The World At Night

Deleuze – Cinema 1: The Movement-Image Prefaces and Translator’s Intro

January 12th, 2009 by jeff

In the prefaces to the book Deleuze lays out his goal relatively clear. He will not be writing a history of cinema but will attempt to ‘isolate certain cinematographic concepts.’ As the translator’s intro mentions, this – the generation of concepts – is seen by Deleuze to be the task of philosophy: concepts are not ‘”concepts of”’, understood by reference to their external object…. Concepts are the images of thought.’ Deleuze – ‘It is not a question of reflecting on the cinema, it is normal that philosophy produces concepts which are in resonance with the pictorial images of today or with cinematographic images, etc.’ Concept creation ‘alongside’ the cinema.

Reading this my first instinct is always to try to think of examples for the various concepts Deleuze is introducing and it seems important to keep in mind that Deleuze here is primarily concerned with pre-WWII cinema. He is focused on the ‘movement-image’ and it is not until after WWII (Welles, neo-realism, new wave) that the time-image emerges. Deleuze says that this shift is much more important than the shift from silent to sound film. At this point I have no idea what that actually might mean but we’ll see I suppose.
Deleuze also states that there are three different types of movement-image
-perception-image
-affection-image
-action-image

Posted in Film, Deleuze, Reading Group | 1 Comment »

The New Situationists?

January 11th, 2009 by jeff

Published in Site, No. 13-14, 2005.

Claire Doherty’s introduction to the recently released Contemporary Art: from Studio to Situation (2005), a book that she herself edited containing texts by artists, critics, and curators on relational aesthetics and site-specific art has likely made Guy Debord roll over in his grave. Her introduction begins by labeling these artists ‘The New Situationists’. The use of the adjective ‘new’ makes one assume that she knows of the Situationist International (1957-72), although one is left in doubt after reading her justification for the label. Her text begins, ‘Situations describes the conditions under which many contemporary artworks now come into being. By “situated”, we refer to those artistic practices for which the “situation” or “context” is often the starting point’. Never mind the fact that this statement means almost nothing (do not many or perhaps all art practices from all historical periods ‘often’ use their situation or context as a starting point?), it implies a complete ignorance of what the Situationists meant when they used the term ‘situation’ or called themselves ‘situationists’ (it has more resonance with Sartre’s concept of man as a being-in-situation). Almost to assure us that she has in fact heard of the SI, a few pages later she makes the strange, unintelligible assertion without any further justification that, ‘Though [the common process of resistance that emerges through the texts and interviews in this book] may not always reveal itself as a process of dérive, described by Guy Debord of the Situationist International as, “playful-constructive behaviour and awareness of psycho-geographical effects” in which persons “drop their usual motives for movement and action… and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters that they find there”, all artists and collectives here maintain that their status as artists allows them to circumnavigate predictability’.
It would be easy to give a text like this an outright dismissal from the SI’s perspective. They spoke of the ‘fake continuation of modern art (formal repetitions attractively packaged and publicized, completely divorced from the original combativeness of their models)’ and it is indeed tempting to apply such a label to a large percentage of what is often characterized under the rubric of relational aesthetics, despite the lip service Nicolas Bourriad often pays to Debord. Such a text though, despite its incoherence, does indirectly bring up extremely important questions to those that seek to seriously engage with the work and legacy of Debord in the SI.

Any use of or reference to the theory and work of Debord and the SI in contemporary art discourse and practice is bound to be problematic. By the early sixties all practicing artists were expelled from the group and they had a notorious distaste for more or less all artists of their own and the following generations - not to mention politicians and academics. Nonetheless, the SI has undoubtedly become an important reference point in the art world and numerous exhibitions and retrospectives have been organized around their work, despite vocal opposition from ex-, pro- and post-situs. This has by and large been a selective selection of Situationist works – something like a Situationist International: The Early Years – which unsurprisingly focuses on the more art-world friendly concepts like dérive and detournement, and tends to neglect the SI’s emphasis on class struggle and the revolutionary proletariat as understood through their unusual blend of Hegelian-Marxism, heavily influenced by Georg Lukács, and the historical avant garde. Design students (på Beckmans) are going on dérives but are not likely to engage with History and Class Consciousness.

