Book launch ‘Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons‘, by Matteo Pasquinelli, Studies in Network Cultures.

Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons book launch
Date and time: Tuesday 20 January at 17h00, entrance from 16h45
Location: Waag Society, Theatrum Anatomicum, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam
Free entrance

The spectres of the financial and energy crisis are affecting new media culture and question the autonomy of networks. While activism and the art world still celebrate Creative Commons and the ‘creative cities’ as the new ideals for the Internet generation, Pasquinelli identifies the key social conflicts and business models at work behind the new commons.

Animal Spirits is the third issue in the series of studies in Network Cultures. This book series investigates concepts and practices special to network cultures. Exploring the spectrum of new media and society, we see network cultures as a strategic term to enlist in diagnosing political and aesthetic developments in user-driven communications. Network cultures can be understood as social-technical formations under construction.

The launch includes short presentations from Matteo Pasquinelli, Sebastian Olma, Merijn Oudenampsen and a discussion, led by Geert Lovink.

About the book: After a decade of digital fetishism, the spectres of the financial and energy crisis have also affected new media culture and brought into question the autonomy of networks. Yet activism and the art world still celebrate Creative Commons and the ‘creative cities’ as the new ideals for the Internet generation. Unmasking the animal spirits of the commons, Matteo Pasquinelli identifies the key social conflicts and business models at work behind the rhetoric of Free Culture. The corporate parasite infiltrating file-sharing networks, the hydra of gentrification in ‘creative cities’ such as Berlin and the bicephalous nature of the Internet with its pornographic underworld are three untold dimensions of contemporary ‘politics of the common’. Against the latent puritanism of authors like Baudrillard and Žižek, constantly quoted by both artists and activists, Animal Spirits draws a conceptual ‘book of beasts’. In a world system shaped by a turbulent stock market, Pasquinelli unleashes a politically incorrect grammar for the coming generation of the new commons.

About the author: Matteo Pasquinelli is an Amsterdam-based writer and researcher at the Queen Mary University of London and has an activist background in Italy. He edited the collection Media Activism: Strategies and Practices of Independent Communication (2002) and co-edited C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). Since 2000, he has been editor of the mailing list Rekombinant (www.rekombinant.org).

Table of Contents:
1. Animal Spirits: A Conceptual Bestiary
2. The Parasite of the Commons: Digitalism and the Economy of ‘Free Culture’
3. The Hydra of Language: The Biomorphic Unconscious of Culture Industry
4. The Bicephalous Image: The Just Masochism of the Imaginary

Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008. ISBN 978-90-5662-663-1. Paperback, sewn, 240 pages, Size: 16 X 23 cm. € 23.50

Design: Huug Schipper/Studio Tint. Cover: Leon Kranenburg and Loes Sikkes

This publication was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.

Previous published in this series:
- Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2006)
- Eric Kluitenberg, Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008)

Press: Please contact Barbera de Kooij at NAiPublishers for more information.

To buy the book visit the NAiPublsihers website.
http://www.naipublishers.nl/art/animal_spirits_e.html (English version)
http://www.naipublishers.nl/kunst/animal_spirits.html (Dutch version)

http://www.networkcultures.org/
http://www.naipublishers.nl/

After a decade of digital fetishism, the spectres of the financial and energy crisis have also affected new media culture and brought into question the autonomy of networks. Yet activism and the art world still celebrate Creative Commons and the ‘creative cities’ as the new ideals for the Internet generation. Unmasking the animal spirits of the commons, Matteo Pasquinelli identifies the key social conflicts and business models at work behind the rhetoric of Free Culture. The corporate parasite infiltrating file-sharing networks, the hydra of gentrification in ‘creative cities’ such as Berlin and the bicephalous nature of the Internet with its pornographic underworld are three untold dimensions of contemporary ‘politics of the common’. Against the latent puritanism of authors like Baudrillard and Zizek, constantly quoted by both artists and activists, Animal Spirits draws a conceptual ‘book of beasts’. In a world system shaped by a turbulent stock market, Pasquinelli unleashes a politically incorrect grammar for the coming generation of the new commons.

Matteo Pasquinelli is an Amsterdam-based writer and researcher at the Queen Mary University of London and has an activist background in Italy. He edited the collection Media Activism: Strategies and Practices of Independent Communication (2002) and co-edited C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). Since 2000, he has been editor of the mailing list Rekombinant (www.rekombinant.org).

If Rhythm Science was about the flow of things, Sound Unbound is about the remix– how music, art, and literature have blurred the lines between what an artist can do and what a composer can create. In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes “Three Pieces”; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer- conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. “Press ‘play,’” Miller writes, “and this anthology says ‘here goes.’” The groundbreaking mix CD that accompanies the book features Nam Jun Paik, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Allen Ginsberg, Iggy Pop, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Gertrude Stein, Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, and many other examples of avant-garde music. Most of the CD’s content comes from the archives of Sub Rosa, a legendary record label that has been the benchmark for archival sounds since the beginnings of electronic music.

