Es folgt eine Auflistung von Büchern und Essays, die ich im Hinblick auf mein Thema relevant finde und Notizen herausgeschrieben habe. Gleichermaßen finden sich auch Notizen zu Büchern und Interviews zur Malerei im Allgemeinen. Zur leichteren Übersicht sind die Inhalte als eine Sammlung von Schlagwörter aufgelistet. Sie fungiert als mein Archiv und meine Sammlung zum Nachschlagen und erneuten Lesen.
Recherche und Notizen
READING
2024
Motiv
Stabile Komposition
Landschaftsmalerei
Licht
10 Lieblingspassagen 1. “In der Malerei, überhaupt in jedem Werk, geht es darum, Dinge, die sich nicht vertragen, miteinander in Einklang zu bringen. In uns stecken allerlei Eigenschaften, die einander widersprechen. Daraus muss man etwas konstruieren, das lebensfähig, das stabil ist.” (p.129) 2. “Jeder Maler hat das Recht auf seine eigene Theorie, und jede Theorie hat ihre eigenen Erfordernisse.” (…) Bei mir ging es um die Farbe. (…) Für mich ist die Farbe eine Kraft. Meine Bilder bestehen aus vier, fünf Farben, die aufeinanderprallen, Energien verströmen. Setze ich ein Grün, dann bedeutet das nicht Gras. Setzte ich ein Blau, dann bedeutet das nicht Himmel.” (p.247) 3. “Ich sah mich als einen Menschen, der das umzusetzen versuchte, was er spürte, und ich dachte, wenn man mich nicht verstand, dann hatte ich mich nicht klar genug ausgedrückt.” (p.266) 4. “Ich suchte nach einem Mittel, um den verschiedenen Elementen in meinem Bild einen festen Platz geben zu können, statt sie ständig spazieren zu führen. (…) Ich wollte also Fixpunkte in meiner Komposition.” (p.249) 5. “Kennen Sie den Spruch von Francois Rude: “All das, was über den Messbereich meines Zirkels hinausgeht, soll meine Persönlichkeit sein.” Ich funktioniere nach dem gleichen Prinzip. In dieser Landschaft des Bois de Boulogne gelang es mir, aus dem abgemessenen Bereich hinauszukommen und mein eigenes Lied zu singen.” (p.251) 6. “Wenn ich nicht das machen würde, was ich mache, dann würde ich gerne so wie Picasso malen wollen.” “Wie lustig sagte Max. “Stellen Sie sich vor, genau das Gleiche hat Picasso über Sie gesagt.” (p.106) 7. “Die Zeichnung war also etwas Geschlossenes, und es ging darin vor allem um die Bewegung des Modells, die fast ganz durch einen Rhythmus suggeriert wurde, der diesem Modell eigen war.” (p.125) 8. “Die Amateure haben einen immensen Vorteil: Sie spielen mit dem Herzen und hören sich nicht. Sie sind anderen gegenüber sehr streng und sich selbst gegenüber unendlich nachsichtig. Auch Amateurmaler malen ganz furchtbar und machen trotzdem weiter.” (p.228) 9. “Müsste ich den Zweig eines Feigenbaumes malen oder zeichnen, so würde ich zuerst die charakteristischsten Blätter in ihrem eigenen Charakter erfassen, und zum Schluss würde ich aufgrund dieser verschiedenen Blätter des Zweiges etwas erfinden. Ich würde verallgemeinern. (…) Man muss es sich vor allem durch die Details vor Augen führen. Die Phantasie darf nicht von etwas ausgehen, das dem Modell fremd ist.” (p.255) 10. “Der Kopist ahmt eins zu eins nach. Das Licht hingegen lässt sich nicht kopieren. Man spürt es und drückt es aus mit den Mitteln der Farbe, der Zeichnung und so weiter. Man schafft etwas Äquivalentes, man arbeitet mit Äquivalenzen, nicht mit Nachahmung. Licht lässt sich nicht kopieren. Beim Orchestrieren des Lichts auf ihren Bildern verteilten die großen Künstler es so, wie man auf einer Zeichnung die Formen verteilt.” (p.263) Alle Passagen, die mir gefallen haben - “Ein junger Maler hat es schwer. Wenn er es ernst meint und sich total in seine Suche vertieft, dann kann er einfach keine Bilder malen, die den Abnehmern gefallen. Wenn er dagegen um jeden Preis reüssieren will und nur mit der Absicht arbeitet, zu gefallen und zu verkaufen, dann kommt ihm sein Gewissen abhanden, und er wird vollkommen abhängig von den Launen anderer. Er vernachlässigt seine Begabung und verliert sie schließlich.” (p.72) - “Für uns gab es keine Abnehmer. Wir arbeiteten für uns. Wir hatten ein hoffnungsloses Metier. Also amüsierten wir uns über jeden Blödsinn.” (p.73) - “Das ist wirklich so. Um ein Geschäft abzuschließen, erfindet man allerlei Lügen, sie sich, sowie das Geschäft abgeschlossen ist, in Luft auflösen.” (p.80) - “Cezannes Malerei kam mir neuartig und stark vor. Sie warf Fragen auf, an denen ich mich heftig abgearbeitet habe.”(p.89) - “Wir arbeiteten, unsere Malerei verkaufte sich nicht, wir waren sehr glücklich, sehr frei, wir konnten machen, was wir wollten.” (p.101) - “Wenn ich nicht das machen würde, was ich mache, dann würde ich gerne so wie Picasso malen wollen.” “Wie lustig sagte Max. “Stellen Sie sich vor, genau das Gleiche hat Picasso über Sie gesagt.” (p.106) - Sie hätten sich Ihren Schülern gegenüber eher wie ein Mitschüler verhalten, und beim Korrigieren sei Ihre häufigste Kritik gewesen: “Da gibt es ein Loch. Dieser Ton ist nicht voll.” “Es kamen um die dreißig Schüler. Ich sagte: “Setzen Sie einen Preis fest. Ich selbst will nicht bezahlt werden, denn das ist für mich kein Vergnügen, und ich möchte mich nicht zum Sklaven davon machen. Ich möchte von einem Tag auf den anderen sagen können: “ Ich komme nicht mehr.” Aber es muss der gleiche Preis wie sonst überall sein, damit die Leute nicht nur deswegen kommen, weil es hier billiger ist.” (p.108) - “Ich sagte mir: “Idiot! Warum sammelst du? Wenn du schöne Dinge magst, dann geh in den Louvre, statt einem Besitzerdrang nachzugeben. Du magst persische Stoffe? Aber am Himmel gibt es umwerfende Wolken, und dann verändern die sich auch noch die ganze Zeit. Wenn du nicht fähig bist Obst zu mögen, dann hast du auch kein Anrecht auf Konfitüre! Wenn der Bios de Boulogne in deiner Reichweite ist, warum suchst su dann nach dem, was andere daraus gemacht haben?” So habe ich mich von der Idee, sammeln zu wollen, geheilt.” (p.114) - “Ich sagte mir: “Einen dieser Schmetterlinge zu kaufen, wäre vollkommen sinnlos. Ich gehe hinein, um ein Detail genauer zu betrachten. Ich bin ja schließlich nicht gezwungen, etwas zu kaufen.” Ich hielt inne vor einem blauen Schmetterling, der war von einem Blau, das es mir durch und durch ging. Ich fragte: “Wie viel?”, und dachte: “Was für ein Blödsinn!” - “50 Francs.” - Ich habe ihn gekauft.” (p.114) - “Ich nehme gern, was mir gefällt, um es für mich zu haben.” (p.115) - “Ich machte aufgrund jeder Pose eine Zeichnung, für die eine halbe Stunde vorgesehen war, das heißt, die Zeichnung beruhte auf mehr oder weniger vielen Beobachtungen, aber die Elemente waren so organisiert, dass man weder retuschieren noch etwas hinzufügen konnte, um die Zeichnung zu vollenden. Die Zeichnung war also etwas Geschlossenes, und es ging darin vor allem um die Bewegung des Modells, die fast ganz durch einen Rhythmus suggeriert wurde, der diesem Modell eigen war.” (p.125) - “In der Malerei, überhaupt in jedem Werk, geht es darum, Dinge, die sich nicht vertragen, miteinander in Einklang zu bringen. In uns stecken allerlei Eigenschaften, die einander widersprechen. Daraus muss man etwas konstruieren, das lebensfähig, das stabil ist. Deshalb arbeitet man sein Leben lang und will bis zum letzten Moment arbeiten, wenn man nicht aufgegeben hat, wenn man die Neugier nicht verloren hat, wenn man es sich nicht in der Routine bequem gemacht hat.” (p.129) - “Djagilew war ein Phänomen. Er ließ in den Köpfen von Künstlern Ideen entstehen.” (p.160) - “Angesichts meiner weißen Riesenleinwände ließ ich ein Modell kommen und begann eine Studie, die mit der geplanten Dekoration absolut nicht zu tun hatte. In jeder Ruhepause des Modells ruhte auch ich mich aus und ließ meinen Blick - zerstreut, wie mir schien - über diese große Fläche schweifen. Und plötzlich kam mir blitzartig die Inspiration. Ich nahm meinen dicken Kohlestift, der in einem langen Schilfrohr steckte, und begann, auf der ganzen Breite von vierzehn Metern den Reigen meiner Tänzerinnen zu zeichnen. Ich war in Fahrt gekommen, hatte die große Fläche kraft meiner Phantasie in Besitz genommen. So malte ich das Bild: nach Gefühl, ohne ein Modell vor mir zu haben.” (p.189) - “Normalerweise macht man ja eine mehr oder weniger große Skizze, überträgt diese dann mithilfe eines Quadratnetzes auf die große Leinwand und beginnt erst danach zu malen. Dieser Vorgang zerstört aber die Verbindung zwischen dem Künstler und seinem Werk: Es hat nicht den selben Schwung, wie wenn es direkt ausgeführt wird.” (p.189) - “Dann sah er (Max Liebermann) ganz hinten den liegenden Akt, der Miss Cone gehört, Blauer Akt, dessen Entstehungsgeschichte ich Ihnen erzählt habe, und sagte: “Ah! So etwas geht nicht! Das ist fürchterlich. Damit verdrehen Sie allen jungen Leuten den Kopf, und dann wollen die nur noch so malen.” Ich blieb hart. Schließlich willigte Cassier ein. Aber er sagte meinem massier: “Matisse ist ein furchtbarer Kerl. Der kommt und macht einem Vorschriften. Das bin ich nicht gewohnt. Hier bestimme ich.” (p.208) - “Ich machte eine Reise nach München, wo ich täglich sieben Liter Bier trank. So ging das fünft, sechs Tage.” (p.213) - “Ich hoffe eich habe noch ein paar gute Arbeitsjahre vor mir, in denen ich endlich die Arbeit meines Lebens zum Abschluss bringen kann mit ein paar Bildern, die deutlich machen, was ich gewollt habe.” (p.226) - “Während des Krieges habe ich viel gemalt, weil ich das Gefühl hatte, vergessen zu müssen, und deshalb den ganzen Tag arbeitete.” (p.227) - “Im Winter malte ich in der Regel bei Tageslicht, solange es hell genug war. Und bei elektrischem Licht zeichnete ich.” (p.227) - “Die Amateure haben einen immensen Vorteil: Sie spielen mit dem Herzen und hören sich nicht. Sie sind anderen gegenüber sehr streng und sich selbst gegenüber unendlich nachsichtig. Auch Amateurmaler malen ganz furchtbar und machen trotzdem weiter.” (p.228) - “Aber Renoir hat schließlich nie mit der Vorstellung gemalt, ein Meisterwerk zu schaffen. Er malte, weil ihn das befriedigte. Wie konnte er also Bescheid wissen? Seine Qualitäten sah er sehr wohl. Doch hat es Leute mit großen Qualitäten gegeben, die lange Zeit in Vergessenheit gerieten, manchmal überhaupt vergessen wurden, jahrhundertelang. Denken Sie nur an El Greco. Es hat unser Zeitalter gebraucht, um ihn auszugraben und zu feiern. Es hat Cezanne gebraucht, damit er den gebührenden Platz erhielt.” (p.230) - “Bei kleineren Formaten hat man weniger Schwierigkeiten, da werden gewisse Qualitäten leichter erkennbar, als wenn man ein großes Gemälde malt, das mehr Architektur, andere Qualitäten verlangt.” (p.231) - “Malt man ein erstes Mal auf eine frische, weiße Leinwand ist das einfach: Das Weiß der Leinwand und die Transparenz der Farbe kommen einem entgegen. Durch die Farbschicht, die man aufträgt, leuchtet das Weiß der Leinwand. Legt man aber eine zweite Farbschicht darüber, löscht man damit diese leuchtende Lebhaftigkeit, es wird hart, pappkartonartig. Von diesem Pappkarton muss man nun mutig ausgehen, um mit ein paar expressiven Valeurs über diesen hässlichen Farbkörper zu triumphieren.” (p.245) - “Jeder Maler hat das Recht auf seine eigene Theorie, und jede Theorie hat ihre eigenen Erfordernisse. In seine Landschaften konnte Marquet immer einen Papagei setzen. Er musste jedenfalls damit rechnen. Er musste darauf vorbereitet sein. Marquet ist ein absoluter Realist: Er interpretiert keine Farbe, er urteilt nicht. Bei ihm zählen die Valeurs und die Linen. Bei mir ging es um die Farbe. (…) Für mich ist die Farbe eine Kraft. Meine Bilder bestehen aus vier, fünf Farben, die aufeinanderprallen, Energien verströmen. Setze ich ein Grün, dann bedeutet das nicht Gras. Setzte ich ein Blau, dann bedeutet das nicht Himmel.” (p.247) Zur Landschaftsmalerei - “Ich suchte nach Fixpunkten, weil ich immer durcheinandergebracht wurde durch die wechselnden Eindrücke angesichts einer Landschaft, was erst recht auffällt, wenn ganze Tage dazwischen liegen. Man sieht eine Landschaft am Dienstag mit klarem frischen Geist und hat einen bestimmten Eindruck. Kommt man am Mittwoch wieder, ist alles völlig anders, obschon an der Landschaft nichts verändert worden ist. Das ist so, weil sie nicht mehr gleich im Kopf sind. man muss deshalb jeden Tag auf etwas zurückkommen können. (…) Ich suchte nach einem Mittel, um den verschiedenen Elementen in meinem Bild einen festen Platz geben zu können, statt sie ständig spazieren zu führen. (…) Ich wollte also Fixpunkte in meiner Komposition.” (p.249) - “Dieser Baum würde auch morgen noch dort sein und in einer Woche. überhaupt immer. Der würde bleiben, wo er war. Danach suchte ich die dieser Vertikalen am meisten entgegengesetzten Linie im Geäst, den Ast, der zu ihr im größten Gegensatz stand. Mit einem kleinen Lineal oder einem Pinsel suchte ich danach und hielt in fest. Das war meine zweite Richtung. Danach suchte ich nach einer Schräge von fünfundvierzig Grad. All das tat ich der Linen wegen.” (p.249) - “Was nun die Farbe betrifft: Die kann einen an der Nase herumführen. Lebhafte Farben berühren Sie mehr oder weniger heftig, je nach ihrem Geisteszustand. Grüntöne beispielsweise berühren Sie nicht jeden Tag gleich.” (p.250) - “Ich wollte mit fixen Elementen arbeiten, mit Dingen, die sich nicht verändern ließen. Ich nahm einen kleinen schwarzen Spiegel und sah mir darin die Landschaft an. Solche Spiegel haben die Eigenschaft, dass sie alle Farben eliminieren (…). Ich wollte, dass nichts aus einer vernünftigen Konstruktion herausragen würde, auf die ich jeden Tag zurückkommen könnte.” (p.250) - “Ich dachte an einen Ausspruch von Corot: “Ich setze das Schwärzeste und das Hellste, und dann kommen die Zwischentöne dazu.” Ich arbeitete auch auf diese Weise, und das ergab eine feste, gut aufgebaute Landschaft.” (p.250) - “Kennen Sie den Spruch von Francois Rude: “All das, was