Re: Democracy Net Zero

[voyd]

A quick note for my having not engaged the conversation fully and going 
lateral. My deepest apologies.

I am a bit in the Brian/Ryan camp  on this one. To reframe my polemic, Brian 
centers it perfectly in saying that the cognitive argument has been had, and it 
is now a question of will, and that was actually my point in Dubai.

"In my view the climate conflict is not just Indigenous people and/or 
environmentalists against the state. It is also a struggle that plays out 
within the state. It no longer has primarily to do with knowledge, because 
science has spoken and people have heard and understood. It is now a struggle 
over identities and their corresponding worlds. To advance the struggle in a 
positive direction means transforming both identities and worlds. The 
democratic public sphere does not disappear, but it is underwritten by cultural 
foundations whose structuring influence is now apparent and is passionately at 
issue."

Exactly.

Brian, Claire - if you pass through Winona either way, a warm welcome awaits, 
but I figure wou'll be going across from MKE.


On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 11:46:33 -0500, Brian Holmes  
wrote:
 
David, I wish the cognitive struggles you are talking about were actually 
happening. Or rather, that they were making the specific difference of our 
times. Then we could think in classic democratic terms with well-established 
ideas about civil society and the like.

The problem is that the new era you portray, of cognitive struggle over the 
risks of modernization, has indeed been going on since the days of Rachel 
Carson, and it has unfolded in many of the ways described by Ulrich Beck in The 
Risk Society, a major work which was published in the 1980s. A lot of what you 
are saying is very close to that book, although it, like your text, remains 
more on the level of rational democratic debate whereas society operates 
equally if not more on the level of passion. Now some six decades after Silent 
spring, untold numbers of toxins -- whether chemical, social or psychic -- have 
been identified through quite tumultuous public debates that begin as fringe 
and minority issues, before coming to occupy the central stages of public 
discourse. In my view, we have finally reached the point that Beck always 
wondered about -- the point where there is no longer any doubt about the risks. 
At this point the cognitive issue fades and the question of will becomes 
primary. Assembling the collective will for a change in the centuries-old 
pattern of industrial modernization is the big issue of our time.

In that regard, the article that Ryan sent is incredibly interesting. It deals 
with one of the basic patterns of modernization, namely dam-building and 
irrigation. All of California was built on this hydrological foundation, but at 
a considerable price to the future. Long ago in the 1960s it was understood 
that ever-increasing water use leads to species extinction, and as the article 
recounts, the Environmental Protection Act has been used both to halt the flow 
of irrigation water during droughts and to divert significant resources to 
endless rebuilds of the hydrological system. Native American tribes like the 
Yurock became involved in these issues all across the West Coast, as did a 
generation of urban environmentalists. Now the state that built the 
hydrological system is making tiny steps toward taking it apart, or at least, 
regulating it differently, under the pressure of what is now a growing fear on 
the part of urban populations that the ecological matrix of the West Coast will 
no longer sustain them (droughts, fires, toxic air etc). Meanwhile the huge 
agricultural economy of California pushes in the opposite direction, toward 
continued growth. And in Northern California and Southern Oregon, as all over 
the world, the constituencies of the growth economy are resorting to neofascism 
to counter this incipient transformation toward an eco-state.

In my view the climate conflict is not just Indigenous people and/or 
environmentalists against the state. It is also a struggle that plays out 
within the state. It no longer has primarily to do with knowledge, because 
science has spoken and people have heard and understood. It is now a struggle 
over identities and their corresponding worlds. To advance the struggle in a 
positive direction means transforming both identities and worlds. The 
democratic public sphere does not disappear, but it is underwritten by cultural 
foundations whose structuring influence is now apparent and is passionately at 
issue.

Some other time I would like to go further with this, but damn, exactly right 
now we gotta leave to go protest against the Enbridge pipeline that's cutting 
through unceded indigenous land up in northern Minnesota!

all the best, Brian
 


On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 5:27 AM  wrote:

On 2021-06-02 18:54, Ryan Griffis wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> This is maybe jumping the tracks of this thread started by David's
> essay, 

Re: Democracy Net Zero

[voyd]

Yes, thanks.
You know, when I was involved in a lecture on the notion of apocalypse and the 
Contemporary, listening to Rohit Goel of BICAR (who was not blithe about the 
subject at all) in Dubai in 2018, I was almost enraged by the oblique way in 
which the subject was being discussed in a Rem Koolhaas-designed gallery.  My 
issue with the discourse was that in one of the richest places in the world, I 
felt like things like climate change was something to discuss in polite 
conversation over cucumber sandwiches and sav blanc.

I grabbed the mic, and said that this conversation is “interesting” and all, 
but let me lob a mind grenade in the conversation. Silent Spring was published 
a few months before I was born (1962) – 58 years ago, and I noted that Carson’s 
word were still grist for “polite consideration”. This galled me, and, as Geert 
knows, gall is borderline legal in Dubai.

I went on to say that (as an aside, Ryan is right on all points) we have to 
allow ourselves to be alarmed, to speak markedly. In 2018 (I believe) the 
Bienniale de Venezia informally dismissed climate change, only to have it 
accepted wholesale the next edition.

 

I was in one of the artistic loci of power of the Middle East, and I was just 
beside myself in that the End of the World was, in my opinion, being 
aestheticized into what I have termed a Pornography of Suffering.

Returning to America, on Instagram, I see the Alt Right framing Climate Change 
as CNN’s next “selling campaign”, and as I am back in the USA, I sit in horror 
at the blitheness of the powerful in the East, and the confusionism set upon 
the USA in the West. 

