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20180519

ME AND MINE – An insight into the relationships between people and entities in Diadema, Brazil (2018) report / documentary is now complete! We looked it over today with Eleonoora and celebrated with beers. It took two months to complete and the film will be premiered in Portugal next week.

On Bullsh*t Jobs a great talk by David Graeber. He offers a useful definition for bullshit jobs (save a click: Middle management jobs are bullshit), uncovers why our society insists that people should work and explains processes which fabricate bullshit jobs. He explains that the majority of non-bullshit-work is care work and that public services which are associated with gray-infra (buss drivers, train operators etc.) engage in care work too which is why their work should not be automated.

The Three Ecologies (1989) Félix Guattari (I’ve written a very similar text for a Neighborizome related publication/performance catalogue).

On Plastic in Time a collection of links to different resources which investigate plastic (by Geoff Manaugh).

Douglas Lain interviews Eric Wilson about his book The Republic of Cthulhu (2016). A very useful introduction to para politics. The talk prompted me to think about dark/black-infra (as defined by Eyal Weizman in Architecture of Violence) as Para Infrastructure. Wilson argues that our skills in reading horror-novels and detective stories can offer a way to survive contempary political realities. When we read the crisises of democracy as a horror story we can identify the shapes of non-rational human forces (even non-human) that work in the undercurrents of representative democracy. He also gives a solid explanation on what the spectacle society is.

Got the ALL apps damaged or incomplete issue on my Mac. Managed ti fix it following the protocol (also had to reinstall Mac OS). The process took me over five hours. A horrible ordeal for a Saturday.

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20180512

Jade Rose aka The Library (Modular) Girl has released her first album record on bandcamp. Some songs were composed using the Lawrence Public Library modular system. Her videos on youtube were an important reference for developing the Oodi modular proposal. My favourite song is Olivine (7min), here is a video of Rose recording it live at the library.

Fixed my Leatherman Wave (which broke a few years back because I forced the locking mechanism of a blade and a design error). I had to brute-force a 6mm (metre) bolt into a 16/64?? inch (imperial) hole. Succeed by grinding both the bolt and the hole with a file. The bolt is now ~5,9,mm and the hole ~15/64 inch. The size of the bolt&holes no longer work within any known measurement system… I’ll call this new system the “post-transatlantic system”. It’s the system of fitting metre size stuff into imperial stuff using brute force.

Ready Player One (2018) is a necessary movie for understanding the loop that visionaries of early globalisation have placed western lifestyles in. The movie is what the people who ended history have left us with. In the movie a group of avatars (who have money for blood) try to figure out the testament of a corporate overlord called Mr. Holliday (Who is compared to Steve Jobs). The movie manifests a Spielbergian fixation with word games: The avatars try to solve puzzles, discover truths within words from pop-culture references (which is used like kabbalah) and this determinism (that words have hidden meanings in them) makes the story very cynical. The movie is aware that its a game save from 1989, there is even a lead figure with a birthmark similar to Gorbachevs. Contemporary culture is a game save, every trail of thought that breaks the game – Returns us to the save. The movie helped me understand that history didn’t end in 1989. History starts in 1989! Majority of us learn about history before the collapse of communism trough digital recourses: This means that there is no history before victory. We are not stuck in the past, we are stuck in a future. #☭

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20180511

Redistribution via Appropriation: White(washing) Marbles (2018) iLiana Fokianaki.

There has finally been the addition of much-needed voices and positions from outside the Western canon. Nonetheless, these voices are usually framed not only by white people but by white logics. Institutions, biennials, and mega-exhibitions attack colonial pasts, but not presents. They are quick to be politically correct and “host” the Other—while often maintaining an all-white staff, and a clearly rigidly Western approach as to how to institute.

Before attempting to address what is to be done, one must first understand the limitations of the contemporary art institution and the mega-exhibition. These forms fail to escape the mechanisms of power they wish to condemn, since they cling to a notion of “civilization” with roots in modernism that continues to structure particular modes of discourse.

When departing on a quest to define the Western and the white, one needs to take into account that the notion of “white” carries socioeconomic and political weight. The propaganda of the WWW (White Western Westphalia) order has always counted on including as many countries as possible in the definition of this Western whiteness, “modernizing” and “civilizing” them throughout the centuries, via globalization and capitalism, but simultaneously exploiting them.

Nonetheless, a clear trajectory belongs to particular countries that have always been part of the West, and another trajectory belongs to others that have hopped in and out of the Western wagon. They are not equally “white.” […] One thing is clear: whatever defines White Western Westphalia today, its de facto imposition of a supposed superiority is certainly to blame for the current socioeconomic and political realities of Europe and the world.

Music Thing Modular – Mikrophonie Berlin Full Kit (Limited Edition) is an eurorack module that has a circuit board element based on the map of Berlin. Feeling proud about the Berlin Wall Distortion! Also noticed that using green-screens for pedal demo videos is a thing now.

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20180509

Miehen paikka (2018) Veera Jussila & Anni Pasanen (Finnish). A critical text investigating at the crisis of masculine culture (in a form of a case-study. All of the interviewees are mocked).