So then what is the proper way of approaching the work of the Situationist International today? Beyond the SI’s aforementioned contempt for the art world and the academy, there is another obstacle hindering contemporary applications of situationist theory and practice. Today is undoubtedly a different epoch than the one in which the SI was active and the SI very much were a product of their times. One only has to look at the differences in tone between Society of the Spectacle written in 1967 and Comments on Society of the Spectacle written in 1988. Society of the Spectacle reads like a guide to the revolutionary contestation to come, and while it would be going too far to say Comments is a testament to Debord’s resignation in the face of the spectacle’s seeming omnipotence, his words are far from encouraging. In Comments, Debord develops the idea of the integrated spectacle, which has taken the best of both previous spectacles – the diffuse of consumer capitalism and concentrated of totalitarianism. Debord gives it five principle features: ‘incessant technological renewal; integration of state and economy; generalized secrecy; unanswerable lies; an eternal present’. The integrated spectacle is spreading over the surface of the globe and as it spreads outwardly, it has also increased its density in the center. The spectacle is much more entrenched at the heart of society than in was in the 1960s: ‘the spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality’.

All of this, coupled with other factors such as the decline in the workers’ movement and changes in the role and position of contemporary art – the artistic sequence of which the SI was perhaps the most extreme representative has most definitely come to a close - and theory have greatly altered the terrain of battle. The SI wrote in a time in which revolution could be seen an as inevitable if not imminent and in which (anti)artists were thought to perform a crucial function. Few would assert as much today. Few can even agree on whom such revolutionary hope would depend – the dormant proletariat, the multitude, the ever-increasing mass of urban slum-dwellers in alliance with the progressive element of the symbolic-class (Zizek)? As such, some of the Situationist’s more acerbic and stringent policies and pronouncements can feel a bit anachronistic, but this may say more about the deficiencies of our own era – and arguably the deficiencies of contemporary art, theory and politics – than is says anything about the work of the SI.

This is not at all to say that the SI must be relegated to the dustbin of history like so many other failed revolutionary projects or the opposite: that a strict return to the SI as such is necessary or desirable. Though in need of reconsideration, the SI’s critique of contemporary society remains relevant and seductive. As Greil Marcus has written, ‘The fact is that the writing the situationist left behind makes almost all present-day political and aesthetic thinking seem cowardly, self-protecting, careerist, and satisfied. It remains a means to the recovery of ambition’. Their incessant, uncompromising attack on a vile world has a potency that is rarely found elsewhere.

All of this has to unfortunately contend with the SI receiving the ‘wrong’ type of attention – falling prey to the same type of spectacular recuperation that they saw depotentialize the Surrealist movement. Over the last couple of years, Guy Debord and the Situationists seem to have (re)emerged in popular culture and academia. A huge biography, art exhibitions, various collections of their work published by different presses, not to mention references in lifestyle magazines like Dazed and Confused, have given their work a level of attention perhaps unequalled since the group’s self-destruction. Not all this attention should be welcome. As Anselm Jappe writes, ‘Recently a bizarre cult of Debord has arisen, threatening to transform him into a pop idol, a sort of Che Guevara for the more refined taste. As a Parisian bookseller put it, “there is a lot of money waiting to be made out of Debord tee-shirts and ashtrays.” Passive worship of real-life icons as a way of compensating for the wretchedness of one’s own life is a quintessentially “spectacular” type of projection. As applied to Debord, it has long plagued the marginal “pro-Situationist” milieu, and it now seems well set to infect a much vaster hip public’. The SI’s critique may be too seductive. Nostalgia for the Left Bank milieu of the 50s and 60s culminating in May ’68 becomes the perfect form of historical escapism that prevents people from dealing with a radical different historical constellation.

Faced with the constant threat of recuperation, those that do wish to not simply carry on but develop this project perhaps have to have the faith that the ideas of the SI are still dangerous enough to make them volatile even in the hands of their most insidious – and in this epoch it can get a whole lot more insidious than say relational aesthetics - recuperators. The SI was of course aware of this danger. They write with characteristic chutzpah, ‘It is quite natural that our enemies succeed in partially using us. We are neither going to leave the present field of culture to them nor mix with them… Like the proletariat, we cannot claim to be unexploitable in the present conditions; we must simply work to make any such exploitation entail the greatest possible risk for the exploiters’.
Many of Debord and the SI’s thesis have been confirmed. In an era in which Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of the most populated state in the United States and used ‘hasta la vista baby’ as an electoral slogan against the incumbent Gray Davis, saying that we live in a ‘society of the spectacle’ has become blatantly obvious. An understanding of the direction of contemporary society that once seemed to need a level of perception bordering on the clairvoyant has over the last forty years ago become clichéd. As Debord himself writes in 1988, ‘no one can reasonably doubt the existence or the power of the spectacle; on the contrary, one might doubt whether it is reasonable to add anything on a question which experience has already settled in such draconian fashion’. But there is indeed plenty to add about the society of the spectacle. This should not only consist in applying their theses to or putting their practices to work in our current situation but also developing and reconsidering their overall project. While there is no sense in simply re-enacting the SI - the current era most certainly calls for something else - the legacy that the SI left behind, to quote Raoul Vaneigem in the introduction to Revolution of Everyday Life, ‘is part of a subversive current of which the last has not yet been heard. Its significance should escape no one; in any case, as time will show, no one is going to escape its implications’.

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Baltimore as World and Representation: The Wire and the Dispossession of the American City

January 4th, 2009 by jeff

Paper Abstract for Culture, Politics, Ethics
Salzburg, Austria
March 16-18, 2009

Jeff Kinkle and Alberto Toscano

Despite a lack of recognition in terms of award and ratings, the American series The Wire (2002-8) has been widely praised as being among the best television shows of all time. Set in inner-city Baltimore, and most superficially classifiable as a cop show or crime drama, the show’s five seasons depict the city in remarkable breadth and depth. While the first season largely revolves around the drug trade, subsequent seasons expand the scope of the show to cover de-industrialization, city hall, the school system, and the media. Each of these dimensions of urban experience is mapped both vertically (laying bare internal hierarchies) and horizontally (showing their entanglements and reciprocal effects). While for a cop show like CSI technology is the real protagonist, in The Wire it is the urban fabric itself. The Wire’s creator, David Simon, has said that each season of the show presents a specific facet of the systematic ‘devaluation’ of the American city and that the series overall is about ‘the decline of the American empire’.

Our aim in this paper is two-fold. First, we will be looking at the theories most relevant for The Wire’s presentation of dispossession, urban decay, and the decline of the American city, particularly David Harvey’s work on the spatial logic of capitalism, much of which is directly concerned with Baltimore, where he taught and lived for a number of years. Secondly, we will inquire into the narrative mechanisms employed by the series and consider its overall aesthetic, in particular the manner in which it is able to present potent and lucid arguments about urban policy without being overtly didactic. Critics have compared the series to the great Victorian novel in its attention to detail, realism, sophisticated character development, and focus on urban depravation (’Dickensian’ is a common adjective). While this is a fair comparison to an extent (as are comparisons to Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine or Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart) our argument will be that this perspective does not allow one to grasp what is novel in the current socio-economic conjuncture, as exemplified by the fate of the city, and in The Wire’s ability to dissect and depict it. Instead, we will argue that The Wire is best understood in terms of the notion of an aesthetic of cognitive mapping. The conception of this aesthetic – whose development was predicted, or called for, by Fredric Jameson in 1988 but never flushed out theoretically in any real detail – was envisioned to be the result of artists’ attempts to come to grips with the emergence of a truly global system organized around the logic of capital accumulation and its determining impact on their local situations. The aesthetic of cognitive mapping would respond to the challenges faced by artists working in the present, in the same way the Victorian novel responded to colonialism, the rise of commodity culture, and epochal religious and class turmoil. In the final analysis, the paper aims to test the hypothesis that the success of The Wire rests in its capacity for developing a realist aesthetic capable of facing up to the “real abstractions” of contemporary capitalism and the devastating mutations they have visited upon the modern city.

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Artists, one more effort if you want to be representatives of a transnational, heterogeneous utopia…

January 2nd, 2009 by jeff

…and not merely shills of capital and the state.

Originally published in Swedish with translation by Kim West. Union. No. 2. 2005.

It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist. – Adorno. Aesthetic Theory.

On the final page of Art Incorporated, Julian Stallabrass quotes the first page of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: ‘For absolute freedom in art, always limited to a particular, comes into contradiction with the perennial unfreedom of the world’. This is an underlying theme of a large portion of Stallabrass’ writings on contemporary art and culture. Art’s self-proclaimed freedom and creativity, widely acknowledged throughout the population, is constantly challenged. Art, to refer to the opening line of Aesthetic Theory (quoted above), is repeatedly asked to defend its existence. In a world dominated by the corrosive influence of capital and the imperatives of the state, what role does art actually play?

In previous books, Stallabrass has skillfully analyzed the tyranny of mass culture against recent efforts to reveal its radicality (Gargantua, Verso 1996), exposed the pretensions of Young British Artists (High Art Light, Verso 2000), and documented the radical potentiality of the burgeoning internet art scene (Internet Art, Tate Publishing 2003). In his latest book, Stallabrass sets his sights slightly higher and wider. In Art Incorporated (2004), he attempts, as the subtitle indicates, to tell the story of contemporary art – an art that he sees as more often than not as being in collusion with capitalist globalization and the state whether it knows it or not.

Art Incorporated itself is a general summary and critique of contemporary art since the end of the Cold War and more specifically about the role contemporary art plays in the liberal capitalist ‘end of history’. It reads more as a polemic than a work of art theory – Stallabrass’ main charge being that art is not the realm of free experimentation that it professes to be. Not only does contemporary art often unwittingly act as a propagandist for global capitalism but it is often used instrumentally by the state and/or corporations to advance their respective agendas. While Stallabrass constantly uses examples to ground his critique, his project is broad and his arguments general. Even if certain homogenous features can be found in contemporary art, the scene is so large that exceptions will always be found and Stallabrass acknowledges this from the beginning. Still, like Adorno, Stallabrass’ summary is generally negative and very little contemporary art is revealed as having any merit besides being formally attractive, shrouded apologies for the ruling order. Even in the works that Stallabrass at first seems to have something positive to say about, we always discover sinister interests lurking in the works’ shadows.

While divulging the commercial interests behind the success of something like the YBA phenomenon isn’t that difficult, revealing the commercial interests behind relational aesthetics or Scandinavian conceptual art takes a slightly more nuanced understanding and it is here that Stallabrass is at his petulant best. Relational aesthetics is decried as ‘merely another art-world assimilation of the dead or the junked, the re-presentation as aesthetics of what was once social interaction, political discourse, and even ordinary human relations. If democracy is found only in art works, it is in a good deal of trouble’ (p. 182). Furthermore, relational aesthetics are seen as being both state (especially social-democratic) and even corporate friendly. The state likes it because it helps bandage the wounds exacerbated by opening more and more of society to capitalist influence. Meanwhile contemporary Scandinavian artists that criticize the legacy of social democracy and its claustrophobic emphasis on safety, security, and all things lagom are seen as playing into the hands of neo-liberal privatization.

The recent exponential growth of biennials also is decried by Stallabrass. First, Stallabrass points out the state interests behind the biennials popping up all over the place; the biennial in Cuba is an attempt of the Cuban state to appear free and open, the biennial in Istanbul an attempt by the Turkish state to present itself as a Western, cosmopolitan nation to EU observers. Biennials, Stallabrass argues, serve the same purposes as hosting an important football match or music festival although an art biennial is even better since art still has a certain cachet that football and pop music does not. Biennials are pleasing to city councils as a form of tourism and help proliferate the image of the host city as a cosmopolitan, dynamic environment, ripe for investment and planned corporate headquarters. The biennials’ supporters like to think of each event as a ‘glimpse of a transnational utopia’ but Stallabrass says this is rarely the case. Rather than being a multicultural mix, biennials are largely about propagating a homogenous Western-centric discourse on heterogeneity. Curated towards the (elite) international art community rather than local populations, they by and large propagate an ideology of hybridity, mobility, and multiculturalism that is congruous with the imperatives of the neo-liberal economy.

At times Stallabrass seems to go to far in indicting artists for aiding and abetting global capital. Take for example his treatment of Alfredo Jarr’s ‘One Million Finnish Passports’. In the work Jarr arranged a million Finnish passports, the amount of passports that would have been granted to migrants if the Finnish authorities had allowed the same rate of immigration as the rest of Europe. Stallabrass writes, ‘This work was typical of globalized art production in many ways. It used both local material and the cosmopolitan language of contemporary art; it responded to and commented on local political issues. In doing so it took the side of the interests of global capital over that of one element of local concern, for the message of the work was that people’s right to resettle must override any national determination, even one democratically arrived at, to protect homogeneity and social cohesion’ (p. 43). While capital may benefit from the cheap labour market that these migrants would have supplied, it is rather oversimplified to claim that it is simply a matter of taking the side of global capital over ‘local concern’, which in this case is likely to be based to a large extent on xenophobia and racism.

This problem resonates throughout the book. Stallabrass refers repeatedly to Marx’s famous ‘All that solid melts into air…’ passage yet rarely acknowledges that for Marx this process was, at least, as positive as it was negative as it laid the groundwork for capitalism’s eventual sublation. Citing Hardt and Negri’s persuasive critique in Empire (2000), much of postmodern discourse is rightly labeled as pushing against an open door and having dubious affinities with the cheerleaders of the global corporate elite, yet Stallabrass does not seem to consider, as Hardt and Negri do, that there is no going back so to speak and that this process, while it does cause some harm, simultaneously opens up new possibilities. Capitalism continues to produce its own gravediggers, even if for the moment we do not know who or where they are.

In 1964, in an admittedly different context, the Situationist International wrote, ‘The path of total police control over all human activities and the path of infinite free creation of all human activities are one: it is the same path of modern discovers. We are necessarily on the same path as our enemies – most often preceding them – but we must be there, without any confusion, as enemies. The best will win’ (SI Anthology p. 136). Could a similar argument be applied to modern artists and even the global anti-capitalist movement? If globalization is a necessary step in the eventual liberation of mankind, is it not necessary for artists – as well as academics, activists, etc. – to embrace this process while trying to blunt its most damaging effects? Or perhaps ‘to embrace’ isn’t the right word. Perhaps it is possible for artists to engage in a different type of globalization, a globalization made possible, to some extent, by developments in the functioning of global capitalism and existing necessarily on the same playing field but with a sense of never ceasing enmity. Maybe the problem is that this is perhaps the vision that contemporary art has of itself. Stallabrass acutely demonstrates that this is often not the case and that the majority of contemporary art that does in fact have this as its vision is innocuous at best and serves as ‘effective pretexts for oppression’ at worst. Once again de Sade’s slogan has to be revised: artists, one more effort if you want to be representatives of a transnational, heterogeneous utopia.

Julian Stallabrass. Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art. UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Situationist International Anthology. ed. