Reading group

Hi all! Still moved by your excellent work and reflections... Some of you have asked about the reading group. We are currently reading Nietzsche's Late Notebooks. The next reading group is May 13 at 5pm (they are every 3 weeks) and for the summer we will be meeting at Temps Libre (5605 de Gaspé, suite 106, behind Falco). Email me and I'll send you the reading if you'd like to come.

And please: can you make the spring come???? After all of this talk of global warming.... ;-)

Hi, bonjour !
Here is a very fresh action by the artist-activist groups Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) yesterday night at the Gugghenheim museum. 
Powerfull inspiration.
Wish you all a great journey through art labor.
josé



G.U.L.F. activism

...it took me a while to figure out a proper format... only in the end to upload it to Youtube...

...I enjoyed the class... there aren't many spaces like this to engage with philosophy and current world issues...
...regards...

Always a work in process

Do Not Feed The Buffalos

Thanks everybody, it was a pleasure learning with you all.

Nature Sounds

Hi everyone,

I am so moved and impressed by everyone's projects last night. It means a lot that so many of you shared them with us.

Here's the audio file that I didn't have the chance to share. While I originally intended it to be experienced in a enclosed space, it would be in interesting experiment to see how it's received in different places.

In process, I wanted to create an installation, a standing environment in which to enter and be enveloped. I’ve prepared what is like something of an in between for my installation, like an idea existing for how I would like to construct it and how I would imagine it being experienced. The structure itself would be free standing, where an adult could comfortably enter and sit, with little or no light. There is a specific need in this exercise in sound and perception for the body to enter a space and experience an affective difference in the process of entering; as opposed to putting a blindfold on and removing a physical sensor, it would be to enhance a sensory experience of listening and how it could thus be perceived.

I was trying to explore an installation that can explore concepts of environment and affect, outside of our typical understanding of nature, and instead imaging nature as other types of human environments. This piece was inspired by the idea of nature outside of nature, ecologies and environments that appear “natural” when we engage with and within them. So I’ve made a sound reel with tracks of places that thrive on human populations and traffic — the Jean Talon market, the metro, a bar. 

Made with colonial, western, and capitalist conditions in mind, I hope to capture how we experience sound outside of their natural environment and in an enclosed space as a alternative way to think through time, captured time, and the realities of time within separate spaces. 

You can listen or download it here:

https://soundcloud.com/andymarlo/nature-sounds

Bodies of Water (finally!)

Hi everyone,

First I just wanted to say how impressed I was last night by everyone's incredible final (even if they are as yet unrealized or in progress) works, and how lucky I feel to be surrounded by such brilliant and creative people. Thanks for sharing all of your hard efforts with us last night, and thanks to everyone who made the evening such a lovely time.

I have at long last managed to get my film uploaded on to Vimeo, sound included, and I would be  delighted if some of you wanted to take a look and give me your feedback.

Bodies of Water explores water as a common denominator connecting various bodies. Water is that which constitutes, surrounds, consumes and is consumed, transports, submerges, carves out and affects the bodies we see in the film, and thus as a common element, it helps to break down nature/human and self/other dichotomies that the concept of the Anthropocene traffics in.

I will provide some more  notes in a few days on the film, but for now just enjoy!




Here is the link to my film, Bodies of Water.
https://vimeo.com/164213166

Amazing evening, thank everyone of you!

Hi everyone,

Thank you for curating this amazing event.
It was amazing and wonderful evening! Each presentation was very interesting and affecting on me, thanks.

I take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Erin and all of you.
The concept of the 'anthropocene' and the affect theory conversing with films, the courage of taking on challenging readings, OKA's activity, food sharing, and talking with some of you, and tonight's special moments, the togetherness and much more, for all this I am grateful. Each Monday, I was thrilled and excited to participate and listen about new materials and diverse perspectives and thoughts. All of it has left a deep impression on me. I've felt and experienced this seminar which is designed thoroughly the multi-facets of crystal image in a topological and architectural mode. With this in mind, I have been able to write a conference paper engaging a few concepts, and have already incorporated them in my thesis work.

Thank so much you, Erin for your generous pedagogy and for letting me be in.

I hope all of us have had a fruitful semester one or way or another.
We will stay in touch and meet again, I hope so :-)

All the best,
mJ

Blogging about get-ting there

in process

I've been thinking about Lacan's cravat for four years

I feel as though I'm sneaking in an outlier, but I couldn't help it.

I'm in the process of doing a semi-creative/semi-academic piece for the final and I can't get this video out of my mind. I came upon it when I began studying psychoanalysis some years ago and it really stuck to me.

There's something about watching that long-haired student pour water all over Lacan's notes that really gets to me. Or rather, it's an interesting way to begin thinking about context.

Excerpt from Lacan Parle

Talking about sustaining life...

Jumping onto Mel's last post - I thought I'd put this video I came across about mushroom burial suits...


https://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee?language=en

MONDAY!

Hey everyone,

We are so looking forward to Monday night's final class!

We will begin at The Topological Media Lab, EV 7.725, at 5:30 sharp.

For those of you that are presenting, we are asking you to please bring:

Laptop, USB or CD-ROM. Please don't put something on Google Drive, or send us a file. It would be easier on the day of presentations to have hard copies of everything. 

We are on a very tight time limit, and we have attached a schedule for those that have let us know about what they are doing. For those of you that are presenting in the first half of the class, we ask that you come to TML at 5pm in order to set up so to avoid too much time lost in between. 

Those people are:

Braden, Justin, Anthony, Jillian, Alyssa, Oslavi, Becky.

We'll have the pot luck in the SenseLab that we'll enjoy during and after the break. If a senselabber can confirm this, we'll ideally have the room open prior to presentations at 5:30pm to drop any food off. 

Here is the proposed schedule:

At 5:30 we will meet at The Topological Media Lab to begin our night of presentations. If you’re planning on bringing food we ask that you drop off your foodstuffs at the Sense Lab just prior to the beginning of class. 

5:00- The curatorial team will be available to set up your screenings or set up an art piece in the Sense Lab.

5:30- Braden 

5:45- Anthony 

6:00- Justin

6:15-Jillian 

6:30- Oslavi 

6:40- Becky

6:45- Alyssa
6:50- CriCri

7:00- Food time/looking at art stuff

For those that are presenting with visuals after the break, please load content before we start up again. 

7:20- Ellie 

7:35- Chelsea

7:50- Jennifer 

8:05- Melanie
8:20- Sima 

8:30- Conclude with José’s sounds piece on St. Catharine’s

We realize that the time frame will be in flux, hence the tentative 5:30-8:20 schedule. However, still plan to have a fifteen-minute presentation including questions in order to allow for the inevitable ‘flow.’ 

** Edit: If you are able, please bring a pair of headphones and some sort of portable device for José's presentation.

See you all Monday, and please feel free to let us know if you have any questions or concerns!

Have a great and sunny weekend,

Alyssa, Rebecca, and Braden. 

Earth Day

Just reflecting on Earth Day (apparently it's today, 22 April) having just received this email from Concordia's official channels (no doubt we all did).  The email briefly summarises some activities related to the 'anthropocene' and Concordia, and it has me thinking more broadly, on the role of educational institution in relation to these sorts of issues.

1. Conference at Concordia in May: 'Can We Avoid Anthropogenic Catastrophe?'
http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2016/04/20/can-we-avoid-anthropogenic-catastrophe-conference-environment-conflict-public-health.html

2. Countdown 2 Degrees - Multimedia Installation
The project counts down the exact amount of time before Earth's atmosphere reaches the apocalyptic '2 degrees' (more than what?) of which the planet can no longer easily sustain life on earth.  This project then, is technically acting like a countdown to the world's end.  The project will be projected onto a building at Concordia over the next few days, after sunset.

It's also calculating data in terms of carbon from the year 1750, which as we know Jason Moore would not agree with.  

I'd love to hear what you think about the kind of alarmist, exacting, calculation which the project makes(and note that it plans to recalculate every year with the aim of remaining exact

Check out the project here: http://www.concordia.ca/news/countdown2degrees.html

********

Interesting to see the varying kinds of discourse on environment and anthropocene; within concordia (projects like these ones in relation to projects such as those our class are involved in), within the email even (which mentioned projects on 'ethical consumption' coming out of the business school next to projects on activism).   Concordia as it stands, is a seething mass of potential discourses, a BwO of environmental projects, strategies and world views.  

Inuit Tactile Maps

Tactile Inuit maps! Compact, buoyant, and can be read in the dark.
 Tactile maps feel like a key to unlock the Earth's paths.
  Tactile maps registers in hand what the body will sense in a little while, crossing that path.
   Tactile maps are very sexy, that may just be my own fantasy...
    Tactile maps carry a sense of layers of history, passed from hands to hands,
     like old crumpled paper maps.
     
       When a path is used often, tactile maps loose their edges, polished by each passage.
So does the Earth, erodes and smooths its peaks, its cliffs.

https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/…/…/inuit-cartography/

Vernissage, April 25th

Hello beautiful people, 

Only 5 days until our final class!

There are some of you that we haven't heard from, concerning your final projects. We will have a space or screening and presentations, as well as the Sense Lab and the rest of the EV building for any installation works. To help run this as smooth as possible, and to map out where all your projects will be, please send us the details before the weekend: if your project will be a presentation or an installation, what it will require and if you have any other notes for us. Remember that presentations shouldn't exceed 10-15 minutes!

Feel free to email all of us or reply in this post.

Alyssa: shore.alyssa@gmail.com

Rebecca: reba.s.holt@gmail.com

Braden: bradenscott3721@gmail.com 

xx

Miam Miam

Lovecraft, Cthulhu and The Ood

In this week's reading there are a great many references to H.P Lovecraft and Cthulhu and I thought it would be beneficial to post some artistic renditions of Lovecraft's mythos for those who are not familiar with the Old Ones.



These images are from a collection called The Art of Lovecraft: Artists Inspired by Lovecraft.

More on the collection can be found here:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5019979/tentacles-and-cosmic-sf-the-art-of-lovecraft

Also for a fantastic documentary on Lovecraft check out Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2008). It's actually on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spoz_1KyZiA

Lastly, for those who are not Doctor Who nerds and have no idea who the Ood are this is what they look like.

The Ood are particularly good figures for the Anthropocene because of their biological vulnerability. They have these hind-brains that are outside of their bodies, attached by a kind of umbilical cord. In addition to the hind-brain, they are connected telepathically to a collective brain. This is what makes them vulnerable to colonization and enslavement by the hu- mans who lobotomize them; when they cut off their hind-brains, they cut them off psychologically from their collective consciousness. In fields like epigenetics and microbiome research, we are hearing new stories about the human body, not as a citadel, but as something porous and vulnerable to exposures. The world passes through us and we are not unchanged. I was wondering what the Ood, who are born with their brains in their hands, can teach us about these sorts of uneven landscapes of exposure that cut us off from what sustains us, and also what prac- tices of resilience...  (Haraway, 268)

Natural Capital

Nature provides countless services for free, such as water filtration and carbon storage. We call these services natural capital, or ecosystem services. We evaluate and describe these services, and calculate the economic cost if we had to provide them ourselves. When our leaders recognize the monetary and intrinsic value of natural capital, they will choose policies that protect and restore it.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/wildlife-habitat/projects/natural-capital/

David Suzuki's concept addresses nature's unpaid labor in a manner similar to Moore; albeit it differs  by presenting this unpaid labor in terms of economic value--capital; This is a strategic approach (and I argue a necessary one) that seeks public and economic leaders (but also the general public) to recognize the "monetary and intrinsic value" and choose to protect it.

I say this strategy is necessary because economic value is a form of convened valuation, one easier to agree with (and be tangibly affected by) than non-tangible ideological valuation or personal subjective appeals; however, it is also problematic in that it is limited to what is economically accountable and hence may fail to capture unknown or undervalued aspects. Furthermore, as Moore mentions (19, II) economic value is itself highly ideological; in this case the Suzuki Foundation offering a shift within the pragmatic ideologies of capital.

Moreover, such pragmatism and tangibility point that if Suzuki's approach works because it has the science and economic impact studies to back up the foundation's claims; in other words something unknown cannot be valued but also, science allows for this value to be known (it is a double-edge sword).

"How to think the anthropocene?" a conference hosted by Phillipe Descola Paris (5-6 Nov 2015), mostly in French

http://www.fondationecolo.org/l-anthropocene/video

a quick gush

I just arrived home and still am basking in the happy glow of this evening. While I'm still feeling gushy, I wanted to once more express my gratitude to everyone who made this excursion possible- I found it so energizing to discuss and think about the materials we've been reading and seeing in this course in a different ecology, one whose ongoing legacy ties together the disparate threads Moore draws out explicitly, and our other films and theorists, more implicitly, as related to the concept of the Anthropocene.


So, a BIG thanks to Matthew and Mark who were so generous to extend this invitation to such a large number of us to join them at the Town Hall and also to their oh so lovely and inviting living space, and who were so open to discussing the politics and Politics of the region. Thank you to Erin for being brave enough to orchestrate this adventure, providing us transport, and for encouraging us to experiment and explore. And thank you to all the drivers!

Here's a couple pictures from the evening:

Donna Harraway Talk

Here is a video which might be useful for context for next week's readings. Apologies if it has already been posted.

https://vimeo.com/97663518