|<---------- Width: 72 Chars - Fixed Font: Courier New, 10 ----------->|For the n0name newsletterbyAli EmasACTA ActIn the subway I had to ask three young women, who had tacked the word on their jackets or put it on their mouth protection, "What is ACTA?". One of them just said: "Youtube". This direct and perfect hook-up of the locutive and the illocutive parts within the act of speech <in the speech act theory the act of speeking which linguistically always means something extralinguistic>, by which Reality and Adress of its Finding coincide, caused in my case -- smart online -- already the perlocution, this action convinced for operation, in which the result of the speech act time-wise coincides with its execution. I don't remember, had forgotten every plea. The trade agreement that has been protested in February was already not up-to-date anymore in the seconds of the selection of apppropriate search engines and was discarded by the government in a play of words, "ad acta" in the words of the electronic press.But the act and its linguistical appeal (or the other way round), did they not fall apart in this? If this agreement complicates juridically more than it resolves for the capital, therefore harms the mittelstand, and when the resistance forms en massive while simultaneously they abandon the intentions to ratify the agreement, to what extend therefore is "conscient what ACTA means" (modified quote Markus Beckedahl, netzpolitik.org)?Some wrote about the ratio of distribution and that a tightened Copyright Law would not bring the little author any profit. Exactly the piratistic ostensible self-employment. Or do they want Diversity?In front of the Mall, in cheap gold and red stone before the concrete, the "mobile" sausage vendors are standing in the cold and the even attacked ACTA will do nothing. The Office for Public Order and Regulation says: "Prohibition would be an intervention in the freedom of trade." So prohibition, the tightened protection of the Copyright Holder of the idea to let people even those in wheelchairs sell sausages with hawker's trays would disturb diversified competition. At this point locution, illocution and perlocution coincide again: The assertion in language about the fact of business competition and the course of action with the help of an assertion in language and the persuasion by this speech act are one. What kind of tape with the sign "ACTA" at the mouth changes that? Again merely the Power of Speech instead of the Power of Activeness. Both are separable despite of Speech Activism.
this installation might be of interest to you allhttp://www.artisopensource.net/2012/02/12/enlarge-your-consciousness-in-4-days-4-free-2/real-time harvesting of users' emotions, and random users put on sale at9.99 eurosbusiness as usualxDxD
...ripples...----- Forwarded message from hellekin -----Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:56:16 +0100From: hellekin <hellekin-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: A Spit in the Ocean A Spit in the Ocean I'm going to reach 1000 followers soon. To all of you, I want to say thank you for the conversations we've had and the attention you gave to me. But I'm going to close my Google+ account, as well as my GMail account, because I don't like the idea of having a corporation, however well intended it could be, have me as a Guinea pig for their social mass-surveillance. I'm referring to the upcoming privacy policy of Google. I know that I'm alienating myself by doing so, by refusing what seems like an evidence nowadays. I have no Facebook account, no car, no phone, no TV set, not even a bank account. Now, I'm gonna have no Google. G+ is a great product. But it's not worth the trade-off. I am the enemy, the marginal, the terrorist, the fool. I'm a spit in the ocean. Hopefully others will follow and realize that "the profit motive" is not the right way to look at life on Earth. I wish there were more people willing to stand by their heartbeats, follow the intuition of the blood pounding hard from within. I find it shameful that we know how to send people in deep space and are unable to deal with poverty, with war, with corruption, with the other. Who really wants to measure the success of their life to the size of their TV set or the ability to travel to foreign countries where people live a year with your monthly spending in chewing-gum? In the few thousands of years of civilization, human morality barely evolved. Humans should be the most beautiful living things on this planet, because of their ability to become: but we're the most hideous, for our infinite capacity to look away, cherish our own stupidity as the best manifestation of genius, and refuse to embrace powerful visions that cannot bear a listing price. By participating in this mass-surveillance system, be it Facebook or Google+, we leave the space for evil people to get the grip and break the most beautiful things apart, we allow them to exist and thrive. By not participating, we take the risk that only people like us don't participate, and that society evolves to make us the next Roms, the next Jews, the next generation of non-conforming humans that need to be eliminated. I will continue working on alternate communication systems that take privacy as a design requirement, not something obsolete. I will continue to use the Internet for end-to-end purpose, with people I cherish. But I won't participate anymore in so-called social media that don't proceed from actual communities nor nourish them. Facebook and Google+ nourish like baby milk: with poison inside. Stop smoking before cancer strikes.----- End forwarded message -----I'll add some thingsYou make an interesting association between the current state of "social networking" (and more in general, the use of the "social" word) and the general expectation of profit. As Internet is sanitized, the places where "sociality" can happen, have indeed a ghastly presence of profit-minded reasoning, something still between the lines, but for how long this will be implicit? Let me suggest, as it might just help to avoid confusion once and for all, we stop using the "social" word in association with the Internet. Today we could just consider the Internet as a market place, where even what we have formerly considered as net-art is now the craft of ready-made souvenirs. Yes. we knew this moment would come my friend.If you have a look in what I2P or the ".onion" network of Tor are nowadays, you'll find a way to shrug off these delusionary feelings and enjoy a taste of the Internet as it really looked back 15 years ago. They are beautiful places :) And even just analyzing the language used, there could be so much to say about it.What strikes me the most about them is how anonymity can make intimacy possible. Does this sounds like a paradox? in fact, it is not. Anonymity is a form courtesy, a (forgotten?) tradition in hospitality, a condition to make an environment truly public.Today we have lost the good manners. There is no netiquette on the Internet, no voluntary courtesy, just policy. Ultimately now I really understand why you are leaving Hellekin, because you do love the good manners.ciao
Last sentence of a message on which I am reacting just to get the gist of it:I used to live in a house that was on the address list of theUnderground Press Service: Keizersstraat 2A, in Amsterdam. Both thehouse and my friend doing the "underground" paper - Steef Davidson arenot there anymore."Cultural underground would have been a better word" as there islittle underground when you receive heaps of radical newspapers fromall over the world. Years later I found our address in a CIA documentthat was half public: "open sources" is the word.Our telephone in that house was also a special case, as it was thehead quarter of a few action groups, all this in the period 1969-1975.A telephone was not a common thing for activists like us with littlemoney. So the bill was not paid once and still the telephone keptfunctioning. We were listened to we concluded and adapted our speech abit.In the early seventies we developed a system called 'telephonesnowball', a distributed quick mobilising system, whereby there werelists with telephone numbers distributed in a systematic way whichallowed us to mobilise a small crowd within an hour.There was no internet of sorts at that time...And as such activist communication and exchange systems grew, one knewthat among the contacts were people with say double identities andsometimes even plain spies.As our "underground" system needed not really to be underground, wedid not care too much about it. It was package and deal of makinga crowd. We developed a happy community with the slogan: publicconspiracy.Secret, hidden cell like structures were also practiced in thosedays, we thought it was dangerous romanticism. The rather young Dutchmaoists groups of that time had a tendency to organise themselvesin such ways. A while ago I bumped into an archive left at theInternational Institute of Social History, with packs of handwrittenmostly internal documents of such a group mostly made up of students.The more secret they got, the more problems arose. Individuals beingexpelled. Threats and the like. Most people involved in such secracywill may have concluded later the futility of their secret activism.Of course it is a luxury to be able to say or think so... but byrefusing to get trapped in secret organisations and all what comeswith it, one may be more effective after all.The social and private are deeply intertwined. Whatever informationflow system in the history of mankind, it has had both its advantagesand the opposite.The ways of control of communication systems and the ways to evadecontrol are in constant oscillation: liberating/recuperating...Will something like Diaspora be an alternative for Facebook? Yes maybein the short run, but when something gets replicated so many timesmillionfold, what was liberating in it will have evaporated in thatprocess.It could even be so, that mainstream social networks give more freedomthan cyber-undergournd connectivity. Just by the mere protective massof the global ones.The message I am reacting on seems to me very romantic and very naiveand also untrue in the sense that when you are against a global bigfirm communication system and want to construct something of an orderorder, an outsider system, the last thing you should do is announceit here, on the dwindling list, that once was full of discussion andnow mostly contains one way announcement (I also use it for that Iconfess)..The quest for purity in community and with that in its communicationsystems, sounds like the manifestos for setting up 'intentionalcommunities' of the sixties and seventies of last century, with theirattempt to isolate themselves from society as it was.One can deny a try to nobody, but I doubt that such an attitude willhave the wished effect. Paranoia is a bad basis for producing anysocial change.tjebbe
published at http://bit.ly/yZ7DVf1. The 12th February demonstration in Athens, consolidated, what isbecoming clearer in the past weeks: a growing majority of the Greekpeople support the refusal of the memorandum no.2 no matter what.In spite of the fear mongering spread by the pro-memorandum forcesthat a negative parliamentary vote would entail an immediate euroexit and the ensuing Africanisation of Greece, the popular supportfor the new EU-ECB-IMF loans and the correlated austerity measuresis waning significantly. The formal political debate is increasinglybased on a politics of fear: the government's and mainstream media'sprincipal argumentation is stripped, on the one hand, to the barethreat of what a disorderly Greek bankruptcy would entail -invokingoften assumed similarities with Greece's plight during the WorldWar II occupation by German and Italian troops- with basic food andmedicine shortages and a lack of basic public amenities like gas,heating, electricity; on the other hand even mainstream media cannotbut be critical vis-?-vis the most dismantling provisions of thememorandum no.2 for any sign of consensual legitimacy, such as theautomatic decrease by 22% of minimum wages, the content and scopeof collective bargaining and so on, insisting however ?in the finalanalysis? that the dilemma posed leaves only one choice.In the current conditions, the growing impoverishment of the widerpopulation and the collapse of state welfare structures makes thisline of argumentation less and less effective. In the everyday livedexperience of the wider population the spectre of destitution and thedestruction of universal public services and amenities is embodied asa direct result of the austerity policies. The massive refusal of thememorandum no.2 tends thus to becoming absolute: it is consolidatedbeyond and besides any types of rationalisations of existing or futureformal policies and calls for new beginnings that the government andfinancial interests can articulate. In the coming critical period, thesite of openness in the political sphere relates to the struggles overwhat forms this absolute refusal might take and what type of politicalactions can be constructed around it.The social composition of the massive absolute refusal ofthe memorandum no. 2 crosses existing societal divisions andcategorisations and reflects its informal and fluid character. Thedemonstrations in Greece include more and more actors with differentsocial backgrounds, different political aspirations, and differentdesires for mostly non-representable futures. Apart from the materialoutcomes that successive austerity plans produce, mainly the violentdowngrading of large parts of the late middle class, a strife againstinjustice is drowning by numbers the whole society regardless previouspolitical affiliations. In addition, demonstrations in Greece moreand more seem to escalate, precisely when they are less organisedand when they are not called by formal political organisations.Although, a 3 day call for action (February 10 to 12) was set againstthe parliamentary vote of the memorandum no.2, during the first twodays that coincided with a 48 hour strike supported by all the tradeunions, the turnout was unexpectedly low, the protests pursued theusual tactic of marching towards the parliament grouped largely inpolitical blocs and ended relatively quickly. On Sunday, February12, when there was no strike, no precise formal call for action andno foreseen march itinerary at all the participation in the protestbecame unprecedented. Everyone just knew that from afternoon onwardspeople should go to Syntagma square, outside the Parliament. Most ofthe participants just walked from different parts of the city joiningthe demonstrations in small groups of friends, at random with peoplethey met on their way to Syntagma, in neighbourhood associations,in neighbourhood assemblies that have been formed the past 6 monthsthroughout Greece. There was no starting point of the ?demonstration?,but only destination. People were trying to reach Syntagma many hoursafter the demonstration was supposed to have started, most wereintermittently leaving the tear-gased areas to catch their breath andreturning after a while. Even some political groups that managed toform a few blocs of demonstrators near the parliament dissolved soonafter the first rounds of teargas were fired by the police as early as5pm.The only political group that retained its cohesive character andtactics during the course of February 12 was the Greek Communist Party(KKE), whose activists remained largely outside of the geographicalscope of the demonstration, on the outskirts of central Athens tryingto avoid any mingling with the rest.3. The police tactics during the 12th February demonstration, wereprimarily aiming to deface the mediamatic image of this consolidatedmass refusal of the memorandum no. 2 by evacuating the square ?byany means necessary?. It was as if the whole crackdown of thedemonstration unfolded around interrupting a panoramic visualrepresentation of the mass of demonstrators and of course avoidany unpredicted shortcomings that could hinder the parliamentaryprocedure. Therefore, the principal concern of the Greek police wasto prevent the demonstrators from gathering in one unified body ofpeople tear-gassing massively all areas around Syntagma square, evenbefore the beginning of the protest. As a result of this tactic, alarge -quite possibly the largest- number of demonstrators nevermanaged to reach Syntagma square and wandered around side streets,engaging in street battles against the police or trying to avoid them.This prevention of the emergence of a centralised mediamatic imagedepicting the mass refusal of the memorandum no.2 was quasi-celebratedby mainstream media and the government precisely as it enabled them toavoid to visually represent, address, or respond to the mass characterof the demonstration. At the same time, however, it expressed theirapprehension: the realisation that their usual formal reaction tothese types of political conditions is becoming null, that they can nolonger appeal to a supposed silent majority supporting them and so on.The widespread rioting during the night of 12th February was alsoa result of this police tactic. The difficulties faced by policeforces in dispersing the demonstrators as far away as possible fromSyntagma square, when their primary desire was to return there everytime they were pushed back. The dispersion of rioting in the widercity centre of Athens in the 12th of February is also related to theradicalisation of wider groups of demonstrators and the unexpectedparticipation of certain social groups experienced in street battlesagainst the police. In an unprecedented action, for instance, theprincipal football fan clubs in Greece, along with youngsters fromother clubs, joined the 12th February demonstrations in a unitedfashion, setting aside club differences.4. Through the absolute refusal of the memorandum no.2, an impossiblesituation is emerging for formal Greek parliamentary politics,particularly for governmental politics. The formal political solution:parliamentary elections cannot be easily pursued by the governmentcoalition, even if the conservative partner in the coalition (NeaDimokratia) insists on asking elections ?just after the state ofemergency? is overcome. This because the result of these electionswill probably make it impossible to put in place a pro-memorandumgovernment, regardless of what type of electoral system will bechosen. The movement of absolute refusal will tend, in this way, topush Greek formal politics to or even beyond their limit.This movement of absolute refusal is emerging out of the exceptionalmaterial circumstances of crisis contagion and catastrophe. Butthe most fearful for parliamentary politics development-factorthat emerges as a mute ? therefore unpredictable ? monster is thatcatastrophe can be pursued, produced and imposed by a frenzy multitudethat feels it has nothing to lose apart from the joy of destruction.Although, similarities and connections to the December 2008 revoltmight seem evident, there is no necessarily linear or evolutionaryprocess that connects the two, apart from the cumulative experiencethat has moved everyone a step towards radicalisation in thought andin practice. It is true that this growing radicalisation of more andmore larger segments of Greek society hasn't produced in these past3 years any permanent democratic structures for organising or forarticulating political struggles. The critical political question,however, might not necessarily be how to create these structuresin the Greek context, but how to immediately transpose them intheir fitting European setting, to think on how will this movementspread like contagion from one country to the next, from one urbancontext to another. In other words, how this absolute refusal will beinternationalised in a continent that already lives its future throughthe lenses of a fist of experimental animals.
also online at http://mediasocialchange.net/2012/01/21/anonymous-and-the-digital-antinomians/cheersdanAnonymous and the Antinomian AtmosphereHow are we to understand the political implications of Anonymous? Howdo we explicate the digitally mediated 'atmosphere of dissent' thatlinks the Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement? I suggest welook to the forgotton history of antinomian movements, especially theradicals of the English Civil War.Anonymous itself resists easy definition; it is a name invoked tocoordinate and identify a plethora of loosely connected actionsi. Itis meme, a culture, a way of organising online – a loose alias thatnevertheless includes a cadre of skilled hackers. An antinomian is noeasier to pin down – it is 'one who holds that under the gospeldispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation becausefaith alone is necessary to salvation'; also: 'one who rejects asocially established morality.'iiThe Ranters were antinomians who were active around 1640-1660, a timeof turmoil and revolution in Englandiii. Their return today is wellsignposted; the pastebin rhetoric of Anonymous splinter Lulzsec is thehacker version of Abiezer Coppe's pamphlets:“We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today markssomething meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humbleship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine,the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are allpart of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.”iv' 50 Days of Lulz' by LulzSec, 2011“And the sea, the earth, yea, all things are now giving up their dead.And all things that ever were, are, or shall be visible... But behold,behold, he is now risen with a witness, to save Zion with vengeance,or to confound and plague all things into himself”vAbiezer Coppe's 'A Fiery Flying Roll', 1650Appreciating the deeper connection between digital dissidence andantinomianism means looking at the roots of Anonymous in 4chan and the/b/ image boardvi (the "random" board). /b/ is characterised byshocking images and dark, densely layered insider jokes, who'sdenizens refer to themselves as "/b/tards"vii:“At first sight /b/ looks chaotic and offensive. It is. And in a senseit isn’t. In Turner’s anthropological terms, /b/ can be seen as aliminoid space that acts as an on going ever-evolving initiationritual”viiiIts 'no rules' policy and florid rejection of convention incubated anantinomianism that coloured Anonymous as it evolved from 4chan toactivism, as tracked by anthropologist Gabriella Coleman in'Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action'ix.Hence we can understand the foundational commitment of Anonymous tofree speech (as one Anon put it, “free speech is non-negotiable”x)not as geek liberalism, or even libertarianism, but a robustness thatprecedes these modern political categories, a free speech typified byEnglish dissenters like the Ranters, the Levellers and the Diggers.The historical linking of this form of free speech with the staunchstruggle against tyranny lessens the surprise of OpTunisiaxi, whenAnonymous unexpectedly forked from online hacktivism in to the messyworld of street politics and the struggle to overthrow thedictatorship in Tunisia.Anonymous has been a direct link between the Arab Spring and theglobal Occupy movement, with a visible presence in camps & protests aswell as online. But they are only part of a plurality of currents thatecho the English Dissenters of the Interregnumxii. It was the Diggerswho most famously 'occupied' St. George's Hill in 1649 the name of“making the Earth a Common Treasury for All”xiii, and it was theLevellers call in the Putney debatesxiv for democratic accountabilityand financial transparency from government that finds common groundwith the discourse of the Occupy movement. Even the tension betweenthe different currents of digital culture finds parallels in the1640's – Digger spokesman Gerard Winstanley's distaste for theRantersxv speaks to the differences between Creative Commons andhacktivism.As with antinomianism, any social movement deploying the affordancesof General Computation and the Internet will tend towards heresy inthe eyes of the Establishment (see the transcript of Cory Doctorow'stalk 'The Coming War on General Computation' at 28c3xvi). This modernheresy finds it's practice in hacking, “the intellectual challenge ofcreatively overcoming or circumventing limitations”xvii and “a tacticfor transforming pre-existing elements to evoke meanings notoriginally intended in the raw material”xviii. As Otto von Busch saysin Abstract Hacktivism:“Hacking and Heresy can be seen as two practices of distributedreinterpretation of systems and political protocols, especially inrelation to organic networked systems where the hacker or hereticclaims the right to be co-author and co-designer”xixThe small group who started the catalytic pre-Occupy camp in Madrid inMay 2011 included hackers. It was a moment that blended technical andabstract hacktivism:“In the early hours of 16 May something unexpected happened. A groupof some forty protesters decided to set camp at Madrid’s main square,Puerta del Sol, instead of returning to their homes. One of them, amember of the hacker group Isaac Hacksimov, explained later: ‘All wedid was a gesture that broke the collective mental block’ (quoted inSánchez 2011). Fearing that the authorities may evict them, they sentout calls for support via the internet. The first person to join themlearned about their action on Twitter.”xxTaken together, these developments become epochal when they raise thecurtain on forgotten social forms outside the framework of capitalistglobalisation. Commenting on the fluid dynamics of the new politics,the Virtual Policy Network makes an explicit link to thepre-industrial:“A new politics has emerged from the affordances of the internet, andagile movements are continually emerging from the underlying flow ofmicro-political acts...If we look inside these movements we seecomplexity, and we can detect a core of deeply rooted pre-industrialhuman behaviours mediated through a digitally interconnected globalsociety.”xxiSo what can we expect from an antiomian atmosphere of dissent thatblows across the internet and condenses in the squares? If our EnglishDissenters are any guide, it will involve commons-based innovation; asCharlie Leadbeater points out in 'Digging for the Future' “theLevellers wanted to raise food production through mutual ownership ofunderused land that would allow new technologies like manuring to takehold” and they believed “ that knowledge, even of the word of God,came from within rather than being handed down by the clergy. Aproductive, cooperative community would share and create knowledgerather than be ruled by the dogma of a narrow elite.”xxiiAs Nicolas Mendoza concludes about 4chan & Wikileaks: “Rather thanbeing the result of a violent class struggle, the end of capitalisthegemony might be the result of a slow Internet-enabled process ofmigration, a dripping (to abuse once more the WikiLeaks logo) towardssocieties that organize around commons”xxiii. It wouldn't be the firsttime there's been an exodus; as David Graeber highlights in 'Fragmentsof an Anarchist Anthropology'xxiv there are historical examples ofwithdrawal, as there are of societies that have resisted hierarchy &accumulation altogether. Even micro-examples like Crop Mobxxv show howthe affordances of the net can support pre-industrial modes ofagriculture and the Foundation for P2P Alternatives relentlesslycatalogues the worldwide prototyping of peer-to-peer alternatives, “arelational dynamic in which people exchange not with each other asindividuals, but with a commons...on a global scale, enabled byinternet technologies”xxvi.In these times, in the streets and squares blown by the digital winds,there occur liminal moments of the kind anthropolgist John Postillexperienced with Spain's Indignados.“Many participants later reported a range of psychosomatic reactionssuch as goose bumps (carne de gallina) or tears of joy. I felt as if aswitch had been turned on, a gestalt switch, and I had now awakened toa new political reality. I was no longer merely a participant observerof the movement, I was the movement. From that moment onwards, viralssuch as #takethesquare or #Iam15M (#yosoy15M) acquired for me – andcountless other ‘converts’ – a very different meaning; they becameintegral to the new paradigm that now organises my emic understandingof the movement”xxvii.Gabriella Coleman has identified the resonance of Anonymous with thehorizontal network forms and decentralized, non-hierarchical consensusdemocracyxxviii, a pattern clearly parallelled in Occupy xxix. Butrather than focus on organisational form we can open ourselves totheir circulations, their tempos and their transmutations. By tuninginstead into their textures and densities we may see them both asaccretions of what Kathleen Stewart describes as an atmosphere:“An atmosphere is not an inert context but a force field in whichpeople find themselves. It is not an effect of other forces but alived affect - a capacity to affect and to be affected that pushes apresent into a composition, an expressivity, the sense of potentialityand event. It is an attunement of the senses, of labors, andimaginaries to potential ways of living in or living through things. Aliving through that shows up in the generative precarity of ordinarysensibilities of not knowing what compels, not being able to sitstill, being exhausted, being left behind or being ahead of the curve,being in love with some form or life that comes along, being ready forsomething - anything - to happen”.The restless antecedents of the Ranters were the Brethren of the FreeSpiritxxx, an antinomian and egalitarian heresy that ranged acrossEurope in the 13th and 14th centuries, challenging earthly powers andrefusing to be repressed. By drawing parallels between the Antinomiansof 1649 and the spirit of Anonymous I am suggesting, perhaps, theemergence of a Brethren of the Free Internet.i 'Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action' - by GabriellaColeman http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/pieces/anonymous-lulz-collective-actionii Definition of ANTINOMIAN http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antinomianiii Ranters (from Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranteriv “50 Days of Lulz” http://pastebin.com/1znEGmHav Abiezer Coppe – excerpts from 'A Fiery Flying Roll:A Word from theLord to all the great ones of the Earth' (London 1650)http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/Coppe%20Fiery.htmvi 'b/ is the home of Anonymous, it is where people go to discussrandom topics on 4chan' http://boards.4chan.org/b/vii 4chan (from Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chanviii “/b/ acts as an on-going membership rite, as it contains many ofthe elements identified and outlined by Tuner referencing Van Gennep’s1908 Rites de Passage. Specifically 4Chan and /b/ are separate spacesthat require the individual to find, enter and understanding them (asthe rules there are different). The sense of time in 4Chan may bealtered, messages move at an unbelievable pace that can leadparticipants to a type of flow state; also many who post there do soin the middle of the night. The language is highly symbolic – whatwords there are seem meaningless or have little relation to themeaning one might suppose; much of the communication is in the form ofimages rather than words (a 4Chan post must contain an image). Lastlythere are, at least superficially, simple symbolic inversions ofmeaning – bad taste is good.”http://www.virtualpolicy.net/agilemovementsfluidpolitics.htmlix 'Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action' - by GabriellaColeman http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/pieces/anonymous-lulz-collective-actionx Is Anonymous Anarchy?- by Gabriella Coleman On August 22, 2011http://owni.eu/2011/08/22/is-anonymous-anarchy/xi ANONYMOUS - OPERATION TUNISIA - A Press Releasehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFLaBRk9wY0xii “ExLibris focuses here on English dissenters prior to and duringthe civil war/revolution in England as well as during the Interregnum.We view the information broadly, incorporating a variety of religiousand social movements and viewpoints that were active at levels ofstate, and among the élites and common folk.”http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/index.htmlxiii The True Levellers Standard A D V A N C E D: or, The State ofCommunity opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men William Everard,John Palmer, John South, John Courton. William Taylor, ChristopherClifford, John Barker. Gerrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, ThomasStarre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, HenryBickerstaffe, John Taylor, &c. (April 20, 1649)http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Renascence_Editions/digger.htmlxiv Putney Debates (from Wikipedia)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putney_Debates – full text available fromthe University of Essexhttp://www.essex.ac.uk/cish/enlightenment/text/putney.htmlxv "Ranting principles" according to Gerrard Winstanley (1609?-60?)denoted a general lack of moral values or restrain in worldlypleasures. http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/ranters.htmlxvi The Coming War on General Computation – a talk by Cory Doctorow.Presented at 28C3https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.mdxvii The Jargon File (version 4.4.7)http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.htmlxviii Konrad Becker (2002)Tactical RealityDictionaryxix Busch, Otto Von, and Karl Palmas. Abstract Hacktivism: The Makingof a Hacker Culture. Mute Publishing Ltd, 2006. p23.xx Democracy in the age of viral reality (2)http://johnpostill.com/2011/11/02/democracy-in-the-age-of-viral-reality-2/xxi '“I don’t speak on behalf of…” Agile Movements, Fluid Politics andthe new Democratic Bargain' on the Virtual Policy Networkhttp://www.virtualpolicy.net/agilemovementsfluidpolitics.htmlxxii Charle Leadbeater, “Digging for the Future” (March 2010) | TheYoung Foundationhttp://www.youngfoundation.org/publications/books/digging-future-march-2010.xxiii A tale of two worlds - Apocalypse, 4Chan, WikiLeaks and thesilent protocol wars RP 166 (Mar/Apr 2011) Nicolas Mendozahttp://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/a-tale-of-two-worlds-2xxiv Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropologyhttp://www.prickly-paradigm.com/titles/fragments-anarchist-anthropologyxxv What is Crop Mob? http://cropmob.org/xxvi Michel Bauwens: A peer-to-peer economyhttp://community.paper.li/2011/11/30/michel-bauwens-a-peer-to-peer-economy/xxvii Democracy in the age of viral reality (3) – John Postillhttp://johnpostill.com/2011/11/07/democracy-in-the-age-of-viral-reality-3/xxviii Is Anonymous Anarchy? - Gabriella Coleman in OWNI.euhttp://owni.eu/2011/08/22/is-anonymous-anarchy/xxix The Future of Occupy | 2012/1 – The Future of Assemblies -http://thefutureofoccupy.org/thematic-issues/20121-the-future-of-assemblies/xxx Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: RevolutionaryMillenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, Revised andExpanded Edition. Rev Exp. Oxford University Press, 1970.
Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything about the Debtors' Party, I have a few texts in mind about horizontal money, about why we should continue to use the word communism, and more about the macroeconomics of class struggle, but I thought I'd start by honouring a debt.I promised my friend Tsvika Frosh of the Raw Men Empire that I'd write a Debtors' Song.So here it is.= The Debtors' Song =My bank wants more moneyThey gonna take away my homeThey gonna take away my homeif I don't pay my loanMy doctor wants more moneyYou see, I had a little spillbut they don't give the pillsif I don't pay my billsMy school wants more moneyThe man, he call me on the phoneThey gonna call the lawyersIf I don't pay my loanNow I may indulge somebut I didn't blow my money on the drinknever been the type to gamble,or live life on the brinkI just did what I had togot an education and a homegot some medication when I neededand had the doctor set a boneAnd I'm not holding back none,I've been payin' what I canI've done what can be doneand I still can't pay the man- chorus - Now my bank wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. Now my school wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. Now my doctor wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. There's no two ways about it, there's no progress to be made. A debt that can't be paid is a debt that won't be paid And I ain't the only one here, you all know what I'm going through wether you're a worker or student I know you're a debtor too.- end chorus -We got to get together,we got find a waywe got to make them listenthere's no way that we can payTell them creditors to back off,show them profiteers the door,we got to get together,so we don't need them any more.They say the market system,is all so fair and free,but there's just some things, and I can list them,that don't add up for me.To get an education, do you need to drown in debt?There's a way to teach each other in a better way I bet,and to get your medication, is this the way it's got to be?We all need medical attention, why can't it just be free?Whats the point of making profit on hospitals and schools?Do we want to be surrounded by sick and angry fools?Wouldn't everyone be better off if we all had health and skills?There's got to be a better way, we just gotta find the will.- repeat chorus -Now animals deserve a habitat,and even fish deserve the sea.And even birds need a branch to build a nest,so why does it gotta be,that the people got to go to work,got to work most every day,and struggle just to get a home,a place where they can stay?Who's planet is this anyway?How did this come to be?That them creditors own everything,while the rest face misery.If we can't go and find a job,and if we can't get that loan,then we just can't get the things we need,no school, no health, no home.Them creditors got everything,us debtors pay and pay,we gotta put a stop to this,we gotta find a way.If us debtors get together,all together, every onewe can heal, and house and teach each otherand do the work that must be done.Them creditors, they don't help us none,they just get in the way,their profits are what drags us down,we must refuse to pay.- repeat chorus -I'l be at Stammtisch, as usual, around 9pm. Come by! Maybe we'll have a sing-a-long!
Hello nettime,I wrote "Digital Networks and Social Innovation: Strategies of the Imagination", in 2008. It was published as a chapter of the book "Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation", volume III of the Cultures and Globalization series, SAGE Publications.According to the contract I signed then, I can now share it freely. So here it is:http://motorhueso.net/text/strategiesOfTheImagination_tisselli.pdf With an excerpt: "The users' rights to modify the technologies they use and adapt them to unintended but legitimate purposes are being fought for in heated battles. At the core of creative usage and misusage lies appropriation, a negotiation about power and control over the configuration of technology, its standards, modes of usage and the distribution of its benefits. Appropriation is a strategy which deeply affects the politics of daily life. In our digital age, it can be seen as a starting point for deep social change. As users, we must face the question of whether we are continuously performing scripts dictated by the interests of technological corporations, or fulfilling our real needs of expression, access and equality. We must face the growing tension between dominance, expressed through the top-down imposition of standards, and agency, represented by our freedom to access and reshape technology. Yes, the flat, democratic appearance of digital networks may just be the perfect disguise of capitalist authoritarianism."I hope you'll still find it useful after all these years.Best wishes,Eugenio.
Hi all,I wasn't exactly sleeping in these last 15 years, but posting hereagain sure feels like awakening.This morning I would like to kindly ask you to participate in the veryearly stage of creating some ideas. Here goes:# It's for an art showI am doing a solo show on how and wether we know what future we're headingto. More specifically, I would like to focus on who is proposing theinitial thoughts and how they turn into operative scenarios. I want to dothat in order to understand the past and present with the aim of fixing theway we generate the future. Easy.# That's about metaphorsEver since we have language/society and specially in these last severaldecades smart people have been discussing, exploring and exploitingmetaphors. I see them as glue and links, but that very basic component iskinda clear and my thoughts are in another floor.# Which are back on stageThe overall crisis being also the crisis of the fundamental narrative (asin 'sense of direction'), I think that the moment is right for some moregroundwork with metaphors. That might easily be the one thing that art hasto contribute at this historic moment.# So we need to look at past onesI am hereby proposing a thought discipline called METAPHORENSICS
:)))fantastic, Gmail now knows when I said enough and just ships emails....damn.Forgive me this and let me continue with few more lines:# MetaphorensicsI believe it would be interesting to check the life cycles of metaphors.Which failed fast, which endured and why.# But there's also the futureIn this place I am proposing one more thought discipline: METAPHORECASTwhich would obviously be some prediction engine for narratives that mightfunction as a tool for coagulating meaning.# Feel like getting involved?I know that in the end there will be some exhibition with objects on walls,maybe projections and talks. But the process is what is interesting so I amasking Nettime nation for companionship.Think with meVuk
Fast-moving news today about the new internet surveillance law, bill C-30.Vic Toews, Canadian Public Safety Minister, has pulled the GW Bush card in the war against privacy: "You either stand with us, or you stand with the child pornographers."He denies saying this, but here's the video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhZZi14CDicIn response, the anonymous Twitter user Vikileaks30 has launched a campaign of revealing private details of Toews' own divorce case:https://twitter.com/#!/vikileaks30I won't repeat any of those tweets here, since I can't vouch for their truth.Today, House of Commons staff handed out the "wrong" version of the new law allowing warrantless surveillance of internet traffic. The error revealed the guts of Conservative communications strategy: accuse defenders of privacy of supporting child predators. "The short title is listed as "Lawful Access Act." An hour later, House of Commons staff withdraw it and replace it with the identical bill, save a new short title. It's now the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.""http://blogs.canada.com/2012/02/15/can-you-spot-the-difference-on-lawful-access-bill/It's a strategy that backfired on then-opposition-leader, now Prime Minister, Harper when he accused PM Paul Martin of defending child molesters in the 2004 election. Now that Harper has a majority government, it might be more useful for battering down the scattered opposition.http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20040619/elxn_campaign_040618/Open Media.ca has a petition against the new law, bill C-30. The law grants unprecedented powers to police, and forces ISP's to pay for surveillance technology.http://openmedia.ca/news/warrantless-online-spying-bills-target-all-canadians-unpopular-legislation-tabled-petition-tops-8000--* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD?http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com
News-Tableau on The Limping MessengerGDP statistic 1961-2009 and 2 coup d'étatlink = http://wp.me/pw0cu-1bATjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/
Nettimers, exiles all ---A few months ago I came across the intriguing call for "The Retreat,"characterized as a kind of get-down hobnob of autonomist exiles at the BanffCentre this August, and organised as a satellite of some sort of theartworld's dOCUMENTA (13).http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1210I've long thought that Banff was out of touch (inaccessible to mostCanadians and mostly unaffordable), but I have to ask: who did get to go theRetreat? Who gets to meet BiFO in the elite setting of the Rocky Mountains?Well, not me, and it cost me a pretty penny. This has led me to question theorganisation behind this Retreat. In particular, how such a Retreat canstyle itself as "open" to creating "new modes of becoming and belonging"when its application process is costly and anything but transparent.The guestlist included autonomists and philosophers, many of whom I havebeen reading in some form or other (if not debating here on this list) forthe past decade and some years: Franco Berardi (Bifo), Bruno Bosteels,Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Pierre Huyghe, Catherine Malabou, Gáspár MiklósTamás.I don't know everyone on there, but besides reading Malabou's work withDerrida, I was intrigued by the call's thesis --- which correspods to mylifework and play --- and especially by the chance to brainstorm withrenegade theorist Bifo. Here was a man I'd like to meet.The call was open enough but lacked detail. Was it an academic pow-wow? Agathering of artists? Which department at Banff was handling this? Couldthis actually be---the shock, the horror---a gathering where the divisionsbetween artist / academic / activist are broken down, such as in this year'sArtivistic? [1] The call language was either all rhetoric or all good, depending on whichway you read it:"Through the act (v.) and space (n.) of retreat, participants will raisequestions about the character of our society and the modes of artistic andcultural investigation being introduced today to create new modes ofbecoming and belonging."After rehearsing the language of autonomia concerning withdrawal as astrategic regrouping (something I've writ on extensively in regards toAfrofuturism and rave culture) [2] [3], the call reaffirms the need for "newspaces of openness, freedom, and possibility."Alright, then. Time to submit! After all, this is the thrust of mydissertation, the language of my life as a post-raver, and has been thefocus of my activities for over a decade. Ever since Bey's TAZ, this hasbeen the defining stuff of my Gen X/Y genes.The application was a compressed two-pager. One page for the CV. One pagefor a written statement. This should've raised a warning flag. Or two.In short, not much room to explain the hybridity of a post-raver/mediaartist/catalyst curator/renegade theorist/autonomist academic/arts andeconomics journalist/organiser and activist who on the average day runs anexperimental audio record label, publishes on questions of collectivisteconomics in the local newspaper, exhibits audio work abroad, edits anacademic Journal [3], DJs as a techno turntablist, and struggles to finish aPhD financed by selling skis in a small BC town --- in short, like most ofyou here, and hardly unique, I be a living example of the precariouscultural worker with a virtual array of at least a dozen arms and hats,fingers in multiple pies, all necessary to keep afloat in times of"austerity measures."Then came the fee.No set fee was announced on the page --- I just got billed later on thecredit machine. The cost to submit these two pages?Sixty clams. That's $60 Canadian beaver pelts.(Sorry, you have to realise that on average I make under ten bucks an hourin most of my work. This had me swallowing dry.)So, I awaited the response. Which came in the measure of a one-sentence formletter:====February 15, 2012 Dear Me, We wish to inform you that you have not been accepted into the Visual ArtsResidency, The Retreat: A Position of dOCUMENTA (13). Many thanks for your application, and we do hope you¹ll consider applying inthe future. Best regards, Margaret AlfredAssistant RegistrarVisual Arts, Aboriginal ArtsThe Banff Centre====Wait a minute. 60 bucks and this is it? A form rejection? A copy-pasted"thank you very much, come again" finish? This is the spirit of Autonomiaand dOCUMENTA these days? Take the money and run?A few furious questions, then:[1] Who is this "we"? Who made the decision for this elite exile?[2] How many were accepted? Out of how many applicants? From where?[3] What, indeed, were the criteria? None were listed.[4] Since when is this Retreat a "Visual Arts Residency"? Does this meanpriority was given to "visual artists" even though this was stated nowherein the Call?[5] Indeed, why is the notoriously narrow-minded Visual Arts bureaucracyhandling applications for an autonomia Retreat that will assuredly beapplied to by all manner of renegade artists of the (multi)media generation?This is a sure-fire way to cast out all the freaks and weirdos.So who does cut the mustard there these days? Are you going? I can only hopethat "they" did include a few locals who are actually involved --- good onthose who made it in --- but these kinds of two-line rejections after payingdouble-digit application fee leaves me wondering if the Banff Centre is yetanother institution that, if it doesn't begin opening up its doors, ought tobe thrown to the wolves.Do we need an institutional elite to organise an exodus? Do we need to pay$60 to even apply for the privilege to meet with a fellow autonomist?Is this AT ALL what is implied in the writing and work of autonomia?Some context is perhaps required here: the Banff Centre is funded by theCanadian Government. Sure, the glory days are over, but this is still thebaseline funding. And as such, the Banff Centre is still supposed to (a) beopen to Canadian applicants and (b) provide some level of accountability onpar with other arts decision-making bodies in Canada, like the CanadaCouncil for the Arts. None of this is evident here.Is this the influence of Kassel?But there is something more here.There is something beyond irony when elite institutions hold conferences onexodus with Italian Autonomists and then hand out closed-door rejectionsafter taking your precariously-earned pay as an "application fee."It's not a bad grab. How much money was made on this for the Banff Centre, Iwonder? At sixty bucks for two page apps, that's a fine afternoon's work forthrowing a bunch of email docs into the virtual trash.This led me to muse.Perhaps an OCCUPY BANFF mission is necessary. I smell a road trip a comin'.In July. To a certain Alberta tourist town. To remind the aging "autonomistmarxists" just what their theories mean. And to remind Banff what it'scultural mission should be too. Down with the bureaucracy.I'd like to dig a moat around the Banff Centre. It's a castle.Indeed, this rejection letter exemplifies everything this "Retreat" shouldbe against.t/c/v====[1] " PROMISCUOUS INFRASTRUCTURES" : 3xAAA - Artists / Academics /Activists. http://artivistic.org/ . This text here will be submitted fortheir publication.[2] "Technics, Precarity and Exodus in Rave Culture."http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/9/55"Contesting Civil War: Tiqqun & Agamben"http://fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/2010/06/contesting-civil-war/"Media Ecology and Autonomy"http://goo.gl/mGhHtetc.[3] "Exodus and Afrofuturism"http://fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/2010/06/exodus-afrofuturism/[4] Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culturehttp://dj.dancecult.net---
