israel is very <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span>, training its army with the most advanced French (liberation) philosophy.</a></div>
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The <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> creates a world on alert. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> says "we forge ahead until the whole world is ours" only at the point of the complete domination of the world will this notion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> become inactive, since the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> is an externally directed cultural policy. Thus the altruism on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> agenda: they fight in order to become unnecessary. And this altruism is so central the need to become unnecessary is so urgent that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde </span>cannot but be perfunctory. </div>
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It is a double bind which, at the same time casts aspersions on the stated benevolence of the campaign. If the object is to colonize the world with our superior moral system, shouldn't this be accomplished with the maximum of certainty and care, if need be, at the expense of speed?<br />
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The reason that deceleraration of technological progress is a taboo subject is primarily an economic one. <a href="http://vimeo.com/6648857">We must have economic growth at all costs</a> because our economies are leveraged on debts which always threaten us to crush us under insurmountable accumulated interest.<br />
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Perfunctory avant gardes create shocks, disruptions in the society which are enormously profitable. Naomi Klein's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427999?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0312427999">The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism</a><img alt="" border="0" class=" qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0312427999" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> reveals the fundemantally economic motivations for the<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>overzealous <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">"<span style="font-weight: bold;">disrumpere et impero!</span>"</span>.<br />
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We smirk and wink and needle the troops of hipster minions, cheeks flushed with youthful exuberance at their noble calling as they head out from the art schools into the airports and tv studios. The<span style="font-style: italic;"> Avant Garde</span> clears the way for a conventional life, so why must the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde </span> claim to be so antithetical to convention? Conventional society and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> are two parts of the same organism, symbiotic and sympathetic. </div>
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Though I share some of the agenda of the avant garde, (and with <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/">quantum computing</a>, perhaps the inefficient computation I advocate above will produce the most mesmerizing and stultifying media ever) I wish to engage <i>the denial of hegemonic necessity</i> at its core, that which pretends to have no relation with the state or culture which it serves. </div>
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Our age is still one where cultures respect each other only when they confront each other with all weapons raised. This<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony"> </a><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony">denial of hegemonic necessity</a></i> allows every state to wage war in the name of its art. We need an integral model of an advanced society where the military/police regimented and instrumental hegemony and the freedom of the artist are elaborated in symbiosis.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj0Hu30SnU2YqNQie6j6vqGVLGllqzETZ-9dbhncTgqB-DFCamhlbl6vxVGnQvKpztmCzGJaTCkj3-O2YsoK50gFADDtYQ-zzek-OgZLXOG9cNPBGOeclb9hhTseHfBUPATOP7J4-HdMA/s400/fucklaw.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj0Hu30SnU2YqNQie6j6vqGVLGllqzETZ-9dbhncTgqB-DFCamhlbl6vxVGnQvKpztmCzGJaTCkj3-O2YsoK50gFADDtYQ-zzek-OgZLXOG9cNPBGOeclb9hhTseHfBUPATOP7J4-HdMA/s400/fucklaw.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 300px; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
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As the sirens ring across the city today, the punks shout 'fuck the police', though the police are just as <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> as they. The police are the <span style="font-style: italic;">Avant Garde</span> of the life they live when they eat as opposed to that which they live when they think. <span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">il faudra</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"> Baisser la Garde!!</span> If we are looking for a world of understanding and collaboration, it is enough Garde!! <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Baissons </span><span style="font-style: italic;">peu à peu, très minutieusement</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"> la garde!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6666cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>The exhibition is still on at </b></span></span><a href="http://wohnlabor.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6666cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>WOHNLABOR</b></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6666cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b> until May 15th, there will be two more artist talks there, next Saturday, the 8th and the following Saturday, the 15th each starting at 6pm.</b></span></span></div>
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Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-686689984379212432010-04-30T18:55:00.000-07:002011-06-05T10:03:38.304-07:00All New Media is PoliticalAn introduction to my installation "<a href="http://www.g4t.info/dienst.htm">DIENST</a>" at <a href="http://wohnlabor.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/winteredition1/">Wohnlabor </a>Berlin March 20th- May 15th<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXju3Vq1R5mxXUWGrkgW84GMwOoEkTxihgPb2SD1rkORdLmXATXtdbcoogU9faqIjfC21VcHRnGUQGdRLfMSJGeUzgooIQcUNV81M8zZOzhlcbMHNXiWk093f35YaygzRxx4qYI5kTGnk/s1600/sol_lines.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXju3Vq1R5mxXUWGrkgW84GMwOoEkTxihgPb2SD1rkORdLmXATXtdbcoogU9faqIjfC21VcHRnGUQGdRLfMSJGeUzgooIQcUNV81M8zZOzhlcbMHNXiWk093f35YaygzRxx4qYI5kTGnk/s400/sol_lines.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467230581725747778" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">All New Media is Political.</span><br /><br />All politics is fundamentally economics. If all people were satisfied with their position in the economy in which they exist, there would be no politics as we know it today.<br /><br />All new media is political, regardless of what appears on the screen or of what rings from the speaker membranes, digital media subsumes, integrates globalized prerequisites which form and inter-penetrate everything we may aesthetically perceive. These globalized prerequisites are international manufacturing standards, global raw materials transportation and refinement chains, international trade agreements; in short: the corporate world as administered through<br />local, national and super-national politics.<br /><br />Therefore, Art made with New Media is a realm of globalized economics and thus a realm of politics, and this should surprise and disturb no-one.<br /><br />The familiar figure of this realm is that of the woman or man in uniform of the military or of the police. These uniforms subordinate these citizens’ civil individuality as they become an anonymous embodiment, the physical manifestation of the Law. The language of the Law provides the structure of the society which is the context of the creative new media artist. National or super-national, there is no new media art without soldiers, just as there is no language without grammar.<br /><br />My work and this talk attempt to elucidate a symbiosis of artistic freedom and of political (military/police) order in the concept of avant garde. The expression 'avant-garde', of course, emerged from military parlance, the soldiers of the front lines, often sacrificed in order to make the enemy reveal itself. The avant garde is posthumously crowned with glory for having sacrificed themselves in the service of the nation. Thus are avant garde artists in all their<br />desperate critical intensity, zealots in the service of the hegemonies which foster them.<br /><br />One who searches for radical alternatives to contemporary industrialized culture's overweening dependence on hegemonies, the violence of the internal and external politics, had better leave the 'avant-garde' and explore an aesthetics of '<a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/baisser-la-garde.html"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">baisser la garde</span></a>' (<span style="font-style: italic;">die Garde herunternehmen?</span>/to lower the guard).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJx0dSzwn0o1_uPdtgqV2DsmP9X7_lSOKEvSXbUDq3SdGPO2SF8xirdupFfkU-wWJqNG01k99PNQqukYK-fwrVcIiev8SaJ9Zhw6NnhAjjm1Xo46holPXf4IbwuZqxLEiZoDSUXzjtUFY/s1600/DSC03446.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJx0dSzwn0o1_uPdtgqV2DsmP9X7_lSOKEvSXbUDq3SdGPO2SF8xirdupFfkU-wWJqNG01k99PNQqukYK-fwrVcIiev8SaJ9Zhw6NnhAjjm1Xo46holPXf4IbwuZqxLEiZoDSUXzjtUFY/s400/DSC03446.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467231239420151650" border="0" /></a><br /><br />This exhibition is a materialization in the public space of an attempt to model a working microcosm of the state of contemporary symbiosis between the forces of order and those of the spontaneous creativity of the artist. It is a three dimensional, "<span style="font-style: italic;">wissenschäftliche Vergegenwärtung</span>" (Philosophical Concretisation) of the theory stated above, using the techniques of New Media.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ7W3sk_qELg5szCDFaGHgf3brYEg_xkiBlBnIodSP8qK8005YoOuB4tpdBXXQAEqc3c1h5ZyLe_6CWz8L3hJ1MDChzBuL8cMBv-2dxYWu_l9PDP6ApRMlPyY9m00y6Dv2tvqVyogpNW8/s1600/fullroom.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ7W3sk_qELg5szCDFaGHgf3brYEg_xkiBlBnIodSP8qK8005YoOuB4tpdBXXQAEqc3c1h5ZyLe_6CWz8L3hJ1MDChzBuL8cMBv-2dxYWu_l9PDP6ApRMlPyY9m00y6Dv2tvqVyogpNW8/s400/fullroom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467231743052531586" border="0" /></a>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-25796265896195219632010-03-14T12:41:00.001-07:002010-04-05T05:17:41.046-07:00Theory will be Applied!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.g4t.info/images/dienst/dienst.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 1000px; height: 1000px;" src="http://www.g4t.info/images/dienst/dienst.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Yes. This is just a short announcement of my solo concept exhibition in Berlin at<a href="http://www.dorothee-robrecht.de/baruch.html"> Wohnlabor in Friedrichshain</a>. The installation integrates one screen of conventional DVD video, one screen of generative database video, generative database recombinant soundtrack, watercolours in frames, and some '<a href="http://portal.tugraz.at/portal/page/portal/TU_Graz/Einrichtungen/Institute/oe_2195">Raumgestaltung</a>' using elastic bands, repurposed steel and some wooden objects (depends how many I get finished by Friday). Opening is Saturday, March 20th at 19hoo the show goes on until May 15th.<br /><br />The work explores many of the themes dealt with here, and, I suppose, most of all, what kind of art can be made using high technology instruments which are also weapons.<br /><br />more information on <a href="http://www.g4t.info/dienst.htm">my website</a>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-21870017362546573942010-02-04T16:08:00.000-08:002010-04-01T05:16:43.313-07:00monitoring processual art<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJI20ealHnOrdWyiV9JtTd5hmXIIbUjSotbaqAw50tejVwr4hY-FJAjd4OJ6g_J68A7xxrCYu_jpH6g4M5t6-2iQGgLhaLFURvrdw4fpTtnKbUfW8auQYDesBwAI6fS18FbRT_Z6NI6Y/s1600-h/radar.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJI20ealHnOrdWyiV9JtTd5hmXIIbUjSotbaqAw50tejVwr4hY-FJAjd4OJ6g_J68A7xxrCYu_jpH6g4M5t6-2iQGgLhaLFURvrdw4fpTtnKbUfW8auQYDesBwAI6fS18FbRT_Z6NI6Y/s400/radar.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434570525919059602" border="0" /><br /></a><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJI20ealHnOrdWyiV9JtTd5hmXIIbUjSotbaqAw50tejVwr4hY-FJAjd4OJ6g_J68A7xxrCYu_jpH6g4M5t6-2iQGgLhaLFURvrdw4fpTtnKbUfW8auQYDesBwAI6fS18FbRT_Z6NI6Y/s1600-h/radar.jpg"><br /></a><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[this is the slightly redacted text of my presentation at a panel on processual art, moderated by Susanna Jaschko on the 4th of February 2010, at the </span><a href="http://www.transmediale.de/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">transmediale10</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">].</span><br /></p><div><br /></div><div><br />Many people speak today of a global crisis. But it is not so much a global crisis as a crisis of globalism itself. Brasil, India, Korea, many developing countries in Africa <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC">are doing quite well</a>. What has happened is not a global crisis, but <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=apocalypse&searchmode=none">apocalypse</a>, in it's original sense of uncovering, revealing the crisis that was, is and always will be.<br /><br />The Cold War provided for us in the <span style="font-style: italic;">'developed world'</span>, as Susanna Jaschko said today "the illusion of stability". It is well known that the Cold War was<a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v032/32.1lawrence.pdf"> very hot in many locations</a> where proxies of the two dominant systems of the time (called ,we remember still, communism and capitalism) battled for the exotic and scarce materials which would provide the coming technological age.<br /><br />After the end of the Cold War we are going though a period of apocalypse, where the true complexity and unresolvable chaos, crisis and conflict of our common lives on this planet are no longer deniable. Processual art provides many approaches for traversing the endless volumes of data flow produced by and in our increasingly real-time consciousness of this state of endless crisis.<br /><br />I will attempt to provide certain <b>B</b><span><b>egriffe<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> (1)</span> </b></span>and certain systemic metaphors which may serve useful in our discussions and in our contemplation of processual art.<br /><br />With the ever-present <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/12/spectres-of-messianic-justice-derridas.html">spectrality </a>engulfing us, the ghost which remind of our own mortality, our culture's response is to tell us to visit the doctor regularly, repeatedly to monitor our health.<br /><br />And if the body is perceived to be in crisis it is immediately surrounded by monitors. The monitors, now form part of the cyborg medial attention, monitoring the health of the patient.<br /><br />Monitor is derived from the Latin verb monere which means originally "to admonish, warn, advise". Lev Manovich in his landmark book: Language of New Media, described the first tele-vision, the <a href="http://www.manovich.net/TEXT/digital_nature.html">first real-time monitor which was the radar screen</a>. Here, the connotation of warning is obvious.<br /><br />On the screens and monitors are visualizations of what are considered the 'Vital Signs' of the patient. By reading these signs, even the uninitiated can imagine what is going on inside the patient.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2009/04/01/1225693/246302-air-passengers-stripped-bare.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 400px;" src="http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2009/04/01/1225693/246302-air-passengers-stripped-bare.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Nowadays, as society is stripped bare of its traditional, unifying beliefs & faiths, and the citizen is particle-ized by personalized and variegated media experience-spaces, we have a growing sense of the complexity of the globalized system in which we exist, and of which we are inextricably, a part.<br /><br />So here, the metaphor is that, with the monitors, we are monitoring (can one say the health of) the body of society, or even that of our civilisation, such as it can be conceived to be, for signs of various kinds.<br /><br />We get warnings, but we also get information we need or want or like, but most of all, the screens tell us that the body of society is still alive and being monitored.<br /><br />But more significantly, there is a stand in, an avatar for the body of society and that is the electrical and, increasingly, the communications grid, the condition of which the monitors display.<br /><br />This is why computer-generative art is so appropriate for public screens, it is public notice of the health of the system. The health of the infrastructure part is verified at the refresh rate of 50 or 60 times a second (the oscillation rate of electrical current), but also and implicitly, the ongoing process of civilization's complex social and economic systems, which are always incomplete and ongoing are monitored. A comforting illusion of social constancy is also thus generated.<br /><br />Failing other, earlier notions of faith, monitor screens promise us we are making technological process. What appears on the monitor screen is a kind of elaborate progress bar by which we monitor trends to fruition, the anticipation of which may be just as enjoyable as is their brief consumption.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRjqGN-pHl3U5Dsja_GrzVmTOs9R0EoBaNqso0AIMbk2v0EIse8p4UZ_yinE5awXCqVUcrGcvHRGchQHoUViUGAkUxV7jl5whENMTSWnQWMTTLFyCoUnhpsskoYSM2Sp8HGqaOWVzBq88/s1600-h/the_progress_bar.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 390px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRjqGN-pHl3U5Dsja_GrzVmTOs9R0EoBaNqso0AIMbk2v0EIse8p4UZ_yinE5awXCqVUcrGcvHRGchQHoUViUGAkUxV7jl5whENMTSWnQWMTTLFyCoUnhpsskoYSM2Sp8HGqaOWVzBq88/s400/the_progress_bar.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434702844670552322" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Two examples of the implementation of processual art on public media facades.<br />- Korea: the progress of modernity/modernization, technologies of fairness overwhelming the creeping mustiness associated with old beliefs. Fairness = equanimity. The line between art and design and social engineering is almost non-existent<br />- Europe: technological progress is also monitored but also our ethical and moral progress in the traditional function of art<br /><br />Processual art provides visions, visualisations of civilization as an incomplete fragmented process, going on in myriad directions at once, a glorious 4-dimensional filigree of causeways of various breadths.<br /><br />But underneath, and fundamental to these real-time patterns and figures on the screens, is a kind of urgency which makes this kind of processual work so compelling and also so exhausting.<br /><br />It is the diminishing <span style="font-weight: bold;">wegsehbarkeit <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(2)</span> </span>of the injustice on which our civilisation, and even more, of the technology of our glorified society monitoring systems are predicated.<br /><br />These are unfair relations of labour, here at home, and elsewhere, the persistence of slavery & indentured labour (<a href="http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/wharton">the Yes Men do a nice take on this</a>), and, especially the lack of parity in the league of nations, in living standards, and, <a href="http://www.betterworldbooks.com/book-id-0981997279.aspx">most importantly for me</a>, this is not just in words, it is in the materials of technology itself.<div><br />Jaromil excellently described some of the problematic deep material relations of high technology utopias <a href="http://www.transmediale.de/en/jaromil-presents-coltan-and-blood">in a presentation at last transmediale</a>, in the so-called conflict minerals trade.<br /><br />We must acknowledge the hardware beholdenness of all our technological art. That this hard ware is produced through <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/07/murderous-mineral-trade.html">hard facts:</a> where and when the materials which become the technology must be (have been) extracted from the earth somewhere before they can be refined into these exquisite processual instruments.<br /><br />This extraction from the earth of metals and minerals and other necessary ingredients for high technology must be brought out of the earth by particular individuals at particular locations at particular stages of their particular lives.<br /><br /></div><div><a href="http://dantoc.net/?p=15634">At the mine head where the Bauxite comes</a> from for the aluminum, essential for all the finest technology in this room, there are hundreds of men with parents and families doing another day's work for peanuts right now.<br /><br />They have no choice. Some even work at gunpoint. Their government, in many cases has been completely bought out by ours, because we cannot and will not do without aluminum.<br /><br /><div><object height="339" width="420"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9lwym"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9lwym" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="339" width="420"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9lwym">Dadis Camera, former president of Guinea (central to the Bauxite trade) castigates the German Ambassador</a></b><br /><i>von <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/Nzwamba">Nzwamba</a></i></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> Camara was a controversial leader. Usually not my favorite type of leader, a throwback to old-school African nationalists from the early 'independence' period. For the purposes of this post, he did one thing that really got the high-tech producing countries angry, he re-evaluated all of his countries mining contracts signed by the previous west-friendly governments, for which he would suffer greatly. </span><br /><br /><br />I have a phrase for this <i>"Absolute corruption corrupts absolutely."</i><br /><br />This is why we must monitor the consequences of our abstract, hardly articulate faith in the noble cause of technological progress and its incipient industry.<br /><br />The men standing around the mine from which the materials are abstracted from the earth, with their personal individual histories and needs are at work right now perpetually inside these monitoring screens.<br /><br />The screen, you may, know, etymologically comes from the old French <b>escran </b>"<b>écran</b>" which was originally the wire mesh which was placed before the warming fire - to block the sparks which could set the house on fire.<br /><br />So we watch this processual art like a warming fire, glorious patterns of immolation from which we derive a pleasant <b>angenehm <small>(3)</small></b> warmth.<br />Standing around the ancient campfire, it is a scene reminiscent of our tribal past, a previous, pre-literate time Flusser often described where human consciousness was dominated by images and the magicians who understood and channeled their power.<br /><br />Flusser described<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqi7Og8gPEj4J64Ci8yPL3dKa2vM6iC8r7p6_FggzFIqUMU0qc5WZIrQwLt3CpZ74f8nK6iVvZu79EfnQ9LrK0QNPxae42BNQ5Tg8vQifno6At12_R83ViOJqE-02MxRiZIu5eBEBZ36k/s1600-h/flusser_sketch.jpg"> two future societal modes possibly generated from technical images:</a> <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/01/computational-politics.html">a totalitarian techno-magical consciousness dominated by techno-magicians, or a new form of literacy in the constitutive codes of technical images, a textual interpretability he might call techno-historical. </a>Flusser would concede of course that these two consciousnesses would probably co-exist antagonistically.<br /><br />To conclude, I would like to recall another etymological sense of 'monitor: "to admonish". The monitor is there to keep us in line, as a society, as a civilization. To keep us on the course. The monitor on which we enjoy (<b>angenehm</b>) processual art, you see, has its own agenda.</div><div><br /></div><div>-----</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(1)</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> We don't have quite the right translation of the German word '<b>Begriff</b>'. In English, we use the word 'term' which has it's roots in 'termination' i.e. 'definition'. But, <b>Begriff </b>is built on the word <b>Griff </b>which in English would be 'grip' or 'handle'. So, unlike terminating a concept in a definition, we can, in German, get a handle on the concept while it is still alive.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(2)</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> I made up this word, which doesn't exist in English either, the closest would be 'look-away-ableness' or 'disregardability'.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div> </div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(3) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">this is best translated as 'pleasant' but </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">angenehm </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">also has the connotation of acceptance</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 'an-nehmen</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">', to take on.</span></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-68404187931113914522010-01-27T02:29:00.000-08:002011-07-29T06:12:03.362-07:00Computational Bio-politics<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">"It has been clear for several centuries now that, if we want to understand the world, it is not sufficient to describe it by words, it is necessary to calculate the world. 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- Vilém Flusser (from a soon-to-be-released DVD of interviews with Miklós Peternák)</span><br />
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Our age is lauded for the unprecedented modes of social functionality enabled by new technologies, especially by the internet. This appears to be the realization of egalitarian Enlightenment humanist aspiration, embodied in many of the so-called <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml">Universal Human Rights</a>. This is an egalitarianism of info-beings predicated on the de-emphasis of materiality.<br />
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Material bodies are not equal, but minds, at least, can generate such generalizing agendas. We don't hear from the <a href="http://www.uncf.org/">UNCF </a>that "A body is a terrible thing to waste", a body is a necessary evil. Increasingly, our age is one of a spiritual human collusion of minds, released from the fleshy shells in which they gestate. The body is becoming extensible, replaceable, expendable, redundant. All technology points to a future of the prevalence of the mind over the materiality of the body.<br />
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Of course,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects"> as McLuhan observed</a>, as one technology becomes obsolete, society generates reactionary cultural forms. The artists, as usual, are the most sensitive to this. Stelarc & Orlan began announcing the obsolescence of the conventional figure of human form decades ago,<a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2006/03/70322?currentPage=all"> this has since become almost mainstream</a>. For these artists, their bodies, far from being irrelevant to their social presence, become central, this is also increasingly the case for pornographic actors, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxi_Mounds">vanguard subjects of body transformation</a>. As most of us lead increasingly discorporate social lives, our body culture becomes ever more cliinical and artificial.<br />
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The social forms generated by discorporating bodies seem unprecedented, but they are not. This is evident in how political discourse has revealed its true impotence. Vilém Flusser, at the dawn of the PC-age, warned about the coming age of electro-idolatric society. "Thinking is anti-image" he warned, the rule of images will not bring about democracy, but a new form of magical terror. A society in the thrall of the magical power of images.<br />
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The only antidote to this, according to Flusser, would be politics, based in the rational, linear processes of text. Text makes historical consciousness which is directed against the image. But the problem today is that electronic text is every bit an image as is an image. Projected from data into text-like manifestations on the screen, the text is not text in a classic sense, but electromagnetic data, which could manifested as easily as a sound or an image or a movie.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyjX7dy_bmGCE0EsYH2j9e-HGmm8p5UpBbs_p8mWHKNmgIKuLcMPIbeqnpLc1ROJ-nQWt2RhaV20135zZmkNmU9iQl8x5jBV0OVdZz9swGwwGLB6-OorHyM_vaRsxxXxky8SIB2r31ACI/s1600-h/txt2img.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431375247845690498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyjX7dy_bmGCE0EsYH2j9e-HGmm8p5UpBbs_p8mWHKNmgIKuLcMPIbeqnpLc1ROJ-nQWt2RhaV20135zZmkNmU9iQl8x5jBV0OVdZz9swGwwGLB6-OorHyM_vaRsxxXxky8SIB2r31ACI/s400/txt2img.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; height: 41px; width: 263px;" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">this blog post as an image</span></b></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyjX7dy_bmGCE0EsYH2j9e-HGmm8p5UpBbs_p8mWHKNmgIKuLcMPIbeqnpLc1ROJ-nQWt2RhaV20135zZmkNmU9iQl8x5jBV0OVdZz9swGwwGLB6-OorHyM_vaRsxxXxky8SIB2r31ACI/s1600-h/txt2img.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br />
This text is an image projected by computing, cycling machines. This text is 'kept alive' on the screen at the rate of your local electrical current (50 or 60 times a second, but recently, parallel processes can multiply this). All the exciting new ways we can interact and contact eachother today are so much spontaneous swirls and algorithmic fractals, projected on beguilingly luminescent material, bound in the minerals and metals of satellites and cables, the exotic alloys of the circuit-boards and chips, as much as the tables and toilets of the factories where these were assembled with such precision, the wells and rivers which washed and wet them.<br />
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And all along the material course from gravity-sodden earth to speed-of-light peta-flop circuit, is a choreography of human bodies writhing back through history, single file and cavalcade, rhythmically and momentarily themselves — this reality of technology is flesh, bone, muscle and blood of human beings with feelings and needs throughout history.<br />
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There is a common industrial history to the text on this screen and the clothes on your back and the fibers of your seat — and here we have a possible reversal: now that text is, itself, an image. Technical images, products of textual codes, may still provide something to fulfill the political role of text. </div><div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqi7Og8gPEj4J64Ci8yPL3dKa2vM6iC8r7p6_FggzFIqUMU0qc5WZIrQwLt3CpZ74f8nK6iVvZu79EfnQ9LrK0QNPxae42BNQ5Tg8vQifno6At12_R83ViOJqE-02MxRiZIu5eBEBZ36k/s1600-h/flusser_sketch.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431514131715640882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqi7Og8gPEj4J64Ci8yPL3dKa2vM6iC8r7p6_FggzFIqUMU0qc5WZIrQwLt3CpZ74f8nK6iVvZu79EfnQ9LrK0QNPxae42BNQ5Tg8vQifno6At12_R83ViOJqE-02MxRiZIu5eBEBZ36k/s400/flusser_sketch.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 174px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
In this sketch from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3596133890?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3596133890">Kommunikologie</a>, Flusser attempts to systematise his theory of meaning. In the diagram, the image alienates people and engenders in them magical consciousness, text, alienates from the thrall of images and engenders historical or political consciousness, and he is not yet clear what is engendered by the techno-image. At the end of his chapter "How the codes function", where this diagram appears, he indicates two (although not mutually exclusive) possibilities.<br />
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The first, as I mentioned before, is that we will enter into a new magical era dominated by the image, what one might call a techno-magical era, in which Flusser seems to encounter <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/09/public-emotion.html">Virilio </a>in describing as mania, madness "<span style="color: black; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic;">Wahnsinn</span>". The second possibility is that we somehow discover how to understand the codes of the techno-images.<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br />
<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">"Eine Möglichkeit ist, in einer bedeutungslos werdenden, sich nunmehr sich selbst bedeutenden kodifizierten Welt ein sinnloses Leben zu führen. Das ist die Zukünft als Totalitarismus. Díe Alternative dazu besteht darin, die Codes des Technobilder in der Griff zu bekommen und gemeinsam eine neue Art von Bedeutung zu projizieren."</span></span> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3596133890?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3596133890">Kommunikologie</a><img alt="" border="0" class=" qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi qxowpfuwbiojqwgznemi" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=3596133890" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" />, p.110)<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"One possibility is to live a meaningless life in an increasingly meaningless codified world, which, from now on, has meaning only of itself. This is the future as totalitarianism. The alternatives depend on us coming to terms with (literally gettinga handle on) the codes of the techno-images and together thereby projecting a new type of meaning."</span></span> <span style="font-size: 85%;">(my translation)</span><br />
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Flusser does not consider the techno-image an image in the classic sense, he considers it a 'project' projected from inside the technology. Thus, when he refers here to projecting new meaning, he is speaking of accomplishing this with the techno-images. The notion of meaning here is clearly Enlightenment Humanist, and the emancipation of the human spirit from the totalitatrianism of the techno-image is an imperative only possible through operations on the level of code.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">"Entweder wir leben in den undurchdringlichen Wänden bedeutungsloser Bilder oder machen aus diesen Bilder Brücken zur Welt. "</span> (ibid, p.110)<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"Either we live in (sic) the impermeable walls of meaningless images, or we make, out of these images, bridges to the world"</span></span> <span style="font-size: 85%;">(my translation)</span><br />
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Here Flusser closes with the hope that the techno-image can lead us back to knowledge in the world. Paradoxically the techno-image is our greatest threat and only tool to escape this threat.<br />
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Flusser says, in a soon-to-be-released <a href="http://www.flusserdvd.c3.hu/index_en.html">(now released!)</a> interview with Miklós Peternak at the Osnabrück New Media Festival in 1988, <span style="font-size: 85%; font-weight: bold;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">"I am impressed by the fact that one of the most important dimensions of the present cultural revolution, linguistic communication, both the spoken and the written word, are no longer capable of transmitting the thoughts and concepts which we have concerning the world..it is my firm belief, that if you want to have a clear and distinct communication of your concepts, you have to use synthetic images, no longer words." </span></span><br />
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<object height="240" width="320"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9065888&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=555555&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9065888&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=555555&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="240" width="320"></embed></object><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/9065888">Vilém Flusser on Synthetic Images</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/baruch">b gottlieb</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a><br />
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We must not only use synthetic or techno-images to communicate about the world, computer-based images (and by this I also mean text, video and audio) are the only possible means we have to communicate meaningfully today about images. If fact, it is at the image level itself that we can best start our discourse, a discourse into the persistent materiality of the techno-image.<br />
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History is made today, not at the level of text, but at the level of techno-images beholden to computer codes, which are bound in, and the historical documents of, globalized industrial processes. The reality of these processes, which is the reality of the material manifestation of this text on your screen right now, such as it is, is the true political reality of this age. A reality only modellable and navigable by figures of computation.<br />
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</div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-17302621089064208022009-12-24T18:14:00.000-08:002011-09-05T06:22:07.405-07:00The Spectres of Messianic Justice (Derrida's SOM part 2!)<span style="font-weight: bold;">I</span>t has been months since I wrote the auspiciously subtitled<a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/08/hyperbole-of-justice-derrida-som-pt-1.html"> Part 1 of my reflections on Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx.</a> When I first bought the book I thought I knew what the spectres of Marx would turn out to be, but of course, first I had to finish the whole book<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a> and ascertain to what degree Derrida and I were on the same track. This, some of you familiar with Derrida's work will understand, took some time. And then other <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">urgencies</span></span> intervened, and vacillation began its orbits. <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The spectres of Marx appear for Derrida in the first sentence of the Communist manifesto. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“A spectre is haunting Europe, it is the spectre of Communism”.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Derrida asks about this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">spectrality</span></span>, right at the outset of one of the most influential documents of the 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">th</span></span> & 20<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span></span> centuries. Are these spectres the spectral beings traversing Marx and his oeuvre, or, are they the spectral legacy of Marx and his oeuvre, the legacy of a certain manifestation of the worker which built for us this technological age? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Derrida explores both of these interpretations, spending much more time on the Messianic implications of transcendental haunting invoked by Marx's use of the word spectre.<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 85%;">“Can one conceive of an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">atheological</span></span> heritage of the messianic?”</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span></span>(p.211). The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">atheological</span></span> messianic notion of a justice to come <span style="font-size: 85%;">“beyond right and law”</span>(p.220), central to this book, remains so through his subsequent writings, which he comes to call <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><i>Messianicity</i></span></span>.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus Derrida likes one French translation of spectre: '<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">revenant</span></span>' (the returning/returner), and works at length to articulate how the inexorable <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">revenant</span></span> may lose its ominousness and become more of a companion, eventually pleading with Marcellus in the first act of Hamlet <span style="font-size: 85%;">“thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio.” </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The inevitable revolutionary <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">rhythmicity</span></span> of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">revenant</span></span> builds up resonance, a murmuring echo in the psyche of the subject. It is not memory of lived experience, it is an experience which transcends our time and is not totally 'of it'. As implied, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">revenant</span></span> is returning for justice. Can we say that, upon its visitation, we, who cannot provide such justice feel guilty? Is it possible to describe a haunting which traumatizes all people, and is it possible to speak to this?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><blockquote><span style="font-size: 85%;">“if right or law stems from vengeance, as Hamlet seems to complain that it does – before Nietzsche, before Heidegger, before Benjamin – can one not yearn for a justice that one day, a day belonging no longer to history, a quasi-messianic day, would finally be removed from the fatality of vengeance?”</span>(p.25) </blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Are Derrida's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">revenants</span></span> the resonance of things we have actually encountered, i.e. there was a time then the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">revenant</span></span> was not merely returning (echoing) but actually <i>together</i>, gathering us, 'with us' in time and space? <span style="font-style: italic;">Ensemble</span>, French for together, has the root for resemble, <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">semblable</span></span></span>, similar. Can we say that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">revenant</span></span> is <i>like us </i><span style="font-style: normal;">living today, that it was once an actual person who lived? Is the spectral here the combined resonances of people's lives lived in the world?</span></div><div style="font-family: times new roman; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0in;">What is the notion of justice but that of the wronged <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">revenant</span></span>?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="" name="query_h1"></a><span style="font-style: normal;">The </span>ineluctable spectral resonance builds up an awful, stultifying wallah which threatens even the Marxist ego. Derrida dedicates the last chapter to Marx's (and comparing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Stirner's</span></span>) efforts to expunge the ghosts haunting them. Marx's unwillingness to cohabit with the spectral may explain why he so categorically denied any sort of meaning an industrialized worker may have in his work.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><i></i></span></div><blockquote><i>"Labour to earn a living</i> involves: 1) estrangement and fortuitous connection between labour and the subject who labours; 2) estrangement and fortuitous connection between labour and the object of labour; 3) that the worker's role is determined by social needs which, however, are alien to him and a compulsion to which he submits out of egoistic need and necessity, and which have for him only the significance of a means of satisfying his dire need, just as for them he exists only as a slave of their needs; 4) that to the worker the maintenance of his individual existence appears to be the <i>purpose</i> of his activity and what he actually does is regarded by him only as a means; that he carries on his life's activity in order to earn means of <i>subsistence</i>." <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm">- Karl Marx 1844<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>Comments on James Mill,<i><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Éléments</span></span> D’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">économie</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Politique</span></span></i></a> </blockquote>Marx is himself too haunted, has not learned how to speak to the ghost which coalesces before his criticism. Perhaps most frightening is that these ghosts may be perceived lacking the very thing which made them useful (to Marx, and to Capitalism) in the first place, their bodies. <br />
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Everyone knows there is nothing so terrifying as a <a href="http://www.somewhere.org/NAR/writings/critical/whitehead/main.htm">nobody</a>, but it is precisely this persistence of the spectral body of the worker, individual and inexorably part of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">revenant</span></span>, which resonated most strongly in the capitalism. Capitalism, Marx is rightly canonized for being the first to painstakingly and incontrovertibly point out, accumulates wealth by institutionally alienating workers from the value they create. But this notion of alienation is merely economic and, unacknowledged by Marx, the worker cannot help but invest, even if only slightly, with human sensibility and care, in the actual carrying out of his work. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The body experience of the worker is recorded in the object of his labour, and this object will continues to serve as a resonance of the worker who made it's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">spectrality</span></span> as long as it exists. If, conversely, technology is the skills and knowledge necessary to produce the technological object then, technology is also stored in the worker's body.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Marx takes the Cartesian (after<a href="http://www.cscs.umich.edu/%7Ecrshalizi/LaMettrie/Machine/"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">de</span></span> la <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Mettrie</span></span>) man-is-a-machine</a> hyperbole and hyper-industrializes it. But if we extrapolate from Chomsky's principle of the innate faculty of language and turn the man-machine hyperbole around, we can say that a machine always has something human-like about it and that this humanity in the machine is in part a residue of the body labour and body knowledge that went into producing it, and not just ideas and instructions. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If we can see the industrialized world, not only as dominated by alienating principles and processes but rather as persistently inhabited by sentient bodies, we will begin to recognize another <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">spectrality</span></span>, that of the physical body resonance of past generations which bequeathed to us the surfaces of modernity. When we thus return to the spectral its acoustic dimension, we may begin to consider the problem not to be that the ghosts appear, but that they leave too quickly before we can echo them detectably. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Disconcerting is not that we, in industrialized convenience, traverse (and are traversed by) a realm of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">discorporate</span></span> human <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">spectrality</span></span>, but rather that the spectres we come across retain their individual integrity with faces and bodies. This is the experience of modernity as a traversal of myriad minute instances of integral, resonant, individual spectral remains, swirling around us like innumerable snowflakes in the shapes of human beings, each an autonomous <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">revenant</span></span>. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But here, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Zizek</span></span> would allow, Derrida and I are both <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">mis</span></span>-appropriating Marx, and Engels, for they spoke not of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">spectrality</span></span> or of spectres but of THE spectre of Communism.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In English, this spectre is a looming thing, like the "spectre of unemployment". In current usage, the spectre is usually a bogey man summoned when fear is required. In that it is destined always to return again, it is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Derridian</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">messianistic</span></span> </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">revenant</span></span>, yet this spectre's return is always invoked, it returns on call and retires until called again.<br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This means the spectre of communism is always immanent, and, as Marx and Engels affirm, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">revenant</span></span> will soon be here to stay. But we have seen that even Marx and (real existing) Communism are haunted by spectres, <span style="font-size: 85%;">“untimely spectres that one must not chase away, but sort out, critique, keep close by and allow to come back”</span> (p.109) </div><br />
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<br />
<div id="sdfootnote1"><div class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Slavoj</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Zizek</span></span> nimbly danced around a tricky question at <a href="http://mariborchan.com/2009/11/30/slavoj-zizek-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-communist-today/">his recent lecture in Helsinki “What does it mean to be a Communist Today” </a>when asked how familiar he really was with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">das</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Kapital</span></span>. His response was. “ To really believe ideology you shouldn't know too much about it.”, giving examples such as Stalin, who certainly hardly read and never read Lenin or Marx, or Marx himself who misunderstood Hegel, who in, turn misinterpreted large parts of Kant. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Zizek's</span></span> disconcerting response shows that misappropriation, purposeful or otherwise may be far more politically effective (and interesting) than strict knowledge of and adherence to a text, if indeed this is even possible.</div><i style="font-style: normal;"></i><br />
<div id="sdfootnote2"><i style="font-style: normal;"> </i><br />
<div class="sdfootnote"><i style="font-style: normal;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a> In<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> German it is</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> „</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><i style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Ein</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Gespenst</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">geht</span></span> um in Europa</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> – <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">das</span></span> </span></span><i style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Gespenst</span></span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">des</span></span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Kommunismus</span></span>“. The word <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Gespenst</span></span> has a wonderful <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">craftsman</span>-related connotation from its root in the verb 'to span' as in to span cloth over a hoarding. It harks back(or forward) nicely to Marx's famous 'length of cloth' <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">example</span> in Capital. So we have a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">spectrality</span></span> which spans Europe goes through it an also goes around it, defining it.</span></span></span></span></i></div></div><div id="sdfootnote3"><div class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9117088783733203830#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a> an interesting article which integrates some thorough exploration of Derrida's notion of the messianic is in <span style="font-size: 85%;"><span lang="en-us"><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm">Prof. Dr. </a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50"><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm">Lieven</a></span></span><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm"> De </a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51"><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm">Cauters</a></span></span><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm"> </a></span><b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-variant: small-caps;"><a href="http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messianism.htm">The Tyrant as Messiah</a></span></b></b></span></div><div class="sdfootnote"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b><b><br />
</b></b></span></div><div class="sdfootnote"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b><b>For further Reference: </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(for those who speak French or Italian, unless someone wants to prevail upon me to translate this) Here is an interview of Derrida by Enrico Ghezzi in which he elaborates on the various notions of spectrality in his book 'Spectres of Marx'.</span></b></span></div><div class="sdfootnote"><span style="font-size: 85%;"><b><b><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RJ5Ac0Liajc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RJ5Ac0Liajc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br />
</b></b></span></div></div></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-88342425878262961892009-09-10T12:40:00.000-07:002011-07-16T07:07:42.386-07:00Public Emotion!<span style="font-size:130%;">Paul Virilio is the velosopher, the philosopher of speed...</span><br /><br />He is the one who best described how photography accelerated the way we think by allowing us to access the microchronology of daily life, until we were industriously and industrially speeding up production process to keep up with our accelerated consciousness. When, WWI shocked everyone over the scale of slaughter which mechanized ideology could execute, the machines seemed to, as Flusser would say, "spout" history.<br /><br />As the smoke began to clear, they plowed the war dead into neat memorial garden rows, and claimed "we humans are better than that", cried "never again!" and they believed it. And there was a socialist <span style="font-style: italic;">bouillonnement</span> in Europe which tried to take care of the root problems and misconceptions which allowed simple scientific truth to be so misapplied.<br /><br />Yet some how, it happened again, and this time around the world, and this time including that which is most offensive to anyone who implicates himself in the least notion of humanism, the industrial death camps of the Germans, and the instantaneous mass slaughter, of the atomic weapons dropped by Americans.<br /><br />Western thought has never recovered from the shock, but technology can't help itself, nobody dares to pull the plug. Technology causes more problems than it solves, but it does solve them all eventually, except the one that it causes more than it solves, and that these problems seem to be increasing in destructive power.<br /><br /><object height="300" width="400"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6482240&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6482240&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="300" width="400"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/6482240">Public Emotion</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/baruch">b gottlieb</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=catastrophe&searchmode=phrase"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">catastrophe</span></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> 1540, "reversal of what is expected" (especially a fatal turning point in a drama), from Gk. katastrephein "to overturn," from kata "down" + strephein "turn" (see strophe). Extension to "sudden disaster" is first recorded 1748. </span><br /><br /><strong style="font-weight: normal;">"Le progrès et la catastrophe sont l'avers et le revers d'une même médaille"- Hannah Arendt, oft quoted by Paul Virilio "Progress and Catastrophe are two sides of the same coin", we won't get one without the other. </strong>Virilio insists that he does not proclaim the apocalypse, and sees only hope in the finitude, the limits, mortal, and other, of humanity which are revealed with every catastrophe. We expect the best, but suddenly, there is an accident, and this reveals the real best, different but as good as that which we expected.<br /><br />__what follows is an excerpt from from an <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/10/18/le-krach-actuel-represente-l-accident-integral-par-excellence_1108473_3232.html">interview with Virilio published in Le Monde</a> on February 2nd, 2009<br /><br /><strong style="font-family: lucida grande;">Gérard Courtois et Michel Guerrin: Croyez-vous, comme certains, que le capitalisme touche à sa fin ?</strong><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Paul Virilio : Je pense plutôt que c'est la fin qui touche le capitalisme. Je suis urbaniste. Le krach montre que la terre est trop petite pour le progrès, pour la vitesse de l'Histoire. D'où les accidents à répétition. Nous vivions dans la conviction que nous avions un passé et un futur. Or le passé ne passe pas, il est devenu monstrueux, au point que nous n'y faisons plus référence. Quant au futur, il est limité par la question écologique, la fin programmée des ressources naturelles, comme le pétrole. Il reste donc le présent à habiter. Mais l'écrivain </span><a style="font-family: lucida grande;" href="http://www.lemonde.fr/sujet/c913/octavio-paz.html" class="listLink">Octavio Paz</a><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> disait : </span><em style="font-family: lucida grande;">"L'instant est inhabitable, comme le futur."