[-empyre-] pirates, pirating pirates

[Parikka J.]

Hi

yes, we need pragmatics of sorts- that is what I think Michel was flagging and you Magnus were pointing towards; what works, what does not? Rosi Braidotti (who like me thinks of pragmatics in a Deleuze-Guattari way) has a nice little phrase "whatever gets you through the day" to refer to nomadic ethics that steers clear from normative rigidity and takes contextual, fluctuating milieus as its starting point - the fact that we need to live in a world, and somehow sustain our being in that. Pirating is already to a large extent that; less about manifestos, politics in the explicit sense of consciousness and goals; it is just getting by, with whatever is at hand: your example of larvae. This is what so often characterises forms of network politics (http://www.networkpolitics.org/) - that they are not even necessarily recognized as politics, but are so mundane, so...practical, embedded in everyday practices (and at times even deemed outright illegal) that they are under the radar when talking of politics - except economics. Piracy is often hanging on to some of the last possibilities of what you've got. Even the Hargreaves report seems to understand this bit: copyright law (in the UK in this case) is not seen credible by the public. Just some passages quoted from the report (we know this already, but just to articulate it once more):

8.5. "Most also cannot understand, or do not accept, that they are doing anything wrong by transferring a music file from a CD they have bought to an MP3 player, iPod or other device. A survey published by Consumer Focus in February 2010 found that 73 per cent of consumers do not know what they are allowed to copy or record.3 A Harris Interactive Poll for the BPI in 2010 found that 44 per cent of all peer-to-peer (P2P) users stated that they believed their actions to be lawful. "

8.6. "It is not surprising that consumers are confused. In a world where it is possible to listen to music free on the radio; free or by subscription through a computer or smartphone from a streaming service; or by continuing to put a purchased or borrowed CD in a player, the concept of “ownership” and “purchase” has itself been redefined. "

The word confused, incidentally, is mentioned in the report a number of times...

The redefinition of ownership and purchase is interesting and of course at the core of this. Writing this while listening to Spotify and interrupted after every Tinariwen song with an idiotic and badly made advertising spot, I come to think of forms of piracy that have to do with those abstract but as real forms of world - time for instance; how my time is being legitimately pirated by mechanisms of capture of something that I mistake to be so personal - my time. (Well, we sell our time anyway to whoever pays our salaries, but that is only one bit of the pirating of such "personals" to which extraction of value bases itself).

So, Evil and Evil Media Studies (Goffey and Fuller in the Spam Book); 

what if evil practices is where we should start? Lets for a second forget that we should play the game according to the rules, the legalities, the jointly (never) accepted frameworks, and start with what actually people do: we pirate, copy, plagiarize, imitate, adopt, adapt, repurpose, discard, trash, deceive, trick and so forth. To quote them: "To put it another way, evil is a good name for the strategies of the object, for what things do in themselves without bothering to pass through the subjective demand for meaning." (A short summary of the stratagems of evil media here: http://jussiparikka.net/2011/06/14/do-some-evil/)

They map what already is taking place in "evil" places of communication from psy-ops to capitalist marketing, and suggest such as theory/practice entry points to evil media studies. Such would be the work of piracy as well - no need to sublimate it as a revolutionary artistic practice perhaps as we have millions of examples around the world of it in action already but still: why not. One of the most natural things in the world -- because it has a connection to production in a very fundamental sense, that McKenzie Wark flags in Hacker Manifesto: versus packing creativity into a commodity, bootlegs and piracy are themselves forms of distribution. 


j

______
Dr Jussi Parikka
Reader in Media & Design
Winchester School of Art
University of Southampton, UK
Http://jussiparikka.net

Adjunct Professor of Digital Culture Theory, University of Turku
Visiting Fellow at Institute of Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin - Spring and Summer 2011
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of magnus at ditch.org.uk [magnus at ditch.org.uk]
Sent: 13 July 2011 21:42
To: empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] pirates, pirating pirates

Reflecting on the interrelation between business and government, the
background of activity in emerging economic circuits and the rise of
cyberwarfare, I start to wonder to what degree the piracy is above all a
relation between the bigger entities in capitalism which Jussi says,
“...already, is rotten, anomalous and deviant itself”. Perhaps I am a
little caught in circular relations, loops and entropy, but these notions
seem to be quite fundamental to an understanding of conditions of the
present moment, especially considering the imprint of political economy on
spaces both virtual and physical. Technical, systems ecology, as I read in
'Digital Contagions' is one more paradigm which has been absorbed into the
body of capital. But, as Michel suggested, the relationship is not
necessarily one way. In this dynamic interplay of forces I am continually
searching (like many others) for new spaces and opportunities. There is a
kind of inadvertent mapping involved in that process, the kind of
activity, I think, which the Keith Bunting work which Marc mentioned,
makes explicit.

I am also seeking analogies for my own and others' circumstances. The
discussion has recast the role of pirate to locate it within the centre of
business and government. It has also questioned the certainties of
self-identification with fringe and underground community. Instead of
locating ourselves at the borders, perhaps denied agency, I suggest an
alternative, less anomalous, identity, as larvae consuming the rotten hull
of capital - Pirate vessels of the 1600s, unable to put in to port for
repairs, were dogged by millions of these creatures, voraciously burrowing
into their wooden hulls. Invariably there was nothing for it but to
abandon these ships to the tide. So, this kind of instinctual and
destructive (vandal) behaviour may be one way to envisage the sharers of
today – possibly acting without any kind of political awareness, doing the
most natural thing in the world.

Further on the larvae trope, I visited the Free Hetherington in Glasgow
this week. This is the former Graduates' Club Building, occupied by
students in defiance of cuts and restructuring being effected within
Glasgow University: http://freehetherington.wordpress.com/
The Free Hetherington has become a centre for numerous educational and
cultural events and activities over the past 160 days and declares itself
to be operating a gift economy. So, I propose such spaces as a flip-side
to the embodied messages Jussi has described. Around such places, it seems
to me, there is a whole cacophony of noise (of protest and participation)
and intermingled use and quiet and reflection that distinguishes it from
the social dynamics of Dubitinsider's co-ordinated marketing campaign. But
I wonder if I am coming on like an old moralist too?!

Jussi, perhaps you could say some more about evil and Evil Media Studies?

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