Good afternoon,I am writing to tell you about our new book 'Networks Without a Cause'by Geert Lovink. Geert has requested that I send you a press releasefor this book which I have included below. If you are interested inreceiving a review copy of this book, would like any more informationor perhaps are interested in having Geert at a forthcoming eventplease do not hesitate to contact me.With best wishes,SaraSara Henning-StoutMarketing AssistantPolityNetworks Without a CauseA Critique of Social MediaGeert Lovinkhttp://politybooks.com/book.asp?ref=9780745649672"This book proposes a new kind of memory for the computer:counter-memory, revisiting recent pasts, deep presents and near-missfutures, always challenging us to ask of, and to invent, the nature ofnetworks."Matthew Fuller, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University ofLondon"Geert Lovink is our Tin Tin. Like that canny adventurer, he travelsthe world discovering new frontiers of both folly and invention. Inplace of Tin Tin's trusty dog Snowy, he takes with him a quick wit andindependent mind. He has a detective's eye for the real story behindthe bright assurances of twenty-first-century networked culture."McKenzie Wark, professor of culture and media, The New School, andauthor of Gamer TheoryPublishing February 2012 - 240 pages?15.99 - PB 978-0-7456-4968-9For more information, interviews and review copy requests contactSara Henning-Stoutshenningst-HQyJVwiL+fUAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org<mailto:shenningst-HQyJVwiL+fUAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>+44 (0) 1865 476146Visit us on Facebook http://polity.msgfocus.com/c/1PJfqtDG0eEIEZurVthnFollow us on Twitter http://polity.msgfocus.com/c/1PJov8a5yEymUEKyv3zmBest wishes,Sara Henning-StoutPolity------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Blackwell Publishing Limited is a private limited company registered in England with registered number 180277.Registered office address: The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom. PO19 8SQ.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emanuel Kant and the Dutch crisis: Awe of AvalancheFebruary 18, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with documented links can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/awe-of-avelache/------------------Prime Minister Mark Rutte 17th of February 2012 comments…. (*)[tableau: showing prime minister Mark Rutte speaking into a microphone of the NOS, Dutch television news, with behind him a framed painting with an avalanche, the text in capital letters on top of this reads: "AWE OF AVALANCHE"]He who fears can form no judgement about the Sublime in nature; just as he who is seduced by inclination and appetite can form no judgement about the Beautiful. The former flies from the sight of an object which inspires him with awe; and it is impossible to find satisfaction in a terror that is seriously felt. Hence the pleasurableness arising from the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy. But this, on account of the deliverance from danger [which is involved], is a state of joy conjoined with the resolve not to expose ourselves to the danger again; we cannot willingly look back upon our sensations [of danger], much less seek the occasion for them again.Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening, rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like; these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.Now, in the immensity of nature, and in the inadequacy of our faculties for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetical estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we find our own limitation; although at the same time in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unit, and in comparison with which everything in nature is small. Thus in our mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity.["Critique of Judgement" (1790) Emanuel Kant; section "Of the Dynamically Sublime in Nature par.28 Of Nature regarded as Might."]The day Prince Johan Friso of the House of Orange-Nassau (1968-) was grabbed by an avalanche he had helped creating himself in the Austrian ski-resort of Leche.Deliberations on the day after, when Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced to the press that he has postponed his own ski-hollidays, he was about to enjoy. The day – also – that “the whole Dutch nation” – those willingly and unwillingly not on ski holidays – are absorbed in hours of non-news television broadcasts on a crisis created by a reckless prince.A day of associative thoughts – that keep surfacing despite a personal tragedy – about a ‘continuous economic crisis’, the supposed ‘symbol and example function of the Dutch Royal House’ to foster national unity, and the ‘non-austerity private pleasure routines’ of that same royal family and the government.[ picture:".. that the whole of the Netherlands sympathises with them very much..." Non altered screen shot, to see the original television news item click picture...]——–(*) The tableau is based on a screen shot from the Dutch television news of February 17th 2012, most probably in the room of the Prime Minister. When watching television, in my mind the painting behind the head of Mark Rutte -some sort of Italian landscape with a mountainous skyline – kept changing into something else: a painting by Turner of an avalanche. “The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons” by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), first exhibited 1810.So I swopped in the Turner picture. Turner saw the Alps in 1802 when visiting Switzerland, but never did witness an avalanche. Newspaper accounts of an avalanche in the Canton of Grison in 1808, did inspire this painting. From this we learn that ‘awe of nature’ is mostly not direct experienced but mediated indirectly. In the case of the painting of Turner it has been early 19th century journalistic ekphrasis that produced an almost abstract rendering of the power of nature.Dutch mainstream media have launched themselves in a campaign with endless hours of drama-devices to reconstruct the ‘avalanche moment’ and its aftermath: snow specialist, ski-specialists, doctors, surgeons, journalists in front of Austrian hospitals, television crews standing in front of palaces without their residents in the Netherlands, and so on. Other news from ‘the rest of the world’ with other disasters are – to this very moment of me writing this – dealt with in a minimal way or even plainly neglected.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/
*:sorry for any crossposting:*Dear all,here is a contribution from LUM collective (Italy), enjoy!claudia***www.lumproject.org*Do the right thing**11 thesis on the conflict to come and the world to invent**1. ?The world is all that is the case?. Let?s start from Oakland. ***On November 2nd a new era began for the *#occupy *movement and, more ingeneral, for the *indignados *movement. The occupation of streets andsquares ?following the Spanish model and the example of Zuccotti Park ? wasaccompanied by an extraordinarily powerful general strike. The port wasblocked, public offices closed. Road transport and production came to astop. Even the police folded their arms. Tens of thousands of people tookto the squares, picketing the city, strengthening the paralysis of theport.We look, with great admiration, to Oakland as to a *prototype*. It is nodoubt an incomplete one, partially immature, yet capable of giving shapetemporarily to much needed conflict, able to square with the newcomposition of labour and with the financial violence. Trade unions are notsufficient to organize a fragmented and widely precarious work force,immersed in the communication flow and forced to slavish job performances.If present day exploitation takes place on the grounds of financialaccumulation, class struggle must involve social reproduction, life andextra-labour cooperation, entirely. However, as we feel part of the *#occupy*movement, we think that much more could be done. Its strength shows thecrisis of liberal democracy before the arrogance of financial dictatorship,but does not yet indicate the way to ?hurt the masters?, to hurt thebankers. It?s necessary to speak out and start ?telling the truth topower?, but power must be sought in the net of metropolitan exploitation,in the theft of surplus value.In this respect Oakland is a prototype, and in this sense we re-discoverour republican inspiration with no shyness.*2. Liberal democracy in Europe has ended. The alternative grows beyond **thecage of the crisis investing political representation. ** *A new Bonapartism, a straightforward ?commissioner dictatorship? hasentered the scene, with Monti and Papadimos, with ?Merkozy? and the lettersfrom the ECB. While we write, the future of the Euro is not at all certain.It appears clear however that the financial markets are using the sovereigndebt crisis to provoke an acceleration without equals in the dismantlementof welfare (of which in Italy the President of the Republic himself hasbecome the unauthorized inspirer and fervent warrantor), in the process ofprivatization; most of all, it?s evident how the financial markets aresuspending state sovereignty, in the economic sphere and sometimes even inthe composition of the executive power. The extension of functions withinthe ECB (the possibility to coin and to lend as a last resort) and theestablishment of a ?Eurobond? will be accompanied ?as required by theBundesbank- by a straightforward process of demolition of representativedemocracy. National parliaments are already completely deprived ofauthority, as governments are limited to execute the indications imposed bythe *hedge funds, *and therefore by the ECB. Monti, a figure working withinthe transnational financial ?lite, part of the 1%, is turning Italy into aprivileged laboratory for the *Grosse Koalition, *a downright model ofgovernability (in its relationship to parliamentary representation) imposedby the new material constitution.In this European context, and just secondly a national one, it is amistake, besides plain naivety, to think that parliamentary politicalrepresentation is where growth and empowerment of the alternative can takeplace. What is really missing, the only thing that can make the difference,is the conquest of a *favourable relation of power* with the financialcapital and with its institutions, and only radical movements cancontribute to creating it. We need to go beyond the traditional separationbetween social and political spheres: *the full recognition of thenot-democratic nature of the financial governance is the basis for a trulypolitical and constituent thought within movements*. *Constituent movementsare equipped with a programmatic intelligence and an institutional ability.*It won?t be easy, but we know this is what?s necessary, it?s what we arewilling to spend our energy, our imagination, all our strength on.*3. The new European governance imposes a re-thinking of the relationshipbetween conflict and political institutions. The present-day Federalist isborn. *Foucault and his courses on neo-liberalism come to our rescue. How elsecould we read the crisis of Europe and of the Euro? The German obsessionwith price stability and the ?necessary inequality? remind us the genealogyof the neoliberal discourse minutely reconstructed by Foucault at theColl?ge de France. As in the case of the German Ordoliberals in 1948, theissue here is to build and legitimize the political space (the continentalspace) beginning with the market and currency requirements. In this sensethe austerity imposed by the Bundesbank is a step forward compared to thefragile European *governance *known till now: a new ?active governmenting?comes forth with the constitutionalisation of the balanced budget, with thecancellation, *de facto, *of the democratic constitutions, with theprivatizations, with the sanctions against those countries spending toomuch on schools and hospitals, with the destruction of labor law. Againstthis, any discussion by the opposition risks going round in circles.Is it possible to imagine a re-thinking of the relationship betweenmovements and political institutions? Does the extra-parliamentary choiceof action bring with it the eternal spiteful litany? No, we are certain ofthis. Instead of giving in to aphasia, we need to significantly extend ourability to negotiate, to combine the resistance with the creation ofalternatives: only an independent and radical movement can bring with itthe necessary strength to negotiate with the new institutions of thefinancial governance! It is also necessary to understand whichinstitutional spaces are favorable to the expansion of movements and totheir constituent intensity.Aside from keeping a close eye on Europe, because the mach on materialconstitution is played on continental grounds, it is advisable to consider,with intelligence and open-mindedness, the political and administrativedevices when these are capable of questioning the ?political monopoly ofthe party machine?. We agree with Luciano Ferrari Bravo in *still* thinkingthat the *party-government* is the privileged political adversary forstrong and not subordinate movement politics, and that a *municipalfederalism* is the institutional field that can be questioned by determinedaction towards *democratic reclaiming*. There is another powerful source ofinspiration aside from the republican one: the idea of federalism.