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Bernard Stiegler : Retourner le confinement en liberté de faire une expérience
by w 11 Aug '20

11 Aug '20

Bernard Stiegler: «Retourner le confinement en liberté de faire une expérience» Aussi paradoxal que cela puisse paraître, lorsque j’appris au mois de février 1983 que j’allais être libéré dans les jours suivants d’une peine de réclusion que je purgeais au centre de détention de Muret [Haute-Garonne], passé le premier moment de la joie de me savoir bientôt revenir auprès des miens, j’en vins presque aussitôt à me demander comment j’allais maintenir ce qu’il y avait de meilleur dans la situation carcérale qui avait été la mienne depuis quatre ans et huit mois que j’explorais ce que j’appelais la vertu de la prison. Ayant eu l’année précédente deux permissions de sortir, j’avais tout de suite compris que la libération pouvait tout aussi bien devenir une aliénation plus grande – plus grande que celle qui m’avait conduit en prison. Durant la période carcérale, et avec le soutien de Gérard Granel [philosophe, 1930-2000], j’avais méticuleusement élaboré une discipline extrêmement stricte, laquelle, au fil des ans, m’apporta des satisfactions de plus en plus intenses – évidemment au prix de peines, mais il en va toujours ainsi (comme dans l’escalade ou le marathon). Commencer par la lecture d’un texte de Mallarmé Je compris très vite que, pour ne pas souffrir du vide absolu qu’impose la détention, il me fallait travailler intensément. C’est pourquoi je parvins en quelques semaines à établir un programme quotidien grâce auquel dès mon réveil ou presque, je me dirigeais vers ce que Karl Popper a appelé « le troisième monde », « qui est surtout le monde de la pensée scientifique, de la pensée poétique et des œuvres d’art ». A cette époque, je prenais toujours cette direction en commençant par la lecture d’un texte de Mallarmé : cela mettait les idées en place. Je finissais la journée avec Proust, et entre les deux, j’étudiais en lisant le matin et en écrivant l’après-midi (avant tout à partir de mes lectures). Il est bien connu que la neutralisation, la suspension ou l’interruption (on dirait en grec l’épokhè) de la relation à ce que Popper appelle le premier monde et le deuxième monde (les états physiques du monde et les états mentaux du sujet) favorise ce que dans le langage de la psychanalyse on appellerait la sublimation. J’expérimentais cela jour après jour, sans aucune échappatoire possible, et cela devint une extraordinaire aventure dans ce troisième monde – étayée par l’encadrement universitaire de l’UFR de philosophie de Toulouse le Mirail, et grâce au télé-enseignement (par courrier postal, et non par vidéo). Ce ne fut possible que grâce à Granel, aux soutiens que je reçus de ma famille, à l’intelligence du directeur de la maison d’arrêt, et parce que j’étais seul en cellule. Il n’y avait alors dans les prisons ni téléphone ni télévision – seulement la radio, les journaux (pour qui pouvait les acheter) et les livres (empruntés à la bibliothèque ou apportés par Gérard). La radio me permettait de suivre l’actualité brièvement (j’écoutais le journal de 12 h 30 en déjeunant), et les livres me donnaient accès au troisième monde dont je tentais de me nourrir pour devenir capable d’un jour revenir aux premier et deuxième mondes. Le confinement actuel, quant aux conditions dans lesquelles il pourrait être fructueux, est comparable à celui que j’ai connu en détention, malheureusement d’abord en cela que très peu de détenus bénéficient de leur période de réclusion, et ce parce que, pour la plupart d’entre eux, les conditions ne sont pas réunies, à commencer par le fait qu’ils vivent dans la promiscuité (sauf en centres de détention), que souvent ils ne savent pas lire, que désormais la télévision est dans les cellules, etc. – outre qu’ils ne sont pas accompagnés par un ange gardien tel Gérard Granel. Cet état de fait n’est cependant en rien une fatalité. L’exécution de la peine peut être l’occasion d’une chance autant qu’il est possible – tout comme une maladie peut être une chance, ainsi que l’enseigne Georges Canguilhem en citant Ludovic Dugas puis Frédéric Nietzsche : « La maladie est (…) une expérimentation de l’ordre le plus subtil, instituée par la nature elle-même dans des circonstances bien déterminées et avec des procédés dont l’art humain ne dispose pas : elle atteint l’inaccessible. » (Dugas cité par Canguihem). « La valeur de tous les états morbides consiste en ceci qu’ils montrent sous un verre grossissant certaines conditions qui, bien que normales, sont difficilement visibles à l’état normal. » (Nietzsche cité par Canguilhem). L’invention d’une nouvelle façon de vivre Le confinement (carcéral, sanitaire ou guerrier) est une sorte de pathologie sociale, et lorsqu’il s’impose, il convient de le retourner en liberté de faire une expérience – laquelle peut procurer d’extraordinaires surprises portant en elles un potentiel salvateur de bifurcation, et engendrer ce que Canguilhem appelle une normativité – c’est-à-dire l’invention d’une nouvelle façon de vivre. Mais tout comme la maladie, cette expérience peut détruire, annihiler, tuer : cette possibilité en est le prix. Pour la plupart des détenus, le confinement carcéral est une catastrophe, qui les enfonce toujours plus terriblement dans la fatalité. Et cependant une telle expérience, pour autant précisément que l’on en puisse faire une expérience, et non un châtiment, peut être d’une richesse sans pareil. Le confinement en cours devrait être l’occasion d’une réflexion de très grande ampleur sur la possibilité et la nécessité de changer nos vies. Cela devrait passer par ce que j’avais appelé, dans Mécréance et discrédit (Galilée, 2004), un otium du peuple. Ce devrait être l’occasion d’une revalorisation du silence, des rythmes que l’on se donne, plutôt qu’on ne s’y plie, d’une pratique très parcimonieuse et raisonnée des médias et de tout ce qui, survenant du dehors, distrait l’homme d’être un homme. Préserver en particulier la virginité du matin de toute intrusion médiatique est essentiel : le matin peut alors devenir une fructification du vierge, du vivace et du bel aujourd’hui pour autant qu’il soit conduit avec ce que les stoïciens appellent tekhnè tou biou et Foucault « technique de soi ». Lire cet entretien de 2016 : Bernard Stiegler : « Je propose la mise en place d’un revenu contributif, qui favorise l’engagement dans des projets » C’est un tel apprentissage, c’est-à-dire un effort – qui devrait venir au cœur des réflexions de ceux qui devront à l’avenir trouver les voies d’un après-Covid-19. Lorsque, avec Patrick Braouezec, nous avons proposé d’expérimenter un revenu contributif sur le territoire de Plaine commune [établissement public territorial dont il est le président, en Seine-Saint-Denis], c’était une façon de soutenir un tel otium du peuple, et sur le mode des intermittents du spectacle qui ne trouvent des emplois intermittents que pour autant qu’ils cultivent un tel otium, c’est-à-dire une fructification de leurs singularités. Un confinement d’ampleur biosphétique Je pense ici tout particulièrement à la génération de Greta Thunberg, en direction de laquelle, avec Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, nous avons créé l’Association des amis de la génération Thunberg, et avec laquelle nous tentons de créer une école itinérante cultivant un tel otium en vue d’« étonner la catastrophe », pour citer Patrick Boucheron citant Victor Hugo, et inventer ainsi une nouvelle normativité. La génération Thunberg fait l’expérience du confinement d’ampleur biosphétique qui caractérise la fin de l’ère anthropocène dans laquelle nous tous nous sentons enfermés, et où nous tentons de vivre toujours plus près du désespoir. Le désespoir est aussi une expérience, dont il peut être beaucoup appris (n’est-ce pas le sens de Pâques chez les chrétiens ?), pour autant qu’il en soit pris soin comme de ce qui peut, dans certaines circonstances, devenir une forme sublime d’énergie. Published on April 19 and August 7, 2020 in Le Monde (Article réservé aux abonnés) https://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2020/04/19/bernard-stiegler-retourner…

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Sixteen Beaver / Society of the Friends of the Virus Volume 4
by Caspar Stracke 10 Aug '20

