[thingist] By way of Sixteen Beaver

Fri May 29 21:34:19 UTC 2020

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/>

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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!)

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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/>

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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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