thingist April 2020

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Pirate Cinema Berlin S08E06: 858.ma
by sebastian＠rolux.org 29 Apr '20

29 Apr '20

april 29 2020 or any other day https://858.ma please scroll all the way down for the classifieds section -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem with "international solidarity" in times of crisis is oftentimes a problem of imagination. Which is why today, we invite you to imagine not the horrors of a global pandemic, but something entirely different: a revolution. The revolution in question was made in Egypt in 2011, and the question is: What images arise when you make one, what images disappear when you succeed, what becomes visible when that victory turns into defeat, and what remains visible today? 858.ma, the online archive of Mosireen and friends, presents no answers to these questions, just the raw material. You'll have to find out for yourself. The Arab Spring has been abused for all kinds of purposes, became the wet dream of the European Left, the casting catwalk for European institutions(1), and the subject of more bad documentaries and fiction films than we can list here. But if the revolution in Egypt has left a bad aftertaste in Egypt, then that is not because of projections from the outside world. It obviously sucks to put your life on the line, risk getting shot, raped, arrested, tortured or disappeared, only to end up in a situation where your life is, again, on the line every day. In order to have a bad time in Egypt today, you don't need Corona or Ramadan. But having a bad time in itself isn't very exotic. On Kottbusser Tor, you don't need Corona or Ramadan either. What's exotic is the life-changing experience of taking part in a protest that turns into a revolution: how a small series of minor events can be sufficient to gain the offensive over the state, its police or army or hired goons, and what's truly exotic is what happens when the full force of what is normally not leaks into that vacuum, how the "other worlds that are possible" immediately realize themselves in the capillaries of the social. (The current pandemic offers small hints at such a state of neccessity, including a few pointers at why one shouldn't totally romanticize this state either.) For those who have lived it, this is often a point of no return, and even though from all we can tell, you're still more likely to die from a gunshot, or mental exhaustion years later, than to be able to sustain a revolution for long, this experience forms an essential part of how you become ungovernable for good. Of course, such a becoming requires certain talents and predispositions, and these are not distributed evenly. There are notable gender, class or ethnicity gradients, since not being subject to permanent harrassment is a more essential requirement for some than it is for others. Obviously, after the revolution, you will be subject to the schadenfreude of countless professional besserwissers who can easily demonstrate that your attempts at overthrowing your government were doomed to failure. What they forget is that for those who lived it, their attempt to overthrow their government was, even if overshadowed by major hardship, a smashing success. And one of the advantages of having an archive like 858.ma around is that is makes it much easier to call bullshit. It may not contain the one true story of what really happened in Egypt in 2011, and when it presents itself as "an archive of resistance", that includes the sustained resistance against all attempts to turn this mess of a million entangled micro-stories into a bold, linear narrative. Still, at times it can be extremely useful to be able to point at footage as fact, as something that actuall happened - as opposed to remaining "just one side of the story" forever, or having to rely on dubious opinions or hazy memories. 858.ma is one of the rare instances of an archive that can be used in court to get people in jail, but also to make the most fantastic science-fiction films. (Of course, when we say "get people in jail", we don't mean the people who have filmed or collected the footage or are runnning the site, but their adversaries - how staying out of jail works is an entirely different issue. And when we say "science-fiction films", we don't claim that any of them has ever been finished, at least not to our knowledge.) And for us, finally, the advantage of working with quite a few of the 858.mas for extended periods of time, in Cairo, Berlin, Bombay and elsewhere, was that we could develop at least some sort of respect (sometimes also some sort of software, but that's not the point here) for people who made a revolution and sustained it for a while, and such "people" are usually not revolutionaries, but rather normal folks like anyone else, and that "sort of recpect" can easily descend into friendship, which is of course nice, and a good antidote against the slanderous hallucinations of outlandish third-world misery that fuel part of the "international solidarity" machine. Of course, it totally sucks if you have to spend time in an Egyptian jail, or have to walk a street as a woman - and cars in Egypt suck big time too! - but in case this little shortlist of practical problems has you wondering from afar how you can transform your own imagination of these issues into concrete acts of solidarity on the ground in Egypt - then Corona and Ramadan is probably not the best time to get started. Even though, as always, and rather obviously: "Now is better than never". (2) (1) among those who created the most irreparable destruction in the Cairo scene, in the shortest amount of time possible, https://www.gold.ac.uk/ and https://www.documenta.de/ come to mind (2) see https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S.: One of our Cairo collaborators got lucky, has chosen the not-so-easy way out, will arrive in Berlin on Sunday, inshallah, and is looking for a nice and affordable apartment, preferably in Kreuzberg or Neukölln, with enough space to accomodate a partner and a small child, who are coming as well. (Now that the Berlin rental market has entered its well-deserved depression, and AirBnB has finally discovered the true meaning of the term "disruption", such a place shouldn't be too hard to find.) So if you got that flat for them, please reply to this e-mail with details, and we're going to put you in touch. Thanks! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- () >< pirate cinema berlin www.piratecinema.org

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Infodemics: Going Viral or Undead Media
by Dominguez, Ricardo 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Infodemics: Going Viral or Undead Media by me (thingist Ricardo Domingez) Do you feel that? Oh, shit. Wah-ah-ah-ah Wah-ah-ah-ah Get up, come on get down with the sickness Get up, come on get down with the sickness Get up, come on get down with the sickness Why can’t you just buck up and die? Get down with the sickness Here it comes Get ready to die Get ready to… die Dawn of the Dead (Film 2004) Not long ago, everyone dreamed of going viral. Every share or post desired to trend. Every insta-image wanted to get to Cloud Heaven riding the streaming mega-meme. Nothing could be better than becoming undead media. Every link demanded to be clicked hard, over and over until dead-link did we un-part. It did not really matter if it was click-bait or the CDC’s Zombie Center (as wild pedagogical informatics détournement or the journal of post-policy forensics, or Fox fake-outs. We all got down with the screenal sickness of undead media. Now I find that I am seeking solace from the uncontainable spread of SARS-CoV-2 that produces COVID-19, to be virologically specific, swimming the massive tsunami of infodemic waves. I, as part of the pandemic privileged in my virtual cocooning, a state of privilege first offered to us at the dawn of the materialization of neo-liberal dreams in 1981 by Faith Popcorn, a trend forecaster and marketing consultant for Reagan and Thatcher, that we are still enfoled in today. These two were always down for the sickness of austerity and precarity, and would no doubt be gleefully watching the Trump Administration’s policy of don’t come to the government for any support. Just buck up and die! So we can get that Sick-fil-A down the street opened again. Now back to the center of my telematic tale of our current infodemic condition and the rising concern that it mirrors and amplifies, how the virus spreads and also how it might be contained on planetary scale. A hyper-real medial pharmakon. The World Health Organization worries that in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, they must also combat an infodemic which it defines as “an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” We are now facing not only the issue of animal to human transmissions, or vice-a-versa, we can add to the feedback loop the contagious socio-technical virality that circuits systems of synchronized affective noospheric-zoonotic disease that attaches itself to the body, to bodies, to data bodies, to panic bodies, to contagious conspiracies, and to the economic condition of hysterical males on Wall Street screaming about the losses and pain of the 1%. The infodemic condition shares endless selfies with empty “just-in-time” shelves and pics infected by “We Are Now Closed” signs on Instagram, that then create even more states of feeling anxious and lost. The virus has infected all commodities from meat to IKEA. They are all down with the sickness. Even the very deep post-9/11 “New Normal” is being dumped into the mass graves as we will never have a “normal” or post-“normal” here-after. COVID-19 will long haunt us by crowning the spiked “new abnormal” as its novel strain. So what choice do we have but to seek out clear and transparent answers, timelines, models and simulations, the atomic facts in the face of the indeterminate condition of infodemics? While the viral logics of the Fox fake media links up and un-links with false flags: that Bill Gates controls the virus, or that a secret bioweapons lab in Wuhan did it, or that the U.S. sent a human bioweapon to Wuhan, or that God is punishing us again because we do not buy enough. During the current lockdown a growing number of people are seeking hard data by clicking into non-partisan knowledge center sites (a bit of good news) like the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on a daily basis. At the same time, the CORONA Zombies movie came out last night and roasted the calls for “Liberate Michigan!” and “Liberate Texas!” The Z-grade flick made it clear that these super spreaders were the ones down with sickness. They are more than ready to buck up and die for the Orange One. These Trumpoids are all infected with a deep fascist virus that has taken over their mindless bodies and forces them to shamble and gather in front of hospitals armed to the teeth in order to blockade the sick from getting in to receive whatever limited treatment can be found-reversing the zombie narrative. Those wearing the MAGA hats are the undead and those dying are more than human. Meanwhile, glimmers of social networks and sensibilities are being circuited and looped. We can see individuals and communities breaking out of the outbreak narratives. Outbreak stories that are consistently full of racial targeting and only seek to protect the heteronormative cismen. The virus is mutating and creating new potential socio-technical zones of care and bubbles of agency. Impossible social shifts are blooming where the virus reveals the gaps and fractures of our inadequate global infrastructures. Some nations, like Portugal, are offering full citizenship and rights to immigrants and refugees. Some nations are depopulating prisons. Mexico is giving 2.5 billion dollars to those communities stuck at the border. In the U.S., movement towards delinking insurance from one’s employment via a national single-payer healthcare plan is being proposed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and UC Santa Cruz COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) students strikers are calling for the end of rent. In Japan, people voted to move the houseless into the new Olympic village hotels. We can see the light of mutual aid rising and pushing the administrations of fear out. The hot zones are calling for total anti-anti-utopian concrescence, calls that were always-already blocked by the zombies of impossibility. Under the waves of COVID-19 and its infodemic double, novel cultural vaccines are being manufactured that will create planetary shifts away from capitalist realism(s) (yes, more than one version is walking dead). They are producing a transversal call for universal pay, universal education and universal health care. We will have to double tap undead capitalism(s) and make sure they don’t reactivate big pharma or re-animate the DOW or resurrect the only-for-some insurance scam, or re-direct the Apple-Google beast from using our need to track COVID-19 to then track us to the grave of data capture for profit. If we must go viral, let it be with counter-infections towards the arc of justice. Not at the speed of infodemics, but at the speed of dreams shared and made real. Can you feel it?!! Shit yeah!!! Published yesterday on HEMIPress Contactos Series: https://contactos.tome.press/infodemics-going-viral-or-undead-media/

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Re: [thingist] Agree?
by w 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '20

I wonder what I was smoking when we discussed this idea. To do the video you will have to buy the princess dolls and get a miniature guillotine. Here are instructions on how to build one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WZFLuU8CU&feature=youtu.be The alternative is to order a Chinese plastic model from amazon for 9.75 Euro, but you still have to paint it yourself: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0829DQ66F?tag=duc03-21&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1 Ok, Bezos, plastics and China, I agree, not a good option. But here's a pretty good Lego execution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oOSXCR9C4Q After all this research, I think some ideas are better left unexecuted. Instead I will have one of my favorite Belgian beers: https://belgianfamilybrewers.be/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/La_Guillotine_10… Greetings from my quarantine cell in Berlin! W CC: Caspar Stracke via thingist. Perhaps there is something there for 04/30. On Sat, 2020-04-25 at 15:04 -0400, Peter Fend wrote: > princess dolls only > > not other ones > > we make a very pronounced distinction > > and we send the message that if you want to be a US citizen > you MUST not behave as a would-be princess > > the social cost is too high > > and the political contradiction is too great: I live in a free > republic? > amd my child is taught to live the life of royalty? No way. > Indeed, the violence that I proposed was FAR LESS than the violence > imposed on the poorer people by the princess-fantasies that abound. > > witness the wage-slavery of all the internet-prompted delivery > nobodies > > Girls with I-phones need to know the social cost of their privileged > behavior. > > The video contemplated, with Wolfgang Stahle, was to build a scaffold > with a guillotine, and then chop off the heads of a hundred Disney > princess > dolls, with music from what we hear at graduation. There would be > point- > blank recitations about the Saudi investment in Disney, and about the > dominance of the oil industry, particularly in the worst ecological > practices, > by royalist or effectively-royalist companies. Their assumption, > very > obnoxous, and contrary to all the thought about so-called creative > capitalism, > has been that they alone will effect a "transition" from fossils to > renewables, > as they alone, by Divine Right, have the power of controlling > "Energy". > > remarkable it is, now that this "traumatized, violence-taught" > daughter who > is going to Harvard, and paid double my earnings to do so, has been > able > to hear, for about 15 yaers, what I really think. > > How is it that I can say to my child what I cannot possibly say in > the art world, or any polite-publication world. > > I can say the truth as i see it to my child, but must avoid > saying such things in my cultural job? > > Strange. > > What use, then, does the cultural job have? > > Peter > > > On April 25, 2020 at 2:24 PM Sarah Markgraf <slipperg(a)optonline.net> > wrote: > > I envision a video in which you are explaining to a young girl about > the revolution, then proceed to de-capitate all her dolls. > > NO, the Dad says: almost all dolls are fine, just not princess or > queen ones > > Sent from my iPad > > > > > On Apr 25, 2020, at 1:19 PM, Peter Fend <fend(a)ocean-earth.net> > > > wrote: > > > > > > To do so in a videotape, with the chopping done anesthetially, by > > > guillotine, > > > and only for Disney-brand princess dolls, > > > > > > if accompanied by an explanatory press release, > > > > > > could be an enactment of political history about which we cannot > > > be sued for > > > libel, or for damaging the Disney brand. > > > > > > Anybody has a right to destroy his or her own property. > > > > > > Would Disney need to come out defending royalism? > > > ahem, r-oilism? > > > > > > Similar vicious actions could be done with "Amazon." > > > > > > F. > > > > > > oh, and M.: was the French Revolution "funny and alarming"? > > > > > > Or was it an historical event with huge global consequences? > > > > On April 25, 2020 at 12:59 PM Sarah Markgraf < > > > > slipperg(a)optonline.net> wrote: > > > > > > > > Thank you for reminding me of the Disney-Saudi connection. > > > > > > > > The story of you and Sophia chopping off the heads of her dolls > > > > has always struck me as both funny and alarming. I don’t mean > > > > “ha ha funny.” > > > > > > > > Sent from my iPad > > > > > > > > > On Apr 24, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Peter Fend <fend(a)ocean-earth.net > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > piqued > > > > > > > > > > "interest"? > > > > > > > > > > I discovered the Disney princess obsession from reading to my > > > > > kid, then seeing videotapes for all the kids. I was so > > > > > pissed off by the narrative that I taught > > > > > Sophia about how in the French Revolution all the princesses > > > > > had their heads chopped off. We made drawings with chalk on > > > > > the pavement of heads being > > > > > chopped off. Her mother got angry, saying that I was > > > > > teaching violence. No, > > > > > I said in angry retort, I'm teaching History. > > > > > > > > > > Hopefully, the lesson sinks in. Princesses or wannabe > > > > > princesses should die. > > > > > > > > > > The fantasy women have of getting all their needs met by > > > > > deliveries, from > > > > > Amazon, from Fresh Direct, from the corner pizzeria, results > > > > > directly from the > > > > > Disney princess propaganda. And so, the free nation > > > > > subordinates itself to > > > > > royalism. > > > > > > > > > > Remember: one of the biggest investors in Walt Disney, > > > > > especially in the 100-year bonds, is Saudi Arabian royalty. > > > > > > > > > > Thus, the US becomes a prisoner of royalist energy policies > > > > > of Saudi Arabia, > > > > > UAE, Kuwait, Britain (BP & Shell), Netherlands (Shell), > > > > > Norway (Equinor), Spain (Repsol), and two autocratic > > > > > countries that could as well be royalist (Russia and China). > > > > > > > > > > OFF WITH THEIR HEADS > > > > > > > > > > Must we do the American and French Revolutions again? > > > > > > > > > > Peter Fend > > > > > wannabe US citizen > > > > > peon of the Empire > > > > > > > > > > > On April 24, 2020 at 3:47 PM Sarah Markgraf < > > > > > > slipperg(a)optonline.net> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The link between Disney girl fantasies and “delivery > > > > > > fantasies” peeked my interest. > > > > > > > > > > > > Sent from my iPad > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Apr 23, 2020, at 9:35 AM, Peter Fend < > > > > > > > fend(a)ocean-earth.net> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ---------- Original Message ---------- > > > > > > > > From: Peter Fend < fend(a)ocean-earth.net> > > > > > > > > To: sofia bastidas < tvgov.info(a)gmail.com> > > > > > > > > Date: April 23, 2020 at 9:31 AM > > > > > > > > Subject: Agree? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > If you do, then--I ask--please forward these thoughts > > > > > > > > to Guillermo and Agustina. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I wake up full of desires to make history. > > > > > > > > The stagnation of my entire life is too much. > > > > > > > > Now, Bezos must fall, Bolsonaro must lose, > > > > > > > > the Amazon must be saved, Physiocratic > > > > > > > > management of land/water must begin, > > > > > > > > Putin must get an imaginative start to his > > > > > > > > next 8 years in the Kremlin, the reservoirs > > > > > > > > must be cleaned out, and we must be rich. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The complete collapse of Bezos is entirely > > > > > > > > possible. Such happened before in history. > > > > > > > > If people no longer believe in a company > > > > > > > > or its head, the whole thing can disappaer > > > > > > > > within months. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > To drive the point home: we spearhead any > > > > > > > > attack on Bezos with an attack on what I > > > > > > > > hated to even touch when I visited Harvard > > > > > > > > Law School in my 20s: the 3-inch thick US > > > > > > > > Internal Revenue Code. The document is > > > > > > > > a NIGHTMARE. And people spend their entire > > > > > > > > lives figuring out to cheat the public by using > > > > > > > > that book. Bezos hired the lawyers who would > > > > > > > > do exactly that. As Professional Parasites, > > > > > > > > eating away at the body politic and genuine > > > > > > > > free enterprise. Eating away at the USA like > > > > > > > > a disease. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Characterize "Amazon" as a disease worse > > > > > > > > than COViD, and everyone will flee in hororr. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > We can then take on the Disney princess > > > > > > > > fantasies, which created the market for selfish > > > > > > > > delivery fantasies. The public name for such > > > > > > > > an attack: TVGOV. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Pedro Quixote > > > > > > > >

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Yes, thingist!!
by Caspar Stracke 22 Apr '20

22 Apr '20

Dear all, Thingist? Really?!? Yes! In the midst of already spotting a misleading light at the end of the tunnel (it’s fake, it’s a wall of LEDs) for many of us the isolation has triggered an interesting output of writing - Weltschmerz, self isolation side-effects, midlife-crisis-ridden disaster-monologues, and other noble insights transformed into short essays, of which some are probably really worth sharing. If any of you do have some works that originate from this exceptional moment of an unraveling present, and consider sharing them, please do! Yes, it’s “the current thing”, because we thought it’s probably a smart idea to stay away from titles like “crisis journal”, “corona diaries” and other oh-so-fitting ways of romanticizing disaster (and turning it into kitsch) In fact we originally wanted to propose that all writings should refrain of including the notions “pandemic”, “corona” or going even further and propose an OuLiPo challenge by a call for texts that are written without using the letters C, O, V, I, D, as well as the numerals 1 and 9. So we rather talking about the thing. Of course we are also talking about THE THING. As old THING members I though it might be a great occasion to make use of this sleeping mailing list, in order to reconnect with old and new friends and colleagues which were –and maybe still are– loosely associated with THE THING. (hey: or not) The outcome will be an fanzine-style online journal, published far, far away from social media, designed closely to a physical counterpart, an issuu-style page-turner. So…whoever is interested, pls send texts, images, drawings, gifs, videos. Publishing deadline now! April 30th Yours, THE THING

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thingist April 2020