[-empyre-] AMAZON IS BURNING

Tue Sep 17 14:38:12 AEST 2019

Oliver,

Dark times. The way that has lead to that tragedy is very controversial,
since it involves populist goverments in all Latin America, with certain
social impact but other aspects not so healthy, to say the least, and out
the scope of the debate. Also, an impeachment process in Brazil. But I
don't think it is too radical to say that the controversy about what was
right or wrong in these governments is paralizing mass resistance in
Brazil. There's no party or leadership or set of discourses able to capture
mass participation in the process of resistance. On the other hand,
Bolsonaro's government is violently destroying all social structures in
which resistence usually develops: culture, arts, education, universities
and anything which may resemble any kind of free thinking. Public
universities, post graduate programs, research scholarships are being
explicitly attacked.

You mention psychonalysis. I will make use this space precious freedom to
advance some insights of mine in the current state of things. However, the
state of things demands urgent reaction we don't see, and the conditions
here resemble the kind of apathy mentioned by Geert Lovink in a recent
email, but, still, I think here things are more severe.

I mean that, as I see it, Brazil as an enormous country, full of
sub-cultures and different dialects and peoples, has always been unified by
fictional narratives. The pre-republic stage, when Brazil was a kingdom
governed by an emperor, created a narrative of its grandeur, and the
grandeur of colonizers, which is almost fictional, with heroes that were
not, real monsters in fact. In the XXth century, during the populist Vargas
dictatorship, from 1937-1945, another fake identity, with new fake heroes
like Tiradentes -- who's been hanged and quartered by the Portuguese, in
the XVIIIth century --, whose was created for public opinion resembling
Jesus in the cross, and also creating the known image of Brazil as a
country free of racial conflicts -- also fake,

Later, the military dictatorship (1964-85) also created its official
ufanist version of the country, full of lies, and kept intelectuals and
artists silent through all kind of repressive means. When the dictatorship
was over, once again we haven't been able to face the truth of the horrible
crimes committed by the military governments: a general amnesty has
guaranteed many torturers and murderers to remain free, sometimes
celebrated as heroes in an imaginary war against communism. Ironically,
president Jair Bolsonaro, a radical right-wing captain who had expelled
from the army because he was -- believe me -- planning to set off a bomb at
the barracks to demand better pay -- was also benefited with amnesty, and
was free to become a congressman, and later, surfing in this strange
conservative wave we're experiencing in the globe (also with the help of
Cambridge Analytica election strategies), suddenly became the
representative of all the worse forces in the country, in a time when
progressive forces are under a huge crisis.

This is how I see things.

In terms of resistance strategies, we're trying to react this radical-right
tsunami.I'm sure the strategies will emerge. As for Amazon, I think it is
very importat now to support
Chief Raoni Metuktire of the Kayapó tribe as a candidate for the 2020 Peace
Nobel Prize, both because of his lifetime fight for the fores as for his
lifetime fight for native peoples in Brazil.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/09/14/world/europe/14reuters-brazil-environment-raoni.html?fbclid=IwAR1H-5wdgTTiGN8HTGXa_HBHs_R_qA56--6MWIFFpV3PoWEOFKIv_oI47_Y

That's not much, but that's something.

Best from Brazil

s

On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:52 AM Oliver Kellhammer <okellhammer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Sergio:
>
> Firstly, my heart goes out to you and everyone (human and nonhuman)
> suffering from this cataclysm.
> I am interested too in your description of 'people not being able to
> believe it is true.' I wonder how much shock and disavowal play into the
> global stasis around the climate emergency and the extinction crisis. Real
> disasters are unfolding globally in the biosphere, but also in the
> psychoanalytical space. Yes, there are repressive, ecocidal and genocidal
> regimes but they are aided and abetted by a significant portion of the
> population. The hypnotic powers of populists seem almost a type of dark
> magic. Do you and Fabi and any of the others on the ground there in Brazil
> have any thoughts on that? What is happening here in America seems so
> analogous but I am sure there are major differences too?
>
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 5:15 PM Sergio Basbaum <sbasbaum at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> From Brazil, I reinforce that the situation is really very very bad and
>> it may come up to a point in which there's no return. The government in
>> Brazil is committing every conceivable crime in terms of violations of
>> native people territories and environmental rules. It's been so explicit up
>> to the point of people not being able to believe this is true.
>>
>> Every support and every help spreading this state of things may help us
>> stop this nightmare.
>>
>> best
>> s
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 10:32 AM margaretha haughwout <
>> margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>> I write from Oneida territory in what is currently central New York
>>> within the so-called United States. The Oneida are one of the 5 nations
>>> that comprise the Haudenosaunee confederacy, and this land from which I
>>> write has never been ceded. The apocalypse began here 500 years ago.
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades, global
>>> food/trade politics
>>>
>>> This week's discussants hope to think together about disasters, and
>>> disaster capitalism/ vs. possibilities in ruins: how, as Oliver Kellhammer
>>> puts it, ruins are the porous interface between imagining possible futures
>>> on one hand and disaster capitalism on the other. Here we must think hard
>>> about the relationships between Amazon fires, opportunities for soybean
>>> production as food and feed, and cattle ranching (noting the "soy-cattle
>>> pasture-deforestation dynamic"). We must think hard about what emerges
>>> intentionally and unintentionally from the disturbance. Soybeans (and we
>>> might think of the crop here as cheap energy, nitrogen fixer, endocrine
>>> disruptor, as allergen generator), and cows (as frontier, as cheap energy,
>>> cheap labor, as domesticating 'wilderness')  are intentionally introduced
>>> of course, and they are implicated in the larger dynamics of global
>>> capital, and the processes of what Jason Moore calls "making cheap."
>>> Specifically they are implicated in the trade poitics of the moment:
>>> Trump's trade war with China. Soybeans were the biggest export from the US
>>> to China; new tariffs position Brazil to take over the drop in US shipments.
>>>
>>> ...What other species emerge and travel from the fires? What viruses
>>> hop, what ghosts.
>>>
>>> ...This week, let's also ask, how can we do time and dreams in relation
>>> to food/ trade/ politics. To return, always to Benjamin's 9th Thesis. How
>>> do we stop the storm of progress and tend to the catastrophe? What are the
>>> practices that change time? Fabi Borges will share with us (among other
>>> amazing interstellar work she is doing) indigenous wisdom she has learned
>>> from the Amazon, asking, how do we stop dreaming the same dream? How do we
>>> imagine more worlds than one?
>>>
>>> ...What are the ways that we know? Using interstellar satellite imagery
>>> to know about fires, we use technology that itself emerges from coloniality
>>> and ways of knowing from above, as if there can be a whole, a point of
>>> neutrality not implicated in totalizing regimes of control. How are we
>>> caught up and inadvertently worlding with this technology -- can this
>>> entanglement make more than one world? More than one dream?
>>>
>>> ...I'd love to ask the discussants and invite the readership to imagine
>>> together what a revolt of  unpaid machines and unpaid natures could look
>>> like. What plants can disrupt monocrop cultivation of soybeans? What kin do
>>> soybeans thrive with? What invasive species will act as a scab on the
>>> scorched earth? What technologies can be hijacked for different ends than
>>> global capital and control.
>>>
>>> ...Always, we must recognize who and what worlds are lost. The
>>> indigenous (Munduruku, Huni Kuin, Xingu to name 3 of over 300 in Brazil)
>>> and their kin. The marmosets, the spider monkeys, the tamarin, the jaguars,
>>> the sloths, frogs, lizards, parakeets, mahogany, ironwood, brazil nuts,
>>> cocoa, passiflora vines, orchids, bromeliads....
>>>
>>> A few thoughts to begin.
>>>
>>> Amazon is burning. forest, cows, soybeans, machines, trades, global
>>> food/trade politics
>>>
>>> (Note: originally the title She Lea gave me was: "amazon is burning. on
>>> forest, machines, interspecies, interstellar, plantationocene, cows,
>>> soybeans and global food/trade politics," and after agonizing over it, now
>>> I realize I am somewhat attached to it. Consider the additional terms stars
>>> in a constellation that are usually hard to see)
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> I am honored to have a set of artists and thinkers with me this week to
>>> work on remembering together -- re-member-ing as reassembling a body,
>>> reassembling worlds. A forest.
>>>
>>> I like to mix up the format for -empyre- a little, and so I'm
>>> introducing a *caravan* of creative thinkers, and Shu Lea will add as the
>>> week goes on. This week will need a LOT of voices, to inch toward the
>>> catastrophe, to try and turn away from the future, to deal with NOW. So I
>>> hope the readership will feel very invited to participate. Needed.
>>>
>>> Fabi Borges (BR)
>>> Fabiane M. Borges: Acts at the intersection between clinic, art and
>>> technology. She works as a Psychologist (in person and online) and as an
>>> essayist, having written and organized publications between academic
>>> journals, collections and personal books. She articulates two international
>>> networks/festivals: Technoshamanism (technology & ancestry) and
>>> Intergalactic Commune (art & space sciences). She has a Post-phd in Visual
>>> Arts at EBA / UFRJ - School of Fine Arts, Federal University of Rio de
>>> Janeiro / 2016-2018. She did a Phd in Visual Arts at Goldsmiths University
>>> of London / 2011, and currently she is doing two post-phd: one at ECA / USP
>>> (School of Communication and Arts at the University of São Paulo / 2019)
>>> the other at ETE / INPE (Space Engineering and Technology at the National
>>> Institute for Space Research / 2019), both dedicated to art and science
>>> focused on space projects that also include terrestrial systems and
>>> Philosophy of science. Since July 2019, she organizes SACIE (Subjectivity,
>>> Art and Space Sciences) a research program and artistic residencies in the
>>> Brazilian space program (INPE), where she develops a series of activities
>>> focused on Space Culture. She is the organizer of Extremophilia magazine,
>>> launched in 2018. As her academic background is in Psychology, with a
>>> master's degree and phd in Clinical Psychology (PUC / SP), all her work has
>>> a focus on the production of subjectivity. Acting on the frontier between
>>> Art and Clinic, having developed several immersive programs focused on
>>> dream and imaginary levels, operating with fiction, speculation, creation.
>>> Some of her actions have been supported by institutions such as Goethe
>>> Institute, SESC, MAC, MAST, MAR, Museum of Tomorrow, Valongo Observatory,
>>> Ibirapuera Planetarium, Nucleus of Arts and New Organisms PPGAV / UFRJ -
>>> (Brazil), Center for Contemporary Art (Ecuador), Aarhus University -
>>> Department of Information Studies & Digital Design (Denmark), STWST / Ars
>>> Electronica (Austria), SenseLab Concordia University (Canada), XenoEntities
>>> (Germany), Transmediale (Germany), Grow Tottenham, Si Shang Art Museum
>>> (China), etc. She lives in São Paulo in a collective house that plants
>>> organic, organizes parties, concerts, meetings, workshops, etc (Casa
>>> Japuanga, SP).
>>>
>>> Amanda McDonald Crowley (USA)
>>> Amanda McDonald Crowley is an independent cultural worker and curator.
>>> Amanda’s work has largely been at the intersection of art + technology
>>> working with artists and groups who have a research based practice; and
>>> current research interests include #artfoodtech #growfoodmakeart. Amanda
>>> develops platforms to generate dialogue, bringing together artists with
>>> professionals and amateurs from varied disciplines, and creating space for
>>> audience engagement.  In recent years Amanda has developed projects with
>>> Kulturföreningen Triennal (Malmo), Bronx Arts Alliance, YMPJ (Bronx), New
>>> Media Scotland / Edinburgh Science Festival (Edinburgh), Pixelache
>>> (Helsinki), PointB (Brooklyn), Bemis Center (Omaha). Amanda has curatorial
>>> and advisor roles on Mary Mattingly’s Swale (NYC), Di Mainstone’s Human
>>> Harp (UK), Juanli Carrion’s OSS Project (NYC), Shu Lea Cheang’s CycleX (NY)
>>> and Vibha Galhotra’s S.O.U.L Foundation (Delhi), and in summer 2019 Amanda
>>> curated Amy Khoshbin’s pop up tattoo parlor in a hotel room for Detroit Art
>>> Week in a project that addressed gun violence in America. Amanda has
>>> previously worked with Eyebeam art + technology center NY, Australian
>>> Network for Art and Technology, ISEA2004, Finland, Adelaide Festival 2002
>>> and has done curatorial residencies at Helsinki International Artists
>>> Program (FI), Santa Fe Art Institute (US), Bogliasco Foundation (IT), Sarai
>>> New Media Institute (IN), and Banff Center for the Arts (CA).
>>> publicartaction.net
>>>
>>> Oliver Kellhammer (USA)
>>> Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, writer, and researcher, who seeks,
>>> through his botanical interventions and social art practice, to demonstrate
>>> nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent work has focused
>>> on the psychosocial effects of climate change, decontaminating polluted
>>> soil, reintroducing prehistoric trees to landscapes impacted by industrial
>>> logging, and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently a
>>> lecturer in sustainable systems at Parsons in NYC.
>>>
>>> He has lectured and given artists talks on bio-art, ecological design,
>>> urban ecology and permaculture at universities and cultural institutions
>>> throughout North America and abroad, including New School, NYU, Rensselaer
>>> Polytechnic, OTIS College, University of Oregon, Emily Carr University,
>>> Smith College, University of British Columbia, Bainbridge Graduate
>>> Institute, University of Windsor, Aalto University (Finland) Tohoku
>>> University (Japan).
>>>
>>> Escher Tsai (TW)
>>> Escher Tsai, New Media Art Artist, Producer, Creative Director of
>>> Dimension Plus,
>>> Director of Arts and Technology: Creative Innovation and Counseling
>>> Project, Production supervisor of “3x3x6”Taiwan Exhibition in 58th Venice
>>> Biennale. He devotes himself into open culture and new media art research,
>>> promotion and creation. He was project manager of Acer Digital Art Centre,
>>> planner of many new media arts creation and centre, host of Digital art
>>> exchange platform.
>>>
>>> Established by Escher Tsai and Keith Lam, well-known curator and artist
>>> from Taiwan and Hong Kong, Dimension Plus is a creative team that devotes
>>> themselves to the interactive digital environment. We are constantly been
>>> generating new ideas that deal with digital and analog technologies. We
>>> also dedicate ourselves to digital art education and environment change.
>>> http://dimensionplus.co/,
>>> http://www.dimensionplus.co/en/projects/soybean.html, (see also:
>>> http://www.makery.info/2019/09/10/les-futurs-du-soja-nourrissent-le-debat-en-marge-dars-electronica/?fbclid=IwAR0zdRyzTktIVHHOsXsM1C1JHgec0eg5E7Yvz0g0JO-W0UDRa-AEZtDFRCE
>>> )
>>>
>>> Dan Phiffer (USA)
>>> Dan Phiffer is a software developer and artist who builds web-based
>>> tools for the American Civil Liberties Union. His previous job was working
>>> on an open data gazetteer called Who’s On First (part of the open source
>>> mapping company Mapzen). This Fall he’s teaching a hacktivism course at
>>> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has started organizing with Extinction
>>> Rebellion in the New York Capital Region.
>>>
>>> Dawn Weleski (USA)
>>> Dawn Weleski’s art practice administers a political stress test,
>>> antagonizing routine cultural behavior by re-purposing underground brawls,
>>> revolutionary protests, and political offices as transformative social
>>> stages. Recent projects include The Black Draft (with Justin Strong), a live
>>> mock sports draft event during which ten Black former Pittsburghers,
>>> from all professions, are drafted to return home and City Council
>>> Wrestling, a series of public wrestling matches where citizens, pro-am
>>> wrestlers, and city council members personified their political passions
>>> into wrestling characters. She co-founded and co-directs Conflict Kitchen
>>> (with Jon Rubin), a take-out restaurant that serves cuisine from countries
>>> with which the U.S. government is in conflict, which has been covered by
>>> over 900 international media and news outlets worldwide and was the North
>>> American finalist for the Second Annual International Award for Public Art
>>> in 2015.
>>>
>>> Weleski has exhibited at The Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; the Hammer
>>> Museum, Los Angeles; the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Anyang Public
>>> Art Project, South Korea; The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art,
>>> San Francisco; Project Row Houses, Houston; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo;
>>> Festival Belluard Bollwerk International, Switzerland; The Mattress Factory
>>> Museum, Pittsburgh; Arts House, Melbourne; and 91mQ, Berlin; has been a
>>> resident at The
>>> Headlands Center for the Arts, SOMA Mexico City, and The Atlantic Center
>>> for the Arts; is a 2017 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
>>> Curatorial Fellow.
>>>
>>> Currently, Weleski is NEH Visiting Assistant Professor of Art & Art
>>> History at Colgate University.
>>>
>>> --
>>> beforebefore.net
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
>> -- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)
>> -- Coordenador Pós-Graduação em Música e Imagem (FASM)
>>
>> -- http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum
>> -- http://soundcloud.com/pantharei <https://soundcloud.com/pantharei>
>> -- [:a.cinema:] <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com.br/>
>> ...sai dessa fila, vem pra roda festejar..
>> <http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum/choror-bye-bye>
>> -- a.cinema <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com>
>> -- pantharei_tube
>> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlPdYtxV5bj5uAQwXC-M_Q>
>>
>> B'H'
>>
>> "Do mesmo modo como a percepção da coisa me abre ao ser, realizando a
>> síntese paradoxal de uma infinidade de aspectos perspectivos, a percepção
>> do outro funda a moralidade (...)"
>> Maurice Merleau-Ponty
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.oliverk.org
> twitter: @okellhammer
> mobile: 917-743-0126
> skype: okellhammer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 
-- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
-- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)
-- Coordenador Pós-Graduação em Música e Imagem (FASM)

-- http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum
-- http://soundcloud.com/pantharei <https://soundcloud.com/pantharei>
-- [:a.cinema:] <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com.br/>
...sai dessa fila, vem pra roda festejar..
<http://soundcloud.com/sergiobasbaum/choror-bye-bye>
-- a.cinema <http://acinemaperformance.blogspot.com>
-- pantharei_tube <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlPdYtxV5bj5uAQwXC-M_Q>

B'H'

"Do mesmo modo como a percepção da coisa me abre ao ser, realizando a
síntese paradoxal de uma infinidade de aspectos perspectivos, a percepção
do outro funda a moralidade (...)"
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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