ecopolis

At the Haus Der Kultuur der Welt, in Berlin, Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin Particles presents Capitalism: Tales of the Matter Market.

Performance
Fri 12.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission
Sa 13.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission
Su 14.10.2007 12:00h – 24:00h, free admission

Nomadic new york counters Manhattan’s restless flow of money with “decelerated” in-between spaces. Their performance art refuses spectacle. It takes on a political dimension through the formation of temporary collectives which occupy spaces in new ways. The artists open up New York and Berlin through their nomadic coming and going, their avoidance of fixed structures. In Berlin they will tell us a story of life in the global metropolis, a story that we all have in common.

For the market, nanoparticles hold the 21st century’s great promise. For critics, they are a vision of pure horror, as long as the toxicological risks are not known. The era of unregulated nanocapitalism has already dawned, with these smallest of particles being used today in cosmetics, fabrics and dyes. Ricardo Dominguez, founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater and initiator of virtual sit-ins on the Zapatista resistance, sees his art as explicitly politically commissioned. He and Diane Ludin invite the public to a multimedia lecture-performance with two leading nanotechnologists that will provide insight into the stories of the global particle market. Knowledge is action!

Above Ricardo Dominguez states what is Particle Capitalism:
“We are no longer under the sign of natural selection or even artificial selection—we are now under the sign of atom selection. Everything on the planet, from indigenous aromas to public spaces to our atoms, is now forced to march into the Intellectual Property filters of globalization. Communication and evolution have now muted to a particle – commoditization systems. The neoliberal matrix that started to emerge fully in the 90’s has played itself out on three stages: digital/Virtual Capitalism, genetic/Clone Capitalism and nanotechnology/Particle Capitalism. Each of these stages of technocapital are being integrated via a new “deep harmonization” of the global Intellectual Property agenda: copyright laws, trademark laws and patent laws. A process that starts in the research chambers and ends in ownership enclosures, from patenting technology to patenting life, from patenting information to patenting atom-based reality.” -Dr. Dominguez

Last time I took a plane, I guess it was in Agoust, I met someone at the security check.
She was not the first-look-wow girl, but we talked deeply, promptly.
She told me not to take my drinks with me any further, she mad e me undress my shoes, my jacket and also my belt.
That was very fast for the first meeting, but she told me to relax.
Hearing strange noises, she told me, she needs to touch me.
I was confused, but i accepted and it felt good.
While body checking we were talking about regulatory power and questions
I never dared to ask. It was so intense.
When she stopped touching, I was left alone with an emptiness of not knowing why all this happened.
And then, I guess, it just occurred, that I had to kill reality.

PRESS RELEASE. 09/11/2007. BERLIN-TORINO.

Online since September 2007 www.check-check.org wants to get in touch with all beings suffering the ambivalence of reality.
The italian-german co-production of Paolo Cirio and Nina Roth focuses on airport security regulations seeing in it the worst case scenario of kidding with peoples fears, peoples brains and the idea of how security is installed as a focal point in our daily lives.

“Check-Check.org” is an easily accessible online platform that aids to deprogram people from Psychological Operations (PsyOps) done on almost all citizen of the so-called first world, in order to engage everyone in military missions and rising social control.

Deprogramming is a sort of debugging of the social code that is given to us since we were born. In the airport case the social code is the script of “Security Theater” or the “Theater of the Absurd” that is a spectacle in a grand scale done around the world.

The deprogrammer “Check-Check.org” operates with a friendly psychological method: everyone can read the experiences, feelings, emotions and unpredictable behaviors of other mind-controlled ‘victims’. So with more consciousness and less embarrassment, because others already unclenched, people generally open up to each other, expressing their self-doubts about their existence and reality. Everyone can share opinions and find confirmations; a practice as an antidote to deceptive brainwashing and a return to a free mind.

In the dramatization of taking a flight, we play several acts of the propaganda theater. It’s like an educational method, as always in theater. You can’t do better than the audience-participation dramas performed at airports.
The chief of the Transportation Security Administration admitted recently: “Taking lighters away is security theater”.

On the stage we have to follow the script that we get daily infused not only by mass media: Stick to moral commitments! Terrorism is everywhere! Stay alert! Don’t trust anyone!

In this contemporary information warfare any news is in a schizophrenic loop, where the goal is to cut off any relation between sense and realty. Without meaning anything it could be possible to justify the kings and queens of absurdity, like class divide, injustice, wars. Senselessness and absurdity is a contemporary feeling between the rows of newspaper and behind the tv box. To get everybody used to nonsense actions: lets play this ridiculous act.

So, double checking our own reality is an act to uncover the (un)real reality, and kill the false.

NOTES:

Deprogramming

Security Theater

Theater of the Absurd

Update News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/20/national/main3080127.shtml
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/20/tsa_head_calls_light.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/16/would_a_hairgel_bomb.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Concerning War: A Critical Reader, BAK / Revolver, 2006, ISBN 9077288082
Artists in time of war, Howard Zinn, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2003, ISBN 1583226028
Under Fire (I/II) the organization and representation of violence, Jordan Crandall, Witte de With Rotterdam, 2004, ISBN 907336261
The no-nonsense guide to terrorism, Jonathan Barker, New Internationalist, London, 2005, ISBN 1859844332
Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier, 2003, ISBN 0387026207
Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal, ISBN 0930452496
Dictionay of War, Conferences Archive, www.dictionaryofwar.org

FUNNY STUFF:

http://kiphawleyisanidiot.com
http://operationcheckpoint.com/
http://eatdrinkandbemarysue.wordpress.com/

MUSIC CREDIT:
:::*:::
http://www.myspace.com/chipsandbites

The city of New York don’t want to be surprised again and now it’s promoting a Disaster Design Competion: thre’s a text and multimedia Disaster Scenario, a purpose, seeking innovative ideas for providing Provisional Housing for residents who may lose their homes as the result of a catastrophic coastal storm, jury criteria sorted above, an history of hurricanes that hitted the city and CAD file to be downnloaded.

The Jury will favor designs that demonstrate the following qualities:
Density Maximize number of housing units per land area
Rapid Deployment Provide units ready to be occupied as soon as possible
Site Flexibility Maximize the ability to accommodate as many different sites as possible
Unit Flexibility Maximize the ability to accommodate as many variable household types and sizes as possible
Reusability Maximize the potential for reuse of the structures either for future disasters or other purposes
Livability Maximize the strength, utility, convenience, and comfort of the dwellings
Accessibility Allow access for people who have limited mobility
Security Make public space defensible and help people feel safe
Sustainability Reduce energy costs and the carbon footprint of the dwellings
Identity Maximize the ability of New Yorkers to feel a sense of identity and even pride in where they live
Cost Efficiency Maximize the best value for investment

SOME NOTABLE HURRICANES IN NEW YORK CITY
1821 Tide levels rose 13 feet, causing the Hudson and East Rivers to meet at Canal Street.
1893 A Category 1 hurricane scoured away Hog Island off the Coney Island coast of Brooklyn.
1938 A Category 3 hurricane (the most powerful hurricane known to have affected New York City) passed over Long Island, causing 10 deaths in the city, over 700 deaths regionally, and disrupted power in Manhattan north of 59th Street and all of the Bronx. The storm also disrupted subway service.
1985 Hurricane Gloria left 2.2 million people without power in the Northeastern United States.
1999 Tropical Storm Floyd flooded subway tunnels across the city, causing service disruptions.

2007

1969

The americans got the Moon first, in the 1969, perhaps….and now for sure the Russian has got a new territory: the norht pole.
End if in 1969 the U.S.A. considered the landing on the moon most of all as a promotional campaign, now the russian are playing hard, looking not only for a promotional campaing but also for…petrol.

More at Guardian and BBC.

Via Jessica Hagy.

Few days ago, the italian collective Molleindustria decided to remove from its website its last videogame, Operation: Pedopriest, “in order to not worsen the situation of our webspace provider that is legally responsable for all the content“. This decision was taken after a point of order in the Italian Parliament called “Countermeasures to the religions’ offenses”, in which the leader of the Christian Democratic Party Luca Volontè asked to shut down this website appealing to a 2006 law about child abuse and pornography.
The law includes a chapter about “virtual pedo-pornography” that consider illegal to publish “pictures whose quality of representation makes unreal situations appear real“. So the picture you see above (a screenshot from the game) is ILLEGAL according to the Italian Parliament. If you want to support Molleindustria, spread it over the web (or, if you prefer, take another screenshot from the game, that can be played here.

Paradoxically the christians politicians are exploiting a law against pedophilia to ban a satirical game that point the finger to child abuses committed within the clergy.

Interview with Alexis Lloyd, creator of AdGenerator, that has been selected as MashUp of the day, on 25th may.

ECO: the AdGenerator is a clear example of what Umberto Eco called ermetic semiotic, that is the semiotic of most of the standard communication language of advertising,that establish a connection, an analogy with all the ideas of the world, and becasue they’re infinite there’s no possibility for the language to reach sense. And so the creator is repaired by any control or verification.What do you think about?
AL:The Ad Generator is a generative artwork that creates fake advertisements in order to explore how advertising uses and manipulates language. Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr to dynamically generate fake ads. By remixing corporate slogans, The Ad Generator deconstructs how the language of advertising is both powerful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet simultaneously meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold. In using the Flickr images, the piece explores the relationship between language and image, and how meaning is constructed by the juxtaposition of the two.

Through this process of generative remixing, The Ad Generator directly addresses the way in which advertising plays on the idea of hermetic semiotics — that, in one way or another, everything can be connected with everything else. Our minds want to make connections, and so if we see a slogan like “Savor the Good Life” next to a Cuisinart food processor, we begin to forge an association between the product and the idea. However, this is highly manipulative and problematic, because while the connection can be made in our minds, that does not translate into that connection having any truth in reality. So, by abstracting this process of association into a generative, random process, The Ad Generator reveals the falsehood of advertisements, and encourages viewers to look at advertising with a more critical eye. I hope that this kind of critical perspective will give people more mental freedom and control over their relationship with advertising and their own consumer practices.

ECO: What about ambivalence in the advertising communication? For exampl,e do i’ve to believe a oil company that promotes clean energy?
AL: This is a very complex issue and an important question, especially in this current era. There are corporations that truly do support good social causes, and we in turn can reinforce those practices by “voting with our pocketbooks”. For example, it really does effect change if large numbers of consumers buy from a company that supports good labor practices. However, this kind of intentional and tangible political act is very different from buying a particular brand of fuel for your car because you have some vague notion that the company somehow “feels” more environmentally friendly.

I think a lot of corporations have realized that social and political issues are important to consumers, but they also know that it is very difficult to thoroughly research the details and implications of corporate activity. Therefore, a popular strategy is to create — through advertising campaigns — an “image” of social responsibility. Many consumers then buy particular brands and feel as if they are doing something good, but there may be no substance behind this image. In essence, environmentalism or labor politics become just another ideal being sold that often has no relationship to the reality of the product you are buying or the political actions of the corporation.

ECO: Is contemporary advertising dada?
In a way, yes. The Ad Generator actually draws on a number of Dada techniques, including collage, chance composition, text as art, and the technique of remixing. (These techniques are not only drawn from Dada, but also owe a debt to movements such as Fluxus and the Situationists.) Yet, in using a “Dada” type of approach, the program ends up creating ads that are highly believable as “real” advertisements, so I find that to be a compelling and thought-provoking result.

What I find disturbing about advertising language and semiotics is the disconnection between the big ideas used to sell products and the function of products themselves. So, for example, Volkswagen’s slogan: “Dare to be happy” creates a false parallel in the consumer’s mind between happiness and the purchase of a car. It is this exploitation of our larger, intangible desires and values that makes advertising so effective at manipulation — while you may have enough cars, you will always want more happiness! It is this connection that is created between consumer products and intangible desires that keeps us in an endless cycle of consumerism — where we continue to buy more and more material “stuff” in an effort to achieve happiness, purity, authenticity, youth, beauty, etc. But of course, this is an effort that never really pays off.

www.alexislloyd.com
www.theadgenerator.org