[-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 2]

[FRAUD]

Hi all,

Bleeding into week 3.

@Christina: In brief, the installation is composed of a whaler wreck 
(used to be used to harpoon the whale from), a scale showing the 'value' 
of wood in carbon futures, and documentation of the process of 
collecting wreck wood. This is accompanied by scrolling text tracing a 
genealogy of carbon emission trading through whale oil, the whale oil 
myth, pitch, boat building, colonialism, slavery, witch burning and 
forestry. We hope to put it online soon (txt/doco).

Also >>> Feral MBA <3

Would happily contribute in explorations of feral bond trading and trusts!

A&F


On 15/06/2018 17:28, Christina McPhee wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Dear Audrey and Francisco of FRAUD-
> How great to have the chance to bring this intervention on lichen, the 
> incalculable /-financialization abstractions, and forest culture into 
> the heart of London at Somerset House. Please could you describe the 
> physical attributes of your installation (?) - how you are carrying 
> these ideas into the space ?
> Thanks
>
> Christina
>
> On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 3:09 PM FRAUD <aud at fraud.la 
> <mailto:aud at fraud.la>> wrote:
>
>     ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>     Dear all,
>
>     We are delighted to join the network discussion (and with such
>     great company!).
>     Some little bits to begin.
>
>     *Networks:*
>     In our case, we are interested in the materiality and
>     necropolitics of the network and critical ecologies. Of late, we
>     have been thinking through the finantialisation of nature through
>     emission trading systems and green bonds. We are producing a
>     genealogy of the conception of the forest as a space of carbon
>     flows which has carbon circulation, exchange and storage as a
>     nominal abstractions. Emission trading and green markets are
>     popping up globally (China just started its own), it is predicted
>     to be the biggest trading market by 2020. Carbon Futures is a
>     speculative valuation system that captures and extracts 'natural
>     resources'. We are also inquiring into how these markets are
>     networked and we are investigating what is obfuscated by this
>     abstraction (cultural conflicts, subaltern knowledges and
>     environmental violence). Happy to expand, also we have a show
>     opening Tuesday in London on this topic :)
>     [https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/complex-values].
>     *
>     **The incomputable:*
>     During related research (in the Finnish forests) we were
>     fascinated about the reindeer lichen in East Fennoscandia, a
>     disappearing species that problematises the management of
>     industrial forestry in Finland. Generally lichen species are
>     interesting because they constitute the majority of diversity in
>     the northern forests--there are only 5 tree species, whereas there
>     are thousands of lichens. Being a composite of a algae or
>     cyanobacteria and a fungi, their genetic make-up is more exposed
>     to mutation, hence diversity. They also have an interesting
>     cultural relevance as both a delicacy and a famine food. Lichen
>     presents itself as an non-computer readable element in the
>     forestry modelling calculations. While the efficiency of
>     industrial forests is heralded, validating the move to increase
>     production and cutting down of trees, 'inefficient' old growth
>     forests provide essential elements such as beard moss the source
>     of food for reindeer in winter. The post World War massive clear
>     cutting in the north and subsequent forestry is a scarification
>     leaving Finland with approximately 5% of its old growth forest.
>     Calculations have deemed industrial forests more efficient in
>     terms of carbon sequestration, and consequently enriches the
>     Finnish economy with carbon credits. In addition, forestry growth
>     provides jobs and fuels many by-product economies. We explore
>     these complex entanglements and scales of power. How are forests
>     calculated? Which forms of knowledge are privileged in this
>     discussion? What is deemed an acceptable compromise/sacrifice? How
>     does one begin to discuss the simultaneous cultural livelihood and
>     destruction of a nation?
>
>     Also, something to throw out there, there is an interesting
>     tension between the incomputable, the uncapturable, as a method of
>     resistance and survival, as well as disappearance/extinction from
>     the network.
>
>         "[P]ower is in fact grounded in the very ability to calculate,
>         count, measure, balance and act on these calculations.
>         Inversely to make oneself ungovernable one much make oneself
>         incalculable, immeasurable uncountable" [Eyal Weizman:
>         https://www.e-flux.com/journal/38/61213/665-the-least-of-all-possible-evils/]
>
>
>
>     *A footnote on invasive / native* (mentioned last week):
>     Those definitions in themselves are quite problematic. Usually
>     there is a point in time after which a species' arrival is
>     determined to be invasive. That point is heavily imbued in
>     politics of immigration, colonialism and other ways of viewing the
>     world that have little to do with the plant or animal's 'threat'.
>     Without expanding further here, we did a project exploring this
>     some time ago, Dreaming in tongues/舌頭/langues/ بألسنة/tunger, and
>     Cooking Sections do great work on this subject.
>
>     Look forward to continuing the discussion over the week.
>
>     Audrey & Francisco of FRAUD
>
>
>
>     On 09/06/2018 10:41, Shu Lea Cheang wrote:
>>     dear all
>>
>>     It seems like our week1 focus on Mycelium network is just heating
>>     up, i am sure we will be coming back to reflect on mycelium's
>>     network nature...
>>
>>     Now we enter  rehearsal of a network - [week 2], with a focus on
>>     networked activism and performance.
>>
>>     We are interested in reviewing a glory past/present/future with 
>>     update on strategies of intervention including applications with
>>     social networks and analogue tactics of 'body counts matter".
>>
>>     I introduce the very very special guests for this week2.
>>
>>     with great respect.
>>
>>     sl
>>
>>
>>     John Jordan (UK/France)
>>
>>     Labelled a  "Domestic Extremist" by the police, and “a magician
>>     of rebellion” by the press, John Jordan has spent the last 25
>>     years merging art and activism. Working in various settings from
>>     Museums to squatted social centres, International Theatre
>>     Festivals to climate camps, he Co-founded /Reclaim the Streets/
>>     and the /Clown Army/, Co-edited /We Are Everywhere: the
>>     irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism/" (Verso), and
>>     co-wrote the film/book /Les Sentiers de l’Utopie/ (Editions
>>     Zones,2012). He now co-facilitates the /Laboratory of
>>     Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii)/, with Isabelle Fremeaux.
>>     Infamous for fermenting mass disobedience on bicycles, throwing
>>     snowballs at bankers, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down
>>     a power station, running workshops in postcapitalism and refusing
>>     to be censored by the Tate Modern,/t/he Labofii now lives on the
>>     autonomous zone of la zad of Notre-dame-des-Landes, 'a territory
>>     lost to the republic,' according to the French government. For
>>     more info about the zad see www.zadforever.blog
>>     <http://www.zadforever.blog>
>>
>>
>>
>>     Nitasha Dhillon (India/USA)
>>
>>     Nitasha Dhillon is one of two artists who make up the MTL
>>     Collective, a collaboration joining research and aesthetic,
>>     theory and practice, action and organizing. With Amin Husain as
>>     MTL, they are co-founders of Tidal: Occupy Theory, Occupy
>>     Strategy magazine, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.), the
>>     direct action arm of Gulf Labor Artist Coalition, Strike Debt and
>>     Rolling Jubilee, Direct Action Front for Palestine (DAFP), and
>>     most recently, as MTL+, Decolonize This Place, a movement space
>>     and decolonial formation in New York City that combine
>>     organizing, art, and action around five strands of struggle:
>>     Indigenous Struggle, Black Liberation, Free Palestine, Global
>>     Wage Worker, and De-Gentrification. Nitasha is currently a PhD
>>     candidate at Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo.
>>
>>
>>     Ricardo Dominguez(USA)
>>
>>     Ricardo Dominguezis a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance
>>     Theater (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies
>>     in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico,
>>     in 1998. His recent Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g.
>>     lab project (http://tbt.tome.press/) with Brett Stalbaum, Micha
>>     Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand, the /Transborder
>>     Immigrant Tool/ (a GPS cell phone safety net tool for crossing
>>     the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational
>>     Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact,
>>     Endowment for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy
>>     in Mexico. It also was funded by CALIT2 and the UCSD Center for
>>     the Humanities. The /Transborder Immigrant Tool/ has been
>>     exhibited at the 2010 California Biennial (OCMA), Toronto Free
>>     Gallery, Canada (2011), The Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands (2013),
>>     ZKM, Germany (2013), as well as a number of other national and
>>     international venues. The project was also under investigation by
>>     the US Congress in 2009-2010 and was reviewed by Glenn Beck in
>>     2010 as a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S. border
>>     with its poetry. Dominguez is Associate Professor of Visual Arts
>>     at the University of California, San Diego, a Hellman Fellow, a
>>     Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2018),
>>     and a Rockefeller Arts & Humanities Fellow (2019) and Principal
>>     Investigator at CALIT2/QI, UCSD. He also is co-founder of
>>     *particle group*, with artists Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy
>>     Sara Carroll, whose art project about nano-toxicology entitled
>>     *Particles of Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* has been
>>     presented at the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2007), the San
>>     Diego Museum of Art (2008), Oi Futuro, Brazil (2008), CAL
>>     NanoSystems Institute, UCLA (2009), Medialab-Prado, Madrid
>>     (2009), E-Poetry Festival, Barcelona, Spain (2009), Nanosférica,
>>     NYU (2010), and SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico (2014):
>>     http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/particle-group-intro.
>>
>>
>>     FRAUD(UK)
>>
>>     FRAUDis a /métis/ duo of critical art practitioners. Their
>>     backgrounds include computational culture, post-colonial and
>>     critical feminism, performance, disruptive design, and space
>>     system engineering. They develop art-led inquiries into the
>>     multiple scales of power and governmentality that flow through
>>     physical and cultural landscapes. The duo focuses on critical
>>     ecologies, exploring forms of slow violence and necropolitics
>>     that are embedded in the entanglement of archiving practices and
>>     technical objects, and erasure as a disruptive technology in
>>     knowledge production.
>>
>
>
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