 

I realize this is a bit of a rant, but I finished my statement in Dubai, saying 
that our theoretical framing of catastrophe is beautiful and well thought out, 
but if we don’t actually take the words of nearly 60 years ago SERIOUSLY -

We are Screwed.

That’s what I said, in the middle of millions of dollars.

It’s interesting that this seminal shot across humanity’s bow (Spring) is 
prophetic, and the US Justice Department knew Big Oil knew 40 years ago  -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

It’s just that humanity doesn’t give a damn unless it gets in the way of 
capitalism, or it causes so much suffering it causes unrest or disruption of 
biocapitalistic labor.  It’s why there are times when I talk about 
Accelerationism, not because I think it’s the best option, but it seems to be 
the only way anyone is going to talk about the Sword of Damocles that awaits 
our civilization.

It can be seen from Covid that humanity can DO THIS. Mayne.

 

 

Patrick Lichty



website: http:://www.patricklichty.com

email: v...@voyd.com

instagram, twitter: @patlichty

 

 

 

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  on 
behalf of Ryan Griffis 
Date: Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 12:53 PM
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org 
Subject: Re:  Democracy Net Zero

Thanks for this David!

 

Minor point: "Silent Spring" is not a work of fiction in any sense of the word; 
the short first chapter "Fable for Tomorrow," is, as its title suggests, a 
fable (of a "town that does not actually exist"). That chapter is obviously a 
literary device that establishes the stakes up front and in an accessible and 
compressed manner, but I wouldn't use it to classify the rest of the book as 
even "creative nonfiction." The book is otherwise a work of reportage, probably 
*the* model for popular contemporary climate/science journalists such as 
Elizabeth Kolbert who rely on a combination of first-person observations, 
interviews, and syntheses of scientific papers and policy documents.

Unfortunately, it's still deeply relevant 50 years later...

 

Take care all,

Ryan

 

"To get a comparative sense of where we currently stand its useful to
contrast today?s environmental politics with the political impact of
Rachel Carson?s ?Silent Spring? published in 1962. As is well known this
was an account of an imaginary community afflicted by environmental
calamity. Although a fiction the narrative drew on detailed evidence
from events that had already actually happened in a number of separate
incidents. Carson had simply and brilliantly drawn these threads
together into a worst-case scenario."

 





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China all the time.

[voyd]

I remember being at Geert's and his son was playing "China all the time Trump 
Remix"
For a lighthearted moment in the tense conversation, I'd like to revisit it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heofJGld5uw
:)


On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 04:23:22 -0500, tbyfi...@panix.com wrote:
 

Yes please, and thank you, Geert. The endless navel-gazing of the WEIRD 
nations’ senescence is recursively dull. The point is not what do the usual 
suspects think about China (or whatever proxy you like), it’s whether they — we 
— can extend the nettime project. Not so it can absorb new milieus; if 
anything, so it can be absorbed by them. 



Cheers, Ted

On Jan 20, 2021, 4:01 AM -0500, Geert Lovink , wrote:



On 19 Jan 2021, at 9:52 pm, bronac ferran  wrote:



The List needs a new Topic








 



Bronac, I agree. This was a tense thread, but also a worthty enof the Trump er

On a bright note, look at this video again: Trump rapping China, China, China:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs

 

In general it would be would for nettime to focus more on China :) Or let’s be 
more clear, to fellow Chinese critics, artists, coders, theorists, researchers 
and other dreamers. To get an understanding of the Party and its relation to 
the business elites is one, but can we still have a direct dialogue with people 
out there? Or how dialogues with Hong Kong? How are people coping there, after 
the great showdown of 2019-2020? How can we strenghten ties with critical 
forces in Taiwan?

 

With Trump gone our own Chinese Question (and how to relate with the official 
forces there) will be even more important as the authoritian grip of the Xi 
regime is only further tightening. Will you except an invitation from a school 
or art institution in Shanghai? Will there be a cultural boycott of China soon? 
In whose interest owuld this be? Has Hong Kong already lost its status aparte 
for you?

 

What else is there to discuss on nettime as the world moves on to Telegram and 
Signal? What to make of social media governance? I do not think this will get 
us anywhere... Internet as public infrastructure aka stack… yes. The clash of 
cultures and strategies in the (de)centralization debate are unresolved. Can 
federation scale? How to dismantle Google and Facebook?

 

Ciao, Geert

 


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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[voyd]

Hi, everyone - 
Watching this curiously as I re-acclimate to being back in the United States 
after 5 years based in the UAE, but engaged in thinking across the Caucusus, 
Turkey, Armenia/Azerbaijan, the I-place, and the Central Asian -Stans, and a 
tiny bit of China.

Being that I left in the general thought-cloud of Holmes/Kurtz/Sterling, I have 
this one look at this argument. On the other hand, in working with people like 
Kazakh indigenous activists, Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Emiratis (especially some 
of the LGBT subculture), I am having a Roy Batty moment in which it's hard for 
me to articulate some of the conversations I've been involved in, except that 
the world has changed radically around American hegemony in ways that I really 
don't think it understands yet, and the notion of left/right has heterogenized 
globally (not necessarily fragmented). One example is that I was interested 
that Indigenous Kazakhs often identify with the American Black Experience and 
BLM, although they experienced genocide and suppression under the Holodoror 
rather than slavery as such (and now autocratic suppression), but I see the way 
that this has been used as an affordance of solidarity of global oppression. 
Trumpism has been such a corrosive agent worldwide that despite the ills of 
American foreign policy, I see the power of the USA under a benevolent 
leadership, but as F-22s went over my head and my wife recounted her life 
growing up under the bombings of Hussein, I just sit here after 5 years in 
places deep in places where many Americans can't even pointo to on a map (not 
saying that about anyone here), just trying to think about how to think from 
the context of America.

I'm glad to be back, almost feel like Tocquevelle/ Oh my God.


On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 18:01:17 + (UTC), Roman Seidl  wrote:

For some time it was kind of entertaining to read something which seems totally 
out of time, like from the 1980s. It seems like it's going to go on like this 
for ever. We are all going to get insulted until "strategic ‘intervention' from 
our moderators" takes place.

I stopped reading it but maybe someone is still keen to get insulted?

Roman

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Re: made for TV, made for social media

[voyd]

 
Yes, there were people like the guy in the fur hat who apparently is the son of 
a judge, but I'm following up on that claim.
Idiocracy isn't so funny any more . Hasn't been for a long time.
Shifting back to the US next week.. I'll be on more.

On Fri, 8 Jan 2021 20:34:30 +0100, Geert Lovink  wrote:

Hi Molly and Tara!
 

A leader, yes… but what were they supposed to do there? Stay? Take over, but 
what exactly? It’s all about staging. Now they were primarily staging for 
social media, for themselves, individually, roaming around in a building, 
looking for what? In the end they were not one will, one social body. And this 
is required for a revolution or coup to succeed. Most likely they were after 
some other experience, some other type of change, perhaps.

 

Best, Geert

 


On 8 Jan 2021, at 7:52 pm, Molly Hankwitz  wrote:
 



not to nitpick, but they had a command and that was from Trump...to "storm the 
capitol"

after that they had no serious intent to occupy the Capitol or, for instance, 
to issue demands...

they were there to disrupt the electoral college vote confirmation by Congress 
- on behalf of their leader (Trump)

 

your points about 'whiteness' are well-taken

we should not obscure 'reach' of whiteness trope, although one could argue, I 
think that those caught up in the swirl of 'whiteness' may think to themselves 
that they are a 'class' of some importance...

 

peace

molly

 






 
 

molly hankwitz - she/her

http://bivoulab.org







 


On Fri, Jan 8, 2021 at 9:58 AM Tara Mcpherson  wrote:





It was definitely a mob, and I think Geert is right that this particular event 
had no clear command.

 

But I would caution against assuming these rioters were all poor white folk or 
that this was primarily about class. Many in the mob have now been identified, 
and there were plenty of white collar hooligans in the mix, some flying in on 
their private jets. The formation and legacies of whiteness in the US are a key 
animating factor here in a way that crosses class lines. It also fuels the way 
the mob claimed the title “patriot” and invoked 1776.

 

Tara


 


(Sent by pneumatic tube.)




From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  on 
behalf of Geert Lovink 
Sent: Friday, January 8, 2021 8:13:54 AM
To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism 
Subject: Re:  made for TV, made for social media

 



Good question, Keith.

Was it a putch without a purpose of a mob without a cause? For sure they were 
all revved up, dazed by meme magick and shit, looking for the best selfie 
opportunity.

Once we enter the heart of the power, and roam around there, we do not face 
power as such. No need to repeat here what Foucault and many other after him 
have written about power. We know, but what if one has to experience this at 
first hand, as riot tourists?

The warriors were running through corridors, without a plan, needless to say, 
without their leader, as he was sitting in front of his TV set, around the 
corner, enjoying the images, watching the spectacle unfold, yet remaining 
silent at the decisive moment.

There was no command, no plan, not even a serious counterforce. At best it was 
a ‘disruption’ such as promoted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Geert

> On 8 Jan 2021, at 4:39 pm, Keith Sanborn  wrote:
>
> Put another way, was it the burning of the Reichstag or the storming of the 
> Winter Palace? or neither?



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Re: A question in earnest (Max Herman)

[voyd]

Responding to Molly - 
I have been really pressed for time these days, but have enjoyed this 
conversation.
I hope I can give you the view from Arabia.
And I am returning to the USA soon.
Such and interesting perspective time from here.



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Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[voyd]

 


On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 10:26:40 -0400, v...@voyd.com wrote:
 
Steve, thanks for this, and yeah, the Tactical Media Electric Kool-Aid Acid 
Test was a great trip. What a ride, and it might not be done. However.

This might seem like the biggest non-committal answer possible, but I see how 
this slices, one way or the other. I certainly channel Steve in thinking of his 
position like Kandinsky calling art "of its time". Also, looked at formally, 
old digital art can look pretty awful - but only if you look at it a certain 
way. Ok, some of the old stuff is pixelated, or, or, or, and might deal with 
the medium a bit stiffly. But one thing that I say about things like the 80's 
and 90's is that there were a lot of things we just didn't have terms for, and 
thanks, Lev for theorizing some of it, but the New Media age was at the 
crossroads of Krokerian Crash hipness and the full-on Postmodern Avant, as we 
are with the Speculative today, or something that I look to Suhail Malik with 
interest for, the Post-Contemporary.

I give things a lot of slack for being of their time. Looked at in their 
context, I really enjoy most work.

However, I think two things - neoliberalism is just the bane of art, and 
institutions can just suck the air out of things almost instantaneously if you 
let them. 
I remember here in Abu Dhabi seeing Inventing Downtown at the NYU gallery, and 
and seeing the vibrancy of the Downtown scene of the 50's, all the artist-run 
spaces and their work. And I remember Rothko talking about the fact that they 
were like Shamans; something that I hold to my heart to this day.  And yes, 
after the artworld ballooned in the 90's and the artists with New Media MFAs in 
the mid 2000's hit the artworld, there is a lot more technological media art, 
some of it good, a lot derivative and tasteless. I roll my eyes at Vaporwave 
for being a bad analogy for my Atari 5200 video games, but as Cory once said, a 
lot; of contemporary New Media hits at a false nostalgia, and the Classicist 
representation of suureal figure s in immersive media hit me as an indexical 
gesture.

As a number of books on the contemporary art scene, including Michael 
Schnayerson's "Boom", the contemporary boom of the 90's and the postinternet 
reply to Claire Bishop's contemporary disavowal of the digital merely shifts 
the locus of the work as cultural value/power instrument. We have New Media 
artists making prints in museums that can digest them. Fair enough. I also know 
that Marisa Olson argues with me that the postinternet impulse was building 
long before the mid-2000's, but my experience is that New Media's real push 
into the contemporary was definitely in the mid 2000's, to be generous.

Then, with the acceptance of technoculture  by High Culture, which is often 
bound to the agendas of status and capital, two things I have had a strained 
relationship with (as one of RTMark/Yes Men), then inevitable comes. Acceptable 
Art. the current generations ahistorical wishes to sweep the "old" away (the 
Futurist maneuver). At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly. I like art that dares 
to be a little disagreeable, and not scrape to "empty gestures of status" 
(Baudrillard), and this way it just seemed that New Media got Hoovered up.

Also, as one of the Board of the Wrong, the adoption of Kepler's Garden 
approach by Ars was too much like ours for our comfort.  Institutional ersatz 
for the four 1600+ artist grass root bienniales that, in my opinion mirror 
Malik's notion of art's exit from the Contemporary through veracity and agency 
of the artist.  I understand Lev's exhaustion with Kepler\s Gardens, they 
seemed far more heavy and staged than the Burning man -like hoedown The Wrong 
throws. And in fact, Burning Man went Virtual this year, and that seemesd to be 
super wonky.

I feel we might be at a minor Arendt-ian crisis of culture as entities scramble 
around for survival and attention, but I see the genuine doing OK.

And for planned obsolescence in medi art - I made 8 Bits or Less as an 
impossibly low resolution with the intention of the timelessness of the pixel, 
usong 40 year old Slow Scan TV devices for the sheer texture of time and grain 
on the CRT. This has flesh and blood in it, for sure.  And for my upcoming 
Confinement Spaces work, I abjectly strolled the streets of Abu Dhabi. making 
shattered landscape scans witht he now-defunct Display.Land app, conteplating 
the dreamlike state the world was in, pondering my existential crises under the 
pandemic. My work is as "fi" as I want it at the time, as I am aware of 
history, the advances of technology, and I use them in my work like texture. 
Using time like texture, I like that.

If you're looking for media to be commodifiable, well-behaved, and fitting n a 
box well, then may I say your sales be plentiful. As for me, as with the 
unfortunate souls of many before me with names far more famous than mine, I 
reside in the "soul-work" of using the process

Re: Facebook

[voyd]

"if you have not spent significant time here, you would not realize..."

Sure, I will.
Consider that the amount of money being invested here in future policy, 
infrastructure, education (nearly 3 billion in higher ed for a country of 12 
million) is staggering. The local attire is worn as a symbol of identity and 
class, and it is not mandatory, like in my wife's country, Iran. Despite any 
laws, creative expression is generally open and artistic forums like the 
Sharjah Art Foundation, Dubai Culture are pushing some unbelievably avant-garde 
work. I won't give my resident country a full pass, but the fact that it is 
illegal to demean, insult, or deride anyone's religion is illegal means that 
the UAE is generally more civil than the USA. We have some net filters, sure. 
But 70 -90 nationalities, overall civility, and almost no crime. It's 
interesting.

But I was at the Daiso store looking at the National Day paraphenalia, and I 
noticed costumes that were VERY "Western" in nature, and Arabic figures for a 
nativity... another thing is that a 3D CGI animation of Sheikh Zayed that was 
loved here was totally at odds with Islamic Aniconism, but it was surprisingly 
OK. There is a huge shopping mall under the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, and a Buudhist 
temple is being erected in Abu Dhabi. 

The syncretic nature of the place is unbelievable, and it constantly gets 
mistaken for Saudi. It definitely isn't but even Saudi has about the same 
underground secularism as Iran.  With the moral decentering of America, as 
an American, I don't feel like I have any moral superiority here, or if so, 
only in specific areas.

Geoffrey, what I am saying is that the UAE is far more heterogenous than one 
would imagine. It's surprising.
I'll leave it at that.

On Tue, 5 Nov 2019 14:15:41 +, Geoffrey Goodell  
wrote:

Dear Alan,

"if you have not spent significant time here, you would not realize"

Can you please elaborate on this point? What is it that we need to realise? I
am sure that you are right about this, although without describing what it is
that we do not realise, we will surely never realise it. If it is something
that can be described, then please describe it. If it is something vague and
ineffable, then how could we assign it credence?

