[-empyre-] networks of catastrophe + terror/capital

[Sean Cubitt]

Hi steve

Just because I've written about them recently I'd suggest Robert cahen's
L'etreinte, Daniel Crooks' work in general, Daniel Reeves' Obsessive
Becoming - artists for the most part working in single channel video and to
some extent in installation; older works by the late Thierry Kuntzel, almost
anything by Peter Gidal . . . There's a justifiable argument that the
machine must be unmade: as I understand it that's the line in software art,
and was back in John lansdowne's day for some digital artists. That remaking
may include repurposing footage, retroengineering equipment, detourning the
device - but these are formalisms if they don't prise open the possibilities
of a future otherwise than the present (the Adorno line), take
responsibility for what they undertake (the Joyce aesthetic) and pursue what
in badiou comes out as an 'essential Truth' (terms I find hard to drag free
of their metapgysical baggage -- you could say 'the potential lurking in
every actual') - somehwre then I admit between romanticism and modernism,
but learning from the horrors of the 20thC that planning the future, giving
the future a content, is the surect way to ensure that it never comes about


On 30/11/08 5:52 AM, "sdv at krokodile.co.uk" <sdv at krokodile.co.uk> wrote:

> Sean,
> 
> what art speaking of the good are you thinking of ?
> 
> The only material i can think of is that which escapes between the shims
> in the machine.
> 
> steve
> 
> Sean Cubitt wrote:
>> A catastrophe in its ordinary running, and a crisis-prone catastrophe.
>> 
>> Fifteen years ago, or maybe twebnty, Jimmie Durham noticed that the
>> invading white men accused the native Americans of rape, scalping,
>> gratuitous slaughter of whole villages . . .  But that of course it
>> was the other way round. Who still believes violence is repressed in
>> liberal capitalist democracies? It is the everyday rapes, pillage and
>> murders by which capitalism manages to profit from its own
>> catastrophic nature. The unending terror that began with Calvin still
>> populates the very heart of commerce (and the state is its executive
>> branch)
>> 
>> The problem now can be phrased like this: The world is split between
>> Evil (regimes, terrorists . . .) and Innocent (civilians, victims . .
>> . ). There is no room left for the Good. What art can do uniquely is
>> to speak of the Good, that is of the very thing that does not exist in
>> or for contemporary capitalism
>> 
>> sean
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 29/11/08 10:21 AM, "Verena Conley" <vconley at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>     Excellent point. Of course, terror is endemic to capitalism.
>>     Though we still have to define it.
>>     Also, since earlier we spoke of catastrophes, it seems fairly safe
>>     to say that free market capitalism the way it was practiced since
>>     1989 but especially 2000 is the real catastrophe.
>> 
>>     Verena
>> 
>>     On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 5:05 PM, simon <swht at clear.net.nz> wrote:
>> 
>>         Does this mean - the following - the following (too late),
>>         which my
>>         earlier post was an attempting to articulate: that capital encodes
>>         terror? makes use of it in its flows of symbolic exchange? as
>>         if having
>>         reached a critical velocity, the accident of history is given to
>>         returning endlessly?
>> 
>>         Or conversely has there been some sort of symbolic phase shift
>>         whereby
>>         the simulacrum, the coded world, that Image of
>>         thought-as-representation, now only runs by circulating,
>>         through the
>>         circulation of, acts/networked nodes of terrestrial and
>>         extraterrestrial
>>         terror? Is capital now entrained in the duration of terror?
>>         (As we are
>>         entrained in the durations of its spectacular technological
>>         means.)
>> 
>>         Simon Taylor
>> 
>>         www.squarewhiteworld.com <http://www.squarewhiteworld.com>
>>         www.brazilcoffee.co.nz <http://www.brazilcoffee.co.nz>
>> 
>> 
>>         Nicholas Ruiz III wrote:
>>> As a reflection of the transparency of evil (Baudrillard),
>>         the whole
>>> lot of it, Mumbai, etc.--is commerical art...and the millions of
>>> downloads, transmissions and commentaries are its market,
>>         paid for in
>>> broadcast fees, cable and satellite subscriptions and financed by
>>> advertisers: with media art critics and all!  We are
>>         enveloped by a
>>> postmodern Roman media coliseum, where gladiatorial urges are
>>         elicited
>>> and fulfilled, where spectators take part in the war games,
>>         which are
>>> repeated endlessly and archived for posterity on the Network.
>>> 
>>> NRIII
>>> 
>>> Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
>>> Editor, Kritikos
>>> http://intertheory.org
>>> 
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         empyre forum
>>         empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>         http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Prof Sean Cubitt
>> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
>> Director
>> Media and Communications Program
>> Faculty of Arts
>> Room 127 John Medley East
>> The University of Melbourne
>> Parkville VIC 3010
>> Australia
>> 
>> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
>> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
>> M: 0448 304 004
>> Skype: seancubitt
>> http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
>> http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
>> http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
>> http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
>> 
>> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
>> http://leonardo.info
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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

Prof Sean Cubitt
scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
Director
Media and Communications Program
Faculty of Arts
Room 127 John Medley East
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3010
Australia

Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
M: 0448 304 004
Skype: seancubitt
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
http://del.icio.us/seancubitt

Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
http://leonardo.info