10 Aug '20

(by way of Sixteen Beaver) Society of the Friends of the Virus Volume 4 / LIFE IS NOT A COMMODITY LANGUAGE IS NOT A COMMODITY EARTH IS NOT A COMMODITY HEALTH IS NOT A COMMODITY KNOWLEDGE IS NOT A COMMODITY AIR IS NOT A COMMODITY WATER IS NOT A COMMODITY LAND IS NOT A COMMODITY ... A COLONY ... THE COMMODIFICATION/COLONIZATION OF LIFE LANGUAGE EARTH MUST BE BROUGHT TO A HALT, PROLIFERATE THE STRIKE* Here is Volume 4: http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_4_society_of_the_friends.pdf <http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_4_society_of_the_friends.pdf> *The notion of strike invoked here, as well as other points emerging in this volume have been elaborated or engaged with in previous volumes. All of them can be found here: http://centreparrhesia.org/ <http://centreparrhesia.org/> ______________________________________ Videos from Previous Assemblings We are hopeful to have more soon, but the most recent video we have shared in the link below is our meeting on 'milpa' (as it is practiced and nurtured by comrades in the Yucatan) as a way of thinking concretely around convivial tools which can hold together social infrastructures of community. To view visit: http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/ <http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/> Testing Assembling - Movement 18 - Valiana Aguilar and Ángel Kú on Milpa and the Social Infrastructures of Community with Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy Also, to have a sense of the questions that were present in the context of struggles in Beirut before and during the pandemic, which the recent explosions are expression and exacerbation of, you can watch Movement 9, in which our friends Haig Aivazian and Göksun Yazici shared notes on the situtaions in Lebanon and Turkey respectively. _______________________________________________ 16 Beaver Group Exodus: 16 Beaver Street Contested: New York for more info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org <http://www.16beavergroup.org/> to subscribe: general-join(a)16beavergroup.org <mailto:general-join@16beavergroup.org> to unsubscribe: general-leave(a)16beavergroup.org <mailto:general-leave@16beavergroup.org>

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the current thing
by w 01 Aug '20

01 Aug '20

The current thing is now online at: https://the.current.thing.net Kudos to Caspar and Keith! Go and buy a print copy! Edition of 500. I get two.

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The Virus Is Our Idea of Ourselves
by sebastian＠rolux.org 30 Jul '20

30 Jul '20

The Virus Is Our Idea of Ourselves by Claire Fontaine "Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, 'I would prefer not to.'" [1] "In The Undercommons if we beginc anywhere, we begin with the right to refuse what has been refused to you." [2] In the midst of a global crisis with no solution in sight, the strategy of total refusal appears irresponsible. No matter how explicitly corrupt and dangerous for itself and the planet the current political organization of everything is: according to most voices in the media we need constructive proposals, seemingly impossible reforms, demented trust, and a good dose of fear and submission. For many of the subjectivities who rebelled in this climate for the past forty years, organization has proven increasingly complicated and claims have become less and less federating; precariousness and fragmentation have been blamed for creating dis-homogeneous experiences. This has allowed repression to hit harder and working conditions to worsen. The dismantlement of the welfare state and workers' rights has gone ahead whilst subjectivities were inexplicably adjusting to the disaster. Struggle has come to define the psychological trouble brought by this new condition in which fighting for one's rights is an almost ungraspable possibility. Internalized violence doesn't only come from one's vulnerable socioeconomic condition, but from the burden of the political defeat that causes it. The return of fascism under so many forms wouldn't be understandable without taking into account the lack of society's anti-bodies against it, brought along by the depression and self-hatred of all the generations of rebels that have seen their physical and emotional world crumbling down under gentrification and mass unemployment. Debt is one of the tools of this oppression; another is widespread poverty (even amongst the employed population). Though being rather common strategies for governance, what is new is that nowadays they are experienced as deeply individual, depending on personal failures, shameful and non-federating. People of all classes sense that they have personal responsibility for an order of things that is destroying them as human beings. They resent what is ruining them but also fear the internal crisis of the power structure that is harming them, fearful that worst conditions can arise; whenever racism kills, poverty strikes, or climate change proves the impossibility of capitalism, they feel guilty and complicit rather than angry. This phase of capitalism has managed to render integration to the productive chain as far more desirable and urgent than anything else, including health, mental balance, human relationships, and a meaningful life. The mass of the constantly excluded pressing outside the gates of whatever we ourselves are included in, the anxiety of losing one's place is more intense and real than any solidarity toward the people in need can be. The deep awareness of being disposable is poisonous. This has allowed work to become more and more invasive in everybody's lives and the general perception of professional experiences to be toxic, dissocializing, competitive, and selfish. Having a job is now a lonely and scary business. And yet in the past few months work has been presented as massively unessential: the COVID-19 measures made it clear that key workers are a tiny overexploited percentage of the population; all the others can just sit back and relax or do their chatter on zoom, and the world will keep turning. In this deep financial crisis, jobs have also become increasingly hard to find and badly paid, but the superstition still stands that working is the only way to provide for one's individual needs and only means to exist as a person; any other condition is considered a befallen one. Because the dream has become precisely what makes the dream impossible, and here capitalism shows its devilish genius: by longing for vast depopulated spaces, powerful cars, expensive lives or just having enough to live in unaffordable cities without having to work several jobs, people run the rat race and don't fight. The objective failure of the economy at keeping society together and preserving class solidarity simply to reproduce the species isn't experienced as a scandal but internalized on a subjective level as the anxiety of being stuck with others that we don't understand. The separating effect of neoliberalism and the psychological weakening of the isolated individuals is not an accident or a side effect: it's vital for this stage of the productive process, where our mental balance needs to be cannibalized in order to secure adhesion to the unacceptable status quo. Limiting social interactions to the chosen ones isn't seen as impoverishing but as hygienic. Self-isolation during the pandemic had something familiar, both for the social classes who have been practicing it for a long time and for many others who can't do so: not only viruses go through the body but also power relationships. The social Darwinism of Boris Johnson's herd immunity theory is in reality the secret murmur of all the liberalist policies, it's the muteness of the stock market's graphs, it's the bureaucracy of any office, the biopower and the necropolitics that we have normalized, although they are bankrupting our lives. Survival cannot and should not be the horizon of any politics. And yet very violent explosions of conflicts have taken place in the past years amongst the populations that cannot participate in the dream of a life made of material comfort, human separation, and electronic interactions. They weren't professionally characterized or homogeneous in terms of class, they were disorderly, transversal, intersectional, critical of the social pact that excluded them. They were human strikes. Women have, through the women's strikes and the #MeToo movement, highlighted the paradoxes of integrating themselves within the professional world which is ecologically unsustainable, economically and emotionally criminal, and informed by toxic ethics. (Rape as a culture goes further than the violence against women: it's the way we, as a civilization, relate to every living source of energy and nourishment.) Indigenous and nomadic populations, who have seen for centuries their way of life definitively and unmistakably rendered impossible, now witness the achievement of a long cycle of colonization as both extraction and genocide. War, the construction of pipelines and walls, the deforestation and the depletion of any form of subsistence outside of waged work, generates profits and kills the unexploitable. Their environment being their livelihood, for some people it only takes intensive agriculture to be wiped out. And then there are black lives: a site of extraordinary manifestation of systemic violence in all its forms. In the United States the black workforce has been kept, since desegregation, in a state of informal slavery, through exclusion, daily racism, and all sorts of institutionalized abuse, including mass incarceration and killings. Black Lives Matter has been possibly the most educational movement of the century for white people of all classes because, even more than the Black Panthers, it has taught everyone that whiteness cannot be reformed. Demanding that one's life matters for others is beyond a political claim. Life isn't naked before being stripped of its value by society and produced as repugnant and excludable. The looting that took place after George Floyd's death was deemed as politically unacceptable by many, but the truth is that a certain level of outrage cannot be translated into orderly words – it's beyond political because it points to what politics doesn't cover: the naked life deprived of any protection. Only smashing the surroundings can echo the infinite damage done to broken people and broke households by a broken system. The lack of integration is blamed on patriarchy, racism, colonialism, but one is still left with the fact that wanting to change the (unchangeable) condition of being a woman, a Native American or black comes down to self-hatred when the reason for one's discrimination is one's physiological and human condition. The deepest impoverishment comes from the lack of alternatives when faced with this blackmail: the only reformist path available for these people would be to become their own enemies, pretending that it's possible and acceptable to enter the very system that has exterminated and rejected most of them. And the system cannot be reformed because it thrives on this rejection, on the unpaid housework, the slave labor, the pillage of natural resources. For capitalism, refusing a (symbolic, cultural, and economic) value to things is the only way of making profit from them. Because we cannot ask to mend the disaster, what is 'radical' now isn't the perspective that refuses reformism, our present condition of communal but not communized humiliation, our lack of political dignity orchestrated by a system of government that has found in our self-respect a new land to colonize and destroy. To trace lines of flight we don't need to become invisible, to cultivate opacity, to dive into conspiracy theory, we just need to stay illegible and unaffiliated and learn how to collude with each other's disaffiliation. Carla Lonzi wrote in 1975: "What I am is pathetically invisible and inaudible and I can't use it. Now I am sure that I am not making a drama of it, because it is in fact a drama, my decision of not falling into the trap anymore is taken [...]. I, who don't exist socially, can recognize another woman who doesn't exist socially and so on. But my consciousness isn't recognized by culture so this chain of recognition between non-existing is valid only between us. I don't see the possibility of a different man because it is unthinkable to give up the social identity that he has for one that doesn't exist." [3] If the man/woman relationship offers the most tragic example of the impossibility of being recognized as a political subject even inside intimate interactions, it's because the occultation of the economic aspect of it is done through the ideology of love. In fact, not only is exploitation possible, authorized, even foundational of the social structure of our society, but it provides the model for heterosexual love. The love of the advertisements, the pop songs, the Hollywood movies is informed by the paradigms of conquest, enclosure, and private property. The mental balance of subjects resting on their relational life, the fact that entire parts of the population are simply dehumanized and represented as naked life threatens our own self-esteem: human fabric is what makes worlds because worlds happen when we can say "we." The nonsense of patriarchy, the darkest mystery that supports its economic metabolism, is its sexual desire and supposed affection for women, who are in fact objectified, despised, and constantly discriminated against in every single social class. From our houses where we have performed remote work we have experienced again the different intensities of gendered multitasking. We saw Deborah Haynes on July 1st being shut down by Sky News because her son barged into her home office, where she was broadcasting live, asking for two biscuits; from the studio her male colleague commented laconically "We'll leave Deborah Haynes in full flow there with some family duties." In 2017 Robert Kelly was subject to a similar incident on the BBC: his two toddlers bolted into the room while he was on air but his wife promptly grabbed them and the interview went on. Last March he was consulted as an authority in the matter of smart working on the Today show. The profile, titled "'BBC Dad' reflects on viral work-from-home moment: 'Mostly fun, sometimes weird'" reads: "Robert Kelly, who inadvertently became a viral star in 2017 when his two children barged into a live interview he was giving, reflected on his family's internet fame in an essay published by an Australian think tank." [4] If a husband, a friend, someone had come to prevent Deborah Haynes's son from insisting on-camera for his biscuits, she wouldn't have felt the humiliation and neither would we. But she was alone, that's why her child needed her, and that's why she could be shut down. The virus has helped us understand why self-abolition has become an appealing and more realistic perspective than either the feminism of equality or the one of difference. Maya Gonzalez and Marina Vishmidt have explored the idea of self-abolition in the specific case of gender and the eccentric position that women hold within the productive/reproductive system of society. Sharing the work of care will never be an option under patriarchy, no matter the policies: the simple fact that the conversation is taking place at a personal and at a political level, that the care of children should be and isn't a task for men and women alike, is the sign that we are living under a regime that doesn't value human life whenever it isn't immediately productive, and as such is self-hating therefore unreformable. The only processes to revalue life are revolutionary, because only in the struggle, as Silvia Federici states, do we belong to ourselves. Our expropriation runs deep and the refugees' condition is a mirror and an allegory of it. Human masses excluded from all service and benefits of contemporary civilization are growing. According to the UN Refugee Agency, in 2020 at least 79.5 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are nearly 26 million refugees, around half of whom are under the age of 18. The time has come for the hypocrisy of the humanitarian ideology, through which capitalism preserves its progressive and civilizing image, to be unmasked: human rights are not being protected because there have never been any rights outside of workers' rights, the ones that had been fought for in productive places, where strikes could actually cause quantifiable economic losses. All other struggles have been of a revolutionary nature and they have demanded a change of civilization, a change of paradigm of perception and understanding reality, the revolution of the current system of value. As long as private property, with all its psychological and physiological ravages will be interpreted as a "reasonable" or "necessary" distribution of the sensible, we won't be able to think. This means that for now millions of subjectivities cannot exist; they are in the limbo of naked life and can't access any symbolic status, any political revolt. There is no rationality on the side of the world governance that can bind us to any loyalty in front of this. There is no identity based on institutional recognition that will allow us to transform the current state of things. We need to struggle as whatever singularities. We need to go on strike from our production and reproduction of subjectivity, we call the strike that will modify both the political situation and ourselves in the process, the human strike. It can be quiet, imperceptible and deeply transformative, irreversible. We can abolish the meaning of being black or being a woman as we abolished the one of being a slave. We won't be complicit in our oppression. An Italian feminist slogan says "We don't believe what they say about us," we must negotiate the terms of how we are perceived and valued. The same must be done with every form of identity, the ones that burden us because they carry a stigma and the ones that separate us from others because they are privileged: they both need to be dismantled, they are both forms of submission. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the lack of value that human life has under our current political regime, the toxicity of our daily living conditions, and how easily our solitude and surveillance can be enforced by different governments. Fred Moten writes in The Undercommons that "the coalition emerges out of your recognition that it's fucked up for you, in the same way that we've already recognized that it's fucked up for us. I don't need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?" [5] Now these findings are in our hands and we no longer need to respect what doesn't respect us. We need lines of flight that help us to become complicit in our dispossession rather than our submission, to transform it into a communal force, shape a reality that is never represented and never will be: that reality is illegible because it's yet to be written. [1] Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, 1856. [2] Jack Halberstam, "The Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons," introduction to The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, by Stefano Harvey and Fred Moten (New York: Minor Compositions, 2013), p. 8. [3] Carla Lonzi, Taci, anzi parla. Diario di una femminista (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1978), pp. 1172–1173. [Translation by the authors.] [4] Scott Stump, "'BBC Dad' reflects on viral work-from-home moment: 'Mostly fun, sometimes weird,'" Today, NBC, March 17, 2020 [March 13, 2018], https://www.today.com/parents/bbc-dad-revisits-his-family-s-viral-moment-on… r-t124934. [5] Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, pp. 140–141. // via https://www.textezurkunst.de/articles/claire-fontaine-idea-ourselves/

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NuMu Home Delivery (plain text copy)
by w 22 Jul '20

22 Jul '20

THURSDAY 07/23/20 2PM EST Phantom Threads: Restoring The Thing BBS This event is organized by the New Museum’s digital art affiliate Rhizome to mark the launch of a restoration of The Thing BBS, which will be presented as part of First Look: New Art Online. It follows on from an event exploring the community and culture of The Thing BBS on Tuesday, July 21 at 2pm. To receive access instructions and a reminder, please RSVP here: https://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/1676/phantom-threads-restoring-the-… Founded in New York City in 1991, The Thing was a Bulletin Board System–a forum where users could post and exchange messages–focusing on contemporary art and cultural theory. Among the tens of thousands of BBSes that flourished from the late 1970s to the 1990s, The Thing was notable for its design and community dynamics. Considered by its founder Wolfgang Staehle to be a kind of social sculpture, The Thing included features such as an anonymized chatroom, and it was a hub for online experimental writing. This history is little known, because most of the messages posted on The Thing BBS have been lost or otherwise inaccessible for many years. During his tenure as Rhizome’s digital conservator, Ben Fino-Radin began a research project to locate missing archives from The Thing BBS. He succeeded in securing a WordPerfect file containing a screen dump of more than 400 pages of messages saved by a hacker named Blackhawk, former sysadmin of The Thing. With the support of a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities. Rhizome has undertaken a project to recover, make accessible, and study this material. This event marks the launch of a web-based interface to offer access to many of the recovered threads from this research process, which will be copresented by Rhizome and the New Museum as part of First Look: New Art Online. Following Tuesday’s event “Consensual Hallucinations: Early Online Writing from The Thing BBS Archives,” this event brings together Rhizome’s Preservation Director Dragan Espenschied, Rhizome Software Curator Lyndsey Moulds, and Ben Fino-Radin, director of Small Data Industries, for a conversation about the philosophical and practical questions that arose in process of offering access to the archives of The Thing BBS.

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Consensual Hallucinations by way of New Museum Home Delivery
by w 19 Jul '20

19 Jul '20

Zoom in while I zoom out on "Consensual Hallucinations: Early Online Writing from The Thing BBS Archives." With Michael Connor and Lori Emerson. July 21, 2PM EST More below:

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EM19282020
by Caspar Stracke 07 Jul '20

07 Jul '20

il ritorno della cosa… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z1fKvN7K_o&fbclid=IwAR1kQaf8O07TgrzLebGZYa… <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z1fKvN7K_o&fbclid=IwAR1kQaf8O07TgrzLebGZYa…> I didnt even know of this soundtrack And I ike to share a woulderful short story by Tosh Berman, most likely in spirit of the humor of il maestro himself: (..Instead of re-posting glorious obituaries on this genius composer…) C.

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call for textz
by sebastian＠rolux.org 21 Jun '20

21 Jun '20

--> inbox(a)textz.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe I give it to you all on a dime o__o /##\__ textz.com https://textz.com/ 2000-2004 // 2020- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[Fwd: Episode 6: Jean-Marie Straub, France Against Robots]
by w 12 Jun '20

12 Jun '20

Sorry for the interruption, but I just had to forward this. Miguel has been running a fantastic program for years and he keeps on surprising me with material you don't usually expect coming from the traditional gallery scene...

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[Fwd: COVID COMMERCIAL]
by w 11 Jun '20

11 Jun '20

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we breathe again
by sebastian＠rolux.org 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

# machine-translated without any further editing # you may want to read the original, here: # https://lundi.am/Nous-respirons-a-nouveau WE BREATHE AGAIN "We know from history, no force is unbeatable" Appeared in Monday, June 8, 2020 (Monday, June 246, 2020) May 25, 2020: another image of police brutality on the internet, this time a small eye shaped tab covers it discreetly, the image is blurred and the digital giants - adding their little "benevolent" personal censorship - warn me of the violence of the images I am likely to see. Two months of immobility watching police violence without being able to react, without being able to share my suffering and despair. Two months of powerlessness to balance between denial and exposure, between a necessary protection and a will to know, in a relationship more than ever bulimic to militant news. I hesitate and I pass, I don't click to launch the video, I don't have the courage. As the cops took to the streets, images of smears swarmed on the internet, the more the police heads took over the public space, the more the police figure dominated online. Apart from private space - and still not for everyone - all living spaces during the lockdown, real or virtual, were saturated by the image of an all-powerful police force. Social networks, the dominant media, but also activists, became the echo chamber of this double symbolic and physical violence. Locked up, inactive, on all screens, the inhuman brutality of the condoms resounds through our optical nerves: in our eyes, our computers and our dreams. The muzzle that falls like a whip on a poor madman who has escaped from the asylum and the door that opens on the passage of a motorbike, the lethal gestures of the cops settle in our imagination and amaze us, taken as we are in our loneliness and our incapacity. The robotic, untouchable, imperturbable army of the immobile lines of CRS or the shattering irruption of the BRAVs - which we have experienced, put into images or seen - comes to bring down in our inner self the sketches of uncontrolled revolts, muscle relaxation and inconsiderate gestures. The impunity of the police figure that haunts the internet, haunts us and temporarily breaks our rebellion. Inheritors of an impasse in critical thinking, we continue to underestimate the power of images, and create ourselves the oppressive images of the invulnerability of the police. Yet, as we know from history, no force is unbeatable - think of the royal power invested with the divine: who would dare at the time to attack God's representative on earth - and we know from experience, the police are sometimes vulnerable. Contrary to the claims of security ideology, there is always a flaw in the system, always a mistake or a passage, never the militarization of existence, despite its stupid claims, will ever be total. Only sometimes fear wins us over and the irrational overrides reason, the magical police figure alienates us more than ever, the all-police man bewitches us, he keeps us wise and mute. I take refuge, I flee and the mechanisms of psychic self-defence are activated, I don't want to see or hear anything anymore. Meanwhile, we beat up outside, we beat up in our neighbourhoods, we beat up, for nothing, for race, for pleasure, for power. And the pride of the dominant spreads out from his disgusting rightness. I can't breathe. Everywhere their petty stories during the lockdown, their little fake problems, their world "after" even more disgusting and unfair than the one "before". It's suffocating. Their new and comfortable justifications for daily repression. Their untenable indifference to the oppressed, letting them go into the most banal and vile racism. We suffocate in the neighbourhoods, we suffocate in the cities, we suffocate with the police boot on George Floyd's neck, on the necks of blacks, on the necks of activists, on the necks of our comrades. He can't breathe, I can't breathe, we all hold our breath. But finally George Floyd will never breathe again, the police kill in full light, live. A stranger's neck is crushed in Minneapolis and blows rain down on friends in Paris. Always humanists, the police beat, maim and kill... to save lives. Then the anguish takes over, our breathing gets excited, old marks are revealed, bad memories come back: I am handcuffed - I wear my hands around my neck -. What if he had tightened the handcuffs? What if he had continued? Maybe I'd have died too, just like Floyd. Except he let go of me and sent my head against the hood of their car. "Save," why? Cause I'm white? Maybe, although these days what they call "black" blocks tend to be prime targets for armed racist peacekeepers. Let us also remember the new High Court of Clichy, an immense ultra-modern maze with a fascist aesthetic where the scoundrel laws are applied, a building besieged by tens of thousands of demonstrators on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. The building visible from all over Paris is only the top of the iceberg of repression, underneath it hides the black part of the pacified world, in its basement: the "depot". A veritable clean dungeon, under the glassed and luminous court of resplendent justice, a gigantic, sanitized and inhuman prison unfolds. Going "to the depot" - while waiting for an immediate appearance for example - is like paying a visit to the other side of the modern world, to a penitentiary universe where humans are treated like animals: abandoned in individual cells for an indeterminate period of time, up to 48 hours, everyone there screams in rage and hits their bars in distress. The policemen are the lords and devils, the prisoners, stripped of their rights, defenceless. The depot is a good example of what can be prison, the CRAs or the madhouse. I saw there the reality of this racist world where eighty percent of the prisoners are racist people who are regularly subjected to this punitive treatment: gardav, depot, prison. Escorted by two policemen, I am taken to an office where I have to sign in at the depot, I ask for a lawyer and a doctor, both are not on my file, I refuse to go back to my cell but the cop threatens me and says to his colleagues in a threatening way: "Hey guys, the black block doesn't want to sign in". As I go to get my blanket, I witness a chilling scene: two fat white cops shouting orders, in a language he can't understand, to a half-naked migrant, shaking like a leaf. Tears run down his dirty cheeks. In this "other" world, certainly dystopian, for those who live in it or pass through it, shouting the slogan: "cop, rapist, murderer" does not sound like an exaggeration or a mere watchword, but a cathartic ritual, a vital necessity. We would like to scream at the top of our lungs, but we are out of breath, we can't breathe, we are suddenly alone. On the other side of the world, a black man has died, who will remember him in this dark time? He will join the long funeral procession of the forgotten oppressed, and the image of his unpunished murder will be added to the symbolic weapons of the police. We will remain there, with our images and our regrets, our rage and our pain will be covered with ruins. Fortunately, the uprisings will bring us relief. They make the rage explode and we throw the pain overboard, we share the suffering with comrades and executioners, we put it in front of the indifferent, we transform it and share it together. Also the uprisings give reason to those raised before, against media sorting, against forgetting, against renunciation, the raised support each other psychically, they ensure the continuity of a power. Thus in 2019, after the unpunished death of Rémi Fraisse, the mutilations and wounded of the social movements and the expulsions of the zads, the defeat at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, comes the Yellow Vests movement. In 2020, after the repression of the movement against pension reform, the massacre of the Gilets-Jaunes, the unacceptable death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement. In each new uprising, what is at stake is the mental health of the activists, their capacity to fight over a long period of time - necessary for important transformations such as the removal of the police institution -, the security of the populations who have always been disarmed in the face of the police or their new targets. Here, the current uprising, if it is an epidermal reaction against police violence, if it is a movement for the emancipation of ethnic minorities, if it is an anti-racist movement, whatever happens, it is fighting for all the victims of police violence, and they are very numerous. In reality, it also fights for the "Youth from the suburbs", for the "ultra-left" activists and the criminalized Yellow Vests, as well as for the repressed trade unionists. The more the Black Lives Matter movement spreads, the more the images of these actions spread, the more the images of barricades in front of the White House and of fires arrive in Europe. The images of the uprisings heal us, it is no longer our powerlessness that is running in a loop on the social networks, but our power. The world is no longer connected to images of French policemen throwing a racist person in the breast with insults dating back to the Algerian war, but to African-Americans setting fire to the cars of the racist American state. No longer on advertising presentations of police drones by the proto-fascist town hall of Nice, but on demonstrators on horseback raising their fists; a police station burning down, a construction machine used as a battering ram, a heroic boxer demonstrator, monster demonstrations in all the major Western cities ... so many images that give us back our power of action, that frighten the leaders and that circulate our collective intelligence. We know that a struggle of representations accompanies our struggle, but there is a lot of confusion about it. Let's just say that for each creation of a police drone image, we need an image of a drone shot down with a roll of toilet paper; for each beating, a stoning, etc., we need an image of a police drone. An audiovisual rule that also supposes that before making images you have to create the necessary situation, and see the satisfactory result: when only one car burns and all the media use the image, individual repression is very strong (as in the case of the Valmy dock), when hundreds of cars burn, you are already more quiet. And then surprise, populations are set ablaze when you least expect it: banned demonstrations, covid19, totalitarian health measures, permanent emotional blackmail, and now tens of thousands of young people, in all the big cities of France, decide not to let it go on any longer and to change the fear of the camp. The uprisings heal us, we find our brothers and sisters, our comrades, we can finally get our breath back and scream at the top of our lungs, we can clear the police boots that compel us. Show our strength to the police institution and its defenders, threaten the state power with a popular counter-power. We breathe again. And in these processions that are so pleasantly socially mixed, the images create dialectical sparks: the image of Athenians attacking an American embassy in Molotov reminds us of historical elements and the imaginations open up to the possibilities of the past. There are more links in these global revolts with the 1970s - a period when feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist movements were even more powerful - with images of the Black Panthers and their allies than with the television images of the "suburban revolt" of 2005. With this uprising and the images it creates, the dominant images are far away now, and we can hope that they will lead to their disappearance, the multiple exotic - and partly racist - fantasies of the supposed alliance of the revolutionary movement with the suburbs. We breathe better. But an uprising is not a revolution, and experience teaches us this too, the breath is exhausted by only breathing during uprisings and holding the rest of the time in apnea. The question is always the same: how to become solid, how to hold on in time, how to organize ourselves, how to no longer run out of air? If for the time being the situation is not under control by the government, the media remain silent and the government reflects, the reactionary movement will come sooner or later in the coming weeks. Let us remember - for those who have known it, or share it with those who have not - the month of December in the Yellow Vests: the rioting situation peaked, then fell further and further to suffocate under bloody repression. We can bet that the government will try the same stupid strategy with populations that are all the more easily criminalised the more the state is racist. Today that we are relieved, let's ask ourselves the right questions, for example: 1) how to preserve a social mix that only a spontaneous movement could allow? 2) how to keep the struggle in an anti-imperialist and internationalist field? 3) how to keep control of the street and the pressure on the forces of law and order 4) how to anchor the movement in time and space? If the answers to these questions are to be answered with the help of our individual and collective imagination, it is almost certain that we must draw on the historical and necessarily unknown experiences of the American Black Panther Party. There is already there: the evidence of a political foundation by neighborhood, a synthetic organization ranging from childcare to hijacking and "police surveillance patrols": "In January 1967, the party officially opened its first office in Oakland. Within months of its establishment, it began a patrol campaign to monitor the actions of the city's police. The action was supposed to respond to the seventh point of its program: "We demand an immediate end to police brutality and the killing of blacks. The Black Panthers were inspired by similar actions in Watts, California, the previous summer. Negro Citizen Alert Patrols were organized by equipping vehicles with scanners to listen and track LAPD cars. Equipped with law books and tape recorders, the patrols made sure that every law enforcement action was legal. However, the operation had to be stopped after the police destroyed the recording devices and forcibly dispersed the patrols. The Black Panthers added an element to the Los Angeles group's initial panoply by arming the participants of the Oakland City surveillance rounds. The group's goal, however, was to stay within the strict framework of legality. It relies on the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California to justify the carrying of concealed weapons by its members. Members receive training on the basic constitutional rights to arrest and carry weapons." Signed X Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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The Re-uptake of Labor
by sebastian＠rolux.org 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

totally unfinished business (the translation) but what isn't ;) https://thegermanissue.com/jpg/reprise.jpg The Re-uptake of Labor BERLIN, MAY 3, 2020 | #ECOLOGY #LIFE #WORK Filmed on 10 June 1968 at the entrance to the Wonder factory (light bulbs). We see a single woman, in a large gathering of men, the moment which, after the strike of a thousand events in May '68, everyone is supposed to go back to work. The voices of reason, embodied by the male functionaries of uprising, remind the woman of the small concessions they have been offered, also the possible concessions with regard to an indefinite future, the potentiality that lies in the events of the strike itself, and so they ask for adjournment and await a concession from her in return. But she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to go back. Her "emotionality" in the face of what she is so bad at "mediating" with "reason": that this situation here, the ordered return to the dirt of the factory, is about her life, which in the moment of the interruption of everday sameness had opened itself up to her, in a completely different projection, towards completely different forms of production, maybe even the opposite, an end to permanent production - that makes the men around here visibly uncomfortable. And that's how hands end up on shoulders. There also appears a man, the figure of The Young Man, who is ready to face the camera discursively, which means properly. This doesn't disturb the sequence, in the film she will now disappear among the talking heads and bodies, he keeps playing on the predefined territory. More men follow who will always be right, also in their life after the film, but they will never find justice, and then they'll be wondering why the one they keep talking at, whenever they are in the right, always reacts so "hysterically". Even though hysterical, that's only and exactly what they are themselves, as they exploit every possible situation to perform forms of speech (almost always ideological and almost never spoken from experience) that, without consideration for losses, maximize their own profit. Of course, May 3 2020 is not just literally about the return to the factory. Because the factories of the 21st century, the logistics centers for example, are still hives of activity. On May 3, 2020, what she doesn't want, what she doesn't want to return to, is the fabrication of life. The return to a fabricated life that is not only unsustainable and irresilient, but also mendacious and violent and boring and false, unbearable not just a vision of the future, but unbearable now, in every moment. The ecological crisis of capitalism is merely the sum of billions of individual ecological crises, of individual lives that have become too abstract and careless and miserable and uncontinuable: a global desaster that is bearing your name. That has been going on forever, and that will continue with certrainty, while we're busy figuring out who is at fault, and carry out wellness therapy against corona in social separation, without a practical critique of separation. And in the case of the Germans, who are already celebrating themselves as Weltmeister of Coronabewältigung(1), May 3, 2020 is all about cautiously ramping up export production again, to make sure the virus doesn't cause a true catastrophe. That means car production, and everyone will be ordered to drive to Rimini for holidays, just like in the 1950s. And in this respect, the reprise du travail is not only about the labor of life and its reproduction - in the kitchen, by the stove, in bed and on zoom - but also about the fabrication of death and destruction. The Germans owe a large portion of their their prosperity to the production of a machine that kills over three and a half thousand people every day, nearly one and a half million per year, and these are people whose sudden but still often miserable deaths are already priced into German prosperity, including the five thousand Euros of free money for freelancers, by which the Berlin Senate puruses its clientele policy that promotes: "Keep it up!" and "Carry on as if nothing happened." And she'd rather not. She prefers not to(2). And that(3) remains our house(4), and finally throw the cars out of Kreuzberg, and if that doesn't work out then throw out the Greens and the Left and the Social Democrats.(5) Notes: (1) World champions of "coping with corona", derived from the noun "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", "coping with the past", which is the term Germans use when they celebrate their victory over the holocaust, the fact that they've managed to cope with it. The verb "bewältigen" means "to successfully deal with" a workload, or "to overcome" a difficult task, but clearly there is "Gewalt" ("walten" means to govern) and "überwältigen" in it, to overpower a victim in the moment of arrest or assault. (2) Melville, Bartleby (the last consensus concept persona of the radical left, or at least of Diedrich Diederichsen and friends, which includes piratecinema) (3) The end is a quote from one of the most famous Ton Steine Scherben tracks, "Rauch-Haus-Song"(6), about the occupation of Bethanien and the cops on Mariannenplatz: "This is our house! Throw Schmidt und Press und Mosch out of Kreuzberg, finally!" Schmidt and Press and Mosch were representatives of the real estate mafia who at the time were constructing the NKZ (Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum) at Kottbusser Tor, which was finished in December 1972. Lead singer Rio Reiser would later pursue a solo career, see "Junimond". (4) "That remains our house" refers to the "House Bartleby", the name of the allegedly former leftist association that in 2020 initiated the nazi demos at Volksbühne. The "House Bartleby" is where the Tocotronic-Left(7) - who we have to thank for the lie of the "Querfront"(8) on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz(9), and who always just wanted "to be part of a youth movement"(10), no matter for or against what, or if at 17 or as pensioneers - has, hoping for hard times, holed itself up. (5) "Then she's alone with CDU and AfD?" - "No, they have to be kicked out firse. Alone with the Bergpartei(11) and KPD/RZ(12) hopefully." - "Hmm... aren't they all infiltrated by Die Partei(13)?" - "The party that put up K.I.Z.(14) as Kreuzberg candidates?" - "Yes, those with Sexism Against the Right(15)." - "Hmm..." (6) "The double album Keine Macht für Niemand ('No power for no-one') was released in 1972 by rock band Ton Steine Scherben. The track "Rauch-Haus-Song" describes the scenes when the police attempted to evict the squatted Georg-von-Rauch-Haus in December 1971. Members of the band were involved in the squat and were present when the police attacked. A derelict nurses' dormitory, part of the former Bethanien hospital, had been occupied in early 1971. It was one of the first buildings to be squatted in Berlin. The squatters had renamed the building Georg-von-Rauch-Haus after Georg von Rauch, a leftist who was shot dead by the police on 5 December 1971. The police action was unsuccessful and the Georg-von-Rauch-Haus remains in existence almost fifty years later. Within the German squatter movement, the "Rauch-Haus-Song" became an anthem, with the refrain 'Das ist unser Haus' (This is our house) being shouted out as a motto." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauch-Haus-Song) (7) The founding pamphlet of "House Bartleby" prominently refers to the German band "Tocotronic" - which piratecinema strongly dislikes - as a witness for lazyness as a political strategy. Singer Dirk von Lowtzow attained nationwide semi-prominence and is, among other things, a Texte zur Kunst regular. via: https://thegermanissue.com/texts/the_re-uptake_of_labor.html german version: https://piratecinema.org/screenings/20200503 video: https://piratecinema.org/videos/reprise.mkv

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By way of Sixteen Beaver
by Caspar Stracke 29 May '20

29 May '20

The amount of Sixteen Beaver’s output, writing and on-line discourse on life and politics beyond the pandemic is both amazing and overwhelming. Saturday -- 05.30.20 -- Testing Assembling Fifth Edition CONTENTS: 0. Short Note 1. Today 2. Tomorrow (Saturday's Assembling) 3. Videos from Previous Weeks 4. Additional Links 5. In Memorium ______________________________________ 0. Short Note We send this invitation to the fifth testing of assembling. It will take place tomorrow (Saturday May 30, 2020) at 11am New York Time. Please write to mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> if you are interested to take part. ______________________________________ 1. Today / Introduction We convene this assembling in the wake of so many whose lives have been senselessly taken in what unfolds as a pandemic, yet can also been seen, as Silvia Federici noted in our first assembling, as pre-meditated and structurally adjusted death (e.g., only taking the most obvious case of 50 years of neoliberal privatization and economization of health care). And we do so facing with deep sadness and a profound anger over the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery which recall Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Jamar Clark, Akai Gurley, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Charles Kinsey, and how many daily whose death is not recorded, captured, noted, which no timeline can grasp if not to return to that age of 'discovery' and all the lies which proliferate and form the bedrock upon which the truths of today circulate, establish themselves, and gain currency. That over 100,000 individuals have been killed in the United States, like George Floyd, in the last months, not from a virus but from structured neglect, mutilated forms of care (which are as racialized, gendered, naturalized and normalized) remains our challenge to connect. Last week, our conversation turned to three incorrigible states, Turkey, Lebanon, the U.S.. It included a friend and elder, Annie Chambers in East Baltimore, who gave us a sense of what 'pre-existing conditions' could mean and what we need to be talking about / considering / struggling against and for in the midst of this pandemic. We hope to share this video soon as her notes as well as those of our other comrades from Ankara and Beirut, given for consideration, are very pertinent to this time we are living through. Below, we share the invite to the fifth attempt to assemble online, which will take place tomorrow (May 30). Please write to mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> if you are interested to take part. ______________________________________ 2. Tomorrow / Testing Assembling Fourth Edition What: Testing Assembling When: Sunday, May 30th, begins 11:00 a.m. (approx. 2hrs) (New York Time) Where: Online Who: please write to mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> (to receive the details) This Saturday, we would like to invite you to the fifth edition of Testing Assembling. We have been using this time of gathering to try and invite friends from different contexts, experiences and struggles to try to share some questions/points they believe to be necessary or critical to consider. This week, we will be joined by a friend of the space (and the Society!) who will share a few points both with regard to our relation to the virus as well as to the question of death and the deceased. What means to live with this virus and to potentially make politics with it? What means to live with those who pass on and to potentially make politics with them? What means politics in such a context we are living today? In the context of today - where we see states and capital reveal in a myriad of ways a blatant disregard for life, especially for the lives of those deemed sacrifice-able, not valuable, expendable, disposable (through deeply structured colonial, racist, patriarchal, classist. heternormative, agiest, corporatist, productivist, destructivist institutions, values, forms of thinking, imposed forms of living); a question poses itself with regard to how we relate to and how do we live with those among us who pass. In situating her use of a word, instauration as it may relate to the deceased, our friend writes: "participating in a transformation that leads to a certain existence, that is, to more existence (in the case of the deceased, both a biographical supplement and the accomplishment of an existence in another realm of reality): an existence that, in the case of a particularly successful accomplishment, may manifest what Étienne Souriau calls its “brilliance of reality” (éclat suffisant de réalité). For we can indeed talk of “reality” as regards the existence of the deceased, provided we agree on the right regime of reality that can be granted to them. By envisaging the definition of the mode of existence that enables us to account for what the deceased do and what they have others do – so that we can describe how they interfere in the lives of the living –, we avoid the trap in which our tradition captures and generally freezes the problem" Thinking about the actions taking place on the streets of Minneapolis in the memory of George Floyd and so many others subjected to the same violence these words above gain new valence. Like the previous weeks, if you are interested to take part, we ask you to please write to: mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> Our schedule will be between 11am-1pm or so. ______________________________________ 3. Videos from Previous Weeks We have uploaded the videos from the second and third edition, which include contributions from Havin Guneser, Suely Rolnik, David Harvey, Michael Taussig, and many more friends. http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/ <http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/> ______________________________________ 4. Useful Links Bring the Dead into Ethology http://centreparrhesia.org/bring_the_dead_back_to_ethology.pdf <http://centreparrhesia.org/bring_the_dead_back_to_ethology.pdf> Inquiries raised by the dead http://centreparrhesia.org/inquiries_raised_by_the_dead.pdf <http://centreparrhesia.org/inquiries_raised_by_the_dead.pdf> Society of the Friends of the Virus http://centreparrhesia.org/ <http://centreparrhesia.org/> Film Supplement to Volume 4 http://centreparrhesia.org/nyc <http://centreparrhesia.org/nyc> (the fifth video includes Annie!) ______________________________________ 5. In Memorium We thought to include here a text we wrote and sent nearly a year ago to mark the passing of a young comrade who frequented the space, Zack Rosen. Remembering Zack and re-reading the text, we were struck by how much of it relates to this moment we are living, which makes the questions posed in it, all the more relevant. Clearly, the reference to 'silence as a common' was a reference to the writings and thought of Ivan Illich who like Zack and many other friends we have lost over the years still accompany us today on this infinite journey. http://16beavergroup.org/mondays/2019/05/25/our-silence-is-also-a-commons/ <http://16beavergroup.org/mondays/2019/05/25/our-silence-is-also-a-commons/> _______________________________________________ 16 Beaver Group 16 Beaver Street - Exodus New York - Under Lockdown for more info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org <http://www.16beavergroup.org/>

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Dear members of thingist /
by Armando Lulaj 20 May '20

20 May '20

Dear thingist Members, This is Armando Lulaj writing. At Wolfgang Staehle's kind invitation I just joined thingist. I want to bring to your attention a very problematic situation we are facing in Albania, that concerns art and politics, and of course the relationship between the two. Members of DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art together with many other artists, activists, etc., have written and signed an Open Letter addressed to the international art community, concerning urgent issues needing a vigorous and immediate response in our country which, like many other countries these days, is rapidly sliding towards fascism. I kindly invite you to read it and to support the cause we are fighting for. You will find the original link to Open Letter and the document where you can sign at the following link. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOD6TJ9YMBrqiL-tRTOmScaUnd9XwVfG3vO-3nb… With all my best regards, Armando -- D.C.C.A debatikcenter.net *www.instagram.com/armandolulaj_magazine <http://www.instagram.com/armandolulaj_magazine>* Sent by a satellite tracking device.