*4. To avoid the sphere of political representation does not mean to singthe organ recital of the insurrectional break-up. Rather, it?s necessary toinsist on the constituent nature of movements. ** *Insurgency has regained right to citizenship in a consistent portion ofcritical thought, while being continually re-launched (like a brokenrecord) by the anarchist components of the movement. In the systemic crisisof the capital, following the emotional and political wave of thewidespread uprisings within the Arab countries, it seems realistic to singthe praises of the insurrectional perspective, each time cars are setalight in the streets. Yet something is unsatisfactory in theinsurrectional theory and practice. In the first place insurgency alwayspresents itself ? and we must turn our attention to the uprisings as theyactually are, not as we would like them to be or, normatively, as theyshould be - with traits of a ?destituting power? unable to produce newforms of life, new organization devices, and institutions which finally arenot State bodies, nor a re-statement of refreshed lobbies that in soothmaintain legacies with financial and colonial powers.In second place insurgency, especially in those subjects that ape it,reveals a strong mimicry of State logic, or better still, of police logic.In fact, for example, the abbreviation ACAB (*All cops are bastards*) hasstopped being an obvious corollary of street revolts, but to the eyes of afew it appears as the heart of the political program. We are convinced thatsuch line of reasoning is not up to the problems faced today by movementsinsisting on radical change of reality. No ?assault on the sky? is capableof effectiveness, the only thing that matters is the institutionalcreativity of movements.What is a non-stately institution (or a common institution), spreadingpower instead of concentrating it? No doubt the forms of organization whoseaction we are witnessing in the *indignados* movement, in Spain, in themovement for education, in Chile, and in the #*occupy *movement in theUnited States are non-stately institutions; movements fighting for thecommon good in Italy, from last summer?s referendum victory to theoccupations of dismissed cinemas and abandoned theatres all over Italy; themany student and youth protests that are disseminating new organizationalforms of teaching and research worldwide ? we called it self-educationyears ago - from Europe to the Americas, and more in general a new way ofliving in universities and schools; non appeasing trade unions. These areincomplete experiences, ok, but even in their incompleteness theseexperiences exemplify the practices of non-stately institutions, of *biopolitical* institutions that, while triggering and fueling conflict,consolidate new forms of life, knowledge, language and means ofcommunication.***5. We call tumult the form of conflict which is suited to the currentpredominance of financial governance*.We resort to a pre-modern and Machiavellian category with the clearintention of finding names that may account for the qualities of thestruggles, where the supremacy of state sovereignty is depleted. We believein fact that the category of Tumult, much more than the insurgency mirage,can account for the new practices of the movements, beginning withmetropolitan riots, ambiguous phenomena no doubt, but non the less worthyof passionate political consideration. The nature of tumult, in itsconformation and composition, is a varied one. It is not a purelydestituting conflict, it is rather (or it aims at being) a conflict inwhich the constituent nature prevails. *In this sense ? and with a sincererepublican spirit - we link the concept of tumult to that of thenon-stately institutions: there is at the same time a co-extensive andrecursive relationship between tumult and institutions.** **6. The present day relevance of revolution is to be re-consideredbeginning with the concept of tumult, opposed to an insurrectionalhypothesis. ** *The constituent nature of movements imposes a compelling consideration ofthe issue of radical transformation, or, with no diplomacy, of revolution.In times of governance, when the legal system is broken up and the exertionof power assumes a reticular shape, stretching along the plurality ofadministrative procedures, revolution, as intended in modern times, says *toomuch*, and at the same time *not enough*. Too much because it continues tobring forth the homogeneous and unitary trait of the antagonistic subject.In these years we have learnt that the hegemony of cognitive labour, on thegrounds of technical class composition, does not make the cognitive workersthe proper subject to summarize in itself, in both extensive and intensiveterms, the fight between capital and labour. Cognitive capitalism, the newparadigm of the subsumption of society to capital, means ontologicalirreducible multiplicity. This multiplicity determines the impossibility ofhomogeneity between the proletarian figure and the antagonistic subject.For the same reasons why it says too much, the category of revolution saystoo little: if the capital, in its schizophrenic and corrupted financialdevelopment, places exploitation and command on the entire *bios,resistance and desire for freedom cannot but spread beyond the laboursubjects, involving processes of intelligent cooperation, behaviour, theethical density of social relations, imagination and linguistic creativity.*Has this already been said in the past? Perhaps, but today old words carrynew meaning.Lets try to think revolution beginning with the concept of tumult. If thechallenge is seriously taken a series of evident facts come to light:revolution (re)presents itself as a *permanent process*, losing the traitsof an assault on the sky, and is qualified through the logic of the *alternative*; revolution can only be *molecular*, articulated alongheterogeneous levels, may they be spatial, temporal, subjective; revolutioncan only but productively conjugate *exit* dynamics (those of an exodus, of?resourceful subtraction?) to *voice* dynamics (of protest, of ?molar?conflict).* **7. Tumult is the only salvation for those living in times of violence. *We don?t need a meteorologist to know that we live in times of violence.The era of *Land grabbing *(the raid of land by agricultural and foodmultinationals as a new form of colonialism), the era in which stateviolence intervenes in defence of the market, banks and currencies, the eraof permanent global war, started by Bush and never interrupted by Obama,the era of silence civil wars. The era in which ?original accumulation?,with its bloody violence, has become the standard, a permanent process. Howelse can we read the savage exploitation of workers in India and tens ofsuicides in China the expropriation of collective intelligence throughcopyright, of life through patents, of knowledge through rankings? Violencewhich becomes a ?low intensity war? in metropolitan areas, when themultitude rebels, when indignations sieges the headquarters of power. Theviolence of Marchionne and of his blackmail, of banks, *too big to fail*.What is the only antidote to contemporary violence? Tumult. Indeed, ifthought of seriously, tumult imposes a consideration of violence. Also: isit possible to think the republican institutions without dealing with thequestion of tumult and therefore of violence? We think the answer is no.Does this mean that we choose to build a force symmetric to State power orto the violence of financial governance? In this case as well thestraightforward answer is: no. Tumult laughs in the face of measures, allkind of measures: neighed violent nor non-violent, if anything both thethings together (both violent and non-violent); in one word, constituent.Let?s try to better understand what constitutes tumult and resistance tothe police brutality, opposed to an imposing violence that in an organizedform is obsessed with symbolic representation, competition between groups,and *bob?* (bourgeois-bohemian) nihilism.In the first place tumult binds movements, it doesn?t tear them apart.Tumult has no shape, but produces different forms from time to time (apeaceful an obstinate mass sit-in has as much value as the rage exploded inthe riot on December 14th). It is not measured by the degree of violence,but it is not obsequious to the moral imperative of non-violence. Tumult isan ?awaited and unexpected event?, that even in advancing like an atomcasually deviating from the chosen path, is always the mature outcome ofmuch accumulated past experience. Let it be clear, there is no dialecticprogression, we do not have in mind the *Preface* of the Phenomenology ofSpirit: tumult is a quantum leap, a creative act, an affective transition,a fact (the world, indeed, is all that is the case). Nevertheless it isnever separate from the conditions of its possibility, which show all theirstrength and clarity only when the conditioned subject, tumult, expressesitself. There is a Kant we like, it is the one of the third Critique:tumult is sublime and helps us to deal seriously with the organizationalplot we have hatched, with the political intelligence we have developed,with the common names that work and with those going round in circles.Tumult is not an event and does not demand ?loyalty? like an event does. Onthe other hand, there are at least two theories of the event, theories somuch in vogue in these past years: the first one confuses the event withthe happening, the second one knows that the event is the meaning (or thepower) of a happening and knows that the meaning is the result of a patientand collective construction. *Caute!, *as Spinoza would say. The meaning oftumult does not demand loyalty, it sets the horizon of collectiveorganization, of the hard work, filled with love, that is necessary tobuild new institutions.In one word: tumult is hostile to purity. It is unfaithful. It is *immoral.**8. The constituent nature of the movement expresses itself in the abilityto invent new institutions, as much as in the democratic re-appropriationof the welfare institutions being dismissed. ** *A greater clarity is needed concerning the issue of institutions of thecommon (already outlined in thesis 4). A French republican, Saint-Just,said that ?many institutions and few laws? where necessary to protect theRepublic (and the revolution). An institution is a ?positive model ofaction?: contrarily to a law, which denies reality in ordering it, aninstitution organizes reality, developing multiplicity. What is social isalways institutional (this is we believe a good, not esoteric, biopolitical concept). It is rather the sovereign transcendence thatcontinually attempts, to brake the constitutive political nature of sociallife through the negative and disintegrating force of law. Thedisintegrating force of law, on the other hand, is what supported theenclosures in the 16th and 17th centuries, the process (factual andprescriptive) that in an admirable chapter of the Capital Marx defined asthe ?original accumulation?.*Therefore, when we say institution we do not mean State, *we do not havethe law at heart, we are not hinting at social democracy. This may be anunnecessary clarification: but in times when purity is considered a value,once more, we need to be cautious, towards those always ready to grasp apen and take an applause, whatever kind it may be.Yet when we think of non stately institutions we have in mind *Occupy WallStreet*, as well as the Teatro Valle occupied in Rome, university movementsfor self- reform, the self-managed hospitals in Catalonia and schools inChile. What do these experiences tell us? They talk of *democraticre-appropriation of welfare institutions*, the same institutions beingdismissed by political measures of austerity, helpless preys to financialransacking. The challenge of the institution of the common is not that ofseparateness: while supporting the invention and the growth of institutionswith a new nature, it is also crucial to take back the existinginstitutions and make them work in a radically new way. In this sense thepoint at issue is the service relation (or the ?anthropogenetic? productionmodel): the combination between the supply of a service ?be it cultural ormedical- and its use, or better, the forms of productive cooperation andthe statue of professional skills, become the object of political practiceitself. Care work, a reproductive dimension put to work, loses its irenicaltrait, and gains the trait of conflict, unavailable to subsidiary logics(from Cameron?s *Big Society* downwards). *The point is to re-think welfarebeyond the horizon of social security, putting at the centre care andrelations as polemic processes generating new forms of life. **In many cases the ?practice of the common good? cannot be distinguishedany more from the defence and the redevelopment of the public good, *be ituniversities or hospitals. The refined palate of *bob?* thinkers is caughtby horror before this statement. Luckily, proletarians are clear minded.