No subject

Sun Jun 3 07:26:21 EST 2012

the Internet and its cultures; such Internet norms create already a
multitude of different communal spaces through shared platforms; the
platforms function out of the Internet as well, being thus always
determined within the net, within this live archive. A multitude of
cluster-like platforms will be controlled consciously or will be
constructed as an uncontrolled archipelago of platforms. Controlled and
uncontrolled formations can here exchange their meanings if we insist on a
closer view to them. "Common platforms" will not define areas accessible to
all. Common platforms at the contrary are meant here as isolated spaces for
communities, functioning towards a specific goal or into a given protocol.
Common platforms may be considered as heteronomous structures: one will
have to accept their rules or leave them; they can only be accepted or
refused.  One will be able to chose other heteronomies, different rules: a
multitude of platforms can be accessed deliberately. But we cannot refuse
the platform system by keeping our position on the platform; and if we
leave the platform we will be soon included to another one. One may chose
deliberately among other cluster-like systems but - while entering them- we
shall immediately be limited to their own rules. Their complex world will
be formed as an accumulation of heterogeneous matter marked by "free
choice" between heteronomous structures. Nevertheless one will only accept
fully a protocol by responding to it. There is no in between position in
the Internet. Protocols will be less and less discussed; the ability to
chose among them will be the user's sole possibility: and choosing was
never the synonym to freedom. Freedom will form more and more impossible
tasks tomorrow. A user may have the possibility to chose: enter the realm
of different platforms or stay out of them. This will be the function of
freedom tomorrow. We will be able to accept some protocols or refuse them.
Their norms will be formed as applications or they may have the structure
of games. We can already chose among some of them and participate to their
prescribed systems, following the rules they propose or responding to their
open questions. Protocols can be created through different procedures but
they form always given systems we can only camp into. Protocols make the
differences between platforms; but the protocols will not be questioned
concerning their rationale or concerning their concepts. The protocols
structure communal schemes; they can form dystopic systems of control or
places of rest; they can also organize creative procedures or they can
structure commodities. They cannot guarantee qualities of the future
societies but they are building anyway already the societies of tomorrow;
the consciousness about this process will be crucial in order to imagine
and invent different political agendas.

Some crucial questions will be: how those small scale structures, seemingly
subordinated to the state, or how the big scale structures that overcome
the limits of states will function together as a multiple, conscious
political system? Without any control of the users -only able to chose
among given structures and live quietly inside them- or after a conscious
decision or a democratic emancipatory decisive intervention by the people?
How can such an intervention take shape within the given Internet culture?
How does this archipelago of protocols can have a controlled geography
installed by common decisions and not by "undetermined" factors?

Leaving this formation of the archipelago of independent protocols to an
"open" and "free" procedure drives already the world towards a tricky
situation. Freedom risks to be understood as a technical problem concerning
the possibility of participation to given structures. Another form of the
"freedom of the Internet" is needed; it will have to deal with a concept of
politics within an archived world; it will have to deal with facts.
Cluster-like structures produced "spontaneously" organize a galaxy of
predetermined worlds. The time of a user responding to a system of games,
contributing in a system of applications and acting within predetermined
platforms forms the political field of tomorrow. The western concept of
citizen will perish, the concept of identity will look more and more
perverse; the era of the user seeks for its constitution and its political
values.

You insist on my "call to deliberate forming norms"; I feel better to only
propose an investigation with examples of norms; there is a need to see how
those example function. In Athens I proposed it some years ago; it would be
easy to act towards this research. The state cannot handle the empty city.
A controlled system of legalized occupancies, organized via Internet, can
show new exemplary functions for the ruin of the modern city center.

We would not have to think of social / political negotiations necessarily,
even if these may also announce a promising field. We may elaborate the
system of a city as an already bankrupted system that will never function
as it did before. I believe this is the challenge for contemporary cities
(Athens is the first). In the cities we can play-test with different
proposals by allowing them to occur in some terms and follow their
evolution. The state, the municipality or a third public structure will
permit and will also stop the function of the controlled occupancies of the
empty parts of the cities. Neighborhoods of functions can be formed as
sharing systems. The urban space can be redefined via the Internet when
this system of open research field makes sense. It will not be installed in
order to stabilize the most prominent communal practices but in order to
always propose new.

