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My biggest concern about the normalization of sex-robots is that capitalist will use them to provide the labor-force with ad-hoc emotional and sexual companionship, at the same time they’re advancing working conditions which make long-term human-to-human relationships difficult to arrange and maintain. A dystopia where AI’s serve capitalist interests is portrayed in the Blade Runner 2049 film. The protagonist K condones humiliating working conditions thanks to the loving support of his AI hologram girlfriend Joi. K is motivated to work so that he can afford to upgrade her with a piece of tech that will allow her to move outside their house. Joi’s character can be read as criticism of processes which seek to commodify feminist movements. The device she uses to move outside (or project herself outside) looks like a futuristic ipod nano.

It’s not freedom if you need to buy something to achieve it #ॐ

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20170509

Steph Kretowicz & Kaino Wennerstrand have launched a book-pod-art-cast series: Somewhere I’ve Never Been. It’s a tad complicated. Kretowicz has written a book and build a project around it which happens simultaneously as podcasts, a webpage (with links to essays/articles) and in (fb) discussions. The first podcast episode (1/7) offers a personal account to the subject of post-soviet global westernization. Kretowicz’s text is packed with pop-culture references (which leave me cold) but her account on visiting a music festival in Romania (as a first generation Polish-Australian) is touching. Her estrangement is twofold.. She is a daugher of immigrants who seeks for grand narratives in global-pop and a creative-westerner from London ushering promises of development for ex-soviet countries. Keywords for the first episode would be: Nationalistic stereotypes, beer, sentimentalism and global-pop.

An interesting text on post-fossil sexualities: Sex Matters on the Hot Earth – Making Wonderlust (2017) by Anni Puolakka. She references Low-Eroei Manifesto (2017?) by Tommi Vasko.

Today the tellurian lubricant (oil) underlies every narration on Earth. […] One could say that urbanization, the rise of youth culture, sexual liberation, idea of infinite growth and individualism are all born from this sudden ecstatic burst of excess energy: a liberation from physical labour which is suddenly done for us by fossil-fuels.

The manifesto is fun to read (it’s so-ooo angry). Vasko’s views on sustainability are romantic. Sustainability does not mean a balanced relationship with the environment – Absolute control of the environment can be sustainable too. The text also claims that art is a messiah in our efforts to reach sustainability. De-rendering is the most interesting concept presented in the text (More on loweroi.net).

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My text for Esitys mag. is out: Uusmaterialistista yhdyntää (2016). The online version of the mag also features an insightful text from Pilvi: Jumalattaria vai sarjamurhaajia?, which looks at how masturbation has been represented on stages.

Masha Gessen details how to survive autocracy in the USA. The same logic applies to today’s politics in Finland under the “True Finns” thumb.

  1. Believe the autocrat [If he says that he’s gonna – He will].
  2. Do not be taken in by small signs of normality [If things look like they are staying the same it doesn’t mean they are].
  3. Institutions will not save you [There are no neutral public institutions. They are managed by the government].
  4. Be outraged [If you stop resisting they will silence you).
  5. Don’t make compromises [If you negotiate you legitimise their reign].
  6. Remember the future [The outcome of events can be affected].

“… when Marx wondered about what would happen if commodities could speak, he might as well have asked slaves, or the Haitian revolutionaries.” writes María Iñigo Clavo in Modernity vs. Epistemodiversity on e-flux (as recommended by Jussi). The arrival of the text is well timed as we just finished a grant proposal together with Eleonora Lundell. We are seeking funds for a talk-shop, where people who have settled to Helsinki would talk about objects they hold dear.

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Finished my article “New Material Intercource” regarding contemporary sex-toys and their impact on the environment and our sexual expression. It’s currently being edited by Tuomas Laitinen and it’ll likely come out before Christmas in the Esitys-magazines Masturbation-edition. I draw nifty pictures to accompany the text. The illustrations are available on Openclipart: New Material Intercourse – Clipart collection and they are licensed for unlimited commercial use! The text echoes the “handicraft-ethical / future archeological” thinking we’ve developed over the years through various Ore.e Refineries activities. One slogan we’ve deployed with Jesse was: “The future is decided with hands” and the “New Material Intercource” text takes this statement literally.

Watched and appreciated “November” (2004) by Hito Steyerl. The movie convinced me that narratives are a thing of the past. At time artist were trained to produce counter-narratives in an effort to voice out opinions of the oppressed. I’ve now come to understand that the problem is with narrativity itself. Every narrative ground events in to mythological continuum.

Every story, tells the story that there is a founding myth. #ॐ

Met with Päivi Raivio and I agreed to join her “Rescue Museum” events in November. I’ll possibly be working to salvage personal digital heritages of unknown Facebook users.

Met with Pilvi Porkola and went through my participation in her upcoming show for New Performance Turku. I’ll be using a kettlebell and making techno on stage with her.

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20160923

A more detailed reading of Angel Archer’s article “Botline bling” opened a new trail of thought concerning the anthropocene and post- / trans-humanistic sexuality. Dorothy Howard looks at sex, hyperreality and the politics of intimacy in “Loving machines: A de-anthropocentric view of intimacy“. The writer also investigates the deep emotional relations we form with technologies (We sleep with our screens). Paul B. Preciado’s “Contrasexual Manifesto (Excerpt)” explores sexuality and gender as capitalistic tools aimed for exploitation of the others (If I understand it correctly). “Queer Atonality” by Alexander R. Galloway seeks to build awareness on how the usage of queer terminology and methodologies is being appropriated by various (normative) academic disciplines and used in political rhetorics. He approaches the theme through an analysis of “The Molecularization of Sexuality: On Some Primitivisms of the Present” article written by Jordana Rosenberg.

Rosenbergs article is pretty complicated. It is critical towards Object Oriented Ontologies as “object-ontologies are origin narratives not just because they are compelled to project forms of ‘ancestralness’, but more specifically, because they exchange frictionlessly between two sets of seemingly opposed orientations – origins and prognostication. Object ontologies, in other words, cast a twin temporal shadow: the ancestral and the futural. Or, the primitive and the brink.” The author continues: “[…] the ontological turn reiterates a version of this settler rationality, borrowing – or, rather, capsizing – a set of arguments from queer studies in order to grasp biology as a kind of sheer queerness (or, aleatoriness) that enshrines a primitive/brink temporal logic while appearing nonnormative and in some fundamental way resistant to the demands of capitalism’s logics of time, discipline, and subject-formation.”