19.7.06

 

Freedom in The City

Critical Walks in The City

Since 2002, PLATFORM has been running periodic and experimental walks around contemporary corporate culture. We have focused specifically on how the world‚s first and most enduring transnational corporation - the East India Company (1600-1858) - has much to teach us. "Loot! Reckoning with the East India Company" takes groups of 20 people around the sites of the Company in London's "Square Mile" (financial district) and East India Docks, making parellels with contemporary ethical issues in transnational corporate business.

PLATFORM has long used the walk as an important form for public space work. We have explored walking as a research tool, as a ritual, as performance, as intervention, as a political tool, and as a tool for sharing insights and information. Our walks have been devised by artists, historians, community activists, psychologists, and environmentalists in collaboration, and as solo ventures.

We are currently exploring walks according to the following themes:

The City as if it had never been built, The City before memory. These walks will explore the land and water underneath The City, juxtaposing the current ‘given’ with its pre-history, thus opening the imagination to its future. The Roman City of Londinium was founded on two wooded hills with a fresh water stream - the Walbrook - running between them, the city's walls surrounded by marshland. What might re-seeing this tell us ? Guided walks along the rivers Walbrook and Fleet form part of this.

The City that erases itself, The City of Forgetting. These walks will explore the questions of visibility and invisibility of the impacts of commerce in The City and have commenced with the walk "Loot - Reckoning with the East India Company", devised by historian Nick Robins and PLATFORM core member Jane Trowell.

The East India Company remains the most powerful corporation the world has ever seen, a precursor to today’s transnational corporations. Starting out as a speculative venture to import spices from the East Indies - modern day Indonesia - the Company grew to fame and fortune by trading with and then conquering and governing India. But visit London today where the Company was headquartered for over 250 years, and little marks its rise and fall, its innovations and its crimes. The walk takes you round this invisible behemoth...and asks in terms of contemporary corporate behaviour, what has changed, and what has remained the same ? Crucially, what can we learn ?

# posted by alvaro @ 2:43 AM 52 comments

8.2.06

 

POR QUE LA PSICOGEOGRAFIA

Hay un espectro que hechiza a Europa, o más bien, al mundo. El espectro es la Psicogeografía. Durante treinta años los dedos estranguladores, que sustentan la Tradición, se han ido retrayendo frente a la erupción de los excitantes y nuevos espacios psicosociales no euclidianos. Rock and Roll, la sociedad permisiva, el nuevo liberalismo que existe en la esfera social; todo esto ha actuado como una cámara de descompresión donde la pre-planeadas desilusiones que genera la sociedad de clases pueden ser productivamente puestas en función de un nuevo diseño, una nueva moda y una revuelta que no atenta contra nada. Centradas sobre la juventud como su fuerza de inocencia, las fuerzas vitales de la imaginación colectiva son dirigidas hacia la subsistencia económica, pues se trata de un recipiente de talentos donde las organizaciones establecidas y las grandes empresas pueden pescar nuevas caras y nuevas ideas.

Sin embargo, de igual manera que el Frente de Liberación Gay devino en moda gay, los Panteras Negras fueron reemplazados por el Islam y las ilusiones de Mao, por la Bolsa de Comercio de Shangai; la integración de un espacio psicosocial no euclideano en las mecánicas post-newtonianas es enfrentado por una oposición anti-euclideana que volverá a encender los fuegos de la revuelta con los fósforos de la metáfora. La Psicogeografía ofrece el tercer polo entre el falso universalismo de la modernidad y la universal virtualidad de la post-modernidad.

La Psicogeografía es universalismo con actitud. Es el universalismo que no busca expresarse mediante palabras, que se mantiene sólo como una sinopsis de lo salvaje. La Psicogeografía investiga la intersección entre el tiempo y el espacio, y así ataca a la ciencia en su punto más debil -la repetición mecánica de resultados. La Psicogeografía es la universalidad de lo específico, de lo particular en su punto de disolución.

La Psicogeografía se sitúa a sí misma por fuera de la democracia. No busca recrear el proceso mediante el cual la experiencia diaria es tamizada para poder ser reproducida como una telenovela, un programa político o un ensayo de doctorado para la facultad. No es una inmersión en la vida privada de la esfera social, sino una invasión a la esfera pública por parte de pasiones que de otra manera se encontrarían confinadas al mundo privatizado del individuo atomizado. Mientras que la democracia busca crear una síntesis de los deseos de los ciudadanos, la Psicogeografía es uno de sus polos antitéticos que se torna consciente del conflicto que existe entre nuestro idealizado rol como ciudadanos y la subjetividad que se deriva de las condiciones materiales de nuestra vida. Al suspender el 'sentido común' mientras nos movemos de un lugar a otro en nuestra vida diaria, podemos redescubrir el aspecto salvaje de la ciudad. Al explorar aquellas áreas en las cuales no tenemos ninguna buena razón para estar, podemos descubrir las razones que nos constriñen a frecuentar solamente ciertas áreas.

http://www.topy.net/kiaosfera/contracultura/zona23/psicogeografia.htm


# posted by alvaro @ 8:48 PM 19 comments
 

Making Critical Public Space

Interview with Krzysztof Wodiczko: Making Critical Public Space
By Elise S. Youn and María J. Prieto

Q: How do different theories of democracy affect your work, and specifically, how do your projects interpret Chantal Mouffe’s idea of the agonistic democracy, in which all members of society have an equal voice?

KW: In the process of doing my own work, I obviously reflect on the theories of Mouffe and others, or at the very least, they help me understand aspects of what I am dealing with. The paradox is that I do not learn from theory what to do, but at the same time, I do not stay away from it. This is because theorists and artists work simultaneously with similar issues.

That said, I think that the many fragments of theory concerning public space, democracy and public art are not necessarily all connected in one unified theory. Through my work, I can see these connections, but they are not systematically organized in my head because I am not a theorist.

When you refer to Chantal Mouffe, yes, I am extremely open to and inspired by some of the things she has said. But there are also many things to which she does not and cannot refer, because she is a theorist rather than a practitioner. Her approach belongs to the domain of political theory, or more specifically, to the theory of democracy. There could also be, I suppose, an ethical-political, as well as a psycho-political approach to democratic theory, although neither one is her primary focus.

I believe that the democratic process and public space cannot even for a moment be created if we do not include all potential speakers and actors in the discourse. We must be inclusive towards the participants – those who are perhaps the most important for agonistic discourse, but who are incapable of contributing to it. Their ability to speak and share their “passions” is incapacitated by the very experiences that they should be communicating. Before they can add their voice to the democratic agon, these actors must again develop their shattered abilities to communicate. They must do so for the sake of their own health and for the health of democracy. The process of unlocking their post-traumatic silence requires not only critical, but also clinical, approaches and attention. Thus, I must risk here injecting (even into Mouffe’s own theory) other concepts and ideas.

In my practical, artistic mind, I try to infuse (hopefully not confuse) the concepts of the agonistic democracy with ethical-political concepts from Foucault and psycho-political ideas from Judith Herman, a trauma theorist and therapist. Calls for “dissensus,” disagreement, passion and an inclusive adversarial discourse that acknowledges and exposes social exclusions (Mouffe) must be injected with a call for an ethics of the self and the Other in “fearless speaking” (Foucault). This would be combined with a call for psychotherapeutic recovery through “reconnection” that emphasizes the role of public truth-telling and testimony (Herman).

When you move into artistic practice, it is all about responding to what each project demands and then going further. In a sense, it is not about making or following theory; it is about creating a continuing practical work that asks new theoretical questions – a certain constellation of questions which may not have necessarily been brought together yet by philosophers and theorists.



Q: In your writings, you have referred to the ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, revisited by Foucault. Parrhesia is the idea of having a responsibility to tell the truth, to confess. You use this concept in your work to encourage those who have been traumatized to speak fearlessly. You have also talked about the importance of “fearless listeners” among those who do not necessarily have the obligation to speak, but who provide the forum within which dialogue can take place. In your experience, when a dialogue is established, is there something greater that gets created?

KW: Since all of the projections have been through monuments, in the context of cultural or art events, there is always something greater there. Even if it is not such a big event, anything that brings people to a monument will be recorded by the media, because somehow television, the press, the radio, and the internet cannot live without these historic, monumental public places. As long as there are a number of people outside looking at a monument, creating a spectacle, the media will be there, guaranteed. This means that maybe I can also use the presence of the media event as an opportunity.

Posted by agglutinations at April 11, 2004 01:38 AM


# posted by alvaro @ 8:20 PM 0 comments
 

::::biker-do-vinil


















O primeiro encontro pós-situacionista de psicogeografia (::::biker-do-vinil) aconteceu no ínicio de agosto de 2003, na praça do japão.. A idéia é ocupar espaços públicos para criar rituais lúdicos novos, afim de celebrar encontros inesperados e reações desconhecidas. Novas variáveis para novas equações.

"As grandes cidades são favoráveis à distração que chamamos de deriva. A deriva é uma técnica do andar sem rumo. Ela se mistura à influência do cenário. Todas as casas são belas. A arquitetura deve se tornar apaixonante. Nós não saberíamos considerar tipos de construção menores. É possível se pensar que as reinvidicações revolucionárias de uma época correspondem à idéia que essa época tem da felicidade. A valorização dos lazeres não é uma brincadeira. Nós insistimos que é preciso se inventar novos jogos". Debord e Fillon (Potlatch, n. 14, novembro 1954)

A Semiótica Polisensorial versus a Cidade Cega. Estar aqui é possível. Você é seu próprio sistema operacional.


# posted by alvaro @ 7:52 PM 0 comments
 

NOMADISMO URBANO















NOMADISMO E DESTERRITORIALIZAÇÃO URBANOS: NOVA YORK
Fábio Duarte (fduarte@usp.br)

As discussões contemporâneas sobre nomadismo partem do ensaio escrito pelos filósofos Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari (1). Eles iniciam o texto com algumas diferenças entre dois jogos de tabuleiro: xadrez e go. No primeiro há regras internas, cada peça/objeto traz consigo todas as possibilidades de movimento, todas suas ações inerentes, com a intenção de se ocupar o maior número de casas com o menor número de peças. O espaço é fechado, forma-se a estrutura de Estado, numa guerra codificada. No go, ao contrário, as peças/objetos são apenas discos com simples ordenações aritméticas em relação as posições que ocupam, com valores equânimes, e as ações são realizadas por outras pessoas (quem as move). O espaço é aberto e valores externos são incorporados ao jogo, numa guerra sem limites de batalha.

Aí está uma das essências do espaço nômade: o espaço da protogeometria, que não é inexata como as coisas e fenômenos sensíveis, mas tampouco exata como essências ideais. A figura do círculo é fixa, exata, ideal; mas a circularidade têm essência fluida, vaga. Não forma uma figura precisa, mas não deixa dúvidas de que uma taça porta a circularidade e uma caixa de sapatos, não. O espaço nômade seria, então, anexato, posto que não preciso, mas rigoroso.

Como enlace ao tema deste ensaio, Deleuze e Guattari propõem que o espaço do xadrez é a polis, e o do go é o nomos. A polis tem uma estrutura definida, e definidora, de objetos, agentes e ações – portanto, um território constituído -; no xadrez tem-se consciência dessa estrutura primeira, e o jogo consiste, a cada movimento das peças, num processo de codificação e decodificação do espaço da polis, sem jamais desconfigurá-lo. No nomos é o espaço impreciso, “esfumaçado”, sem uma estrutura definidora; no jogo go, cada lance da peças consiste num processo de territorialização e desterritorialização desse espaço, sem contudo, jamais atingir-lhe uma codificação plena – pois inexistente.

O espaço das grandes cidades, com seu fluxo incessante de pessoas vindas de diversos lugares, um imbricamento de interesses e ações de campos distintos, a influência de ações de escala local e global, transforma-a num campo rico para análise de manifestações da cultura moderna e contemporânea.

Neste mesmo inverno de 1987, a galeria Clockhouse abrigava a primeira exibição do projetos do Homeless Vehicle, do designer Krzysztof Wodiczko. Parecido com um carrinho de supermercado, construído com placas de alumínio, barras e grades de aço, e plexiglass, a primeira pergunta que suscita é: pra que serve isto? O estranhamento aumenta quando alguns moradores de rua, que haviam participado das discussões e elaborações do projeto, começaram a utilizar o Homeless Vehicle (HV) nas ruas. Mas, afinal, o que faz essa pessoa empurrando esse carrinho nas ruas da cidade?

Num primeiro momento ocupam os espaços públicos, como monumentos, jardins, praças, imediatamente seguido de um policiamento (ou seria um des POLIS ciamento) dessas áreas, excluindo-os, assim, não só das esferas privadas das cidades como também da esfera pública. Os evitados ocupam então túneis de metrô, vãos sob as pontes e viadutos, buracos, e perambulam. Os homeless passam grande parte do dia caminhando. Sem ponto de partida, sem destino, são nômades caminhando pela malha urbana, e, poderíamos dizer, pelos seus interstícios.

A cidade está marcada por territórios e referências físicas – bairros, rios, edifícios, marcos, monumentos, praças – que servem como ordenadores do cotidiano urbano. Os usuários elegem alguns desses elementos, ligados à moradia ou local de trabalho, como referenciais na construção de seus mapas mentais. O homeless perde a casa como referência primeira. Seus mapas mentais são compostos segundo sua permanente circulação. Têm consciência dos pontos espaciais que conformam a cidade, mas os perdem como referências essenciais e afetivas. A única referência para o evitado, moral ou espacial, em última análise, é ele mesmo.

O homelesses assume a figura do nômade nos intestinos das cidades. No deserto, o nômade, sem referências físicas fixas para lhe guiar, caminha num terreno que apaga seus rastros, fazendo com que possa andar numa pequena região, geometricamente, caminhando infinitamente. O nômade, como notam Deleuze e Guattari, é o desterritorializado por excelência, pois ele não deve ser definido pelo que se move, mas justamente pelo que não se move.

Dentro do mesmo espaço ocupado pela polis, mas desagregado dela, o evitado ocupa o nomos, espaço impreciso, “vagabundo”. Faz seus caminhos nos interstícios da cidade não tendo princípios, mas apenas um ponto sendo conseqüência de outro. Nesse sentido, o seu território é construído de maneira coordenativa, não subordinativa, como o espaço codificado da polis.


# posted by alvaro @ 7:43 PM 1 comments

5.2.06

 

Explorion


# posted by alvaro @ 12:15 AM 2 comments

15.1.06

 

Overcoming Tourism

Hakim Bey

Travel, in other words, is meant to induce a certain state of consciousness or «spiritual state» - that of Expansion.

Not warriors, not merchants, and not quite ordinary pilgrims either, the dervishes represent a spiritualization of pure nomadism.

 As Sufism crystallised from the loose spontaneity of early days to an institution with rules and grades, «travel for knowledge» was also regularised and organised. Elaborate handbooks of duties for dervishes were produced which included methods for turning travel into a very specific form of meditation. The whole Sufi «path» itself was symbolised in terms of intentional travel.

 All the different types of sub travel we've described are united by certain shared vital structural forces. One such force might be called a «magical» worldview, a sense of life that rejects the «merely» random for a reality of signs and wonders, of meaningful coincidences and «unveilings». As anyone who's ever tried it will testify, intentional travel immediately opens one up to this «magical» influence.

The wandering dervish however manifests a state more typical of Islam in its most exuberant energies. He indeed seeks Expansion, spiritual joy based on the sheer multiplicity of the divine generosity in material creation. (Ibn Arabi has an amusing «proof» that this world is the best world - for, if it were not, then God would be ungenerous - which is absurd. Q.E.D.) In order to appreciate the multiple waymarks of the Wide Earth precisely as the unfolding of this generosity, the sufi cultivates what might be called the theophanic gaze : - the opening of the «Eye of the Heart» to the experience of certain places, objects people, events as locations of the «shining-through» of divine Light.

The dervish travels, so to speak, both in the material world and in the «World of Imagination» simultaneously. But for the eye of the heart these worlds interpenetrate at certain points. One might say that they mutually reveal or «unveil» each other. Ultimately, they are «one»-and only our state of tranced inattention, our mundane consciousness, prevents us from experiencing this «deep» identity at every moment. The purpose of intentional travel, with its «adventures» and its uprooting of habits, is to shake loose the dervish from all the trance­effects of ordinariness. Travel, in other words, is meant to induce a certain state of consciousness or «spiritual state» - that of Expansion.

Obviously one doesn't need to travel to experience this state. But travel can be used - that is, an art of travel can be acquired - to maximise the chances for attaining such a state. It is a moving meditation, like the Taoist martial arts. The Caravan of Summer moved outward, out of Mecca, to the rich trading lands of Syria and Yemen. Likewise the dervish is «moving out» (it's always «moving day»), heading forth, taking off, on «perpetual holiday» as one poet expressed it, with an open Heart, an attentive eye (and other senses), and a yearning for Meaning, a thirst for knowledge. One must remain alert, since anything might suddenly unveil itself as a sign. This sounds like a kind of «paranoia» - although «metanoia» might be a better term ­ and indeed one finds «madmen» amongst the dervishes, «attracted ones», overpowered by divine influxions, lost in the Light. In the Orient the insane are often cared for and admired as helpless saints, because «mental illness» may sometimes appear as a symptom of too much holiness rather than too little «reason». Hemp's popularity amongst the dervishes can be attributed to its power to induce a kind of intuitive attentiveness which constitutes a controllable insanity: - herbal metanoia. But travel in itself can intoxicate the heart with the beauty of theophanic presence. It's a question of practise - the polishing of the jewel - removal of moss from the rolling stone..

We need a model of cognition that emphasises the «magic» of reciprocity: - to give attention is to receive attention, as if the universe in some mysterious way responds to our cognition with an influx of effortless grace. If we convinced ourselves that attentiveness follows a rule of «synergy» rather than a law of depletion, we might begin to overcome in ourselves the banal mundanity of quotidian inattention, and open ourselves to «higher states.»

In any case, the fact remains that unless we learn to cultivate such states, travel will never amount to more than tourism. And for those of us who are not already adepts at the Zen of travel, the cultivation of these states does indeed demand an initial expenditure of energy. We have inhibitions to repress, hesitations to conquer, habits of introversion or bookishness to break, anxieties to sublimate. Our third­rate stay­at­home consciousness seems safe and cozy compared to the dangers and discomforts of the Road with its eternal novelty, its constant demands on our attention. «Fear of freedom» poisons our unconscious, despite our conscious desire for freedom in travel. The art we're seeking seldom occurs as a natural talent. It must be cultivated ­ practised ­ perfected. We must summon up the will for intentional travel.

 In the 1950's the French Situationists developed a technique for travel which they called the derive, the «drift.» They were disgusted with themselves for never leaving the usual ruts and pathways of their habit­driven lives; they realised they'd never even seen Paris. They began to carry out structureless random expeditions through the city, hiking or sauntering by day, drinking by night, opening up their own tight little world into a terra incognita of slums, suburbs, gardens, and adventures. They became revolutionary versions of Baudelaire's famous flaneur, the idle stroller, the displaced subject of urban capitalism. Their aimless wandering became insurrectionary praxis.

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/tourism.html

# posted by alvaro @ 10:30 PM 3 comments

17.11.05

 

On Going A Journey

On Going A Journey
by William Hazlitt
( 1822)

"...I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same line. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for

A friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet.
Cowper, "Retirement," 741-742

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation..."

http://www.socialfiction.org/Journey_Hazlitt.htm

# posted by alvaro @ 9:03 PM 9 comments

23.8.05

 

Ellen Auerbach Ciudadana del Mundo




















Renate Schottelius fotografiada en la pampa argentina en 1946 por Elen Auerbach, fotografa de vanguardia, profesora de la Bauhaus quien muere el 30 de Agosto de 2004 en Nueva York a la edad de 98 años. "Soy una ciudadana del Mundo irredimible" diria durante una entrevista en 1998.

"Die vielen Wechsel und Veränderungen in meinem Leben, all die Neuanfänge sind für mich jetzt, am Ende meines Lebens, Ausdruck einer Suche nach etwas anderem. Etwas, was hinter den Dingen steht...ich würde es gern noch herausfinden" (Ellen "Pit" Auerbach, Fotografin)

# posted by alvaro @ 1:35 AM 56 comments

12.8.05

 

The Hieroglyphics of Driftwork

The Architectonality of Psychogeographicism or The Hieroglyphics of Driftwork

HAKIM BEY

(in memoriam Guy Debord)

obscure & mysterious grottoes into which they enter, imitating serpents -- spaces of return to an intimacy that "once upon a time" was shattered by memory -- by the simultaneous reiteration & belatedness of memory -- that faculty of human consciousness "closet to the divine". But don't they say that "to forgive is human, to forget is divine" ? In the ritual reiteration or "remembrance" (dhikr) of the sufis one forgets the "self" precisely in order to recall the Self; -- thus to re-member is to erase separation, & this erasure is a species of forgetfulness. (In certain key Islamic buildings like the Alhambra the reiteration of dhikr as calligrammatic text becomes the very definition of built space as mnemonic device or "Memory Palace" -- not ornament but the very basis or crystal-precipitation-principle of architecture.)
"Since we are Jesus Christ," as one of the Brethren of the free Spirit boasted, "the only issue is that what is already perfect in us should be reiterated ..." This process however leads to a paradoxical un-learning -- hence to a loss of fear -- so that one can "let oneself be led by one's natural senses, like a little child". Now, the cave stands for unconsciousness; -- the goal however is not to lose unconsciousness but to recapture that which unconsciousness separated us from, that which consciousness "spoiled". Thus within the dark grotto itself memory must be paradoxically inscribed -- key images are reiterated (literally repeated in some cases by a palimpsestic or incisive over-drawing) -- images which represent out lost intimacy as a pantheon of animals ("good to think with") -- each animal a special joy or "divine" function. Thus the the cave becomes the first intentional architectural space, the intersection of unconsciousness (the bliss of "Nature") & consciousness (memory , reiteration).

# posted by alvaro @ 12:20 AM 0 comments

22.6.05

 

Travesia Nomádica por Bogotá

Interazioni urbane. ON/Bogotà

Marialuisa Palumbo
El andar como práctica estética. Interacciones urbanes è il titolo di un ciclo di seminari tenuti lo scorso febbraio a Bogotà da Francesco Careri, Giorgio D'Ambrosio e Alberto Iacovoni, organizzati dal Grupo Construcción de lo Público del dipartimento di Architettura dell'Università di Los Andes. La città, e le forme della sua investigazione, in rapporto all'esperienza di Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade il tema di fondo dei seminari. Negli appunti che seguono provo a raccontare alcuni dei punti centrali del dibattito ma anche la nostra esperienza di Bogotà: una città cresciuta di ben venti volte negli ultimi cinquant'anni fino a circa 7 milioni di persone, di cui oltre la metà abitanti in zone informali o clandestine. [MLP]

IN VOLO. 37000 piedi sull'oceano atlantico, 1000 km/h. Fuori -52°. Contemplo ipnoticamente, sul piccolo schermo di fronte a me, l'immagine dell'aeroplano che sorvola l'oceano alternata alle informazioni sul volo. Il tempo trascorso dalla partenza, l'altitudine, la velocità e il tiempo para il destino: ciò che resta per terminare il volo, ovvero, il tempo che ci separa da Bogotà, nel cuore della Colombia...
(...)
 Marialuisa Palumbo
malupa@libero.it

PS. Un ringraziamento speciale per Camilo, Tatiana, Diana, Pacio, Margherita, Raul, Catalina, Alessandra, Paolo e Alvaro e tutti quelli che ci hanno così calorosamente accolto a Bogotà!

> STALKER
> OSSERVATORIO NOMADE
> ALVARO MORENO HOFFMANN

http://architettura.supereva.com/sopralluoghi/20050616/index.htm


# posted by alvaro @ 11:32 AM 10 comments

21.6.05

 

The Summer Solstice

The Summer Solstice is also known as: Alban Heflin, Alben Heruin, All-couples day, Feast of Epona, Feast of St. John the Baptist, Feill-Sheathain, Gathering Day, Johannistag, Litha, Midsummer, Sonnwend, Thing-Tide, Vestalia, etc.

Overview

People around the world have observed spiritual and religious seasonal days of celebration during the month of June. Most have been religious holy days which are linked in some way to the summer solstice. On this day, typically JUN-21, the daytime hours are at a maximum in the Northern hemisphere, and night time is at a minimum. It is officially the first day of summer. It is also referred to as Midsummer because it is roughly the middle of the growing season throughout much of Europe.

"Solstice" is derived from two Latin words: "sol" meaning sun, and "sistere," to cause to stand still. This is because, as the summer solstice approaches, the noonday sun rises higher and higher in the sky on each successive day. On the day of the solstice, it rises an imperceptible amount, compared to the day before. In this sense, it "stands still."

(In the southern hemisphere, the summer solstice is celebrated in December, also when the night time is at a minimum and the daytime is at a maximum. We will assume that the reader lives in the Northern hemisphere for the rest of this essay.)

# posted by alvaro @ 1:52 AM 0 comments

21.5.05

 

PHOTOBLOGS

http://thomashawk.com/2004/09/reflections-on-manhattan.html

Raphael Kessler BOLIVIA
http://www.raphaelk.co.uk/web%20pics/Bolivia/Bolivia.htm

# posted by alvaro @ 4:58 AM 0 comments

30.3.05

 

Dibujo con GPS

GPS Drawing [Gallery] [Projects] [Information]
over land - on water - in the air - maps - experiments - contributions

Water on water (back)
Looking south across the choppy English Channel towards France and then around to the north to the Kings Esplanade in Hove. (18 images)







# posted by alvaro @ 11:46 PM 0 comments
 

The Man

The Man








# posted by alvaro @ 11:27 PM 0 comments
 

arquitectura TEMPORAL

Steve's Fotografik Rephlux - Burning Man 2004


# posted by alvaro @ 11:15 PM 0 comments
 

We need to reinvent a public world

America is now wealthier than at any other time in its history, yet all around us and within us a feeling of lurking anomie persists. Like that scratchy sensation at the back of your throat, that shudder down your spine when you feel the flu coming on, and symptoms of this deep unease pervade our society. The spread of materialistic values has contributed to a moral coarsening and a growing cynicism in our country. Within a manipulative world all motives seem venal, all efforts illusory. But at a deeper level, it is the commodifying of imagination itself, the moral passivity, the social isolation, the angst that is generated by living in a solipsistic world of fraudulent satisfactions that is producing the greatest evil.

When children addicted to video games slaughter other children with automatic weapons, and do this in the style of video games, we know that something tragic is occurring. Critics call for better values, as if values were something that could be advertised and sold. And yet to even entertain a moral value one must first be someone in a world beyond one's self. We're suffering the symptoms of narcissistic injury. The vital here and there of spiritual experience is disappearing from our world. It's dissolving into vicarious spectacle. The world, in some nauseating fashion, no longer appears to belong to itself.

We need some deep and drastic therapy to break this spell. We need to reestablish contact with our inner selves. We need to reinvent a public world. We need immediate connection to the natural world of vital need. And this is where my work and the experiment called Burning Man comes in.

Imagine you are put upon a desert plain, a space which is so vast and blank that only your initiative can make of it a place. Imagine it is swept by fearsome winds and scorching temperatures, and only by your effort can you make of it a home. Imagine you're surrounded by thousands of other people, that together you form a city, and that within this teeming city there is nothing that's for sale.

These challenging conditions represent the chief appeal of our utopian experiment. Since its founding in the Nevada desert in 1990, Black Rock City has grown from a hamlet of 80 people into a five square mile civic entity complete with a fire department, two daily newspapers, over 20 radio stations, a department of public works. [whistles] In 1999 its boulevards and avenues were thronged by a population of over 23,000 people. This elaborate urban infrastructure has been described by the London Observer as a, "beautifully zoned tentopolis designed with a precision of which the Renaissance city state idealists would approve".

This city that arises annually and disappears without a trace occurs in an extraordinary setting. The Black Rock desert is an empty void. Not a bird or bush or bump disturb its surface. It is a place that is no place at all apart from what we choose to make of it. Think of it as a vast blank slate, or better yet, think of it as a sort of movie screen upon which every citizen of Black Rock City is encouraged to project some aspect of their inner selves. This novel use of nothingness elicits a superabundant production of spectacle. But it is spectacle with a difference. We have, in fact, reversed the process of spectation by inviting every citizen to create a vision and contribute it to a public environment. We call this process radical self-expression. What makes this self-expression truly radical is its reintegration of the private and personal back into a shared public domain.

The idea was essentially that you would take the elements of mass culture that had been expropriated from real culture and denatured of their meaning and you would appropriate it back and invest it with new meaning by making your own show.

All of this activity forms the immediate background of Burning Man. It forms a whole series of these anti-consumerist utopias that people were trying to create. The theoretician that people were always citing, they talk about him still, was Hakim Bey, who originated the notion of TAZ, the "Temporary Autonomous Zone". This was anarchist theory.


This is the One Tree. This is public art. You can see people interacting with it. It generated society around itself. It put people in a relationship to one another. It dripped water through those branches and people bathed in it. It also generated steam, and, if we look at the next slide, you'll see it sprouted leaves of flame. This was by Dan Das Man, a brilliant artist, and if you come to the event I'm sure you'll see more work by him.

The next slide, please...

This is my baby. Now, we called this the Nebulous Entity because I didn't want people to know what the hell it was. We were very insistent on ambiguity. The Burning Man's famous for our never having attributed meaning to him, and that's done on purpose. He is a blank. His face is literally a blank shoji-like screen, and the idea, of course, is that you have to project your own meaning onto him. You're responsible for the spectacle.

So this was the nebulous entity, and we made it as nebulous as you can imagine. A brilliant artist, Michael Christian, created the sculpture, and Dr. Aaron Wolf Baum designed a system that absorbed ambient sounds from the environment, fractalized them, and then broadcast them back to people. It continuously talked to people in a sort of burbling dialect. You'll notice also that it is mounted on airplane wheels. When we were designing it, one of the artists said, "Let's put a motor in it!" This being America, someone was bound to say that. [laughter] I said, "No. No, this has got to require people's effort. They should expend some calories to make it move! They need to invest themselves in its motion!".

You know, if you take people and scatter them like grains of sugar, or imagine them as ants on a sidewalk in a perfectly blank featureless environment, you'll find that they'll spontaneously begin to create certain kinds of order. It is in our nature. The first thing they'll do is surround any focal point of activity. They'll form circles. You will see this happen naturally. They never form a square, — I've never seen a rectangle — always a circle. Then, if you take that focal point and move it, you'll create a vector, and that forms a parade, a procession.

So the idea in this flat environment was to take advantage of the flat plain and make a work of art that only people could move, a giant plaything, and then permit it to move about, as if animated by its own impulse, and it generated parades and processions throughout the city.

Here, at its base, you see speaking tubes. People could talk into those apertures and it would distort their voice. We painted it white, so it would be reflective, and we didn't move it during daytime, only at night.

Next slide, please.

This is that same mobile platform, stripped down, and outfitted with a new work of art. This is "The Tree of Time". It was created by an artist named Dana Albany, and this is another typically BoHo project. It necessitated this huge network of people cooperating and collaborating with one another. She had people fanned out all over eastern Oregon looking for bones — they met a lot of ranchers in the process, — and I'm not sure how you'd pay for such a service. Only a community would have the sort of resource to accomplish this. They found a lot of cattle bones, generated several unlikely friendships, and it circulated throughout Black Rock City just as the Nebulous had.

Next slide please.

This was created by Rev. Al Ridenour, who I mentioned earlier, and the LA Cacophony Society. It was a perfectly scaled replica of an attraction at Disneyland called "It's A Small World". They renamed it "Small After All World" to avoid prosecution. The original was created in the 50's or 60's, I think, and children of that era were taken there in droves. Al says it frightened him out of his wits.

The premise here is that this recreated version is ruled by Chairman Mouse and his New World Order, and they have come to the desert to create enforced world solidarity. It featured a large cast of "ethnic" characters. A milkmaid from Switzerland and a Swahili chieftain were handcuffed together in front of it. All the while, this incessant theme music played, "It's a small world after all...", the sort of tune that sticks and rankles in your brain. They had German helmets with mouse ears sticking out of them, and they goose-stepped around like storm troopers. At the climactic moment, a beautifully rendered effigy of Death sprang from a concealed spring in the back of the great bell tower, and all hell broke loose. The whole thing just blew up, and that was that. [laughter]

Needless to say this was a ritual with some cathartic intent, especially for denizens of LA. Obviously, it's about anger, about the emotions of those who've been conditioned to experience in a world that has been alienated from them and commodified as a distanced spectacle designed to make them passive, a system that relies on social isolation to achieve its ends.




# posted by alvaro @ 10:15 PM 0 comments
 

Burning Mud


Since 1992 I have spent most Labor Day weekends in the middle of Nevada at the Burning Man Festival. It's hard to describe what a cool event this is. Sorta Fellini meets Road Warrior meets Salvidor Dali at a Greatful Dead concert. Hard to picture? Here's some photos to give you an idea.

http://www152.pair.com/tierney/burning-man/

The Burning Man project has grown from a small group of people gathering spontaneously to a community of over 25,000 people. It is impossible to truly understand the event as it is now without understanding how it has evolved. See the first years page and Burning Man 1986 - 1996 for the legendary story of Burning Man's beginnings and to understand how the event has come to become what it is today. The timeline gives a short overview of what each year looked like. Please also check out the detailed archives for years 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. Within each of these years are descriptions each year's art theme, theme camps, large art installations, as well as maps, journals of our city being built, the newsletters to the community for each year, issues of the Black Rock Gazette (a daily news publication produced and printed on the playa), and clean up reports for each year, including a list of those sites that failed to "leave no trace". These pages help understand the larger scope of the entire experience, from the planning that happens year-round to make each event possible, to the clean-up efforts which take place for sometimes months after the city has disappeared.

# posted by alvaro @ 9:45 PM 8 comments
 

PSYCHOGEO


# posted by alvaro @ 9:37 PM 0 comments

28.3.05

 

Dada Photomontage and net.art Sitemaps


Maps of websites represent them as networks of linked files and provide perspective on the sites and their parts. Some of these maps and perspectives are utterly standardized (those for information retrieval, for example), but some are as much for interpretation as navigation. This piece sketches a semiotics of website imagemaps. Even more than Cubist collage, Dada photomontage (Höch, Hausmann, Schwitters, Grosz/Heartfield) presents very suggestive images composed of signifying fragments ranging from small schematic arrangements to wildernesses of profusion. One sees several patterns (matrix, swirl, cascade) with their associated semantics. We then apply these categories and principles to website imagemaps to see what the imagemap is saying visually about the site and our experience of it.

# posted by alvaro @ 6:55 PM 0 comments

26.3.05

 

ciencia nomada y compagnon gótico

Ciencia Nómada vs. Ciencia Real o Ciencia Imperial

Existe un tipo de ciencia, o un tratamiento de la ciencia, difícilmente clasificable, y cuya historia tampoco es fácil de seguir. No son "técnicas", según la acepción habitual. Tampoco son ciencias en el sentido real o legal establecido por la historia.
  1. Su modelo es hidráulico
  2. Es un modelo de devenir y heterogeneidad
  3. De la línea al flujo, de la turba al turbo
  4. Es un modelo problemático, y ya no teoremático: las figuras solo son consideradas en función de los afectos que se producen en ellas, secciones, ablaciones, adjunciones, proyecciones. Mientras que el teorema es del orden de las razones, el problema es afectivo, e inseparable de las metamorfosis, generaciones y creaciones de la propia ciencia.

Diríase que toda ciencia nómada se desarrolla excéntricamente, y que es muy diferente de las ciencias reales o imperiales. Es mas, esa ciencia nómada no cesa de ser “bloqueada”, inhibida, o prohibida por las exigencias y las condiciones de la ciencia de Estado. Arquímedes, vencido por el Estado romano, deviene un símbolo. Pues las dos ciencias difieren por el modelo de formalización, y la ciencia de Estado no cesa de imponer su forma de soberanía a las invenciones de la ciencia nómada; solo retiene de la ciencia nómada aquello de lo que se puede apropiar, y, con el resto , crea un conjunto de recetas estrechamente limitadas, sin estatuto verdaderamente científico, o simplemente lo reprime y lo prohíbe.

Hay un ritmo mesurado, cadencioso, que remite a la circulación de un río entre sus márgenes o a la forma de un espacio estriado; pero también hay un ritmo sin medida, que remite a la fluxión de un flujo, es decir a la forma en la que un fluido ocupa un espacio liso.

Los trabajos de Anne Querrien permiten localizar dos de esos momentos, uno con la construcción de las catedrales góticas en el siglo XXll, otro con la construcción de los puentes en los siglos XVlll y XIX.

Su compagnon, el monje albañil Garin de Troyes, invoca una lógica operatoria del movimiento que permite al "iniciado" trazar, luego cortar los volúmenes en profundidad en el espacio, y hacer que "el trazo produzca la cifra". No se representa, se engendra y se recorre.

Al plano sobre el suelo del compagnon gótico se opone el plano metrico sobre papel del arquitecto exterior a la obra. Al plan de consistencia o de composición se opone otro plan, que es de organización y de formación. A la talla por corte a escuadra de las piedras se opone la talla por paneles, que implica la construcción de un modelo reproducible. No solo se dira que ya no se necesita un trabajo cualificado: se necesita de un trabajo no cualificado, una descualificación del trabajo.

Habría que oponer dos modelos científicos, como hace Platon en el Timeo. Uno se denominaría Compars y el otro Dispars. El Compars es el modelo legal o legalista adoptado por la ciencia real. La búsqueda de layes consiste en extraer constantes, incluso si estas constantes tan solo son relaciones entre variables (ecuaciones).

Pero el Dispars como elemento de la ciencia nómada remite a material-fuerzas más bien que a materia-forma. Ya no se trata exactamente de extraer constantes a partir de variables, sino de poner las variables en estado de variación continua.

El nómada es un vector de desterritorialización.

El desierto de arena y el de hielo se describen en los mismos terminos: en ellos ningúna línea separa la tierra y el cielo; no existe distancia intermedia, perspectiva ni contorno, la visibilidad es limitada; y sin embargo hay una topología extraordinariamente fina, que no se basa en puntos u objetos, sino en haecceidades, en conjuntos de relaciones (vientos, ondulaciones de la nieve, canto de la arena o chasquido del hielo); es un espacio táctil, o más bien "háptico", y un espacio sonoro, mucho más que visual...

Mil Mesetas / Capitalismo y Esquizofrenia por Gilles Deleuze y Felix Guattari
Capitulo 12: (año 1227) TRATADO DE NOMADOLOGÍA: LA MÁQUINA DE GUERRA


# posted by alvaro @ 2:11 AM 25 comments
 

welcome to the buckymap puzzle!


Un juego de rompecabezas virtual con el mapa dimaxion de Bucky Fuller
To play you'll need Safari, Internet Explorer 5 or higher,
Netscape Navigator 7 or higher, and JavaScript enabled.
A screen-resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or more is recommended.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:32 AM 0 comments
 

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth


Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

2. origins of specialization

"...The topmost Great Pirates’ Leonardos discovered-both in their careful, long-distance
planning and in their anticipatory inventing‹that the grand strategies of sea power made it
experimentally clear that a plurality of ships could usually outmaneuver one ship. So the
Great Pirates’ Leonardos invented navies. Then, of course, they had to control various
resource-supplying mines, forests, and lands with which and upon which to build the ships
and establish the industries essential to building, supplying, and maintaining their navy’s ships.

Then came the grand strategy which said, "divide and conquer." You divide up the other man’s ships in battle or you best him when several of his ships are hauled out on the land
for repairs. They also had a grand strategy of anticipatory divide and conquer. Anticipatory
divide and conquer was much more effective than tardy divide and conquer, since it enabled
those who employed it to surprise the other pirate under conditions unfavorable to the latter, So the great top pirates of the world, realizing that dull people were innocuous and that the only people who could contrive to displace the supreme pirates were the bright ones, set about to apply their grand strategy of anticipatory divide and conquer to solve that situation comprehensively..."

"..

The Great Pirate came into each of the various lands where he either acquired or sold goods profitably and picked the strongest man there to be his local head man. The Pirate’s picked man became the Pirate’s general manager of the local realm. If the Great Pirate’s local strong man in a given land had not already done so, the Great Pirate told him to proclaim himself king. Despite the local head man’s secret subservience to him, the Great Pirate allowed and counted upon his king-stooge to convince his countrymen that he, the local king, was indeed the head man of all men ‹the god-ordained ruler. To guarantee that sovereign claim the Pirates gave their stooge-kings secret lines of supplies which provided everything required to enforce the sovereign claim. The more massively bejeweled the kings gold crown, and the more visible his court and castle, the less visible was his pirate master.

The Great Pirates said to all their lieutenants around the world, "Any time bright young people show up, I’d like to know about it, because we need bright men." So each time the Pirate came into port the local king-ruler would mention that he had some bright, young men whose capabilities and thinking shone out in the community. The Great Pirate would say to the king, "All right, you summon them and deal with them as follows: As each young man is brought forward you say to him, ’Young man, you are very bright. I’m going to assign you to a great history tutor and in due course if you study well and learn enough I’m going to make you my Royal Historian, but you’ve got to pass many examinations by both your teacher and myself.’" And when the next bright boy was brought before him the King was to say, "I’m going to make you my Royal Treasurer," and so forth. Then the Pirate said to the king, "You will finally say to all of them: But each of you must mind your own business or off go your heads. I’m the only one who minds everybody’s business.’ "

And this is the way schools began‹as the royal tutorial schools. You realize, I hope, that I am not being facetious. That is it. This is the beginning of schools and colleges and the beginning of intellectual specialization. Of course, it took great wealth to start schools, to have great teachers, and to house, clothe, feed, and cultivate both teachers and students. Only the Great-Pirate-protected robber-barons and the Pirate-protected and secret intelligence-exploited international religious organizations could afford such scholarship investment. And the development of the bright ones into specialists gave the king very great brain power, and made him and his kingdom the most powerful in the land and thus, secretly and greatly, advantaged his patron Pirate in the world competition with the other Great Pirates.

But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the "expert" is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position. But only the king’s son received the Kingdom-wide scope of training.

However, the big thinking in general of a spherical Earth and celestial navigation was retained exclusively by the Great Pirates, in contradistinction to a four-cornered, flat world concept, with empire and kingdom circumscribed knowledge, constricted to only that which could be learned through localized preoccupations. Knowledge of the world and its resources was enjoyed exclusively by the Great Pirates, as were also the arts of navigation, shipbuilding and handling, and of grand logistical strategies and of nationally-undetectable,therefore effectively deceptive, international exchange media and trade balancing tricks by which the top pirate, as (in gambler’s parlance) "the house," always won..."

http://www.bfi.org/operating_manual.htm#2%20origins%20of%20specialization

# posted by alvaro @ 1:18 AM 1 comments
 

GLOWLAB: The Supernatural Method for Location based Experience

about Glowlab
Glowlab is a Brooklyn-based creative lab exploring psychogeography as it relates to contemporary art. We publish a bi-monthly web-based magazine and produce events, lectures, projects and exhibitions. We're interested in how people are interpreting the idea of psychogeography today, at a time when the paper maps used in early dérives have been supplemented by mobile phones, wi-fi, GPS systems, and advanced field-recording techniques. By presenting new interpretations of traditional psychogeographic methods and practices, Glowlab supports and promotes the collective evolution of the field.

Bienvenidos Psicogeografos del Hemisferio al nuevo Web Site de GLOWLAB!
Welcome to the new Glowlab -- we're now a bi-monthly magazine for psychogeography and contemporary art.
Quick links, in case you're looking for: the Conflux festival
the Xanadu discussion
background

Psychogeography is an open and highly experimental discipline concerned with the ways in which the geographic environment affects emotions and behavior. The Situationists first coined the term psychogeography in the 1950s. They explored the city by engaging in “dérives” or observational drifts with the intention of discovering new perspectives on urban life. Current approaches to psychogeography vary, and include artistic, political, philosophical and scientific work in fields ranging from architecture to street art. Glowlab is particularly interested in the psychogeographic elements of contemporary public-space art, including performance, documentary work, film/video and urban research. We aim to bring together diverse perspectives on emerging methods and practice of psychogeography.

Glowlab was founded in 2002 by Brooklyn artist Christina Ray, and in the first year hosted a group exhibition, an audio/video performance and several walking experiments in New York and Germany. In 2003 we produced the first annual Conflux, a festival and conference in New York dedicated to current artistic and social investigations in psychogeography, held at community art and activist center ABC No Rio. In May 2004, the second annual Conflux took place at PARTICIPANT INC on the Lower East Side. The event grew to include over 50 artists from around the world who engaged in a wide variety of public-space projects, lectures, performances and audio events over the course of four days. In lieu of a 2005 Conflux, we've chosen to focus on our online efforts by rebuilding our website. Glowlab.com is now a web-based magazine for psychogeography, with projects developed by our core contributors in response to a new theme every two months.

Glowlab has worked with organizations including Creative Time, Parsons School of Design, the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Intel’s Berkeley Research Lab. Our projects have been featured extensively online and in publications such as the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Time Out, New York Press, and Utne, PDN and Flash Art magazines.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:06 AM 0 comments
 

Psychogeography with a deck of cards and your own two feet.


Psychogeography can be broadly defined as the study of how physical surroundings affect mood and behavior. Explorers who wander the world as psychogeographers have various motivations — political, artistic, scientific, technological, philosophical, historical. There are those who engage in demographic research, social protest or the documentation of overlooked spaces. Others study patterns of movement and navigation by setting specific parameters for constrained walks. Audio/visual artists and writers who use the landscape as raw material gather objects, data and recordings, and often alter their cities by means of stickers, graffiti, performance or intervention. Some psychogeographers use GPS receivers to locate hidden caches or make drawings in the landscape. High-speed networks and wireless devices are also being used as psychogeographic tools. Areas of related activity include urban planning, cartography, gaming, virtual environments, the creation of mazes and labyrinths and urban code (tagging, warchalking, hobo signs). Finally, there are always those who stroll, drift and wander simply for the pleasure of turning the next corner...

Taking a cue from those working in generative/algorithmic psychogeography, Glowlab recently constructed a method with limited rules that generates diverse results. 'Shuffle' incorporates various sub-genres of psychogeography in a set of instructions printed as a deck of cards. At the start of a Shuffle session, participants (working alone or in groups) are given identical decks of cards stacked in numerical order. Each group shuffles the cards to randomize the order of their walk, starts walking in any direction, turns over the first card and follows the instructions. Examples of the instructions include "Walk in the shadows," "Look for codes or symbols in this area," "Write a slogan on the sidewalk," "Note any surveillance cameras in this area," "Sit on the curb and do nothing," "Eavesdrop," and "Keep walking straight ahead." Cards are 'played' in succession for a set amount of time, after which there is a gathering at a nearby location for refreshments and discussion.

The first Shuffle session took place in Brooklyn on 21 September, 2002. Results, photographs and other documentation can be found here.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:03 AM 0 comments
 

METAPHORIC ROCKS


A Psychogeography of Tourism and Monumentality

From Tourism to Solonism

A review of our disciplinary resources reveals that in fact there are many significant points of overlap between the arts and tourism. Take for example the case of Solon, one of the wisest of the Ancient Greeks, who is said to be both the first theorist and the first tourist. "The Greeks," Wlad Godzich explains,"designated certain individuals to act as legates on certain formal occasions in other city states or in matters of considerable political importance. These individuals bore the title of theoros and collectively constituted a theoria. They were summoned on special occasions to attest the occurrence of some event, to witness its happenstance, and to then verbally certify its having taken place" (Godzich). Others could see and make claims, but these would have merely the status of "perceptions"; only the report of the theoria provided certainty, certifying the attested event such that it could be treated as fact. "What it certified as having been seen could become the object of public discourse."

Travel was an essential element of archaic theoria. Herodotus noted that theoria was the reason for Solon's visit to the ruler of Lydia. "Originally theoria meant seeing the sights, seeing for yourself, and getting a worldview," E. V. Walter comments. "The first theorists were 'tourists'--the wise men who traveled to inspect the obvious world. Solon, the Greek sage whose political reforms around 590 B.C. renewed the city of Athens, is the first 'theorist' in Western history" (Walter). This theoria "did not mean the kind of vision that is restricted to the sense of sight. The term implied a complex but organic mode of active observation--a perceptual system that included asking questions, listening to stories and local myths, and feeling as well as hearing and seeing. It encouraged an open reception to every kind of emotional, cognitive, symbolic, imaginative, and sensory experience." Nor was the travel of a theoros always a response; it could also be a probe. The motive for Solon's visit to Lydia, where he went "to see what could be seen," was "curiosity": "and it was just this great gift of curiosity, and the desire to see all the wonderful things--pyramids, inundations, and so forth--that were to be seen that enabled the Ionians to pick up and turn to their own use such scraps of knowledge as they could come by among the barbarians"(Burnet).

In one of the founding works in the history of method, the Timaeus, Plato tells the story that is the origin of the legend of Atlantis. On his visit to Egypt, Solon learned from an Egyptian priest that the original Athenians had defeated the empire of Atlantis in its attempt to conquer all the Greeks. The story had been lost when Athens was destroyed in the same cataclysm that sunk Atlantis, and it is retold in the Timaeus as part of Plato's effort to understand how to put into practice the principles of a just state outlined in the Republic.

Let us take Solon, then, as the emblem of the FRE consultancy on tourism: in an improved tourism, the tourist will be a theoros,whose collective practice will constitute a theoria. It might be useful to coin a neologism to name this new vacationing--"soloning" --and its practitioners-- "solonists." The solonist is a tourist functioning as "witness."

Tourism as Invention


# posted by alvaro @ 12:53 AM 1 comments
 

dont miss a sec


the panopticon loo

thanks to marisol for sending this my way. on "exhibit" right now in london is the installation "dont miss a sec", a glass-enclosed toilet in the middle of a sidewalk near the thames river. yea...in the middle of the sidewalk. the installation, which was designed by italian-born monica bonvicini, utilizes a special glass that is completely opaque from the exterior, but clear from the interior. it plays on the notion of the public voyeur and takes cues from jeremy benthams original idea for the panopticon, a prison layout where a central glass tower surrounded by the cells would be able to watch the inmates at all times. foucault expounded upon this in his book, "discipline & punish: the birth of the prison". the idea was to strip privacy away from the inmates and to centralize authority in the "omnipotent" glass tower. the glass box, while similar in ideology, is actually a subverted form of benthams intention, where the power of voyeur is given to that which is usually voyeured. while most people would try and peer into the prominent box to see someone pee (sick bastards), its actually the person inside that can watch unobstructed everybody around them.

i think while the exhibit explores interesting notions of the public and private, i wouldnt be one to take a whiz inside the box anytime soon. its not necessarily the privacy issue (im sure its a 100% opaque from the exterior). its the fact that while inside, youre still staring at faces staring back at you thats unsettling. bathroom time for me is zen...undisturbed and sacred. strangers with their faces peering towards you (but not at you) is not zen. and whether they were staring specifically at you or not, your perceived notion while being able to see thru the glass around you is that its still very much public (albeit an internalized publicity). besides, the activities inside the bathroom arent purely a visual one. i hope they sound-proofed that thing...

> the panopticon loo


# posted by alvaro @ 12:41 AM 0 comments
 

Psicoarquitectura de la Seguridad Democratica

Panopticon

Panopticon blueprint by Jeremy Bentham, 1791
Panopticon blueprint by Jeremy Bentham, 1791
Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture!-
Jeremy Bentham[1]

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience".

The architectural figure "incorporates a tower central to an annular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows. The occupants of the cells . . . are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Toward this end, Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also mazelike connections among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray the presence of an observer." [2]

Bentham derived the idea from the plan of a factory designed for easy supervision, itself conceived by his brother Samuel who arrived to it as a solution to the complexities involved in the handling of large numbers of men. Bentham supplemented this principle with the idea of contract management, that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality. The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than that of the prisons of his time, as it required less staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model," Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see [...] that the gaoler will have no salary -- will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched.

Bentham devoted a large part of his time and almost his whole fortune to promote the construction of a prison based on his scheme. After many years and innumerable political and financial difficulties, he eventually obtained a favourable sanction from Parliament for the purchase of a place to erect the prison, but in 1811 and after the King refused to authorize the purchase of the land, the project was finally aborted. In 1813 he was awarded a sum of £23,000 in compensation for his monetary loss which, however, did little to alleviate Bentham's ensuing unhappiness for the miscarriage.

While the design did not come to fruition during Bentham's time, it has been seen as an important development. For instance, the design was invoked by Michel Foucault (in "Discipline and Punish") as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and its pervasive inclination to observe and normalize. Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the army, the school, the hospital and the factory have evolved through history to resemble the Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it.

The Panopticon influenced the design of Pentonville Prison, Armagh Gaol [1] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/restoration/profiles/?6), Eastern State Penitentiary [2] (http://www.easternstate.org/tour/index.html), and several other Victorian prisons.

The Panopticon was likewise later suggested as an "open" hospital architecture: "Hospitals required knowledge of contacts, contagions, proximity and crowding... at the same time to divide space and keep it open, assuring a surveillance which is both global and individualising", 1977 interview (preface to French edition of Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon").

Critics argue this technology and philosophy could be expanded to society as a whole. Many areas have seen an incremental creep of video camera surveillance such as at stoplights and in city downtowns like London where video cameras are used to reduce the risk of terrorism. In totalitarian societies, panopticon systems could lead to oppressive Orwellian conditions.

The Panopticon is also the name given to the citadel of an extraterrestrial race known as the Time Lords, in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who.


# posted by alvaro @ 12:22 AM 7 comments

25.3.05

 

Humbolt-iando


# posted by alvaro @ 11:49 PM 0 comments
 

Humboldt arriba a SantaFe

Apenas se llega al Alto del Roble, se divisa enseguida una llanura cuyo término no
alcanza la vista. Aún cuando uno esté muy preparado para esta escena natural, no se
asombra menos de encontrar a esta altura una planicie tan parecida a las marinas. Uno
ha pasado cuatro días encerrado en desfiladeros en los que a duras penas cabe el
cuerpo de la mula;

Los ojos están acostumbrados a los espesos bosques, precipicios y montes rocosos y
de repente ve ilimitados campos de trigo en la planicie sin árboles. Y exactamente a esa
altura, a la altura de los más altos Pirineos, el Canigou, en esa atmósfera encarecida
han levantado los hombres una gran ciudad... En esta planicie se encontraron por
casualidad, sin acuerdo, 3 Conquistadores en 1535, Federman y Belalcázar desde el sur
y el osado Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada desde el Opón, este último por caminos ahora
desconocidos y que no han vuelto a ser pisados, después de que saliendo de Santa
Marta, había pasado 6 meses sobre barcos de quilla en el Río Magdalena, y ya al querer
abandonar la expedición, fue animado a continuar en el Opón, debido a esta sal gema
que anunciaba la presencia de minas, y por malinterpretadas noticias acerca del Dorado
y de la Laguna de Guatavita. La mayoría de sus acompañantes murieron de hambre en
el camino entre Opón y la elevada planicie de la sábana de Bogotá, ellos se comieron
los cueros sobre los que dormían... En esta planicie disputaron los conquistadores por el
premio del Emperador y sin tener en cuenta la distancia, decidieron buscar en Viena al
Emperador para que zanjara la disputa... Qué ideas, despierta la vista de estas
praderas. Aun cuando estos trigales sonríen amablemente al europeo, sin embargo la
meseta tiene un carácter serio, triste y aún monótono a causa de la falta total de árboles
y la severidad del clima. Al Oriente se divisa una cadena de montañas a cuyos pies está
situada la capital.

En Santa Fé, la expectativa por nuestra llegada fue singularmente excitada. Yo había
escrito desde Turbaco al famoso Mutis que el sólo deseo de verle y de admirar su obra
me habían movido a preferir el camino por Popayán al inmensamente más corto por
Panamá y Guayaquil. Este sacrificio (y en realidad a causa del río Magdalena, no fue
pequeño) movió al Señor Mutis y a sus amigos a movilizar todo para proporcionamos un
recibimiento honroso. Habían situado botes a todo lo largo de todo el camino a partir de
Guaduas, para conocer el día de nuestra llegada. La fiebre de Bonpland y nuestra
permanencia en Guaduas hicieron que Don Pedro Groot y sus amigos nos esperaran
durante 10 días en Facatativá. Tan pronto como en el alto del Roble salimos del bosque
a la ilimitada planicie (las sabanas de Bogotá), ya encontramos carruajes y caballería
para continuar más cómodamente el viaje. De hecho, uno se asombra de encontrar en la
cumbre de una montaña de unas 1870 toesas de altura, coches de Londres con
resortes, y en la ciudad una cantidad de barómetros, termómetros, máquinas de
electrización, en la casa de Mutis telescopios acromáticos, que fueron enviados a
Londres en reparación y los cuales recorrieron felizmente el enorme camino dos veces.
A cuántos accidentes están expuestos todos estos instrumentos en el río Magdalena y
en el camino rocoso de Honda al Roble a veces apenas de 7 pulgadas de amplitud.

# posted by alvaro @ 11:39 PM 0 comments
 

Ciudad de Santa Fé.

La ciudad tiene a lo sumo 30.000 habitantes - queda en la falda de una cordillera,
mientras que hubiera podido buscarse una mejor situación en toda la planicie. Pero los
conquistadores se dejaron guiar por el azar, siguieron especialmente a los indios y
solamente aumentaron las ciudades que ya encontraron. Es una empresa realmente
singular, el establecerse en la cima de una montaña de 1.370 toesas de altura, en una
altura que sobrepasa las crestas de los Pirineos, en una región que aún lleva todas las
huellas de su condición anterior. El extenso suelo los depósitos de sílice redondeado, las
rocas que, como las de Facatativá y Suba, se elevan en la planicie en forma de islas,
todo denuncia la existencia de un lago extinguido. Los pantanos de los alrededores de
Bogotá y Fontibón son también restos de aquel antiguo depósito de agua, y en la época
de lluvia las aguas inundan aún hoy de tal forma la planicie, que sin gran esfuerzo podría
construirse alrededor de Santa Fé un lago mexicano. En un clima menos frío, la cercanía
de estas aguas estancadas (lagunetas de Bogotá) llenas de plantas palustres en
descomposición, sería muy desventajosa. Pero el frío se opone mucho a todo desarrollo
de gases por mucho que la reducida presión de la atmósfera lo promueva, y los
habitantes de Santa Fé sufren menos de fiebres que de ataques reumáticos, hidropesía
y tabardillo (fiebres inflamatorias). En las zonas cálidas (Cartagena, Guaira, Llanos,
aparecen las inflamaciones por la acción del calor del sol. Aquí en el clima frío la causa
parece ser la falta de contrapresión del aire exterior sobre los vasos, la turgencia de los
mismos en el delgado aire de las montañas.

Las más antiguas revoluciones del cuerpo de la tierra pueden siempre ser buscadas en
los mitos religiosos de los pueblos. Aun cuando la incomprensión y la incuria de los
conquistadores españoles nos han conservado poco de la antigüedad india (los monjes
quemaron todo, aborrecieron sin analizar, porque consideraron todo obra del demonio, y
los soldados fundieron todos los ídolos y símbolos), sinembargo aún se puede reconocer
la antigua condición de las Sabanas de Bogotá en lo poco conservado. El Adelantado
Don Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (yo ví a uno de sus descendientes no lejos de
Soacha, andar descalzo detrás de una manada de cerdos), escribió, como Julio Cesar,
sus propios hechos; conté sobre los indios, lo que vio y lo que entendió por medio de
intérpretes. El era un héroe ágil, indómito, joven y vanidoso. Un vestido de terciopelo de
color escarlata, con el que se presentó a mal tiempo ante el Emperador en el luto de la
corte, hizo que el conquistador de un nuevo reino perdiera la gracia del Emperador. Un
joven guerrero tan vanidoso no estaba, pues, capacitado para descifrar los misterios
ricos en símbolos de los indios, y el Obispo de Panamá, Don Lucas Fernández
Piedrahíta, que utilizó el manuscrito de Quesada, estaba aún menos capacitado para
transmitirnos hechos genuinos. Pero sabemos por lo que nos refirieron aquellos
historiadores, que entre los pobladores de las grandes mesetas de las montañas
(Sabanas de Bogotá), entra los Muiscas, Calimas, Panches y Natagaimas, reinaban los
siguientes mitos:

# posted by alvaro @ 11:34 PM 1 comments
 

Mitología Local descrita por von Humboldt


Los pueblos de esta región montañosa vivían bárbaros y salvajes!, sin divisiones de
credo ni políticas, cuando desde la llanura (es decir desde el este) llegó un taumaturgo
de larga barba y los cabellos partidos sobre la frente, descalzo pero con los hombros
cubiertos. Los viejos lo llama Bochica o Nemqueteba (seguramente idéntico con
Nemterqueteba, como Zué y Xué lo son, Acosta 1849, p. 208) o Zué, otros afirman que
estos nombres designan a 3 extranjeros barbados que penetraron a esta región
montañosa en épocas diferentes. Bochica (quizá un símbolo astronómico del sol) trajo
consigo una mujer de gran belleza, a la cual la tradición da así mismo la misteriosa
cantidad de 3 nombres, Chía, Yubecayguaya o Huythaca, la mujer (Pandora?) se le
opuso y sedujo al pueblo a funestos vicios. ¿No son estos símbolos de dos principios,
del intento de hombres salvajes de derivar de dos fuentes lo bueno y lo malo? La mujer
causante de las desgracias logró por medio de sus artes de magia, que el río Funza
creciera omnipotente (por crecimiento del río Sono y Tibitó, afluentes del Funza, Acosta
1848, p. 196) y convirtió las hermosas, entonces habitadas sabanas de Bogotá, en un
lago. Los habitantes se refugiaron en las altas montañas. Mitos de una inundación local,
marea deucalionistica y oguigística, cuya tradición he encontrado por todas partes en El
Orinoco y Erevato y en Río Negro, entre los indios selváticos independientes. Bochica,
encolerizado con la mujer, desterró a la Huythaca de la tierra y la convirtió en la luna,
que apenas nació entonces, y a la que ordenó, en castigo por la desgracia ocasionada, a
aparecer solo de noche. Los indios de Ubaque añaden a esto, que Huythaca se desposó
con el Vaqui o el capitán de los demonios y que convertía a los hombres en animales
feroces. Bastante natural el atribuir a la luna y a una mujer astuta todas las
fantasmagorías nocturnas. Pero Bochica (el principio bondadoso) se compadeció de los
pueblos, golpeó en Canoas sobre las rocas y abrió un camino a las aguas, el lago de
Bogotá se escurrió, el espumante Salto de Tequendama se formó en ese entonces, y la
planicie se volvió habitable como antes. Bochica, el creador del culto al sol, se retiró a un
páramo en Sogamoso donde vivió cinco veces veinte veces veinte a 2.000 años y
después de su muerte se trasladó al cielo.
La región en la cual vivió Bochica durante 2.000 años se llama Iraca, el oeste de Tunja,
la hermosa llanura a lo largo del río Sogamoso. (el nombre de Sogamoso fue inventado
erróneamente por los españoles, porque el ultimo pontífice de Iraca se llamaba
Sogamuxi). Iraca fue la Palestina de los cristianos y la Meca de los mahometanos. Los
indios venían de todas partes en peregrinación a esta ciudad santificada por Bochica y
84
en medio de la guerra los príncipes amparaban a estos peregrinos. Bochica, también
llamado ldacanças, creó, además del culto al sol, una forma de gobierno, en la cual, sin
embargo, el príncipe espiritual no era al mismo tiempo príncipe terrenal, como en Perú y
Schina (?). Puesto que encontró a los cabecillas indígenas (así dice la leyenda) en
pugna, les aconsejó elegir un comandante como jefe de todos, y puesto que todos se
confiaron a su elección, nombró a Huncahua (se deriva del nombre Hunca o Tunja), un
hombre justo querido por todos, quién dominó todas las provincias desde San Juan de
los Llanos hasta Vélez y generalizó la lengua chibcha. El vivió 250 años y sus
descendientes se llamaron Zaques, así como se llamaron Zipas los príncipes de Bogotá
sometidos a él. Además de estos zaques, Bochica encargó a un Sumo Sacerdote y a
cuatro Electores de las naciones de Tobaza o de Firavitoba, dos tribus elegidas, (los
jefes de los indios Gámeza, Busbanca, Pesca y Toza) para que nombraran al Pontífice
de Iraca. Estos Pontífices nombrados por Bochica como sus representantes temporales
tenían poderes milagrosos. Ellos convertían a los hombres en serpientes, dominaban
sobre las tormentas y las lluvias, y la gente so dirigía a ellos con presentes para implorar
la bendición de la divinidad. Así el jefe terrenal era el Zaque hereditario y el sacerdote (el
sacerdote del sol) de Iraca.
La vanidad europea pretende que hombres de Laponia emigraron a Norte-América. Los
mejicanos tenían tradiciones contrapuestas. Quezalcoal, el Amo de las 7 cuevas del
Nautlacas y rey de 7 naciones, las cuales establecieron la Monarquía mejicana,
abandonó México y se dirigió hacia el este para conquistar nuevas regiones y profetizó
que sus descendientes regresarían alguna vez del este para transformar la forma de
gobierno de México. Esto según Montezuma en la primera visita que hiciera a Cortés.
Solís, Historia de Nueva España. Tomo 1 pág. 376.
Uno tiene que sorprenderse de ver como arriban coches ingleses con resortes a esta
planicie montañosa (1.370 toesas de altura), cómo están llenas todas las casas de Santa
Fé de soberbios espejos, barómetros, termómetros. A qué peligros están expuestas
estas cosas en el río y de nuevo en el camino de Honda a Santa Fé con 14 pulgadas de
ancho. Los artículos de vidrio son por consiguiente tan caros que un tubo de barómetro
es comprado aquí por 2 piastras.
Antes de la conquista los indios llamaban Cundinamarca al Reino de Nueva Granada,
parece un nombre nórdico. Laches en la ribera occidental del Sogamoso, única nación
en la que era permitida una clase de pederastia. Como en esta nación guerrera sólo
trabajaban las mujeres, cuando una mujer paría 5 varones uno detrás de otro, ella (en la
12ava. luna de edad del varón) podía educar a uno de los varones como si fuera una
muchacha. Así esta muchacha se llamaba Cusmo, con ropa femenina, e imitando con tal
exactitud las maneras femeninas que el más sutil fisiognomista se habría equivocado.
Los hombres se casaban con estas Cusmos, prefiriéndolas a las mujeres verdaderas, y
apenas después del establecimiento (fundación) de la Real Audiencia en Santa Fé fue
posible obligar a los Cusmos a vestirse como hombres. (El legislador de los Laches
trataba de aumentar la clase de las personas que trabajaban...)
Los Laches creían que los hombres eran convertidos en piedra después de la muerte, y
que las piedras resucitarían nuevamente como hombres. Piedras de Deucalión...
Los conquistadores hallaron a las naciones Mozca, Guane (alrededor de Vélez), Muzo y
Calima, que habitaban todas regiones montañosas frías, vestidos con ropas de algodón.
Los conquistadores no se sorprendieron poco, cuando llegaron a la alta planicie de los
Llanos de Bogotá, y en lugar de hombres desnudos, cómo habían encontrado cerca a
Santa Marta y en la desembocadura de Río Grande, vieron a los indios vestidos con
ropas finamente tejidas. Las ruanas son invención indígena. El frío obligó a los Mozcas a
trabajar, a vestirse. Campos cultivados, maíz, Chenopodium Quinoa, Solanum
85
tuberosum (llamado aquí turmas) habían sido cuidadosamente sembrados en las
montañas, con más cuidado que en las llanuras más cálidas, donde la naturaleza
produce todo por si misma y apenas si se necesita remover la tierra. Cuando uno viaja
de Suba a Zipaquirá ve aún huellas de antiguos campos indígenas cultivados, allí donde
los españoles han dejado todo sin cultivar o para guardar ganado. Si es cierto que antes
de la conquista vivían menos hombres que ahora en el Llano de Bogotá (ahora con
Santa Fé unos 60.000), lo cual es dudoso, entonces aquellos, aún a pesar de su
moderación en la comida, necesitaban más campos de cultivo. A ellos les faltaba el
grano que aquí madura mejor que el maíz, les faltaban las vacas y puesto que ellos
guerreaban eternamente con las naciones vecinas de las regiones más calientes, les
hacía falta la importación, que sólo ahora alimenta a aquellos 60.000 hombres. La
necesidad obliga a trabajar, el frío es necesidad, y la mezcla de zonas frías e
improductivas, planicies de 1.000 toesas de altura en medio de las regiones tropicales
más fructíferas, ha tenido seguramente la mayor influencia sobre la cultura humana en
América. Así como hordas humanas aisladas, expulsadas y obligadas a abandonar las
regiones tropicales, alcanzaron una cultura en las regiones nórdicas, que nunca
hubieran alcanzado en el mundo del trópico que no incita a ninguna clase de trabajo
(todo se ofrece por si mismo); así como estas hordas formadas y acrecentadas en el
norte descubrieron, reencontraron y conquistaron poco a poco su patria primitiva (el
mundo de las palmas), le transmitieron su cultura y sus necesidades, - así mismo creo
yo que se establecieron y se refugiaron en las zonas frías (planicies montañosas) del
mundo tropical familias aisladas, perseguidas por enemigos personales allí se educaron,
se acostumbraron al trabajo y a la vestimenta, habiéndose hecho poderosos
políticamente, descendiendo de las alturas, para conquistar las zonas más calientes que
los rodeaban, impusieron su cultura y sus necesidades a los vecinos más cálidos y
originalmente más inactivos. Tal es la influencia sobre la suerte humana y sobre la
formación humana que tiene la irregularidad de la superficie terrestre; ¡esta es la
influencia moral de las montañas! En el nuevo continente también observamos que
antes de la conquista, en las regiones en las que alternan zonas frías y calientes (Nueva
Granada, México y Perú), los habitantes habían alcanzado una cultura espiritual más
elevada que en las llanuras cálidas y uniformes de Guayana, Caracas, Orinoco, Río
Negro y Marañón, donde la naturaleza produce todo por sí misma voluntariamente, y
donde las montañas

# posted by alvaro @ 11:27 PM 1 comments
 

Humbold sobre la Burundanga

En los caminos de las afueras de Santa Fé en todas partes Borrachera, la Datura
arbórea de flores blancas (en Almaguer descubrimos otra más eficaz, de flores
amarillas). Por la tarde sus flores difunden un exquisito aroma. Los indios preparan una
bebida mágica con la semilla del Borrachero, unas veces para ver arder las Guacas
(túmbas que esconden tesoros de los antepasados indígenas), a veces para narcotizar
una muchacha y violarla. La bebida se llama Tongo. Cuando Quesada llegó a Nemocón
en el Llano de Funza con sus guerreros, los indios dieron maliciosamente a los
españoles la bebida embriagante del Borrachero. Quesada, (así lo dice el mismo en la
Historia de sus expediciones. Véase Piedrahíta, quién utilizó el MSS.), se asustó cuando
vio a todos los suyos, todo el ejército enloquecido y aletargado, sin encontrar la causa. A
la mañana siguiente recuperaron el sentido; sinembargo (agrega el tan ingenioso como
valiente joven en sus MSS), me parece, “como si nos hubiera quedado a todos una
buena porción de locura, pues que otra cosa puede ser sino locura guerrear contra
indios inocentes, y abandonar su patria para robar objetos sobre los cuales no se tiene el
menor derecho”. Una singular confesión en boca de un conquistador. El sacerdote que
daba los oráculos

# posted by alvaro @ 11:25 PM 0 comments
 

Fitogeografia Humboldiana de la Psiquis Euro-Tropical

De Mompós hacia arriba, el paisaje que se disfruta desde el río es más variado, más
verde y agradable. (...) Estos bosques tienen un carácter grandioso, solemne y severo, por la fastuosidad y cantidad de vegetación, por la dimensión del gigantesco Bombax, Anacardio caracolí, Ficus indica...
En Casiquiare los tigres aúllan desde los árboles. Esta es la casa de los animales
de la clase de los monos y de las aves que viven eternamente sobre los árboles y no
conocen el suelo en que éstos están arraigados. Allí donde la materia orgánica
encuentra un espacio allí se extiende (Goethe, Metamorfosis) y estimulada
continuamente por la luz solar y el calor húmedo, sólo condiciones internas, (fruto y flor),
ponen término a esta expansión orgánica. Pero precisamente esta visión de plenitud,
este gigantismo de las formas, esta falta de lugares claros, esta medrosa oscuridad
impenetrable que causa aquellos techos de follaje, trae al espíritu serias y escalofriantes
emociones. A esta región del trópico le falta el amable carácter de nuestros praderas
alemanas, de nuestras campiñas nórdicas. Nosotros anhelamos casi un curso de ideas
más ligero, una naturaleza menos grandiosa, menos solemne y menos rica. De allí la
bienhechora impresión que hace a nuestro ánimo una isla de sauces, una ribera llena de
arbustos de mimosa pequeños y de hojas delicadas, una pradera de hierba cubierta de
palmos y tamarindos aislados. Sobre todo los sauces, una forma nativa tan fielmente
repetida como si fueran sauces de la ribera del Oder o del Sena. La naturaleza que dio a
los hombres un espíritu inquieto y una fiebre intermitente de emigrar sin descanso de
una zona a otra, la naturaleza ha mezclado la forma de las plantas tan amorosamente,
que en cada región, una hoja, una flor, un fruto, recuerdan al extranjero su lejana patria.
Qué agradable es esta remembranza, con cuánto gusto escucha el hombre cada voz de
la naturaleza, se reconoce incluso en los hombres que los agricultores del norte han
dado en todo el sur a los productos desconocidos para ellos. Los europeos han
encontrado en todas partes ciruelas, cerezas, aceitunas, manzanas... El más lejano
parecido de las plantas del trópico con las plantas de la patria ha sido captado por ellos.
El danés ve en todas partes abedules, abetos, sauces, y robles; el español olivos y
algarrobos (Ceratonia silliqua); a cada uno se le aparece en todas partes el cuadro de su
patria ante los ojos. Para llenar la fantasía con sueños agradables, el recién llegado da
el nombre de su ciudad natal al nuevo lugar de su residencia. Ríos, lagos y montañas,
todo el ambiente es saludado con nombres de la patria. Cada colina de Cataluña y de
Vizcaya, cada vega de Andalucía tiene su nombre hermano en ambas Indias. Así los
vástagos de aquellos pueblos, que una vez asombraron al mundo con sus
descubrimientos, españoles y portugueses, tienen la ventaja de encontrar en ambas
Indias no sólo su idioma y conciudadanos, sino también recuerdos de los productos y de
las relaciones locales de su patria.

# posted by alvaro @ 11:14 PM 0 comments
 

Caribbean Images from the Latin American Library's Rare Book Collection


"VUE DE LA MAGDALENA" (COLOMBIA)
From Gaspard Th�odore, comte de Mollien,
Voyage dans la Republique de Colombia, en 1823
Paris, A. Bertrand, 1824.



# posted by alvaro @ 11:00 PM 0 comments
 

Humboldt: Sobre los Bogas y Remeros

Puesto que los bogas apoyan la palanca contra el pecho arriba de las tetillas, todos
tienen allí una terrible callosidad, y no utilizan plastrones de cuero hasta cuando (lo que
es muy raro), les aparecen heridas. Por suerte los hombres tienen poca predisposición al
cáncer del pecho. Los remeros son zambos, pocas veces indios y van desnudos a
excepción de guayuco; de fuerza hercúlea. Es muy pintoresco cuando estas figuras
bronceadas de fuerza atlética, avanzan poderosamente apoyados en la palanca. La
forma como se les hincha cada vez la vena yugular, como chorrean sudor diariamente
durante 18 horas en un clima cálido, ardiente, en la cuenca de un río en el que casi
nunca sopla un airecillo bienhechor que mueva los hojas. A pesar de lo admirable de
esta demostración de fuerza humana, yo hubiera deseado admirarla por menos tiempo.
No es que estos hombres despertaran compasión, pues aunque mal pagados (la comida
y un sueldo de 1 ½ real de plata diarios) son hombres libres, y al tiempo muy insolentes,
indómitos y alegres. Su eterna alegría, su buena nutrición ... todo esto disminuye el
sentimiento de compasión. Pero lo más enojoso es la bárbara, lujuriosa, ululante y
rabiosa gritería, a veces lastimera, a veces jubilosa, otras veces con expresiones
blasfemantes, por medio de las cuales estos hombres buscan desahogar el esfuerzo
muscular. Sobre este punto pueden realizarse aquí observaciones psicológicas no poco
interesantes. Como todo esfuerzo muscular grande descompone más aire en el pulmón,
que durante el reposo. El movimiento muscular es un proceso de oxidación en el que se
produce agua, ácidos... (Ver mi libro sobre los nervios, Parte 2). Para aspirar más aire en
los pulmones, es también necesario expeler más aire viciado. Por eso en el trabajo
pesado son muy naturales los quejidos y la emisión de sonidos. Si el trabajo (esfuerzo)
tiene cierta cadencia regular, (tala, perforación en minería, halar de las velas los
marinos), se añade un factor psicológico. El placer por la cadencia hace que los tonos
sean expresados en una forma más determinada, Hau, Hau... Ham, Ham... Halle, Halle...
Si se agrega todo lo imaginable, el inarticulado tono se convierte en canto y aún diálogo.
Así, mientras más pesado sea el trabajo, más rabiosa será la gritería que harán los
bogas, en la que la cadencia se verá a veces afectada por el capricho.
Ellos comienzan con un silbante has, has, has y terminan con prolijas blasfemias. Sobre
todo, cada arbusto de la orilla que pueden alcanzar con la palanca es saludado en la
forma más descortés, o el Has se convierte bien pronto en un mugiente alboroto, en un
juramento... El estruendo que se oye ininterrumpidamente durante 35 días hasta llegar a
Santa Fé es tan molesto como el pisoteo de los remeros sobre el toldo, que pisan tan
fuertemente que a menudo amenazan traspasarlo. Nuestros perros necesitaron muchos
días para acostumbrarse a este descomunal estruendo. Sus ladridos y sus aullidos
aumentaban el escándalo.

Es sorprendente que este trabajo del río en lugar de afectar la salud, robustece. Todos
los remeros son de una fuerza hercúlea, comen enormemente, siempre están de buen
humor y tiene el pecho arqueado, muy ancho y bien desarrollado. El eterno gritar, y el
respirar profundo durante el apoyarse en los remos, en 20 años de trabajo
ininterrumpido, hace que los pulmones de estos hombres se ensanchen
admirablemente, las costillas se vuelven más ágiles y el esternón más suelto... Yo
opinaría que un anatomista podría diferenciar el aparato respiratorio de un remero del río
Magdalena de cualquier otro individuo. El boga va completamente desnudo, tiene los
pies siempre húmedos (continuamente se lava y se humedece la parte de la cubierta
donde pisan, para sacar la tierra y las ramas que caen de la orilla...) El boga trabaja
desde las 5 de la mañana hasta las 6 de la tarde, de lo cual se descuentan 5/4 de hora
para el desayuno y ½ para el almuerzo. La mayoría pasa la noche sin dormir, en lugares
donde los mosquitos son abundantes y muy venenosos. (Pinto, Chilloa, Tamalameque...)
Puesto que ellos se beben todo el sueldo ganado y pagado por anticipado antes del
inicio del viaje, sólo los más ordenados y los más ahorrativos tienen un toldo, una
especie de talego, o carpa. Se tiende una cuerda de árbol a árbol a 2 pies del suelo. A
esta cuerda está amarrado un saco, que sólo está abierto a todo lo largo por un lado.
Debajo de este saco se acuesta el boga sobre una estera de paja. El borde del saco se
mete en todas partes debajo de la estera; la parte superior del saco se estira dentro con
1 estaca de madera. Una invención muy significativa: el toldo forma un tonel de lienzo.
Pero la mayoría de los bogas yacen desnudos sobre el suelo, a merced de los zancudos
ávidos de sangre.
Texto en PDF
Site con Imagen

# posted by alvaro @ 10:54 PM 0 comments
 

DIARIOS DE HUMBOLDT EN COLOMBIA

Los primeros aventureros (grosera chusma), en lugar de elegir sitios donde se pudieran
ubicar grandes poblaciones, pensando en un comercio futuro, se radicaron en los
grandes caseríos de los indios. Por eso surgieron grandes ciudades donde uno menos lo
espera en Santa Fé, Caracas, sobre los terrenos más accidentados. Los recién llegados
aprendieron a construir las casas de los indios, aprendieron su cocina, a preparar jugos
fermentados, a dormir en hamacas, a sentarse en las sillas curiosamente reclinadas y
bajas, en butacas, a hacer ollas sin torno, a cocinar sin horno, a construir canoas; ellos
aprendieron que quemar los cultivos significa que se puede vivir sin sembrar, pues la
naturaleza produce todo por si misma ... Ellos impidieron con la intolerancia religiosa y
las leyes, el progreso espiritual de la cultura, la espontaneidad del indio, ellos impidieron
que, entre ellos mismos, una antigua y culta sociedad (Inca), hubiera despertado a las
demás de su sopor por medio de guerras, y ellos mismos, los españoles, no
compartieron absolutamente nada de su propia cultura europea, ya de todas maneras
15
reducida, —no introdujeron ni el torno alfarero, ni el arado, ni el horno para quemar la
cerámica.
Puesto que el bosque en Turbaco está por todas partes tan cerca, en tiempo de lluvia se
padece enormemente a causa de los zancudos, lluvia ... el pueblo también está lleno de
culebras, tan grandes que hasta comen gallinas. Todas las noches los murciélagos
provocan un atroz alboroto, porque las culebras trepan al techo de nuestra casa, se
deslizan en el cuarto y persiguen a los murciélagos. En Europa se aterraria uno
seguramente, ante la sola idea, tampoco es aquí raro como en la Provincia de Cumaná,
que de noche caigan culebras del techo en la hamaca o en la cama. Aquí la larga
costumbre familiariza con todos los peligros.
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT EN COLOMBIA
EXTRACTOS DE SUS DIARIOS [pdf]

# posted by alvaro @ 10:45 PM 1 comments
 

LANDSAT PROJECT

Banda Aceh - Tsunami Before and After

Landsat Image Gallery - Banda Aceh - Tsunami Before and After
More Information

Mount St. Helens, Washington

Landsat Image Gallery - Mount St. Helens, Washington
More Information

Byrd Glacier, Antarctica

Landsat Image Gallery - Byrd Glacier, Antarctica

Featured Image
Main Gallery
Change Over Time
Interactive Map
Earth as Art

# posted by alvaro @ 10:31 PM 0 comments
 

EROS Data Center

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center (EDC)
EDC Image Gallery Collections
A special collection of images that record events of historic significance, beautiful sights or images that stir the imagination. Earth As Art Collection

Earth As Art Thumbnail
Earth As Art
Earth As Art 2 Thumbnail
Earth As Art 2
States-Landsat 7 Thumbnail
States-Landsat 7
States-NED Shaded Relief Thumbnail
States-NED Shaded Relief

http://edcw2ks15.cr.usgs.gov:8090/imagegallery/silverstream/pages/pgCollectionDisplay.html

The Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center (EDC)

Data Availability

Data searching and ordering may be performed through a variety of information management systems and interfaces, including:

USGS Global Visualization Viewer

Earth Explorer

Photo Finder

Map Finder

EOS Data Gateway


# posted by alvaro @ 10:20 PM 0 comments
 

Wooster Collective : A Celebration of Street Art


COLLECTIVE \Col*lect"ive\: done by or characteristic of individuals acting together; "a joint identity"; "the collective mind"; members of a cooperative enterprise
WOOSTER: a street in Soho, New York
http://www.woostercollective.com/

On June 12th, an amazing artist and architect named Doug Michels, died tragically while hiking near Sydney Australia. He was only 59. Michels was the founding member of Ant Farm, a radical art and design collective. Ant Farm was best known for "Cadillac Ranch", an installation of 10 old Cadillac cars buried nose first into the dirt of Amarillo, Texas. He was also known for creating "Media Burn" a performance art piece where he drove his car (again, a Cadillac) through a pyramid of tv sets. With his collaborator Chip Lord, Michels truly pushed the envelope of counterculture art. He was a true visionary and an inspiration for many artists around the world. We're saddened to hear that he has died.
http://www.woostercollective.com/2003_06_15_newsarchive.html#200437544

# posted by alvaro @ 1:11 AM 0 comments
 

Santiago psygeo: "individuels". dans le rue

grupo de psicogeógrafos derivando por la
ciudad de Santiago de Chile

buscando situaciones mediante la deriva y lo vagabundo
la aleatoriedad de los recorridos nos permiten descubrir nuevas situaciones
estamos reuniendo información para crear una base de datos con derivas realizadas en la ciudad de Santiago, con el objetivo de realizar un levantamiento de las situaciones registradas. Esto se traduce en el plano psicogeográfico del gran Santiago, el cual está en creación
estamos apoyando la creación de nuevos grupos de deriva, para completar nuestra base de información y compartir experiencias.
hemos aparecido en la página de glowlab, como un link recomendado, a nivel internacional [junio 2004]



# posted by alvaro @ 1:06 AM 1 comments
 

The Place Matters

The Place Matters mission is to foster the conservation of New York City's historically and culturally significant places. These are places that hold memories and anchor traditions for individuals and communities, and that help tell the history of the city as a whole. We are convinced that such places promote the well being of New York's many communities in ways that too often go unrecognized.

Our process begins with surveying New Yorkers to learn about the places they care about. We follow up with educational programs and advocacy to promote and protect these places and others like them.

* Place Matters conducts a citywide survey called the Census of Places that Matter to discover places that evoke associations with history, memory, and tradition. Hundreds of New Yorkers have nominated places to the Census. Amounting to a new knowledge bank, the Census identifies places of public significance and helps us understand how and why "place" is meaningful to people. Explore the Census.
http://www.placematters.net/flash/home.htm


# posted by alvaro @ 12:56 AM 0 comments
 

GLOWLAB intro

GLOWLAB's new site

Glowlab_logo_125px_1
We're excited to announce that beginning in mid-March, Glowlab will be published in the form of a bi-monthly web-based magazine for psychogeographic projects. Our regular members and guest contributors are getting set to bring you fresh psychogeographic adventures in the form of performances, walks, interventions, multimedia/tech-based work and more. Project documentation and related articles will be published in every issue, and we'll offer a running calendar of offline events for public participation. Each issue's publication will be accompanied by a Glowlounge event in NYC where contributors will present their projects in an informal setting. The Glowlab website will also include a news blog and an online forum to discuss psychogeography.

# posted by alvaro @ 12:47 AM 0 comments
 

Culture Jamming

Culture Jamming - a War on Brands

The Adbusters Media Foundation (AMF) describe themselves and their goals like this; "We are a global network of artists, writers, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to launch the new social activist movement of the information age. Our goal is to galvanize resistance against those who would destroy the environment, pollute our minds and diminish our lives. .. We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons."(14) AMF publishes the quarterly magazine "Adbusters" and the website www.adbusters.org, as well as offer its services through the advertising agency Powershift, which claims only to take on campaigns for organisations with goals corresponding to AMFs own. Kalle Lasn runs AMF, and has recently published "Culture Jam" to explain the movement and give instructions in how to live an uncommercialised life.

The Adbusters magazine is like an exquisitely wrapped piece of barbed wire. Thick paper, stylish visual layout; like the jammed advertisements it resembles something it's not - a glossy fashion or lifestyle magazine. Open it, and the barbed wire's sting is found in articles that seek to expose the underlying tactics and tools used when promoting brands or expound on brands' dangerous influence. The just as stylish website contains, apart from Adbusters magazine excerpts, information on AMF campaigns, such as the annual TV-turnoff week, and coverage on other culture jamming activities.

Inspiration - a Line of Revolutionaries

Lasn cites the French avant-garde group The Situationists as his inspiration. As a movement existing in the 50s and 60s, it was critical to the influence of the modern media culture, or what they called the spectacle of modern life. This omnipresent phenomenon, everything from billboards to art exhibitions to TV, refused human beings the experience of the authentic(15). It had kidnapped our real lives. Kalle Lasn of The Media Foundation, a Canadian-based culture jamming organisation, uses this line of rhetoric in justifying an attack on commercial brands when he says: "Culture jamming is, at root, just a metaphor for stopping the flow of spectacle long enough to adjust your set." or "..breaking the syntax, and replacing it with a new one. The new syntax carries the instructions for a whole new way of being in the world."(16)

The final goal is a cultural revolution, or in Lasn's words, "an about-face in our values, lifestyles and institutional agendas. A reinvention of the American dream."(17) He sees the current culture jamming movement as part of a "revolutionary continuum that includes, .. , early punk rockers, the 60s hippie movement, ..the Situationists.., whose chief aim was to challenge the prevailing ethos in a way that was so primal and heartfelt it could only be true."(18) The revolution depicted by Lasn is one where the media-consumer trance is broken, the power of corporations seriously weakened and authenticity rediscovered. In fact, this also places culture jammers on a continuum of youth rebelling against the status quo, where the young rebel against the old and established before they fade into complacent middle age and in turn are challenged by the next generation of youth.

Détournement

The culture jammers of today borrow more from the Situationists, and more specifically Guy Debord, when they speak of détournement as their main tool. The action of détournement means to lift an image, message or artefact out of its context to create a new meaning(19). The most advanced culture jams are counter-messages that mimic the corporation's own method of communication, and sends a message, a subvertisement, starkly at odds with the one originally intended. Often, but not always, the brand name or logo is slightly altered, but the visual recognition is still assured. The Nike parody at the top of page 1 is a good example of this. The culture jammers call this "a re-routing of images to reclaim them and to devalue the currency of commercial images"(20). The Billboard Liberation Front jams advertisement billboards, like the simple, but powerful jam on Exxon that appeared just after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, "Shit happens - New Exxon" or on a billboard originally advertising Gordon's Gin, "Gordon's Gin - It Fucks You Up".

Using Saussure's framework, this can be explained as adding negative messages to the sign's signifier, and the goal is that consumers will include these messages when they go through their sensemaking cycles. Promotion transfers meaning on to a product from the outside(21) and it is this process that the culture jamming seeks to enter, by jamming the original coherence between the message sent through product design, packaging and promotional messages. The acts of culture jamming are thus intended to throw a spanner into the integrated system of production/promotion which, by the corporations, are deployed together in a mutually referring and self-confirming way.
http://www.anthrobase.com/Browse/Aut/index.html


# posted by alvaro @ 12:28 AM 3 comments

24.3.05

 

“Turismo Subterráneo por el Centro de Bogotá”
Haga clic para ampliar la imagen Estos bogotanos fueron turistas en su propia ciudad, durante "Turismo subterráneo en el Centro de Bogotá".
Roger Triana / Código de Acceso

Marzo 7 de 2005
 Más de 100 personas participaron en “Turismo Subterráneo por el Centro de Bogotá”

El recorrido se hizo el pasado 5 de marzo por la carrera décima, entre las calles 6ª y 26.

Las calles del centro de Bogota fueron tomadas el pasado sábado 5 de Marzo por un grupo de más de cien personas, que se dieron cita a las afueras del Planetario Distrital con el propósito de visitar ciertos lugares “invisibles” del centro de Bogotá.

La caminata, organizada por el Museo de Bogotá, forma parte de la exposición “Ciudad (in) visible y fue liderada por Ómar Delgado y Johan Cristancho, dos jóvenes diseñadores de la Universidad Nacional. La finalidad del recorrido, según explicaron, era identificar y dar a conocer varios puntos anti turísticos de la ciudad.

Aunque la idea del tour era visitar 48 lugares ubicados en el mapa que realizaron los diseñadores, solo se pudo visitar siete puntos, pues el grupo resultaba demasiado numeroso para alcanzar a cubrir toda la ruta.

Finalmente, el recorrido incluyó el club de billares Londres (Cra. 7ª # 21-94), el pasaje La Macarena (entre la calle 19 # 8-62 y la calle 20 # 8-57), el centro comercial Galaxcentro (Cra. 10ª # 17-67), el centro comercial Caravana (calle 12 # 9-68), el pasaje Rivas (calle 10ª con Cra. 10ª), el Mundo de la Calcomania (Cra. 10ª # 5-64) y el sobandero El Tigre (calle 6ª con Cra. 12).

Los turistas no desaprovecharon la oportunidad para registrar con sus cámaras de video y fotografia una ciudad que muchos ciudadanos desconocen, por miedo o prejuicio. Para obtener más informacion, visite www.antituristico.tk.

ROGER TRIANA
Código de Acceso - Bogotá
http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/educ/CODACC/ca_vida/marzo05/ARTICULO-WEB-_NOTA_INTERIOR-2001055.html


# posted by alvaro @ 11:57 PM 0 comments
 

La calle. Espacio geográfico y vivencia urbana


Título:
La calle. Espacio geográfico y vivencia urbana en Santa Fe de Bogotá (1998)
Autor:
Vladimir Melo Moreno
Descripción:
Esta obra aborda al planeta calle y la leyenda urbana a través de la historia de la ciudad en general y de Bacatá, en su singularidad y tránsito intermilenario. Realiza una reflexión cabal de la sociedad excluida y excluyente, del poder, el control del espacio, la negación de la vida, el esfuerzo realizado por quienes mantienen la urbe en la miseria; así como de la política y las festividades, la viivienda y los hogares construidos entre la planificación y la identidad de la vida. Su autor , a partir de una propuesta teórica sólida y metodológicamente renovada, sostiene que la construcción del espacio es la construcción misma de la sociedad, con sus tensiones y conflictos.
COLECCIÓN OBSERVATORIO DE CULTURA URBANA

# posted by alvaro @ 11:48 PM 1 comments
 

ciencia nomada y compagnon gótico

Ciencia Nómada vs. Ciencia Real o Ciencia Imperial
Existe un tipo de ciencia, o un tratamiento de la ciencia, difícilmente clasificable, y cuya historia tampoco es fácil de seguir. No son "técnicas", según la acepción habitual. Tampoco son ciencias en el sentido real o legal establecido por la historia.
  1. Su modelo es hidráulico
  2. Es un modelo de devenir y heterogeneidad
  3. De la línea al flujo, de la turba al turbo
  4. Es un modelo problemático, y ya no teoremático: las figuras solo son consideradas en función de los afectos que se producen en ellas, secciones, ablaciones, adjunciones, proyecciones. Mientras que el teorema es del orden de las razones, el problema es afectivo, e inseparable de las metamorfosis, generaciones y creaciones de la propia ciencia.

Diríase que toda ciencia nómada se desarrolla excéntricamente, y que es muy diferente de las ciencias reales o imperiales. Es mas, esa ciencia nómada no cesa de ser “bloqueada”, inhibida, o prohibida por las exigencias y las condiciones de la ciencia de Estado. Arquímedes, vencido por el Estado romano, deviene un símbolo. Pues las dos ciencias difieren por el modelo de formalización, y la ciencia de Estado no cesa de imponer su forma de soberanía a las invenciones de la ciencia nómada; solo retiene de la ciencia nómada aquello de lo que se puede apropiar, y, con el resto , crea un conjunto de recetas estrechamente limitadas, sin estatuto verdaderamente científico, o simplemente lo reprime y lo prohíbe.

Hay un ritmo mesurado, cadencioso, que remite a la circulación de un río entre sus márgenes o a la forma de un espacio estriado; pero también hay un ritmo sin medida, que remite a la fluxión de un flujo, es decir a la forma en la que un fluido ocupa un espacio liso.

Los trabajos de Anne Querrien permiten localizar dos de esos momentos, uno con la construcción de las catedrales góticas en el siglo XXll, otro con la construcción de los puentes en los siglos XVlll y lXX.

Su compagnon, el monje albañil Garin de Troyes, invoca una lógica operatoria del movimiento que permite al "iniciado" trazar, luego cortar los volúmenes en profundidad en el espacio, y hacer que "el trazo produzca la cifra". No se representa, se engendra y se recorre.

Al plano sobre el suelo del compagnon gótico se opone el plano metrico sobre papel del arquitecto exterior a la obra. Al plan de consistencia o de composición se opone otro plan, que es de organización y de formación. A la talla por corte a escuadra de las piedras se opone la talla por paneles, que implica la construcción de un modelo reproducible. No solo se dira que ya no se necesita un trabajo cualificado: se necesita de un trabajo no cualificado, una descualificación del trabajo.


# posted by alvaro @ 10:03 PM 0 comments
 

URBANOLOGY

Ciudad Bolivar is the poorest neighborhood of Bogota, Colombia. We organized a trading places conference there last year. Ciudad Bolivar was definitively what impressed me the most in Bogota. It is a place full of life and with a real potential for becoming a great neighborhood. However, a very high percentage of the population live in misery and social problems are deep. One thing is certain, Ciudad Bolivar is growing and consolidating horizontally and vertically.
http://www.urbanology.org/Bogota



Nomadology is an experiential journey into a practical philosophy of life. The concept is adapted to the hypertextual enironment of the internet. Makes your own way through the concept by clicking on the words that inspire you. In this labyrith of links of images you can get lost or on the contrary find the path to a longer journey.
http://www.nomadology.com

# posted by alvaro @ 7:44 PM 1 comments
 

nomadology


DESIRE

"We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun"
--- Ivan Chtcheglov

"The street, the neighbourhood, the city should stimulate colour, fantasy, emotion, communication and harmony"
--- Ernest Mandel


# posted by alvaro @ 3:31 AM 3 comments
 

The Nomadic Subject and Nomadology

Deleuze and Guattari identify the potential for resistance in this process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Importantly, this may be a consequence of either an individual’s reflexivity or the actions of another. Either way, it can provide what they call (1988: 9) a line of flight by which the BwO escapes from a territorialization. Often the de-territorialization is momentary and perhaps inconsequential: the BwO moves just a little from its previous position before re-territorializing in a new patterning. At other times, it may be substantial and life-changing, a line of flight which carries the BwO into unimagined realms of possibility and becoming-other. To give two examples: a patient’s BwO may be de-territorialized by the health care worker or friend who treats them as something more than a collection of pathologies; the child’s BwO may be deterritorialized (and reterritorialized) by the adult who treats her as an equal.

Such lines of flight can lead to what Deleuze and Guattari describe as nomadic subjectivity. All deterritorializations carry the trace of the nomadic in them, but Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between relative and absolute deterritorialization (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 55). Because the relation between a person and her environment is dynamic and challenging, movements of deterritorialization and reterritorialization are commonplace: part of the daily fabric of existence, part of the unfolding and becoming-other character of life and death, health and illness. Deterritorialization can be seen clearly in relation to sickness and mortality. Thus a risk to health from some environmental factor leads to a change in behaviour; an illness or impairment forces a person to adapt and exploit unused potentialities. In each case there is relative deterritorialization of the BwO. But these relative deterritorializations, even if they are very rapid or very extreme, rarely (perhaps never) result in an absolute line of flight, the absolute deterritorialization of the BwO which Deleuze and Guattari call nomadism.

This metaphor of the nomad exemplifies absolute deterritorialization. Nomads may follow customary paths, but the points along the way possess no intrinsic significance for them. They do not mark out territory to be distributed among people (as with sedentary cultures), rather people are distributed in an open space without borders or enclosures. Nomad space is smooth, without features, and in that sense the nomad traverses without movement, the land ceases to be other than support. Unlike the migrant, the nomad does not leave land because it has become hostile: rather she clings to the land because it is undifferentiated from other spaces she inhabits (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 380-1).

Nomadism is not just a life-style choice, however. Deleuze and Guattari (ibid: 23) see nomadology as an alternative approach to understanding the history of civilisation. Traditionally, history has been written from the point of view of the sedentary, from which has grown all the apparatus of the State, including ‘state philosophy’ (Massumi 1992: 4-5), the official version of how to live and die. Nomadology - in contrast -- multiplies narratives; creating an uninterrupted flow of deterritorialization which establishes a line of flight away from territories, grand designs and monolithic institutions. Needless to say, this is not something which is achieved once and for all, there is always another and another deterritorialization ahead.

Thus nomadism must be thought of not as an outcome but as a process, as a line of flight which continually resists the sedentary, the single fixed perspective. Again recall that Foucault (1977: 148) spoke of the body completely imprinted with history -- that is, the forces of the social. Nomadology sets itself in opposition to this inscription: nomad subjectivity is one free to roam, untrammelled by the territorializations of power, and free to resist. As such, a commitment to deterritorialization and the nomad is intrinsically political, always on the side of freedom, choice and becoming, always opposed to power, territory and the fixing of identity.


# posted by alvaro @ 3:22 AM 2 comments
 

Nomadology: The War Machine (M.I.T. review)

From Semiotext(e):
Nomadology: The War Machine
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

In this daring essay inspired by Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers (the army) are nomads who always come from the outside and keep threatening the authority of the state. In the same vein, nomadic science keeps infiltrating royal science, undermining its axioms and principles. Nomadology is a speedy, pocket-sized treatise that refuses to be pinned down. Theorizing a dynamic relationship between sedentary power and "schizophrenic lines of flight," this volume is meant to be read in transit, smuggled into urban nightclubs, offices, and subways.

Deleuze and Guattari propose a creative and resistant ethics of becoming-imperceptible, strategizing a continuous invention of weapons on the run. An anarchic bricolage of ideas uprooted from anthropology, aesthetics, history, and military strategy, Nomadology carries out Deleuze's desire to "leave philosophy, but to leave it as a philosopher."

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes/Saint Denis.

Felix Guattari is the author of The Molecular Revolution and Chaosmosis and coauthor (with Gilles Deleuze) of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.

# posted by alvaro @ 3:20 AM 4 comments
 

Welcome to NomadInstitute

Welcome to NomadInstitute

german version: NomadInstitut
german InNo webpage
moments Freakfrachter

No Action without Reflection

No Reflection without Action


we are a swarm of people, trying hard to stay in contact, learn, communicate and have fun. At this institute we want think and create, organise events and do some workshops
and of course:

present our current projects:


IllegalTourists | ThinkTank

events to come:


...

Workshop

pranksters and clowns at TheLaboratoryOfInsurrectionaryImagination

History:

events 2004: NomadiCamp | RawWar | FreakFrachterMutantenLabor | CampTipsy | AlexMauer | AutonomousSpaces at London ESF | MauernProjektionen | ReiseFreiheit
events 2003: BoundariesToBridges | FreakFrachter | InnoKongress | ParanoidTimes
coordination: FFML DeKoLicht | TeamTreffen | MutantWorkers
contact: team | subscribe mailinglist | admin
also visit: memenet.de
who or what is the MemeNet ?
to be up to date: wiki-rss and image-gallery-rss

# posted by alvaro @ 3:16 AM 0 comments
 

IllegalTourists

Important Information for all tourists of London

Welcome Tourists,
We are happy to host you in our amazing city and hope you are spending a pleasant time here.
We kindly request your attention concerning a new legislation on tourists. This new law, implemented by the authorities of London from the beginning of Oct. 2004, says that all foreigners who can not truly identify themselves as tourists will be deported to north african camps in order to do social work with rejected african asylum seekers.

As identification, authorites will request from all tourists proof of the consumption of cultural commodities during their stay in London. The law defines tourists as people who are consuming more than 200 Pounds per day during their temporary stay in London.

Attention: If people are not able to prove their consumption, there will be no second chance to claim the tourist status.
Since Oct. 14th, the Metropolitan Police Authority has installed checkpoints at various locations throughout the city. Tourists and people wearing strange clothing will be requested to verify their status.
This legislation seeks only to serve your own safety. We kindly request that you cooperate with the authorities and always carry your purchased commodities with you.
Background Information:
There is an increasing number of illegal tourists all over the world, people who are claiming a tourist status without participating in tourist activities such as consuming the culture and nature of the visited areas. The city of London as one of the most visited places in the world needs to defend her interests against the threat of illegal tourism. Tolerance towards false tourists could lead to a situation where-by the privilege of freedom of movement becomes a right enjoyed by everyone.
This dangerous development is effectivly addressed by our new legislation.
We kindly apologize for any inconvenience and wish you a pleasent stay in London.

# posted by alvaro @ 3:12 AM 1 comments
 

NOMADOLOGY

Nomadism is a strategy of the present. There is not one nomadic strategy but a multiplicity of micro-strategies.


Nomadism as a concept is a war-machine, created to resist monolithism, to transcend domestification and alienation. Therefore, it is a strategy of consciousness, opening and resistance. It is the strategy of the movement for the movement.


Nomadism is a tribal strategy, relying on community, hospitality and exchange. These values are essential to the survival of nomads. Nomadism is a strategy for those who do not want to renounce to their freedom.


# posted by alvaro @ 3:02 AM 1 comments
 

.WALK

"The Dutch Group Social Fiction has been experimenting with walking on algorithms for some time now. Under the heading ".walk" they are taking the thing one step further by introducing pseudo-software to determine the route of their walks. They explain how this works and how different .walk can be connected together to form a 'pedestrian computer'. You might want to read the postscript first."

.walk by socialfiction.org
no software but walkware. This tutorial shows the fundamental concepts that might be used to program a non-electric computer. .walk is the name for the pedestrian software that will be used in the construction of a 'psychogeographical computer' which will use the city as hardware.
[ go to project page ]

.walk

Algorithms are by no way limited to computer software, and computer - as devices which execute algorithms - are by no way limited to chip-based electronic hardware. La Monte Young's "Draw a straight line and follow it" is a plastic example of an algorithm which can be executed by any kind of being or hardware which thus acts as a "computer" executing the algorithm. ".walk" by socialfiction.org is based on this very concept of a, quote, "non-electric computer". Computations are executed not through electricity flowing through the transistor gates of a processor chip, but by walks through urban spaces.

The history of urban walks as artistic activity begins in the 19th century and could be told as a one of a gradual demystification: from Baudelaire, the romanticist flaneur as he was portrait by Walter Benjamin over the Surrealists - remember the walks through Paris in Breton's "Nadja" and Aragons "Paysan de Paris", already rationalized under the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis - to the Situationist International, which re-thought of flaneurism as "psychogeography" in terms of a postmarxist sociological urbanism. Socialfiction.org consciously continues this tradition by calling its project a "psychogeographical computer which will use the city as hardware".

The documentation of ".walk" explains this as follows: "Because we were already exploring walking around on algorithms, it was a logical step to modify these little programs into something that actually solves problems. Theoretically these individual .walk programs could be connected into a computer. In the 'programming .walk for dummies' text it is shown how you can solve quite complex computations by stripping them down to their smallest factor & have a interesting walk at the same time." A ".walk" sourcecode might look like this:

// Classic.walk
Repeat
{
1 st street left
2 nd street right
2 nd street left
}

More complex .walk algorithms allow to execute multiplications and divisions through city walks. .walk has been practically employed in London and Rotterdam. Classical psychogeography is thus turned into what socialfiction.org calls "generative psychogeography", with urban drift being finally put to a practical end. However, ".walk" could also be seen the other way round, as romantic deconstruction of computing and its concealed metaphysics of architecture. by Florian Cramer, posted 19 May 2003

# posted by alvaro @ 2:38 AM 3 comments
 

Language/Psychogeonamics and Where-To-Go-Next

Imagine some 20 people drifting around La Source, (a suburb of Orleans, combining a university and research laboratories in the north, rows of free-standing domestic dwellings in the south and, so we where told, the only proper 'ghetto' of Orleans in between: modest high-rises painted in light Mediterranean colours splattered between groups of trees, boys are playing football and the streets are more spacious than traffic demands, complementary to all this La Source is the sister town of Winnipeg, Manitobe, Canada), trying to name things, objects, scenes that stand apart from the drab surrounding it. Actively trying to find things of interest, especially in one of those neighbourhoods nobody ever speaks friendly about; doesn't that sound like a psychogeographical exercise? It was, it happened mid-October 2004, as part of the Archilab festival. Starting from the observation that the naming of places is one of the most natural way language comes into existence, this text will explore some lines of thought about concerning the function of language in artistic urban research. Recently, some things have become clear that previously were confused and muddled up in corrupting auxiliary motivations. This is a manifesto of sorts, pointing out where we are going next.

Not too long ago, rural landscape was divided in abstract categories of things and names only so far as the people themselves had felt the practical need to do so. This is why Wordsworth could write, by way of advertisement for his 'Poems on Naming Places': "By persons resident in the country, and attached to rural objects, many places will be found unnamed or of unknown name, where little Incidents must have occurred, or feelings been experienced...". The ability to communicate about places in names you have yourself found the language for, the name of it reflecting the reason why it is named as it is, creates a strong emotional relationship with these objects. The survey of the names a community has given through the ages, will tell you about their collective history, it will relive past hopes and miseries, it will evoke mental maps of which some area's will be nearly abandoned, while elsewhere lots of names are in close proximity. Wordsworth understood that the suppression of local names, in favour for gutless administrative ones, estranged people from the world they live in, especially because names tend to become inseparable from the object they are naming. We underline our ownership of a pet when adopting it, sometimes even in the case of babies, by renaming it. Yet nobody finds it odd that the places we occupy for years go without personalised names. It is as if we are half human/half scorpion, living in an bubble of mud, pretending not to be there, at any time anticipating some huge shoe coming from the sky to evict us.

You can't fake the psychogeonamics of naming places: you can't go in with a fistful of psychogeographers, approaching it as a name-dropping PsyOp and expect names to pop up by reflex. What this experiment proved is that giving names to places needs time and a real attachment to grow in. This is even more true when you try too hard and you find that the object to be named escapes you. Afterwards it became clear that instead of naming places, the attention had without consultation shifted towards describing, with varying length and eloquence, the gusto of a place. Gusto, William Hazlitt defined it as the "power or passion defining any object", encountered in the setting of a psychogeographical walk focused at urban systems at large, was only rarely found in isolated objects. The gusto of a city is defined by configurations of objects, in a pattern not in a landscape. "Orange Berry Tree; I stop in front of one of those trees or bushes. They are really full of orange berries and bring really flashy and nice colour touch in the town", one psychogeographer noted. "Square with anything but trees, in front of a forest of buildings", writes another. Both describe the gusto of a view in emblematic, nearly heraldic, terms, each element turning into a symbol that tells a story at a level different from the observation at hand. Wordsworth documented what struck him in blank verse, rambling stanzas and boldly rhyme, but nowadays artists use technology to share this with others and posterity.

The hills with no name, the lake with one name, and the rock with multiple names are captured as validated machine-readable data-models, images, video, worked over by algorithms and statistical analysis, translated into maps, diagrams, flowcharts and waypoints. But often the focus on these tools turn the place being researched into just another source of data. Psychogeography, like all urban research, needs to document, it needs to collect information, to be able to be more than just a habit of making people walk in strange ways. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. As we are a civilisation of snapshotteers, taking pictures is regarded by many as the holy grail of documentation, (with GPS coming in second). But landscapes and cities have qualities impossible to isolate in a series of pictures. Psychogeographical research should put the documentation of ambiguous, unacknowledged, psychic effects of place upon people before the documentation of the places that caused these effects. Pictures show the crime but not the motive. Abstraction by definition has no room for fear, bewilderment, crisis and all these mixed emotions you have to go through before a place really opens up itself. Naming places, committing a description to a place in the most sublimated form language can provide, is not an act but a process that takes years to become self-evident. If this time is not available, artistic research should at least put in some effort, by finding the language to talk about whatever is being researched, to reach between the bits, to touch upon the reality that escapes high-resolution vector-graphic mappea mundi.

When thinking about ways to record the psychogeographic appreciation of landscapes there always lurks that strange entry in Coleridge's notebook, made in 1805: "In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, ..., I seem rather to be seeking, as it where asking for, a symbolic language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new". Coleridge himself lost track of what he meant to say while writing this and accordingly we can only speculate on the syntax and grammar of this unspecified symbolic language that, for a short instance, flickered before his mind's eye. A language not made of words but of symbols, a symbol "a focal point for feelings which otherwise would have remained less articulate" (Gombrich), that would mirror the outward world: perhaps a language with you as the only one native speaker. Even though that would be a modern interpretation as Coleridge still believed in the universal meaning of symbols. If the naming of places forges a direct link between you and your surroundings, or (more bluntly) if the landscapes makes you as much as you make the landscape, the symbolic language of Coleridge would allow you to communicate this intangible relationship where ordinary language and images would fail. Would it be too far-fetched to think that this symbolic language would be written with hieroglyphs expressing categories of gusto?

To remind you of the gusto of he who went by the name of Coleridge: he was the best friend of Wordsworth, famous for his infinite recursion of asides and for this very reason unable to walk in a straight line (Hazlitt informs us), his major prose works are labyrinthine structures readable only in well-proportioned fragments while his best poems are unfinished, and intriguingly so. His command of language was near perfect and his daughter approvingly remarked that his essential quality was Coleridge: "could not bear to complete incompletely, which everybody else does". His talents were unmarketable because of this instinct that made him write about the world in a way similar to the cartographer producing a map bigger than the territory. Coleridge's own research followed the path carved out by science only so far as it helped him to get a grip on what was around him. Once science stopped doing that, Coleridge unfolded his wings of imagination and wandered of into endless but equally valid speculations in order to make statements about the same general truths, from an angle necessarily the opposite of scientific objectiveness. For Coleridge language should be vigilantly personal, and it should do justice to the infinite complexity of reality. It is doubtful that a scientist would ever achieve acclaim for a shattered body of unfinished work, but an artist can and s/he should use this power to bring to life what otherwise would be gone forever. The map is not the territory, let science produce the map and let art recreate a bit of the territory.

socialfiction.org

# posted by alvaro @ 2:26 AM 3 comments
 

HISTORY OF UNITARY URBANISM AND PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

HISTORY OF UNITARY URBANISM AND PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY AT THE TURN OF THE SIXTIES
+
EXEMPLES AND COMMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

Ewen Chardronnet (ewen at tiscali dot fr)
(lecture notes for a conference in Riga May 2003)


The topic of our panel discussion this afternoon is about " local media, maps and psychogeography ". I think it's necessarry to come back first to a brief history of psychogeography, Unitary Urbanism and the Situationnist International at the turn of the sixties. The end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties were a period of acceleration in urbanism of European and world cities. In Paris, this period is the explosion of what politicians and urban planners called " new cities ". Paris was exploding outside its " ring road" and cities such as Sarcelles were created with totally new urban models. There was a strong feeling in that time that the cities were losing their human dimensions. I will first try to show how this acceleration of modernisation of urban
society had an influence on the tactics of the SI as an avant-garde concerned with the uniformisation of society through urbanism, mass media, and the dichotomy of work and leisure. I will especially focus on Unitary Urbanism and 4 years of intense activities (58-61) that finally culminate by totally abandonning these theories. We will then discuss actual initiatives that use tactical medias in the streets and how this is link to the new rise of psychogeography and the necessity of reclaiming the streets.

The Situationnist International emerged in 1957 from the Lettrist International, the Imaginary Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Comittee, with new fields of interests and a revolutionnary program that was
focusing on the " suppresion and realisation of art in life " and what they called the "construction of situations ". The preliminary idea for many of their members, as many avant-gardes tried to, was to make creativity appear again in the social sphere.

Constructed Situation, Psychogeography and Unitary Urbanism were the key concepts at the foundation of the Situationist International. In 1958, the first issue of the Situationist International bulletin directed
by Debord gives these definitions :

constructed situation

A moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the
collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events.

psychogeography

The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment
(whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of
individuals.

unitary urbanism

The theory of the combined use of arts and techniques as means
contributing to the construction of a unified milieu in dynamic relation
with experiments in behavior.



These key concepts were developed for few years by founding members such as Jorn or Debord and relayed in Potlatch, the bulletin of the French section of the Lettrist International.

I read you a quote of Asger Jorn's text " Form and Image " published in 1954 in Potlatch 15.

"Architecture is always the ultimate realisation of a mental and artistic evolution; it is the materialisation of an economic level/status. Architecture is the pinnacle of realisation for all artistic production because architecture signifies the construction of an atmosphere and fixes a way of living."

Another founding text was The Formulary for a New Urbanism, by Gilles Ivain alias Ivan Chtcheglov, written in 1953 and published in 1958, in the first issue of the Situationist International bulletin.

" The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a means of action. "

" We have already pointed out the need of constructing situations as being one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be founded. This need for absolute creation has always been intimately
associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space.... "

# posted by alvaro @ 2:17 AM 0 comments
 

HEADMAP

headmap

The space, the social network, thinking tools and the network interface in the same field of view. The boundaries between what is interior and what is exterior intersecting tangibly in front of your eyes.

there are notes in boxes that are empty

every room has an accessible history

every place has emotional attachments you can open and save

you can search for sadness in new york

people within a mile of each other who have never met stop what they are doing and organise spontaneously to help with some task or other.

in a strange town you knock on the door of someone you don't know and they give you sandwiches.

paths compete to offer themselves to you

life flows into inanimate objects

the trees hum advertising jingles

everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached


# posted by alvaro @ 2:16 AM 0 comments
 

Psychogeography in Prague

Ghost hunt 2003 na Vyšehrade


The first psychogeography walk in Prague happened on the 6.04.2003. Some 40 people took part in it and we were divided into 6 groups. There was one "mysterious group" that organized the whole walk independently on the rest of us and they sent us only 2 sms messages. We all used a very simple alghoritm: 2 left, 1 right, 2 left, for an hour. After the hour we all met in one café where we kicked out all the guests because we were very loud.

The largest group (8 people) started their walk at the St. Jacobs church http://web.ff.cuni.cz/~novakpe/psychogeografie/fotos.htm and did a lot of interventions on their walk. They were mainly interviewing people they met on the streets asking them silly questions, and they also used a lot of street art stickers. They have funny audio records of their interviews. For example, in the local comfort station in the center of the city they asked the lady who was working there which is the proper toilet for a transvestite. She called them little perverts and kicked them out of the place. They also decided to help the transvestite by sticking on the opposite small icons of man/woman toilet on the big signs. The most funny part was when they met another strange group on the streets - completely unknown people that seemed to be doing something like psychogeography (looking around the buildings and filling in some forms). They asked them if they were "fellow psychogeographers" but they were not. These people were playing some history architecture game organized by the society for the preservation of old Prague where they had to run around, find and document statues on the buildings. There is a whole subculture of weird people playing around this city that we probably do not know about. We do know about one group of similar interest to psychogeography, called Regula Pragensis http://www.ecn.cz/regula that organizes similar "walks" and explorations with algorithms in the nature (not so much in the city). They usually write diaries of such walks and publish them in their own magazine, "Lazensky host", one of the oldest samizdats in Bohemia since 1977. They call themselves an "organization of those who are in favor of creative playfulness, impressionability, openness and wisdom in a broad spectrum of human activities, from history, literature, a flight of a rooster, bleating of a sheep to philosophy and mythology".
http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/ghost1/ghosthunt0002.html

# posted by alvaro @ 2:05 AM 0 comments
 

Blogger of the Self

Blogger of the Self

- Read 50 random blogs in blogger by hitting the "next blog" button ("bloghopping").
- Find out which "techniques of the self" lay behind each blog's discourses.
- Select 5 that touched you and share here:
koolaiddavis.blogspot.com
foundingfathersquotes.blogspot.com
...

redwinehaiku.blogspot.com
bethrica.blogspot.com
postsecret.blogspot.com


# posted by alvaro @ 1:42 AM 1 comments
 

Heterotopias: Michel Foucault : Of other Spaces (1967)

"...Bachelard's monumental work and the descriptions of phenomenologists have taught us that we do not live in a homogeneous and empty space, but on the contrary in a space thoroughly imbued with quantities and perhaps thoroughly fantasmatic as well. The space of our primary perception, the space of our dreams and that of our passions hold within themselves qualities that seem intrinsic: there is a light, ethereal, transparent space, or again a dark, rough, encumbered space; a space from above, of summits, or on the contrary a space from below of mud; or again a space that can be flowing like sparkling water, or space that is fixed, congealed, like stone or crystal. Yet these analyses, while fundamental for reflection in our time, primarily concern internal space. I should like to speak now of external space..."

HETEROTOPIAS

First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces. (...)

Its first principle is that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias. That is a constant of every human group. But the heterotopias obviously take quite varied forms, and perhaps no one absolutely universal form of heterotopia would be found. We can however class them in two main categories. (...)

The second principle of this description of heterotopias is that a society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another.

As an example I shall take the strange heterotopia of the cemetery. The cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or society or village, etc., since each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery. In western culture the cemetery has practically always existed. But it has undergone important changes. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery was placed at the heart of the city, next to the church. In it there was a hierarchy of possible tombs. There was the charnel house in which bodies lost the last traces of individuality, there were a few individual tombs and then there were the tombs inside the church. These latter tombs were themselves of two types, either simply tombstones with an inscription, or mausoleums with statues. This cemetery housed inside the sacred space of the church has taken on a quite different cast in modern civilizations, and curiously, it is in a time when civilization has become 'atheistic,' as one says very crudely, that western culture has established what is termed the cult of the dead.

Third principle. The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Thus it is that the theater brings onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another; thus it is that the cinema is a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space, but perhaps the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden. We must not forget that in the Orient the garden, an astonishing creation that is now a thousand years old, had very deep and seemingly superimposed meanings. The traditional garden of the Persians was a sacred space that was supposed to bring together inside its rectangle four parts representing the four parts of the world, with a space still more sacred than the others that were like an umbilicus, the navel of the world at its center (the basin and water fountain were there); and all the vegetation of the garden was supposed to come together in this space, in this sort of microcosm. As for carpets, they were originally reproductions of gardens (the garden is a rug onto which the whole world comes to enact its symbolic perfection, and the rug is a sort of garden that can move across space). The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world. The garden has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginnings of antiquity (our modern zoological gardens spring from that source).

Fourth principle. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time - which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance. (...)

Fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures. Moreover, there are even heterotopias that are entirely consecrated to these activities of purification -purification that is partly religious and partly hygienic, such as the hammin of the Moslems, or else purification that appears to be purely hygienic, as in Scandinavian saunas. (...)"

"...Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates..."


# posted by alvaro @ 1:32 AM 0 comments
 

METAFILTER BLOG

About Metafilter

Metafilter is a weblog (what's a weblog? | comprehensive history of weblogs) that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to. A typical weblog is one person posting their thoughts on the unique things they find on the web. This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members.

If you're new to the site, I'd suggest taking a look around, checking out the archives, and getting a feel for the place. You might also consider registering as a member. Members can post comments, customize the look and behavior of the site.

After becoming a member, check out some of the links and think about leaving a comment or two. If you stick around for a while, you'll get a feel for what types of things are posted as links, and if you find something amazing and/or enlightening, please post it.

The privilege of posting links to main page comes after posting a few comments and being a member for at least a week. This lag is built in to allow new members to get used to the place and to understand what other members consider good links. With the current number of members, even if fewer than 1% of the total membership post a link each day, it's far too many links to take in. Please take extra special care when selecting a link for the front page. To get an idea of what constitutes a good link, take a look at the link guidelines, to hear some philosophies guiding the site and community, check out the new user message.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:30 AM 0 comments
 

Tibetan Mandala Teacher’s Guide

About the Art

A mandala (MAHN-duh-lah) is a symbol* of the universe. It is a diagram whose colors, lines, and forms all have meaning. In the Buddhist religion, mandalas are used in sacred ceremonies and meditation, to help people on their journey toward spiritual enlightenment. Mandalas have been made since ancient times. They can be painted on cloth or carved or, like this one, created from sand.

This mandala is dedicated to the deity Yamantaka, Conqueror of Death, and represents his celestial palace. A meditating Buddhist proceeds from the outer rim inward, moving from the earthly world to various levels of spiritual growth and knowledge. The ultimate goal is to attain total enlightenment, or nirvana, at the center. There Yamantaka is represented by the blue vajra (VAHJ-rah), or thunderbolt, symbolizing compassion. In the mandala’s outer corners, symbols of the five senses are reminders that true knowledge comes through spiritual enlightenment, not from our fleeting perceptions. Smell is represented by a perfumed elixir bubbling up from a conch shell (upper left). A lute (lower left) stands for hearing, and a blue disc mirror (lower right) for vision. Peaches (upper right) symbolize taste. A flowing silk scarf, for touch, appears in all four corners. The circular rim’s outermost ring, representing the earthly world, shows eight burial grounds with images of suffering and decay: skeletons, floating limbs, scavenging animals, trees, mountains, and burial mounds called stupas, symbolic of the Buddha’s life and teaching. Next comes a circle of flames in a rainbow pattern of bright colors, then a ring of vajras, and finally a band of lotus petals, signifying spiritual purity and representing various deities. Now we encounter the square walls of Yamantaka’s palace, with gates at the four compass points. The palace is filled with symbols, including masked guardians, umbrellas, jewel trees, wheels, and deer. Within the innermost square, which is divided into triangular quadrants, is a circle containing symbols of nine Buddhist deities, with Yamantaka at the center. This is the realm of perfect enlightenment. All mandalas represent an invitation to enter the Buddha’s awakened mind. Tibetan Buddhists believe that in each person’s mind there is a seed of enlightenment that can be discovered by contemplating a mandala. The mandala’s design denotes the order and harmony of an enlightened mind. Order is shown through symmetrical organization, tight structure, and the use of geometric forms such as the square and the circle. The complex symbols and calculated combination of primary colors express the principles of wisdom and compassion that underlie Tantric Buddhist philosophy.
http://www.artsmia.org/arts-of-asia/tibet/teachers_guide/index.cfm


# posted by alvaro @ 1:25 AM 3 comments
 

we make money not art: Grafik Dynamo


# posted by alvaro @ 1:15 AM 0 comments
 

Kate Armstrong

Kate Armstrong is a new media artist and writer who has lived and worked in Canada, France, Japan, Scotland, and the United States. Her work focuses on the creation of experimental narrative forms, particularly works in which poetics are inserted within the functional framework of computer programs, and performative pieces in which computer functionality is merged with physical space. She has worked with a variety of forms including short films, theatre, essays, net art, performative network events, psychogeography and installation.

Armstrong curates the new media speaker series Upgrade 2.0 at the Western Front in conjunction with Upgrade at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, and runs the media arts organization Special Airplane. She has extensive production experience in independent film and network television and has written for P.S 1/MoMA, the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, TrAce, Year Zero One, and The Thing, as well as for catalogue publications. Her first book, Crisis & Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture, was published in 2002.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:09 AM 0 comments
 

Grafik Dynamo

Grafik Dynamo is a net art work by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett that loads live images from blogs and news sources on the web into a live action comic strip. The images are accompanied by narrative fragments that are dynamically loaded into speech and thought bubbles and randomly displayed. Animating the comic strip using dynamic web content opens up the genre in a new way. Together, the images and narrative serve to create a strange, dislocated notion of sense and expectation in the reader, as they are sometimes at odds with each other, sometimes perfectly in sync, and always moving and changing. A narrative sequence emerges but is never closed. Grafik Dynamo is a 2004 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

# posted by alvaro @ 1:02 AM 0 comments
 

SPECIAL AIRPLANE


Our team became immediately entangled in Arthur Erikson's courthouse building for three generations of the algorithm (2nd left, 1st right, 2nd left), which gave us elevated gardeny views of downtown corridors. The street below was lined with small elevated rooms which had been temporarily rented for the use of television actors. When we crossed over to a traffic throughway in front of the Hotel Vancouver we had to decide whether the door leading into the hotel was our next turn. We briefly discussed the Saint Lazare train station dérive and other historical precedents for taking a dérive inside but decided against entering the hotel because we felt that we would like to understand the workings of the algorithm in an urban context rather than in a velvety corridor and heated buffet plate context. Later, when speaking to another group, we found that they had taken their dérive into an indoor parking structure and had gone up several levels on a ramp. This excited our imaginations and we wondered if we had made the correct decision. Because part of the concept for this dérive involved the release of a paper airplane if we were to be faced with the ocean as a dead end, we began to feel oddly pleased when our algorithm appeared to be taking us in the direction of the waterfront. We cut through a bank of glassy highrises noticing that traffic had disappeared and that we were surrounded by deep parkades, long onramps, security guards, and small, weirdly meaningless pedestrian plazas. As we walked we struggled to determine the nature of this unsettling place. 1 2 3

# posted by alvaro @ 12:58 AM 1 comments
 

Let the algorithm plot it's own course

A Genetic Generative Psychogeographical survey of Amsterdam's redeveloped artificial docklands
 The redevelopment of Amsterdam's artificial harbour islands into a new dense urban environment near the city centre is interesting from all angles. Many ideas are compressed into a relative small area. Everything, every minor detail, is stylistically designed to the maximum level; the clear angles & the straight lines of the grid seems designed to look well on air photographs. In fact: everything might well be designed to look beautiful in a computerized 3D presentation.

A psychogeographical survey of the place uncovers that this area which is designed to be exciting by means of planned diversity in reality shows every sign of unplanned uniformity. Everything is copy-pasted from a catalogue onto a holistically planned grid, like digital LEGO for adults. Rarely this repeated usage of the same building is obvious to the casual visitor. Camouflaged between different configurations of facades the same constructions are however used over and over again. Perhaps slightly modified in colour but hardly anything appears only once. There is one street on Borneo Islands for which a dozen architects were invited to deliver their best, most 'avant-garde', work. All these designs are built next to each other & again a striking uniformity emerges: the same ideas reappear over and over again: there are no contradictions, no conflicts.

Also noticeable is the faint echo of the inhabitants from the time this area was a dead zone waiting for redevelopment. These islands used to be a semi-autonomous part of the city inhabited by artists, squatters, techno tribes, nomads & boat dwellers. Some of the artist, if they were reasonable people, stayed. The rest had to go. Only the boat people were allowed to keep their place on the quays. But only if their lifestyles didn't interfere with the demands for silence of the new inhabitants.

Especially in relation with other contemporary large-scale building projects, Leidsche Rijn for instance, the redevelopment of the eastern harbour islands might well prove to be the site where most clear a whole variety of half conscious ideas about city-planning, architecture, political motivations & the good life become visible.
This makes the area a good place for a generative psychogeographical experiment.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/genetic.htm

# posted by alvaro @ 12:43 AM 0 comments
 

Berlin Urban Drift festival 2002

socialftion.org was present at the Berlin Urban Drift festival 2002 to do a presenation on generative psychogeography. Obviously this could not go without giving the audience the possibility to do an experiment with us the day after, at 12 october.

At 4 in the afternoon a small but dedicated group of psychogeographers were present to explore the surroundings of the area around the café Moskau at which the festival took place.

We left as a group in the same direction (the dotted line), slowly dispersing into different directions as the algorithm (and our interpretation) would have it.

This is the combined graph of 4 walks.


Thanx to Berlin psychogeographer Nick Grindell for logistics & ideas, Cheers to Brooklyn Psychogeographer Dave Mandl for the moral support.

# posted by alvaro @ 12:36 AM 0 comments
 

urban drift

Urban Drift is a transcultural platform for new tendencies in Architecture, Design and Urbanism.


urban drift is .. a collaborative platform for contemporary urban strategies / a network initiating and supporting urban interventions / a hybrid urban praxis, opening up and communicating architecture to a wider audience / urban survival strategies / time-based architecture, temporary and ephemeral / urban transformation and the reanimation of lost, forgotten, hidden city spaces / drift-inspired by random movement / neon-inspired / trans-cultural collaboration / the city as a medium / scavenging, remapping, resampling the city in light, sound and text / urban nomadism / 24 hours nightwalking / the reinvention of spaces / intervention.....urban curating / working with the city's second skin / communicating a mobile, fluid urbanity / reading the city as text / psychogeographies the space of relationships / the creation of urban situations / stalking peripheral urban spaces / process-driven urban design / garage settlements / urban voids / urban animators / to know is to insert something into what is real and hence to distort reality / container cities / born in berlin - city in a state of flux / but modular, viral, transportable and translatable elsewhere .. / drift via text / smart materials, mobile telephone technologies and new hybrid cultures in urban design / soundscapes / reanimating the real / multiple identites

# posted by alvaro @ 12:31 AM 2 comments
 

REPORT TORONTO WALKS

Socialfiction.org was invited by the Image Festival (10-19 April 2003) in Toronto to take a plane & come do a series of walks. So we did.

EXPERIMENT 1; 12-4-2003; 401 Richmond Street
Method: generative

To prevent all walks ending up in a loop on the sameness of the Toronto grid, the first experiment was done with walk algorithms that contained 4 (instead of the usual 3) directional instructions to enlarge the possible trajectories.

For us this was the first psychogeographical experiment on a grid. The for us most stunning fact was the fractal-like organization of the streets that unfolds itself when you get deeper into the urban fabric of streets & blocks; constructed from a patchwork of huge, crowded streets as the most visible level, that branch of into less broad, less frequently used, streets that reach into the interior of the blocks. These streets in turn branch out into even smaller streets, which in turn are connected to back alleys that might in turn be connected to the main street. By consequently taking short turns the extent of this semi-invisible network hidden behind the facades, only used by those who need to be there, becomes clear. Due to the lack of detail on the map it turned out to be impossible to recap the walks on the map, so unfortunately there is no documentation of this walk.

 The contradiction between the tidy main streets, the less regulated side streets & the rubbish heaps in the alleys is big & as we were told, politically engineered. The experiment also showed that you can very well get from one point in the city to any other point without using the main streets other than an occasional crossing, in practise you use the big ones, because it is just more fun. Jane Jacobs ramblings on the importance of a good sideway culture suddenly started to make much more sense.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/dotwalktoronto.html

# posted by alvaro @ 12:24 AM 0 comments
 

Molde para el Algoritmo

on-line [3 term] generative psychogeographical algorithm engine; select & print
4 term engine here
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/mold.htm

# posted by alvaro @ 12:21 AM 0 comments
 

TOOL

Draw the paths generated by generative psychogeographical algorithms when executed on a perfect grid in a Design by Numbers script

Download 3_the script 3 directions (for example 2nd left, 1th right, 3rd left, repeat)
Download 4_the script 4 directions
(See the header for more info)

Download Design By Numbers
Questions? e-mail: psychogeography at socialfiction dot org


# posted by alvaro @ 12:19 AM 0 comments
 

Report on Crowd Psychogeography experiment 25 January 2003

In our discussion afterwards it turned out that most of us were during the experiment mostly preoccupied with staying on the track of the people they were following; it can be actually hard work that demands all your attention. An observation that should be included here is that even though it can be difficult to follow people who are in a rush, it's impossible to follow people who walk in turtle mode. Walking that slow is such unnatural behaviour that nobody could maintain it for longer than a minute.
 In the announcement people were offered the possibility of doing this experiment while being drunk. Nobody tried this & perhaps for the better because it's forbidden to drink while in (or outside) HC. Or to be more precise the law forbids carrying with you any opened storage devices that contain alcoholic beverages. Anti-psychogeographic legislation will be coming to your neighbourhood soon too.


# posted by alvaro @ 12:08 AM 0 comments
 

CROWD PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

One definition of psychogeography might be that it's a discipline that maps the ways in which the design of spaces & places work to evoke, influence or manipulate moods & behaviour.

Another possible definition of psychogeography might be that it's an activity that tries to figure out how the cognitive image we have of a certain place has been formed by it design & this image is conform reality by exploring it in a way that is different from normal use of that space. By doing algorithmic walks for instance.

The experiment Social Fiction will undertake at January the 25th, 2003 in that lovely town called Utrecht, which happens to be where we live, will combine the approaches of both definitions in an effort to try to find out in which ways the availability of a crowd, or a lack thereof, changes your appreciation of a certain place.

Since the early seventies Utrecht has been blessed with a concrete corridor called Hoog Catharijne (HC) that connects the train station with the old heart of the town. For most people HC is only a obstacle, a trench filled with shops & people that has to be passed ASAP. What a lot of people fail to notice is that HC apart form this own crowded trench also offers the visitor a wide range of allies, obscure entrances & staircases at 3 different levels, most of which seem to be without function.

But apart from the crowds, HC has got another reputation, that of being unsafe in the evening when large groups of addicts & homeless people seek shelter there for the night. Even though at a square like Neude more violence & robberies happen than at HC, the latter is in the eye of the public a dangerous no-go area.

For this experiment participants are asked to follow people, without them noticing you, on their various ways through HC to find out where they are going to, what they are doing & what seems to determine their decisions to go about. By infiltrating the crowd, it might be possible to find out how being part of a crowd changes your perception of the place.

By doing this experiment at the end of the afternoon it will be possible to experience HC when it's very crowded & when it's returning to it's desolate state in the stretch of one hour.

The participants in the possession of the will to do so are encouraged to find out if the observation made by Elias Canetti that 'The hallucinations of alcohol provides us with an opportunity to study crowds as they appear in mind of individuals' by using alcoholic beverages before & during the experiment.
All the participants are invited to join the bald anarchists of Social Fiction afterwards to a pub famous for it's beer called Belgium.

# posted by alvaro @ 12:02 AM 0 comments

23.3.05

 

Psychogeographical Markup Language

PMLBRAINDUMP your PML braindump

After laying dormant within obscurantist circles for the last few decades, psychogeography, that joyful combination of peripatetic hedonism & cartographic sadism, is again a living practise. This revival takes place alongside recent developments in fields as diverse as outdoor gaming, location based services & graffiti. All these practises reflects the need for new ways of using, experiencing & understanding the ever changing city.

One important direction modern psychogeography is taking is the development of systems that can display the psychogeographical landscape of a city without having the need to describe the shape of the city that caused the psychogeography. Or in other words: instead of talking about the anatomy of individual cities it wants to extract data from the city as a persistent body of continuing processes: doing psychogeography thus becomes the possibility to, metaphorically speaking, measure the heartbeat & blood pressure of a city. Of course in the human body blood pressures are different for everybody, but for all humans apply the same boundaries of what is considered healthy. It would be interesting to see if it’s possible to determine the ideal conditions that support a healthy urban system. Jane Jacobs already postulated this kind of research in the 60-ties.

PML (Psychogeographical Markup Language) is a notation system meant to do all of the above. It’s not at all finished at present, but here follows in rough sketch how it’s proceedings are envisaged. PML starts with a list of recommended markups that identify beyond doubt a certain experience-based quality of urban space. These markups are not placed in a fixed dropdown menu that floats around in the corner of your mind’s eye while wandering about. They are recommendations only, it’s use being experiment-specific. Current tags include: “stim”, “dross”, “horror”, “terror”, “open”, “closed”, most of them taken from acknowledged writers in urban theory (Jacobs, Lerup, Lynch, Radcliffe).

Once a small set of markups is selected, psychogeographers start swarming through the area; they are not trying to find the experiences that come with the tags. They only mark them when they really feel the markup is a valid tag equivalent to their experience. After a certain time everybody comes back together. The various lists of markups can than be layered on top of each other, usually with the name of the street as the binding element. In this way PML tries to distill an objective psychogeographical image of a territory by clustering many small subjective observations into one file. In this way the particular, the freak-incident, is cancelled out from the from the average.

Once a PML dataset for an area has been compiled it can be used in several ways. The results can be translated into a psychogeogram: a diagrammatic representation of psychogeographically experienced space. Or in other words: a psychogeogram is the cardiogram of a territory.

The resulting data can be shared on the internet, preferably in a format that complies to the standards used in the development of the ‘free information network’, more commonly known as the semantic web. This has several benefits, once your data is ready for the semantic web you can also combine it with other data about the same area your PML data is about, in this way adding more knowledge to your psychogeogram. Secondly you add to the available knowledge about an area, thereby improving the precision of future psychogeograms. Thirdly, by making this data available you ultimately add to the knowledge of cities in general, cities that can than be compared, analysed, etc.

Translating the experience of cities into a small number of categories is in many ways a blatant contradiction to the general aim of psychogeography. On the other hand, PML is impossible enough to give it a try. More importantly: PML, as a tool developed in the public domain, might play an important role in the development of a participatory urban design. PML enables non-specialists to make reasonable statements about urban space: with PML anybody can get their second opinion if the one put forward by the urban planner doesn’t seem right.

http://socialfiction.org/psychogeography/PML.html

PMLBRAINDUMP your PML braindump


# posted by alvaro @ 11:53 PM 3 comments
 

Object Oriented Psychogeography

The piece below is meant to be published in the HTV magazine. There's some interesting ideas here, but it was somewhat of a rush job; some things will be reformulated (like the OO metaphor shizzle) when I get to it.

Yonder goes the OOP: Software for Landscapes

From the renaissance onwards space has been rendered according to the specifications of the Euclidian-OS. 'Perspective' was the killer-app of the first revolution in landscape mathematics. Today popular culture is exploring the second groundbreaking shift in framing the space around us. It does this by using software, mathematics that runs on a machine. As psychogeographers we propose OOP ?Object Oriented Psychogeography as one possible application that perspectifies landscape radically different.

OOP will crash your sneakers

Perspective can be said to connect different object dispersed over place in a unifying framework of lines of sight anchored in a hypothetical horizon. OOP is called Object Oriented in a gesture to the programming concept in which algorithms are small objects that talk to each other without mediation of a central command-algorithm. OOP echoes this as it structures landscape by chopping it up in distinct boxes of information that in unison shape a new perspective: the OOP-P ?OOP-Perspective.

Thus OOP is an application that creates ad-hoc horizons that exist independent from the territory around you. But horizon, with all it's Euclidian connotations is the wrong word here; it better be called a vector or a trace, welcome terms as both carry the implication of movement. But the new horizon, the OOP-P, can be understand best as a direction to go elsewhere.

One-way streets are nullpointers

OOP is not meant to extract you from where you are by constantly forcing you to gaze at your pocket screen. Instead, OOP is meant to position you more firmly within your surroundings, by aiding in the mental process of making sense of the space around you. OOP is a project that operates in loving memory of 18th century romantic painters & poets who would indulge in their surrounding landscape like it was their birthday; who would ramble all day through forests & lake districts like it was their birthday. We have lost the ability to feel oceans in all their dept, mountains in all their height & cities in all their mindnumbing diversity as these artists of yore could. After organising countless psychogeographical walks we find it sad to notice that in comparison, as a society, we are nothing but beggars when it comes to the wealth with which we perceive our landscape.

Surveillance Technology in Public Space is a Symptom of this Alienation

Within OOP, all objects are oriented towards PML Psychogeographical Markup Language a widely adapted notation system to record psychogeographical experiences in an interchangeable syntax. The anatomy of a city is fascinating in it's own right: skyscrapers piercing the urban skin are hard to ignore. But PML, as the cardiogram of a city, aims at measuring the underlying processes that shape a city: human interactions as they are suggested by the landscape: be it wild nature or sophisticated urban planning. PML is important within OOP because it's a double edged sword: collective experience in the past, in harmony with other data sources like stories from annotated space databases, guide new psychogeographical experiences ready to be tagged in PML. Without exaggeration OOP can be called a tool of mythopoetics as it will unearth horror & terror at places where you would otherwise pass by like it was just every other ordinary day.

OOP-P After the Turing Test

Experimental pedestrians not tourists will inherit the OOP. Psychogeographical landscape software is an application that teaches us what we have unlearned. Those with a black belt in psychogeography will find OOP a distraction between them & their surrounding, the rest will gradually lean to understand what they mean by that. In it's ultimate instalment, depending on the final arrival of the Quaternion-OS, OOP-P will be rendered by entities possessing artificial intelligence. The resulting interfaces to our landscape would be totally alien to us now, but will seem as normal to the people in the future as Euclidian perspective is to us. But that is social fiction.

barnaby snap

Last edited on April 28, 2004 9:13 am.


# posted by alvaro @ 11:45 PM 0 comments
 

CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE RUNDGANG - GSM MAPPING" 13 SEPT 2002, Berlin


announcing, as part of the Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography, "CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE RUNDGANG - GSM MAPPING"

this is an event organized by epram.org together with ROCKET SHOP, a gallery in berlin. on 13/14th september, a generous spattering of small independent galleries in a certain district ("mitte, north of torstrasse") are coordinating events, openings etc. to draw attention to themselves and their concentration in this corner of town. epram.org was asked to help organize some form of event to take place on one of these evenings, and thus the following scheme was born:

date: september 13th, 2002

start time: 19:00

start place: "rocket shop" (brunnenstrasse 151)

pairs of walkers equipped with at least one mobile phone each will be given an algorithm and told to phone in a progress report to HQ at rocket shop each time they enact a step of the algorithm. they are not to proceed from the respective corner until this has been accomplished. there will be three copies of each algorithm, so that, for example, if there are just three pairs participating, they will all be given the same algorithm and sent off in three different directions. each pair will be alloted a colour as their ID and given epram.org stickers to mark each corner where they turn. the reports will consist of ID, time, and names of the intersecting streets. if there are only a very few pairs walking, then they may also be encouraged to file small descriptions of a single feature of what they see there, but if there are more, this would cause too much delay on the phone line. someone will stay behind at rocket shop to look after the PA (the calls will be amped and taped) and to map the progress of the various pairs in coloured pen corresponding to their ID on a map. at 21:00, those who have not already terminated their walks will return to rocket shop and there will follow an "evaluation session".
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/berlin.htm#eng


# posted by alvaro @ 4:53 PM 0 comments
 

Derivas por Praga


lov na duchy 31.10.2003
The first psychogeography walk in Prague happened on the 6.04.2003. Some 40 people took part in it and we were divided into 6 groups. There was one "mysterious group" that organized the whole walk independently on the rest of us and they sent us only 2 sms messages. We all used a very simple alghoritm: 2 left, 1 right, 2 left, for an hour. After the hour we all met in one café where we kicked out all the guests because we were very loud.

The largest group (8 people) started their walk at the St. Jacobs church http://web.ff.cuni.cz/~novakpe/psychogeografie/fotos.htm and did a lot of interventions on their walk. They were mainly interviewing people they met on the streets asking them silly questions, and they also used a lot of street art stickers. They have funny audio records of their interviews. For example, in the local comfort station in the center of the city they asked the lady who was working there which is the proper toilet for a transvestite. She called them little perverts and kicked them out of the place. They also decided to help the transvestite by sticking on the opposite small icons of man/woman toilet on the big signs. The most funny part was when they met another strange group on the streets - completely unknown people that seemed to be doing something like psychogeography (looking around the buildings and filling in some forms). They asked them if they were "fellow psychogeographers" but they were not. These people were playing some history architecture game organized by the society for the preservation of old Prague where they had to run around, find and document statues on the buildings. There is a whole subculture of weird people playing around this city that we probably do not know about. We do know about one group of similar interest to psychogeography, called Regula Pragensis http://www.ecn.cz/regula that organizes similar "walks" and explorations with algorithms in the nature (not so much in the city). They usually write diaries of such walks and publish them in their own magazine, "Lazensky host", one of the oldest samizdats in Bohemia since 1977. They call themselves an "organization of those who are in favor of creative playfulness, impressionability, openness and wisdom in a broad spectrum of human activities, from history, literature, a flight of a rooster, bleating of a sheep to philosophy and mythology".

více + fotky: http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/

Jirkovy fotografie: http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/ghost1/ghosthunt.html
Liborovy fotografie: http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/ghost2/ghosthunt2.html
Steliny fotografie: http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/ghost3/ghosthunt3.html
Joseho fotografie: http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/kera/psychogeografie/ghost4/ghosthunt4.html

# posted by alvaro @ 4:10 PM 2 comments
 

a company of vagabonds

A society of fuguers dedicated to forging new and unexpected pathways through city and countryside alike.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Bricoleur

The flaneur is old hat and dependant on the male gaze; the street is alive differently now. I had always found the concept of the flaneur insubstantial. The notion of bricoleur is more rewarding. In 1973, Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced the notion of the bricoleur who appropriates pre-existing materials that are ready-to-hand. We use things to hand and improvise our lives, actions, behaviours from short cuts through buildings, down alleyways, via favourite views to ways of being in the city not covered in the guidebooks. It is cumulative, involves unintended uses, economical (using a small number of tools) and has unintended consequences and fits the process of evolution, as well as cultural change.

And perhaps poets, should be alert to bricolage a feature of language which Wittgenstein compared to 'an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.' How to write the city into poetry? The experience of the city shares affinities with the cinema which has been more involved in working with cities than poetry. But the experience also has affinities with the hypertextual experience. The city resists closure, the self-contained lyric and linear narrative. Mireille Rosello in an essay, 'The Screener's Maps: Michel de Certeau's "Wandersmanner" and Paul Auster's Hypertextual Detective', explores the wanderer/ flaneur figure of reading and navigating to describe hypertextual reading. She denies the need for formal navigational aids and metaphors like ‘traveling’ or ‘exploring’ preferring that of ‘the wanderer’. Meaning happens in the process not from reaching some journey’s end. Poetry like hypertext can subvert official structures and narratives, can ‘La perrugue’ as bricolage does and as diaries can.

John Bennett

# posted by alvaro @ 3:36 PM 0 comments
 

INTERACT - EXTRACT - INTERPOLATE

a (psycho) geo (graphical) al experiment at BANFF Centre Alberta Canada

Algorithmic Statement #1:
If "x = 22"
And "x" = "human"
Then "human = four"

Algorithmic Statement #2:
If "22 = (y + 23)"
And "y" = "left"
Then "four = (left + eight)"
Conclusion:
Human = four = (left + eight)
Result:
Human walks four blocks, turns left and walks eight blocks.

Confused?

Algorithmic Statement #3:
"Human" = "psychogeographer"
Translation:
Psychogeographer walks four blocks, all the while analysing and digitally documenting the landscape. At the end of the four blocks, psychogeographer turns left and walks eight blocks, all the while analysing and digitally documenting the landscape.
Reason:
The respective minds and collective human mind are, in fact, the most generative computers in existence. Without the human computer, the nonhuman computer (in its pervasive, invasive and ubiquitous state of being today) could not and would not function - or even exist.
Algorithms drive software. The human mind is the software of the human body. Thus, in order to effectively drive the software of the human mind to psychogeographically analyse and document an environment, algorithmic statements must be employed.
Algorithms, like humans, generate, derivate, mutate and permutate when given the chance.
Psychogeographics is about chance.

And you thought algebra was neither interesting nor fun. Ha!

# posted by alvaro @ 3:31 PM 0 comments
 

Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography 2002

ALGORITMIC NOISE AS FREE CULTURE: The Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography 2002 [as experienced by www.socialfiction.org]
 Walking is the best way to experience the environment, but how to walk in such a way that is becomes not just a tool to be a spectator but to actively explore it. We decided to use what we learned from the 'Game of Life' & complexity and combine that with the legacy of psychogeography, a sub-cultural strand in the pedestrian culture which can be traced back all the way from the Flaneur, the British pedestrian writers of the Romantic age to the peripatetic school of Aristotle.

All these influences are folded together in (generative) algorithms like this one:

first street right
second street left
first street left
repeat

In theory walks generated in this way never run into an obstacle that forces the pedestrian to stop meandering. In reality cities should be redesigned from scratch & people should be made flawless by genetic modification to reach the situation where the human compliance to the complexities of an algorithm as a psychogeographical device is perfect. Participation in a generative psychogeographical experiment forces you to adopt to the characteristics of a machine, you are pushed through streets like an object in almost closed loops which are connected by sudden rushes straight forward. There is a sense of alienation involved in navigating in this manner but that feeling is never realized completely: the algorithm which should be able to produce a walk without navigational friction repeatedly produces more confusion than certainty: the algorithm becomes chaos. In this sense a generative psychogeographical experiment must always fail, it's not pixel clean movement, it isn't a Flash animation come to flesh, its dirty, it's algorithmic noise & we love it. generative psychogeography is a pleasant state of displacement: it's the city-space cut-up.

# posted by alvaro @ 3:25 PM 0 comments
 

Flaneur Culture

Just like Karl Marx & Joseph Goebbels, Margaret Thather was aware of the fact that those who control the streets also control the state & it was with this political truth in mind that she ordered the BBC to get serious with daytime television. Her intention was to ensure that the unemployed masses would get their boredom dulled by staying at home & watching television, instead of taking their frustration outside where they would surely gather in the streets, causing riots & mayhem.

To understand the socio-political implications of experimental strolls in the city, it is important to know how the public-domains functions as the place where individuals meet, so forming communities form & as a consequence society on the most fundamental level emerges out of the interaction of/between/inside crowds.
This public domain is not an autonomous field, but the result of the interplay between public-space & urbanism: the dialectic between the physic objects in a city & the social/cultural use that is being made of it. Because the public domain emerges out of the interacting happening between these 2 different things, both with a complex set of parameters of their own, it can only be indirectly manipulated. This happens by town planning and structural architectural interventions in public space on the one hand & by formulating laws to ban or reward certain uses of urban space on the other. These attempts to influence the public domain are always feeble & no one can predict what the consequences will be.
A strong tendency which can be observed everywhere is that when the municipal government shows more concern with economic pragmatism (to ensure the availability of labour, for instance by luring companies into building prestigious skyscrapers in the city-centre) than for urban diversity, the destruction of a normal public life can be witnessed.
A movement like Reclaim the Streets is criticizing this economic single-mindedness by which in the present day city-centres are handed over to commerce, by organizing street parties as an antidote to the monoculture of commuting office workers who add nothing to street culture besides traffic, parking problems & smog.
RTS should be looked upon as a disco-socialist activity in the footsteps of Jane Jacobs famous manifesto 'The Death and Live of Great American Cities' published in 1961. In this manifesto Jacobs argues that a thriving pedestrian culture is simultaneously the cause & the result of a healthy public-domain.

When unravelling societies power structure, starting from the national government all the way down through local governments, trade unions & corporations we ultimately end up with the pedestrian as the smallest undividable particle at the bottom of the pyramid.

This insight is not entirely new. Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) already hailed the flaneur, those pedestrians who willingly ignored the spirit of the crowds of their days & strolled around town without any specific goal or destination. While the zeitgeist held being busy as the most fashionable thing, the flaneur provoked it by wandering about with a turtle on a lead that indicated the speed.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/flaneureng.html

# posted by alvaro @ 3:22 PM 0 comments
 

Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN)

Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN)

A new international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media has been funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme. The network will bring together practicing artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects. It will be of relevance to people working in the arts, games, education, tourism, heritage, science and engineering.

The network will stage three major gatherings. Each gathering will have a distinct form and focus: an initial workshop to launch the network and assess the state of the art; a technology summer camp for artists and technologists, including hands-on prototyping sessions using the facilities at Nottingham's Mixed reality Laboratory; and a major public conference and participatory exhibition as a central component of the Futuresonic 2006 festival in Manchester; as well as a supporting web site and other resources.

Network objectives

The network aims to support the formation of a new interdisciplinary research community to investigate how the convergent fields of pervasive media and locative media need to evolve in order to support future cultural and creative activities. Specific network objectives are:

• To review the scope of the research that is currently being carried out in these fields through a focused workshop, leading to an integrated ‘state of the art’ survey paper.
• To identify the key research issues that need to be addressed in order to further develop pervasive and locative media to support culture and creativity, leading to a series of discussion ‘white papers’.
• To seed future projects by bringing artists, scientists and industry together in a creative environment so that they can generate and practically explore new ideas, and also to provide a forum for publicly demonstrating some of these.
• To produce online and offline resources to support researchers, artists, industry and to promote public understanding of this emerging field, including a public website, an online document repository for members and a newsletter and DVD.

# posted by alvaro @ 3:16 PM 0 comments
 

crisps- a list for walkers


So what's this all about then?

Well, back in February 2001 there was a discussion on (void) about walking around London, in which we talked about viewpoints, Suicide Bridge, and London Walking, a book by Simon Pope. One chapter of this is what he called a 'constrained walk', where he walked along a single row of the London A-Z from dawn until dusk.

Some people on (void) and London.pm thought this was a good idea, so we walked for 20 miles through the city. It was tiring, but sort of fun.

Within a couple of months there was talk of doing another walk, so I set up a mailing list (rather than involving a list or two in discussions they'd not be caring about). In my usual punning way, we called it crisps.

What walks have you done?

So far, we've done a few:

2001-03-18: Constrained Walk North-South
From Muswell Hill to Croydon
2001-05-28: Circle Line
King's Cross to King's Cross clockwise
2001-07-08: Regent's Canal
Warwick Avenue to Limehouse
2001-10-27: London Wall mini-cheddar
London Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge
2002-03-17: Constrained Walk East-West
Mile End to North Acton
2002-04-21: Hawksmoor mini-cheddar
Holborn to Limehouse via Hawksmoor's churches
2002-06-17: London Derive
Around Russell Square
2002-09-21: Open House
City / Southwark / Rotherhithe
2002-10-20: Suffragette City
Albert Hall to Houses of Parliament
2002-11-10: Highwalks and Parks
The Barbican to Lloyds of London

# posted by alvaro @ 3:13 PM 0 comments
 

Psychogeographical Markup Language

Somewhat like the Necronomicon, PML has been a non-existing protagonist hovering around this site during flights of fancy concerning the recording and sharing of psychogeographic data. However PML does exist, actually it starts to exist more and more. The draft version of a PML packet (in XML/RDF) is now waiting for your attention in the box at your left.

What is PML?

PML is a set of keywords lifted from various sources that can be used to capture meaningful psychogeographical [meta]data about urban space. PML is a unified system of psychogeonamic classification that lurks behind the psychogeogram: the diagrammatic representation of psychogeographically experienced space.

PML is the base layer for a psychogeographical content management system that can:


1) be used to transform a mass of subjective data into an objective representation
2) be used as an engine that, after being fed certain parameters, generates new psychogeographical drifts
3) be used to develop further a cartography that negates the territory
4) be datamined to show never before suspected patterns in the urban fabric
5) be fired up into a new mythology for urban space
6) be used to take the fingerprint of a city


PML incorporates work done in fields like annotated space, geo-tagging, mental mapping, GIS & collaborative mapping but is different in that it aims at the invisible & the absurd.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/PML.html


# posted by alvaro @ 2:46 PM 1 comments
 

Cracking the Urban Cheat Code

Psychogeography is by definition a subjective activity, but by mapping the area collaboratively & afterwards aggregating the results it is possible to attain an accurate bolagram (boundary language) of the area. Because the urban territory can be defined by it's distinctions, mapping the boundaries of these distinctions simultaneously implies that by studying the boundaries one is studying the city as a whole.

What is needed in order to be able to combine individual psychogeographical accounts into a psychogeogram is a protocol. This protocol can take different forms: a graphic notation system, a psychogeographical mark-up language or a system of metadata connected to a signifier of a space like street names, position in an arbitrary grid or GPS-coordinates(3); something more like XML than HTML. The latter option seems most worthwhile as it means compiling a dataset; enabling the root-psychogeographer to pump the resulting data into different soft & walkware applications & thus making it fairly easy to analyse it from many angles & compare cities with one another.
Cracking the Urban Cheat Code

# posted by alvaro @ 2:38 PM 1 comments
 

These are exciting times for psychogeography

To be read at the psy geo conflux festival in NYC

(a quick draft that was not really used for the actual talk. Because it is a nice summary it is included here anyway)

These are exciting times for psychogeography. In the last one or two years or so the discipline of psychogeography has found new breath, it has ripped itself free from the body of academic thought where it was slowly decaying into an obscure theoretical subculture.

Of course in England a few psychogeographical groups operating in cities like London, Manchester & Nottingham have kept the spirit alive & over the years they have developed a unique framework that combines radical politics, the occult & the composition of the urban environment into a coherent & slightly paranoid ideology.

Since the Hot Summer of Psychogeography 2002 also outside the British isle's countless new psychogeographers on the block have rediscovered the walks or rather the Dérives of the French post Freudian avant-garde movements like surrealism & lettrism which culminated in the well know consortium of European groups called the International Situationist who managed quite falsely to secure the term & the practise psychogeography in the eye of the public as their own invention. Psychogeography however is practise as old as human civilization itself. In the 14th century the Italian humanist poet Petrach climbed the Mont Ventoux for no other reason then to find out how the view from the top would affect him, a strangle exploit for which he had to seek anecdotes from to past to make it look sane to his contemporaries. In ancient Greece there was the peripatetic school of Aristotle who developed their philosophy while walking: for them thinking or rather contemplation & movement where indistinguishable.
Psychogeographers, which combines the previous examples have always been interested in history: the city is an artefact, a product, of history itself. But, as the Psy Geo Conflux festival will show it's also very much concerned with exploring new the spaces created by technology, by science: using algorithms, databases, GPS systems, PDA's, Lap-tops, Minidiscs, mobile telephones, psychogeographers are now annotating space, rediscovering their own neighbourhood, are mapping invisible spaces like open nodes in Wi-Fi networks, the city is used as a chessboard or as a logic gate. Psychogeography is a strange hybrid between walking & technology, between DIY & high tech, between philosophy & engineering.

I'm still not sure what a definition of psychogeography might look like: nobody can't tell you what psychogeography is & what it's not, therefore you should not trust people who say they know. This is important because psychogeography as it's exist today is a process. Every few weeks I get e-mails from new groups all over the western world, who are all doing their own thing for their own reasons, it's very exiting, & it's relevant in many field. Psychogeography can be practised as artistic practise, as a branch of urban exploration, as a form of social commentary & often it's all these thing at the same time. Psychogeography also has it's own paranoia in the sense that it believe that any environment can induce behaviour. Perhaps you remember the main character in Albert Camus' novel The Stranger who commits a murder for now other reason than the way the ocean reflects the sun in his eyes. This is a very clear & powerful example of a psychogeographical effect, an effect that can be consciously engineered in the composition of the city.
William Burroughs tried to expose subliminal messages in newspapers by chopping them up, psychogeography as a city space cut-up does the new thing: it tries to find out what's out there, encrypted beneath the surface, by navigating through it in unusual ways.

The design of the city, of public space, is very much in vogue right now. Psychogeography has always taken an active approach to these topics. A psychogeographical walk is meant to create your own environment: by exploring it, by breaking free from daily habits, by adding your own technology, our own creativity to the environment.
 These are exciting times for psychogeography. In the last one or two years or so the discipline of psychogeography has found new breath, it has ripped itself free from the body of academic thought where it was slowly decaying into an obscure theoretical subculture.

# posted by alvaro @ 2:31 PM 0 comments
 

Petrarch: The Ascent of Mount Ventoux

Petrarch's motives for climbing Mount Ventoux - to see the view - is often cited as the mark of a new humanistic "Renaissance" spirit. It is worthing noting, however, that in his distinctly non-humanistic work on the "Misery of the Human Condition", Pope Innocent III had asked the question about why people climb mountains, and had come up with the same need to see the view.

To Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro

(307) To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called (308)Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day. The idea took hold upon me with especial force when, in re-reading Livy's History of Rome, yesterday, I happened upon the place where Philip of Macedon, the same who waged war against the Romans, ascended Mount Haemus in Thessaly, from whose summit he was able, it is said, to see two seas, the Adriatic and the Euxine. Whether this be true or false I have not been able to determine, for the mountain is too far away, and writers disagree. Pomponius Mela, the cosmographer - not to mention others who have spoken of this occurrence - admits its truth without hesitation; Titus Livius, on the other hand, considers it false. (309)I, assuredly, should not have left the question long in doubt, had that mountain been as easy to explore as this one. Let us leave this matter one side, however, and return to my mountain here, - it seems to me that a young man in private life may well be excused for attempting what an aged king could undertake without arousing criticism.

When I came to look about for a companion I found, strangely enough, that hardly one among my friends seemed suitable, so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics, even among those who are dearest to us. This one was too apathetic, that one over-anxious; this one too slow, that one too hasty; one was too sad, another over-cheerful; one more simple, another more sagacious, than I desired. I feared this one's taciturnity and that one's loquacity. The heavy deliberation of some repelled me as much as the lean incapacity of others. I rejected those who were likely to irritate me by a cold want of interest, as well as those who might weary me by their excessive enthusiasm. Such defects, however grave, could be borne with at home, for charity suffereth all things, and friendship accepts any burden; but it is quite otherwise on a journey, where every weakness becomes much more serious. So, as I was bent upon pleasure and anxious that my enjoyment should be unalloyed, I looked about me with unusual care, balanced against one another the various characteristics of my friends, and without committing any breach of friendship I silently condemned every trait which might prove disagreeable (310) on the way. And - would you believe it? - I finally turned homeward for aid, and proposed the ascent to my only brother, who is younger than I, and with whom you are well acquainted. He was delighted and gratified beyond measure by the thought of holding the place of a friend as well as of a brother.
Petrarch: The Ascent of Mount Ventoux


# posted by alvaro @ 2:26 PM 1 comments
 

Why Lettrism

It seems necessary to historically define the post war period in Europe as one of the generalised halt of attempts at change, in the realm of emotions as much as in the political realm.

Just when spectacular technical inventions multiply the chances of future constructions, alongside the dangers of still unresolved contradictions, we witness a stagnation of social struggles and, on the mental level, a complete reaction against the movement of discovery which culminated around 1930 with the association of the broadest demands with the recognition of the practical means of imposing them.

From the rise of fascism to the second world war, the exercise of revolutionary means has been deceptive, and the regression of hopes linked to them has been inevitable.

Following the incomplete liberation of 1944, intellectual and artistic reaction broke loose everywhere: abstract painting, a simple moment of modern pictorial evolution where it only occupies a very meagre place, is presented by all the publicity machines as the basis of a new aesthetic. The alexandrine is dedicated to a proletarian renaissance, where the proletariat will become outmoded as a cultural form just as the quadriga and trireme have become outmoded as a means of transport. The by-products of writing which had caused indignation, and which had not been ready, are getting an ephemeral but resounding admiration: the poetry of Prevert or Char, the prose of Gracq, the drama of the atrocious cretin Pichette, and all the others. The Cinema, where the various arrangements of scenarios are used just as harmonies, proclaims its future in the plagiarism of De Sica, and finds novelty - and above all exoticism - in various Italian films where meanness has imposed a style of camerawork little different from the habits of Hollywood, but so long after S.M.Eisenstein. Further, it is known that the scholars who otherwise do not dance in caves, have given themselves up to laborious phenomenological refinements.
Confronting this dismal and profitable mess, where each repetition has its disciples, each regression its admirers, each remake its fans, a single group shows universal opposition and complete contempt in the name of the historically necessary supercession of old values. A kind of inventive optimism has taken the place of refusal, affirming itself beyond refusal. It is necessary to recognise the healthy role that Dada assumed in another epoch, despite its very different intentions.

We may be told that it is not a very intelligent project to restart Dadaism. But it is not a matter of going over Dadaism. The very serious setback of revolutionary politics, linked to the glaring weakness of the working class aesthetic promoted by the same retrograde phase, has lead to confusion in every field where it will soon have raged for thirty years. On the spiritual level the petit-bourgeoisie always hold sway. After several resounding crises, its monopoly is even more extended than before: everything which is actually impressed in the world - whether it be the capitalist literature, the social-realist literature, the false formalist avant-garde living on forms which have dropped into the public domain, or the bogus theosophical agonies of certain movements of erstwhile emancipators - entirely nurtures the petit-bourgeois spirit. Under the pressure of the realities of the epoch, it is well necessary to finish with this spirit. From this perspective any measures are good.

The outrageous provocations that the Lettrist group has carried out or prepared (poetry reduced to letters, metagraphic recital, cinema without images) unleashes a fatal inflation in the arts.

We therefore joined them without hesitation.

Why Lettrism

# posted by alvaro @ 2:24 PM 0 comments

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