"No Church in the Wild: Queer Anarchy and Gaga Feminism."

The PSU Dept. of English Presents: The 2013 Kellogg Awards Ceremony. Featuring one of the world's leading gender and queer theorists, Jack Halberstam. whose talk is entitled, "No Church in the Wild: Queer Anarchy and Gaga Feminism."

In a new book on "The Wild" I turn to anarchist thought to elaborate a queer politics for this particular moment of crisis and renewal. As many thinkers have proposed recently, a turn to anarchy makes sense at this time precisely because people's faith in the state and in a politics of inclusion and assimilation is wearing thin, particularly in leftist circles; and, anti-hegemonic, anti-state and anti-assimilationist positions have been rendered thinkable by Occupy movements and other global expressions of radical dissent. My recent book, Gaga Feminism, in that it both calls for and describes an end to "the normal," or that form of state power that manages people by disciplining them in relation to a fantasised norm, could be called anarchist. And my book on failure, in that it breaks with the all or nothing logics of success driven by capitalism, could be characterized as anarchist critique. In this new project, I seek to make explicit the stakes of a queer investment in anarchy that both reaches back to punk movements from the 1970's for inspiration but also seeks other traditions of anarchy globally. 

Jack Halberstam is Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Halberstam works in the areas of popular, visual and queer culture with an emphasis on subcultures. Halberstam's first book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995), was a study of popular gothic cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries and it stretched from Frankenstein to contemporary horror film. The 1998 book, Female Masculinity (1998), made a ground breaking argument about non-male masculinity and tracked the impact of female masculinity upon hegemonic genders. In the book, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), Halberstam described and theorized queer reconfigurations of time and space in relation to subcultural scenes and the emergence of transgender visibility. This book devotes several chapters to the topic of visual representation of gender ambiguity.  Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book titled THE WILD on queer anarchy.

In The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Halberstam wrote about "about finding alternatives to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives."

Halberstam's latest book is Gaga Feminism (2012), is "a provocative manifesto of creative mayhem, a roadmap to sex and gender for the twenty-first century, that holds Lady Gaga as an exemplar of a new kind of feminism that privileges gender and sexual fluidity."

Technology and Anarchy: A Talk with Cory and Nigel

With a 3D printer and laptop, does everyone have the tools they need to build a bio-weapon? Science fiction novelist, blogger and activist Cory Doctorow talks to Nigel Warburton about whether we can - or should - attempt to regulate subversive technology.

Sylvère Lotringer. Capitalism, Leisure, and Potlatch. 2011

Sylvère Lotringer, literary critic and cultural theorist talking about Jean Baudrillard's "Symbolic Exchange and Death," Throstein Veblen and the leisure class. In this lecture Sylvère Lotringer discusses the concepts of potlatch, sacrifice and exchange through the work of Marcel Mauss, Georges Bataille, Antonin Artaud, Marshall McLuhan, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2011. Sylvère Lotringer.

Sylvère Lotringer, Ph.D., born in Paris in 1938, is Jean Baudrillard Chair at the European Graduate School EGS and Professor Emeritus of French literature and philosophy at Columbia University. He is based in New York and Baja, California. Sylvère Lotringer is a literary critic and cultural theorist, and as general editor of Semiotext(e) and Foreign Agents book series was instrumental in introducing French theory to the United States. His interests range from philosophy, literature and art to architecture, anthropology, semiotics, avant-garde movements, structuralism and post-structuralism.

Sylvère Lotringer studied at the Sorbonne and received his doctorate from the École Pratique des Hautes Études VIe section, Paris (1967). As General Editor of Semiotext(e) and of the "Foreign Agents" series, Lotringer was instrumental in introducing French theory to the United States. His teaching interests include Dada and surrealism, situationism, Mallarmé, Proust, structuralism and post-structuralism, as well as anthropology, semiotics, philosophy and art in relation to 20th-century literature.

Among the books Sylvère Lotringer has published, he has co-written with Paul Virilio: Pure War (1983), Crepuscular Dawn (2002), and The Accident of Art (2005), and with Jean Baudrillard: Forget Foucault (1986), Oublier Artaud (2005), and The Conspiracy of Art (2005). Sylvère Lotringer has also written extensively on Georges Bataille, Simone Weil, L. F. Céline, Marguerite Duras, and Robert Antelme, and is the author of Antonin Artaud (1990), French Theory in America (2001), Hatred of Capitalism (2002), David Wojnarowicz (2006), and Overexposed (2007). Silvère Lotringer frequently lectures on art and has published catalogue essays for the MOMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Musee du Jeu de Paume, Modern Kunst and has edited numerous magazines and books such as Philosopher-Artist (1986), Foreign Agent: Kunst in den Zeiten der Theorie (1991), and Nancy Spero (1995).

For background reading on this lecture see "For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign" By Jean Baudrillard, Charles Levin, which includes The Ideological Genesis of Needs.

Par tous les moyens nécessaires

Prague Activities 12th-19 September 2009.

We All Are Unadapted

Media, politicians, neo-Nazis and even "decent people" have united in order to bring to light today's biggest threat: the unadapted. The abusive characterization has began to live its own life. It is used for denouncing anyone who is not a favorite: Roma, squatters, ravers, the poor...

The unadaptability label seems to point out something about the labeling society itself. It reveals what its principal value really is: to adapt. It want us to be obedient career makers indifferent to our environment, always ready to conform.

"Unadaptability", in fact, threatens the most important thing we have - freedom. Adaptable freedom is a contradiction in terms, we identify freedom precisely when it does not adapt.