über den Messbereich meines Zirkels hinausgeht, soll meine Persönlichkeit sein.” Ich funktioniere nach dem gleichen Prinzip. In dieser Landschaft des Bois de Boulogne gelang es mir, aus dem abgemessenen Bereich hinauszukommen und mein eigenes Lied zu singen.” (p.251) Das Motiv - “Damit der Tag gut anfängt, muss ich morgens Lust haben, jemanden umzubringen, muss ich etwas geben können, Energie zu verbrauchen haben. Wenn Sie in diesem Zustand sind, gehen Sie los und finden sich plötzlich vor einem Objekt wieder, das die Entladung bewirkt: Sie müssen es darstellen. Das Objekt ist immer da. Ihr Gefühl zwingt Sie dazu. Um es auszudrücken, müssen Sie das Objekt darstellen.” (p.252) - “Malerei ist ein Kommunikationsmittel, eine Art Sprache. Ein Künstler ist ein Exhibitionist. Wenn Sie einem Exhibitionisten ein Publikum wegnehmen, dann schleicht er sich, die Hände in den Taschen, davon.” (p.253) - “Das Publikum ist das Material, mit dem Sie arbeiten. Sein Gesicht sehen Sie nicht. Es ist eine große, enorme, gigantische Masse. Das Publikum ist der Typ, dem Sie eines Tages begegnen und der Ihnen sagt: “Monsieur Matisse, Sie können sich gar nicht vorstellen, wie sehr mir Ihr Bild gefällt, das Sie im Salon X ausgestellt haben.” Und dieser Typ, das ist ein Angestellter, der keinen Sou für Kunst ausgeben könnte. Das Publikum ist nicht der Käufer, sondern das empfindliche Material, in dem Sie eine Spur zu hinterlassen hoffen.” (p.253) - “Müsste ich den Zweig eines Feigenbaumes malen oder zeichnen, so würde ich zuerst die charakteristischsten Blätter in ihrem eigenen Charakter erfassen, und zum Schluss würde ich aufgrund dieser verschiedenen Blätter des Zweiges etwas erfinden. Ich würde verallgemeinern. (…) Man muss es sich vor allem durch die Details vor Augen führen. Die Phantasie darf nicht von etwas ausgehen, das dem Modell fremd ist.” (p.255) Das Licht - “Ja, durch die kunstvolle Verwendung heller und dunkler Töne vermittelt man ein Gefühl von Licht, etwas, was Licht äquivalent ist. (…) der Kontrast dieser beiden Gegenstände (erzeugt) im Geist eine Bewegung, die derjenigen durch Licht analog ist. Es ist eine Frage der Beziehungen. (…) Der Kopist ahmt eins zu eins nach. Das Licht hingegen lässt sich nicht kopieren. Man spürt es und drückt es aus mit den Mitteln der Farbe, der Zeichnung und so weiter. Man schafft etwas Äquivalentes, man arbeitet mit Äquivalenzen, nicht mit Nachahmung. Licht lässt sich nicht kopieren. Beim Orchestrieren des Lichts auf ihren Bildern verteilten die großen Künstler es so, wie man auf einer Zeichnung die Formen verteilt.” (p.263) - “Es gibt Künstler, die besser arbeiten, wenn sie von der Kritik bejubelt werden. Im Allgemeinen sind das schlechte Künstler. Die besseren Künstler reagieren in der Regel auf Einschätzungen der Kritik, weil sie sie ungerechtfertigt finden, und dann wollen sie das, was sie zu sagen haben, bekräftigen, noch deutlicher machen. Das ist ein Vorteil der Kritik. (…) Ist es einem Künstler gelungen, das Publikum zu erreichen, und beginnen die Kritiker ihn zu loben, stellt der Künstler fest, dass ihm der Antrieb abhanden gekommen ist. Ihm fehlt die Aufregung des Kampfes.” (p.264) - “Ich sah mich nie als Genie. Ich sah mich als einen Menschen, der das umzusetzen versuchte, was er spürte, und ich dachte, wenn man mich nicht verstand, dann hatte ich mich nicht klar genug ausgedrückt.” (p.266)
Henri Matisse – Kunst sollte sein wie ein bequemer Sessel (Plaudereien mit Pierre Courthion)
2022
audiovisual capitalism
invisibility of the image
digital no-man´s land
capturing reality
medium as message
"The trick is to create the algorithm to clean the picture from the noise, or rather to define the picture from within noise." – Hito Steyerl The poor image is a copy in motion. (p.1) the poor image tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea in its very becoming. (p.1) It mocks the promises of digital technology. (p.1) They testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images - their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. (p.1) conspiracy theories (p.1) Poor images show the rare, the obvious, and the unbelievable - that is, if we can still manage to decipher it. (p.1) Low Resolutions Focus is identified as a class position, a position of ease and privilege, while being out of focus lowers one´s value as an image. (p.1) conservative in their very structure. (p.3) Resurrection (as Poor Images) insisting on rich images (p.3) In this case the invisibility of the image was more or less voluntary and based on aesthetic premises. (p.3) Twenty or even thirty years ago, the neoliberal restructuring of media production began slowly obscuring non-commercial imagery, to the point where experimental and essayistic cinema became almost invisible. (p.3) Thus they slowly disappeared not just from cinemas, but from the public sphere as well. (p.3) In this way, resistant or non-conformist visual matter disappeared from the surface into an underground of alternative archives and collections, kept alive only by a network of committed organizations and individuals, who would circulate bootlegged VHS copies amongst themselves. (p.3) With the possibility to stream video online, this condition started to dramatically change. An increasing number of rare materials reappeared on publicly accessible platforms, some of them carefully curated (Ubuweb) and some just a pile of stuff (YouTube). (p.3) Many works of avant-garde, essayistic, and non-commercial cinema have been resurrected as poor images. Whether they like it or not. (p.3) Privatization and Piracy Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images - their status as illicit or degraded grants them exemption from its criteria. Their lack of resolution attests to their appropriation and displacement. (p.6) Pirate copies seep out of such archives through disorganized privatization. On the other hand, even the British Library sells off its contents online at astronomical prices. As Kodwo Eshun has noted, poor images circulate partly in the void left by state-cinema organizations who find it too difficult to operate as a 16/35-mm archive or to maintain any kind of distribution infrastructure in the contemporary era. (p.6) Imperfect Cinema Espinosa argues for an imperfect cinema because, in his words, perfect cinema - technically and artistically masterful - is almost always reactionary cinema. The imperfect cinema is one that strives to overcome the divisions of labor within class society. It merges art with life and science, blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author. It insists upon its own imperfection, is popular but not consumerist, committed without becoming bureaucratic. (p.6) promises of new media (p.6) He clearly predicts that the development of video technology will jeopardize the elitist position of traditional filmmakers and enable some sort of mass film production: an art of the people. (p.6) imperfect cinema merges life and art (p.6) Most of all, its visuality is resolutely compromised: blurred, amateurish, and full of artifacts. (p.6) But the real and contemporary imperfect cinema is also much more ambivalent and affective than Espinosa had anticipated. On the one hand, the economy of poor images, with its immediate possibility of worldwide distribution and its ethics of remix and appropriation, enables the participation of a much larger group of producers than ever before. (p.6) Hate speech, spam (p.6) They contain experimental and artistic material, but also incredible amounts of porn and paranoia. (p.6) Users become the editors, critics, translators, and (co-)authors of poor images. Poor images are thus popular images - images that can be made and seen by the many. (p.6) Altogether, poor images present a snapshot of the affective condition of the crowd, its neurosis, paranoia, and fear, as well as its craving for intensity, fun, and distraction. (p.6) the condition of the images speaks not only of countless transfers and reformattings, but also of the countless people who cared enough about them to convert them over and over again, to add subtitles, reedit, or upload them. (p.7) Apart from resolution and exchange value, one might imagine another form of value defined by velocity, intensity, and spread. Poor images are poor because they are heavily compressed and travel quickly. They lose matter and gain speed. But they also express a condition of dematerialization, shared not only with the legacy of conceptual art but above all with contemporary modes of semiotic production. Capital´s semiotic turn, as described by Felix Guattari, plays in favor of the creation and dissemination of compressed and flexible data packages that can be integrated into ever-newer combinations and sequences. This flattening-out of visual content - the concept-in-becoming of the images - positions them within a general informational turn, within economies of knowledge that tear images and their captions out of context into the swirl of permanent capitalist deterritorialization. The history of conceptual art describes this dematerialization of the art object first as a resistant move against the fetish value of visibility. (p.7) On the other hand, this is precisely why it also ends up being perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans, on impression rather than immersion, on intensity rather than contemplation, on previews rather than screenings. (p.7) What is your visual bond today? The circulation of poor images creates a circuit, which fulfills the original ambitions of militant and (some) essayistic and experimental cinema - to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams. In the age of file-sharing, even marginalized content circulates again and reconnects dispersed worldwide audiences. (p.7) The poor image thus constructs anonymous global networks just as it creates a shared history. It builds alliances as it travels, provokes translation or mistranslation, and creates new publics and debates. By losing its visual substance it recovers some of its political punch and creates a new aura around it. This aura is no longer based on the permanence of the original, but on the transience of the copy. (p.8) floats on the surface of temporary and dubious data pools (p.8) Dziga Vertov - He imagined a sort of communist, visual, Adamic language that could not only inform or entertain, but also organize its viewers. (p.8) a global information capitalism whose audiences are linked almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement, affective attunement, and anxiety. (p.8) production of poor images based on cell phone cameras, home computers, and unconventional forms of distribution (p.8) In addition to a lot of confusion and stupefaction, it also possibly creates disruptive movements of thought and affect. (p.8) Moreover, it reactualizes many of the historical ideas associated with these circuits, among others Vertov´s idea of the visual bond. (p.8) Now! After being kicked out of the protected and often protectionist arena of national culture, discarded from commercial circulation, these works have become travelers in a digital no-man´s land, constantly shifting their resolution and format, speed and media, sometimes even losing names and credits along the way. (p.8) The poor image is no longer about the real thing - the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short: it is about reality. (p.8)
In defense of the poor image (Hito Steyerl)
2022
(00:31) What is bubble vision? It's about immersive technologies like VR and 360 degree videos, which are kind of spherical, and they are built on a sort of very strange paradox, which is also very well known because the viewer is at the center of a sphere, yet at the same time he or she are actually missing from it. They are fully immersed into something they are not part of. This kind of vision is actually shaped by round things, by orbs, by spheres, by rounded lenses. One could call this paradigm bubble vision. In the last decade, 300 degree panoramas became common in photography and in video and VR. There were also, of course, lots of discussions about so called filter bubbles on social media that have been said to nurture division by creating parallel information universes, even though those statements are contested. It can hardly be contested, though, that bubbles have been an emblem of neoliberal globalisation. So called bubble economies have shaped cycle after cycle of boom and bust, affecting real estate, finance, debt, bondage, as well as the art market of the 21st century. I think that this period is most likely over, but it would be completely wrong to read this as the disappearance of the bubble paradigm. Instead, if any bubble burst at all, it didn't just vanish, it just multiplied into a multitude of smaller steely bubbles. In art history, bubbles were already very popular in the 16th and 17th century. There was a whole genre by Dutch artist called vanitas that painted glass and soap bubbles. And vanitas loosely means the meaningless of earthly life, the change and nature of vanity and mortality in general. (…) (05:09) What is the anthropocene? This is the geological era in which humans significantly shape nature. In this era, man is supposed to be at the center of nature, just as the viewer is at the center of a 300 degree panoramic sphere. But in the anthropocene, the human at the center may actually be missing. Just like as I said in Bubble Vision, in 360 degree technology, the traditional offscreen is mostly exchanged for a blind spot in the center, which means that you yourself are missing from the scene. Even though you're at the center, even your hands are mostly transparent. But looking into orbs also has a different dimension - crystal balls. They are called little orbs. Orbukulum. They are used to tell the future. They are magic prediction tools. (…) This is still from the VR version of the famous franchise Ghost in the Shell, and this series of animals and films predicts this kind of preemptive strategy. In one of its many iterations, the main character is called Major, and she is an antiterror police cyborg. (…) In other words, to be eliminated means to be automated, and conversely, to be automated means to be eliminated. In reality, of course, machines are not literally the ghosts of disappeared people, but maybe they prove that something else is disappearing. Namely, the idea of the anthropocene. The minute humans become aware that they are supposedly all powerful and at the center of the universe, they are already busy handing over this power to opaque automated procedures, to black box algorithms, all sorts of crystal ball gazing. And also, as Hans Ulrich said, to Artificial Stupidities, they are pushing it onto systems which are just as invisible as the famous Invisible Hand. And as everyone knows, today's main real existing artificial intelligence is the invisible hand of the markets, which supposedly knows and fixes everything. What is bubble vision? Is it thus a training scheme to adapt humans to a world from which they are increasingly missing because they have been replaced by invisible systems? Are you already rehearsing how to be your own ghost? Look at your hand. Is it slowly turning transparent? Actually I think one needs to accept that we are in a situation where magic seems like a logical consequence because nothing else seems to work anyway. What can we see in a crystal sphere? So I think that we should look at these crystal balls again and take them seriously because there are real things to be seen in there. Let me name three: Every crystal ball reflects … - the likeness of its teacher or whatever trained it so to speak - in this case one could say the bais of one whole society; - yourself but nothing but yourself - you are not only missing but you are also on your own isolation in VR spheres; they cannot be shared with other people easily; they construct a specific, singular, customised point of view; your selfie is reflected on the surface even though you might not even be there); - a possible future state in which you yourself are clearly missing weather you have been automated or eliminated or are in trouble because of another man-made carbon dioxide crisis (assuming magic works and crystal ball prediction is possible - in the future you will not be there (isolated and made redundant = automation) We should predict anything but the future.
Hito Steyerl – Bubble Vision (podcast)
2022
Introduction Emancipation from complacency through new images/visions of the future “The works post radical views of the future that don´t rely on the retelling of big tech fantasies of power, control and subversion that are built from colonial imaginings, capitalist, patriarchal and imperialist ideologies, but instead emancipate us from the complacency we have been acclaimed to.” (arebyte, 2022) “What might become of the future we will never inhabit is not clear - we know where the future is but not entirely what it is.” (Guin, 2017 in Dancing at the Edge of the World) “… it is not to presume what the future will look like but rather to think about how the future is seen through the lenses of past, present, future and preservation.” (arebyte, 2022) “The wester notion of time is linear; time flows as a straight line.” (arebyte, 2022) “…Three D Scans, a project initiated in 2012 by Oliver Laric that aims to make museums´permanent collections available to an audience outside of its geographic proximity.” (arebyte, 2022) The Anthropocene and technological singularity 1 “Exploring rupture and futurity in the exhibition and addressing climate change, extractivism and the Anthropocene are works by Matteo Zamagni, Entangled Others, Shinji Tony and Dominique Cro. These works provide insights into organic evolutionary processes and electronic evolutionary processes via machine sentience and remixing data.” (arebyte, 2022) 2 “Conveying novelty and futurity, and addressing post-human and cyborgian threads are works by Kumbirai Makumbe and Abi Sheng as well as videos by Ryan Vaultier and Sarah Blome. These works interrogate the body as a site for emotional emancipation together with the notion of reaching a technological singularity. Figuring novelty and boundaries, and addressing worldbuilding within the realm of future thinking are works by Lawrence Lek and Sandrine Deumier. The works add gamification to the idea of altered states of presence and memory that exist in digital space questioning our capacity to perceive the living world as a complex entity.” (arebyte, 2022) Selection of artists 1 Matteo Zamagni Artist website → https://alt-o.com/ “Zamagnis practice offers a multi-scalar analysis of the consequences wrought by disaster capitalism and its lasting impact on the planets ecosystem. (…) The modern and evidently destructive disconnect between nature and culture might be patched by re-positioning ourselves and out technologies within nature rather that outside of it;” (arebyte, 2022) Project: Thought Experiment, 2021 “Inspired by ‘ever-present conversations about machines and sentience’ this video speculates the shift from organic evolutionary processes to electronic evolutionary processes. Cybernetic organisms, partly made of organic structures and part electronic components respond to their environment in a variety of ways at an ever-increasing speed. The video has been performed live in real-time, recorded, and subsequently edited to retain the best composition and motion.” (Zagmani, 2021; https://alt-o.com/ThoughtExperiment) 2 Kumbirai Makumbe Artist website → http://www.kumbiraimakumbe.com/ Makumbe is a Zimbabwean new media artist based in London. Using sculpture, audiovisual digital installation, image and video, they continually interrogate the multidimensionality of blackness, queerness, transcendence and “inbetweenness”. Through worldbuilding and the use of speculative science fiction narratives, they place significant efforts into exploring alternative modes of being and thinking that could negate ideologies inhibiting a “needed” future. They repeatedly bring elements from the digital worlds they´ve forged into IRL spaces, through 3D printing, as crucial practice akin to terraforming. They´re enticed by the materiality and malleability of digital matter and infinite possibilities of its employability.” (arebyte, 2022) Project: Living Doesn´t Mean You´re Alive, 2021 This work interrogates the emotional aspects of a human´s emancipation from their body and their ascension into an “informorph; a virtual body of information that possesses self-awareness and scentience. Within this process of translation, so much of what is gained is discussed but then what is also lost? And what is lost of importance?” (arebyte, 2022) “In this nuances of loss of one´s physicality that Makumbe is drawn to, and its parallels to what is lost in our endeavours for progress especially when it comes to transformation. It is an exploration of the emotional particularities of being within the process of change itself. It is a moment of questioning what truly fuelled their yearning to emancipate themselves from the confines of their biological human body. What is the body itself? or was it t he experience of inhabiting their body in the context it existed within?” (arebyte, 2022) “[It] explores the liminal space between the digital and the physical but also engages with the process of translation of matter between these two spaces.” (arebyte, 2022) Project: The Figments, 2021 “The Figments are physical and material embodiments of the translations of matter between digital and physical states. Each sculpture was initially sculpted in clay, then 3D scanned, manipulated digitally, 3D printed and then finished by hand. With each translation, elements of the previous form are lost and replaced by new features. Makumbe (…) asks what is lost within the process of translation, specifically a digital translation, whereas the other complicates this as it illustrates that it is not simply about loss but as there is also something to be gained.” (arebyte, 2022)
Arebyte – futuresPAST (group show booklet)
2022
gender / body
utopia
cyborg
glitch as anti-body
glitch as remix
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a body. " – Legancy Russell Introduction “… empowered via creating new selves, slipping in and out of digital skins, celebrating in the new rituals of cybersex.” (p.4) “… opportunities to immerse myself in the potential of refusal.” (p.6) “… take control of the eyes on me and how they interpreted my body.” (p.6) “… the binary was some kind of fiction.” (p.6) “… a DuBoisian double-consciousness splinters further, “double” becoming “triple”, consciousness amplified and expanded by the “third eye” of gender.” (p.6) “ I could explore my true self, open and ready to be read by those who spoke my language.” (p.6) “ Alone and together, “female”, “queer”, “Black” as a survival strategy demand the creation of their individual machinery, that innovates, builds, resists.” (p.7) Glitch “… invent space through rupture.(…) one finds the power of the glitch.” (p.7) “A glitch as an error, a mistake, a failure to function. Within technoculture, a glitch is part of mechanic anxiety, an indicator of something having gone wrong.” (p.7) “… breaking free of an understanding of gender as something stationary.” (p.9) “Through the application of the glitch, we ghost on the gendered body and accelerate towards its end.” (p.10) “ The glitch is for those who selves joyfully immersed in the in-between …” (p.11) “ The ongoing presence of the glitch generated a welcome and protected space in which to innovate and experiment.” (p.12) Fred Moten: “The normative is the after-effect, it is a response to the irregular.” (p.13) Glitch feminism “Glitch feminism urges us to consider the “in-between” as a core component of survival – neither masculine nor feminine, neither male nor female, but a spectrum across which we may be empowered to choose and define ourselves for ourselves. Thus the glitch creates a fissure within which new possibilities of being and becoming manifest. (…) Glitch feminism dissents, pushes back against capitalism.” (p.11) “… this is our police: we refuse to be hewn to the hegemonic line of binary body.” (p.11) Gender / Body “The idea of the “body” carries this weapon: gender circumscribes the body, “protects” it from becoming limitless, from claiming the infinite vast, from realising its true potential.” (p.8) “We use “body” to give material form to an idea that has no form, an assemblage that is abstract.” (p.8) “… the bod performs gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individual.” (p.8) “This glitch is a form of refusal.” (p.8) “ The glitch aims to make abstract again that which has been forced into an uncomfortable and ill-defined material: the body” (p.8) “… troubles material of the body. The process of becoming material surfaces tensions, prompting us to inquire: Who defines the material of the body? Who gives it value - and why?” (p.9) “ So what does it mean to dismantle gender? (…) it demands the end of our relationship with the social practice of the body as we know it.” (p.10) “ … we want new skin (…) we make new worlds and dare to modify our own.” (p.11) “Freed” from the mores of gender, (…) the Internet still remains a vessel through which a “becoming” can realise itself.” (p.13) “This book is for those who are en rout to becoming their avatars, those who continue to play, experiment, and build via the Internet as means of strengthening the loop between online an AFK.” (p.13) Capital “… genders bodies are far from absolute but rather an imaginary, manufactured and commodified for capital.” (p.9) “… all we have are the bodies we are housed in, gendered or otherwise. Under the sun of capitalism, we truly own little else, and even so, we are often subject to a complicated choreography dictated by the complicated, bureaucratic, and rhizomatic systems of institutions.” (p.9, p.10) “… a gender performance that fits within a binary in order to comply with the prescriptions of the everyday.” (p.10) 01 – Glitch refuses “We refuse to shrink ourselves, refuse to fit. Fluid, insistent, we refuse to stand still … we will take up space.” (p.145) Glitch “The etymology of glitch finds its deep roots in the Yiddish gletshn (to slide, glide, slip) or the German glitschen (to slip). Glitch in an active words, one that implies movement or change from the outset; this movement triggers error.” (p.28) “To glitch is to embrace malfunction, and to embrace malfunction is in and of itself an expression that starts with “no”.” (p.17) “… carefully constructed divide between on- and offline selfdom.” (E. Jane, 2017 in Russel, p.19) “… he contains multitudes is his exercise of his right toe be large, his capacity to contradict himself is his exercise of the right to be blurry, unfixed, abstract.” (p.20) “… this wildness is permitted just as long as it is properly maintained, growing only within its prescribed space.” (p.23) “The glitch challenges us to consider how we can “penetrate … break … puncture …tear” th material of the institution, and by extension, the institution of the body.” (p.25) “… the digital becomes the catalyst to a variance of selfdom. (…) manifesting our own reflections …” (p.27) The rupture “One exists not only by virtue of being recognised, but … by being reconizable.” (p.28; Judith Butler, 1997); “… we become bodies by recognising ourselves and (…) by recognising our self in others. (…) we will always struggle to recognise ourselves if we continue to turn to the normative as a central reference point.” (p.28) “… glitch moves, but glitch also blocks.” (p.30) “Theorist Nathan Jurgenson (2011): critique of “digital dualism”, identifying and problematising the split between online selfdom and “real life” -> IRL becomes AFK” (p.30) “The glitch … moves forward out into society… permeating Avery corner of our lives… is a vehicle to rethink our physical selves.” (p.31) “Intersectionality” (Crenshaw, 1989; p.36) Cybermfeminism – Cornelia Sollfrank (German artist): “Cybermfeminism does not express itself in single, individual approaches but in the differences and spaces in-between.” (p.36) Patriarchy “Patriarchy exercises its social dominance by taking up space as its birthright;” (p.20) “… under white patriarchy, bodies - selves - that cannot be defined with clarity by the “primary gaze”, are pushed from the centre.” (p.21) “… it becomes easier for one group to establish a position of supremacy over another. (…) we see domination.” (p.21) “Audre Lorde: “The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house …” (p. 25) “Othered bodies are rendered invisible because they cannot be read by a normative mainstream and therefore cannot be categorized.” (p.27) (!?) “This reality (former feminist movements) dermarcated digital space as both white and Western, drawing an equation: white woman = producing white theory = producing white cyberspace.” (p.33) “… who is brought into the definition of womanhood and, via extension, who is truly recognised as being fully human.” (p.35) Utopia “The imaginative architecture of utopia remains ever present in glitch feminism.” (p.22) José Esteban Munoz in “Cruising Utopia”: “Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” (…) a wanting of a better world”(p.22) “… Internet-as-utopia, against this backdrop reality, should not be dismissed as naive. Imbuiging digital media with fantasy today is not a redo act of mythologizing; it continues as a survival mechanism. (…) it brings us closer to a projection of a “sustainable future.” (p.23) “ … the public of the Internet is not singular or cohesive but divergent and fractal.” (p.26) Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok) “These are the institutions (re)defining the future of visual culture; they are also, without question deeply flawed.” (p.23) “… that co-opt, sensationalize, and capitalize on POC, female-identifying and queer bodies (and our pain)…” (p.24) “Glitched bodies are not considered in the process of programming new creative technologies.” (p.25) “… these tools (Googles image-recognition filter, Arts&Culture finding museum doppelgänger) have done little mote that gasify racial bias.” (p.25) “… these technologies underscore the dominant arc of whiteness within art historical image-making…” (p.26) 02 – Glitch is cosmic “… bodies are not fixed points, they are not destinations. Bodies are journeys. Bodies are abstract - abstraction ad a journey to becoming.” (p.146) Blurring real life and the digital (Cyborg) Anais Duplan: “cosmic bodies” … “the idea of the body is inconceivably vast” (p.41) “To dematerialize - to abstract the body we need to make room for other realities.” (p.42) “… the internet … is reality.” (p.42) “ Thus the term “digital native” has been applied to the generation who remembers nothing other than a life intertwined with the Internet.” (p.42) “… AFK as a term works toward undermining the fetishisation of “real life”, (…) actions online can inform and even deepen our offline, or AFK, existence.” (p.43) Boychilds about his performance body-as-machine: “Its like the physical body turning into a cyborg… Its like a glitch; there’s a repetitive thing that happens” (p.45) Bridle (2012) “New Aesthetic” is cited as “a way of seeing that … reveals a blurring between “the real” and “the digital”, … the human and the machine.” (p.45) “… bionic patios fluent to the digital native.” (p.45) Digital diaspora – “this digital diaspora therefore is an important component if glitch, as it means that bodies in this era of visual culture have no single destination but rather take on a distributed nature, fluidly occupying many beings, many places all at once.” (p.46) “… the opportunity to experiment and try on different selves empowers seizing a more integrated public identity with radical potential.” (p.47) “…prove herself to herself…hide race for a while” (p.47) 03 – Glitch throws shade Huxtable Juliana Huxtable - was born intersex; self defined “cyborg”; “… she seeks to shatter there rigidity of binary systems.” (p.51); “What´s the nastiest shade ever thrown? - Existing in the world.” (p.52); Benson´s 3D-scanned plastic sculpture Juliana as an homage to Huxtable…” (p.52) “…all of this media become modes of abstracting presence or abstracting myself in the present.” (p.54) “The Internet and specifically social media (instagram), became an essential way for me to explore inclinations that I otherwise would not have an outlet for.” (p.54); “Huxtable herself I a glitch…” (p.55) “We choose to support one another in living, as the act of staying alive is a form of world-building.” (p.55) “… gender as means of deconstructing” (p.56) Victoria Sin “… wrapped within the seductive fabric of the digital - Sin toys with the trappings of gender.” (p.56); “Sin is super-human, extra-human, and post-human all at once.” (p.59) Gender theorist Judith Butler – “a male in his stereotype … a person unable to cope with his own femininity” / the female unable to cope with her masculinity.” (p.59) “Here we see a crack in the gloss and gleam of capitalist consumption of gender-as-product.” (p.60) 04 – Glitch ghosts Ghosting Def. to ghost: “to end a relationship by ending all communication, and subsequently disappearing.” (p.63) “… question of becoming … creates a generative void … absence of ownership - an embrace of a cosmic corporeality.” (p.69) “As we engage with the digital, it encourages us to challenge the world around us, and … change the world as we know it, …” (p.69) “When we reject the binary, we reject the economy that goes along with it.” (p.69) Big Data “The scaling of the economy of gender features most prominently across discussions surrounding big data. For example, every 48h online we as a global community generate as much information as was generated in written history from the beginning of civilization until 2003.” (p.64; TechCruch, Schmidt, E in Siegler, M) -> “mass surveillance” (p.64) “Our Internet search histories, social media habits, and modes of online communication - “factual fragments” (David Lyon) - expose our innermost thoughts, anxieties, plans, desires and goals.” (p.64) -> “masculine/feminine fulfils a target demographic for advertising and marketing.” (p.65) - Lyon: “disappearing bodies” as a “basic problem of modernity”” as an increase of surveillance correlates directly with the “growing difficulties of embodied surveillance that watches visible bodies.” (p.65) Online Interactions “With these various modes of online engagement, we leave traces of ourselves …” (p.65) “Paradox: as bodies disappear within the everyday interactions of the Internet, that which we might have assumed as inherently private - our physical bodies - remain at risk of becoming increasingly public, the abstract fragments of our online selves making moves of those chosen of our own volition.” (p.66) Gilbert Ryle (1949) – “the ghost in the machine” Cecile B. Evans: “in todays society, where drones are used for warfare and romantic relationships begin online, we can no longer distinguish between the so-called real and the virtual.” (p.67) “… bodied navigating digital space are as much computational as they are flesh.” (p.67) “… standing in-between, is at threat of ceasing to exist in its failure to be recognised …” (p.67) Rindon Johnson – “What is a body therefore?” (2019) - he reflects on the “malleable” self as a form of language that can teach, learn, signify, code - he creates a link between poetry and virtual reality maps to the body’s experimental immersion within it: “The more you are inside it (VR), the more you read it, the easier it is to quickly disappear within it.” (p.68) “… we work toward ghosting the binary body, we also work toward dissolving ourselves, making the boundaries that delineate where we begin and end, and the points where we touch and come into contact with the world, disappear completely.” (p.68) “Is ceasing to exist within a gendered framework the most skilful of disappearing acts? In rejecting binary gender, can we challenge how our data is harvested, and, in turn, how our data moves?” (p.68) 05 – Glitch is error “… proudly fail in the present as we dream new futures.” (p.147) “Glitches are difficult to name and nearly impossible to identify until that instant when they reveal themselves …” (p.73) “We banally are complicit with the individual theft of our personal data. … one of the greatest shared existential crises of our time.” (p.73) “… make our lives easier - when our favourite digital platform appears to know us better than we know ourselves, suggestion … “ (p.74) “Errors bring new movement into static space;” (p.74) “What is a body without a name? An error.” (p.75) “I am not Other. You name me Other.” (p.76) 06 – Glitch encrypts “… the care-full reading of others is an exercise of trust, intimacy, belonging, homecoming … bodies can render us invisible and hypervisible at the same time.” (p.147) “We’re not supposed to be there.” (Perry, p.83) Morton – “Gender is … a “hyperobject” (all- encompassing, out-scaling us) “gender is so big, it becomes invisible.” (p.83) “In asserting itself as part of a vast normative ordinary, gender embeds itself within what we see and experience in the everyday, winding itself through the public networks and spaces we live in. - It is a foundational framework … ” (p.83) “… one must reimagine space.” (p.84) Lefebvre - “The body serves both as point of departure, and as destination.” (p.84) “This experience of being hyper visible and invisible all at once can be vulnerable.” (p.85) Sondra Perry exhibition “Typhoon coming on:” immersed the viewer in a surround projection of waves, …” - referencing Turners “Slave Ship” - software Blender and tool Ocean Modifier to animate Turners painting and where information was missing it was rendered purple (like a glitch in visual information) -> gesturing toward the edges of stories both hidden and untold” (p.86,87) “To glitch the body requires the simultaneous occupation of some-where and no-where, no-thing and every-thing. We consent not to be a single being frozen in binary code, and, as such, consent as well not to be a single site.” (p.88) “… we affirm and celebrate the infinite failure of arrival at any place. … we find ourselves in outer space, exploring the breath of cosmic corporeality.” (p.88) 07 – Glitch is anti-body “A lot of work is put into trying to give the body form.” (p.91) “Glitches gesture toward the artifice of social and cultural systems, revealing the fissures in a reality we assume to be seamless. They reveal the fallibility of bodies as cultural and social signifiers … ” (p.92) Lil Miquela – Instagram personalty (by Brud company) - “aspiration of becoming the prototype of the “wolds most advanced AI”… She is the future… yet she has no body.” (p.93) “What purpose can a body that has no body serve?” (p.93) - an authentic advocate, a catalyst toward social change? -> advances the archetype of the influencer; Lil Miquela epitomises a perverse intersection of a neoliberal consumer capitalism and advocacy … being “without” a body, epitomises what becomes possible with avatar performativity.” (p.95) Kia LaBeija – “… survival strategy, creating space for historically bothered bodies.” (p.95) - voyaging battles; self-documenting and self-defining (p.95); born with HIV and now long-term survivor; dancing as resistance and celebration (p.96) “Her sharply theatrical compositions blur the boundary between the real and the surreal.” (p.96) 08 – Glitch is skin “… the skin of the digital … remains necessary as a tool of experimentation.” (p.148) Holloway – “Glitch is, and will always be a methodology for me … I still really FEEL that brokenness and instability.” (p.101) “Skin is as much about what is kept in as what it keeps out. … It functions to edit … skin wraps, covers, protects, it paradoxically wounds, occupies, and builds worlds. It is a container. It is a peel that contains and cradles wilderness. It gives shape to the bodies.” (p.101) “… the presence of a glitch makes the “digital skin” visible, reminding us of the fallibility of the machine … revealing its edges and seams. … show us the machinic limitations … exposing a carefully constructed fiction.” (p.102) Instagram portraits – “picking skin”, “Mirror, Mirror” (Weems, 1987) Avatars “… tension between a projection of an invulnerable self with a seemingly impenetrable digital skin, and the vulnerability of sharing oneself in such forums … navigate these tensions through her enacting fantasy selves online.” (p.103) “… power and play, investigating how a body can simultaneously, mutually, consensually consume and be consumed as radical act of self-discovery.” (p.103) “… power of the people and the culture outside looking in. I feel ashamed that I see these spaces as a playground where I get to construct my own fantasies and control my environment.” (p.103) “the Internet cam girl” (p.104); Ulman, 2014 – 5 month Instagram performance “Excellences & Perfections” (p.105) 09 – Glitch is virus “ … in this breaking, there is a beginning.” (p.148) “What can we learn from a computer virus? A computer virus corrupts data. A computer virus costs capitalism. It degrades productivity within the machine. … The machine transforms into one that cannot perform (works against its function)…” (p.111) “… machinic responses of slowness in ways that are unpredictable to the user: endless buffering, crashing, damaging, deleting, reformatting. This slowness shifts time and space, altering a person’s relationship to the machine.” (p.111) “We change course when confronted with systems that refuse to perform.” (p.112) “A virus breaks, and so we are delivered into the time and space of brokenness. … the virus makes brokenness a space, placing us within the break itself.” (p.112) “We want to infect, to corrupt ordinary data. … perhaps we want the break, we want to fail. … We want wild, amorous, monstrous bodies. … we want to stand before, within, and outside of brokenness. The break an error, the error a passageway. … twist the machine.” (p.112,113) “Viral, we want to multiply. … create sticky, runny spaces where everything can come into contact and blur.” (p.113) “ … ever-aggressive bias of search engine optimisation (SEO; Google)” (p.114) “ … we become no-body, and in the gorgeous crush crush of no.body, we become every-body.” (p.116) “The glitch is a tool: it is socio-cultural malware.” (p.116) “ALL BODIES CAN BE EVERY-BODY.” (p.117) “As we fail, we morph.” (p.117) “Glitch-as-virus presents us with a sharp vision of decay, a nonperformance that veers us toward a wild unknown. This is where we bloom.” (p.117) (?) “Let´s mutate, please. Bye binary! Buffer forever.” (p.117) 10 – Glitch is mobilizes “Facebook´s 58 gender options … - it was neoliberalism at its finest. If a body without a name is an error, providing more names, while proffering inclusivity, does not resolve the issue of the binary body. Rather, it makes and requires a box to be ticked, a categorisation to be determined.” (p.121) Cyborg “… recognition via this platforms urges us to believe that signifying who we are to others is the only pathway to being deemed fit to participate.” (p.121) “So traumatised cyborg subject is the new normal, but is that the best we cab hope for?” (p.121) “… the personage of the “cyborg subject” is in and of itself the problem.” (p.122) Devin Kenny (artist) - “… this is a recreation through mediation, often one that can be traced back to one IP address, and therefore one personage.” (p.122) “If we cannot shed IP address tracking without the aid of virtual private network (VPN) or some pro like it, what other alternatives are there to protect our digital biometrics as we aim to imagine, to mobilise, to collectivise.” (p.122) Generic difference Galloway – The Internet Effect (2012): “ generic difference” and how the rejection of “the assignation of traits” might carry biopolitical potential… (p.122); “All bodies are full. But their fullness is a generic fullness … that does not mean that difference has gone away. The opposite is the case, as difference may now finally come into its own as generic difference.” (p.122) “… generic difference theory proposes a path to a body that is inherently fluid, a body emancipated from ever being asked to register its traces online.” (p.123) “… in the face of pressure to constantly classify oneself…” (p.123) “The anxious question remains: is the sacrifice of true autonomy, the distribution of these bodily traces, worth it if it means we can be part of something greater than ourselves? Especially if that is something that helps us shape ourselves and, by this shaping, reshapes the world” (p.123) Alone together Sherry Turkle – Alone Together (2011): “she argues that through our increased use of technology we remain connected but increasingly isolated from one another. … the digital is being weaponised to undermine its value and speaks recklessly through a white, straight, cisgender lens. For her Internet = alienation” (p.124) by limiting the supply of the “product” they amplified the demand for access to the physical presence of the person.” (p.141) “How can one envision the needs of the other when one doesn’t even realise the other exists? … Has the glitch become a means of seeing the unseen?” (p.141) 12 – Glitch survives
Glitch Feminism –A Manifesto (Legacy Russell)
2022
politics of the commons
re-enchantment
primitive accumulation
Globalization
reproduction work
everyday transformation
"We cannot change our everyday life without changing its immediate institutions and the political and economic system by which they are structured." – Silvia Federici Silvia Federici is an Italian-American professor emeritus, political philosopher and activist. Federici was a professor of political philosophy and women studies. She has published numerous books and essays on Marxist and feminist theory, criticism of globalization and the concept of the commons. Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons What did Weber mean by disenchantment? In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. Introduction - the International Monetary Fund as part of its “structural adjustment program” and the campaigning in the antiglobalization movement (p.2) - The need for a politics that refuses to separate the time of political organizing from that of reproduction is a lesson that many Occupiers have not forgotten and is one of the main themes of this volume. (p.5) - An important aspect of it (reproduction) is the reproduction of our collective memory and the cultural symbols that give meaning to our life and nourish our struggles. (p.5) - “the root of oppression is loss of memory” Paula Gunn Allen (p.6) -„… the principle of the commons ... contrasts with the assumption shared by Marxist developmentalists, accelerationists, and Marx himself concerning the necessity of land privatization as a path to large-scale production and of globalization as the instrument for the unification of the world proletariat.“ (p.7) Part One On the New Enclosures On Primitive Accumulation, Globalization, and Reproduction - „… violence is always necessary to establish and maintain the capitalist work discipline (p.16) - „in the 1960s and 1970s, primitive accumulation became a global and seemingly permanent process…" (p.16) -„… we can now better understand the “nature of the enclosing force that we are facing,”(12) the logic by which it is driven, and its consequences for us.“ (p.16) - we have different histories of primitive accumulation - this means that the history of primitive accumulation past and present cannot be fully comprehended ... until it is written also from the viewpoint of the enslaved and colonized - those whose place cannot be assimilated into the history of the waged. (vgl.p.17) The two most essential processes from a historical and methodological viewpoint: 1 “the constitution of reproduction work as women´s labor and as a separate sphere” and thereby devalued from a capitalist viepoint (p.17) the expulsion of reproductive work from the shperes of economic relations and its deceptive relegation to the sphere of the private, the personal, outside of capital accumulation, and, above all, feminine has made it invisible as work and has naturalized its exploitation. (p.17) - basis of a new sexual division of labour and a new family organization, subordinating women to men. (p.17) 2 “the institutionalization of the state´s control over women´s sexuality and reproductive capacity, through the criminalization of abortion and the introduction of a system of surveillance and punishment that literally expropriates women´s bodies.” (p.17) - In contrast to Marxist autonomists´view of the restructuring of the global economy, which, focusing on the computer and information revolution and the rise of cognitive capitalism, describes this phase of capitalist development as a step toward the autonomation of labour. (17) (p.18) Federici proposes that there has been a concerted attack on our basic means of reproduction, the land, the house, and the wage to expand the global work force and reduce the cost of labor. (p.18) - only one logic driving the new forms of primitive accumulation: “to form a labor force reduced to abstract labor, pure labor power, with no guarantees, no protections, ready to be moved from place to place and job to job, employed mostly through short-term contracts and at the lowest possible wage.” (p.18) - Impoverishment in much of the world has reached a magnitude never seen before, now affecting up to 70 percent of the population. (p.19) - organ trafficking, reproducing other families, giving up own children for adoption, work as surrogate mothers, sell their eggs for stem cell research (p.19,20) - having fewer children, as the need to secure some income has had a sterilizing effect. (p.20) - political class that makes it almost impossible for women to proved for themselves and their families criminalizes them for trying to obtain an abortion. (p.20) - subsistence farming stands in the way of the World Bank´s attempt to create land markets and place all natural resources in the hands of commercial enterprises. (p.20) - capitalist accumulation continues to require the degradation of human life and the reconstruction of social hierarchies and divisions on the basis of gender, race and age. (p.21) - by undermining the self sufficiency of every region and creating a total economic interdependence, even among distant countries, globalization generates (...) a need for an unlimited exploitation of labor and the natural environment. (p.21) - extractivism (mineral extraction) (p.22) - Africa : impoverishment and displacement; the figure of the worker has become that of the migrant, the itinerant, the refugee (p.22) - life expectancy for the working class in diminishing (p.22) - “…unspeakable devastation unfolding under our eyes, I would affirm that worldwide a consciousness is taking shape - more and more translated into action - that capitalism is unsustainable and creating a different social economic system. (p.23) Part Two On the Commons From Crisis to Commons: Reproductive Work, Affect Labor and Technology, and the Transformation of Everyday Life - Lefebvre argued that social theory must address the life of the “whole worker”(1) and set out to investigate how “everydayness” is constituted and why the philosophers have constantly devalued it. → Situationists / discussion of consumerism and technological alienation (p.175) - By rebelling against women´s confinement to reproductive work and the hierarchies constructed through the sexual division of labour, the women´s movement gave a material basis to the critique of everyday life and uncovered the “deep structure”, the “arch”, underlining and binding the multiplicity of daily acts and events... (p.175) - the structured reality (p.176) - A theoretical and practical revolution has followed from this discovery that has transformed our concept of work, politics, “femininity”, and the methodology of the social sciences, enabling us to transcend the traditional psychological viewpoint that individualizes our experiences and separates the mental from the social. (p.176) - realization at the core of the feminist revolution: we cannot look at social life from the viewpoint of an abstract, universal, sexless social subject.... (vgl.p.176) - In the absence of wage, domestic work has been so naturalized that it has been difficult for women to struggle against it without experiencing an enormous sense of guilt and becoming vulnerable to abuse → if they refuse they are not treated as workers on strike but as “bad women” (p.176) - the personal is political and the private/public divide is a ruse mystifying women´s unpaid work as a “labor of love” (176) - the feminist critique of everyday life (p.176) - More broadly, women have transformed their everyday interactions with the world, asserting a new power with regard to language, knowledge, relations to men, and the expression of their desire. (p.17 The feminist movement: - has rehabilitated and revalorized everyday life (p.177) - has established that women will no longer accept a subordinate social position and a relation to the state and capital mediated by men (p.177) - was somewhat tamed because it needed to be controlled to prevent any more drastic changes - International Conference in Mexico City in 1975 → institutionalisazion of the feminist movement and integration of women into the globalizing world economy (p.178) - Reproduction was abandoned as terrain of feminist struggle (p.178) - The lesson we have learned in this process is that we cannot change our everyday life without changing its immediate institutions and the political and economic system by which they are structured. (p.178) Everyday Life as Permanent Crisis 1 - Nancy MacLean has pointed out, the fight for entrance into male dominated jobs has contributed to “our own era´s heightened consciousness concerning the social contruction and instability of the categories of gender, race and class.” (10) (p.179) - The new Problems: childcare, commercialization of domestic work, high cost of this work and low quality, obesity in children, cuts in education, health care, and hospital care, caring of children and elderly or those with illnesses and disabilities (p.179) -… even among those who were career bound, there has recently been a return to the home and revalorization of deomesticity.(12) ← many women “throwing in the towel” because of the workplace that no longer tries to care for workers´reproduction, still assuming they have wives at home → dedicate themselves to provide their families with a “high-quality” reproduction (p.179) - the newly reclaimed domesticity is also shaped by ecological concerns and the desire to know where food comes from → refusal of convenience food (p.179) - They are a manifestation of the rise of a new individualism pursuing the “good life”, but not through a social struggle for the “common good”. (p.180) - Because of the double load to which many women are condemned, the long hours of work, the low wages they earn, and the cuts of essential reproductive services, for most women everyday life has become a permanent crisis (this crisis is not limited to women). (p.180) - much of womens´work is emotional/affective labor (...) which over time leads to a profound sense of depersonalization and an incapacity to know what one really desires. (13) (p.180) - women are twice as likely to suffer from clinical depression and anxiety as men (p.180) - breakdown of social solidarity and family relations (p.180) - (1960) economic restructuring, gentrification, and forced mobility (p.181) - Men´s refusal to accept women´s autonomy (surfacing as increasing male violence against women) has contributed to weakening social bonds. (p.181) - many are fleeing everyday life and cannot sustain interpersonal relations that appear too laborious and difficult to handle (vgl. p.181) 2 care work is not attended to (vgl. p.181) - interpersonal, face-to-face communication is also declining amongst adults and between adults and children and has become purely instrumental - the internet gradually replaces it (p.181) - Technology - communication technology in particular - plays a role in the organization of domestic work and is now an essential part or our daily life. But, as Fortunati argues, it has primarily served to replace, rather than to enhance, interpersonal communication, allowing each family member to escape the communication crisis by taking refuge in the machine. (p.184) attempt to robotize our reproduction (nursebots and lovebots) (p.184) signs of a growing solitude (p.184) crisis of reproduction (vgl. p.181) the new technologies contribute to a further devaluation of everyday life (p.181) life expectancy is diminishing as daily experience is characterized by a profound sense of alienation, anxiety, and fear → mental disorders (p.181) domestic work is extremely isolating (p.182) urban gardens, community-supported agriculture, time banks (p.182) - Deprivatize our daily lives - pave the way for a world where care for others can become a creative task rather that a burden (break down isolation, create solidarity bonds) (p.184) Re-enchanting the World: Technology, the Body, and the Construction of the Commons Max Weber in “Science as a Vocation”: “The fate of our times is characterized, above all, by the disenchantment of the world” - referring to the vanishing of the religiouse and the sacred from the world (p.188) ← here: recognize the existence of a logic other than that of capitalist development What prevents our suffering from becoming productive of alternatives to capitalism is also the seduction that technology exerts on us, as it appears to give us powers without which it seems impossible to live. (p.188) Need to acknowledge the cost of the technological innovations by which we are mesmerized and, above all, to remind us of the knowledges and powers that we have lost with their production and acquisition (p.188) Societies not prepared to scale down their use of industrial technology must face ecological catastrophes, competition for diminishing resources, and a growing sense of despair about the future of the earth and the meaning of our presence on it. (p.188) “re-enchantment” = to reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and with our bodies, enabling us not only to escape the gravitational pull pf capitalism but to regain a sense of wholeness in our lives. (p.189) Technology, the Body, and Autonomy Federici argues that the seduction that technology exerts on us is the effect of the impoverishment - economic, ecological, cultural - that five centuries of capitalist development have produced on our lives. (...) It has devalued the activities by which our bodies and minds are reconstituted after being consumed in the work process and has overworked the earth to the point that it is increasingly incapable of sustaining our life. (p.189) ... it becomes difficult for us to assess the full cost of any new forms of production (p.190) Otto Ulrich (German sociologist): “Only modern technology´s capacity to transfer its costs over considerable times and spaces and our consequent inability to see the suffering caused by our daily usage of technological devices allow the myth that technology generates prosperity to persist. (3) (p.190) the generalization of the capitalist application of science would only be possible if another planet were available for more plunder and pollution (4). (p.190) ... This is the loss produced by the long history of capitalist assault on our capacities that millions of years of evolutionary development in close relation with nature have sedimented in us, which constitute one of the main sources of our resistance to exploitation. → the need for sin, wind, sky, touching, smelling, sleeping, making love, and being in the open air, instead of being surrounded by closed walls. (p.190) Insistence on the discursive construction of the body has made us loose sight of this reality. Yet this accumulated structure of needs and desires is the precondition of our social reproduction and has been a powerful limit to the exploitation of labor. (...) Capitalism had to wage a war against our body, making it a signifier for all that is limited, material, and opposed to reason (5). (p.190) Foucault´s ontological primacy of resistance: can be explained on the basis of a constitutive interaction between our bodies and an “outside” - call it the cosmos, the world of nature - that has been immensely productive of capacities and collective visions and imagination, though obviously mediated through social/cultural interaction. (p.190) Also the most important scientific discoveries have originated in precapitalist societies, in which people´s lives were profoundly shaped at all levels by a daily interaction with nature. (p.191) ... the great impoverishment that we have undergone in the course of capitalist development, for which no technological device has compensated. (p.191) (reading the elements, navigating through nature, being guided by the stars) The development of capitalist industrial technologies has been built on that loss and has amplified it. (p.191) Federici in Caliban and the Witch: the mechanization of the world was premised on and preceded by the mechanization of the human body... (p.191) It is important to remember that technologies are not neural devices but involve specific systems of relations, “particular social and physical infrastructures”(12), as well as disciplinary and cognitive regimes capturing and incorporating the most creative aspects of living labor used in the production process (digital technologies). (p.191) Computerization what computerization has required casts a long shadow over any optimistic view of the information revolution and knowledge-based society. It has also increased the military capacity of the capitalist class and its surveillance of our work and lives (p.192) has neither reduced the workweek nor burden of physical work. We work now more than ever (Japan: “death by work”) (p.192) the abstraction and regimentation of work is reaching its completion and so is our alienation and desocialization (p.192) the level of stress digital labor is producing can be measured by the epidemic of mental illnesses - depression, panic, anxiety, attention deficit, dyslexia - now typical in most technologically advanced countries like the U.S. → a refusal to become machine-like and make capital´s plans our own. (17) (p.192) Julian de La Mettrie´s idea of the “man-machine” (p.192) illusion of interconnectivity and the production of a new type of isolation and new forms of distancing and separation (p.192) every move we make is being monitored, registered, and possibly punished; social relations have broken down, as we spend weeks in front of our screens; communication has become more superficial as the attraction of immediate response replaces pondered letters with superficial exchanges; impatience is growing in our daily interactions with other people, as these cannot math the velocity of the machine (p.192-3) Social Media platforms can bring thousands of people to the streets, but only if thy are already mobilized. (p.193) The way we come together is free a fruit of a desire for the other, for body-to-body- communication, and for a shared process of reproduction (p.193) the internet can be a facilitator, but transformative activity is not triggered by the information passed online; we need to solve problems together and affirm ourselves of our collective power (p.193) In reality, the regions less technologically advanced from a capitalist viewpoint are today those in which political struggle is most intense and most confident in the possibility of changing the world. (p.193) Sam Moyo “re-peasantization” Other reasons In the industrialized countries, as well, as Chris Carlsson has documented in his “Nowtopia”, more people are seeking alternatives to a life regulated by work and the market, both because in a regime of precarity work can no longer be a source of identity formation and because of their need to be more creative. (p.195) a search for new models of protest and new relations between human beings and between human beings and nature (p.195) gender identity, the rise of the transsexual and intersex movements and the queer rejection of gender, with its implied rejection of the sexual division of labor (p.195) → breakdowns of disciplinary mechanisms and a profound desire for a remoulding of our humanity in ways different from those that capitalist industrial discipline has tried to impose in us. (p.195) As such, reproductive work potentially generates a deeper understanding of the natural constraints with which we operate on this planet, which is essential to the re-enchantment of the world I propose. (p.195)
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons(Silvia Federici)
2022
intelligence as construct
digitization
disruptive technologies
disruptive power of AI
neglected physicality
The following text is a summary of my notes translated from the original German language of the talk. The event was recorded by me with a sound recording to ensure the reproduction of the content. January 25, 2022, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Expert talks and discussions organized by the German Academy of Science and Engineering e. V. in cooperation with the Catholic Academy in Bavaria Greeting Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jan Wörner, President of acatech PD Dr. Achim Budde, director of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria Introduction and moderation Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology / acatech Impulses/Podium Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin, Chair of Robotics and System Intelligence, Technical University of Munich / acatech Dr. Olivia Mitscherlich-Schönherr, lecturer in philosophical anthropology at the Munich School of Philosophy Prof. Dr. Anke Becker, Center for Synthetic Microbiology (SYNMIKRO), Philipps University of Marburg Prof. Dr. (TR) Dr. phil. and med. habil. İlhan İlkılıç, Türk-Alman Üniversitesi |Turkish-German University Istanbul Introduction to the online event (00:00:00-00:17:00) Armin Grunwald, German physicist, philosopher and technology assessor understands the relationship between humans and technology as a reciprocal relationship. For him, a peculiar dynamic of its own emerges here, in which the state of our knowledge changes the way in which we perceive the world. He interprets our view of the world and our role in it, as a mirror of the technologies that surround us and as an attempt to see what they may mean for us in the future. The technological development and the image of man intertwine and form a unit. Grunwald supports his thesis by pointing out signs of this unity in the last few centuries. For him, the so-called “mechanical man” of the eighteenth century emerged from the far-reaching effects of Newton, who was the first to define gravitation, force and mass. The world is understood as clockwork and God as the clockmaker. Due to the change in society into a gainful society in times of the Industrial Revolution, people perceived themselves primarily as workers who are aware of their working conditions and denounce them. When Kant's philosophy defines the autonomous human being, one's own will and morality move to the center of consciousness. Grunwald now puts up for debate whether we can understand ourselves today as “homo digitalis” and whether our own self-image is now increasingly taking on the features of a processing machine. (Grunwald, 2022) Is our intelligence a construct? “The question of how we have to deal with the technical progress of digitization does not answer the question of who we are. Are humans now actually becoming the “all-maker” and the crown of creation, or are they now more than ever “pests” and “parasites” that exploit nature?” (Grunwald, 2022) Talk 1 - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin (00:17:22-00:29:00) For Sami Haddadin, electrical engineer, computer scientist, entrepreneur and scientist in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, the new digital technology quenches our insatiable thirst for knowledge and primarily serves to acquire knowledge and thus strive for the new. He classifies artificial intelligence in a series of developments that goes back to the fictitious “Golem”, an artificially brought to life protector of humans, and understands the interaction between man and machine as a field of tension and a challenge. (Haddadin, 2022) He recognizes the disregard of human physicality as a major challenge. That is why he defines our current age as a “cold age” in which the digital and physical worlds merge into a meta-universe in which the human being as a being of constant physical movement is neglected and only the mind is given attention. (Haddadin, 2022) Haddadin makes the following theses: “Technology must be designed symbiotically for people and the environment and also be a tool for the constant pursuit of knowledge and innovation.” (Haddadin, 2022) "We can only meet major challenges such as securing global prosperity, protecting our environment or demographic change with the widespread use of disruptive technologies and innovations." (Haddadin, 2022) “In our society, technology must again be understood and used as an opportunity and possibility. This does not mean negating risks. On the contrary, it means learning to deal with them consciously and responsibly.” (Haddadin, 2022) Talk 2 - Dr. Olivia Mitscherlich-Schönherr (00:29:10-00:37:55) The philosopher Olivia Mitscherlich explains the newly gained human insight as artificial, because the technologies are permeated by the developer´s images of humanity and their personal definition of the "good life". For her, the technology of artificial intelligence holds the power to develop new forms of human existence with it and to pursue the question of being human. But what is the good life? How do we define intelligence and are the defined rules really universal? In her impulse she critically points out that intelligence cannot only be understood as understanding and evaluating concrete life situations, because such conclusions only define views of the concrete hour. It can only be defined how we want to live together today and now and this judgment could be outdated very soon. In the disruptive power of AI and digital technologies, she sees a danger of digitizing or automating processes too carelessly, which at their core live on human interaction. (Mitscherlich, 2022) Discussion on the talks about AI and digital technologies (00:37:55-01:12:35) Armin Grunwald introduces the discussion with questioning the term “disruptive”, which both speakers brought up. The definition of the adjective “disruptive” basically expresses a termination. But if the technology of AI is disruptive, what comes after this disruption? (Grunwald, 2022) Haddadin defines disruptivity as an amplifying effect. For him, the chaos theory applies here, in which a small change in the system can have serious consequences. From the perspective of the technician, he does not see the AI as disruptive at all, since he understands the current state of research and can assess its potential to date. He locates the feeling of disruption much more in the population, which lacks this insight. He does not see the general feeling of acceleration in the technical development, because according to Haddadin, the technology is usually much further than its effect in society. (Haddadin, 2022) For him, this perception of disruption is much more a sign that changes are taking place in the real world that are not just economic. He sees the idea of an impending crisis and rapid acceleration through artificial intelligence as a purely market-based perspective. For him, technology always enriches both economically and culturally, and just because there are rapid advances on the economic level does not mean that all areas of life are accelerating at an alarming rate. Rather, he sees this concern as justified in the fact that in the course of progress, especially in the education system, the wrong framework conditions are being adhered to. (Haddadin, 2022) At this point, a listener raises a request to speak and demands the right for “freedom from technology”. He feels compelled to use the new technical applications and laments the lack of alternatives to digitized processes. In his view, if you don't familiarize yourself with new applications and processes and accept them as the only way, you will become more and more excluded from society. (Haddadin, 2022) Haddadin uses this objection to reaffirm his concern about neglected physicality. He worries about the relegation of motor skills and warns against reducing human beings to beings of communication, as we are also beings of movement. This potential of AI and digitization to a negative spiral is generally considered to be “convenient”. Mitscherlich agrees here and adds that it is also about understanding expression. (Haddadin, Mitscherlich, 2022) (00:58:50) The physicist and philosopher of technology Klaus Kornwachs interjects critically as to whether the human ability to abduct is not being overestimated. For him, invention is not yet an innovation. In the course of this, he vehemently rejects the concept of disruption as a battle cry from business administration and defines the effect more as a continuous development. He criticizes Haddadin's thesis that digitization would have led to an enrichment of all knowledge, and explains that for him at this point knowledge is confused with information. For him, this abundance of available knowledge tends to lead to being overwhelmed and to get on the wrong track quite quickly. He elaborates on this idea by saying, "We don't posses the knowledge of the world just because it's available." (Kornwachs, 2022) (1:00:00) Ralph Hohenwarter, an expert in artificial intelligence in particular machine learning, calls on the developers of AI to be educated ethically. In his view of artificial intelligence, developers should be ethically trained in order to guide the technology in the right direction in the future. He expresses the hope that the question of "Who are we?" might be answered by AI in the future. He is driven by the search to understand consciousness and intelligence and to find the unique selling point of man and thus the meaning of human existence and his vocation. (Hohenwarter, 2022) (01:02:00) Mitscherlich intervenes at this point and denies this potential of artificial intelligence. In her view, such value questions cannot be answered by digital technology. She emphasizes that one should not look for knowledge of values, because the question of the destiny of humanity must always be kept open. (Mitscherlich, 2022) (01:03:00) Technology historian Wolfgang König takes the floor and questions the direction of the discussion by interjecting whether the progress can really be understood as groundbreaking. He calls for the de-dramatization of this discussion. For him, research in the field of artificial intelligence is in no way as groundbreaking as the transition of humans from hunter-gatherers to a sedentary lifestyle. Equally, he adds that groundbreaking changes in human history are probably only recognized in hindsight. (King, 2022) (01:04:00) Andrea Buettner, researcher in the field of bioeconomy at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, questions whether it is really desirable to find the knowledge of what is possible for us as humans and what is our nature. She defines humans as an inquisitive and playful species and fears that with this rapid development in artificial intelligence, the possibility of self-knowledge could be lost as knowledge is developed and made accessible by machines. (Buettner, 2022) (01:09:00) Haddadin replies that the knowledge acquisition process has become incredibly faster and AI can only be used to scratch the surface of what it means to be human. (Haddadin, 2022) References Acatech (25 Jan 2022) acatech am Dienstag: Wer sind wir? – Vom Wandel der Technik und der Zukunft des Menschen, zoom event. Available at: https://www.acatech.de/termin/acatech-am-dienstag-wer-sind-wir/ (German audio recording)
Acatech Podium: Who are we? - About the change in technology and the future of man (German Academy of Science and Engineering)
2021
fluidity
feminized future
overcoming identity
multimedia environment
virtual reality
"She is in the process, turned on with the machines" - Plant Sadie Plant is a British philosopher, cultural theorist, and author. She taught at the University of Birmingham's Department of Cultural Studies before going on to found the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit with colleague Nick Land at the University of Warwick. Her original research is related to the social and political potential of cyber-technology. Her writing in the 1990s would prove influential in the development of cyberfeminism. In the following paragraphs I have collected and structured direct references from her book in in thematic contexts Fluidity Virtuality brings a fluidity to identities which once had to be fixed;(Plant 1997, p.325) The new cyberotics engineered by the girls; the queer traits and tendencies of Generations XYZ; tie post-human experiments of dance music scenes. All New Gen and her allies are resolutely hostile to morality and do nothing but erode political power. They reprogram guilt, deny authority, confuse identity, and have no interest in the reform or redecoration of the ancient patriarchal code. (Plant 1997, p.326) Genders can be bent and blurred and the time-space coordinates tend to get lost (Plant 1997, p.328) This 'connectionist' machine is an indeterminate process, rather than a definite entity. (Plant 1997, p.329) Ada Lovelace wrote the software for the 1840s Analytical Engine which too was programmed by a woman, Grace Murray Hopper. (...) Unable to find the words for them (her daydreams), she programs a mathematics in which to communicate the abstraction and complexity of her thoughts. (Plant 1997, p.320/331) Irigaray's woman has never had a unified role: mirror, screen, commodity; means of communication and reproduction; carrier and weaver; carer and whore; machine assemblage in the service of the species; a general purpose system of simulation and self-stimulation. It may have been woman's 'fluid character which has deprived her of all possibility of identity with herself within such a logic' (lrigaray 1985b: 109), but if fluidity has been configured as a matter of deprivation and disadvantage in the past, it is a positive advantage in a feminized future for which identity is nothing more than a Iiability. Her very inability to concentrate now connects her with the parallel processings of machines which function without unified control. (Plant 1997, p.331) Weaving, however, is outside this narrative: there is continuity between the weaver, the weaving and the woven which gives them a connectivity which eludes all orthodox conceptions of technology. (Plant 1997, p.332) Queer culture converges with post-human sexualities which haven no regard for the moral code. Working patterns move from full-time, life-long, specialized careers to part time, temporary, and multi-functional formats, and the context shifts into one in which women have long had expertise. It is suddenly noticed that girls' achievements in school and higher education are far in excess of those of their male counterparts, and a new transferable intelligence begins to be valued above either the strength or single-mindedness which once gave the masculine its power and are now being downgraded and rendered obsolete. (Plant 1997, p.334) Instead there is a virtual reality, an emergent process for which identity is not the goal but the enemy, precisely what has kept at bay the matrix of potentialities from which women have always downloaded their roles.(Plant 1997, p.335) The new tactile environment And multimedia provides a new tactile environment in which women artists can find their space. (Plant 1997, p.325) As media, tools and goods mutate, so the women begin to change, escaping their isolation and becoming increasingly interlinked. Modern feminism is marked by the emergence of networks and contacts which need no centralized organization and evade its structures of command and control. (Plant 1997, p.328) It also turns the computer into a complex thinking machine which converges with the operations of the human brain. Simultaneous with the Artificial Intelligence and computer science programmes which have led to such developments, research in the neuro-sciences moves towards materialist conceptions of the brain as a complex, connective, distributed machine. Neural nets are distributed systems which function as analogues of the brain and can learn, think, 'evolve' and 'live'. (Plant 1997, p.329) Unlike previous machines, which tend to have some single purpose, the computer functions as a general purpose system which can, in effect, do anything. (Plant 1997, p.320) As images migrate from canvas to film and finally on to the digital screen, what was once called art mutates into a matter of software engineering. Digital art takes the image beyond even its mechanical reproduction, eroding orthodox conceptions of originals and originality. And just as the image is reprocessed, so it finds itself embroiled in a new network of connections between words, music and architectures which diminishes the governing role it once played in the specular economy. (Plant 1997, p.332) Communication cannot be caught by the gaze, but is always a matter of getting in touch, a question of contact, contagion, transmission, reception and connectivity. (Plant 1997, p.332) Women are at the cutting edge of experimentation in these zones.(Plant 1997, p.333) Patriarchy (Complex systems) undermine both the world-view and the material reality of two thousand years of patriarchal control.(Plant 1997, p.325) Patriarchy needs to contain and control what it understands as 'woman' and 'the" feminine', but it cannot do without them: indeed, as its media' means of communication, reproduction and exchange, women are the very fabric of its culture, the material precondition of the world it controls. (Plant 1997, p.327) Exclusively anthropomorphic perspective world-view revolves around the interests of man. Conceived as the products, of his genius and as means to his o'w'n ends, even complex machines are understood to be tools and mediations which allow a unified, discreet human agency to interact with an inferior natural world. As the activities which have been monopolized by male conceptions of creativity and artistic genius now extend into the new multimedia and interactive spaces of the digital arts, women are at the cutting edge of experimentation in these zones. (Plant 1997, p.333) What man has named as his history was supposed to function as the self narrating story of a drive for domination and escape from the earth; a passage from carnal passions to self-control; a journey from the strange fluidities of the material to the self-identification of the soul. Driven by dreams of taming nature and so escaping its constraints, technical development has always invested in unification, light and flight, the struggle for enlightenment, a dream of escaping from the meat. (Plant 1997, p.334) Those who still cherish the patriarchal dream see cyberspace as a new zone of hope for a humanity which wants to be freed from the natural trap, escaping the body and sliding into an infinite, transcendent and perfect other world. But the matrix is neither heaven, nor even a comforting return to the womb. (Plant 1997, p.335) Further research Cyberfeminism / A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century Hypermedia / Hyperrealtactility Beth Stryker's Cyberqueer, Faultlines from Ingrid Bachmann and Barbara Layne. In the UK, Orphan Drift ride a wave of writing, digital art, film and music. In Australia, Linda Dement's Typhoid Mary and Cyberfesh Girlmonster put blood, guts and visceral infections on to her tactile multimedia screens. The French artist Orlan slides her body into cyberspace. (Plant 1997, p.333) The woman as a stereotyp And without this one (the man), as Irigaray writes, hysteria 'is all she has left'. This, or mimicry, or catatonic silence. Either way, woman is left without the senses of self and identity which accrue to the masculine. (Plant 1997, p.327) But always in relation to a sacrosanct conception of a male identity which women can either accept, adapt to, or refuse altogether. Only Irigaray and even then, only in some of her works - begins to suggest that there really is no point in pursuing the masculine dream of self-contiol, self-iclentification, self-knowledge and self determination.(Irigaray 1985, p.133/ Plant 1997, p.327) There is a long history of such intimate and influential connections between women and modernity´s machines. (Plant 1997, p.320) Neural nets function in intuitive leaps and cross-connections which characterize what has been pathologized as hysteria in women (by Freud). (Plant 1997, p.331) Weaving is the exemplary case of a denigrated female craft which now turns out to be intimately connected to the history of computing and the digital technologies. (Plant 1997, p.332) Digitization sets zero free to stand for nothing and make everything work. (...) It neither counts nor represents, but with digitization it proliferates, replicates and undermines the privilege of one. (Plant 1997, p.333) In Greek, the word for womb is hysteria; in Latin, it is matrix, or matter, both the mother and the material (Plant 1997, p.333). She is in the process, turned on with the machines (Plant 1997, p.335). Sources: ICA (1994) Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doL9mRMEUGw&t=520s (Accessed: 15 Nov 2021) Plant, S (1997) On the Matrix – Cyberfeminist simulations. Available at: https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Sadie-Plant-On-the-Matrix-Cyberfeminist-Simulations.pdf (Accessed: 15 Nov 2021)
Zeros + ones: digital women + the new technoculture (Sadie Plant)
2021
the rhizome
the human as a machine
the virtual
plateaus
identity-zones
conditioned reality
the world as energy
multiplicity
the flow
immanence
"Artifice is fully a part of nature, since each thing, on the immanent plane of Nature, is defined by the arrangement of motions and affects into which it enters, whether these arrangements are artificial or a natural." - Gilles Deleuze I found the ideas and concepts of Deleuze and Guattari particularly interesting in thinking about the body and the mind and the structures and connections they make which are defined by them as machine like. Gilles Deleuze and Guattari created these concepts to „create the world differently and (to create) new tools with which to reorder our selves and our world" (O´Sullivan, 2002, p. 84). Deleuze and Guattari aim to overcome the „ontological iron curtain between being and things (Guattari, 1995)“ and therefor define the concept-tools of the rhizome and the machine. The concept of the rhizome "The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between deceleration and acceleration of particles. A composition of speeds and slowness on a plane of immanence…it should be clear that the plane of immanence, the plane of Nature that distributes affects, does not make any distinction at all between things that might be called natural and things that might be called artificial. Artifice is fully a part of nature, since each thing, on the immanent plane of Nature, is defined by the arrangement of motions and affects into which it enters, whether these arrangements are artificial or a natural." - Deleuze The rhizome is an anti-hierarchical and a-centered open system, that can be connected to anything at any point of it and must be. It creates connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power and relevant circumstances. That is why it fosters transversal and alogical connections between events and offers multiple entry ways of contact. These entry ways can be imagined as plateaus and a single plateau is made of nonlinear assemblages. An assemblage of meaning can “inform others and each other (...) and (these connections) only make sense when read within and against each other” (Honan, 2007 in Jeffery, 2013). Deleuze understands it as a symbolization of how thoughts, ideas and movements link together. It is a non fixable and never completely graspable structure which has no clear beginning or end. (West, 2018, episode 127; Jeffery, 2013) For Deleuze the rhizome is also a map with which people can „reorganize or resingularise themselves in a creative and affirmative manner (…) always opening up to an outside" (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.84). It does not differ between the inner and the outer as defining categories. The infinite reorganization of the rhizome follows the principle of an “asignifying rupture” where a line in the rhizome is destroyed just to start up again at that same point and to develop in a different or even the same direction. (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.84; Jeffery, 2013) ”A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines... Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialised, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialisation down which it constantly flees” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988). The concept of the machine We are all machines…and the institutions we make for ourselves such as the family and the state are also machines that take the desiring production of humanity and process it in useful ways for a particular social regime…in order to work functionally we have to desire efficiently. But the desire is innately reckless and inefficient; an energistics without bounds, and it should be understood as just one segment in larger flows of energy and matter that constitute the world as a mobile, varying, multiple flux with different strata that make up planes of consistency. We exist within such planes as lines of flight that can either escape or be captured and pinned down by signifying regimes, semantic orders that assign us meanings and identities…All such stabilizations or codings constitute territorialisations in that they establish boundaries of identity that restrain temporarily the movement of the flows and the lines of flight…but deterritorialisation is a more powerful force, and everything eventually breaks apart and flows anew, only once again to be recaptured and reterritorialised by another social regime of signification (Deleuze, 1998).“ For Deleuze and Guattari each living individuality can be understood as not a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between deceleration and acceleration of particles. That is why they define the function and meaning of human bodies as machines who work as assemblages and depend on the other bodies or machines they form connections with. Becoming human is "to affect and be affected" (Mercieca and Mercieca, 2010). Identity is a process in motion rather than a fixed state of being. The individual finds himself in an "identity zone" which can always be reconfigured without having to be stuck in it. (Jeffery, 2013) The human exists as a fragment of the One as he begins to enter a world of populated events where subject and object are replaced by determinations, magnitudes and dimensions. He is a strategic position to launch into other worlds whereas in this world only conditions exists which are producing other conditions. The world becomes a conditioned reality and a "vortex of energy". (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.88; West, 2018, episode 127; Jeffery, 2013) Deleuzes machine can be described as a fluid function and as part of mega machine. This concept can be applied on the human body functioning as a machine of organs whereas the human could also simultaneously be a part of several bigger machines like the machinery of society. The human body is also able to connect itself to a non-living machine for example a car, a bus or a bike and despite their different natures make a functioning connection. These connections are defined as flows, comparable to the flowing water in a river, which are changed completely by human interaction. But why is there a flow in particular? Every process becomes fluid in its multiplicity and this multiplicity drives deterritorialization. The world can be understood as a world in constant motion where difference keeps the flow alive. This difference enables us to derive our identity from it and understand our life as a process of being rather than becoming. (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.88; West, 2018, episode 128) Not only the human can be perceived as rhizomatical also data can be analysed following a rhizomatic approach. This approach enables us to to create "plausible readings of connections between and across and within various data"(Jeffery, 2013). Deleuze does not differentiate between things that might be called natural and things that might be called artificial. He perceives artifice as "fully a part of nature" on the shared plane of immanence, the plane of Nature. (Jeffery, 2013) The concept of the virtual "The only danger in all this is that the virtual could be confused with the possible. The possible is opposed to the real, the process undergone by the possible is ‘realisation’. However the virtual is not opposed to the real, it possesses a full reality by itself. The process it undergoes is actualisation. It would be wrong to see only a verbal dispute here: it is a question of existence itself" (Deleuze, 1988, p.211). For Deleuze the virtual is strictly a part of the real object. The object in itself exists in both dimensions the virtual and the objective one. The only difference between those dimensions is that „the virtual is temporal and the completely determined structure of the object” (O´Sullivan, 2002, p.90; Bergson). The virtual is a genuine creation and therefore cannot be seen as the possible. For Deleuze abstract machines constitute becomings - thus are always singular and immanent. (O´Sullivan, 2002) References O´Sullivan, S (2002) Cultural Studies as rhizome - rhizomes in Cultural Studies. Available at: (Accessed 05 Nov 2021) O´Sullivan, S (2014) A Life Between the Finite and Infinite. Available at: https://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/life-between-finite-infinite.pdf (Accessed 03 Jan 2022) Jeffery, S (2013) Thesis Review Part One: Assemblages and Rhizomes. Available at: https://nthmind.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/thesis-review-part-one-assemblages-and-rhizomes/ (Accessed 18 Jan 2022) Thornton, E (2017) The Rise of the Machines: Deleuze’s Flight from Structuralism. University of Memphis: The Southern Journal of Philosophy Available at: https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/files/34753376/The_Rise_of_the_Machines_SJP_Sharing_Copy_.pdf (Accessed 03 Jan 2022) West, S (2018) Podcast Philosophize This!, Episodes 125 – 129. Available on Spotify and at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6RnMHRtos4&t=315s (Accessed 05 Dec 2021)