[-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

In his 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heiddeger says the following: 
"The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of truth, comes to pass.

But what help is it to us to looking into constellation? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power.

… How can this happen? Here and now and in little things that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger…

There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techie…. Once there was a time when the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful was called techie. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was called techne…."

The "extreme danger" Heiddeger is talking about now is President Trump. He is the master "techie" of words and weaver of lies -- basically an artist of evil spirit, of bad faith singing a siren song to the dejected and hating.

The guest contributors this week, Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala, are poets. Sala works inside the entrails of the corporate structure as data analyst and writes his poetry from there. Boghn, along with Kent Johnson, is the co-founder of the poetry blog Dispatches where, in the great anarchist Hakim Bey's (Peter Lamborn Wilson's) words, they want to create an "autonomous zone," a "pirate utopia" of poets within the structure of the internet. Dispatches has organized the first concrete reaction of "poises" in the United States to Trump's election. They are preparing an anthology  that will have I think over 200 poet's/artists' reactions to the election. It will be published the day of Trump's inauguration.

From this point on, I will let Michael and Jerome speak for themselves.

I invite most devoutly every member on the list to contribute to the discussions,

Ciao,
Murat