Category: Space

• Traces = Tracks = Lines = Mappings

  There is this question of the traces that we produce. When I called you earlier today, I produced traces; every time I do a search on Google, I produce traces. But I do not believe anything that consists in saying we must prevent the development of trace-ability. We are now in an industrial society that rests on the recording of traces. And it is not worthwhile trying to make us believe that we should prevent it—it’s just wrong. That’s what I personally believe. The question is not how to prevent the recording of traces; the question is to create a consciousness of the recording of traces, a politics of the recording of traces. (467-468)

  The emphasis was added by myself. This is from the same Stiegler interview as quoted from in the last post. Interesting for thinking through how one might re-act to the tracing/tracking of human bodies (that, is with GPS).

  2012.12.20

• Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon and Henri Lefebvre

  

  I’m in the process of putting together a research presentation for January. It’s something all first year PhD students in sociology at the University of Warwick have to do, and it’s a nice way to introduce your thesis to the other students, as well as helping formulate your own plans. I’ve started to put the bulk of it into MS PowerPoint but decided I’d have a little play about with Prezi, which is great for adding a few neat visual touches and is far more flexible than PowerPoint.

  After trying a couple of their pre-formatted designs I decided I’d search for a suitable background image. I first typed in something general like ‘digital maps’ and ‘map game boards’ because I wanted to re-create the sequential format Prezi seems to like, with arrows and frames and also play on the urban exploration side of mapping. Then I had a bit of a brainwave and searched for some Situationist artworks/maps; the perfect combination of maps, play and ‘flow’. The classic image of the cut-out map segments with red arrows darting from section to section seemed perfect (see a selection here). Alas, I couldn’t find an image with a good enough resolution for the levels of zooming Prezi requires so I had to ditch them.

  Then I came across a post on the [polis] blog on the Moscow Occupy movement. Their main picture was an image by Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920 – 2005). Taken from his New Babylon project, the image was part of a selection of “models, sketches, etchings, lithographs, collages, architectural drawings, and photocollages, as well as …manifestos, essays, lectures, and films” (Wigley 1998; text available here) that together formed a utopian vision of an anti-capitalist city. His work was strongly interconnected with the Situationists of the 1950s/60s.

  In two, perhaps not so, coincidental moves I found a translation of an interview with Henri Lefebvre on Nieuwenhuys, Guy Debord and the Situationists, and also a reference to the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga and his homo ludens concept. Nieuwenhuys wanted his utopian city to be populated with the ‘playing man’ (homo ludens) in opposition to the ‘bourgeois shackles’ (Goldhagen 2006; direct link) the working man had to contend with in the modern city.

  A subsequent image I found from Nieuwenhuys’ same New Babylon project was perfect for the background to my presentation. Good quality and a perfect colour scheme (here). Close up I think it looks like either a microscopic image of a biological cell or a computer circuit board. It also gives me an opportunity to pick out individual elements in the collage (as I think it originally was) and link them into the different sections in the presentation.

  If you want to know a little bit more about Constant himself there’s an interview by Linda Boersma at the art magazine BOMB here from 2005. I’d like to think my attempts to introduce the digital map (and mobile device) as a ‘new terrain’ for situationist-style explorations draws on some of themes Constant envisaged in New Babylon.

  2012.12.19

• Halsall Interviews Latour

  There is a new issue of Society and Space hot off the press which, amongst other things (including a heart-warming set of tributes to the late Neil Smith) includes a short interview with Bruno Latour as conducted by Francis Halsall. It’s mainly on art and his ongoing Modes of Existence project. Although it does turn nicely into a discussion of the Enlightenment and the Gaia hypothesis, which is the subject of his upcoming Gifford Lecture Series at University of Edinburgh, outlined below:

  Facing Gaia. A new inquiry into Natural Religion

  There could be no better theme for a lecture series on natural religion than that of Gaia, this puzzling figure that has emerged recently in public discourse from Earth science as well as from many activist and spiritual movements. The problem is that the expression of “natural religion” is somewhat of a pleonasm, since Western definitions of nature borrow so much from theology. The set of lectures attempts to decipher the face of Gaia in order to redistribute the notions that have been packed too tightly into the composite notion of ‘’natural religion’’.

  There will be 6 lectures in total from 18 February – 28 February 2012. The details of which can be found in this publicity PDF.

  2012.12.14

• Another Apple Maps Fail

  This time it’s all rather serious. If you’re trying to find the town of Mildura in northwestern Victoria, Australia, you might have some problems. Apple’s iOS 6 marks it a whole 70km away from its actual location. The warning was put out by the state police, here. I always like seeing the comments on news sites when these stories come up though. Here’s a selection from The Guardian:

  Don’t worry, the other Very Good features make up for it. Like the 3D view, or the ability to control the GPS with Siri. For example:

  “Where the fuck are we, Siri?”
  “That abandoned coal mine doesn’t look like a Starbucks, Siri”
  “Communicate our whereabouts to the nearest search and rescue chopper, Siri”

  Here

  Not sure Siri would be able to help much!

  Oh for **** sake – why are people stupidly relying on technology that needs batteries, is prone to error and damage. Get a map, you know the paper versions with contours etc

  Here

  And a great response to the above, here:

  @ agir: you mean use paper maps made using the same processes and techniques as electronic maps?
  Oh for **** sake – why are people stupidly relying on paper maps that disintegrate in the rain and are difficult to read in high winds, are prone to error and damage. Get a phone, you know the electronic versions with contours etc

  both have advantages and disadvantages…

  I love it when people assume the paper map doesn’t have faults of its own. Although admittedly, it is rather hot in Australia this time of year so I doubt high winds and downpours are going to cause a problem.

  2012.12.10

• Carnivalesque windows of opportunity

  

  Two similar ‘carnivalesque’ moments in protest history, consider:

  In 1982, during the [Polish] May Day celebrations, members of [the activist group] Orange Alternative dressed up in ridiculous costumes, rented a bus, went to the local zoo, and waved red flags and sang communist songs while ironically demanding “freedom for the bears,” the bear being an obvious Soviet symbol. Although the “protesters” were arrested, they were so ridiculous that the police refused to fine them, particularly because it was difficult to know where to draw the line when it came to this obscure kind of political performance. Additionally, because the government wanted to take advantage of its newfound ability to distance itself from direct Soviet intervention in local economic and political affairs, officials did not want to be seen as returning to the more openly brutal political oppression of the past.

  And;

  The idea for the turtle people [during the Seattle WTO demonstrations] was the brainchild of Ben White of the Animal Welfare Institute, mainly as a reaction to the fact that the WTO court had overturned a US law passed in 1996 banning the sale of shrimp caught in nets that killed endangered sea turtles. The WTO court’s reasoning was that the law constituted “an unfair barrier to trade.” White thought that a public performance by “turtle people” could send a number of important symbolic messages. […B]ecause unelected courts in newly empowered international government organizations designed to enforce “free trade” were (and are) now able to overturn the laws of nation-states, the turtle people wanted to provide a “street theater [sic] spectacle” to draw attention to this new and relatively unknown form of corporate global governance.

  Then as a summary;

  These two examples, limited as they are, suggest that the humorless [sic] state has a very difficult time dealing with absurdity, symbolic protest, and the curious blending of the fictive and the real—people becoming turtles, elves becoming “real”—but it has much less trouble violently dealing with more “serious” forms of protest. And perhaps this has always been true.

  Really enjoying Michael Lane Bruner’s (2005) ‘Carnivalesque Protest and the Humorless State’ in Text and Performance Quarterly. Available here (subscription only). He argues that whilst playful protest does indeed work in subverting and inverting typical social roles and power hierarchies they only work during specific ‘windows of opportunity’. In his examples, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 80s and pre-9/11 era USA. Is there a similar window currently open across the UK and Europe? That’s difficult to say. I’m tempted to say yes, only because I think there is a particular ideological objective to be reached for those in power, and ‘serious’ protest arguably is only having a detrimental effect to those involved. At least in the UK that is. Carnivalesque forms of protest (similar to calls for ‘playful protest’) open the door for a wider inclusion of those who otherwise might not have engaged in any protest at all. The ‘seriousness’ of protest can frequently deter those who feel like they need to in some way ‘swot up’ on what they’re protesting about. No doubt there needs to be a certain amount of education involved, but that’s not to say that people should be deterred from heading out onto the streets. I do think carnivalesque forms of protest can help in mobilising people. As Major Fydrych (leader of the Polish Orange Alternative movement) was quoted as saying in Padraig Kenney’s A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (2002);

  Orange Alternative “happenings” were “places to learn opposition” and to “discover more political forms of protest.” He argued, “The WrocŁaw street slowly ceases to fear, and through participation in the fun, people learn to support more serious [protest] . . . [and slowly the] fear of detention—usually for a few hours, without serious consequences—evaporates” (190). It was, as Kenney remarks, a kind of socialist surrealism as sociotherapy.

  A sociotherapy I’m sure many people in the UK would welcome now.

   

  2012.11.29