As the alarm bells have made it urgently clear—humanity has breached planetary boundaries—causing anthropogenic climate change and environmental disaster across the world.

This video critiques memes. It doesn't aim at judging which memes are based and which are cringe, nor at declaring this or that meme to be dead, but rather at explaining and critiquing the concept of the meme, starting with the original meaning as Richard Dawkins defined it.

Relevant Titles

The Memeing of Mark Fisher by Mike Watson https://www.waterstones.com/book/memeing-of-mark-fisher-the/mike-watson//9781789049336

Support Zero Books on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zerobooks Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SubZeroBooks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroBooks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/zer0books

Zero Books Manifesto:

The modern world is at an impasse. Disasters scroll across our smartphone screens and we’re invited to like, follow or upvote, but critical thinking is harder and harder to find. Rather than connecting us in common struggle and debate, the internet has sped up and deepened a long-standing process of alienation and atomization.

Zero Books aims to work against this trend.

It’s everywhere on the Internet right now—NFT this, Rarible that. Tokens, tokens, come get your tokens! We’ve got people shouting that the whole idea is an absurdity or an abomination, others saying it’s only a cynical cash grab, or that it is yet another harbinger of ecological disaster.

At around 8:00pm on the 24th of November 2009 John Edward Jones – an avid amateur caver – entered the Nutty Putty caves just south of Salt Lake City in Utah. He was accompanied by a large group of family and friends – it was, after all, just before Thanksgiving. The trip was intended to be a brief adventure that they could share before the holiday. What it turned into was a living nightmare that would cost John Edward Jones his life.

I tell the true stories behind some of history's greatest disasters... but without sensationalism or disturbing imagery. Fascinating Horror is all about in-depth research, respectful storytelling, and learning what we can from the mistakes of the past. You might be surprised to discover just how much of today's world is shaped by long-forgotten disasters from decades gone by.

Music: "Glass Pond" by Public Memory

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Documentary #History #TrueStories

What can our awareness of the immediate present gain from the study of old visual art? At this time, when we need all of the help we can get, that hard question deserves discussion. To represent the world is to understand it, and to understand it might, hopefully, help cope with disaster.

What can our awareness of the immediate present gain from the study of old visual art? At this time, when we need all of the help we can get, that hard question deserves discussion. To represent the world is to understand it, and to understand it might, hopefully, help cope with disaster.

AB: Your approach to climate politics emphasizes what you call “disaster communism.” Can you unpack that phrase? What does each term signify? And what do they mean when you put them together? How does this perspective differ from other approaches to the ecological crisis?

AB: Your approach to climate politics emphasizes what you call “disaster communism.” Can you unpack that phrase? What does each term signify? And what do they mean when you put them together? How does this perspective differ from other approaches to the ecological crisis?

Since the start of HBO’s mini-series about the 1986 nuclear disaster, “Chernobyl,” journalists have praised the series for getting the facts of the event right, even if its creators took some creative liberties.

Climate change is here. In the midst of the storm, an opportunity arises to break with capitalism and its vicious inequality. Let’s seize it while we can. The alternatives are unthinkable.

Let’s face it: reading stories about the ongoing destruction of planet Earth, the life-sustaining blue marble that all of us – aside from maybe Elon Musk – are permanently trapped on, has got to be one of the least-favorite topics of all time.

Utopian Topographies

Posted

on May 18, 2018 in Talks | 0 comments

I was recently invited to deliver a guest lecture at the City Literary Institute in London as part of their evening lecture programme, titled "Mapping Imaginary Topographies and Times: Literary Utopias from the Renaissance to the Present." Since I'm currently writing a chapter on “Utopia and Science Fiction" for the Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literature (ed. Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Fátima Vieira and Peter Marks, forthcoming 2018) I thought I'd take the opportunity to introduce students to the literary utopia and sketch out key moments in its development, including: the genre's origins in Renaissance island-utopias, the subterranean worlds of late nineteenth-century hollow-earth utopias, euchronias (utopias set in the future) of evolutionary progress and scientific management, Martian utopias, critical utopias of the 1970s, and contemporary post-apocalyptic and disaster fictions (particularly flood fictions) that privilege the utopian impulse despite their narratives of catastrophe.

