[mf2012] networked insurgents and communications guerilla

anthony iles anthony_iles at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 11 20:21:11 CEST 2012


Rachel,

Thanks for the response. Sadly, I'm not sure taking a walk frees one from the strictures of neoliberalism, but it might lead to less than routine navigation of the neoliberal landscape. 

Here's a text John Cunningham and I wrote together about clandestinity, it contains a small collection of forms of cultural/literary
 camouflage:
http://saladofpearls.blogsome.com/2010/08/06/p58/

It could perhaps be read in combination of Nick's neat description of minor politics and non-identitarian social formations.

In relation to magic/art/technology and determination under capitalism I find this quote apposite: 
The work of art is the visible transformation of 
mechanical necessitation into incompleteness of determination and so is 
the manufacturing of freedom. [...] let us recall that Kant’ s ultimate charge against the
 misguided art pedagogues is that they treat art as play rather than 
what it is, labor. Kant remembers what many forget, that a work of art 
is called work for a reason. Art is the labor of remaking the world of 
mechanism as a world that need not be the realm of necessity. - Gregg Horowitz:
a

--- On Wed, 11/4/12, rachelbaker at irational.org <rachelbaker at irational.org> wrote:

From: rachelbaker at irational.org <rachelbaker at irational.org>
Subject: Re: [mf2012] networked insurgents and communications guerilla
To: "movingforestl2012london" <list at movingforest.net>
Date: Wednesday, 11 April, 2012, 13:08

MACBETH

    How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
    What is't you
 do?

WITCHES

    A deed without a name.


So yes, Anthony, the semantics of using 'insurgent' ('guerrilla' actually
isn't in the Moving Forest vocabulary as far as I'm aware) is problematic
and needs to be thought through.

But is it possible to use 'insurgent' in a poetic or theatrical context
without invoking actual paramilitary histories such as the RAF, or to
gesture towards symbolic radical chic?  I.e to re-imagine an 'insurgent'
as someone who goes for a pedagogic walk along an underground river route
temporarily suspended from the strictures of social relations as imposed
by neo-liberalism?

If not, then can we think of alternative nomenclatures for the actors who
are interpreting the role of the soldiers who lay siege on Macbeth's
castle?  Shu lea might be able to expand on her original vision of a
forest that moves, but i recall that the metaphor was one which
 lent
itself to 'transmission'. To me, in this motif that we are
staging/replaying, the key characteristic is one of 'camouflage' , but
also of movement and mobilisation.


> The problems of taking on the insurgent or guerilla tag is the problem of
> the grin without the cat - where is the social movement of which the MF
> insurgents would be the vanguard?
Yes, where is it? where is any opposition to the neo-liberal project be
found these days...;

Specifically,  do you object to the Olympics and its counter-movements as
a context for Moving Forest London 2012, the cat for which the MF grins
(or grimaces)?

Or is the whole premise of reinterpreting the Tragedy of Macbeth against
the Tragedy of the Olympics just misplaced?

>The guerilla insurgent is
> thoroughly absorbed into the state, it is the model on which it prepares
> it's cities and its security systems (see IBM
 post).
Indeed and Trenton's boat race stunt will no doubt serve  to only tighten
security around all waterways during the Olympics.
It is these and other self-fulfilling prophecies that witches need to be
aware of and summon other kinds of magic - theatrical, pedagogical,
festival...or deeds without names..


> The above is maybe more a knee jerk reaction to the use of the terms
> guerilla or insurgent and not an attack on Moving Forest's general
> trajectory. Rather it is my hope that critique encourages some movement in
> less predictable directions. Rachel's proposed reading group is an
> excellent one. The invocation of magic speaks to the unpredictible,
> non-instrumental, not yet possible social relations which both guerilla
> and state forms would act to police. Turning away from the double bind of
> vanguardist revolution or liberal law-abiding reform there are a host
 of
> less self-defeating positions, actions, tactics and debates which could,
> and I hope will, be explored in the movement of the moving forest
Yes, i hope so too - i think although the multiple entry points into
Moving Forest is confusing, it is also the strength of the project. I
would like to think that each Moving Forest Act could produce discursive,
collaborative groups that can find different routes through the forests.
Hecate's Prophecies reading group is an attempt to find a collective
dramaturgy for Act 0 'Omen'

Act 1 'Remorse' has all kinds of resonances to the idea of past actions
that cannot be undone, histories of misadventures and misdeeds - any
artists working with archives out there?

It would be good to hear from people involved in other Acts.

Rachel



> --- On Mon, 9/4/12, rachelbaker at irational.org <rachelbaker at irational.org>
> wrote:
>
> From: rachelbaker at irational.org <rachelbaker at irational.org>
> Subject: Re: [mf2012] networked insurgents and communications guerilla
> To: "movingforestl2012london" <list at movingforest.net>
> Date: Monday, 9 April, 2012, 20:55
>
> “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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