mezomian community?

video talk on eventality and sustension

a matter of algorithms

Good thing the internet is so full of stuff always, so I don'¨t have to feel bad about not posting regularly, would love to, but, well... enough of that. Here are some thoughts in the making of an article for a collection on sustainability as a cultural concept, which will be published in january 2008 with Sacha Kagan as editor and a lot of beautiful contributions, more about that later.

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I am working on building in a concept of the algorithm into the theory of eventality that I am using to describe the kinds of changes that seem to me to be called for if "sustainable culture" is to make its way into our worlds of social interaction.

Now, the problem of course is that where the event is also a logical and mathematical term, it also has a range of other uses, so I can allow myself to work through it without too much worrying about the mix of humanities and mathematics in that work. Whereas the algorithm is obviously a mathematical term, and I know already that if I start using it seriously, and people start reading this, I will be accused of transferring uncritically ideas from mathematics (and bad maths, as I am no mathematician) to matters of culture - which will probably be seen as a sin to both one field and the other.

So why speak of algorithms at all? And what is the relevance of algorithms when sepaking of events?

thoughts from talk by Stowe Boyd at reboot 9.0

"Time is a shared space", Stowe says at reboot in Copenhagen

time is not my own - time already belongs to all of us or to the between of us. this means that basically, what I do does not belong to me, as it is necessarily and more and more something that is created by interaction, that is action that takes place between us, with more than one mind acting and developing things, so the ideas develop even though I am not present - this creates better ideas, but I have to accept that I do not own the ideas that are being developed. at the ened of the line, this destroys the right to property, whether individual or collective. no protection of rights, no protection of property, no redistribution of property. but at the end of that - how does anyone make money today? the whole market economy is arranged around property and exchange of it:- and even if we create in open source processes, in the end, if no one own's the products that come out of our work, no one can make money from them? well, not exactly, right?

there is stuff on flow that I don't agree with, like the feeling of personal control while being in flow. this is definitely not my impression; control doesn't really take me very far, except of course control over the desire to control B-)

but this is cool: network productivity trumps personal productivity - yep. but this is really in contradiction with the way that i.e. many academics are working and being asked to work today.

"everything important will find its way to you more than once, don't worry if you miss it the first time" - I don't know if he is right on this, but something tells me (that something being a kind of collective intuition?) that it is.

The main problem here, apart from "being in personal control", which at least demands a change in what we call "person", is that is maybe isn't radical enough at least for my taste. ok, this is fine, but let's go there: if time is not my own, my mind i snot my own, my body is not my own, let's skip the whole idea of individual property, which means that we have to blow up the whole idea of property whatsoever except as precisely that: flow...

But nice talk, though, a good start to a day that seems suspiciously promising (suspiciously because shit happens, but ok, let me be optimistic about it).

Intuition and Space

Did a small intervention in Trento, Italy, on Intuition and Space, part of a larger project on the margins of the development of a city in Northern Italy, Trento in Viaggio.

Here is the text version of the talk, it is being edited now, for a special issue of a local university magazine, ight use it for further writing, so far it's very fresh and.. intuitive, I think. But i will let the world eat it and judge it.

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Intuition is the crossing point coming alive. It is the meeting of tracks and trajectories crossing each other, speaking to one another as they pass by.
Voices are at play, but not voices of subjects. Voices that move within the infinite complexes of matter and movement in intersection at any point in time, any point in space.
So maybe intuition is time talking through space? Maybe intuition is matter talking through space and time?

Revolution in Christiania - day 2

The revolutionary event is a matter of four components, interlaced and intertwined - there is no chronology here, but a simultaneous precsence of components of the revolutionary event.

The first is the intuitive component. For revolutions to take place, rather than just riots, revolts or mass suicides, intuition is called for, in the philosophical meaning of the word, as coined and held from Spinoza to Bergson. A truth that poises itself as a clear, but often wordless distinction – a point de mire, the bull’s eye ahead of the mind that draws thought, action, and order forwards. Though historical reconstruction is always brought to us through the angle of causes and effects, they mostly fail to catch the intuitive component that comes from the vestige of no-sense, of a place inside history in its constantly living and multiple of virtuality. If revolution is immanence coming forth, there must be active forces within it in the present, or maybe active from the point of a future already inside the present, a non-transcendance of the emanence of a future exploding from the inside of actuality. Or the past actively decomposing itself. Such a past in decomposition would be similar to an intuition of society reinventing itself in its own decomposition, as a constant re-opening of the impossible.
 

Revolutions revisited

Sent another text for reviewing recently, it carries the heavy title of "Explosio Revolutio - Four Components in the Revolutionary Event", and suggests the first steps to an eventology of the revolutionary event, mainly in encounter with Deleuze and Zizek (reading Deleuze), Henri Michaux, and Alain Badiou. The Michaux part is drwan from his fascinating book on the effects of doing mescaline - yes, I know, I should not find dangerous drugs fascinating, but he is quite serious about it, lots of great descriptions and small stories about his experiments, very philosophical, and besides, wht would Michaux be without the drugs? Sorry, but it's a part of the package.. so the discussion is, of course, also a matter of: what is a revolution wihtout a goal? If revolutions are not bound up by the final goal, what will they become? Is that just pop-art and commercialisation, or is it simply the drug-thing again: suspensions and no results to show for the world?

Will be working some on the renewal of Christiania, the "Free City" created in the middle of Copenhagen some 30 years ago, and in the middle of another crisis now, with the political majority heading for normalisation of this out-of-bounds place. Needless to say, I am not exactly for the normalisation thing, but it has made them realise that they have to open up and invite people inside to help define what this place could be: the more they serve the communities outside, the more people have a share or a stake in the place, and the more it will be difficult to change the place without asking. Lots of fear and anxiety going on, but lots of interesting moves and sizzles, too. Try googling Christiania, or go to the Danish website for the project, Renewing Christiania (think it has some English stuff as well, at least in links). And come see the place, feel the ambience of a slight suspension, a minor revolution (those are often the most succesful ones, not minor by the affects that they create, but by their size) - and spend the night in the legendary Grey Hall (where I saw and heard old Nick Cave ten years ago) or even at our nearby ship..

Intuition desire virtual

How does intuition do what it does? As Susanne marked today, we should be wary of substantivating 'something' like intuition; we should remember to speak of intuitions, not Intuition, we should be careful that we don't fall into the romantic pit of the unique, the answer to all our questions, etc - this is one of the reasons why we should be aware of other terms for the forces bringing forth action and producing new, tangential movements out of the pre-individual or sub-subjective. So that we do not make desire, or intuition, or dialectics (well, no great risk here, but it could be, as we know), the answer to every movement of becoming. Intuitions? Desires? Well, maybe not, after all, but remember to think of the multitude, not as Hardt & Negri want us to think it, as movements of individuals, but as that which is one and many at once, because it is becoming and event in force uncurling the folds. This is what makes the emergence out of the social. How do we see it? Superior empiricism, or virtual empiricism, as they called it. Yes, I agree, I think I have felt, if you can ever be sure at all. But then what - describing it? representing it? Or can it be trusted to speak, if we open our mouths?
And the connection between intuition as multitude ripping me apart like a thousand stings inside the layers of skin of the social, of the person, and the virtual? The virtual which keeps itself at a slight distance from the rational gaze, playing with every attempt at a definition. If we go closer and try a careful attempt in terms of that which is almost time and almost space, but not quite any of them, almost substance but not quite, not at all conscient, yet multiply conscient and infinitely potentialising?
Will be back when I can pinpoint that connection, there will be some controversial readings of Messieurs bergson, tarde, and deleuze, to name a few. And maybe of the gaps in the social....

Getting off the juggernaut

Wow, time eats me and hesitates to spit me out, I try to lean out and take a slower step, but the ground rushes by beneath at such a pace that I will rip off my leg if I try. What should I do? Pull the break and get off - but what is there outside of this juggernaut? Is there real life - or is there the world of Tony Blankley with the nazi-like threat of radical Islamists eating up first Europe, then the rest of the world?

Will get on with a life, slowly, take one small step at a time, then the next one, daring to find the pace of the earths rotation, so that my legs will stay on - what kind of a linedance this will be, only experience can show.

Back on the track. If you can, read the wonderfully dying and yet ever so living last text by GD, "Immanence: a life". As Hardt puts it:

"The concept of immanence is not so simple and neither can our evaluation of it, our affirmation of it remain unqualified -- a philosophical complication and then a political qualification. In the last article published during his life, a very brief and dense piece, Deleuze returned again to the problematic of immanence ("Immanence: une vie," Philosophie, no. 47, 1995). Let me summarize the argument for you..."