As part of my broader current research into science fiction and utopian narratives of what I'm calling "extreme environments" (such as Mars, Antarctica, the deep sea, the hollow earth), I focussed the lecture around the question of how particular locations and settings have inspired literary utopias; as well as the common political features of these ideal societies and how they critique the socio-political conditions of their own times.

Click here to listen to a recording of the talk:

http://www.drcarolineedwards.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CityLit-Talk.m4a 

Below are the PowerPoint slides which accompanied the plenary, or click here to download:

Download (PPTX, 15.4MB)

http://www.drcarolineedwards.com/2018/05/18/utopian-topographies/

Houshi Ryokan was founded around 1,300 years ago and it has always been managed by the same family since then. 
It is the oldest still running family business in the world. This ryokan (a traditional japanese style hotel) was built over a natural hot spring in Awazu in central Japan in the year 718. Until 2011, it held the record for being the oldest hotel in the world. 
 Houshi Ryokan has been visited by the Japanese Imperial Family and countless great artists over the centuries. Its buildings were destroyed by natural disasters many times, but the family has always rebuilt. The garden as well as some parts of the hotel are over 400 years old. Houshi (法師) means buddhist priest. It is the name of the family as well as of the hotel. (It's great if you want to share the video, but DON'T publish any still images or screenshots from it without my permission!) (c) Fritz Schumann 2014 fotografritz.de twitter.com/fotografritz music by Mario Kaoru Mevy mevy.co.uk/ vimeo.com/kmevy Houshi Soundtrack available here: soundcloud.com/mario-kaoru-mevy/sets/houshi-soundtrackCast: Fritz Schumann and Mario Kaoru MevyTags: hotel, japan, old, history, houshi, ryokan, onsen, water and family

Année: 2016 Durée: 90' Langue: English / Fr & Nl Sub Réalisateur: Fabrizio Terranova Synopsis: EN - Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a feminist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between science and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with critters and trans species, in an era of disasters. Brussels filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in California, living with her – almost literally, for a few weeks, and there produced a quirky film portrait. Terranova allowed Haraway to speak in her own environment, using attractive staging that emphasised the playful, cerebral sensitivity of the scientist. The result is a rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker. FR - Donna Haraway, éminente philosophe, primatologue et féministe, a bousculé les sciences sociales et la philosophie contemporaine en tissant des liens sinueux entre la théorie et la fiction. Elle s’est fait connaître à partir des années 1980 par un travail sur l’identité qui, rompant avec les tendances dominantes, œuvre à subvertir l’hégémonie de la vision masculine sur la nature et la science. L’auteure du Manifeste Cyborg est aussi une incroyable conteuse qui dépeint dans ses livres des univers fabuleux peuplés d’espèces transfuturistes. Le réalisateur bruxellois Fabrizio Terranova a rencontré Donna Haraway chez elle en Californie. À partir de discussions complices sur ses recherches et sa pensée foisonnante, il a construit un portrait cinématographique singulier qui immerge le spectateur dans un monde où la frontière entre la science-fiction et la réalité se trouble. Le film tente de déceler une pensée en mouvement, mêlant récits, images d’archives et fabulation dans la forêt californienne. Crédits: Production by Atelier Graphoui, CBA, Spectre, Fabbula and Rien à Voir. • written & directed by Fabrizio Terranova • starring: Donna Haraway, Rusten Hogness, Cayenne Pepper • cinematography : Tristan Galand • film editing : Bruno Tracq • original music : Laurent Baudoux & The Fan Club Orchestra • sound : Nicolas Lebecque, Frédéric Fichefet, Cyril Mossé • visual effects : Alain Clément, Patrick Theunen • digital crochet coral reef animation : Clara Sobrino • process witch : Isabelle Stengers • producer : Ellen Meiresonne • co-producer : Olivier Marboeuf, Javier Packer-Comyn, Bruno Tracq • associate producer : Fabien Siouffi • Aides au développement : CBA et Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles Contact : graphoui.orgCast: Atelier Graphoui and Centre de l'Audiovisuel à BxlTags: atelier, graphoui and 2016

I just came back from two jam packed weeks at Transmediale festival, 2017. Morehshin Allahyari and I were involved in a wealth of events, mostly in relation to our #Additivism project. Including: On the Far Side of the Marchlands: an exhibition at Schering Stiftung gallery, featuring work by Catherine Disney, Keeley Haftner, Brittany Ransom, Morehshin and myself.

Photos from the event are gathered here.

The 3D Additivist Cookbook european launch: held at Transmediale on Saturday 4th Feb.

Audio of the event is available here.

Singularities: a panel and discussion conceived and introduced by Morehshin and myself. Featuring Luiza Prado & Pedro Oliveira (A parede), Rasheedah Phillips, and Dorothy R. Santos.

Audio of the entire panel is available here. The introduction to the panel – written by Morehshin and myself – can be found below. Photos from the panel are here.

Alien Matter exhibition: curated by Inke Arns as part of Transmediale 2017. Featuring The 3D Additivist Cookbook and works by Joey Holder, Dov Ganchrow, and Kuang-Yi Ku.

Photos from the exhibition can be found here.

Singularities Panel delivered at Transmediale, Sunday 5th February 2017 Introduction by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke   Morehshin: In 1979, the Iranian Islamic revolution resulted in the overthrowing of the Pahlavi deen-as-ty and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic. Many different organizations, parties and guerrilla groups were involved in the Iranian Revolution. Some groups were created after the fall of Pahlavi and still survive in Iran; others helped overthrow the Shah but no longer exist. Much of Iranian society was hopeful about the coming revolution. Secular and leftist politicians participated in the movement to gain power in the aftermath, believing that Khomeini would support their voice and allow multiple positions and parties to be active and involved in the shaping of the post-revolution Iran. Like my mother – a Marxist at the time – would always say: The Iranian revolution brought sudden change, death, violence in unforeseen ways. It was a point, a very fast point of collapse and rise. The revolution spun out of control and the country was taken over by Islamists so fast that people weren’t able to react to it; to slow it; or even to understand it. The future was now in the hands of a single party with a single vision that would change the lives of generations of Iranians, including myself, in the years that followed. We were forced and expected to live in one singular reality. A mono authoritarian singularity. In physics, a singularity is a point in space and time of such incredible density that the very nature of reality is brought into question. Associated with elusive black holes and the alien particles that bubble out of the quantum foam at their event horizon, the term ‘singularity’ has also been co-opted by cultural theorists and techno-utopianists to describe moments of profound social, political, ontological or material transformation. The coming-into-being of new worlds that redefine their own origins. For mathematicians and physicists, singularities are often considered as ‘bad behaviour’ in the numbers and calculations. Infinite points may signal weird behaviours existing ‘in’ the physical world: things outside or beyond our ability to comprehend. Or perhaps, more interestingly, a singularity may expose the need for an entirely new physics. Some anomalies can only be made sense of by drafting a radically new model of the physical world to include them. For this panel we consider ‘bad behaviours’ in social, technological and ontological singularities. Moments of profound change triggered by a combination of technological shifts, cultural mutations, or unforeseen political dramas and events. Like the physicists who comprehend singularities in the physical world, we do not know whether the singularities our panelists highlight today tell us something profound about the world itself, or force us to question the model we have of the world or worlds. Daniel: As well as technological or socio-political singularities, this panel will question the ever narcissistic singularities of ‘I’, ‘here’ and ‘now’ – confounding the principles of human universality upon which these suppositions are based. We propose ‘singularities’ as eccentric and elusive figures in need of collective attention. It is no coincidence that ‘Singularity’ is often used as a term to indicate human finitude. Self-same subjects existing at particular points in time, embedded within particular contexts, told through a singular history or single potential future. The metaphor of the transformative Singularity signals not one reality ‘to come’, nor even two realities – one moved from and one towards – but of many, all dependant on who the subject of the singularity is and how much autonomy they are ascribed. The ‘Technological’ Singularity is a myth of the ‘transhumanists’, a group of mainly Western, commonly white, male enthusiasts, who ascribe to the collective belief that technology will help them to become ‘more than human’… ‘possessed of drastically augmented intellects, memories, and physical powers.’ As technological change accelerates, according to prominent Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil, so it pulls us upwards in its wake. Kurzweil argues that as the curve of change reaches an infinite gradient reality itself will be brought into question: like a Black Hole in space-time subjects travelling toward this spike will find it impossible to turn around, to escape its pull. A transformed post-human reality awaits us on the other side of the Technological Singularity. A reality Kurzweil and his ilk believe ‘we’ will inevitably pass into in the coming decades. In a 2007 paper entitled ‘Droppin’ Science Fiction’, Darryl A. Smith explores the metaphor of the singularity through Afro-American and Afrofuturist science fiction. He notes that the metaphor of runaway change positions those subject to it in the place of Sisyphus, the figure of Greek myth condemned to push a stone up a hill forever. For Sisyphus to progress he has to fight gravity as it conspires with the stone to pull him back to the bottom of the slope. The singularity in much science fiction from black and afro-american authors focusses on this potential fall, rather than the ascent:

“Here, in the geometrics of spacetime, the Spike lies not at the highest point on an infinite curve but at the lowest… Far from being the shift into a posthumanity, the Negative Spike is understood… as an infinite collapsing and, thus, negation of reality. Escape from such a region thus requires an opposing infinite movement.”

The image of a collective ‘push’ of the stone of progress up the slope necessarily posits a universal human subject, resisting the pull of gravity back down the slope. A universal human subject who passes victorious to the other side of the event horizon. But as history has shown us, technological, social and political singularities – arriving with little warning – often split the world into those inside and those outside their event horizons. Singularities like the 1979 Iranian revolution left many more on the outside of the Negative Spike, than the inside. Singularities such as the Industrial Revolution, which is retrospectively told in the West as a tale of imperial and technological triumph, rather than as a story of those who were violently abducted from their homelands, and made to toil and die in fields of cotton and sugarcane. The acceleration toward and away from that singularity brought about a Negative Spike so dense, that many millions of people alive today still find their identities subject to its social and ontological mass. In their recent definition of The Anthropocene, the International Commission on Stratigraphy named the Golden Spike after World War II as the official signal of the human-centric geological epoch. A series of converging events marked in the geological record around the same time: the detonation of the first nuclear warhead; the proliferation of synthetic plastic from crude oil constituents; and the introduction of large scale, industrialised farming practices, noted by the appearance of trillions of discarded chicken bones in the geological record. Will the early 21st century be remembered for the 9/11 terrorist event? The introduction of the iPhone, and Twitter? Or for the presidency of Donald J Trump? Or will each of these extraordinary events be considered as part of a single, larger shift in global power and techno-mediated autonomy? If ‘we’ are to rebuild ourselves through stronger unities, and collective actions in the wake of recent political upheavals, will ‘we’ also forego the need to recognise the different subjectivities and distinct realities that bubble out of each singularity’s wake? As the iPhone event sent shockwaves through the socio-technical cultures of the West, so the rare earth minerals required to power those iPhones were pushed skywards in value, forcing more bodies into pits in the ground to mine them. As we gather at Transmediale to consider ai, infrastructural, data, robotic, or cyborgian revolutions, what truly remains ‘elusive’ is a definition of ‘the human’ that does justice to the complex array of subjectivities destined to be impacted – and even crafted anew – by each of these advances. In his recent text on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Jean-Luc Nancy proposes instilling “the condition of an ever-renewed present” into the urgent design and creation of new, mobile futures. In this proposition Nancy recognises that each singularity is equal to all others in its finitude; an equivalence he defines as “the essence of community.” To contend with the idea of singularities – plural – of ruptures as such, we must share together that which will forever remain unimaginable alone. Morehshin: This appeal to a plurality of singularities is easily mistaken for the kinds of large scale collective action we have seen in recent years around the world. From the Arab Springs, and Occupy Movement through to the recent Women’s March, which took place not 24 hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump. These events in particular spoke of a universal drive, a collective of people’s united against a single cause. Much has been written about the ‘human microphone’ technique utilized by Occupy protesters to amplify the voice of a speaker when megaphones and loud speakers were banned or unavailable. We wonder whether rather than speak as a single voice we should seek to emphasise the different singularities enabled by different voices, different minds; distinct votes and protestations. We wonder whether black and brown protestors gathered in similar numbers, with similar appeals to their collective unity and identity would have been portrayed very differently by the media. Whether the radical white women and population that united for the march would also show up to the next black lives matter or Muslim ban protests. These are not just some academic questions but an actual personal concern… what is collectivism and for who does the collective function? When we talk about futures and worlds and singularities, whose realities are we talking about? Who is going to go to Mars with Elon Musk? And who will be left? As we put this panel together, in the last weeks, our Manifesto’s apocalyptic vision of a world accelerated to breaking point by technological progress began to seem strangely comforting compared to the delirious political landscape we saw emerging before us. Whether you believe political mele-ee-ze, media delirium, or the inevitable implosion of the neo-liberal project is to blame for the rise of figures like Farage, Trump or – in the Philippines – the outspoken President Rodrigo Duterte, the promises these figures make of an absolute shift in the conditions of power, appear grand precisely because they choose to demonize the discrete differences of minority groups, or attempt to overturn truths that might fragment and disturb their all-encompassing narratives. Daniel: The appeal to inclusivity – in virtue of a shared political identity – often instates those of ‘normal’ body, race, sex, or genome as exclusive harbingers of the-change-which-should – or so we are told, will – come. A process that theorist Rosi Braidotti refers to as a ‘dialectics of otherness’ which subtly disguises difference, in celebration of a collective voice of will or governance. Morehshin: Last week on January 27, as part of a plan to keep out “Islamic terrorists” outside of the United States Trump signed an order, that suspended entry for citizens of seven countries for 90 days. This includes Iran, the country I am a citizen of. I have lived in the U.S. for 9 years and hold a green-card which was included in Trump’s ban and now is being reviewed case by case for each person who enters the U.S.. When the news came out, I was already in Berlin for Transmediale and wasn’t sure whether I had a home to go back to. Although the chaos of Trump’s announcement has now settled, and my own status as a resident of America appears a bit more clear for now, the ripples of emotion and uncertainty from last week have coloured my experience at this festival. As I have sat through panels and talks in the last 3 days, and as I stand here introducing this panel about elusive events, potential futures and the in betweenness of all profound technological singularities… the realities that feel most significant to me are yet to take place in the lives of so many Middle-Easterners and Muslims affected by Trump’s ban. How does one imagine/re-imagine/figure/re-figure the future when there are still so many ‘presents’ existing in conflict? I grew up in Iran for 23 years, where science fiction didn’t really exist as a genre in popular culture. I always think we were discouraged to imagine the future other than how it was ‘imagined’ for us. Science-fiction as a genre flourishes in the West… But I still struggle with the kinds of futures we seem most comfortable imagining. THANKS   We now want to hand over to our fantastic panelists, to highlight their voices, and build harmonies and dissonances with our own. We are extremely honoured to introduce them: Dorothy Santos is a Filipina-American writer, editor, curator, and educator. She has written and spoken on a wide variety of subjects, including art, activism, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. She is managing editor of Hyphen Magazine, and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts fellow, where she is researching the concept of citizenship. Her talk today is entitled Machines and Materiality: Speculations of Future Biology and the Human Body. Luiza Prado and Pedro Oliveira are Brazilian design researchers, who very recently wrapped up their PhDs at the University of the Arts Berlin. Under the ‘A Parede’ alias, the duo researches new design methodologies, processes, and pedagogies for an onto-epistemological decolonization of the field. In their joint talk and performance, Luiza and Pedro will explore the tensions around hyperdense gravitational pulls and acts of resistance. With particular focus on the so-called “non-lethal” bombs – teargas and stun grenades – manufactured in Brazil, and exported and deployed all around the world. Rasheedah Phillips is creative director of Afrofuturist Affair: a community formed to celebrate, strengthen, and promote Afrofuturistic and Sci-Fi concepts and culture. In her work with ‘Black Quantum Futurism’, Rasheedah derives facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics, futurist traditions, and Black/African cultural traditions to celebrate the ability of African-descended people to see “into,” choose, or create the impending future. In her talk today, Rasheedah will explore the history of linear time constructs, notions of the future, and alternative theories of temporal-spatial consciousness.      

In his 1971 novella The Futurological Congress, the Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem describes a group of futurologists who have gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Costa Rica to stave off planetary disaster.

More than five years after the devastating tsunami and the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck north-eastern Japan, causing the explosion of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, the Japanese town remains abandoned. Since April 22, 2011, an area within 20km (12.

Jason Ray thinks the culture of “disaster prepping” is misunderstood.

For Paul Virilio the last remaining defense against the crumbling world economy is to abandon the ship, lift our heads to the sky and join in the exurbanist future of the Ultracity.

Imagine constructing a building with no blueprints or architects, and no inkling of what the finished edifice should look like. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and yet that’s what ants and termites do all the time—and the results speak for themselves.