[mf2012] networked insurgents and communications guerilla

micha cárdenas mmcarden at usc.edu
Mon Apr 9 23:06:57 CEST 2012


Your reading list is fantastic! I would like to start a satellite reading
group in LA, starting in May. Zach Blas and I will both be here, and I
think he'll be interested as well. I appreciate Avital Ronell's The
Telephone Book, also, for making good connections between
spiritualism/magic and telecommunications technologies that underlie much
of our networked forms of today.

Zach and I are proposing a project called "Anticapitalism - The Game!",
centered on the three axes of evade your enemies, find your allies and
build alternatives, and the project should certainly be seen in a
tragicomic light. In a Macbethian sense, the game might harken to backwards
temporalities, thinking through ways out of capitalism via precapitalist
stories. The witches certainly offer an alternative epistemology and
magical logic that exists outside of the logic of kings, property and
ownership. Your point about allies being enemies is also an important one
to consider.

Your point about the dangers of techno-fetishism in adopting the same
technologies that the olympics planners are deploying on the city is
useful, and I think that having a flexible imagination and using magical
logic (ala mayan and queer technology) might help us think about different
approaches. Part of the game I was thinking of may include mapping out
biometric recognition technologies in the city, in a participatory way.
This could be done with simple phone calls, text messages and emails to
zach or i who could populate the map, or we could use a more open format
like wikimaping, google maps or even flickr with auto-geotagged photos. Our
game strategies for actually avoiding those technologies, though, may be
bordering on the magical.

cheers,

  micha


On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 12:55 PM, <rachelbaker at irational.org> wrote:

> “And you all know security, Is mortals' chiefest enemy”.
> Hecate, Macbeth
>
> So the problem with the MF narrative of a 'networked insurgency' is of
> course that it is predicated on, and therefore anticipates, the kind of
> smart-city network technology that IBM and the Olympic machinists would
> want foisted upon us in their over-securitised cybernetic nightmare. The
> school of thought that says revert, infect, hack or parasite the
> technology is one i have sympathy with - create conditions for The Glitch
> - but mostly as a theatrical proposition.
>
> 1. If we created a non-rational Moving Forest map that was layered with
> geo-fictions, obscuring the surveillance friendly panoptical tendencies of
> all electronical mapping devices, then that might be more interesting.
> Camouflage. Anyone interested to design such a map?
>
> 2. Also, the 'insurgent' suggests a binary oppositional narrative of good
> vs evil -  however, MF recognises that our wost enemies are usually
> ourselves as Macbeth proves. MF is an associative artwork of dissonant
> dissensus, insurgents can be at odds with each other as they move towards
> the Castle. As long as there is movement.
>
> 3. Also, networks don't always have to be predicated on the electronic.
> To uncover/read city infrastructure we can use material that is close to
> us and everyday, to make relationships and associations through simple
> actions, for example London's reading groups and walking groups such as
> the Wetherspoons Underground SykoGeosofy Club which meets on occasion to
> follow the various routes of London's many underground rivers. Over the
> years river infrastructure has been built on, replaced in parts by the
> London Underground. In turn a further layer of infrastructural formatting
> is laid congruently with the railtrack in the copper cabling used for high
> speed telecommunications. Copper was one of the 7 metals that alchemists
> used (gold, silver, mercury, copper, lead, iron & tin). Before its highly
> conductive properties were discovered in electromagnetism it was used to
> craft mirrors and was associated with love and attraction. The spikes in
> copper trading prices have resulted in a spate of copper theft around
> London including the Barbara Hepworth sculpture 'Two Forms (Divided
> Circle)'
>
> 4. So base metal can be transformed into 'gold'. These small associations
> of associative drifts are what will shape the Moving Forest in July and
> beyond. To this end I propose 'Hecate's Prophecies' Reading Group and
> invite all the witches on the list to attend. The intention is to explore
> the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy, a key Macbethian theme and also
> the core principle of cybernetic systems. The reading list is currently:-
> - The witches soliloquies in Macbeth
> - Caliban and The Witch by Silvia Federici
> - Witch Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
> - On Seduction by Baudrillard
> - A General Theory of Magic by Marcel Mauss
> - Zeroes + Ones : Digital Women and the New Technoculture by Sadie Plant
>
> Any more suggestions welcome, and any satellite groups encouraged.
> The first meeting is being prepared for Friday 13th April at the Autonomy
> Club at Freedom bookshop, Angel Alley, Whitechapel.
> \
>
> rachel
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org
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