Best wishes --

Geoff

On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 05:45:55AM -0500, v...@voyd.com wrote:
>
>
>
>
> I'm there, and for me, it is as much my location (Arabia) and how able I 
am to access global networks from here - it isn't bad, but we do have some 
firewalling to political, adult, etc. For me, I feel that if I were in the 
Western World, I would be in a position to have a different stance. Here in 
Asia, the sociopolitics are extremely different to the point that if you have 
not spent significant time here, you would not realize, and I am not speaking 
to the far more restrictive Saudi society.  I think it is easy to have a 
Western politics and think that they just translate tot he rest of the world. 
This is also not being in defence; it is merely pointing towards the differend.
>
> The politics of the infrastructure in the time of the Stacks is something 
I struggle with.
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2019 19:29:17 -0500 (EST), Alan Sondheim 
 wrote:
>
>
> I'm in agreement here; I leave as little trace as I can. (Also trapped
> because I want my own work to remain.) This reminds me of the fight I had
> on YouTube with Viacom and YouTube (later) re: my banning which went on
> for a couple of years, a fight I finally won. YouTube has its own
> viciousness of course - even something as saying no to autoplay, which
> then returns on the next login.
>
> I'd be curious about the server farms YouTube must use; they seem
> unimaginable to me.
>
> Best, Alan
>
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2019, Craig Fahner wrote:
>
> > maybe it's not so much a question of whether facebook's policies are 
bad (of
> > course they are) or whether facebook is part of our social 
infrastructure
> > (of course it is), but, rather, what capacity users have to undermine
> > facebook's more predatory policies and evade its data collection 
regimes and
> > biased recommendation algorithms. given that a lot of people use 
facebook
> > not because they think it's an optimal platform, but because it is
> > absolutely necessary to use it in order to connect with certain 
communities,
> > what possibilities exist for users to participate in those 
communities while
> > circumventing the platform's more odious aspects? what do a tactics of
> > social media usership look like? i suspect they would engage in a 
constant
> > give-and-take with the algorithmic governing forces that be, but, 
with a
> > growing sentiment of suspicion regarding facebook's policies, perhaps 
a
> > tactical approach along the lines of plugins that remove algorithmic
> > recommendation features, deliberate scrambling/obfuscation of users' 
data
> > and trackable behaviours, etc. might be more successful in empowering

Re: Facebook

[voyd]

Even though it might seem trite, I think that a return to the rhetoric of 
Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace is not the worst idea. In 
some ways, it could be updated to say that you had your chance; all it has done 
has subjugated the internet with capitalism and ignorance.  While I don;t 
expect a grand Digital Spring, nor do I think that the networks de refusees are 
teh answers either, I feel a much more subtle social shift is in order, and I 
see the potential of it in the Post-Trump world if we do not let the 
fragmentation that has compounded itself upon polarization drag everything 
further into the abyss.

Because there is not cliff to go over, as the situation for me is far stranger 
than merely going across a line (I.e. cliff)


On Tue, 05 Nov 2019 02:23:36 -0800, tac...@riseup.net wrote:

other social networks are possible

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50127713


Em 2019-11-04 21:29, Alan Sondheim escreveu:
> I'm in agreement here; I leave as little trace as I can. (Also trapped
> because I want my own work to remain.) This reminds me of the fight I
> had on YouTube with Viacom and YouTube (later) re: my banning which
> went on for a couple of years, a fight I finally won. YouTube has its
> own viciousness of course - even something as saying no to autoplay,
> which then returns on the next login.
>
> I'd be curious about the server farms YouTube must use; they seem
> unimaginable to me.
>
> Best, Alan
>
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2019, Craig Fahner wrote:
>
>> maybe it's not so much a question of whether facebook's policies are 
bad (of
>> course they are) or whether facebook is part of our social 
infrastructure
>> (of course it is), but, rather, what capacity users have to undermine
>> facebook's more predatory policies and evade its data collection 
regimes and
>> biased recommendation algorithms. given that a lot of people use 
facebook
>> not because they think it's an optimal platform, but because it is
>> absolutely necessary to use it in order to connect with certain 
communities,
>> what possibilities exist for users to participate in those communities 
while
>> circumventing the platform's more odious aspects? what do a tactics of
>> social media usership look like? i suspect they would engage in a 
constant
>> give-and-take with the algorithmic governing forces that be, but, with 
a
>> growing sentiment of suspicion regarding facebook's policies, perhaps a
>> tactical approach along the lines of plugins that remove algorithmic
>> recommendation features, deliberate scrambling/obfuscation of users' 
data
>> and trackable behaviours, etc. might be more successful in empowering 
users
>> than simply encouraging them to leave the platform entirely.
>> craig fahner - https://www.craigfahner.com/
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 9:25 AM Alan Sondheim  wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 4 Nov 2019, mp wrote:
>>
>> > On 03/11/2019 20:36, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>> >>
>> >> The loss is more important to me
>> >
>> >> On Sun, 3 Nov 2019, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
>> >>> 1/ FB enables to create a "community," that's good for
>> sure;?
>> >>> 2/ but in the same time, it destroys?the condition of the
>> possibility of
>> >>> community/togetherness/Gemeinwesen/?tre-ensemble, etc.
>> >
>> > Individual, particular and hence relatively short term
>> perspective and
>> > context (Alan's) vs. collective, abstract and hence relatively
>> long term
>> > perspective and context (Frederic's).
>> >
>> > A common disjuncture.
>> >
>>
>> What disturbs me here is the assumption of passivity "relatively
>> short
>> term perspective" for example. Unless you know my work, read my
>> posts,
>> etc., you have no idea how long my perspective is. I've run
>> talkers, a
>> MOO, conferencing in IRC years ago, CuSeeMe, and on and on. I've
>> taught
>> courses in internet culture from 1995 on. And one of the things
>> that keeps
>> me generally from posting on nettime, is its own toxicity, these
>> constant
>> presumptions about one another, about the world, etc. And re:
>> below, there
>> is no "on the one hand, on the other hand" - the issue is far
>> more complex
>> as is people's usage of Fb or other platforms (for example email
>> lists
>> themselves). So "email is also shit"?
>>
>> I know a hell of a lot of free jazz musicians who work through
>> Fb, fight
>> racism, and take advantage of the platform. I know people who
>> have found
>> community on Fb that is absent for them in rl. I've participated
>> in
>> courses taught on Fb. I've engaged in political action on the
>> platform. I
>> don't expect purity anywhere; I never have. And one person's
>> purity can be
>> another person's hell. I'm appalled at Fb's policies but also
>> given that
>> the platform has between 1 and 2.4 billion users, the sociality
>> is far
>> greater (and far more diverse and interesting) than its public
>> image.
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>
>> > It is a complex issue. On the one hand it makes sense to
>> adjust your
>> > means to the ends you

Re: Facebook

[voyd]

I'm there, and for me, it is as much my location (Arabia) and how able I am to 
access global networks from here - it isn't bad, but we do have some 
firewalling to political, adult, etc. For me, I feel that if I were in the 
Western World, I would be in a position to have a different stance. Here in 
Asia, the sociopolitics are extremely different to the point that if you have 
not spent significant time here, you would not realize, and I am not speaking 
to the far more restrictive Saudi society.  I think it is easy to have a 
Western politics and think that they just translate tot he rest of the world. 
This is also not being in defence; it is merely pointing towards the differend.

The politics of the infrastructure in the time of the Stacks is something I 
struggle with.


On Mon, 4 Nov 2019 19:29:17 -0500 (EST), Alan Sondheim 
 wrote:


I'm in agreement here; I leave as little trace as I can. (Also trapped
because I want my own work to remain.) This reminds me of the fight I had
on YouTube with Viacom and YouTube (later) re: my banning which went on
for a couple of years, a fight I finally won. YouTube has its own
viciousness of course - even something as saying no to autoplay, which
then returns on the next login.

I'd be curious about the server farms YouTube must use; they seem
unimaginable to me.

Best, Alan

On Mon, 4 Nov 2019, Craig Fahner wrote:

> maybe it's not so much a question of whether facebook's policies are bad 
(of
> course they are) or whether facebook is part of our social infrastructure
> (of course it is), but, rather, what capacity users have to undermine
> facebook's more predatory policies and evade its data collection regimes 
and
> biased recommendation algorithms. given that a lot of people use facebook
> not because they think it's an optimal platform, but because it is
> absolutely necessary to use it in order to connect with certain 
communities,
> what possibilities exist for users to participate in those communities 
while
> circumventing the platform's more odious aspects? what do a tactics of
> social media usership look like? i suspect they would engage in a constant
> give-and-take with the algorithmic governing forces that be, but, with a
> growing sentiment of suspicion regarding facebook's policies, perhaps a
> tactical approach along the lines of plugins that remove algorithmic
> recommendation features, deliberate scrambling/obfuscation of users' data
> and trackable behaviours, etc. might be more successful in empowering users
> than simply encouraging them to leave the platform entirely.
> craig fahner - https://www.craigfahner.com/
>
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 9:25 AM Alan Sondheim  wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2019, mp wrote:
>
> > On 03/11/2019 20:36, Alan Sondheim wrote:
> >>
> >> The loss is more important to me
> >
> >> On Sun, 3 Nov 2019, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
> >>> 1/ FB enables to create a "community," that's good for
> sure;?
> >>> 2/ but in the same time, it destroys?the condition of the
> possibility of
> >>> community/togetherness/Gemeinwesen/?tre-ensemble, etc.
> >
> > Individual, particular and hence relatively short term
> perspective and
> > context (Alan's) vs. collective, abstract and hence relatively
> long term
> > perspective and context (Frederic's).
> >
> > A common disjuncture.
> >
>
> What disturbs me here is the assumption of passivity "relatively
> short
> term perspective" for example. Unless you know my work, read my
> posts,
> etc., you have no idea how long my perspective is. I've run
> talkers, a
> MOO, conferencing in IRC years ago, CuSeeMe, and on and on. I've
> taught
> courses in internet culture from 1995 on. And one of the things
> that keeps
> me generally from posting on nettime, is its own toxicity, these
> constant
> presumptions about one another, about the world, etc. And re:
> below, there
> is no "on the one hand, on the other hand" - the issue is far
> more complex
> as is people's usage of Fb or other platforms (for example email
> lists
> themselves). So "email is also shit"?
>
> I know a hell of a lot of free jazz musicians who work through
> Fb, fight
> racism, and take advantage of the platform. I know people who
> have found
> community on Fb that is absent for them in rl. I've participated
> in
> courses taught on Fb. I've engaged in political action on the
> platform. I
> don't expect purity anywhere; I never have. And one person's
> purity can be
> another person's hell. I'm appalled at Fb's policies but also
> given that
> the platform has between 1 and 2.4 billion users, the sociality
> is far
> greater (and far more diverse and interesting) than its public
> image.
>
> Alan
>
>
> > It is a complex issue. On the one hand it makes sense to
> adjust your
> > means to the ends you desire. Be the change you want to see
> and all that.
> >
> > On the other hand, it could be seen as a form of
> neoliberalisation when
> > the responsibility for the future of the system is distri

Re: Has net-art lost political significance?