</em><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> Nous sommes en train de vivre cela, y compris les banquiers.</span><br /><br />Gérard Courtois et Michel Guerrin: Do you believe, as do some, that capitalism is coming to an end?<br /><br />Paul Virilio: I rather think that it is the end which is coming to capitalism. I am an urbanist. The Crash shows the earth is too small for progress, for the speed of history. From which [we get] the repetitive accidents. We used to live in the conviction that we had a past and a future. But the past doesn't happen, it has become monstrous, to the point where we no longer refer to it. Whereas the future is limited by the question of ecology, in the programmed end of natural resources, like oil. This leaves only the present for us to live in. But the writer Octavio Paz said "the immediate is uninhabitable,as is the future". We are living this now, the bankers included.<br /><br />PS. <a href="http://bit.ly/1sDf1z">corollary in today's Wall Street Journal</a> from Granta's John Freeman. The fact that this call to eschew email and forgo all indulgence in the increasing panoply of light-speed communication is being published in the WSJ must mean that it is (and perhaps Granta itself (representing literary traditional intellectual/left critique) has become)not only hopelessly out of touch, but probably, likely through their trust-fund investments, so hopelessly ensnarled in the thing they wish to critique that they can only produce counter-intelligence for the disaster management industry. We probably need more of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/29/apocalypse-survival-guide-tanya-gold">this. </a><br />Or <a href="http://survivetheapocalypse.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/money-in-a-post-apocalyptic-world/">this.</a>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-74174378037230638352009-09-04T08:57:00.000-07:002009-09-05T15:32:25.656-07:00Berlin Street Life:: Poster PoliticsIt is elections season in Berlin and the streets, more than ever are the locus for a great battle for the hearts and minds of Berliners. The democratic system appears in full bloom with posters of the <a href="http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/de/parteien/parteien_downloads.html">dozens of parties</a> festooning every available lamppost and boulevard. (click on the images for larger size)<br /><div><br /><br /><div>The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) is reigning chancellor Angela Merkel's party, They seem to be running as the 'safe bet in times of crisis'. Indeed the word 'Sicherheit' (safety, but also, security) is very present on their posters. If you feel a panic coming on because of the immigrantsmuslimsunemployedneonaziboozerworkerpinkocommies coming down the street at you, the CDU are your safe bet.<br /></div><div><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn5Yagp1wypoP74UrAY4KIbIhNBLm9mUVC8s_TeSJnEt-YIYLr6G4E3UGDp5ge_aMTeTH7RPpBBju4Q2J-_IIidio-18R7HZgEuSdo07rZVqQM8ZXFlWlA-1y6eXHtXZMunyzMhJjqz4U/s400/cdu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377645634259503762" border="0" /><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Here's a poster where they are promising not just Security, but also Leisure time, </span><span style="font-size:85%;">obviously for the well-dressed man in the first class train seat. This image was taken in the fairly upscale area of Mitte.<br /><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp6GTU19xPrG8MdHZCMioil5EmBVlpab4LuNoRC1jV2d78o9s0FRQ3khRlf7PhwmxoswSlbu0dp5mNVRsYHqd5MH739h89rrtBfuREZ2LI6UlghVtlAp4uwgznjM38QCy1vBZMQetl_gE/s1600-h/cdumlpd.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp6GTU19xPrG8MdHZCMioil5EmBVlpab4LuNoRC1jV2d78o9s0FRQ3khRlf7PhwmxoswSlbu0dp5mNVRsYHqd5MH739h89rrtBfuREZ2LI6UlghVtlAp4uwgznjM38QCy1vBZMQetl_gE/s400/cdumlpd.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377648118898860994" style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div>On the Karl-Marx Allee on the other hand, deeper in the former East Berlin, the CDUs posters are almost all defaced. Here, someone has spraypainted 'keine Wahl' (which translates either as 'no choice' or 'no election').</div><div>The slogan 'Business, with good reason" - says smiley business guy. On the lamp post on the right you can see a modest poster from the Marxist-Leninist party which is here imploring "no more short-term work and firings - a 30-hour week with equal wages for all!"</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDjiUBD6XKdutoDUcPMOBeLsHdVaTGOqkybQdeMXFa3CDSLRv0lJiY0b7jks6Ik1poUXEF0uxwVFzVuHenWTuIhs2y4fid55IfkoKrn5AAICSGWLWQNZMyeH2o2FbzILiCqkVq1Kgl1U/s1600-h/cdu_grunt.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaDjiUBD6XKdutoDUcPMOBeLsHdVaTGOqkybQdeMXFa3CDSLRv0lJiY0b7jks6Ik1poUXEF0uxwVFzVuHenWTuIhs2y4fid55IfkoKrn5AAICSGWLWQNZMyeH2o2FbzILiCqkVq1Kgl1U/s400/cdu_grunt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377797171204945634" border="0" /></a><br />For contrast, here is a defaced CDU poster in West Berlin. The vandal even bothered to enclose their vitriol in a somewhat weather-resistant plastic sleeve. I got a bit arty with the superimposition here, look through the larger version of the poster to the establishing shot... This brusque slogan on the original poster simply says "We have the strength" with the We on a German flag. So according to the defacer, do the Power Rangers have the strength. The interventionist is evidently irked at the notion that the Rangers have to share the strength with the reeking-sense-of-entitlement CDU (they are in power now, after all, or, in German "Wir haben die <span style="font-style: italic;">Macht</span>!") In small print the dissident continues plaintively, "how much longer are you going to make us endure this crap?"<br /></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div>Back in the East again The CDU is not the only party which is submitted to massive-billboard-scale humiliation. Both the SPD (German Social-democratic Party) , CDU's arch-rivals, something similar to the American "Democratic Party", Business with a human face, reason trumping out and out greed, etc. and the FDP (Free Democratic Party) libertarians both must submit to the vandal's spray and splatter.</div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKRijfExfYDVASnjlcoAih98B2kp_Knz-YrAsbw4n9n4vTuvF5fTPVOaXVcoj3cr0oDtP4fZ_NnRT5vSdU4nle08yeMk9e0BGJPKvhOTWLMpcx6MxTJspPwLm0F8sJ3X6GC8489Ze_Gk/s1600-h/spd.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKRijfExfYDVASnjlcoAih98B2kp_Knz-YrAsbw4n9n4vTuvF5fTPVOaXVcoj3cr0oDtP4fZ_NnRT5vSdU4nle08yeMk9e0BGJPKvhOTWLMpcx6MxTJspPwLm0F8sJ3X6GC8489Ze_Gk/s400/spd.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377651205521655442" border="0" /></a><div>Someone obviously went to the trouble of mixing up some flesh coloured paint to blank out the faces of the 'real voters' portrayed in the SPD ads. The text in this one reads "Education should not depend on parent's bank accounts. And that's why I am voting SPD" Yes very reasonable you unbelievably modest-looking middle-of-the-road elitoid.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Qe8UaPxR4EWiiXVJmws3H1fJJDB5PXGE8ytbxckHxy2wgn3NMk5GUWVRZ9hp-21RuKVH6bQV34Q9jTMgI781aHppuS-LMiKpi7_q6baUkDLUZ4XNFcD95zRF3WnjhkGRU1ZiJyajKS8/s1600-h/spd_ok.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Qe8UaPxR4EWiiXVJmws3H1fJJDB5PXGE8ytbxckHxy2wgn3NMk5GUWVRZ9hp-21RuKVH6bQV34Q9jTMgI781aHppuS-LMiKpi7_q6baUkDLUZ4XNFcD95zRF3WnjhkGRU1ZiJyajKS8/s400/spd_ok.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377800746706471730" border="0" /></a><br />Again, for comparison, here is a pristine SPD poster in West Berlin. The slogan goes "This is how we respect quality labour: Decent wages for the people" and then subscript "Our country can do more". Hmmm... very... restrained and reasonable, you are breaking my heart SPD with your fusty know-it-all properly measured concern.<br /><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, back on Karl-Marx Allee...<br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglRQsGejmeMguxrfkDz5Q4FALHNSMBhMfT9LyEgMDnSy2wiPpUDRAX8KovKkzHktExdLdTQlyamK3fNxsiF0pNH_nzUOYG6jzxE4ZNcZoadlH54-irywiI43ugB7e8j2nnBDUhXer3qp0/s1600-h/fdp.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglRQsGejmeMguxrfkDz5Q4FALHNSMBhMfT9LyEgMDnSy2wiPpUDRAX8KovKkzHktExdLdTQlyamK3fNxsiF0pNH_nzUOYG6jzxE4ZNcZoadlH54-irywiI43ugB7e8j2nnBDUhXer3qp0/s400/fdp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377652428738965410" border="0" /></a></div><div>Not far from the CDU poster, the FDP seems to be mixing the Ron Paul backyard brew of nationalism and libertarianism. Note the lack of any visilble minorities in the crowd and the background made out of the colours of the German standard promising untold acres of Germanness beyond. Schmarmy crop-head business school tyke gets a kkklown nose here, CDU and FDP are, in our cursory survey, evidently both sprayed with the same can.<br /></div><div><br /><br />I mentioned in<a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/08/biographical-berlin-part-1.html"> my previous post</a> the quintessential post-war german notion of being 'konsequent'. Definitely the SPD are the standard-bearers of 'konsequent'-ness. Here they are, deep in the East, fighting Nazis with konsequent-ce.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkhziDcDNQADZaKPPFggIYrnO73Vnk4ZbV0rzj6uxcKsFXLa_c2BrviMRUfAS87UZS0G31FD20e409SrRsP9Oa0jBjAR17PXAkG4ny_nmREvIO2hQpJeLPPZKwSaoThmIgAARUrOFeww/s1600-h/spd_nazi.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkhziDcDNQADZaKPPFggIYrnO73Vnk4ZbV0rzj6uxcKsFXLa_c2BrviMRUfAS87UZS0G31FD20e409SrRsP9Oa0jBjAR17PXAkG4ny_nmREvIO2hQpJeLPPZKwSaoThmIgAARUrOFeww/s400/spd_nazi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377656414231666210" border="0" /></a><br />You will notice a different quality to this poster, it has a kind of minority-party look, actually having been pasted on a piece of press-board, as are perforce all the posters of the lower-budget parties. You are educated and are thus naturally have anarchist leanings but you don't want to throw away your vote, now, do you? ("there is nothing so anarchic as the bourgeois ideal"- Georgio Agamben (paraphrased by Slavoj Zizek))<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjegGXPGGEIL5n5bQ1wdvIOV3Bq2Hy4VYUwddFJHU2wYby3T6M8pBmEEvJE2KLJnKGCJeA8E60ZZRTE29A6YA3CVsPCjf23LUG2gDxhEp-RCxrfwE_hjKsibhXNcb0ZWa4pcNfDF9bPRwo/s1600-h/piraten.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 348px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjegGXPGGEIL5n5bQ1wdvIOV3Bq2Hy4VYUwddFJHU2wYby3T6M8pBmEEvJE2KLJnKGCJeA8E60ZZRTE29A6YA3CVsPCjf23LUG2gDxhEp-RCxrfwE_hjKsibhXNcb0ZWa4pcNfDF9bPRwo/s400/piraten.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377766928966020514" border="0" /></a><br />The Piratenpartei, on the other hand... write in what you'd like us to be for or against...hmm extreme idealism? This can only come from an extreme sense of entitlement. Of course, with regard to internet they are the most informed and advanced, if only the internet was made purely of thought. Pirateparty the party of sci-fi justice.<br /><br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZxdw3AOidXwBP7Uz3eSUYmYAFvox5gmFJJwNGtzsR2exuUaeFCVnTpMaTuUzJa7CdXkgkXDI_A-v5ygtl-EovnB0onRM_9HyqGeZ2YZDoQzl2T2ViTqjygCLkN3tR0XH2mmh7pJlf7qA/s1600-h/sozialist.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZxdw3AOidXwBP7Uz3eSUYmYAFvox5gmFJJwNGtzsR2exuUaeFCVnTpMaTuUzJa7CdXkgkXDI_A-v5ygtl-EovnB0onRM_9HyqGeZ2YZDoQzl2T2ViTqjygCLkN3tR0XH2mmh7pJlf7qA/s400/sozialist.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377658531815492706" border="0" /></a></div><div>What's this? Socialist Tramp Stamp? now that's change I can believe in.<br />It doesn't matter really what it looks like though for these new generation SED (Sozalistiche Einheitspartei Deutschland, the former ruling party of East Germany) what's important are the <a href="http://www.die-linke.de/index.php?id=898">IDEAS</a> . These people from Die Linke (the Left) are even more konzequent than the SPD they are so konsequent they want to change the world not just the government! Lot's o luck with that. But really, they are one of the best-established firmly left-wing parties in all western democracy, so they are pushing the envelope.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-yebZM0Tr74RH7vhEcNNN3bVJeRRWiH0rRcSTjd4Xxs7aS8YYVE2yZRp54zybope_BlN70xeqzhDdwfn-eibeGuJRjO2Ljez2TQy1mAoGXgblfKz4HyWtKMghDezsPIHeWu_L0NcDA0/s1600-h/gysi.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-yebZM0Tr74RH7vhEcNNN3bVJeRRWiH0rRcSTjd4Xxs7aS8YYVE2yZRp54zybope_BlN70xeqzhDdwfn-eibeGuJRjO2Ljez2TQy1mAoGXgblfKz4HyWtKMghDezsPIHeWu_L0NcDA0/s400/gysi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377761465943198418" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><span style="font-size:85%;">Die Linke leader Gregor Gysi (also the last leader of the SED during the early post-wall re-unification period) seems to be advocating a rather radical educational reform to combat poverty. Note that the website is fuer-gerechtigkeit.de (for justice, for correctness, for fairness) (see <a href="http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2009/08/biographical-berlin-part-1.html">my previous post</a>, especially the last paragraph).</span><br /><br />The Green Party, so konsequent that they have forgone completely the wasteful and expensive large billboard ads and restrained themselves to modest curbside posters (no doubt printed on recycled paper)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeL3_mfY-Q8TcFvl6UJoRrAeAdGhSRtUn86COVmvaE75ox_DDZ3bhAjLTMBD4zc4yDnM0nCT2Og7FH0LvRb05kq0viQRB36oWy18a6sSbN8XDlDnfW-x6G23NJvEBVuAsAL-DKkAvE7s/s1600-h/atom.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeL3_mfY-Q8TcFvl6UJoRrAeAdGhSRtUn86COVmvaE75ox_DDZ3bhAjLTMBD4zc4yDnM0nCT2Og7FH0LvRb05kq0viQRB36oWy18a6sSbN8XDlDnfW-x6G23NJvEBVuAsAL-DKkAvE7s/s400/atom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377776802361281858" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">This poster compares a possible coalition of the CDU (Schwarz) and FDP (Gelb) to nuclear waste.</span><br /><br />The nuclear issue was understandably very volatile during the cold war drawing many pacifists and alternative lifestyle practitioners to the Green Party. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germany">The Greens were the only party in West Germany who could catalyze and sustain large-scale grassroots anti-government protes</a>t, and even influence policy on numerous occasions. But now, in the internet age, their attraction is fading. It is hard to reconcile their back-to-the-earth roots with the globalized industrial demands of today's generation of twittering alternative culture jammers.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidTCMXYMLajpqxrk3v_95blzQe-QXhjY6uIwGqbAsNcTfSD2BP9TaY3ilwLOFF74lTZO3EbBwQrrDOrqlFh4jHToOSKrhlPINSFpqMfnSkyXkjnW5r9C3GGc9rI2FyyE6v73H9fgAO5Eo/s1600-h/gruenpirat.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidTCMXYMLajpqxrk3v_95blzQe-QXhjY6uIwGqbAsNcTfSD2BP9TaY3ilwLOFF74lTZO3EbBwQrrDOrqlFh4jHToOSKrhlPINSFpqMfnSkyXkjnW5r9C3GGc9rI2FyyE6v73H9fgAO5Eo/s400/gruenpirat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377789721251296354" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Greens muscling in on Pirate Party turf in a grungier area on the edge of Mitte and on the issue of internet privacy. Stencil type guy warning you "you are under suspicion!" Jah Man! The Pirate Party poster below is 20 degrees cooler "you already know what we are about, we just need to tag some crap and put it up".</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuEASzk3maqpRxioH4vJXChPtEQLQ5jkYuMQadG1WfEIMZmUVtZirbdRzSB3XStEmGng3lpBCzSa4SUASX09rNIfIjAlmJ6L7V5nPpzOWCetx3ve2lj2XJXelFRV3mSNZJOA0LDWt4dE/s1600-h/pigru.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuEASzk3maqpRxioH4vJXChPtEQLQ5jkYuMQadG1WfEIMZmUVtZirbdRzSB3XStEmGng3lpBCzSa4SUASX09rNIfIjAlmJ6L7V5nPpzOWCetx3ve2lj2XJXelFRV3mSNZJOA0LDWt4dE/s400/pigru.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378112139441694818" border="0" /></a><br />Here we can see the Pirate Party's open-access model in full effect. The poster asks passers-by to write in the white space what they would like from their party. The response (looks authentic) "more support for the Greens!"<br /><br />The amazingly broad reform <a href="http://gruene.de/themen.html">platform</a> of the Green Party is perhaps due to the fact that they are actually two (or even four) parties. Their official name <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90">Alliance 90</a>/The Greens comes from a reunification era union with three dissident (but very <span style="font-style: italic;">gerecht</span>) East German political parties. The result is a party that tries to please everybody. They are the kind of party that invites people like me to speak at their meetings (they have!).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0zJqdBaguUmfl9MUdhG1UDI1mUG5eG_6KBEJgA8Pvlj_zgYa8dtRW8NHwPWHwc0y5QowriUvEBn3hQMfqVE-3GgqO0NKaK_L2bm6iyFewiaFKLiyVMwk8bweX3zvGhQOJpe2fGYsGUs/s1600-h/gruen.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0zJqdBaguUmfl9MUdhG1UDI1mUG5eG_6KBEJgA8Pvlj_zgYa8dtRW8NHwPWHwc0y5QowriUvEBn3hQMfqVE-3GgqO0NKaK_L2bm6iyFewiaFKLiyVMwk8bweX3zvGhQOJpe2fGYsGUs/s400/gruen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377781449659250258" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">The headquarters of the Green party glowing green in the Berlin evening. Evidently powered using only wind and biomass. Their slogan "It's about everything!"</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm_asi38haN93rMjNvPpghRa44fWrpLEXyGUHIhkNBcGduFjToKoeUBsLsIjjuxa6_je7XbZrq2qNp6UF0h2FsGibtLmO4WVfZXf_2ryYTq-okBlNAWb9CrNFF4bwstwfZFKWeplegd4/s1600-h/dkp.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm_asi38haN93rMjNvPpghRa44fWrpLEXyGUHIhkNBcGduFjToKoeUBsLsIjjuxa6_je7XbZrq2qNp6UF0h2FsGibtLmO4WVfZXf_2ryYTq-okBlNAWb9CrNFF4bwstwfZFKWeplegd4/s400/dkp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377795642266521346" border="0" /></a><br />Nice to see the old hard-liners are keeping up the fight. Berlin is where Marx and Engels honed their chops back in the day so I guess it is understandable that this is one of the last places one can still see them on election posters. The slogan reads "Our Crisis Advisers".<br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Of course there are those who will conscientiously refuse to take part in the ceremonies of our civil society, they will refuse to vote, pay taxes or otherwise deign to acknowledge the endemically hypocritical and flawed personalities of their parents, erm, I mean the institutions of the state.<br />Though their earnest protest certainly strikes a chord with me, I wish they would have found a more inventive way around the problem of how to disseminate their idea than by having it printed on a state-of-the-art, made by slave labor printer with conflict mineral inks designed on their conflict mineral computers run on hard-core institutional power grids. </div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj0Hu30SnU2YqNQie6j6vqGVLGllqzETZ-9dbhncTgqB-DFCamhlbl6vxVGnQvKpztmCzGJaTCkj3-O2YsoK50gFADDtYQ-zzek-OgZLXOG9cNPBGOeclb9hhTseHfBUPATOP7J4-HdMA/s1600-h/fucklaw.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj0Hu30SnU2YqNQie6j6vqGVLGllqzETZ-9dbhncTgqB-DFCamhlbl6vxVGnQvKpztmCzGJaTCkj3-O2YsoK50gFADDtYQ-zzek-OgZLXOG9cNPBGOeclb9hhTseHfBUPATOP7J4-HdMA/s400/fucklaw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377657277316023922" border="0" /></a></div><div>In the modestly smaller print in German they exhort "We seize back the public space!" Sounds inappropriately militaristic, and something we should already be aware of an not have to read it off a garbage can. What are you going to do with the public space you've seized, make it private? Yah yah this just a temporary solution until<span style="font-style: italic;"> we</span> take POWER!<br /><br />The problem is, there are only stop-gap solutions in today's democracy, it is almost taboo to speak about a long-term political program in our advanced media-accelerated political sphere. Vilém Flusser, in a soon-to-be-published DVD of late interviews and lectures, claimed that the invention of photography was the beginning of the end of the linear concept of history. The photograph does not need the photographer to take photos. The persistent presence of the photographer serves only to impede the normal functioning of the apparatus (this word also refers to state apparatus). "Revolution no longer is a political event. Politics are then over. Revolution becomes an inversion of the intention of the apparatus."<br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-38835444544555428702009-08-29T18:01:00.001-07:002011-09-01T01:53:48.067-07:00Biographical Berlin part 1Berlin is my second home. The order and the 'correct' procedural quality of daily life here allows for an enormous amount of radical and experimental culture to thrive. This correctness also extends to the way Berlin deals with it's difficult past. Liebeskind's brilliant Museum of German Jewry and Eisenmann's excellent Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe are two remarkable examples of successful memorial architecture on a grand scale. The Topography of Terror memorial to the victims of the SS and the publicly visitable Stasi archives testify to a studied earnest approach to dealing with difficult memories.<br />
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In Germany, find out the proper procedure and follow it exactly, and everything will work very smoothly. Everyone should be 'konsequent' (there is no direct translation, but it means something between considerate (of the consequences of your actions, i.e. do unto others... )and consistent, and everything should be 'gerecht' (fair, just, correct). Yet there is always space for dissent and even anti-sociality and difference.<br />
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The city is bankrupt and has been for a long time and is searching in the most efficient way possible to find a raison-d'etre in this world where the action is gradually shifting east and south.<br />
This may be one of the reasons that the streets of Berlin have become such vibrant spaces of autonomous expression.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLwLATmrDTAv8Lo7SL50RcFWZM-eqAuTJdhTHOb3uw2QVkmL2JOuBgFqpYnkQXJbzMLZ-lqMMLwRmmNwhPoOvvw0IrgFCdole-QsGk45q1sk7DVI-qknL8MiNWhx8d3reVlEH3mMMlKdw/s1600-h/neu.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLwLATmrDTAv8Lo7SL50RcFWZM-eqAuTJdhTHOb3uw2QVkmL2JOuBgFqpYnkQXJbzMLZ-lqMMLwRmmNwhPoOvvw0IrgFCdole-QsGk45q1sk7DVI-qknL8MiNWhx8d3reVlEH3mMMlKdw/s400/neu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375596585465269234" border="0" /></a><br />
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Anarchism has a strong tradition in Berlin, the current phase of which originated in the 'special status' laws from during the divided Berlin period which attracted thousands of German pacifists to the city in the 70s and 80s (compulsory military service was waived for residents of Berlin).<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygAwKO2pcPZQ0t5mjTOQOsL_AF0dDq0MeEpyHOh7_43TLYi3y-9eRwBGEWNtmS_On9fSj8eGZVtFhLuBVYS6c0junhSKfsbSAFv-fJymWiqbrn1-3EFomCLId4XImkZ-2hrPPrTDPrBo/s1600-h/uncontrobable.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygAwKO2pcPZQ0t5mjTOQOsL_AF0dDq0MeEpyHOh7_43TLYi3y-9eRwBGEWNtmS_On9fSj8eGZVtFhLuBVYS6c0junhSKfsbSAFv-fJymWiqbrn1-3EFomCLId4XImkZ-2hrPPrTDPrBo/s400/uncontrobable.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375562484184142738" border="0" /></a><br />
The <a href="http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/">'Coming Insurrectionists'</a> have come to Berlin. They are uncontrobable, they are so uncontrobable the sheer power of the insurrection is like a tidal wave crushing semantic conventions. UNCONTROBABLE! yes that is exactly what you are!<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiClzA0IsLFL2blflrMQUpZgFy4TvQ__J7csxHhGi7SdORWOOAbQ0gc0uB9K_u2ghLnJWqi4UNLL-IQkWEo_LWUPx86TlnU4PQqRgkP-ijzGxmWnL5ZtOJEbwhNAvTYLGS41xrZOc7ZBbs/s1600-h/kunsthalle1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiClzA0IsLFL2blflrMQUpZgFy4TvQ__J7csxHhGi7SdORWOOAbQ0gc0uB9K_u2ghLnJWqi4UNLL-IQkWEo_LWUPx86TlnU4PQqRgkP-ijzGxmWnL5ZtOJEbwhNAvTYLGS41xrZOc7ZBbs/s400/kunsthalle1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375564994361735426" border="0" /></a>Someone, perhaps the same 'Coming Insurrectionists' launched a big messy splat on the cooly low-res-graphicked exterior of our new 'Temporary Art Hall'. This swinging splash is an exquisitely inarticulate oath. <a href="http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2646589/Berlin-opens-new-temporary-art-hall.html">The Temporary Art Hall</a> represents all that is bad and good in Berlin's contemporary art scene. Good, there is relatively a lot of money for new art, and the funding agencies are willing to try new and daring institutional concepts, bad, once the funding has been secured the same old power plays and in-group mentality stymie anything really exciting from taking place. The current show is so inauspicious they have had to drop all admission charges. With the trend towards privatization of all public services, art institutions increasingly have to compete with Reality TV.<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxTOgYWL5DfV3UjWRROHzceHXV_GKC-K0jegubyTaZz9n8NVDqm6DmHd9wGszfyva9_PxK2YIFnedUmqoGFkhEC99q55gi0GPi2pm7ZgA2gGP4mLFX1wTRDzdZYU34E3MMy9SoCNRb0g/s1600-h/kunsthalle.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxTOgYWL5DfV3UjWRROHzceHXV_GKC-K0jegubyTaZz9n8NVDqm6DmHd9wGszfyva9_PxK2YIFnedUmqoGFkhEC99q55gi0GPi2pm7ZgA2gGP4mLFX1wTRDzdZYU34E3MMy9SoCNRb0g/s400/kunsthalle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375564991184369394" border="0" /></a><br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9g3A5D-UAH2sT5HyiPraOQhc1DsI_DRJA3OYGgSZEFPFZRbytnDaAmqq4Kdp3IbO9aTHCw2RpaPmQpC1f7T8dBqscscIYzR-N5i2rVWrxT7xRYrzdqDQmNRrp_ntaoZ_FOV2YkqdhH90/s1600-h/kunsthalle2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9g3A5D-UAH2sT5HyiPraOQhc1DsI_DRJA3OYGgSZEFPFZRbytnDaAmqq4Kdp3IbO9aTHCw2RpaPmQpC1f7T8dBqscscIYzR-N5i2rVWrxT7xRYrzdqDQmNRrp_ntaoZ_FOV2YkqdhH90/s400/kunsthalle2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375564997760702930" border="0" /></a><br />
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Turning around 180 degrees, and what do we see?<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtFQtG-xhz-P-32rmnG0IwbmusBqgFG-dAgtv2dXOGzHbZ7BP-Wb-fSiHLOgPbx2tkG2SJ_iq4BUHj8Zb0mGzHalPbt1vWRCd35CyLSRY0FXafjxtZ1AbfaqMxmY0IDrEk_huuYvA2kY/s1600-h/IMG_0177.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtFQtG-xhz-P-32rmnG0IwbmusBqgFG-dAgtv2dXOGzHbZ7BP-Wb-fSiHLOgPbx2tkG2SJ_iq4BUHj8Zb0mGzHalPbt1vWRCd35CyLSRY0FXafjxtZ1AbfaqMxmY0IDrEk_huuYvA2kY/s400/IMG_0177.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375570073036197250" border="0" /></a><br />
an empty field with the TV tower in the distance? What is the name of this place? This is the site of two willful demolitions. In 1950, 5 years after World War II and 1 year after the capital of West Berlin was established at Bonn, the communist authorities tore down the slightly damaged Stadtschloss (City Palace) which for 500 years had been the symbolic of seat power in the region.<br />
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In its place they erected the '<a href="http://www.pdr.kultur-netz.de/palace_e.htm">Palast der Republik</a>" (Palace of the Republic), one of the the most successful public buildings of the GDR, popular with East Berliners for it's bowling alleys, dance halls, as well as being the location of the parliament and administrative functions such as issuing marriage licenses. The Palast der Republik became a strong symbol of what was positive in the social experiment of East Germany.<br />
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The Palace was shut down in 1990 amid claims that asbestos had been found in the construction.<br />
Some groups appeared to lobby for the reconstruction of the City Palace. in 2007, it was decided that the <a href="http://berliner-schloss.de/neues-schloss-humboldt-forum/die-preistraeger-des-architekturwettbewerbs-2008/">City Palace would be rebuilt in Italian Renaissance style</a>.<br />
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On the site, today, awaiting the start of construction, the city has created a veritable tabula rasa. Neat swaths of green with tidy wooden walkways and not the slightest trace of the Palast der Republik. For me, it is ironic that the City which is so concerned with facing and preserving it's past should treat the memories of half of its citizens with such evident antipathy. <a href="http://schlossdebatte.de/?cat=23"> Berliners are by no means unanimous in their support for the 'City Castle' project</a>, and, due to the current financial strictures, the project seems to be going into storage mode.<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKMC09IsnSRKLWD9a3AHQLLoPi79l9-XHrGGb1998L_tVuw89d0q90ruZd_64w9mivI6NxHa010lwgeWeUSncjKUmBF0MNIWOj0CvHOsT0bY_l9uLboBezYXeO9QAnHaCnDjdiyTfjCY/s1600-h/rasa.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKMC09IsnSRKLWD9a3AHQLLoPi79l9-XHrGGb1998L_tVuw89d0q90ruZd_64w9mivI6NxHa010lwgeWeUSncjKUmBF0MNIWOj0CvHOsT0bY_l9uLboBezYXeO9QAnHaCnDjdiyTfjCY/s400/rasa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375588095033535650" border="0" /></a><br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOcHJHMKS77NhIWJEvQcMH1_cwmLO_ImIfN2GJ9n681PnIqCwNWHdTIrdnid89d07WBNqExYtkgre16CNzWEJSO0wqvZR3aMD3L-KGJUuRurOeZoYMCUvoe1tNWn8tu_0kq7FjRTx55ds/s1600-h/friedens.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOcHJHMKS77NhIWJEvQcMH1_cwmLO_ImIfN2GJ9n681PnIqCwNWHdTIrdnid89d07WBNqExYtkgre16CNzWEJSO0wqvZR3aMD3L-KGJUuRurOeZoYMCUvoe1tNWn8tu_0kq7FjRTx55ds/s400/friedens.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375583843788277778" border="0" /></a>This reminds me of the peculiarity in German, retrieved from Nietzsche by Derrida in Specters of Marx (p. 30) between the homonyms gerechte (correct, fair, just (see above)) and gerächte (avenged).<br />
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In the GDR, Berlin, city of Hitler, was re-baptised "Berlin Stadt des Friedens" (Berlin, city of peace). The slogan, accompanied with the customary dove, once emblazoned across the socialist capital, is been progressively removed during the 20 years since reunification. Evidently, city leaders would prefer to see the history of East Berlin as an exceptionally forgettable error. Soon, apparently, Berlin will retrieve an earlier identity: symbolic center of imperial Germany.Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-72116430987662116852009-08-25T19:35:00.000-07:002009-08-26T08:59:46.983-07:00Gratitude for Technology<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Gratitude in etymology (Derrida cautions about this "abuse of etymology that serves as explanation, play on homonyms (he should know about this one), privileging of nomination, autonomization of language, and so forth"- <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415389577?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0415389577">Specters of Marx</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0415389577" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" />, p. 167)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">gratitude</span> c.1500, from M.L. gratitudo "thankfulness," from L. gratus "thankful, pleasing" (see grace). </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">grace</span> from L. gratia "pleasing quality, good will, gratitude," from gratus "pleasing, agreeable," from PIE base *gwer- "to praise, welcome" (cf. Skt. grnati "sings, praises, announces," Lith. giriu "to praise, celebrate," Avestan gar- "to praise").<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=gratitude&searchmode=phrase">etymology from the amazing etymonline</a><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this book I wish to create a manifestation of the legacy of human care and effort that coalesces in the contemporary surface. This manifestation, of the intricate webs of human relations intertwining back through history, all the way to the flint knife and before, is proposed to be a media object, a digital media modeling of documentary/historical traces, that should serve as contemplative resonator for gratitude for technology. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Rather than being an object of our contemplation it is a Flusserian <span style="font-style: italic;">project </span>projected from processes inside the apparatus which is modeling the history of human collaboration recorded in the document of the contemporary surface. This work requires an infinite labour: </p> <ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">of research, to compile records towards a comprehensive documentary legacy of the human history of technology,</p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">of mimetics, to re-enact and reembody all the events of this legacy </p> </li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">of modeling, developing categorization and cross-referencing protocols and the algorithms to traverse these, creating recombinant documentary sequences and inter-associations with intuitive subjective sense of perspective and movement..</p> </li></ol> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My friend <a href="http://staugustinian.wordpress.com/">Steven Augustine</a> has challenged my use of the notion of gratitude as implicitly religious. Seeing as even the secular humanist modernist tradition is redolent of judeo-christian learning, this charge is hard to defuse. Without god, utterly without god, we really only have each other, and we will have to start dealing with that fact with the earnestness it deserves.<br /></p><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* </div><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p> <p>Today, while editing, I heard a scratchy squeaky rhythmic something coming from the park beneath my window. There were a few young voices obviously enjoying this racket very much. I finally figured out that it was<br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vQqpMukDSP4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vQqpMukDSP4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="300"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQqpMukDSP4">“Das Geht ab”</a> (it’s starting) by Frauenartz (Gynecologist) and Manny Mark coming out of a cellphone speaker. I thought about what I was doing, trying to make something sublime, but the cell-phone makers know just what functionality the kids need. Kids today, as back when I was, are desperate for anything that will give them hope that this technological future world will be worth it.<br /></p> <p>People are grateful for technology which transports them, away from their bodily and existential uncertainty into a fantasy space where everything responds to them, and offers them an intoxicating taste of complete control. We suspend ever longer this technological fantasy through drugs , through media, it seems the future will be one where people will be transported from cradle to grave without ever having a moment unmediated by technology. There will be no slowing down of technology no crisis just an ever surging yearning thrust towards fusion with automated processes. </p>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-37996963940175382192009-08-11T11:32:00.000-07:002012-09-13T15:27:00.180-07:00The Hyperbole of Justice (Derrida SOM pt. 1)<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Research for my current work "a PEotST" and its upcoming manifestation in Ji Yoon Yang's radical new exhibition project <a href="http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=east_bridge&logNo=70073863131">"NOW WHAT"</a> has lead me deep in to Derrida's </span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415389577?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0415389577"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning & the New International</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0415389577" style="-moz-binding: url(chrome://global/content/bindings/general.xml#asdfzxcv); border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> which, I have found, much to my humbling satisfaction, has not only a beautifully written thesis, but also several direct points of confluence with </span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981997279?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0981997279"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Gratitude for Technology</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0981997279" style="-moz-binding: url(chrome://global/content/bindings/general.xml#asdfzxcv); border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> and</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"> "a PEotST"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">. I started here with some ideas about the notion of justice and I hope to follow up in the near future with a post on the notion of the specter.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he Electronic Revolution has not yet found its Marx</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">" wrote Wolfgang Schirmacher in his prescient article </span></span><a href="http://www.egs.edu/Art_Life/wolfgang/hamburg.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"> "Net-world from the inside"</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"> in 1997, but what Marx could the current 'revolution' possibly require?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">At the dawn of the age of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer">Quantum Computing</a> and the exponential acceleration and miniaturization of many of the essential industrial processes on which our daily life is based, it is clear that the social-critical position customarily embodied in the left, </span></span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/should-the-french-sociali_b_253282.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">seems to have reached an impasse</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">. What is left of the left today but a resistant force to the propulsive force of capitalist progress? Would the death of the Socialist Party in France, </span></span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/should-the-french-sociali_b_253282.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">as envisaged by Bernard-Henri-Lévy</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"> herald the emergence of a radically more effective form of political mobilization for social justice?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Indeed even the viability of the notion of a party, of party politics itself is being held up for re-evaluation. "</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Now, as one can see foreshadowed, it seems, everywhere in the world today, the structure of the party is becoming not only more and more suspect(and for reasons that are no longer always, necessarily, "reactionary", those of the classical individualist reaction) but also radically unadapted to the new - tele-techno-media - conditions of public space, of political life, of democracy, and of new modes-or representation,( both parliamentary and non-parliamentary) that they call up</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">." Derrida writes in "Specters of Marx", powerfully problematizing the state-party relation which has dominated global politics for the last 200 years.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">".</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">..liberal democracies, constitutional Monarchies, Nazi, fascist or Soviet totalitarianisms. Not one of these regimes was possible without what could be called the axiomatics of the Party. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">"(p.127)</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Central to Derrida's meditations in the book is the notion of justice, <span style="font-style: italic;">justice</span>, which he offsets, in his accustomed punny methodology with the notion of justness, <span style="font-style: italic;">justesse </span>correct- or exactness (<span style="font-style: italic;">de justesse</span> means just barely) approaching with the engineer's ruler the infinitesimal convergence-point of truth, to which any application of justice must ascribe.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">"Specters of Marx" is a radical text, more radical than Marx alone could be today and too radical for Derrida to imagine writing while the Iron Curtain still divided the world in two. I was startled to see we make a similar call for a thoroughgoing, indiscriminate and nonjudgmental reckoning and acknowledgment of the 'whole truth' of a given political manifestation, integrating illegal, black/grey market and otherwise prohibited-though-persistent sex and drugs, body parts and slave dealing modes of social organization active in every society.</span></span></div>
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<i>"How can one ignore the growing and undelimitable, that is, worldwide power of those super-efficient and properly capitalist phantom-States that are the mafia and drug cartels on every continent, including the former so-called socialist States of Eastern Europe? These phantom-States have infiltrated and banalized themselves everywhere, to the point that they can no longer be strictly identified. Nor even sometimes clearly dissociated from the processes of democritization (think—for example—of the schema, telegraphically simplified here, that would associate them with the history-of-a-Sicilian-mafia-harrassed-by-the-fascism-of-the-Mussolinian-State-thus-intimately-and-symbiotically-allied-to-the-Allies-in-the-democratic-camp-on-both-sides-of-the-Atlantic-as-well-as-in-the-reconstruction-of-the-Italian-Christian-democratic-State-which-has-today-entered-into-a-new-configuration-of-capital, about which, the least on can say is that <b>we will understand nothing of what is happening if we do not take account of that genealogy</b>)<b>.</b> All these infiltrations are going through a "critical" phase, as one says, which is no doubt what allows us to talk about them or to begin their analysis. These phantom-States invade not only the socio-economic fabric, the general circulation of capital, but also statist and inter-statist institutions." </i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">(p.103 my emphasis).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Whereas the politics in "Gratitude for Technology" is grounded in a material-economic understanding, Derrida's is polemic and prophetic. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">In the </span></span><a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Communist Manifesto</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"> there is always the problem of the persistence of an intellectual elite layer in what should be a completely egalitarian paradigm: that of the Communists who serve the function of the guiding imagination of the proletariat "</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">" (C.M. II(2)) Even in Derrida's New International, we must assume a judgmental intellectual hegemony as a moderating and visionary force leading the world toward justness. Since this campaign will not be consummated in the foreseeable future, what we need (to be satisfied with) are (operating) principles.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Only through embracing and understanding the complexities of our current age can we hope to cultivate satisfying activities which will hearten us and engage us as in a world of economic production under just conditions (as opposed to the current regime of "maximum profits (and/)or bust"). </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: medium;">The New International hopes to supplant or supplement earlier teachings, rituals, strategies, such as those of the Bible scriptures and church service, with more prosaic ones which call citizens to actively engage with and question their own reality. The Specters of Marx, thus regularly confronted and encountered, would seem to necessitate an institutionalized scholarly rigour in a mode akin to that of the Chassidim or other orthodox faithful who regurgitate to re-metabolize their scripture at every social juncture.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';">The prospects seem dim for the cultivation of what would be the requisite appetite of 'learning for society's sake' among the general populations of our contemporary states where education is merely one of the many discouraging processes necessary for the formation of the contemporary political subject, indoctrinating, assimilating and domesticating the pupil, stripping it of its confidence and of its just conviction.</span></span></div>
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Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-27032692824270757962009-08-03T19:49:00.001-07:002010-11-27T05:49:07.911-08:00Congo Confluence : a proposal<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxdeVzJFGGhfMyvDnLl6O8tEeLlRzbp9yBEtvg-2y5K_Uur96AWFPXZZW16vQ2IYRmlucFueyTfRHeNNTmYYkeFSW4QTlZmBWpPm0-klUZCap1cjbPwo9yPAE9TJKaRFvEVYdlsIi7EY/s1600-h/sankinsha.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 346px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxdeVzJFGGhfMyvDnLl6O8tEeLlRzbp9yBEtvg-2y5K_Uur96AWFPXZZW16vQ2IYRmlucFueyTfRHeNNTmYYkeFSW4QTlZmBWpPm0-klUZCap1cjbPwo9yPAE9TJKaRFvEVYdlsIi7EY/s400/sankinsha.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365940284943957298" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I just submitted a proposal to do a <a href="http://www.mookychick.co.uk/spirit/psychogeography.php">psychogeographic</a> project for the<a href="http://zero1.org/01sj/2010-biennial"> 01SJ Biennal 2010</a> in which Kinshasa will be superimposed on San Jose using public projections, both mobile and stationary, performances/rituals and a variety of other mobile media tricks. What follows is some of the text from the concept proposal.<br /><br /><br /><br />The title of this work "Congo Confluence" is a reference to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference_%281884%29">Congo Conference of 1884-1885 </a>at which the European powers divided Africa into the nations we know today. This work addresses a core issue not only in Digital Media but also in globalization as a whole. This is a work in which technology is used to open a window of human access to the black box of the economic relations which already intimately connect them across the the world.<br /><br />This is a work about about the materiality of digital media, the cellphones and other portable devices, laptops, built-ins and wearables. The layer of digital media which is coming to spread over every surface is not news, from media theory to industrial design this has been an exciting topic for at least a decade, however, what is not discussed, is that this information conveying layer is also a physical, material one, and that many of these materials are won from the earth under conditions which would be unacceptable to any contemporary humanist.<br /><br />My point is that the idealism inspired by increasingly tiny and mobile technology is simple vanity unless it is counterbalanced with an earnest acknowledgement of the material circumstances of the technology's production. Despite all our relative wealth and security, we continue to look at the rest of the world and even each other with fear and trepidation. Increasingly it seems weapons and defence uses dominate technology research. Why? because there is injustice in the materials of our technology. It is hoped that a rapprochement with this fact will bring about more humanizing and valuable use and discussion of the state-of.-the-art technology.<br /><br />It is a painful fact that the 10-year war in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) is largely the result of various militias and the corrupted DRC army vying with each other for control of Coltan, Cassiterite, Niobium and other minerals vital to producing the very smaller electronic components which make our state-of the-art. By some reports, these 'conflict minerals' have resulted in the <a href="http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/">deaths, rapes and orphaning of over six million people</a>. Every developed country, their corporations and their "aid" agencies is involved in this sorry state of affairs. The DRC, mineralogically, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is one of the poorest. Kinshasa, the capital has less than 3 hours of electricity per day.<br /><br />Nevertheless, just as it does here, life in the DRC goes on. Markets open, and people go to work and try to make a living, a career, a future. Kinshasa, over 1000 miles from the mineral-death-rich Kivu provinces, is a bustling metropolis with a thriving music industry and burgeoning contemporary art scene.<br /><br />Now I know psychogeography is so y2k, and, in the early days of locative media, everybody started quoting <a href="http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord.html">deBord </a>and getting big grant money for projects which largely either flopped or were no more than prototypes for industrial products which arrived on the scene 24 months later. And now that Israeli army is using<a href="http://secondparadise.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/why-the-idf-reads-deleuze/"> deBord</a> to blast new trajectories through people's houses in Gaza, its seems his pedigree as a leading light for radical emancipatory digital practise has become almost irredeemable.<br /><br />But <a href="http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/en/display/314">psychogeography </a>can help us understand what it is like to live somewhere else without actually travelling there.<a href="http://flyingcity.kr/index.php?/2/"> Seoul's Flying City's 2003 project</a>, mapping (for Koreans) inaccessible Pyongyang onto Seoul, had a strong resonance. So, too, I believe will the current proposed project of mapping Kinshasa onto San Jose and extending the map eastward to scale so that the eastern frontier of Congo, the aforementioned Kivu provinces so drenched in blood and hardship, the regional capital Goma, will be found right next to Denver CO.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUTLwgAwjHZdIKZ7ClWTBzCnmOfSfQetrSwmBiFxQekkb98CZDIBgCnuEiC9-0LjFB0lgVOaONhY9unq5ABo0Hk8IgC97trHfZAfGcUNwiQSEk4A1rBvItzwcA2GgDF7V_cUsjIdr21o/s1600-h/calicongo1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 346px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUTLwgAwjHZdIKZ7ClWTBzCnmOfSfQetrSwmBiFxQekkb98CZDIBgCnuEiC9-0LjFB0lgVOaONhY9unq5ABo0Hk8IgC97trHfZAfGcUNwiQSEk4A1rBvItzwcA2GgDF7V_cUsjIdr21o/s400/calicongo1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365939794538381426" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Layering the thriving culture of today's DRC with all its hope intermingled with the reverberations of extreme injustice and pain on the relatively sedate surfaces of today's America should produce some powerful effects and, it is hopes, engender much valuable discussion and long-term exchange between the two places so tied by economic binds, to mitigate the injustice that eats away at our satisfaction with the accomplishments of the technological age.Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9117088783733203830.post-62530006574314533362009-07-27T07:58:00.000-07:002009-08-04T03:08:02.777-07:00the morality of pure scienceIn late June, I went to visit Otto Rössler to talk about human scale in relation to the size of atomic particles. I also wanted to discuss the role that visualization plays in the experimental process. Atomic particles are almost exclusively data, generated by the invisible particle flitting through a sensor array. It is hard to separate the energy of the particle from the energy of the data, there is a lot of overlap of reality and simulacra in the visualization of particle physics, especially since the "reality" is generated though a controlled experiment.<br /><br />I knew Rössler had more urgent matters to discuss, however. Besides being known for the eponymous <a href="http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/%7Epbourke/fractals/rossler/">Rössler Attractor</a>, a formula used in chaos theory mathematics, Rössler famously has issued <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,577243,00.html">a public warning on Spiegel TV</a> that the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have a chance of creating stable<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole"> micro black holes</a> (mBHs) which could put the world at risk.<br />With his self-deprecating humour only barely masking his con<span style="font-style: italic;">cern</span>, he told me the chances were 1 in 6 the world would be destroyed when CERN begins operations again in September, Russian Roulette.<br /><br />His claims have been solidly discredited by many eminent physicists, including Stephen Hawkings, yet, he says <a href="http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/links.htm">many also support him</a> but are unwilling to do so publicly for fear for their careers. Indeed, I found at least<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415"> one other prominent scientist</a> voicing a similar warning.<br /><br />With the date of the restart of the LHC approaching, Rössler is forcefully calling for a scientific safety conference to be held whereby the public can be informed of the true risk and the actions being taken to prevent any disaster. In the clip below, he relates a conversation he had with CERN physicist Rolf Landua where they discussed an experiment which could test whether Rössler's calculations were correct or not. Such an experiment would significantly postpone the riskier experiments for which the LHC was built. Claiming all he wants is to be proven wrong, Rössler seems to be employing a stalling tactic similar to that <a href="http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw04.html">described by Leo Szilard in his "Mark Gable Foundation"</a>.<br /><br />Szilard, with Einstein, one of the essential geniuses of the atomic bomb, had to watch impotently in horror as his brainchild was exploded over a civilian population, despite his and Einstein's protests to then President Truman. Szilard became catalyzed into an activist and writer, who worked to slow down the pace of scientific progress.<br /><br />Rössler invokes the repented <span style="font-style: italic;">sins</span> of Szilard, Oppenheimer and Einstein, and claims that the pursuit of the LHC experiments as planned, without additional safety considerations, would be a <span style="font-style: italic;">sin against science</span>. Rössler might feel himself responsible for innovating some of the mathematics which have found their application in the LHC. Most poignantly, Rössler is calling here for what appears today an anachronistic sense of scientific morality, one that places the value of truth above all.<br /><br /><object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5785156&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5785156&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br /><br />One look at the genealogy of today's technologies will reveal that business interests (or their national proxies, states and their militaries) have accompanied every technological discovery. There is no knowledge untainted by lucre, just as there is no literature and no art devoid of the existential realities of the material survival of the artist. It is time we acknowledge these concurrent forces in the works we admire and integrate these in our appreciation.<br /><br />Can scientists be held accountable for the adverse realisation of their theories? We can see with nuclear physics, the research has provided the full range of effects from the beneficial to cataclysmic. Today we live in a world where not a day goes by without some global crisis over "Nuclear Proliferation". Science is the new god, providing for our wildest desires and deepest fears. But, as Bruno Latour pointed out in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069102832X?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=069102832X">Laboratory Life</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=069102832X" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; -moz-binding: url(chrome://global/content/bindings/general.xml#asdfzxcv);" width="1" border="0" height="1" /> , science is a social product, and scientific results must also be considered with attention to the contexts under which thy were produced.<br /><br />In the next blog, I would like to explore the notions of absolute and relative good and bad in the frame of Derrida's discussion of Marx in "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415389577?ie=UTF8&tag=gratitudefort-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0415389577">Specters of Marx</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=gratitudefort-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0415389577" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; -moz-binding: url(chrome://global/content/bindings/general.xml#asdfzxcv);" width="1" border="0" height="1" />". For now, I will leave you with the question. If we cannot determine good or bad, what does it mean to plunge forth unmitigated into post-humanizing scientific revolution? Rössler raises the same conCERN<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>at the end of the clip above. If CERN goes online on schedule in September without additional safety questions addressed, it will be "a proof they didn't care about risk, even though they know it exists".<br /><br />UPDATE: 31.07.09 <a href="http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/07/31/lhc-update-july-31-2009/"> Looks like CERN is experiencing more leakage problems with the cooling units which may push the start of experiments up to November or even later!</a><br /><br />UPDATE 2: 4.08.09 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/earth/04collide.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print">New York Times reports today</a> that, due to system electrical faults, CERN may not reach full operationality for years<span style="font-style: italic;"> if ever!<br /><br /><br /></span><div align="right"><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />additional resources:</span><br /><a href="http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1165534/files/CERN-Brochure-2009-003-Eng.pdf"><br />CERN's LHC FAQ with lots of good basic information about the project</a><br /><br /><a href="http://wissensnavigator.ch/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf">A Rational and Moral and Spiritual Dilemma<br />by Otto E. Rossler</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TjYobXKebM">P.M. - Wie gefährlich ist das CERN-Experiment? (how dangerous is the CERN Experiment?)<br />Interview in German with Rössler with countervailing responses from Rolf Landua</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/interview_professor_otto_rossler_takes_on_the_lhc">In depth interview with Dr. Rössler and a long forum conversation in which he is forced to rebut many arguments</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/stop_cern_euro_court_action_slips_and_slides_forward">Some good references in this report on the European Court Case to impose stricter safety tests before CERN begins full operation</a></div>Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08074299629184871552noreply@blogger.com0