Supposedly "unadapted" are, in fact, groups that are expected to accept their own deprivation. Roma nomadism was outlawed and now the society is shocked that Romas don't adapt to the lifestyle that has been forced on them. Rave subculture was deprived of free movement, it was dispersed while society attempted to co-opt free technivals. Squatters were deprived of their home - the clearing out of Milada, the last squat in the Czech Republic, meant that the last place dedicated to alternative housing as well as culture has ceased to exist. Not only those afflicted are deprived. These events represent acts against all who value freedom and diversity in the society.

Our resistance against labeling does not mean that we defend any kind of behavior that is so designated. Problems do exist but we have a choice: either to look for real causes and deal with them or to find supposed trespassers in order to demonize them.

We can demand our rights, issue complaints and remind others of all that we have been deprived of by the acts of repression. At the same time, we are convinced that if we achieve anything in this manner, we get it in a distorted form. The last Czechtek, for example, has become a caricature of itself. That is not what we want. We will manage our freedom ourselves: we will squat other buildings, organize other carnivals and parties.

The Czech initiative Freedom Not Fear has come to existence in reaction to a world wide action against repression. Last year it helped to organize Do It Yourself Street Parade against state repression - cameras, restrictive laws and invasion of privacy. We would like to continue these activities; this year we focus on violence not only one provoked by the state but also violence incited by the society that labels and excludes certain groups. This also arouses fear for it is people who are described as a threat, and, as a result, our freedoms are limited.

Pokud jsme nepřizpůsobiví, jsme také svobodní - Týden nepřizpůsobivosti Praha 12.-19.9.2009 from Freedom not fear on Vimeo.

Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord's THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, originally published in 1967,
is easily the most important radical book of the twentieth century.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Debord's book is neither an ivory tower
"philosophical discourse" nor an impulsive "rant" or "protest." It is an
effort to clarify the nature of the situation in which we find ourselves and
the advantages and drawbacks of various methods for changing it. It examines
the most fundamental tendencies and contradictions of the present society --
what is really going on behind the spectacular surface phenomena that we are
conditioned to perceive as the only reality.

This means that it needs to be reread many times, but it also means that it
remains as pertinent as ever while countless radical and intellectual fads
have come and gone. As Debord noted in his later "Comments on the Society
of the Spectacle" (1988), in the intervening decades the spectacle has
become more pervasive than ever, to the point of repressing virtually any
awareness of pre-spectacle history or anti-spectacle possibilities:
"Spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an entire generation molded
to its laws."

Debord's strategy is to cut through the mass of false solutions so as to
open the way for real ones. His method may seem negative and abstract, but
his aim is positive and concrete. No matter how many times you read his
book, you will never really understand it until you use it. Which means
using your imagination and experimenting for yourself. The purpose of the
book is to help you do just that.

* * *

Ken Knabb's translation of THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE is
online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord

The translation is also available in book form --
http://www.bopsecrets.org/cat.htm

A new PDF version is online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/images/sos.pdf

Debord also made a film of his book, which is available in various
formats -- http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/index.htm

Related texts by Debord and other members of the Situationist International
are online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm

Autonomous Culture Center Burns

The culture center Cyclopen (The Cyclops) in Högdalen south of Stockholm burnt to the ground last night under very suspicious circumstances. I have never visited the place but I have been following its progress over the past two and half years via the Fria newspapers and am quite shocked at this has happened. With two large neo-nazi rallies planned for the Swedish capital city this week I wonder if the events are not connected. The Cyclops had been built from nothing (literally) by those who made use of it for music, meetings, education, festivals, art, study circles, visiting cultural figures and of course activism. I hope the loss of Cyclopen gets the attention in the mass media it deserves.


Video in Swedish on the Cyclops activist and culture house.


Cyclopen in better days- I hope it is reborn from the ashes.

More in Swedish HERE, HERE and HERE.

Welcome to the Virus

I am revisiting Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin's excellent work Remediation: Understanding New Media from 1999 to try and develop some perspective and depth to my use of Remix for digital literature. While reading through Remediation (which must be considered a foundational text in the areas of digital media, literacy, narrative studies, and game studies) I came across references to the Emergency Broadcast Network (Bolter and Grusin, 42). A memory awoke and I thought there must be stuff by EBM on Youtube now...and yes, I was so happy to see there is. I first encountered the EBN in the late 1990s with videos shown at anarchist occasions in Sydney. According to the Wikipedia the EBN were:

Emergency Broadcast Network is the name of a multimedia performance group formed in 1991 that took its name from the Emergency Broadcast System. The founders were Rhode Island School of Design graduates Joshua Pearson, Gardner Post and Brian Kane (author of the Vujak VJ software). Kane left EBN in 1992.

Josh Pearson [more vids from link], EBN's charismatic front man and principal performance artist, was also EBN's music composer and main video editor. The music and video editing techniques he personally developed and refined have been hugely influential on a generation of advertising and music video editors.

The first EBN video project was a muscial remix of the Gulf War, created in 1991 as the war was still ongoing. The VHS tape of the remix project, which contained the George H.W. Bush "We Rock You" cover, became a viral underground hit, and was distributed widely by fans as bootleg copies. In the summer of 1991, EBN traveled with the first Lollapalooza tour, distributing tapes and showing their videos on a modified station wagon with TVs on the roof. The group also became well known for their media sculptures and stage props which were created by Gardner Post.



The EBN Live Team included DJ Ron O'Donnell, video artist/technologist Greg Deocampo (founder of CoSA, and founding CTO of IFILM.com), artist/designer Tracy Brown and technologist Mark Marinello.

As remix and mashup artists the EBN set the standard that many have followed since. Many of the EBN projects have been hosted by the Guerilla News Network, another media arts collective working with remix and social action on the fringes of Intellectual Property.