“Scientists and engineers, if they care for a better world, must more fully understand the consequences of their actions. Artists must learn more about science and take up the challenge of illuminating our technological world to those who are shaping it. Both communities, in making their work more accessible to the other, will benefit. Not everyone will agree with the politics argued here–but that is fine. The need for dialogue has now extended far beyond Snow’s The Two Cultures, and so has its urgency. Tactical Biopolitics takes up that challenge; it is one of the most stimulating books I have read in a long time.”
–Charles Taylor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA

During 2007, As Sahab, the media production department of Al Qaeda, has released an unprecedented number of videos. Because of size restrictions by our printer, the Al Qaeda Yearbook for 2007 is being released in two volumes. Volume I is available for shipment on December 1; Volume 2 will be available shortly after the beginning of the year.

This publication includes the videos and audios produced and released by As Sahab during 2007.

The “Yearbook” is heavily indexed, with extensive footnotes.

“‘I suffer from attention surplus disorder,’ jokes a character in Anathem. Attention surplus is exactly what Stephenson teaches his readers, in a book so tightly crafted it rewards instant rereading.” – Stewart Brand

“It is a great story, set in an alternative reality where people take long-term thinking seriously.” – Danny Hillis

“Long Now’s 10,000-year clock inspired Neal Stephenson’s new story, Anathem, and now Anathem is inspiring the Long Now. In ten centuries, no one will be sure which came first.” – Kevin Kelly

The Long Now Foundation will be hosting the launch event of Neal Stephenson’s new book Anathem, in San Francisco on the evening of September 9th.

Eric Kluitenberg, Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007.

The formerly open terrain of the new media is closing fast: market concentration, legal consolidation and tightening governmental control have effectively ended the myth of the new media networks as the home of the free. The object of this book is not simply to critique these conditions. A thread that binds this collection of essays is the desire to assume both a critical position whilst retaining a utopian potential for the emerging cultures around new digital media. The challenge is how to develop such a position without falling prone to the delusions of the ‘new’, something that accompanied ‘new media culture’ all too often in its formative years. With this book Kluitenberg insists upon a cultural reading of media and technology, and argues that in order to reach the desired critical position it is necessary to understand the much larger histories of the linkages of culture and technology and to situate ‘new media’ cultural practices carefully within the local contexts they emerged from.

Delusive Spaces is divided into four main sections, ‘Archaeology’ tracing alternative histories of technology; ‘Politics’, questioning the politics of media and information; ‘Anthropology’ asking how to live in a digitally networked world; and ‘Art’ exploring the relevance of artistic strategies in a society dominated by global machines.

about the author: Eric Kluitenberg is a writer, theorist and organizer. He works as a programme coordinator at De Balie, Centre for Culture and Politics in Amsterdam. He has taught new media courses at Media-GN, the Art Academy Minerva in Groningen, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, and the School of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam Polytechnic, and has worked as scientific staff member at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Buyit online from NAI PUBLISHERS.

Have you ever wondered what’s behind a perfect Tetris-wall?
Have you ever freed a 3D world from terrorists?
Have you ever made polygon friends in networked fantasy realms?
And do you know what happens when these games never end?

The richly illustrated texts in “Space Time Play” cover a wide range of gamespaces: from milestone video and computer games to virtual metropolises to digitally-overlaid physical spaces. As a comprehensive and interdisciplinary compendium, “Space Time Play” explores the architectural history of computer games and the future of ludic space. More than 140 experts from game studies and the game industry, from architecture and urban planning, have contributed essays, game reviews and interviews. The games examined range from commercial products to artistic projects and from scientific experiments to spatial design and planning tools.

“Space Time Play” is not just meant for architects, designers and gamers, but for all those who take an interest in the culture of digital games and the spaces within and modeled after them. Let’s play!

Purchase online at www.joaap.org
An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. It pairs artists, architects, and designers with writers to address the role of the map as a political agent. An Atlas of Radical Cartography makes an important contribution to a growing cultural movement that traverses the boundaries between art, cartography, geography and activism.

Maps by:
An Architektur | the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) | Ashley Hunt | Institute for Applied Autonomy | Pedro Lasch | Lize Mogel | Trevor Paglen & John Emerson | Brooke Singer | Jane Tsong | Unnayan

Essays by:

Kolya Abramsky | Sebastian Cobarrubias & Maribel Casas-Cortes | Alejandro De Acosta | Avery F. Gordon | Institute for Applied Autonomy | Sarah Lewison | Jenny Price, Ellen Sollod, D.J. Waldie, Paul Kibel | Heather Rogers | Jai Sen | Visible Collective & Trevor Paglen

This beautiful boxed set containing ten unbound 17²x22² maps and a 160-page book of essays is immediately available from the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press @ www.joaap.org.
It is available to bookstores worldwide in January 2008 through Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) @ www.artbook.com.