*9. The invention of new forms of struggle bring out today new usefulelements for the political program of the alternative. ** *How is the political program built today? Here we find ourselves in asphere yet to be explored. To try to convince others, or at leastourselves, that if adequately articulated the program is what changes thenature of the movement?s future is equivalent to a clumsy trick not turnedout.Lets talk about a concrete example. The issue of guaranteed income has beenfor a long time the flag of critical thought and of independent movements.With the deepening of the crisis this claim becomes absolutely decisive,overriding: to win guaranteed income means to draw resources from financialincome, to establish a *social pension*, adjusted to the transformations ofthe labour market and to the quality of processes involving production andthe extraction of value. Everything is crystal clear, yet this point of theprogram struggles to come forth as an element of re-composition of socialconflict. Do we think this point is unrelated to the Spanish *indignados,#occupy student debt* or to the occupation of the Teatro Valle? Perhaps.Rather, it is the *#occupy *movement itself, when it concerns the spheresof production and of services, that, more than others, demands guaranteedincome and health, and forces some important parts of it, not solving ones,but important.So lets go back to the program. *Only the invention of concrete forms ofstruggle and of re-appropriation can guarantee the definition of a matureanti-capitalistic program, where political imagination finds an adequateexpression and an unforgiving test. Logic becomes inductive more than ever,more than ever singularity and circumstance organize a common language. ** **10. It is crucial to create new organizational devices, that are able toconjugate the **#occupy** movement with the general strike. That onehundred Oakland may flourish!** *Lets try to imagine the Oakland prototype in Europe. Surely Puerta del Solin Madrid, surely the Teatro Valle or the Cinema Palazzo in Rome, surelythe English or Italian student tumults. And still, perhaps, we need to gofurther, we need to build places for re-composition, metropolitan devicesable to conjugate *#occupy *to the general strike.About ten years ago, before Genoa 2001, the IWW (*Immaterial Workers of theWorld*) proposed the ?chambers of work and non-work?. The intuition wascorrect, but the times weren?t right, subjectivity immature. Ten yearsafter Genoa, after the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in the wholeof Europe, and simultaneously, of youth and student movements fightingagainst austerity, the proposal gains strength again. If the name is notappropriate, another one can be found, what matters is the concept: placesfor horizontal and common organization of precarious labour not regulatedby unions and scattered across the territory, and for those trade unions,or parts of them, that are non-concerting and conflictual.It?s not about creating a new trade union, or celebrating a new politicalsubject: the issue is rather to adopt the bio-political trait of themetropolitan productive structure and consequently its organization,through disputes and mutualism, communication and independence. Chambers oflabour, universities, social centres and squats, are not enough to achievethis: we need to build links between these fields, federative lines thatmay give life to stable forms of political cooperation.In the face of complete deregulation of the labour market, the endlesssqueeze on revenue and income, the wild privatization of services, theblackmail of debt, the mass unemployment, the only chance European newpoors have is to radically re-think the organizational forms of life andlabour, assuming there is no distinction between the two terms anymore.*11. Taking leave from moderatism, thinking democracy of the common as acreative and conflictual process. ** *To take leave from moderatism and to reduce it to peaces is the duty lyingbefore European radical movements wanting to change the currents state ofaffairs. Moderatism today comes in the guise of national unity governmentsor of the *Grosse Koalition*. Its slogan is the guilt for the debt,together with the ?sober? and ?responsible? choice of demanding sacrificesto the poor in order to give to the rich, to banks, to *hedge funds*.Moderate is also the choice of those political left-wing forces (all) thatthink they can tell fairytales and combine the *diktat* coming from the ECBwith general wellbeing.*Reformism is undoubtedly short of breath, there is no organizedrelationship between capital and work-force (the fields of life andlanguage), least of all any possible mediation. In the era when liberaldemocracy disappears, democracy as a process connecting tumults andinstitutions is the material horizon of anti-capitalism. A process and nota form of government, a singular production of common space, space regainedfrom private property and State logic. Only the equalitarian demand standsagainst neo-liberal politics: only this claim makes democracy the mostfierce opponent of political moderatism, the antidote to the ?soberness? ofinjustice. The democracy of the common, the democracy of the new poor, theonly ones capable of creating something new. To say it in the words ofWalter Benjamin: ?Among the great creators there were always theinexorable, who wanted to clear the table. They wanted to have cleardrawing table, construction was their field.? ***LUM (Libera Universit? Metropolitana/ Free Metropolitan University?Roma)<http://www.lumproject.org/>ESC, atelier autogestito <http://www.escatelier.net/>*February 2012*
Hello Nettimers,Oh dear. I am posting something perilously close to self-promotion. Ignore it if you like. However, I am attempting to provide ADDED VALUE, in the form of some critical debate and hard data (see below) which may help you to make sense of what's happened.A few months ago Access Space applied to "The Observer" (a slightly left-of-centre UK Newspaper, The Sunday version of "The Guardian") putting ourselves forward as one of "Britain's New Radicals". People or organisations who were "Making Britain Better".The 50 winners have been announced, ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/feb/18/50-new-radicals-britain-nesta ) and Access Space is one of them.Fantastic!But does this mean a resurgence of radical innovation, social inclusion, critical digital engagement, and a new, higher valuation of the arts in Britain? Well maybe...There seems to be considerable confusion about whether this is a list of ORGANISATIONS or PEOPLE. And some ambiguity about what "radicalism" actually constitutes. And the website which lists the winners (http://www.nesta.org.uk/news_and_features/britains_new_radicals ) sucks if you actually want hard data to analyse.So I have spent the last couple of hours making a list of all the winners and the websites featured.(1) The list is in the order on NESTA's website, which is alphabetical, by organisation or SOMETIMES by person.(2) Where an organisation is in brackets, they are mentioned as significant (eg: the originator) in the body text, but are not named as the "radical".(3) I have picked through the NESTA website to extract the names of individuals featured as originators, innovators or significant contributors.(4) The list is # delimited and pasted below. Sorry if the line-wraps interfere.Interestingly, we have worked with several of these organisations and people:* We have run OpenStreetMap workshops.* Dougald Hine of Spacemakers Network has been a regular participant at Access Space.* Lots of Access Space participants are also part of the Transition Town Network....so we are quite well represented on this list. But some entries seem just boggling. There are people who work for the government, who maybe are really good people, but do they qualify as "radical"? CAN you qualify as "radical" if you work for the government? There are some "radicals" who are named individuals, and some who are organisations with hundreds of employees.NESTA are hoping that this list will spark some controversy and debate.We're aiming to use this publicity to make our critical, do-it-yourself approach to community, creativity and technology more widespread in the UK.Being featured on this list is "publicity only" - there is no cash prize or other resource attached. So if you have an idea that'll help us use this increased profile to unlock real resource, then please, get in touch!(Personally, I'm just well impressed by being on just about any list that includes both Conrad "Mathematica" Wolfram and Rob "Transition" Hopkins).Best Regards,James=====#ORGANISATION#URL#Named People##3space#http://www.3space.org/#Henry Mason, Andrew Cribb##Access Space#http://www.access-space.org/#James Wallbank##Sidekick Studios#http://www.sidekickstudios.net/#Adil Abrar##Shared Lives Plus#http://www.sharedlivesplus.org.uk/#Alex Fox##Graphene (University of Manchester)#n/a#Sir Andre Geim, Professor Kostya Novoselov##Frameworks 4 Change#http://www.frameworks4change.co.uk/#Andy Bradley##Includem#http://www.includem.org/#Angela Morgan##The Brilliant Club#http://www.thebrilliantclub.org#Jonathan Sobczyk, Simon Coyle##Childreach International#http://www.childreach.org.uk/#n/a##Community Land Scotland#http://www.communitylandscotland.co.uk/#n/a##(Research Europe Ltd)#http://www.wolfram.com/#Conrad Wolfram##The Greenhouse#http://www.thegreenhousedingwall.co.uk/#Dave Lynch##Dementia Adventure#http://www.dementiaadventure.co.uk/#Neil Mapes, Lucy Harding##Clinks Care Farm#http://www.carefarminguk.org/#Doeke Dobma, Iris van Zon, (Norfolk County Council)##(De Montfort University)#http://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/partnerships/square-mile/square-mile-project.aspx#Professor Dominic Shellard##Space Makers Agency#http://www.spacemakers.org.uk/#Dougald Hine##dRMM#http://www.drmm.co.uk/#Alex de Rijke, Philip Mars, Sadie Morgan##FairPensions#http://www.fairpensions.org.uk/#n/a##The Finance Innovation Lab#http://www.thefinancelab.org/#(ICAEW & WWF-UK)##(Swindon Borough Council)#n/a#Gavin Jones##Homeless World Cup#http://www.homelessworldcup.org/#Mel Young##i-Probono#http://www.i-probono.com/#Shireen Irani##CDI Europe, Apps for Good#http://www.cdieurope.eu/#Iris Lapinski##SB.TV#http://www.sbtv.co.uk/#Jamal Edwards##The Reader Organisation#http://www.thereader.org.uk/#Jane Davis##Sugru#http://www.sugru.com/#Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh##Rubies in the Rubble#http://www.rubiesintherubble.com/#Jenny Dawson##Spice#http://www.justaddspice.org/#(University of Wales)##KwickScreen#http://www.kwickscreen.com/#Michael Konn##Lexxic#http://www.lexxic.com/#Nicola James##The Liverpool Project#http://www.theliverpoolproject.org/#Dr Simon Jackson, Dr Nick Rhead, Steve Boote##Livity#http://www.livity.co.uk/#n/a##Maslaha#http://www.maslaha.org/#n/a##Mind Candy#http://www.mindcandy.com/#Michael Acton Smith##(UK Government's Executive Director of Digital)#n/a#Mike Bracken ##MyBnk#http://www.mybnk.org/#Lily Lapenna##We Are What We Do#http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/#Nick Stanhope##OpenStreetMap#http://www.openstreetmap.org/#Steve Coast##Incredible Edible Todmorden#http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/#Pam Warhurst##PatientsLikeMe#http://www.patientslikeme.com/#Benjamin Heywood, James Heywood, Jeff Cole, Stephen Heywood, Paul Wicks##Ideas Tap#http://www.ideastap.com/#Peter De Haan##Respect4us#http://www.respect4us.co.uk/#n/a##Transition Town Movement#http://www.transitionnetwork.org/#Rob Hopkins##Just For Kids Law#http://www.justforkidslaw.org/#Shauneen Lambe##Shift.ms#http://www.shift.ms/#George Pepper, Freddie Yauner##Start Again#http://www.start-again.co.uk/#Mark Peters##Citizens UK#http://www.citizensuk.org/#Tom Chigbo##UpRising#http://www.uprising.org.uk/#Alveena Malik##Women Like Us#http://www.womenlikeus.org.uk/#Emma Stewart, Karen Mattison#_______________________________________________Brico mailing listBrico-pma9X3FYtpzZ+VzJOa5vwg< at >public.gmane.orghttp://lists.dyne.org/mailman/listinfo/brico
SOUND::GENDER::FEMINISM::ACTIVISMCALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONSPost-graduate Research EventLondon College of Communication, University of the Arts LondonMay 17th 2012We invite submissions for 10 minute contributions relating to aspects of research in the context of sound, in its various creative and theoretical forms, and gender. This is an open call and we welcome responses from all relevant disciplines and will accept a variety of formats from short academic presentations to more experimental contributions.We are looking to share research with a view to establishing a network of researchers and practitioners working in these areas. The final format of the event will be generated around the contributions received.Please send expressions of interest, including the theme, topic and format of your presentation, of around 100 words and a short biography of no more than 100 words by March 16th 2012 to soundartsevent< at >crisap.orgsupported by CRiSAP http://www.crisap.org/This event follows on from Her Noise Archive Symposium3-5 May 2012Tate ModernA three day event investigating feminist discourses in sound, launching with a performance and talk by Pauline Oliveros. The symposium, which brings together contributions by leading artists, performers, theoreticians and writers aims to provide a platform to further develop these emergent feminist discourses in sound and music, with an emphasis on tactics that challenge and / or infiltrate canonical readings. The event marks the donation of the Her Noise Archive to University of the Arts London Archives and Special Collections housed at London College of Communication, and is realised as a collaboration between CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice), Electra and Tate.# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org
"Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!" With these words Karl Marx perhaps summarized best what Communism is, succinctly expressing the goals of the communist movement. While Communism is an older and much broader movement than the work of Marx and his followers alone, we are all none the less united around the central idea that our shared productive capacity should be directed towards the common wealth and that each person should have the opportunity to maximize their ability and potential, and to contribute accordingly.This stands in stark contrast of what might be described as "From each according to their privilege, to each according to there usefulness to the privileged," otherwise known as "Capitalism" Where a privileged elite produce nothing, yet control the distribution of all wealth and direct our shared productive capacity towards their own enrichment, while everybody else produces everything, yet receives only as much as the privileged give them, according to their usefulness to the privileged, and only infrequently any more than their own subsistence or replacement costs.Given the choice between a society that allows everyone the chance to develop to their full potential and a society where opportunity is determined by class structure and privilege, in other words a choice between Communism and Capitalism, who would chose Capitalism?Given the choice between a society that directs its productive capacity towards creating real social value and building common wealth and a society that directs its productive capacity towards the enrichment of the few, in other words a choice between Communism and Capitalism, who wouldn't want to work towards Communism?Yet, few people today openly identify as Communists, many even believe that using this word somehow works against them, as if the elite who will resist all efforts to reduce their privilege will somehow be caught off-guard and be tricked into a more equal society if we just outsmart them with some clever new terms.To paraphrase Juliette, What's in a name? That which we call Communism, by any other name, would be suppressed just the same.The fact is that any proposal that seeks to create more equality will be automatically called "Communism" by reactionary forces who who have invested considerable wealth and effort trying to sully the term.A similar discussion has taken place among members of the Pirate Party. As Rick Falkvinge reports from the the discussion in founding the Spanish Partido Pirata "Either we call ourselves the Pirate Party, and get to define what the name stands for, they reasoned, or we’ll be called the Pirate Party anyway, without control of what the name stands for."Those who wish to preserve the privilege of the elite will call us Communists no matter what. If we are timid about being called Communists, and try to shy away from the name, all that will do is strengthen the attacks against us, it will make it seem like being a Communist is somehow shameful, something to be denied, something to hide. It will make it seem that we call ourselves something other than Communists only to keep people from knowing the truth about our sinister Communism.As in the discussion that Falkvinge reports, we thereby relinquish the ability to define what Communism means, and what it means to be a Communist. We also let our accusers off the hook. By pretending not to be Communists, we allow them to never explain what it is they think is wrong with Communism and why it's a bad thing. By pretending we are not Communists, we allow them to effectively employ a guilt-by-association fallacy to discredit us as Communists without ever needing to make a logical arguments against our views.We should be under no delusion, the same propagandists that have made communism a bad word in many uninformed minds, will do likewise to any new terms that seek to deny privilege and power to the elite. This is clearly evident in how the words "welfare" and even "liberal" have become terms of derision in US politics, for instance. This is also brought to the level of absurdity when right-wing commentators label even the most timid parliamentarian reformists as "Communists." Such fallacy is displayed at it's most vulgar with common feminist-baiting trolls likes "feminism is just Communism in drag." We have all seen plenty of this.By saying "Yes, I am a Communist.", we turn the tables. Not only that, we open the door to a far more interesting and rich discussion, a discussion that is made unnecessarily shallow when we hide our Communism behind neologisms. Communists have been producing theory for hundreds of years, a rich stock of insight where many core questions have been investigated, disputed, and a wide variety of tactics, tendencies and views have emerged, including Marxian, anarchist and co-operative tendencies, which each having quite different views on how communism is to be achieved. Views we do well to consider and contrast.To be Communist simply means that you believe in equality, that you do not believe that a society that allows one class of people to exploit another is the best that we can achieve, and therefore, that you believe that democracy and equality must be respected in all human relations, not only in government, but also in economic and domestic life as well.Communists believe we are equals politically, equals in the workplace, and equals in the home.Communism has never been achieved. So we do not yet know what a Communist society would look like in detail. Even the leaders of so-called Communist countries such as the USSR or China have never claimed to have achieved Communism. They have only claimed to be working towards it. And yet, this is perhaps the most common reason cited to avoid the use of Communism, because many of the attempts to realize it have gone wrong, have failed, and have even produced results directly contradictory to the aims of Communism.Far from being a reason to avoid it, the mistakes and failures of the past are perhaps the strongest reason why we should continue to use the word. We know that attempts to achieve Communism could lead to negative consequences.When we pretend that the ideas being explored are wholly new, when we employ neologisms and we make-believe that we have escaped from the political realities faced by those before us, when we allow ourselves the hubris to believe that our own theories and models are so new and novel that they do not have the same limits and risks of those of the previous revolutionaries, we invite failure and disaster.When we use the word Communism, we do so without delusion, we already know it can go wrong. Thus we can learn from, and build upon the mistakes and failures of the past. Any idea can go wrong, any course of action, no matter how noble its ideals, can lead to unintended consequences. Simply using a different term does not protect us.Instead of clouding the discussion with neologistic delusion, lets acknowledge the history and embrace the future of Communism. To appropriate the reasoning of the founders of the Partido Pirata, let us call ourselves Communists, and define what the name stands for, otherwise we’ll be called Communists anyway, and give up control of what Communism means.If you believe in working towards a society where everyone is treated as an equal, an equal under the law, an equal in the workplace and an equal in the home. If you believe in working towards a society where the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all. If you believe in working towards a society that applies it's wealth to empower the many and not only to enrich the few, join me in standing up and saying "Yes, I am a Communist" and lets work out what that means together.I'll be Stammtisch tonight as usual at 9pm or so. See you at Cafe Buchhandlung. Aparently, it's a Fasching party at Cafe Buchhandlung! Where a costume if you're up for it.- http://bit.ly/buchhandlung
Flick Harrison <flick-aWVegx4lPYdvL3vi5tcqnAC/G2K4zDHf< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmediale Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmediale Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmediale- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Flick Harrison <flick-aWVegx4lPYdvL3vi5tcqnAC/G2K4zDHf< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmedialeDate: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:19:09 -0800On 2012-02-10, at 22:01 , Morlock Elloi wrote:Bla bla bla. This is exactly the kind of obscurantist theory that caneasily be reality-checked. Why don't you take a photo of your naked body -nuts and all - and post a link to it here on nettime with your nextcomment? I mean, you post your thoughts here all the time, why not yourbody? And make sure you're holding up today's paper so we know it's real.Even then, a picture of your body isn't your body - when a stranger fucksyou because you need a few bucks, that's a real sacrifice.If you're talking about my reply, that it indicates a religious attitudetowards brain-body separation, I'd say you're wildly off-base. The ideathat prostituting your mind is just as much a violation as prostitutingyour body is the more religious response. The pure mind, besmirched by theperformance of that which isn't fervently believed... just like the bodyperforming the sex act without love - both equally debase the soul...That sounds more religious to me.It's silly to say that an hour of lame intellectual labour is equivalent toan hour of unwanted sex. Name a culture where the social barriers tosexual penetration are exactly equal to the barriers to intellectualintercourse and I'll believe you that this difference is all culturallyconstructed.-Flick- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Flick Harrison <flick-aWVegx4lPYdvL3vi5tcqnAC/G2K4zDHf< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmedialeDate: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:26:25 -0800Margaret,I wouldn't use the word "feminist" as a pejorative stick, but "pseudo-" Iwould. Even 'pseudo-fascist' is kind of a double insult. It's true the 'moral majority' get exposed for hypocrisy time after time,and that's a source of amusement. For some reason sex scandals underminetheir authority more than non-sexual exploitation of, say, precariouslabour. Go figure. On 2012-02-16, at 15:17 , Margaret Morse wrote:If you mean the Marxism bit, I'd say the sex worker doesn't need to keepthe pleasure any more than the car-building soviet keeps the cars; but theyshould keep the money, or at least the profits. And in Marxist analysis,worker-ownership of the factory (in this case the [usually female] body)should guarantee that.Aside: In this debate over mind vs body we're ignoring the intellectualnature of sex work. If the mind is the most important erogenous zone, andgender and sexuality are performances (phone sex being perhaps the mostobvious expression of that), then the prostitute is putting their mind aswell as his or her body into the service of the client.and a PS: 'Sex worker' is a bad phrase for other reasons - for instance, ifphone sex workers, strippers, porn actors, models etc are all sex workers,what is the specific word for a sex worker who sells sexual intercourse?--* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD?http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Flick Harrison <flick-aWVegx4lPYdvL3vi5tcqnAC/G2K4zDHf< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmedialeDate: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:27:55 -0800John,I've done plenty of intellectual work that made me feel icky. It's alreadya privilege to be literate, intelligent and articulate, for which you getoffered those kind of gigs.I did once refuse to make a commercial for Gordon Campbell, but I did abunch of work for Dalton McGuinty because I needed the money. Outside the office where I worked at the time, there were a couple of gayrent-boys who worked the corner.There is no question in my mind about who had higher status. I supposethey could say no to a customer if their spidey-senses tingled.I also shot Hollywood auditions for a year and a half, where the boundarybetween intellectual (actress) and sex worker (can you try that again withyour shirt off?) was very thin indeed.But: you will never see a brain-worker standing on a street corner.Correction, I did see that in Pakistan. Scribes lined the streets aroundgovernment ministries, offering to read and fill out forms. However, theywere generally serving a lower class than themselves, i.e. illiteratepeasants.--* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD?http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -