[mf2012] networked insurgents and communications guerilla

rachelbaker at irational.org rachelbaker at irational.org
Tue Apr 10 02:10:25 CEST 2012


Hey Micha!

A Hecate's Prophesies reading group? In LA? Cool :)
Avital Ronell is a great suggestion. Also I've not yet read your book, The
Transreal and I'd be tempted to throw it into the mix too. The witch in
Kurosawa's version of Macbeth, 'Throne of Blood', is definitely portrayed
as transgendered...we'll certainly be introducing this in the 'Act 0 -
Omen' part of Moving Forest.

No doubt we'll be lucky to get to Margaret Murray by July but it might be
that we do a bit of simultaneous book-reading and cross-referencing.

Anyway, we'll update you and Zack here after Friday's meet-up.

Your game idea reminds me of the Institute Of Applied Technology's mapping
project - 'The Path Of  Least Surveillance' which is featured in this book
'An Atlas of Radical Cartography' http://www.an-atlas.com/. Might be worth
revisiting for Moving Forest mapping too.

Warmest
Rachel

> 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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> http://lists.movingforest.net/mailman/listinfo/list
>




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