 I believe that we cannot engage governments to such a procedure but in any
case the existing authorities will have to accept small communal actions
inside given frames; we need a local collaboration between governments and
the Internet; we need local authorities to use the Internet as part of its
constructive power; the aim will be not to destroy completely the citizen
of the past in order to install a community of users; how can a part of the
political tradition of the west be saved while we enter this new phase of
the post network politics? Formed as protocols and accepted temporarily
some examples of controlled heteronomies can be installed and constantly
observed by a democratic control system. The concept would remind the idea
of renting out parts of the city under strict conditions. In this case it
the renting out strategies will concern community structures; the
authorities may allow the space to be used temporarily as in a play-testing
phase: the play-testing views towards the concretization of a protocol; the
permission for a controlled occupancy would be an acceptance of the first
draft of the urban protocol. An urban protocol will have the structure of a
game, consisted as a series of rules. The city of Urban Protocols will be a
field of research that will use empty space in the cities in order to
implement examples of communal strategies. An archipelago of such urban
protocols could present the vision of a future city.

Gaming seems to be the key structure through which smaller or larger
invented platforms will be transformed to systems of action; this will be
done after the failure of the state system of today as a political dystopia
we cannot predict or it will get organized into that may lead to different
futures. Thank you for your questions, Johannes, they ask for a shape of
imagining a new political vigilance concerning the ruins of the
contemporary city.

All best wishes

Aristide Antonas

On 24 July 2012 23:09, Johannes Birringer
<Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>wrote:

> dear all
>
> how to track back from the psychoanalytic to the political philosophy (or
> architectural philosophy) that Aristide, to my surprise, brought up here =
in
> the discussion on Monday?
> there may very well be close connections, too, between the two, but it
> took me a little while to ponder Aristide' commentary on how "the
> architectures of gaming are characterized by the limits of the game, the
> structures of its interior space and the concepts of its exterior...." an=
d
> what he critically made of the distinction between the screenic (if that =
is
> how he read our discussion via Badiou and B's divide between facts and
> events) and the action, acting, building, forming interaction etc beyond
> the screen. We have not really discussed visions of the beyond the screen
> yet, or have we?
>
> I am not well read in Badiou, so cannot reply to a concern with [his]
> events and facts. But I take it that Aristide worries about cities (and t=
he
> troubled times in Athens, Greece) and is looking at architectures through
> the lens of gaming cultures (and games of course would involve screens,
> desire and fantasy). Or, proposing that architecture and its discourses a=
re
> significant sites for a public production of knowledge and poliitics?
>
> In terms of a media archaeology (or anarchaeology, as Zielinski called it
> at one point), on screens and technique, function, and fantasy, it actual=
ly
> strikes me as remarkable that architects, after World War II, invited
> philosophers to address this need for public production, for new building
> (reconstruction after a traumatic war and after a period of horrendous
> fascism), and for new terms to discuss dwelling and living  ("Education
> through Form," "Man and Space" were some of the titles of the Darmstadt
> Colloquia in thew 50s).  I am reading a book on the reception history of
> the Bauhaus (Jeffrey Saletnik/Robin Schuldenfrei, eds., Bauhaus Construct=
:
> Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism", London 2009), and one of t=
he
> chapters mentions how Bloch, Adorno, and Heidegger addressed the architec=
ts
> in the 1950s and debated ideas of ornament and function.
>
> Curiously =96  and thank you, Scott, for your incisive comments on the ma=
ss
> ornament in your recent post, and for bringing Nathalie Bookchin's 'mass
> ornament' video to our attention =96=96  I found an intriguing passage fr=
om
> Adorno commenting on the ornament:
>
> In his speech, "Functionalism Today," Adorno breaks down the distinction
> between ornament and function, pushing it through a historical dialectic.
> Function, he argues, is not only external but is first and foremost a
> matter of immanent, artistic function, within the logic of the work itsel=
f.
> What was once functional can become, internally, unncessarym superfluous,
> and ornamental, when its logic is no longer necessary to internal
> coherence. The functional and the functionless are historically
> intertwined. Adorno then writes of the ornament as "scars of superseded
> modes of production."  the non-functional [external?] is given new
> credibility as the "sublimation" of function.  (cf. Bauhaus Cosntruct, p.
> 64).
>
> The "democratic drama,"  invoked by Scott,  and in extension the Blochian
> utopia of a home that we cannot find, a game we cannot play.  can now
> indeed be critiqued at being played out at the "limits of contemporary
> exhortations for self-performance as self-improvement" - am in
>  understanding you correctly, Scott?     But is then fantasy (gaming
> culture, Batman?) our hope for non-useful innervation?  I think not, and =
as
> I was trying to suggest earlier, I worry
> that interactivity is precisely not what we can assume to bring greater
> participatory freedom or provide stronger political affect.
>
> Aristide wrote me saying " Badiou always disregards facts, and privileges
> events; outside the game, outside the frame is the field of exception and
> there is the field of what interests politics for him. I do not agree. I
> think that the most difficult thing is to form norms, not exceptions. I
> think the culture of gaming may help towards this direction."
>
> How are we to understand your call to deliberate forming norms, are you
> thinking of social/political negotiations, for example about how we want =
to
> live, how we engage local governments or communitarian projects, how we
> might screen banks and our security forces who screen us, how we become
> pirates and vote for the Pirate party, how we occupy urban space or share
> rural space, how we debate [?] fantasy archiectures, etc?  How is gaming
> related to politics in your view?
>
>
> respectfully
>
> Johannes Birringer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

--=20
ANTONAS office
emm. Benaki 118
Exarcheia, Athens 11473
Greece

--e89a8ff252b009433a04c722b8b8
Content-Type: text/html; charset=windows-1252
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<p class=3D"p1">Dear Johannes,</p><p class=3D"p1">

Yes, I believe that Badiou usually disregards facts; he=
 privileges events; he disregards norms in order to prioritize the exceptio=
nal: his concept for the &quot;fact&quot; is always represented as part of =
a finished archived past. His &quot;event&quot; as the exception to any suc=
h archiving: it would always stay open to an undetermined future. Neverthel=
ess any exception is linked to the norm it overcomes. Outside the game, out=
side the frame Badiou finds the field of exception as the one that concerns=
 politics. I do not agree. I think that it is more challenging to invent no=
rms, not exceptions. The culture of gaming may help to understand this rema=
rk and orient towards this direction new concepts of the political.

Excuse me for delaying my response. I am still considering =
your questions. They are not easy to answer. I try to suggest an urgent con=
structive awareness towards new communal norms; we may enter a phase where =
the political may be again identified to inventions of the normal; it seems=
 that this will be the political task for tomorrow. We used to understand t=
he political as a simple attitude of resisting the hegemonic. The hegemonic=
 structures are less and less visible. Norms cannot anymore be stabilized t=
hrough the function of a state, the state legislative platform seem already=
 more and more old, unpractical and dysfunctional. Most governments cannot =
even act anymore within the field of their laws. Pressed by the banking sys=
tem, the states succumb to demands related to the value of the citizen; the=
 states cannot react anymore to a barbaric &quot;lessez faire&quot;.=A0

From another point of view norms are produced everyday, mos=
tly related to the Internet and its cultures; such Internet norms create al=
ready a multitude of different communal spaces through shared platforms; th=
e platforms function out of the Internet as well, being thus always determi=
ned within the net, within this live archive. A multitude of cluster-like p=
latforms will be controlled consciously or will be constructed as an uncont=
rolled archipelago of platforms. Controlled and uncontrolled formations can=
 here exchange their meanings if we insist on a closer view to them. &quot;=
Common platforms&quot; will not define areas accessible to all. Common plat=
forms at the contrary are meant here as isolated spaces for communities, fu=
nctioning towards a specific goal or into a given protocol. Common platform=
s may be considered as heteronomous structures: one will have to accept the=
ir rules or leave them; they can only be accepted or refused.=A0 One will b=
e able to chose other heteronomies, different rules: a multitude of platfor=
ms can be accessed deliberately. But we cannot refuse the platform system b=
y keeping our position on the platform; and if we leave the platform we wil=
l be soon included to another one. One may chose deliberately among other c=
luster-like systems but - while entering them- we shall immediately be limi=
ted to their own rules. Their complex world will be formed as an accumulati=
on of heterogeneous matter marked by &quot;free choice&quot; between hetero=
nomous structures. Nevertheless one will only accept fully a protocol by re=
sponding to it. There is no in between position in the Internet. Protocols =
will be less and less discussed; the ability to chose among them will be th=
e user&#39;s sole possibility: and choosing was never the synonym to freedo=
m. Freedom will form more and more impossible tasks tomorrow. A user may ha=
ve the possibility to chose: enter the realm of different platforms or stay=
 out of them. This will be the function of freedom tomorrow. We will be abl=
e to accept some protocols or refuse them. Their norms will be formed as ap=
plications or they may have the structure of games. We can already chose am=
ong some of them and participate to their prescribed systems, following the=
 rules they propose or responding to their open questions. Protocols can be=
 created through different procedures but they form always given systems we=
 can only camp into. Protocols make the differences between platforms; but =
the protocols will not be questioned concerning their rationale or concerni=
ng their concepts. The protocols structure communal schemes; they can form =
dystopic systems of control or places of rest; they can also organize creat=
ive procedures or they can structure commodities. They cannot guarantee qua=
lities of the future societies but they are building anyway already the soc=
ieties of tomorrow; the consciousness about this process will be crucial in=
 order to imagine and invent different political agendas.=A0

Some crucial questions will be: how those small scale struc=
tures, seemingly subordinated to the state, or how the big scale structures=
 that overcome the limits of states will function together as a multiple, c=
onscious political system? Without any control of the users -only able to c=
hose among given structures and live quietly inside them- or after a consci=
ous decision or a democratic emancipatory decisive intervention by the peop=
le? How can such an intervention take shape within the given Internet cultu=
re? How does this archipelago of protocols can have a controlled geography =
installed by common decisions and not by &quot;undetermined&quot; factors?<=
/p>

Leaving this formation of the archipelago of independent pr=
otocols to an &quot;open&quot; and &quot;free&quot; procedure drives alread=
y the world towards a tricky situation. Freedom risks to be understood as a=
 technical problem concerning the possibility of participation to given str=
uctures. Another form of the &quot;freedom of the Internet&quot; is needed;=
 it will have to deal with a concept of politics within an archived world; =
it will have to deal with facts. Cluster-like structures produced &quot;spo=
ntaneously&quot; organize a galaxy of predetermined worlds. The time of a u=
ser responding to a system of games, contributing in a system of applicatio=
ns and acting within predetermined platforms forms the political field of t=
omorrow. The western concept of citizen will perish, the concept of identit=
y will look more and more perverse; the era of the user seeks for its const=
itution and its political values.

You insist on my &quot;call to deliberate forming norms&quo=
t;; I feel better to only propose an investigation with examples of norms; =
there is a need to see how those example function. In Athens I proposed it =
some years ago; it would be easy to act towards this research. The state ca=
nnot handle the empty city. A controlled system of legalized occupancies, o=
rganized via Internet, can show new exemplary functions for the ruin of the=
 modern city center.=A0

We would not have to think of social / political negotiatio=
ns necessarily, even if these may also announce a promising field. We may e=
laborate the system of a city as an already bankrupted system that will nev=
er function as it did before. I believe this is the challenge for contempor=
ary cities (Athens is the first). In the cities we can play-test with diffe=
rent proposals by allowing them to occur in some terms and follow their evo=
lution. The state, the municipality or a third public structure will permit=
 and will also stop the function of the controlled occupancies of the empty=
 parts of the cities. Neighborhoods of functions can be formed as sharing s=
ystems. The urban space can be redefined via the Internet when this system =
of open research field makes sense. It will not be installed in order to st=
abilize the most prominent communal practices but in order to always propos=
e new.=A0

=A0I believe that we cannot engage governments to such a pr=
ocedure but in any case the existing authorities will have to accept small =
communal actions inside given frames; we need a local collaboration between=
 governments and the Internet; we need local authorities to use the Interne=
t as part of its constructive power; the aim will be not to destroy complet=
ely the citizen of the past in order to install a community of users; how c=
an a part of the political tradition of the west be saved while we enter th=
is new phase of the post network politics? Formed as protocols and accepted=
 temporarily some examples of controlled heteronomies can be installed and =
constantly observed by a democratic control system. The concept would remin=
d the idea of renting out parts of the city under strict conditions. In thi=
s case it the renting out strategies will concern community structures; the=
 authorities may allow the space to be used temporarily as in a play-testin=
g phase: the play-testing views towards the concretization of a protocol; t=
he permission for a controlled occupancy would be an acceptance of the firs=
t draft of the urban protocol. An urban protocol will have the structure of=
 a game, consisted as a series of rules. The city of Urban Protocols will b=
e a field of research that will use empty space in the cities in order to i=
mplement examples of communal strategies. An archipelago of such urban prot=
ocols could present the vision of a future city.

Gaming seems to be the key structure through which smaller =
or larger invented platforms will be transformed to systems of action; this=
 will be done after the failure of the state system of today as a political=
 dystopia we cannot predict or it will get organized into that may lead to =
different futures. Thank you for your questions, Johannes, they ask for a s=
hape of imagining a new political vigilance concerning the ruins of the con=
temporary city.

All best wishes
Aristide Antonas <div class=3D"gmail_quote">O=
n 24 July 2012 23:09, Johannes Birringer &lt;<a href=3D"m=
ailto:Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk" target=3D"_blank">Johannes.Birringer=
@brunel.ac.uk</a>&gt; wrote: 
<blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1p=
x #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">dear all 
 
how to track back from the psychoanalytic to the political philosophy (or a=
rchitectural philosophy) that Aristide, to my surprise, brought up here in =
the discussion on Monday? 
there may very well be close connections, too, between the two, but it took=
 me a little while to ponder Aristide&#39; commentary on how &quot;the arch=
itectures of gaming are characterized by the limits of the game, the struct=
ures of its interior space and the concepts of its exterior....&quot; and w=
hat he critically made of the distinction between the screenic (if that is =
how he read our discussion via Badiou and B&#39;s divide between facts and =
events) and the action, acting, building, forming interaction etc beyond th=
e screen. We have not really discussed visions of the beyond the screen yet=
, or have we?

I am not well read in Badiou, so cannot reply to a concern with [his] event=
s and facts. But I take it that Aristide worries about cities (and the trou=
bled times in Athens, Greece) and is looking at architectures through the l=
ens of gaming cultures (and games of course would involve screens, desire a=
nd fantasy). Or, proposing that architecture and its discourses are signifi=
cant sites for a public production of knowledge and poliitics?

In terms of a media archaeology (or anarchaeology, as Zielinski called it a=
t one point), on screens and technique, function, and fantasy, it actually =
strikes me as remarkable that architects, after World War II, invited philo=
sophers to address this need for public production, for new building (recon=
struction after a traumatic war and after a period of horrendous fascism), =
and for new terms to discuss dwelling and living =A0(&quot;Education throug=
h Form,&quot; &quot;Man and Space&quot; were some of the titles of the Darm=
stadt Colloquia in thew 50s). =A0I am reading a book on the reception histo=
ry of the Bauhaus (Jeffrey Saletnik/Robin Schuldenfrei, eds., Bauhaus Const=
ruct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism&quot;, London 2009), and=
 one of the chapters mentions how Bloch, Adorno, and Heidegger addressed th=
e architects in the 1950s and debated ideas of ornament and function.

<br>
Curiously =96 =A0and thank you, Scott, for your incisive comments on the ma=
ss ornament in your recent post, and for bringing Nathalie Bookchin&#39;s &=
#39;mass ornament&#39; video to our attention =96=96 =A0I found an intrigui=
ng passage from Adorno commenting on the ornament:<br>

In his speech, &quot;Functionalism Today,&quot; Adorno breaks down the dist=
inction between ornament and function, pushing it through a historical dial=
ectic. Function, he argues, is not only external but is first and foremost =
a matter of immanent, artistic function, within the logic of the work itsel=
f. What was once functional can become, internally, unncessarym superfluous=
, and ornamental, when its logic is no longer necessary to internal coheren=
ce. The functional and the functionless are historically intertwined. Adorn=
o then writes of the ornament as &quot;scars of superseded modes of product=
ion.&quot; =A0the non-functional [external?] is given new credibility as th=
e &quot;sublimation&quot; of function. =A0(cf. Bauhaus Cosntruct, p. 64).<b=
r>

The &quot;democratic drama,&quot; =A0invoked by Scott, =A0and in extension =
the Blochian utopia of a home that we cannot find, a game we cannot play. =
=A0can now indeed be critiqued at being played out at the &quot;limits of c=
ontemporary exhortations for self-performance as self-improvement&quot; - a=
m in =A0understanding you correctly, Scott? =A0 =A0 But is then fantasy (ga=
ming culture, Batman?) our hope for non-useful innervation? =A0I think not,=
 and as I was trying to suggest earlier, I worry

that interactivity is precisely not what we can assume to bring greater par=
ticipatory freedom or provide stronger political affect. 
 
Aristide wrote me saying &quot; Badiou always disregards facts, and privile=
ges events; outside the game, outside the frame is the field of exception a=
nd there is the field of what interests politics for him. I do not agree. I=
 think that the most difficult thing is to form norms, not exceptions. I th=
ink the culture of gaming may help towards this direction.&quot;

How are we to understand your call to deliberate forming norms, are you thi=
nking of social/political negotiations, for example about how we want to li=
ve, how we engage local governments or communitarian projects, how we might=
 screen banks and our security forces who screen us, how we become pirates =
and vote for the Pirate party, how we occupy urban space or share rural spa=
ce, how we debate [?] fantasy archiectures, etc? =A0How is gaming related t=
o politics in your view?

respectfully 
 
Johannes Birringer 
 
 
_______________________________________________ 
empyre forum 
<a href=3D"mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au">empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu=
.au</a> 
<a href=3D"http://www.subtle.net/empyre" target=3D"_blank">http://www.subtl=
e.net/empyre</a> 
</blockquote></div> <div> </div>-- ANTONAS offi=
ce emm. Benaki 118 Exarcheia, Athens 11473 Greece

--e89a8ff252b009433a04c722b8b8--