It soothes, and tingles, and then again: there is something lost about it, something immobile about this immanent life - does it hold anything like a future for us? More than you would think if you just take it as a counterweight to transcendence. And more than you would think if you only drowse on the quasi-zen mythology of the moment predicated by someone like Ekhardt Tolle - making the "now" the centre of everything, and that's about it when it comes to immanence, buddhism for the people, all right, I don't mind, but there is so much more.. And what's his problem with "academics", anyway? All right, so Academics are often locked up inside their institutions, so are so many other people out there, almost everyone, I would say. But of course, if you want a cosy position as the guru-who-is-no-longer-and-academic-but-comes-out-and-tells-us-all-his-fabulous-story, then the "academics" would be a good place to start.

Ok, leave Tolle be, I was just amazed at his popularity, at least here in DK. But then, when you attend something like the Deleuze conference in Cph. last month, you understand why noone understands what this is all about; if anyone from outside of the universitary circles made it there, they will have experienced a circle of churchgoers telling eachother that they have read the scriptures and will tell you about them (som exceptions, of course, like Sue Rolnik) - what's with the church, guys? You don't want the world to understand, you don't want to know if it works, if it can actually work beyond reading books about reading books??

..and back to immancence. For understanding the force of immanence is, I believe, one of the major philosophical tasks that we face today. The combination of immanence and virtuality, the force innert in, not just the moment, for this is a spatialisation of time that cannot be accepted. But everything that is right here/now, as this is the gateway that we hold, and which we must leave behind by stepping just one small step off the time/space divide. Let's go.

More following..

Roots and rhizomes

A bit slow on posting these days, gone south to vacate, vegetate, and write.. plenty of time to look at seagulls, waves, and trees, and to ponder on the effectiveness of decentralising, centrifugal organising - there is nothing like it for remaining afloat, alive, felxibility depends very much on how far an organizing system is able to spread its organs, members, units, or movements; a tree grows longer roots in order to cope with dry seasons, a flock of seagulls fills up the sky rather than diving all at once; they survive, they remain.. how do you make that work inside the movement for development? Often, movements for chang become too tight or too forceless, they tend to build their tenisons around just one or two zones or nodes of organizing, which kills creation like nothing else.. but how do you let the many nodes grow, keep the forces of movements alive, how do you quench the fear of apreading out seeds rather than building plantations? Will this take a new civilisation, or will a new politics of economy do the trick? Enjoy whatever current traverses you these days, you never know if its the last one you will feel..

three ideas of knowledge

Oh, just a quick thought from a small talk I took part in today, input for a seminar - I ventured into the idea that some people may find interesting, that we have moved or are beginning to move into the possibility of a new knowledge paradigm; to rephrase it shortly, here are three phases, that of course are all still present, and probably very strongly intertwined, yet something has opened up for the third one:

1) Knowledge as the capacity for storage and classification along an outside-inside axis, making the outside, and eventually the inside, handy for democratic and fascist purposes, among others;

2) Knowledge as the capacity for potentiality - 1 + the potential to manipulate, influence, act upon, exceeding classification, though often leaning upon it, but often setting the goals of making potentiality optimisable within confined, in themselves classified, circles or spheres in time and space;

3) Knowledge as the capacity, between individuals or processes, to sense and react upon the virtual, upon that which is not yet present as potentiality, and which in its complexity calls for a much larger ability to accept and contain the mulitple and uncertain aspects of virtuality - and, in one direction, as the mutual ability to create and to give in to, this virtuality as a possible new form of sociality in motion; but of course, as another option, the ability to seize the virtual in the other in order to create the truly frightening idea of means of control that move as fast as the movements of the virtual, be it thought, social knowledge or information circulation..

So it it not that the idea of knowledge as the capacity for virtuality is a utopia - but I have an idea, intuitive as it still may be, that this is one of the new forms taking its chronotopic place, time and substance in the world we live in..

btw, tjeck out this place for a bit of action..

And if the word virtual confuses you, go looking in Bergson's direction, that's where it came from, for me - or from Ansell Pearson, or Deleuze. But this use of it is my responsability.