The Corona Reboot
An attempt to provisionally theorize the emergence of new subjectivities in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
ReadAn attempt to provisionally theorize the emergence of new subjectivities in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
ReadRepublished with permission from metamute / Mute Magazine in London:
Moving beyond the conceptual polarisation of tight-knit vanguardist
parties and loose-tie virtual networks, Rodrigo Nunes sifts the residue
of last year's wave of revolts to produce a more nuanced picture of
organisational dynamics in the age of Web 2.0
Andrew Boyd is an author, humorist and veteran of creative campaigns for social change.
ReadOrganiser, networker and writer, based in Cluj. Born in Bucharest, Romania, grew up in New York. Ex-philosopher, media theorist and freelance organizer.
Read"The darkest, hottest place in hell waits for that repulsive angel choir
Which, at the hour when crisis strikes, sings equivocal, neutral songs".
Dante, Inferno, Canto III.
That guerrilla video is now the subject of historical reflection is
probably a sign of its demise. There has been a recent flurry of
archival and publishing activity centering on experiments made in the
'70s. In 1997, the Chicago-based Video Data Bank released Surveying the
First Decade, a compilation of work from the early days of video, and
Oxford University Press published Deirdre Boyle's Subject to Change:
Guerrilla Television Revisited, the definitive study of the video
movements of the late 1960s and '70s. These reflections on the utopian
impulse in early video provide an opportunity to think about the
present state of media in this country, in particular those movements
that have attempted to create electronic space for non-commercial views
that run counter to the mainstream.
Every so often, a technology or protocol emerges that is touted as a ?magic bullet? either by the company or consortium promoting it or a core group of enthusiasts using it. Examples of this are WAP, OS/2, ISDN etc? The technology is initially promoted as having ?earth-changing? significance that will revolutionize the way things are done. Eventually most of these either fall by the wayside or take their rightful place as effective [but less hyped] mainstream tools in a much larger toolbox of solutions. The problem with the magic bullet approach is that it over-promotes particular technologies and often obfuscating the real benefits they could provide if evaluated and positioned in a more realistic context. For the for-profit community investing in failed magic bullets, the fallout is typically nothing more than an unfortunate R&D decision which can be expensed before moving on to the next IT investment.
Read"Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it: speed. The change has come about within a generation," noted the historian Marc Bloch, writing in the nineteen-thirties. This situation brings in its wake a second feature: the accident. The progressive spread of catastrophic events do not just affect current reality, but produce anxiety and anguish for coming generations.
ReadThe Situationist Movement can be seen as an artistic avant-garde, as an experimental investigation of possible ways for freely constructing everyday life, and as a contribution to the theoretical and practical development of a new revolutionary contestation. From now on, any fundamental cultural creation, as well as any qualitative transformation of society, is contingent on the continued development of this sort of interrelated approach.
ReadThis text was written in July 2003, at the height of the tension on the border between India and Pakistan. Following elections in Pakistan, and in the Indian administered part of Kashmir, the two countries have agreed to de-escalate and troops on both sides are now on their way back to "peace time" positions. Relations between the two governments however, continue to be tense.
ReadWritten for Interstanding - Understanding INteractivity conference, Tallinn, Estonia November 23-25, 1995 - RFC Draft 1.1
Utopian ideas - like "Spaceship Earth" - are round, multidimensional, interrelated: their archetypal map is the Milky Way, the infinite constellations. But rational thinking is instrumental, linear, it distorts: and that's exactly the problem with the Mercator map, the most common world projection. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, created a "Dymaxion map" to undo those distortions. First the earth becomes a geometric figure, an isocahedron: its 20 triangles are then disjointed and laid flat, so the land masses radiate from a nexus in the north, without splitting continents or enlarging the polar regions.
The punk band Pussy Riot, which I belong to, is a musical group that conducts unexpected performances in different urban spaces. Pussy Riot's songs address topical political issues. The interests of the group members are: political activism, ecology, and the elimination of authoritarian tendencies in the Russian state system through the creation of the civil society.
ReadSixty-two-year old Jordanian Labibeh Tannous was trying frantically to
decide which satellite dish to buy. Should she go for the simple kind
that only has the Arab satellite stations that goes for about $100 or
should she go for a rotating dish that can pick up European stations as
well which can be bought for about $150?
Her interest reflects both how inexpensive satellite dishes have become
and the great thirst people throughout the Arab world have to go beyond
what their national station is providing in television news.
March 17th, 2005
How did it come to this?
Only a perverse authoritarian logic can explain how Critical Art
Ensemble (CAE) can at one moment be creating the project "Free Range
Grain" for the Risk exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt,
reconfiguring it for The Interventionists exhibition at Mass MoCA in a
second moment, and then suddenly have a CAE member in FBI detention.
The U.S. Justice Department has accused us of such shocking crimes as
bioterrorism, health and safety violations, mail fraud, wire fraud, and
even murder. Now, as we retool "Free Range Grain" for the Risk
exhibition at the Glasgow Center for Contemporary Art, the surreal
farce of our legal nightmare continues unabated.
Summary of the extended conversation on the emergence, consequences, and activist responses to the concept of "post-control"
Report of the conference 'The Society of Post-Control', organised by Eric Kluitenberg and David Garcia, tying into the opening of the exhibition As If.
"If you've been following events in Syria, you'd know that the
English-language press is mostly deeply critical of the Assad regime
(while the Arabic press displays a slightly wider range of views). I
thought it would be worth trying to present a minority report on the
situation from a Syrian friend of mine, although, as you will see, he
argues precisely that his position is actually held by a very
significant majority (albeit a rather quiet and frustrated majority) of
Syrians.
Camille Otrakji is a Syrian political blogger based in
Montreal. Although he tends to keep a low profile, Otrakji has been, for
the past several years, at the forefront of many of the most
interesting and influential online initiatives relating to Syrian
politics. He is one of the authors and moderators at Joshua Landis's
Syria Comment, and the founder of Creative Syria, a constellation of
websites including Mideast Image (a vast collection of original old
photographs of Middle Eastern subjects) and Syrian Think Tank (an online
debate site hosting many of Syria's top analysts). Last year, Otrakji
courted controversy with a new initiative devoted to the subject of
Syrian-Israeli peace, entitled OneMideast.org. He agreed to speak with
me about the latest events in Syria, and I'm sure that his views will
generate plenty of discussion."
The following text is an excerpt from a talk given by Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos to the International Civil Commission of Human Rights
Observation in La Realidad, Chiapas on November 20, 1999. The outline
for the talk was published in Letters 5.1 and 5.2 in November of the
same year, with the titles "Chiapas: the War: 1, Between the Satellite
and the Microscope, the Other's Gaze," and 2, "The Machinery of
Ethnocide." Any similarity to the conditions of the current war is
purely coincidental. Published in Spanish in La Jornada, Tuesday,
October 23, 2001.