Re: Leaders of the Capitol insurrection

[Christiane Robbins]

Could not agree any more.   This specific refrain I have heard my entire life 
which brings us to this moment. 

The prevailing degree of easy cynicism is a danger - healthy skepticism is 
not….and that skepticism underpins each of our positioning as we take a side.

Cris



> On Jan 27, 2021, at 9:45 AM, Brian Holmes  
> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 10:52 AM mp  > wrote:
> 
> FBI had an agent provocateur embedded, leading the line. Sounds familiar.
> 
> The state has long done exactly that (although Tarrio was not "leading the 
> line", he had been arrested the day before and limited himself to a few 
> encouraging tweets from afar on the day of the riot - NOT pushing people to 
> violence).
> 
> It's certain that the damage done by FBI provocateurs is considerable. Above 
> all it damages people's capacity to seek out the truth and recognize it when 
> they find it. People then become cynical, and they are unable to contribute 
> anything except their skepticism. The capitalist system provides them plenty 
> of leisure to express that skepticism, and they do. Listen to the QAnon 
> people, they are very expressive concerning their doubts. But not the 
> greatest company to keep.
> 
> I think sitting back and being cynical when a country is in danger of being 
> taken over by fascists is a mistake. This is going to happen to many 
> countries. At some point, when the leisure collapses, you actually have to 
> take a side - compromising as that may be.
> 
> Brian
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:



JETZTZEIT 


" ... the space between zero and one ... "
Walter Benjamin

Los Angeles _ San Francisco
California
415.336.6839
323.665.0369

he information contained in this electronic mail message (including any 
attachments) is confidential information covered by the Electronic 
Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC Sections 2510-2521,  
and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above, and may 
be privileged.  
_

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby 
notified that any use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution, or copying of 
this communication to anyone, 
or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited.  

If you have received this message in error, please advise the sender by reply 
e-mail and delete the message. If you are the intended recipient, please be 
advised that the content of this message is subject to access, review and 
disclosure by the sender's email administrators.

Please be advised that no agreement can be formed by this email under the 
Uniform  Electronic Transactions Act or any similar law unless the email 
explicitly states  that is the case.

 

Thank you.







#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Not One

[Christiane Robbins]

Zak,

Not certain that I am following you accurately, as it seems as if you are 
presenting us with the devil’s choice - choosing between one’s own survival or 
perishing for the sake of your unspecified “greater risk”.

I’m not sure of your citizenry but as a woman living in the USA at this moment, 
amongst other significant factors, I am subject to the distinct threat of the 
overt forces of misogyny ( see the attempt to kidnap and Lynch the Gov. of 
Michican as a most recent example).  

Make no mistake these are not illusionistic threats.  They are real, they are 
deliberate and they are growing …and their intent is to "bring the entire 
system down from within."

> On Oct 7, 2020, at 2:29 AM, Zak McGregor  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 6 Oct 2020 19:00:39 -0400
> Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
>> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
>> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
>> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
>> any time. 
> 
> Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses 
> probably an even greater risk to their lives than Trump. The US left needs to 
> realise that they a. can't effect meaningful change through the ballot, and 
> b. need to bring the entire system down from within. 
> 
> -- 
> Zak McGregor 
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Not One

[Christiane Robbins]

Dear Fellow Travelers,

Keith points below are not only sage, they are of an absolute necessity in the 
USA … and I (as a direct descendant of those puritan settler-colonialists, 
aboriginal and colonized peoples ( yes,Trump’s worst nightmare) I couldn’t 
agree any more.

