http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/ en-us 2008-04-22T09:41:56-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/002558.php As the summary below states, this doesn't mean the ordeal is over--the justice dept. can still appeal, and there are the huge legal bills to deal with. BUT this is great news nonetheless. While there is still an abundance of... ayreen 2008-04-22T09:41:56-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/002302.php You Can’t Anticipate Explosions Jacques Ranciere/Chto delat ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of this collective project is a work in progress. But the general idea is that we cannot be in all places at all times. So those who would like to can write a "report" or "editorial" or "correspondence" to share experiences for the benefit of others. To take part, send submission or for more information please write to journalisms@16beavergroup.org or post online: http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/contact.php ------------------------------------------------------ 'You Can’t Anticipate Explosions' is a part of a larger discussion/debate pertaining to the Avant-garde initiated by Chto delat, more of which can be found on their website and their latest issue: http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=17&id=177&Itemid=179 Magun: The question we would like to discuss with you today is the connection between aesthetics and politics. Is there a specific type of art that would be both productive and relevant to the contemporary political and cultural situation? Our hypothesis is that the avant-garde – both as a phenomenon and a notion - could be important for us today. This view comes out of our historical situation, which was shaped by the constitutive moment of perestroika. As democratic mobilization challenged the authoritarian and corrupt power of the Soviet state, there was a major revival of interest in both Western modernism (not just Kafka and Joyce, but also Pollock, etc.) and the Soviet avant-garde art of the 1920-30s; what seemed important was the conjunction of this type of art with political emancipation. What do you think? Is the avant-garde is still usable as a notion? Ranciére: What strikes me is precisely that your relation to avant-gardist art was mediated through the democratic aspirations of the time of the perestroika. This means that it took its relevance in a certain present as a thing of the past. The question is: what thing and what past exactly? It seems to me that there are two concepts of avant-garde art and of its political effect. There is the idea of avant-garde art as an art intentionally designed to create new forms of life. Such was the art of the Russian futurists and constructivists, the art of El Lissitsky , Rodtchenko and their likes. They were people who really had a project to change the world, using certain materials and certain forms. Avant-garde art, in that way, was destined to create a new fabric of common sensible life, erasing the very difference between the artistic sphere and the political sphere. When you mention Kafka, Joyce or Pollock, it is not the same at all. What they have in common with the former is the rejection of standard representational art. But they did not want to create new forms of life, they did not want to merge art and politics. In this case, the political effect of art is something like what you mentioned: a transformation of our ways of feeling and thinking, the construction of a new sensorium. But this new sensorium is not the consequence of a desire to create new forms of collective experience. Instead it is the very break between the contexts in which Joyce or Kafka created and the context in which you read them that gave them their “political” relevance. So, I would say, first, that the idea of the avant-garde entails two different things, two different ideas of the connection between the artistic and the political, second, that the concept of the avant-garde that you had in mind at that time was a retrospective construction. As a matter of fact, avant-gardism and modernism as they are used in contemporary debates are retrospective constructions that are supposed to allow us to have it both ways: to have both the collective impulse and aspiration to a new life and the separating effect of the aesthetic break. Vilensky: Still, maybe we can start by positing some generic features of the avant-garde. For example, what immediately springs to mind is the principle of sublation of art into life. Then, of course, there is the direct connection with political struggle, and the idea that art should and must change the world, on different levels. Then, there is also a very interesting idea, and a very complicated one, coming from Adorno, namely that art should keep its own non-identity. To me, this means that the avant-garde is not about some tangible object of art, it’s always about the composition of different things. For example, Malevich was not just about pictures. Actually most of his paintings were sketches for large-scale public art projects. So I think that avant-garde is based on the rejection of fetishization into objects that are bought and sold; its main goal is to supply the subject with instruments for self-knowledge and self-realization through aesthetic experience. Magun: Maybe the definition of such features could help us to draw a line between the avant-garde and modernism? Because modernism uses innovative, non-representative techniques to sublimate art as such, to make an absolute work of art that would contain the entire world. The avant-garde uses the same techniques to do the opposite: to break up art, to explode art into life, achieving a kind of a Hegelian end of art. So, modernism would mean “life absorbed into art,” and avant-gardism “art absorbed into life.” rene 2007-09-21T12:10:19-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/002181.php Dear Friends, I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to share with you my personal reflections on the recent evictions of an incredible occupied building in Copenhagen called Ungdomshuset (The Youth House). My emotions about this are still... ayreen 2007-03-06T02:14:21-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/002161.php Franco Berardi (Bifo) -- Sensitivity to the rhizome ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of this collective project is a work in progress. But the general idea is that we cannot be in all places... ayreen 2007-02-13T01:36:36-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/002015.php GDR -- 12 notes from an evening in hell or, no wonder new york is dying?: notes on the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of... rene 2006-10-05T21:33:41-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001949.php These letters were written by a friend in Lebanon. They have been organized starting from the beginning and concluding to the most recent. They are direct accounts that have circulated through various personal lists. they offer a very sobering vision... rene 2006-07-26T22:15:58-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001939.php Yet another day of bombing all over the place. In the mountain here, we were subject to about three different bombing runs: 1 to continue destroying the Beirut to Damascus road; another to destroy the cell phone antennas; and... rene 2006-07-15T22:08:39-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001913.php Shareholders invite us in and hold their breath http://www.revbilly.com/blog/?p=292 The showdown at the shareholders meeting of Victoria’s Secret (parent company: LimitedBrands, owned mostly by the Wexner family of Columbus, Ohio) was JUST GREAT! ForestEthics is trying to stop the clear-cutting... rene 2006-06-07T12:20:35-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001892.php Chris Gilbert - statement on resigning 5/21/06 I made the decision to resign as Matrix Curator on April 28, but my struggles with the BAM/PFA over the content and approach of the projects in the exhibition cycle "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path of the Bolivarian Process" go back quite a few months. In particular the museum administrators -- meaning the deputy directors and senior curator collaborating, of course, with the public relations and audience development staff -- have for some time been insisting that I take the idea of solidarity, revolutionary solidarity, out of the cycle. For some months, they have said they wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have always said that instead my approach is about commitment, support, and alignment -- in brief, taking sides with and promoting revolution. I have always successfully resisted the museum's attempts to interfere with the projects (and you will see that the ideas of alignment, support, and revolutionary solidarity are written all over the "Now-Time" projects part 1 & part 2 -- they are present in all the texts I have generated and as a consequence in almost all of the reviews). In the museum's most recent attempt to alter things, the one that precipitated my resignation, they proposed to remove the offending concept from the Now-Time Part 2 introductory text panel (a panel which had already gone to the printer). Their plan was to replace the phrase "in solidarity" with revolutionary Venezuela with a phrase like "concerning" revolutionary Venezuela -- or another phrase describing a relation that would not be explicitly one of solidarity. rene 2006-05-23T22:54:39-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001612.php Rene -- Journalisms -- Interview with Trevor Paglen -- The Black World of the Military -- 08.15.05 INTROVIEW Rene: Before we officially begin the interview, I thought it may be good to begin with some of your key research findings. Trevor: Ok, here’s the super-condensed version of what my basic findings are so far: 1) The military has a whole “shadow” infrastructure composed of what are usually called “Special Access Programs.” Special Access Programs are set up in such a way that their very existence is usually classified; they are programs that “don’t exist.” The amount of money dedicated to these sorts of programs is astronomical, probably around $30 billion annually. 2) That these kinds of military expenditures do not happen in a vacuum; they entail producing some bizarre forms of space. “Black budget” military spending is far more pervasive than I had ever imagined – money (and thereby certain forms of space) extend from remote “secret bases” in the desert to downtown high-rises, and from “things that go bump in the night” on military land to the most innocuous corners in the halls of the academia. The “black world” is truly global. Furthermore, “black world” spending is not an obscure “special case” of militarism: the infrastructures dedicated to it and the land it occupies achieve the scale of cities in the first instance, and small countries in the second. 3) The military is far more capable than I would have imagined at keeping secrets. To give you an example, I’ve been able to figure out that between 6 and 11 still-classified airplanes have been built in the last twenty years. There is almost no direct, publicly available evidence for the existence of a single one. The amount of money and people that you need to build a single airplane is absolutely enormous. 4) The socio-economic relationships and bureaucratic capacities developed in order to perform classified research, development, procurement, and testing have become increasingly generalized throughout the state. The Department of the Treasury, for example, has taken on far more characteristics of the National Reconnaissance Office than vice versa. 5) The “black world” of classified spending is not only a socio-political regime, but an ecological one as well. With the introduction of strange chemicals and other materials to the landscape, classified military programs become a source of ecological mutation. The forms of these mutations are themselves classified, but they have often meant death (this is a very long discussion). Like capitalism, “black world” spending has a particular metabolic relationship to nature and to the land. 6) The “black world” is a highly racialized landscape, whose reproduction presupposes the practical “non-existence” of certain groups of people. In the US itself, this usually means Native American communities. Moreover, the “black world” of domestic militarism mirrors the “black worlds” traditionally associated with empire: the American Frontier, the Belgian Congo, the Mekong Delta, the West Bank, and so forth. rene 2005-09-02T12:55:45-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001553.php this text will appear in "Deleuze and the Contemporary World" early next year. Treatise on Militarism Doubtless, the present situation is highly discouraging. - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (422) The 2004 US election must have... ayreen 2005-06-12T02:57:25-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001551.php this is one of two texts that will appear early next year in a volume Ian is editing, called "Deleuze and the Contemporary World" -- he kindly allowed us to post it here. this Introduction The Axiomatic, or, The Seven Givens of the Contemporary World It is the real characteristics of axiomatics that lead us to say that capitalism and present-day politics are an axiomatic in the literal sense. - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus In his book on Nietzsche, Deleuze says that you can never know a philosopher properly until to you know what he or she is against. To know them at all, you have to know what puts fire in their soul, what makes them take up the nearly impossible challenge of trying to say anything at all. Too many people are content to say Deleuze, like Nietzsche, was against Hegel without ever asking why. And those who do trouble themselves to ask this question are too often satisfied with a merely philosophical answer. But if Deleuze found Hegel’s philosophy intolerable it was not simply because he thought that the dialectic was a badly made concept, or that he objected to a metaphysics predicated on negation. These are the complaints of a sandbox philosopher and Deleuze was certainly not that. Hegel’s philosophy was intolerable to Deleuze because in his eyes it offers a slave’s view of the world. Worse, it is a model of thought that seems to participate in the legitimation of the very system that enslaves us by installing the master-slave dialectic at the centre our ratiocination, making it seem like this is the only choice we have, effectively denying us in advance the option of asking our own questions and forming our own problematics. But this critique is only meaningful (i.e., authentically critical) to the extent that it is read in terms of their conception of philosophy’s purpose, which is precisely Marxian to the extent that, like Marx, they hold that the point of philosophy is not simply to understand society, but to change it. Our answer to the question of what Deleuze and Guattari are against, then, is this: the axiomatic. The axiomatic is the latest form of social organisation, which for Deleuze and Guattari always means the organisation of the flows of desire. For Deleuze and Guattari desire is a kind of cosmic energy that is constantly being deformed into the desire-for-something; but, in their view, its true form is that of production itself. It is, in other words, a process rather than a thing. Desire is the force in the universe that brings things together, but does so without plan or purpose and the results are always uncertain. It may lead to the formation of new compositions, but it might also lead to decomposition. As such, desire is an ambivalent force - without it, we shrivel up and die, but if it isn’t carefully harnessed it can tear us apart. Deleuze and Guattari’s handling of the concept is similarly ambivalent: on the one hand, they are constantly demanding that desire be unbound from the various shackles of guilt, repression and shame, but on the other hand they caution that this process needs to be done slowly and with care. ayreen 2005-06-07T00:19:27-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001377.php Nataša Petrešin -- Journalisms -- POTENTIALITY OF A CULTURAL RESISTANCE TALK WITH BRIAN HOLMES, CLAIRE PENTECOST, MARKO PELJHAN, IGOR ZABEL Nataša Petrešin ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of this collective project is a work... rene 2004-11-19T17:09:29-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001338.php Reverend Billy -- Journalisms -- Out of Jail - Into Free Speech ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of this collective project is a work in progress. But the general idea is that we cannot... rene 2004-11-10T21:46:36-05:00 http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001256.php Marc -- Journalisms -- Whoever Wins, We Lose ------------------------------------------------------ "Journalisms:" or "Our Correspondent:" or "?" The title and mission of this collective project is a work in progress. But the general idea is that we cannot be in all places... rene 2004-09-08T00:43:03-05:00