<div dir="ltr">I wanted to direct some questions to Fabi and anyone else who is on the ground in the Amazonia/Brazil.<div>In Hobbes' notion of the 'The Leviathan' the state via some kind of sovereign power mitigates in 'the war of all against all.'</div><div>It seems now what we are seeing is the emergence of 'anti-states' in which the only governing principle is the imposition of raw power, not based on any rational, even maliciously rational, program.</div><div>America under Trump has felt like this. It is the administration's pervasive irrationalism that has made it so hard for the left to respond rationally. The more contradictions and falsehoods the anti-state promulgates, the more its asserts its raw power.<br><div>I was wondering if this is what is happening under the Bolsonaro. Are irrationality and brutality its main selling points to a nihilistic electorate?</div><div><br></div><div>O.<br><div><br></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 9:45 AM Shu Lea Cheang <<a href="mailto:shulea@earthlink.net">shulea@earthlink.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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<p>oh, dear Margaretha</p>
<p>I apologize, yes, I did revise to these keywords... <br>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<pre>amazon is burning. on forest, machines, interspecies, interstellar, plantationocene, cows,
soybeans and global food/trade politics</pre>
<p>Aya, so many versions at work, i posted the older one.</p>
<p>I correct.</p>
<p>let me bring up this recent (2019) post-
</p>
<h1 class="gmail-m_6639279509122452391entry-title"><font size="-1">Reflections on the
Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna
Tsing</font></h1>
<p><a class="gmail-m_6639279509122452391moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/" target="_blank">https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/</a><br>
</p>
<p>a good pot-mix.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>best</p>
<p>sl<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="gmail-m_6639279509122452391moz-cite-prefix">On 16.09.19 14:04, margaretha haughwout
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------</pre>
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<div dir="ltr">I write from Oneida territory in what is currently
central New York within the so-called United States. The Oneida
are one of the 5 nations that comprise the Haudenosaunee
confederacy, and this land from which I write has never been
ceded. The apocalypse began here 500 years ago.<br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>...<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades,
global food/trade politics<br>
<br>
This week's discussants hope to think together about disasters,
and disaster capitalism/ vs. possibilities in ruins: how, as
Oliver Kellhammer puts it, ruins are the porous interface
between imagining possible futures on one hand and disaster
capitalism on the other. Here we must think hard about the
relationships between Amazon fires, opportunities for soybean
production as food and feed, and cattle ranching (noting the
"soy-cattle pasture-deforestation dynamic"). We must think hard
about what emerges intentionally and unintentionally from the
disturbance. Soybeans (and we might think of the crop here as
cheap energy, nitrogen fixer, endocrine disruptor, as allergen
generator), and cows (as frontier, as cheap energy, cheap labor,
as domesticating 'wilderness') are intentionally introduced of
course, and they are implicated in the larger dynamics of global
capital, and the processes of what Jason Moore calls "making
cheap." Specifically they are implicated in the trade poitics of
the moment: Trump's trade war with China. Soybeans were the
biggest export from the US to China; new tariffs position Brazil
to take over the drop in US shipments.<br>
<br>
...What other species emerge and travel from the fires? What
viruses hop, what ghosts.<br>
<br>
...This week, let's also ask, how can we do time and dreams in
relation to food/ trade/ politics. To return, always to
Benjamin's 9th Thesis. How do we stop the storm of progress and
tend to the catastrophe? What are the practices that change
time? Fabi Borges will share with us (among other amazing
interstellar work she is doing) indigenous wisdom she has
learned from the Amazon, asking, how do we stop dreaming the
same dream? How do we imagine more worlds than one?<br>
<br>
...What are the ways that we know? Using interstellar satellite
imagery to know about fires, we use technology that itself
emerges from coloniality and ways of knowing from above, as if
there can be a whole, a point of neutrality not implicated in
totalizing regimes of control. How are we caught up and
inadvertently worlding with this technology -- can this
entanglement make more than one world? More than one dream?<br>
<br>
...I'd love to ask the discussants and invite the readership to
imagine together what a revolt of unpaid machines and unpaid
natures could look like. What plants can disrupt monocrop
cultivation of soybeans? What kin do soybeans thrive with? What
invasive species will act as a scab on the scorched earth? What
technologies can be hijacked for different ends than global
capital and control.<br>
<br>
...Always, we must recognize who and what worlds are lost. The
indigenous (Munduruku, Huni Kuin, Xingu to name 3 of over 300 in
Brazil) and their kin. The marmosets, the spider monkeys, the
tamarin, the jaguars, the sloths, frogs, lizards, parakeets,
mahogany, ironwood, brazil nuts, cocoa, passiflora vines,
orchids, bromeliads....<br>
<br>
A few thoughts to begin.<br>
<br>
Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades,
global food/trade politics<br>
<br>
<div>(Note: originally the title She Lea gave me was: "amazon is
burning. on forest, machines, interspecies, interstellar,
plantationocene, cows, soybeans and global food/trade
politics," and after agonizing over it, now I realize I am
somewhat attached to it. Consider the additional terms stars
in a constellation that are usually hard to see)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>...<br>
</div>
<br>
I am honored to have a set of artists and thinkers with me this
week to work on remembering together -- re-member-ing as
reassembling a body, reassembling worlds. A forest.<br>
<br>
I like to mix up the format for -empyre- a little, and so I'm
introducing a *caravan* of creative thinkers, and Shu Lea will
add as the week goes on. This week will need a LOT of voices, to
inch toward the catastrophe, to try and turn away from the
future, to deal with NOW. So I hope the readership will feel
very invited to participate. Needed.<br>
<br>
Fabi Borges (BR)<br>
Fabiane M. Borges: Acts at the intersection between clinic, art
and technology. She works as a Psychologist (in person and
online) and as an essayist, having written and organized
publications between academic journals, collections and personal
books. She articulates two international networks/festivals:
Technoshamanism (technology & ancestry) and Intergalactic
Commune (art & space sciences). She has a Post-phd in Visual
Arts at EBA / UFRJ - School of Fine Arts, Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro / 2016-2018. She did a Phd in Visual Arts at
Goldsmiths University of London / 2011, and currently she is
doing two post-phd: one at ECA / USP (School of Communication
and Arts at the University of São Paulo / 2019) the other at ETE
/ INPE (Space Engineering and Technology at the National
Institute for Space Research / 2019), both dedicated to art and
science focused on space projects that also include terrestrial
systems and Philosophy of science. Since July 2019, she
organizes SACIE (Subjectivity, Art and Space Sciences) a
research program and artistic residencies in the Brazilian space
program (INPE), where she develops a series of activities
focused on Space Culture. She is the organizer of Extremophilia
magazine, launched in 2018. As her academic background is in
Psychology, with a master's degree and phd in Clinical
Psychology (PUC / SP), all her work has a focus on the
production of subjectivity. Acting on the frontier between Art
and Clinic, having developed several immersive programs focused
on dream and imaginary levels, operating with fiction,
speculation, creation. Some of her actions have been supported
by institutions such as Goethe Institute, SESC, MAC, MAST, MAR,
Museum of Tomorrow, Valongo Observatory, Ibirapuera Planetarium,
Nucleus of Arts and New Organisms PPGAV / UFRJ - (Brazil),
Center for Contemporary Art (Ecuador), Aarhus University -
Department of Information Studies & Digital Design
(Denmark), STWST / Ars Electronica (Austria), SenseLab Concordia
University (Canada), XenoEntities (Germany), Transmediale
(Germany), Grow Tottenham, Si Shang Art Museum (China), etc. She
lives in São Paulo in a collective house that plants organic,
organizes parties, concerts, meetings, workshops, etc (Casa
Japuanga, SP).<br>
<br>
Amanda McDonald Crowley (USA)<br>
Amanda McDonald Crowley is an independent cultural worker and
curator. Amanda’s work has largely been at the intersection of
art + technology working with artists and groups who have a
research based practice; and current research interests include
#artfoodtech #growfoodmakeart. Amanda develops platforms to
generate dialogue, bringing together artists with professionals
and amateurs from varied disciplines, and creating space for
audience engagement. In recent years Amanda has developed
projects with Kulturföreningen Triennal (Malmo), Bronx Arts
Alliance, YMPJ (Bronx), New Media Scotland / Edinburgh Science
Festival (Edinburgh), Pixelache (Helsinki), PointB (Brooklyn),
Bemis Center (Omaha). Amanda has curatorial and advisor roles on
Mary Mattingly’s Swale (NYC), Di Mainstone’s Human Harp (UK),
Juanli Carrion’s OSS Project (NYC), Shu Lea Cheang’s CycleX (NY)
and Vibha Galhotra’s S.O.U.L Foundation (Delhi), and in summer
2019 Amanda curated Amy Khoshbin’s pop up tattoo parlor in a
hotel room for Detroit Art Week in a project that addressed gun
violence in America. Amanda has previously worked with Eyebeam
art + technology center NY, Australian Network for Art and
Technology, ISEA2004, Finland, Adelaide Festival 2002 and has
done curatorial residencies at Helsinki International Artists
Program (FI), Santa Fe Art Institute (US), Bogliasco Foundation
(IT), Sarai New Media Institute (IN), and Banff Center for the
Arts (CA). <a href="http://publicartaction.net" target="_blank">publicartaction.net</a><br>
<br>
Oliver Kellhammer (USA)<br>
Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher, who
seeks, through his botanical interventions and social art
practice, to demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover
from damage. Recent work has focused on the psychosocial effects
of climate change, decontaminating polluted soil, reintroducing
prehistoric trees to landscapes impacted by industrial logging,
and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently
a lecturer in sustainable systems at Parsons in NYC.<br>
<br>
He has lectured and given artists talks on bio-art, ecological
design, urban ecology and permaculture at universities and
cultural institutions throughout North America and abroad,
including New School, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic, OTIS College,
University of Oregon, Emily Carr University, Smith College,
University of British Columbia, Bainbridge Graduate Institute,
University of Windsor, Aalto University (Finland) Tohoku
University (Japan).<br>
<br>
Escher Tsai (TW) <br>
Escher Tsai, New Media Art Artist, Producer, Creative Director
of Dimension Plus,<br>
Director of Arts and Technology: Creative Innovation and
Counseling Project, Production supervisor of “3x3x6”Taiwan
Exhibition in 58th Venice Biennale. He devotes himself into open
culture and new media art research, promotion and creation. He
was project manager of Acer Digital Art Centre, planner of many
new media arts creation and centre, host of Digital art exchange
platform.<br>
<br>
Established by Escher Tsai and Keith Lam, well-known curator and
artist from Taiwan and Hong Kong, Dimension Plus is a creative
team that devotes themselves to the interactive digital
environment. We are constantly been generating new ideas that
deal with digital and analog technologies. We also dedicate
ourselves to digital art education and environment change. <a href="http://dimensionplus.co/" target="_blank">http://dimensionplus.co/</a>,
<a href="http://www.dimensionplus.co/en/projects/soybean.html" target="_blank">http://www.dimensionplus.co/en/projects/soybean.html</a>,
(see also: <a href="http://www.makery.info/2019/09/10/les-futurs-du-soja-nourrissent-le-debat-en-marge-dars-electronica/?fbclid=IwAR0zdRyzTktIVHHOsXsM1C1JHgec0eg5E7Yvz0g0JO-W0UDRa-AEZtDFRCE" target="_blank">http://www.makery.info/2019/09/10/les-futurs-du-soja-nourrissent-le-debat-en-marge-dars-electronica/?fbclid=IwAR0zdRyzTktIVHHOsXsM1C1JHgec0eg5E7Yvz0g0JO-W0UDRa-AEZtDFRCE</a>)<br>
<br>
Dan Phiffer (USA)<br>
Dan Phiffer is a software developer and artist who builds
web-based tools for the American Civil Liberties Union. His
previous job was working on an open data gazetteer called Who’s
On First (part of the open source mapping company Mapzen). This
Fall he’s teaching a hacktivism course at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute and has started organizing with Extinction Rebellion
in the New York Capital Region.<br>
<br>
Dawn Weleski (USA)<br>
Dawn Weleski’s art practice administers a political stress test,
antagonizing routine cultural behavior by re-purposing
underground brawls, revolutionary protests, and political
offices as transformative social stages. Recent projects include
The Black Draft (with Justin Strong), a live<br>
mock sports draft event during which ten Black former
Pittsburghers, from all professions, are drafted to return home
and City Council Wrestling, a series of public wrestling matches
where citizens, pro-am wrestlers, and city council members
personified their political passions into wrestling characters.
She co-founded and co-directs Conflict Kitchen (with Jon Rubin),
a take-out restaurant that serves cuisine from countries with
which the U.S. government is in conflict, which has been covered
by over 900 international media and news outlets worldwide and
was the North American finalist for the Second Annual
International Award for Public Art in 2015.<br>
<br>
Weleski has exhibited at The Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; the
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the San Jose Museum of Art, San
Jose; Anyang Public Art Project, South Korea; The CCA Wattis
Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Project Row
Houses, Houston; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; Festival Belluard
Bollwerk International, Switzerland; The Mattress Factory
Museum, Pittsburgh; Arts House, Melbourne; and 91mQ, Berlin; has
been a resident at The<br>
Headlands Center for the Arts, SOMA Mexico City, and The
Atlantic Center for the Arts; is a 2017 Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow.<br>
<br>
Currently, Weleski is NEH Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
& Art History at Colgate University.<br>
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<div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(204,204,204)"><a href="http://beforebefore.net" target="_blank">beforebefore.net</a></span><br>
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<pre>_______________________________________________
empyre forum
<a class="gmail-m_6639279509122452391moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>
<a class="gmail-m_6639279509122452391moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></pre>
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_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><a href="http://www.oliverk.org" target="_blank">http://www.oliverk.org</a><br>twitter: @okellhammer</div><div>mobile: 917-743-0126</div><div>skype: okellhammer</div><div><br><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>