[-empyre-] Critical Dromology - and Inertia

Tue Nov 11 11:22:44 EST 2008

Hola Frederic and all other critical dromologist,

> So i want to question the artists: what do you do with inertia ? Have
> the artists to create a new kind of inertia, or not?

I think/feel that new media artivist and digital zapatistas have created new
forms of hyper-speed(s) and hyper-inertia(s) that are aware that these
trajectories function tactically in different forms of fractal time(s) zones.

So, that it may be tactically better to use hyper-inertia to shift the .mil
speeds and that it may be better to use hyper-speed trajectories when dealing
with CNN timelines - or that it has to be poly-spacial strategy of the
"speed"
of feet in Chiapas, Mexico and the hyper-inertia of bodies blocking road to
stop Mexican army tanks. Each being aware of the timezone/planes of the
other.

The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) was among the first to develop a
relationship between bad technology, inefficient code and rebellion with a
good cause – EDT operated/operates in “contradiction to cyberspace.” 
EDT's mass demonstration machine (FloodNet created by artists Brett
Stalbaum and Carmin Karasic) connects to mass actions on the streets that
was and is intimately linked to the Zapatistas and the
alter-(lo)balization movements – a performative matrix which shifts the
core of the network from communication and documentation to one of mass
direct action on-line, a gesture that attempts to suture individuals and
browsers, the virtual mass and mass demonstrations in public spaces that
are local and (lo)bal at the same time.
	“Virtual sit-ins,” as EDT came to name these network based actions were a
direct echo of Critical Art Ensemble's vision for ECD, but rather than
the CAE version of a cadre of secret and efficient hackers, EDT created a
transparent and artivistic reconfiguration of ECD – that by all the laws
of well-made code
should never work – but, since when does art need to be well-made to spill
out into world? It was a new social poesis that allowed EDT's version of
ECD to negotiate with pre-9/11 state and transnational powers over the
discursive mobilizations of  “cybercrime,” “cyberwar” and “cyberterrorism”
and shifting the frame to that of Civil Disobedience (CD) and its legal
histories in relation to ECD – without giving up the “art” in artivism or
the “activism” this hybrid term contains: “...the Electronic Disturbance
Theater illuminates a new set of possibilities for understanding the
relation between performance, embodiment, and spatial practice in
cyberspace. Unlike a number of other performance artists who have explored
the relation of the body to technology through the literal encounter of
individual physical bodies to machines—Orlan's livecast surgeries;
Stelarc's cybernetic experiments—EDT, in turn, has placed the very notion
of “embodiment” under rigorous question, and thought to understand the
specific possibilities for constituting presence in digital space that is
both collective and politicized...Those actions suggest that performance
in cyberspace can reproduce—rehearse or practice—cyberspace in ways that
produce an alternate form of spatiality. For EDT, as for the Zapatistas,
cyberspace can be practiced as a new public sphere, a runway for the
staging of more productive “lines of flight” for those struggling for
social change.”

It may also be a question of disturbing the conditions of hyper-speed(s)
and hyper-inertia(s) that function on other planes - such as the question
of the
polar ice caps as/IS THE DISASTER. Where question of slowing down/or just
stop some segments of global production and speed up others - with the
understanding that is not only the states of time are fractal - but the
earth itself needs fixed points
and alter-flows to function - a type of geo-philosophy as a critical
dromology.

My best in flow and blockage,
Ricardo

On Mon, November 10, 2008 10:21 am, fredericneyrat at free.fr wrote:
> Dear Ricardo, and dear other guests,
>
> inertia surely is one of the main topics of Virilio theory, maybe the
> central point, a fear AND a desire for him (and the problem is the
> transition / the link between these two affects...).
>
> a/ a desire : in his last book, ‘L’université du désastre’ (2008), he
> says that nowadays we have to « faire maintenant l’’éloge de
> l’inertie’ ; de cette statique, de cette fixité photosensible dont
> l’épreuve photographique est le témoin »  (p.71). « Depuis la
> révolution des transports (industriels)”, he says, “l’inertie a très
> mauvaise réputation”, on ne cesse de “dévaloriser le solide et sa
> statique au bénéfice de la dynamique (des ondes, des fluides)” -
> however: « Souvenons-nous : pour que la roue tourne, il lui faut un
> point fixe, le moyeu qui, lui, ne tourne pas » (pp.63-64). So it
> seems, we need an inertial point (or inertial space, or area – or
> someting else...), a ‘fixed point’. In this respect, the lack of
> inertia is the condition of possibility of any kind of CATASTROPHES :
> no ‘permanent’ point means no wheel...
>
> b/ however, in his firts books he seems to argue something else: speed
> leads to a lethal inertia. In ‘L’espace critique’ (1984) : ‘l’inertie
> tend a renouveler l’ancienne sedentarité’ = ‘l’arrivée supplante le
> départ: tout ‘arrive’ sans qu’il soit nécessaire de partir” =
> telescopage = suppression of space = ‘desertification’ = ‘moment
> d’inertie de l’environnement' ... and so on; the conclusion of all
> that is in the last chapter of “L’inertie polaire” (1990): ‘la perte
> de l’exo-centration territoriale developpe et accroit l’ego-centration
> comportementale de l’homme’.
> An image to sum up this techno-ego-centration, that allows a ‘trajet
> sans trajet’ (a trip without any real trip), that allows to see
> without moving:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7472559.stm
> In this case, (polar) inertia IS THE DISASTER !
>
> So i want to question the artists: what do you do with inertia ? Have
> the artists to create a new kind of inertia, or not?
>
> L’inertie est-elle ce qui doit être évitée par excellence, une maudite
> immobilité, ou tout au contraire ce qui doit être formé, imaginé,
> construit dans la forme même de l’art?
>
> Ou autrement dit encore: la ‘disturbance’ dont parle Ricardo Dominguez
> doit-elle importer du flux - de la mobilité - ou de l’inertie?...
>
> In a friendly way,
>
> Frederic
>
>
> Selon rrdominguez at ucsd.edu:
>
>> Hola toda/os,
>>
>> It is a pleasure to be a part of the list this turn of time. I was
>> asked
>> to diagram some thoughts on Virilio’s influence on the work that
>> we/I
>> as the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) have done in developing
>> the practice of Electronic Civil Disobedience (we are now
>> celebrating
>> 10 years of electronic disturbances).
>>
>> I thought I would post the statement that introduced my
>> presentation
>> at the gathering in S.F. and then a statement made during phone
>> interview in 1999 on EDT’s framing of Demos and Dromos in relation
>> to the Agora-on-line.
>>
>> I look forward to your gestures and responses.
>>
>> Yours in speed,
>> Ricardo
>>
>>
>> >>>S.F. Statement:
>>
>> Hacktivism and Critical Dromology
>> (Ricardo Dominguez)
>>
>> Paul Virilio's deep vision of the 'politics of speed’ and THE
>> 'aesthetics
>> of disappearance' is full of anxieties about the nature of
>> post-contemporary art's relationship to the "body" and the
>> "virtual". His
>> fear of dromology-as-art has created a blind spot, an inability to
>> see the
>> potential of current art practices over the course of the last ten
>> years.
>> Hacktivism and Digital Zapatismo have been about creating
>> visibility for
>> mute body/bodies around the planet. The work of the Electronic
>> Disturbance
>> Theater [EDT] has created possibilities for constituting presence
>> in
>> digital space that is both collective and politicized - performance
>> art as
>> critical dromology. By extracting the core ideas from the canon of
>> Virilian thought and mixing them with new modalities in art and
>> performance, a new paradigm emerges- a radical dromology for our
>> time.
>>
>> >>>Phone Interview
>>
>> Performance Art in a Digital Age: A Live Phone Conversation with
>> Ricardo
>> Dominguez
>>
>> Took place on Thursday 25 November 1999, Institute of International
>> Visual
>> Arts, London.
>> By Coco Fusco
>>
>> I was in NYC and Coco Fusco was in London with an audience:
>>
>> CF: When you theorize EDT's practice you often mention connections
>> with
>> Ancient Greek concepts of the Agora and Demos. How do you envision
>> virtual performance as a kind of metaphorical speech in light of
>> this
>> genealogy?
>>
>>
>> RD: The idea of a virtual republic in Western Civilization can be
>> traced
>> back to Plato, and is connected to the functions of public space.
>> The
>> Republic incorporated the central concept of the Agora. The Agora
>> was the area for those who were entitled to engage in rational
>> discourse of Logos, and to articulate social policy as the Law
>> (Nomos),
>> and thus contribute to the evolution of Athenian democracy. Of
>> course
>> those who did speak were, for the most part, male, slave-owning and
>> ship owning merchants, those that represented the base of Athenian
>> power. We can call them Dromos: those that belong the societies of
>> speed. Speed and the Virtual Republic are the primary nodes of
>> Athenian
>> democracy – not much different than today. The Agora was constantly
>> being disturbed by Demos, what we would call those who demonstrate
>> or who move into the Agora and make gestures. Later on, with the
>> rise
>> of Catholicism – Demos would be transposed into Demons, those
>> representatives of the lower depths. Demos did not necessarily use
>> the rational speech of the Agora, they did not have access to it;
>> instead, they used symbolic speech or a somatic poesis - towards
>> defining Nomos. The Demos gesture towards Nomos, with a language
>> of gaps that points to invisibility, that points to the lacks in
>> the Agora.
>> The Agora is thus disturbed; the rational processes of its codes
>> are
>> disrupted, the power of speed was blocked. EDT alludes to this
>> history
>> of Demos as it intervenes with Nomos. The Zapatista FloodNet
>> injects
>> bodies as  Nomos into digital space, a critical mass of gestures as
>> blockage.
>> What we also add to the equation is the power of speed is now
>> leveraged
>> by Demos via the networks. Thus Demos_qua_Dromos create the space
>> for a new type of social drama to take place. Remember in Ancient
>> Greece, those who were in power and who had slaves and commerce,
>> were the ones who had the fastest ships. EDT utilizes these
>> elements
>> to create drama and movement by empowering contemporary groups
>> of Demos with the speed of Dromos – without asking societies of
>> command and control for the right to do so. We enter the Agora
>> with the metaphorical gestures towards Nomos and squat on
>> high-speed
>> lanes of the new Virtual Republic – this creates a digital platform
>> or
>> situation for a techno-political drama that reflects the real
>> condition
>> of the world beyond code. This disturbs the Virtual Republic that
>> is accustomed to the properties  of Logos, the ownership of
>> property,
>> copyright, and all the different strategies in which they are
>> attempting
>> enclosure of the Internet.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ricardo Dominguez
>> Assistant Professor
>> Hellman Fellow
>>
>> Visual Arts Department, UCSD
>> http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
>> Principal Investigator, CALIT2
>> http://calit2.net
>> Co-Chair gallery at calit2
>> http://gallery.calit2.net
>> CRCA Researcher
>> http://crca.ucsd.edu/
>> Ethnic Studies Affiliate
>> http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/
>>
>> Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics,
>> Board Member
>> http://hemi.nyu.edu
>>
>> University of California, San Diego,
>> 9500 Gilman Drive Drive,
>> La Jolla, CA 92093-0436
>> Phone: (619) 322-7571
>> e-mail: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu
>>
>> Project sites:
>> site: http://gallery.calit2.net
>> site: http://pitmm.net
>> site: http://bang.calit2.net
>> site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom
>> blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
Ricardo Dominguez
Assistant Professor
Hellman Fellow

Visual Arts Department, UCSD
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
Principal Investigator, CALIT2
http://calit2.net
Co-Chair gallery at calit2
http://gallery.calit2.net
CRCA Researcher
http://crca.ucsd.edu/
Ethnic Studies Affiliate
http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics,
Board Member
http://hemi.nyu.edu

University of California, San Diego,
9500 Gilman Drive Drive,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0436
Phone: (619) 322-7571
e-mail: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu

Project sites:
site: http://gallery.calit2.net
site: http://pitmm.net
site: http://bang.calit2.net
site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom
blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom