Friday, March 6, 2015
Postcolonialists Tweaked Out by OOO, Take Note
From my essay for DIA Art Foundation on Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla's about-to-launch Puerto Rican Light:
If you were going to reduce my ontology with one sentence, it would be this one:
Things shimmer without mechanical input
A tiny mirror sends out infrared light, without being pushed around by anything. That is strictly impossible if a thing is a bland ball being manipulated by other bland balls. How things appear—the shimmering—is intrinsic to what they are. Qualities and substances are deeply intertwined, like the twist in a Möbius strip. There are no bland extension lumps decorated with accidents. There are no things waiting to be formatted by us, the humans, the Decider, goo goo ga joob.
How come we keep acting like things are like that? Because we are still retweeting a lot of memes to do with desperately trying to survive, no matter what that looks like, and damn the other lifeforms. It's quite simple. The only reason we act like things are bland lumps waiting for our Where Do You Want to Go Today, Just Do It, I can do anything to anything sadism—which would include colonialism, patriarchy and racism as a matter of fact—is because we are still unconsciously partying like it's 1699, and beyond that, we are partying like it's 9 999 BCE.
If you want to party like it's 1999, let alone 2009, you might want to stop retweeting the desperate survival meme. You might want to start seeing how things shimmer all by themselves, without mechanical input.
*****
Global warming is infrared light trapped by a carbon dioxide shield. We have turned light itself into a toxic substance. Puerto Rican Light shows us what should be obvious: that there are other modalities of light than this globalized photonic violence. Absolute space is really, as postcolonial theory also likes to argue, an imperial product, not an absolute at all. In the same way, the globalized violence of light is not an absolute, just a very, very large, massively distributed yet finite and impermanent being. It can be changed. It can be turned off.
There is no (absolute, box-like) space. There are just places—it's simply that now we know that some places are not human-scale at all. Place is not just a human-flavored candy that we paint on things. Place is a fundamental category of how things are. There is Puerto Rican Light.
If you were going to reduce my ontology with one sentence, it would be this one:
Things shimmer without mechanical input
A tiny mirror sends out infrared light, without being pushed around by anything. That is strictly impossible if a thing is a bland ball being manipulated by other bland balls. How things appear—the shimmering—is intrinsic to what they are. Qualities and substances are deeply intertwined, like the twist in a Möbius strip. There are no bland extension lumps decorated with accidents. There are no things waiting to be formatted by us, the humans, the Decider, goo goo ga joob.
How come we keep acting like things are like that? Because we are still retweeting a lot of memes to do with desperately trying to survive, no matter what that looks like, and damn the other lifeforms. It's quite simple. The only reason we act like things are bland lumps waiting for our Where Do You Want to Go Today, Just Do It, I can do anything to anything sadism—which would include colonialism, patriarchy and racism as a matter of fact—is because we are still unconsciously partying like it's 1699, and beyond that, we are partying like it's 9 999 BCE.
If you want to party like it's 1999, let alone 2009, you might want to stop retweeting the desperate survival meme. You might want to start seeing how things shimmer all by themselves, without mechanical input.
*****
Global warming is infrared light trapped by a carbon dioxide shield. We have turned light itself into a toxic substance. Puerto Rican Light shows us what should be obvious: that there are other modalities of light than this globalized photonic violence. Absolute space is really, as postcolonial theory also likes to argue, an imperial product, not an absolute at all. In the same way, the globalized violence of light is not an absolute, just a very, very large, massively distributed yet finite and impermanent being. It can be changed. It can be turned off.
There is no (absolute, box-like) space. There are just places—it's simply that now we know that some places are not human-scale at all. Place is not just a human-flavored candy that we paint on things. Place is a fundamental category of how things are. There is Puerto Rican Light.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Who Am Paul Johnson
You don't know? How come?! He is in the Saatchi Gallery for example...look...
Paul Johnson - 'There's something about you I am unsure about' - Usher Gallery, Lincoln from Paul Johnson on Vimeo.
The Sunless Sea
Apparently reservations are going like hot cakes for my conversation with Paul Johnson at Focal Point Gallery on March 21. You should totally come. It's going to be amazing. We have very good mojo together! Be prepared for maximum weirdness!
Why Most Theories of Consumerism Suck
...because they are pretty much all based (all--since the 1700s, Marxism included) on a metaphysical want–need distinction.
“First we needed things. Then at some point x we started wanting things. And wanting is bad, because it's twisted in a loop with what it wants. Just watch Roadrunner.”
So I'm here in La Guardia watching CNN after the greatest, greatest day with Björk in NYC. And I'm seeing this jerk (who knows who he is) reiterate that being gay is a choice.
And I'm thinking, this whole thing is based on the metaphysics of want versus need.
The fact that the fight against homophobia has to pitch desire as a need is part of the oppressive reality we still dwell in.
And by need we don't mean “super super super want.” Which is in fact what it is.
Neanderthals would have loved Coke Zero.
(Btw this is a big argument in Dark Ecology.)
“First we needed things. Then at some point x we started wanting things. And wanting is bad, because it's twisted in a loop with what it wants. Just watch Roadrunner.”
So I'm here in La Guardia watching CNN after the greatest, greatest day with Björk in NYC. And I'm seeing this jerk (who knows who he is) reiterate that being gay is a choice.
And I'm thinking, this whole thing is based on the metaphysics of want versus need.
The fact that the fight against homophobia has to pitch desire as a need is part of the oppressive reality we still dwell in.
And by need we don't mean “super super super want.” Which is in fact what it is.
Neanderthals would have loved Coke Zero.
(Btw this is a big argument in Dark Ecology.)
Saturday, February 28, 2015
All Our Yesterdays
...the episode where Spock goes through the Atavachron and has an entire lifetime, and has to be extricated--double, triple grief...Allan Holdsworth thinks of himself sometimes as Spock.
Check the lyrics: “Through the leaves the sunlight streaming / The leaves of light are shining down on me...” wow.
Check the lyrics: “Through the leaves the sunlight streaming / The leaves of light are shining down on me...” wow.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
QE
Nick, quantitative easing just is Keynesianism. (That dare not speak its name.) EVEN the ECB is now a little bit Keynesian. And it's the only reason why we didn't have such a bumpy ride in the US. Because austerity was blunted by longer QE and a (not big enough) stimulus. Poor Europe.
Escape from Mesopotamia (12 000 Years Too Late) (MP3)
My lecture at the architecture, landscape architecture and design conference Atmospheres: Emergence at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, February 6, 2015.
Thanks so much to the people who invited me. In particular, Marcella Eaton: such a nice introduction among many other things!
Thanks so much to the people who invited me. In particular, Marcella Eaton: such a nice introduction among many other things!
On Ecological Touching: Knowing (as) Intimacy (MP3)
My lecture at the University of Manitoba. Thanks so much to my host Dana Medoro!
Friday, February 20, 2015
Blackmail
"Either you are a feminist, critical race theorist, postcolonialist.
"Or you talk about nonhumans.
"With us--or against us?"
With all good wishes as ever,
Critical Inquiry
"Or you talk about nonhumans.
"With us--or against us?"
With all good wishes as ever,
Critical Inquiry
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Germany
“Far be it for us to repeat the mistakes of the past. For the sake of avoiding Keynes for the second time since the 1930s, we are ready for Greece to become overrun by Golden Dawn. We have outsourced fascism this time. So that's okay.”
Discuss.
Discuss.
Rubbing Two Sticks Together
...to create a spark, aka meditating. Haha was just reading Irigaray:
Meditation is relating yourself with yourself, and it is also relating yourself with your world. Through the practice of meditation, you are able to synchronize your world and yourself together. Working with the two eventually produces a spark. It is like rubbing two sticks together or striking a flint against a stone to produce a spark. The spark of light you produce is called compassion. (Chögyam Trungpa)
Meditation is relating yourself with yourself, and it is also relating yourself with your world. Through the practice of meditation, you are able to synchronize your world and yourself together. Working with the two eventually produces a spark. It is like rubbing two sticks together or striking a flint against a stone to produce a spark. The spark of light you produce is called compassion. (Chögyam Trungpa)
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