[-empyre-] Bio-Fascism: Eclipse of the Social /Decline of Politics -- question marks

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all

just to thank the moderators for convening this vigorous debate and exchange of views and experiences on the current time of events, & thanks Gary Hall
for citing the "trap of the event" and "trap of existing discourses."

I am trying to catch up & am way behind, other matters taking precedence; and if you wish to know where my area of confinement is – it's a small village
in rural area of the Saarland, a tiny southwestern state in Germany where I was able to retreat when my workplace closed and I found myself without internet which I only used at the office where I teach. Where I am now I have internet access but it's not vital, more reassuring to me are the small things that work, in a community that calmly appears to work their way around, reasonably adhering to reasonable restriction helping to maintain or regain public health. There are many more observations that could be made, from my limited perspective in the countryside with its old solidarity & family networks  (which differs from initial confusions I sensed in London where I experienced self-isolation differently), but I actually wanted to go back to the initial postings by Melinda Rackham (about the "contagion called fear"), thanking her for her tremendous personal narrative, and then thank Christina McPhee for her painting.

These are very large 'Shapeshifters' - Christina, and they seem a mixture or assemblage of organic forms or elements and the digital, digital refrains,  can you please tell us more about how Sor Juana's writings or compositions inspired you, and whether you felt the solitude of a monastic cell was also implying something gritty/resilient for you (Sor Juana had visitors and a lover, I gathered from "Sor Juana and the Chambered Nautilus", a theatrical staging and reembodiment I saw last year at MECA, Houston), or now seems an even more inspiring premonition? (and not premonition, as Simon Taylor alerted us to, that 'the world is ending' but that community(and art) will not be an option?)?

I was trying to read your "Caminando al tormento" in light of Premesh Lalu refering us to apartheid and less good ideas (thanks for making me look at Season 1 and the performances in Kentridge's & Pahla O.Phala's curation), and the painting by Francis Danby titled *The Opening of the Sixth Seal* (1828)..... 

I could barely make out the scene in the lower depths in the color painting on my screen (all the while also thinking of Soo Yon Lee's fascinating tale about Shincheonji  and the invisibles), then I found the Mezzotint plate with etching version of the painting, and also discovered the curious tale about the exhibit of the work at Rochdale in 1843, when "some miscreant… cut a piece, about 12 inches by 8, out of the centre of it… The slave with uplifted hands, with the prostrate King and warrior in armour, is the part cut out and taken away”....  
I think Premesh wanted to refer us to that painted figure of the slave, downstage center, "erect and fearless, amid the warring elements, shaking his manacles from his hands and tossing his liberated arms to heaven"? --  am I correct, and could you comment on what you thought might have happened to Foucault's "Order"?

Lastly, may I make a very small comment, in the spirit of the above   – and having participated last week in a Third Space Network Crowdcast, organized by Randall Packer & friends, a Washington DC Virtual Town Hall meeting where numerous national & regional relief grants and bottom up lateral support ventures for artists and arts organizations were brought forward/shared, and (unlike Tim Murray suggests) where a vibrant infrastructure of activities and activism seems alive –  a question-comment on Arthur Kroker's posting.  

I was so impressed with the first part, and felt encouraged by the descriptions of an attentive Vancouver Island population, "their widely shared sense of civic responsibility and general care for the community in responding to the virus, and well as by what follows, a vivid, inspiring narrative about the winter protests there: 

>>collective  political struggle during the winter months, many of us were involved in an active alliance between youth and elders involved in indigenous
 resurgence and environmental activists in protesting the armed occupation of indigenous territories by Canadian federal police in support of aggressive pipeline expansion...Like an epochal rip in the fabric of normal time and space, the Legislature Building here was surrounded by a large encampment of indigenous youth with the lighting of  sacred fires, drumming, inspiring speeches, and a field of red dresses symbolizing murdered and missing indigenous women, all of this with a spirit of love, not violence, and very courageous, very determined resolve on the part of indigenous youth and elders>>

What then, on earth, makes you think of, or even want to use panic-generator language, about "the eclipse of the social/the death of politics." 
I found it unnecessary to invoke bio-fascism or that kind of semi biblical "opening of the sixth seal", since surely the same resurgence of solidarity and protest will be assured to step up if elected governments fail to live up to the responsibilities of addressing public health and the common weal (I am reading a story about Mongolia, called "The First and the Last," which i will translate for you later).

with regards, and wishing everyone well

Johannes Birringer

DAP-Lab &
http://interaktionslabor.de