[-empyre-] Towards a drift in values? (part 3/3) QUESTIONS

Thu Apr 23 05:56:31 AEST 2020

Thank you Maurice for your insights. I was deeply inspired by your two
questions at the end of the post. I think that they both go hand in hand.
However, first, perhaps we need to disentangle  what it means for artists
in particular, but also the public in general, to be considered "viruses of
social consciousness/awareness."

One thing that we have been discussing so far is how the virus has affected
everyone, in particular nations, but also us, as academics in our pedagogy.

Our discussions surrounding the virus have been, understandably, on the
dire side. Indeed it has been difficult for some individuals, primarily
Asians, who have been targeted as being the culprits in spreading the
virus. It has been a difficult time for them, as the spread of hatred,

and discrimination, have also become rampant. With statements like "We Are
Not The Virus" coming to the forefront to stop the discrimination and/or at
least raise awareness of it,

it might seem insensitive for us to characterize people, any one for that
matter as a virus, and to follow such theorization, albeit provocative.

However, as it might be obvious from our discussion, the prevalence of
virus parlance seems ubiquitous in our use of words such as "spreading,"
"infiltrating," "crossing borders," "porosity," "networks," "virality,"
"contagion" among others. With it being part of our language, the virus
lexicon may not always have negative connotations for it is a central part
of our larger digital culture. This is all to say that we can in fact
recuperate the term to think about it in an affirmative manner.

How can we coopt the virus to think about possible futures? How would it
manifest politically?  How do we mobilize ourselves to think about care and
about making a radical political act? In fact,

since it would be despicable to assume once again a sense of normalcy to
the morbid inequality and neoliberal violence that the COVID pandemic has
rendered so clear to us, we have only one option and that is to push
towards a change in mentality and humanity.

In other words, if we can be viruses of social consciousness and awareness,
we must act as viruses act. We must infect, run rampant, infiltrate, cross
networks, borders so that a renewed notion of humanness can transcend our
ideas of the Human to advocate, speak to, all those once considered Others
that have now become the bedrock to our society.

As someone else on the listserve who stated so eloquently, the virus also
means vitality. And as a virus we have the capacity to mobilize,
infiltrate, and most importantly mutate endlessly. There is power in the
collective, in an assembly, in the multitude (as Negri and Hardt) would say.

It is in this spirit that I would like to share a draft of the Virus
Manifesto, which a colleague and friend of mine Sara Garzon wrote in hopes
that this can give us a different perspective as to how to not only
re-narrate the virus epidemic, but also the possibility it has granting us
to institutionalize a much needed culture of care. Since Sara is still
working on this, I thought we could open it up to comments and/or
revisions. This is also a place to work collectively and practice what
Haraway has eloquently called "tentacular thinking."

I am excited to see what conversations can come about in thinking the virus
in a different way.

*Constanza Salazar*

Ph.D. Candidate
Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies
GM08 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
(646) 861-8152
cs2293 at cornell.edu

On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 10:07 PM Maurice Benayoun <
benayoun.maurice at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> When they barter their VoV (value tokens) they contribute to defining
> the relative value of human values: if they need to give PEACE and
> LOVE to get POWER, they clearly state than for them, POWER is more
> than PEACE and LOVE together.
> This is where we generate the Transactional Poetry. The virtual poet
> generates automatically an interpretation of the actual transaction.
> It can be literal: “I give SEX for MONEY” or more elaborate “I was so
> eager to get POWER, I would have given all my PEACE, and even my LOVE”
> …
> When it comes to trading, value collectors want to keep some values
> and give away some other.
> They define their scale of values, and in a way, they define
> themselves as a set of values.
> They can determine a price or offer a token for auction.
> As a real trading platform, charts are displayed showing the values
> ranking. The final price reached at auctions tells us how people
> consider the value of each human value. We know this for a City (where
> the show happened), for a Country, and for a Continent. It becomes
> possible to compare the hierarchy of values in UK, China, USA, France,
> Italy…
> More about Value of Values (VoV): www.v-o-v.io
>
> This brings us back to the present pandemic. Most of us noticed how
> the crisis led the power, and the people, to take positions, to make
> choices and to prioritize values:
> Human Life vs Money
> Elderly vs young
> Shareholders vs workers
> Religion vs Science
> Family vs company
> Solidarity vs individualism
>
> In the Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein
> explains how capitalism and totalitarian power use crises to move the
> lines: more surveillance, less regulations, lower environmental, less
> protection for the poor and the weak. Taking advantage of the criseis
> Trump limits immigration, China consolidate the surveillance/tracking
> system, Hong Kong arrests 15 democrat leaders. May we eventually
> expect a different scenario?
>
> It was rather surprising to hear recently the German President saying:
> "No, this pandemic is not a war. Nations do not oppose other nations
> nor soldiers against other soldiers. It is a test of our humanity,"
> Steinmeier said, notably countering a view that French President
> Emmanuel Macron gave in March. Steinmeier implored Germans to show
> solidarity with others and with Europe. This crisis "brings out the
> best and the worst of people. Let us show others what is best in us,"
> he asked his fellow citizens. (Quoted in Euronews, 11/4/2020).
>
> And, a more moderate position, but even more surprising from a banker:
> « The coronavirus announces "the end of neoliberal capitalism",
> according to the chief economist of the bank Natixis” (…) Patrick
> Artus does not predict a radical upheaval in the existing social
> order. By the end of neoliberal capitalism, he means a change in the
> way capitalism works today. A capitalism that has bet on
> "globalization", "the reduction of the role of the state and the tax
> burden", "privatizations", and "the weakness of social protection" in
> certain countries, such as the United States. (article in the French
> newspaper Marianne, 1/4/2020)
>
> This position contrasts with the one of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump
> and Jair Bolsonaro on the one hand, and China on the other hand.
> Industry and private interests first, and MORE Control and submission
> (China).
>
> In 2016, a research led in 2 universities mentioned the possibility
> that a virus would be at the origin of
> memory/consciousness/intelligence
> (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5884693/).
> Of course, it took something like 500 M year before becoming the
> stable mind of our brilliant leaders. As we can’t wait that long for
> modification of individual human mindset, could we imagine,
> metaphorically, that epidemic of this nature could trigger societal
> mutations in a shorter-term?
>
> I would like to get your feedback on 2 questions raised by these
> considerations:
> 1/ Could we expect a constructive fight for values as a possible
> outcome of the crisis?
> 2/ can the artists be considered as viruses of social
> consciousness/awareness?
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

-- 

*Constanza Salazar*
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of the History of Art and Visual Studies
GM08 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
(646) 861-8152
cs2293 at cornell.edu
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