[voyd]

So interesting. 
I also find this so interesting because in the light of fakeness, Tactical 
Media is harder, in the sense of the intervention/provocation to response that 
was done  with RTMark/YesMen back in the time I was active. I think that 
the new Washington Post, after the Times and NY Post ones that were done in the 
late 2000's, was powerful because I heard about it in the UAE.

However, in the Eastern hemisphere, I have been working with AR as a "local" 
discourse (meaning that anyone can get the app, but the message is pretty 
limited to them), as well as working with artists in Kazakhstan about messages 
AR as tactical media, such as overlaying messages over works in the National 
Mueum (based on the Manifest.AR We AR MoMA intervention I was part of around 
2010) and the "Modernization of Consciousness" (Ruhani Zhangru) posters in 
2018.  These are some interestign ways in which one can laterally engage 
networks for critical discourse.

In addition, I am working with David Guillo with his independent web router 
galleries as a sort of TAZ in regions that employ firewalls and net.filtering. 
This follows from my setting up occupy.here routers as wifi "islands" for 
collaboration without using VPN, and therefore staying technically within local 
regulations.

While not so much "Tactical" media, I consider that in the era of increasing 
firewalling, and in the case of threatened net.separation in Russia and Iran, I 
feel hang autonomous server art is a critical space for exploration of these 
topics as well.

On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:28:58 -0700, Molly Hankwitz  wrote:
 

Hi Rachel, 



snip - 

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the 
wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio 
communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, 
communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks 
and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who 
owns it, how it’s controlled and so on

snip

 

Great. So needed. I wrote a dissertation on WiFi practices - a bit earlier 
history than what you are looking for. I write about “warchalking” and other 
kinds of social media based information spaces, hacks. From that experience I’d 
bet you will be best off in the arts. If there is writing being done it would 
be from groups like the then - headman - Knowbotics Research, etc. But the best 
project - utilizing mobile tools and being both tactical and poetry and human 
rights - Transborder Tool b.a.n.g. Lab. Ricardo Dominguez’s and Brett Stalbaum 
from virtual sit-in days behind it as well as Micha Cardenas. We programmed 
this into our project - City Centered: Locative Media and Wireless Festival - 
2010. I think TBT is having a re-release. (Smile) 

 

Molly 
 


On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 3:40 AM Rachel O' Dwyer  
wrote:





What characterises media art interventions in the context of ‘surveillance 
capitalism’, platforms and the gig economy? Are these practices still 
meaningful or, as F.A.T. Lab claimed in 2015,  have they lost political 
significance in the face of global platforms?

 

 Can we still speak about ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’, and if not is 
this because 

a) network activism has transformed so that these older descriptions no longer 
accurately describe net art and ‘hacktivist’ practices, or 

b) these art practices have stayed much the same, but they are no longer 
effective in the current political and economic context?

 

I’m wondering if anyone knows of any writing that attempts to theorise/frame 
media art activist work post 2012? Perhaps to speak about it as a set of 
practices discrete from theories of ‘tactical media’ or ‘the exploit’ that go 
before? Perhaps something on post-internet art and activism?

Or is it a case of looking at writing about activism in the face of defeat and 
what seems like a hopeless cause?

 

If you've read or written anything that you think might be interesting I'd love 
to hear about it,

 

Best,

 

Rachel

 

A bit more detail about why I'm asking this question: 

I’m currently writing about various tactical and activist practices in the 
wireless space, including artistic interventions, software-defined radio 
communities who are reverse-engineering, hacking, sniffing and jamming signals, 
communities and activists who are building communal Wi-Fi and cellular networks 
and artists making work in or about the politics of the wireless spectrum – who 
owns it, how it’s controlled and so on. 

But I’m feeling a bit paralysed. 

I love these works; I love their inventive materiality and the ways that they 
exploit and reverse-engineer existing systems, but I don’t know what claims I 
can make for their political impact. And yet I feel that this work is still 
very worthwhile. 







 

 

 

 
--



http://www.rachelodwyer.com/

+353 (85) 7023779





#  distributed via 

Re: Periodizing With Control

[voyd]

 
Actually, in addition to the canon, I have been in love with the Zero Books 
"Horror of Philosophy" series, especially Thacker's trilogy.

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:03:36 -0700, Garnet Hertz  wrote:
 
Emaline: based on your response, it looks like you have the same careerism as 
Seb. No?
 

1. Why would anybody use the term "imbricated" in a tweet without being 
insecure? https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/

2. I don't hate Foucault and Deleuze (I did my PhD w Mark Poster, perhaps 
one of the bigger fans of these guys) - but thinking that advanced thought 
starts and stops with these people is totally lazy scholarship.

3. Max Herman: "I sometimes think the flaws or errors in three main names -- 
Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche". Sounds okay, but is about a hundred years late.


4. Seb may be trying to keep academia alive, but this sort of resembles a 
zombie life form that isn't worth the life support.

 

I think I'm primarily gagging at a fetishization of the same group of guys that 
everybody worships: Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, 
Jameson, etc. It's totally true that they really are fantastic: I think I 
literally have every printed word of all of these people on my bookshelf. I 
also still consider Baudrillard the best theoretical summary of my life's work, 
for example -- his writing is amazingly inspiring and bright. But by continuing 
to worship the same incantation of sacred names we really run the risk of our 
outfit (critical studies, digital humanities, or whatever) of becoming totally 
irrelevant and disconnected from the tools and dialogue of today. In my 
opinion, if your scholarship is focused on Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche then 
maybe you're in a stagnant nostalgic backwater of thought. There are so many 
new tools, techniques and scholars that bring so many fresh perspectives on 
different topics that we need to dig down and do work on instead of just taking 
for granted the names that our grad advisors assigned us. If nothing else, we 
really owe it to the non-European and non-male scholars around us that have 
done fantastic, vigorous scholarship. If we're writing theory or history it's 
up to us to dig deeper into the archive of this stuff and put the effort to 
find people outside the canon and write them into history. This is what great 
historians do, I think. They worry less about careerism and focus on paying 
attention to what is actually going on in the real world - and they formulate a 
fantastic way to summarize the gestalt of it without leaning on a bunch of 
clichés. They cut a fresh and insightful path. If nothing else, your long term 
careerism will accelerate by stepping out of your theoretical safe zone. 
Fuck Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, and Jameson 
-- not that they're wrong, but that there are a lot of other people that 
deserve our attention that have been totally neglected. The well-known folks 
had enough coverage already - they are useful in establishing a base zone for 
your arguments, but I really think all of these individuals would agree with me 
in moving forward. I think they'd say "Move on and clue in to what's happening 
now" -- or maybe encouraging us to not totally fetishize May 1968.

 

In summary, I'd like to try to encourage people to be more like an 
inspirational groundbreaker than a careerist schmuck, I guess. Only a few 
beyond the small circle of critical studies colleagues genuinely care about the 
chain of thought between Freud-Marx-Nietzsche. Not that they're useless, 
but that a lot has happened since they were writing. We're in a significantly 
different world than when these folks were around. The work isn't completely 
useless, just not the best set of tools for discussing the problems of today. 
No?

 

Garnet

 


On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 1:34 PM Emaline Friedman 
 wrote:



Garnet,

 

I laughed at your response ! Not at all interested in tearing you apart, but 
wanting to explore this sense of "who cares?", toward which I'm also inclined.

 

What really makes me think "who cares" is the obvious careerism baked into the 
argument. I think one could put Seb's basic idea in a tweet and credit Kojin 
Karatani: "all the modes of control are imbricated. everything is happening all 
at once". Hence we have digital feudalism, social coercion via reciprocity, 
state surveillance, and the marketization of everything a la real subsumption 
simultaneously. Great. Now what?

As a young person emerging from grad school, I often think that if we were 
actually adapting to the abundance of the net that no one would be reading 
Foucault and Deleuze anymore. They're already perfectly distilled and advanced 
upon by diligent secondary readers who have used them well. And yet...one must 
continue to read "the greats" even when there isn't much left to mine. A 
perfect example is this tone of "I'm going to show you some

Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.

[voyd]

Thanks, Sean and all for these salient replies.
I have often been active here, but had been offline more than I like related to 
living in Arabia; some things you'd imagine, others not. More than anything 
else, I have been creating a VR research center and doing a snowstorm of 
paperwork. My intentions are to be here more, as my research is revving up 
again.

I value Nettime a great deal in that it remains one of the places where a high 
concentration of fine minds, whether they pop in or out like virtual particles 
int he cyber-aether, usually pop out clear thought.

Another thing is that for the past three years, I have been traveling into 
Central Asia, Married an Iranian, coming to know the Eastern Hemisphere, and 
seeing what Geert Lovink and I had long discussions on here in Abu Dhabi 
relating the slide of Krokerian Bimodernism to American global colonial war 
capitalism under the Plan for the New American Century to the collapse into 
spheres of influence with the rise of Trump.  Actually a lot more than 
this, but the flood of understanding has taken a while to coalesce.

Looking forward to more conversation.


On Sat, 8 Jun 2019 15:21:58 +, Sean Cubitt  wrote:





I've been active long ago, and lurking for a decade or more, with only sporadic 
comments and adds: this look like a good prod to get us silent majority out of 
the closet.

 

the thing that keeps nettime valuable is a) the contributors, timeliness, 
and swift smart dialogues and b) that there still seems to be a common 
purpose. 

 

social media start taking the forefront about ten years ago. The neo-populist 
right begins to replace the neo-liberal right about ten years ago. Is there 
some shared diagram? 

 

Other lists died for their own reasons: one because it seemed like everything 
interesting was on blogs, back when the blogosphere was a thing. Another 
because a concept / art movement / political trajectory could be exhausted so 
fast it scarcely seemed worth inventing new concepts etc. 

 

Mailing lists are asynchronous, which is great: more time to think; less kudos 
for fast reaction times. More consideration in every sense of the word

 

in a few days I'll try to post something closer than this reflection on the 
medium to what I think this list is for: the aesthetics, politics 
and aesthetic politics of the early C21st -- consideration, 
wonder and hope

 



Sean

 

 





From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  
on behalf of nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org 

Sent: 08 June 2019 15:45
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: nettime-l Digest, Vol 141, Issue 11

 



Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
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mx.kein.org

-- a moderated mailing list for net criticism 
 is not just a mailing list but an effort to formulate an 
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can 
change   it.
  (John Preston)
   2. The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors;
  throws in the towel (Bruce Sterling)
   3. Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can 
change   it.
  (John Preston)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2019 15:06:56 +0100
From: John Preston 
To: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: Re:  Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can
    change  it.
Message-ID: <07a59428-bf8f-419b-841a-ea06bddb2...@riseup.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Just forwarding this up.


 Original Message 
From: Karim Brohi 
Sent: 8 June 2019 14:35:45 BST
To: John Preston 
Subject: Re:  Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can 
change it.

Nettime is in bad shape - as are most (all?) of the email based discussion
groups on the Interwebs now.
I run another mailing list, started in 1995 in a medical specialty area- -
which finds itself in the same state.  Back t