Christiane Robbins


> On Oct 6, 2020, at 4:00 PM, Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
> Dear Nettimers,
> 
> An appeal to the history of settler colonialism and the continued history of 
> slavery is appropriate and accurate but at this moment used as a reductio ad 
> absurdum is just dangerous. I am not a believer in justice through bourgeois 
> democracy but the violence promoted and actualized under the Trump regime 
> must be stopped. Think of Biden/Harris as a tourniquet applied to staunch 
> fatal bleeding. 
> 
> Let me end with this: the day after Trump was elected, my students at the New 
> School, most of them women, were in a state of shock and for good reason: one 
> shared with the class that after Trump’s win had been announced she was 
> walking down the street near the “campus” in New York City and a young guy 
> walked up to her and said, “Now I can grab your pussy whenever I want.” And 
> disease entity called Trump was not even inaugurated yet. The irresponsible 
> minimization of covid which has lead directly to deaths and the work of the 
> “Proud Boys” as agents provocateurs, which again lead to deaths. 
> 
> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
> any time. 
> 
> Keith Sanborn 
> 
>> On Oct 6, 2020, at 2:42 PM, Ryan Griffis  wrote:
>> 
>> Tue, 6 Oct 2020 11:12:55 -0500, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
>> 
>>> A subject, be it collective or individual, is always divided. The One is an
>>> imposture.
>> 
>> Thank you Frederic, for stating what I would have hoped was a shared 
>> understanding of nation-state politics, especially on an international list 
>> focused on “networked culture.” 
>> 
>> I wrote the following just before receiving Frederic's message, then decided 
>> not to send it. But, maybe it’s worth adding to Frederic’s rightful call to 
>> dispense with the collapsing of people into nation-states? Anyway, here it 
>> is...
>> 
>> I don’t mean to overstate the point here, but discussions of “democracy in 
>> the US” (as with discussions of the political economy anywhere in the world) 
>> should really be more responsible to actual history. Personally, I think 
>> such responsibility is necessary to have a meaningful international leftist 
>> perspective on solidarity.
>> For starters, the settler-colonial status of the US as an ongoing form of 
>> occupation can’t be simply glossed over.
>> But specifically to the question of democracy, it might be more useful to 
>> understand the situation as the *continued prevention* of democracy, rather 
>> than its collapse, as if it was somehow ever stable or even meaningfully 
>> democratic in some historical sense.
>> Just to provide *some* specifics.
>> It would be ridiculous to consider the rollback of voting rights for 
>> formerly incarcerated individuals (essentially a poll tax) in my settler 
>> home state of Florida without recognizing that the very rights being 
>> undermined *were just recently granted* to begin with.
>> Exactly 100 years ago there, leading up to the 1920 election, there was 
>> widespread mass violence perpetrated against black residents to re-solidify 
>> an anti-democratic, white supremacist regime.
>> For anyone interested in this specific history who is not familiar, I’d 
>> recommend Paul Ortiz’s excellent book “Emancipation Betrayed.”
>> 
>> Trump may be a glaring and garish example of white supremacist 
>> anti-democratic/fascism in the US, but it’s not like the foundation wasn’t 
>> already set. 
>> IF we’re able to move the US in a more democratic direction, it will be 
>> through continued struggle that builds on the history of such struggles that 
>> have been occurring for well over 100 years (some would say it’s more like 
>> 500 years). IMHO, these struggles are not best understood as trying to 
>> *perfect* the US as a democracy, but as part of a movement to achieve (and 
>> maintain) liberation for all people (which is no simple concept in a 
>> settler-colonial state). Our foundation as a nation-state built on 
>> internationally coordinated, genocidal violence (that predates the actual US 
>> nation-state, obviously) seems like it begs for us to understan

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[Christiane Robbins]

ess, disappointment, remorse, and embarrassment have 
> been provoked especially this week as I am watching Ars Electronica programs 
> every day. I start wondering - did I waste my whole life in the wrong field? 
> It is very exciting to be at the "cutting edge", but the price you pay is 
> heavy. After 30 years in this field, there are very few artworks I can show 
> to my students without feeling embarrassed. While I remember why there were 
> so important to us at the moment they were made, their low-resolution visuals 
> and broken links can't inspire students. //
> The same is often true for the "content" of digital art. It's about "issues," 
> "impact of X on Y", "critique of A", "a parody of B", "community of C" and so 
> on. //
> It's almost never about our real everyday life and our humanity. Feelings. 
> Passions. Looking at the world. Looking inside yourself. Falling in love. 
> Breaking up. Questioning yourself. Searching for love, meaning, less 
> alienated life.//
> After I watch Ars Electronica streams, I go to Netflix or switch on the TV, 
> and it feels like fresh air. I see very well made films and TV series. 
> Perfectly lighted, color graded, art directed.
> I see real people, not "ideas" and meaningless sounds of yet another 
> "electronic music" performance, or yet another meaningless outputs of a 
> neural network invented by brilliant scientists and badly misused by 
> "artists."
> New media art never deals with human life, and this is why it does not enter 
> museums. It's our fault. Don't blame curators or the "art world." Digital art 
> is "anti-human art," and this is why it does not stay in history. //
> P.S. As always, I exaggerated a bit my point to provoke discussion - but not 
> that much. This post does reflect my real feelings. Of course, some of these 
> issues are complex - but after 30 years in the field, I really do wonder what 
> it was all about)
> P.P.S.
> The mystery of why some technology (and art made with them) has obsolescence 
> and others do not - thinking about this for 25 years. We are fascinated by 
> 19th-century photographs or 1960s ones. They look beautiful, rich, full of 
> emotions, and meanings. But video art from the 1980s-1990s looks simply 
> terrible, you want to run away and forget that you ever saw this. Why first 
> Apple computers look cool, cute, engaged? But art created on them does not? 
> And so on. I still have not solved this question.
> Perhaps part of this has to be with the message that goes along with lots of 
> tech art from the 1960s to today - and especially today. 19th or 20th-century 
> photographs done by professional photographs or good amateurs do not come 
> with utopian, pretentious, exaggerated, unrealistic, and hypocritical 
> statements, the way lots of "progressive art" does today. Nor do their titles 
> announce all latest tech processes used to create these photographs.
> 
> Ars Electronica 2020: 
> https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/ 
> <https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fars.electronica.art%2Fkeplersgardens%2Fen%2F=AT2w4OEuuoeVihKs5LjapuFkzEqtX9kuEBqihrvRbLxcuGHrMqRyRMepEAj7BPSSlqJg9BXKo7LkCG_hIaW69JvA5Kxej9OYXAGjkGNmEm3brgToON6XJYp7Et8r5tsIzkFwbrHkPa3zDVfvnsoo2zo5TMf5GxGjT83hCGKqrSbm>
> 
> Video illustration: Japanese robot at Ars Electronica 2010 -
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmabKC1P51A 
> <https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmmabKC1P51A=AT0ZZLvc7X9Tf8ucLLR-DUPF7ioMwdtdLBafjgz2Y_Fq9EBhcL-jiyga7ljPRHx0Quc6zpegRFbBFcgLw7VFffy0xT4s9Y_QZ1lFGsTgU2dNuph12NAxFyRRUwNZ0uai5yQJ3nDDib4h4xcmlL6vHlPXM27bHgOHtAZB67GwKbei>-->
>  #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l 
> <http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l>
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org <http://www.nettime.org/> contact: 
> nett...@kein.org <mailto:nett...@kein.org>
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:



Christiane Robbins


"Every disaster shakes loose the old order. What replaces it is up to us."

~Rebecca Solnit




#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: California Ideology mea culpa

[Christiane Robbins]

As read …. very quick response … 

mea culpa - this instrument of confession strikes me as one so rooted in the 
confiteor and contriteness of a Catholic asking for penance - an acceptance of 
punishment and absolution. 

It caused me to circle round to my proverbial question - are we really so 
shocked at the sophomoric a biased level of hubris and self-service that 
underpinned this 25 yr. trajectory - as well as our collectively blind 
participation?  Perhaps FB’s "failure of imagination" may simply approximate 
a mirror of our own.  To singularly tag this as FB is to deny any of our own 
participation - whether as part of a burgeoning community or as employees of 
these expedient companies exporting aspects of our expertise, et all.

A salient point raised is that Civil engineers are licensed - as they are 
charged w/ protecting our public safety ( physical ) as other other 
professionals ( Architects, Attorneys, Doctors) who ostensibly protect the 
public good.  In the absence of any necessary and ubiquitous digital media 
literacy and agency  and as we emerge from the wading around hip-deep in the 
arrested development of of High School emotives and directives of software 
engineer ( Imagineering).  As indicated it behooves us to give critical thought 
to the field and its responsibilities to the public good.  

“  The nerds had ascended, culturally and socially, and had become enchanted 
with their own virtuous self-image. “  

Dare I state, it wasn’t only those aspects of ascension noted, it was also 
the base fact that divisiveness had been generated by the mere amount of 
capital - of $$$ -  of salaries of class divisiveness - which dwarfed other 
professions - outsized salaries,  remunerations and career advances which held 
a initial promise of a reciprocal offering of public good / responsibility.  
Much of this was not realized.  Reportedly, just the opposite.  Despite its 
mythical MSM illusion - serving as the cover story -  the City of love, the 
genesis of burning man and the legacy of the Gold Rush, the SF Bay Area 
embodies that divisiveness …. and, perhaps divine intervention ( its the 
Catholic in me speaking :)

Much more to be addressed - to be continued … thx!

Chris

> On Jan 15, 2020, at 1:10 AM, Bruce Sterling  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> "Our beloved 'California Ideology'!  It's ended in tears!  If only we'd been 
> more Canadian all along!"
> 

<>




#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: