[-empyre-] A Play for all Trans ( ) versals: In Several Uneasy Pieces.

[Ricardo Dominguez]

A Play for all Trans (  ) versals: In Several Uneasy Pieces.

ACT O – Scene 0.1

Performing actants: utopian performatives as infinite translucencies and
dis-locating nomos for what takes a breath.

(The stage lights slowly come up and start to flicker without pause.)

A fugitive figure moves to edge of the stage and holds out a bottle of water.
After a long pause it speaks:

fugitive figure: “This will be my brief aside before the performance, my
trans (   ) critique before/on/and within the empty set.  This day only
one will be hunted down by the state machinery, that old chthonian
apparatus - for bearing no name
in the desert of the real. It is after all the season of dying. So put on
your wigs, wait in the wings and let aphanisis be your office wear.”

The fugitive figure walks off stage and leaves the bottle of water behind.

(The stage lights come up)

RD: A consideration of the anti-anti-utopian gesture of ECD and tactical
media post 9/11 is
linked in this email and it was published in Third Text circa 2008. A few
moments in the text do take into consideration the question of the
interpellation, limits and potentials of this trans (   ) versal encounter
within the institution and what could be rehearsed within the frame of
bang.lab/EDT and then performed.

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/ThirdText.pdf

One unexpected condition was the earning of tenure based on the infinitely
demanding practices of artivism by any other name.  That the trans (   )
lucent-effects of bang.lab/EDT gestures via a number of ECD performances
and the development of the Transborder Immigrant Tool were considered 
worthy within the limited frame of a research one university and its
dreams of the trans (   ) disciplinary trans (   ) jections.  Certainly a
fascinating outcome – somewhere between the a mysterious hieroglyph, a
joyful queering exploit and the wild affects of the vulnerabilities,
surrenders and slippages of our
own trans (   ) parencies.

The perfect storms of the racist activities on and around UCSD, the
response to it by students, faculty and labor – then the March 4th protest
on the education crisis that had already been gathering, TBT, ECD and most
importantly that bang.lab was and is part of these coalitions of
contestation – and not just a deep focus and practice of
tactical artivisms alone – it is the performative matrix and its fractal
encounters
with the power that has been sensing its fragile condition that is now
targeting specific elements that are dreaming of becoming Another
University – even before the hard flows of those who say that only an
atavistic neo-liberal university is possible – we say Another University
is Possible! So Say We All! So Say We....

(Joe Friday runs onto to the stage from a door behind the stage with a
giant gold badge with the words “Audit & Management Advisory” written on
it).

JF: Just the facts, ma'am!  Can you say what you meme?! We have had enough
of your coyotek’a dribbles of herstories, poli/ticks and that damn
aesthetic-tac-toe! What are you rebels doing at this moment?

RD: We the coyotek’a, yes we are many, and we are all a rainbow of
perversities,
we are planning the following – (based on the vote by the communities of
April 8th,
2010 in courtyard of the Visuals Arts Department, UCSD):

This week we are trying to interview as many lawyers as possible to
assemble a team that will have to deal with the multiple complexities that
our art has raised:

- two to deal with TBT as part of academic freedom and immigration rights
advocacy,
- one to deal with UCSD and UC employment issues, one to deal with artist
and art rights, - - - and one to deal with state and federal questions
about ECD.

It is long list and not a symptom of pleasure – but it does expand the
performative matrix to encounter nomos, counter-nomos, and all the fails
to fall into either.

Once, we have established the legal team we will establish a trans (   )
defense fund committee of 7 (a good number for mayan technology) – two
members will from UCSD, two from the UC system, two national members and
one international

(Suddenly Joe Friday is knocked-out by Mark Rasch, a former federal
prosecutor who is the founder of Secure IT experts in Bethesda, Maryland,
he turns the badge into a useful garbage lid to protect undocumented
immigrants crossing the desert of the real into tool to protect them from
the heat of the day.)

 “It wil be hard to bring a case under US cracking laws. In order for
there to be a computer crime, there has to be either an intentional
denial-of-service or some form of trespass, which would be an
Unauthorized Access. The problem you have here is if this is a public
website, merely going to the website repeatedly many, many times as
Authorized Accesses, not an unauthorized access, changes the very
condition of  the virtual-as-action. What we have here is a force more
powerful, the unbearable weight of human beings dis-locating
code-as-nomos to a code-as-demos (   ) aesthetics .”

(RD as some other than himself stands next to some code drifts and sings a
bit of out tune “Can you catch my Trans (  ) baby?” RD not as his selves,
but as his other selves turns to you and whisper into your ear.)

NOT-RD: “It maybe the case that I am being targeted for my names, for my
collaborations, for my ya bastas!, for my enjoyment of bad flicks, for my
lack of truly revolutionary art, for my control over a rebel cadre of
committed painters, for my cleaning of my soon to be four son’s poopy
under/wares - perhaps it is the case that I am a world target to tell all
other potential targets that you will be next if you do not go back into
your offices and just write about the catastrophes of the world – and do
not dare imagine doing anything about it.  One can see this in the
concerned e-mails by young scholars who have been working on bang.lab/EDT
projects now re-thinking doing presentations about it – because the
regimes of power will target them – “your work is not true scholarship or
research, it carries of stench of empathy and care” – this is an important
frame for the deliberate chill that these “investigations” have created
via its targeting of the work.

But, it must be also stated that I am in a very different power dynamic
from my fellow artists, researchers, students, and the young scholars – I
have tenure for this
Hist(or)y of artivist research – so that my ability to become and be a
critical
trans (   ) versal aberrant of institutional trans (   ) critique that can
navigate from within/without wigging out – it maybe the case that
bang.lab/EDT’s fugitive artists, poets, and researchers my have to limit
their projective trans (  ) missions to the edges of this assemblage ‘till
the intergalactic pores can be re-opened. It is a concern.

Yet, another light breaks before us from us to us. So Say We All :-)

(Stage lights come down to a pinpoint on a bottle of water that is now
overflowing and spilling beyond the light.)

http://bang.calit2.net



-- 
Ricardo Dominguez
Associate Professor
Hellman Fellow

Help restore democracy to California today: http://www.CAMajorityRule.com

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/
Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Affiliate
http://cilas.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://bang.calit2.net
site: http://gallery.calit2.net
site: http://pitmm.net
blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom
site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom