[-empyre-] Re: Traveling on the marks of my body

[Andres Burbano <burbano@gmail.com>]

- few weeks ago the national newspaper in Colombia "el tiempo"  talked
about the second submarine which was cached by the police  from the
narcotrafic. Well, it was not small but the first one was bigger . . .

- the processes of transfer of technology  in Colombia and in Latin
America, in general,  is one of the most important topics to study in
order to understand our tech local-global landscape. It is complex as
you imagine it is ... like the submarine, every problem and fact
crosses the comprehension and turn the topic into rare and obscure.

- the task - thinking what tech is - is not easy. Usually we have a
very simple way to think about technology, we always understand  it
linked to the average consensus of what it is, guided by the market as
you know, "tech is computers, is mobil phones, is electricity" etc ...

- but tech is much more, is also the tools to explore oil fields, to
create submarines, to design weapons, to do spacial research, the 
exploitation of biotech, the creation of telecommunication devices,
the increasing of the logic and computing research, etc ...

 - every of this points have crucial implications for our present and
future - but specially for our mind ecology and daily life ... the
challenge is strong in every place around the globe, but for us,
living in countries with such complex and urgent problems ... we are
exhausted.

- well, but not all is so dark, the initiatives like  Arte Nuevo
InteractivA 05,  among others, are spaces to think and to act in this
complex scenario ... I hope the event will be a creative and strong
door to continue the reflection of our condition.

- all the best 




|||

andres_burbano
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/burbano/
http://basic-research.zkm.de

|||



On 4/21/05, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet
<rfbalanquet@cartodigital.org> wrote:
> Amigos members of the Forum, McKenzie;,
> 
> In the last post, I forgot to mention that the Columbian artist 
> Andres Burbano is also part of Arte Nuevo InteractivA 05 and I would 
> like to thank him for his great input, solidarity and energy.
> 
> It is true that new media technologies are interested in people. The 
> sophistication of the mobile technology has become the most 
> irreverent interruption of the private space, the closer 
> contamination tank, as well as the most sophisticated surveillance 
> apparatus hooked to the big brother colonial matrix.
> 
> We also have to understand that views of the world and power does 
> varies from geo-historical postionalities, and that a lot of us do 
> not believe in the so called centrality of universal or imperialistic 
> power. Therefore, even though the power of biotechnology invades our 
> territories in search of the genetic codes of the plants, there are 
> places where they will never enter. We are not that stupid to give 
> out every thingŠ and if the one with money comes along and want to 
> pay, I assure you that we may take the money knowing that the 
> "foreign" doesn't not the complexities of our cultural territories or 
> our languages and for sure, we will trick the power. Resistance is 
> always with us, so is the understanding that the center of that 
> colonial power is not our center, therefore our existence doesn't 
> depend on that power and that knowing resides on our tribal memory 
> where no machine has access.
> 
> It is true that Marx mentioned the slave when he wrote about the way 
> in which the capitalist system tricked the people into believing that 
> "freeing the slave" was a charitable gesture and explained how they 
> became the paid worker of the capitalist world. But, from my 
> subjective historical view I see an erasure of the problematic of the 
> slave in Marx's Capital pointing out to slavery as something of the 
> past. A deeper analysis of the slave's condition would have brought 
> to the surface how most of the colonial independence wars, except the 
> one taking place in Haiti, were conducted by the national bourgeois 
> who at that time were brainwashed by the ideology of the industrial 
> revolution.
> 
> A deeper analysis of the condition of women would have shown how the 
> state and the church, understanding the amount of labor needed for 
> the "industrial progress", made a pact to frame the women "as the 
> makers of children who later become the workers" so there we have the 
> roots of the violation of reproductive rights, over population, 
> famine and the destruction of the forest in favor of the urban space.
> 
> Perhaps I asked too much from Marx, but the complexity of my 
> upbringing in Cuba, having his ideology hammering my head and not 
> satisfying the hunger I felt, forced me to question his ideology in 
> the historical context of my territories.
> 
> 
> If it were not for the slave narratives, most written in one person, 
> I would have lived in the Marxist erasure and be co-opted by an a 
> lefty ideology that was, outside its national discourse, perpetuating 
> racialization, sexism, homophobia and spiritual segregation in the 
> name of equality.
> 
> No matter how I am attracted to technology and new media, I am rooted 
> on a network of interaction that is older than the industrial 
> revolution, older than the slave trade and the European invasion. 
> That network encompass a system of knowledge, data knowledge as we 
> may called that can not be storage on the information networks 
> operate by that " colonial power", therefore, I , as a son of Yemaya, 
> of Shango, of the trickster Elegba who at each intersection opens a 
> new road to decenter from oppression,  el ahijado de Kukulkan, dragón 
> que ilumina los cielos, as the bilingual person who transgress 
> linguistic codes y escribe en la lengua impuesta por los 
> colonizadores de Castilla y eclesiáticos que intentaron eliminar con 
> castigo brutales el conocimiento de los probladores de mis 
> territories, yo I --the subject who is not colonized by the 
> ideologies of written words that are never sacred, but are the 
> entrance to inquiry and growth--, understand that mediate technology 
> can not overpower my connection to the universe, the truly cosmic 
> energy fueling the transformation of everyday life and I am not 
> alone, there are many, many more of us for whom technology will never 
> be central.
> 
> Saludotes
> -- 
> Raúl Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet MFA
> Curador Ejecutivo/ Arte Nuevo InteractivA
> http://www.cartodigital.org/interactiva
> interactiva@cartodigital.org
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>