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More from Sixteen Beaver's "Testing Assembly"
by Caspar Stracke 09 May '20

09 May '20

Sunday — 05.10.20 — Testing Assembling Second Edition — Videos from First Edition CONTENTS: 0. Short Note 1. Testing Assembling Second Edition (This Sunday) 2. Some Thoughts (for Second Testing) 3. Testing Assembling First Edition (Videos) 4. Society of the Friends of the Virus (Small Note) ______________________________________ 0. Short Note We want to write this short note to let you know two things: One, that we will try to build on our first meeting last Sunday with a second test at assembling. The description is below. Like last week, if you are interested to take part, we ask you to please write to: mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> Two, we also have videos from last week, please see below for more details and the link. ______________________________________ 1. Testing Assembling Second Edition What: Testing Assembling When: Sunday, May 10th, begins 11:00 a.m. Where: Online Who: All are invited, please write to mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> (to receive further details) This Sunday, we would like to invite you to the second edition of our Testing Assembling. We are still waiting to determine the more precise schedule. We provide a description below, if you are interested, please write to mai [at] 16beavergroup.org <http://16beavergroup.org/> and we will confirm the schedule and details of how to access the meeting. We are still testing assembling, in the sense that we would like to try different ways of meeting and thinking together (making use of the means of meeting remotely while attempting to also consider the limits and dead-ends of such means). ______________________________________ 2. Some Thoughts (for Second Testing) Each of us prepares a question or two, a point or two, related to last Sunday’s meeting, something that was brought up, that resonates, needs attention and thinking. (We managed to put up the recordings from last week to also allow others who could not attend to be able to participate.) (If you were not able to take part last week, you can also join to follow the discussions but it will be useful to at least watch one of the movements.) To make this assembling useful and our meeting meaningful, we encourage everyone to try to link their questions and associated points or elaborations to issues raised in the first series of conversations. We are trying to build a process of thinking and questioning together and avoid the institutionalized approaches which foreclose any possibility to develop collectively a critical space for thought, action, and organization in whatever form that may take. After each has shared their question with everyone, the rest who did not formulate a question will open the discussion. As you can imagine, we are trying to activate all the intelligences in the assembling space and encourage it. At the same time, we hope that it does not become a democracy of speech time as an empty formal and meaningless gesture without the necessary counterparts of listening, responding, considering, translating through another body, another affection and perspective. It goes without saying that our invited guests from the first assembling are a core part of this continued conversation and will hopefully be part of this evolving process, whether on this occasion or subsequent assemblings. We will also be inviting other friends to slowly build up a suppleness to our responses to the virus. Our horizon for organizing these meetings is not to fill content or fulfill a mandate for a job, institution, anything of the kind: rather, it comes out from and toward a care for our worlds-in-common. The exigency is communal, political, and based on affinity and friendship, which is also based on the establishment of relations and forms of organizing with one another that go beyond professionalisms and instrumentalisms. We are all being or going to be called into processes which will establish, shape a 'new normal', to 'return', to go 'back to work', 'back to school', etc.: trying to create a space of thinking together in this moment is also searching for the terms to struggle within the cuts/ruptures the virus opens and understand what these fissures may mean and how they may affect the way we reimagine the politics and the necessary shifts in sense-abilities to come.. ______________________________________ 3. Testing Assembling First Edition We also uploaded the videos to the four movements we organized last week. Many interventions from friends including those whom we had invited to contribute: Jean-Luc Nancy Nazan Ustundag Rolando Vázquez Melken Nika Dubrovsky David Graeber Jaspal Singh Hardeep Mann Silvia Federici Marcela Olivera Sarah Lewison Suely Rolnik You can find links to the videos here: http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/ <http://16beavergroup.org/assembling/> ______________________________________ 4. Society of the Friends of the Virus We realize that these downloads are 7mb, for anyone who has low bandwidth and needs lighter files or simple text files, please write to letters [at] centreparrhesia.org <http://centreparrhesia.org/> You can also visit the centre's website for some translations in Spanish and Italian. We are working on translating additional volumes. Volume 3 http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_3_society_of_the_friends.pdf <http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_3_society_of_the_friends.pdf> Volume 3 Supplement - Perspectives http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_3_society_of_the_friends_supplement.pdf <http://centreparrhesia.org/vol_3_society_of_the_friends_supplement.pdf> Finally, both the videos and the texts are being circulated only through our mailing lists, hardly visible in the anti-social media. We put a lot of time in preparing them and we think they are of value. We are happy that they are shared in this organic manner, hand-to-hand, as a virtual samizdat. Thanks to all who take part in that passing on. _______________________________________________ 16 Beaver Group 16 Beaver Street - Exodus New York - Under Lockdown for more info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org <http://www.16beavergroup.org/>more from Sixteen Beaver's

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[Fwd: Sunday Testing Assembling / Society of the Friends of the Virus Vol. 3]
by w 07 May '20

07 May '20

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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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call for contributions: video vortex 12, malta, conference & exhibition: september 2019
by adnan hadzi 27 Feb '19

27 Feb '19

Call for Lectures/Theory Presentations VideoVortex XII, Malta Conference: September 27-28, 2019 Please submit to: submissions(a)vv12.org Deadline for lectures/theory contributions: March 15, 2019. Please also look at our website where you can read the general call: http://vv12.org VideoVortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again in Malta for a two-day conference in late September 2019. In this call we are in particularly focussed on bringing new research, theory and critiques of online video – in addition to questions around its integration with social media – to Malta. If you are a graduate student or researcher/critic that is engaged with the theoretical challenges of contemporary (moving) image cultures, please get in contact with us. If you have any specific questions, you can also address them directly to Geert Lovink (geert(a)xs4all.nl). We are looking for contributions about: 1) Online video cultures on social media/mobile platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, smart phone aesthetics, YouTube and YouTube integration, comments, its recommendation economy, thumbnails, etc.) 2) Realtime video streaming & its platforms (Twitter's Periscope, Facebook Live, Twitch, etc. - their aesthetics, the performance of streaming, their modes of spectatorship, etc.) 3) Surveillance Cinema 4) Activism, migration, and online video 5) Automated and algorithmic filmmaking (AI), bots - their affects, their implications 6) Drone aesthetics (military, Wiki Loves Monuments) 7) Digital preservation of online video (archives / curating) 8) The phenomenology of YouTube as cultural archive 9) Use of online video in the established film industry (interface cinema, data-driven filmmaking, etc.) 10) Algorithmic radicalisation 11) Synthetic intimacies (ASMR, 'I will play _____ with you' services, etc.) 14) Deepfakes 15) VR, embodiment, pornography Program committee: Andreas Treske (Department of Communication and Design, Bilkent University, Ankara) Toni Sant, Justin Galea, Daniel Azzopardi (Spazju Kreattiv, Malta) Matthew Galea & Adnan Hadzi (Department of Digital Arts, University of Malta) Barbara Dubbeldam & Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam) Background of VideoVortex VideoVortex is a network of video makers, geeks, activists, artists and researchers that are concerned with the politics and aesthetics of online video. The initiative was established in 2007 by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam (NL). Video technology has radically altered the way in which we produce, consume and circulate images, influencing the aesthetics and possibilities of moving image cultures, as well as yielding a rich body of scholarship across various disciplines. Given its ease of access and use, video has historically been aligned with media activism and collaborative work. Now, however, with video's prevalence across social media and the web, its dominance of the internet of things, the role of the camera in both the maintinence and breaking down of networks, in addition to the increasing capacity of digital video to simulate that which has not occured – we require novel theories and research. That is to say that rapidly changing technological formats underscore the urgent need to engage with practices of archiving and curation, modes of collaboration and political mobilisation, as well as fresh comprehensions of the subject-spectator, actors and networks constituted by contemporary video and digital cultures. Previous events: videovortex #1: Brussels, Belgium, October 2007 videovortex #2: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 2008 videovortex #3: Ankara, Turkey, October 2008 videovortex #4: Split, Croatia, October 2009 videovortex #5: Brussels, Belgium, November 2009 videovortex #6: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 2011 videovortex #7: Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 2011 videovortex #8: Zagreb, Croatia, May 2012 videovortex #9: Lüneburg, Germany, February 2013 videovortex #10: Istanbul, Turkey, September 2014 videovortex #11: Kochi, India, February 2017

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Newsletter | Einen guten Rutsch!
by Kienzle Art Foundation 13 Dec '18

13 Dec '18

Termine im Januar - www.kienzleartfoundation.de Marcus Neufanger: Franz Erhard Walther, 2017 Die Kienzle Art Foundation wünscht ein gutes Jahr 2018! ======================================================= Lesung von Gregor Mirwa im Gespräch mit Sieglinde Geisel Donnerstag, 11.01. 2018 um 19h Die vorliegende Auswahl umfaßt Gedichte der letzten Jahre. Im ersten Teil Raum, Schachtel, neue Heimat geht es darum, die unmittelbare Umgebung des Lebens und Arbeitens mit einem Bleistift zu zeichnen, dessen Spitze ständig abbricht. Film ohne Tonspur wurde mit der Handkamera aufgenommen – so als würde sie selbst das Drehbuch schreiben. Bei den Tronies bin ich mir des Werkzeugs nicht ganz gewiss. Sie sind zuallererst Geschenk, ein Wink mit dem Fuß. Auch die Axt geht einem unterwegs leicht zur Hand und schafft Platz. "Wo war ich, wie ich war Da war diese Sache, gerade hier in Reihe 27, Platz C. Irgendwie muss ich herunter geschaut haben. Da war es da. So was wie ein Einfall, eine nicht zu Ende gebrachte Formel. Alter Kaugummi, irgendetwas, was dem Lauf der Zeit abhanden gekommen war und sich wie ein Beißholz zwischen die Sekunden geschoben hatte. ..." Gregor Mirwa ist Arzt und Schriftsteller. www.leipzigerliteraturverlag.de/aktuelles/neuerscheinungen.htm Sieglinde Geisel ist Journalistin, Lektorin und Dozentin für Schreibwerkstätten. www.tell-review.de Kienzle Art Foundation Bleibtreustrasse 54 10623 Berlin Im Rahmen der Ausstellung "Sammlung Kienzle" im Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz laden wir Sie herzlich ein zu einem Gespräch mit Jochen Kienzle und Franz Erhard Walther. Sonntag, 21. Januar 2018 um 11h https://www.kunstmuseum.li/ Mit der in Berlin beheimateten Sammlung Kienzle arbeitet das Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein bereits seit vielen Jahren zusammen. Fanden in den ersten Jahren Werke von mit der Arte Povera verbundenen Künstlern als Dauerleihgaben Eingang in die Sammlung, vertiefte sich 2016 die Zusammenarbeit durch die Übernahme eines umfangreichen Konvoluts zahlreicher weiterer Werke von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern aus Europa und den USA. Die Ausstellung stellt nun erstmals die Sammlung Kienzle in ihrer besonderen thematischen Struktur vor, die einen weiten Bogen schlägt zwischen malerischen und konzeptuellen Positionen, die sich in allen möglichen Medien äussern. Ausgehend von Franz Erhard Walther, der mit Werken aus allen Schaffensphasen vertreten ist, sind Gemälde von Jonathan Lasker, Jack Goldstein, David Reed, Gary Stephan oder Klaus Merkel zu sehen wie auch konzeptuellere Werke von Anna Oppermann, Ketty La Rocca, Emilio Prini, Ferdinand Kriwet oder Louise Fishman. Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein Städtle 32 9490 Vaduz Liechtenstein Tel +423 235 03 00 Fax +423 235 03 29 mail(a)kunstmuseum.li Kienzle Art Foundation Bleibtreustr. 54 D–10623 Berlin Tel. +49(0)30 89627605 Tel. +49(0)30 31507013 Fax. +49(0)30 89642591 E-Mail: office(a)kienzleartfoundation.de www.news.kienzleartfoundation.de www.facebook.com/kienzleartfoundation Öffnungszeiten Do–Fr 14–19 Uhr Sa 11–16 Uhr https://unsubscribe.newsletter2go.com

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Einladung zur Eröffnung: Die Verkörperung von Öffentlichkeit, 07. Dezember 2018
by Kienzle Art Foundation 29 Nov '18

29 Nov '18

Impressum: Kienzle Art Foundation Bleibtreustrasse 54 10623 Berlin 030-31507013 office(a)kienzleartfoundation.de Öffnungszeiten: Donnerstag und Freitag: 14-19h Samstag: 11-16h [Newsletter abbestellen](http://p.cto-now.com/gztu5r2f-h127wszb-trrnrx1u-15zg)

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after party
by w 26 Nov '17

26 Nov '17

Hi Guys, you are invited to a slumber party at Poppers Locarno (1563 Decatur St, Ridgewood) after the opening at Postmasters. http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/staehle16/staehle16direct.html See you, Wolfgang

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ERÖFFNUNG: Dominik Steiner "die meisten... bei Nacht und Nebel" am Freitag, den 16. Sept um 19 Uhr
by Kienzle Art Foundation 09 Sep '16

09 Sep '16

Einladung zur Eröffnung: Dominik Steiner die meisten... bei Nacht und Nebel Eröffnung am Freitag, den 16. September 2016, um 19 Uhr Ausstellung: 17. September – 19. November 2016 Dominik Steiner: die meisten...bei Nacht und Nebel, 2016, Öl, Wachskreide, Tinte, Firnis auf Leinwand, 55 x 71 cm Fotocredit: Claudia Klein Dominik Steiners künstlerische Methode besteht aus der Verschmelzung stilistischer Steigerungen, die studiert, erforscht, einverleibt und schließlich transzendiert werden. In diesem Prozess der Einverleibung verbleiben und durchdringen Spuren und Arbeitsgänge das Bewusstsein des Künstlers im Gleichnis eines Palimpsests (Schichtung), da nichts jemals wirklich verworfen, sondern letztlich und verschieden verwandelt wird. Der Künstler re-etabliert ferner die Rolle der Zeichnung, erweitert Verfahren der Collage und macht metaphorische Verweise auf Figuration. Im selben Moment wird dem Betrachter das Material bewusst gemacht, das zusammengefasst so behandelt wurde, als ob sich dieses in einem Zustand roher Darstellung befände. Er teilt sich in einer eher problematischen und relativ expressiven Weise durch die vielfältigen experimentellen Qualitäten einer kreativen Polyphonie mit. Steiner partizipiert an einer Reise kontinuierlicher Anhäufung von Spuren, die er als Künstler fähig ist, zu einer einzigartigen und sehr persönlichen, eigenen Sprache zu formen. Textausschnitt von Mark Gisbourne Übersetzung von Hannah Beck-Mannagetta Mit freundlicher Unterstützung: KIENZLE ART FOUNDATION Bleibtreustr. 54 D–10623 Berlin Tel. +49(0)30 31507013 E-Mail: office(a)kienzleartfoundation.de Fax. +49(0)30 89642591 Öffnungszeiten: Do–Fr 14–19 Uhr Sa 11–16 Uhr ============================================================ ** (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=bbad9070fe4…) ** () Copyright © 2016 Kienzle Art Foundation, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: newsletter(a)kienzleartfoundation.de Want to change how you receive these emails? You can ** update your preferences (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage.com/profile?u=bbad9070fe4741f4…) or ** unsubscribe from this list (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage1.com/unsubscribe?u=bbad9070fe4…) This email was sent to thingist(a)mailman.thing.net (mailto:thingist@mailman.thing.net) why did I get this? (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage.com/about?u=bbad9070fe4741f4fc…) unsubscribe from this list (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage1.com/unsubscribe?u=bbad9070fe4…) update subscription preferences (http://kienzleartfoundation.us13.list-manage.com/profile?u=bbad9070fe4741f4…) Kienzle Art Foundation . Bleibtreustraße 54 . Berlin 10623 . Germany Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm…

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