i'm completely overwhelmed and scattered but am feeling
good with the progress of ideas. i've just completed my
proposal and have joined forces with compatriots and will
have things moving ...
things to think about in my quest for world (de)domination:
what space will i infiltrate and how will i treat it?
does it matter?
what type of signs will i play with?
ummmm....
i can't think of any more right now ... though kathleen
really helped to bring my ideas into form, a few hours ago,
but they are now lost....damn....i should have been taking
notes.
here's my proposal .... will be revised soon enough with
more tactile explanation.
:'':
____________________________________________________________
iBOt an iconoclast
"An Icon is not a person. An Icon is just waiting for an
Iconoclast to come along. In fact, an Icon doesn't even
deserve a capital letter. From now on, you will be referred
to as an icon. Icons are those who fuel the machine. icons
are the cannon fodder that keeps wars going. icons are
numbers. icons are faceless. icons struggle every day to
make enough money to pay for rent and food so that they can
survive for one more day to start the whole process over
again. icons are trapped.
All icons have is hope."
The above quote is taken from a multi-user dungeon at
www.iconoclast.com; where players represent her/his own
character, object, idea, place ... clicking from one to
another, building the network reality - destroying the
conventions that enslave them.
EMANCIPATION from
Ignorance and servitude
Exploitation and alienation
Poverty through technical and industrial development
DEATH
These stories are of the first kind. Myths that bring us
closer to god, be like god, attempt to transcend god,
create god ... all mirror a reflection of the moral
sensibilities of the time. However, in a technocratic age,
a new set of rules form in wake of the old. A sort of
virtual morality that is based on the premise that you
should do what makes you stronger. A cyberpunk's manifesto:
be moral for yourself.
``Life's a bitch/and then you die/that's why we get
high/cause you never know when you're gonna go''
--Nas feat. AZ the Visualiza ``Life's a Bitch''
Strongly resonating in Hip Hop culture which takes directly
from our instinctual sensibility to fight against the
unnamed Enemy, the making of morality is an essential part
of coping with the confusion-the scarcity. That everyday is
one more day until we die, ``you do what you got to do'', `by
any means necessary'. This invokes the making up of our own
rules, our own myths. Joseph Campbell understands the new
mythology as:
...The old, everlasting, perennial mythology, in
its "subjective sense," poetically renewed in terms neither
of a remembered past nor of a projected future, but of now:
addressed, that is to say, not to the flattery
of "peoples," but to the waking of individuals in the
knowledge of themselves...each in his own way at one with
all, and with no horizons. (Myths to Live By pg.266)
By erasing objective moralities for individualized
subjected ones we transcend borders that limit humanity.
And instead, opt for a world in constant flux, set adrift
along a course mapped out by the topographical tools of our
imagination. Where there is no meaning but what we mean.
`It's the dream that is real'
Those International Situationits were really onto something...
Graffiti is a significant practice amongst those who are
not given a voice. Instead, they mark messages on the
street, on buildings, billboards - anywhere public...to
communicate messages between themselves and to the rest of
the suspected populace. If taken to metaphor, it could be
understood that the post is in the tradition of graffiti.
The back alleys of Queen St. as message boards for crews
like DOH, LNC or old school cats like REN, FLEX, TCM; each
requesting for comment within their network. Joseph
Campbell realizes the making of myth amongst youths in
today's society during his Power of Myth interview.
They make them up for themselves. This is why we have
graffiti all over the city. These kids have their own gangs
and their own initiations and their own morality, and
they're doing the best they can. But they're dangerous
because their own laws are not those of the city.
``When you see another person write over your graffiti, what
do you do?''
``I kill him, man''
--Interview with NYC graffiti artist DONDE
Graffiti and other subversive methods of communication,
have disruptive agendas. An anti-thesis/dote to the
Socratic method which reinforces social obedience by
alluding to a false sense of security in the questions that
we think we ask, when in fact, we subconsciously de-rail
ourselves from imagination EXPRESSion as we opt for non-
punitive forms of control which hide benevolently behind
the masks of mice, keeping the awareness of control
dormant. This breeds confusion and apathy. We don't know
what is going on and we don't care to change it. Keeping
faith in the `immune systems' that govern our ideas and
behaviors, we will be ready to ignore control than take it
for ourselves. ``To think that we can escape control is a
delusion that prevents us from attending to the task of
making a better world.''(B.F Skinner)
``There is a myth system waiting to become a political
language to ground one way of looking at science and
technology and challenging the informatics of
domination-- in order to act potently.''
--Donna Hathaway `A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology,
and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century'
STRATEGY: semiurgy
PANIC - symptomizing a schizophrenic tendency common with
the postmodern moment. It describes a breakdown of the
interdependent relationship between signifiers leading to
the loss of identity over time. As Frederic Jameson
writes: 'schizophrenic experience is an experience of
isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers
which fail to link up in a coherent sequence'. Within our
consumptive system that actively manipulates and plays with
signs until they have no meaning, a fetishizing process
occurs with these objects. They no longer have a referent,
but a relationship between other referents to make meaning.
Charles Levin understands this as `the death of experience
in terms of the loss of personal significance resulting
from an advanced kind of fetishism in which 'objects have
become increasingly closed off from human interaction in
their systematic self-referential play'. This
disassociation from our objects around us allow for
differentiation to occur; a tactic that has been
successfully used to create affiliations with abstract
models, like fashion (urban outfitters' skull & crossbones)
or masculinity (Barthes' Citeroen).
Now with the Citeroen, there is also the flight to
represent the fluidity speed and travel. Not only asserting
one's manhood, but also, one's escape to `an ecology of
driving'. This expansion of meaning embodies no gender, but
in fact, a vision to transcend the physical limitations of
travel. The Citeroen transforms the imagery of speed into a
world that we control ... that we are able to own. Something
to stand on. However, in this sort of work - the work of
semiurgy - it's always got to move. There is no place to
stand, as Istvan Csicsery-Ronay cries,'' So one must move,
always move.''
``I'll hit up blocks and blocks ... sometimes a whole
neighborhood, all in one night...Tag up that shit so everyone
knows ... me and my crew go all city.''
--KD crew CopeOne Bronx, NY
The semiurgical practice of circulating an icon will
prescribe the remedy to `the death of experience' and will
instead, regenerate meaningful social communication through
the mediating systems of signs.
In this project, the sign will be a series of robot icons.
With one myth propelling their authorship through a series
of works converging into a point that will then rupture...
creating an iconoclastic motion toward the implosion of its
creation.
A repetition of symbol and the manipulation of meaning
within contextualized settings that affirm an unapologetic
stance on the climate of our technocracy today. Such
meanings set forth will assert ideas of the `superego'
mechanized as manifest in a robot-body. That
the `servomechanic' (McLuhan) tendencies of our society
need to be questioned in terms of its functionality within
various levels of communication command and control. That
the cyborg will emancipate, as Hathaway alludes, is part of
it. What will it free us from? And how is it changing us?
del.icio.us
Digg
Google bookmark
reddit
Simpy
StumbleUpon
Furl
Newsvine
Technorati
Tailrank