[-empyre-] Mediated Matters and design abjections
Johannes Birringer
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk
Tue Sep 23 05:16:23 EST 2014
hello all
thanks, Oron, for quietly correcting my mistake of the rolled down/rolled up sleeves over the silent ear that cannot hear. And interestingly, both Adam and Oron, in their last posts, somewhat changed a reference I made, from "perverse capitalism" to "pervasive capitalism." I did mean perverse, and I wanted to make that comment in regard to what I assumed was "regenerative biology's'' and connected life-design biotechnology' proximity to cosmetic surgery. I admit
that I lack some of the background; perhaps, Oron, you could please elaborate on the trajectory of what you just hinted at, that allure of designing new in vitro things, matters, products, organs? Where does generative biology play, industrially? and how do symbolic bioart performance cope or situate themselves -- and you mention "Victimless Leather," yes, and I thought of you (and "Evolution Haute Couture", that show in Russia a few years back) again last Friday
when I sat in an auditorium at the London College of Fashion and listened to designers there speculate on the future, mapping the future. The symposium was called "The Body in Digital Fashion," and one speaker, Lynne Murray, just appointed head of the Fashion Digital Studio, cheerfully announced the future is bright, as the "body is the perfect interface between business and consumer".
Now one would want to explore more concretely the design limitations within perverse capitalism, no? Boyan Manchev, from whose "La résistance de la danse" I took the analytic of perverse capitalism [available also in German as "Der Widerstand des Tanzes: GEGEN die VERWANDLUNG des Körpers, der Wahrnehmung und der Gefühle ZU WAREN in einem perversen Kapitalismus" [http://www.corpusweb.net/der-widerstand-des-tanzes.html] of course vigorously critiques the "politics of plasticity", and, as Adam correctly suggests, I think, affects are mutational matters designed into product and interaction. And thus to counter an alluring neoliberal design productivity dealing in pseudo affects and real affects, increasingly perverse fetishisms and life style enhancements, what do we need? surely more than slow space or stillness (of movement/mutation, as Manchev seems to imply with his examples from dance), and misguiding-design? Perhaps current political terrors are coming capitalisms's way, facing its generativity. Other disruptive potentials, if I follow Oron's logic, were to lie in the breeding of strange, useless, unusable monsters and hybrid abjections, impure and unsanitary concrescences? or am I misunderstanding?
regards
Johannes Birringer
[Oron schreibt]
Yes, this silence of the ear, a symbolic object. An ear that is made for the eye; whether it is on a back of a mouse or on Stelarc's arm when the sleeve is rolled over. In both cases the ears call us to imagine "extended operational architectures of bodies", perhaps, as Johannes suggest, not as powerful (for some) as words/lectures that are vocalisation of images made for the ear.
As mentioned, it is hard to imagine anything outside the "pervasive capitalism", in particular when it comes to design, capitalism's not much of a bastard kid, and the servant of neoliberalism. However, would the rule of design be disturbed when it comes to designing living systems? When we choose to embark on pseudo-utilitarian series of works, In-Vitro Meat (Disembodied Cuisine) and In-Vitro Leather (the ironically named Victimless Leather), we thought that by doing it as art works we will be able to bring into focus the disruptive potential of biological design.....
But of interest for me is what happens when the designed product is non-human and the purpose is not medical. The new allure of regenerative biology consumer products is no longer confined to artists who want to be critical or designers who want to be speculative....
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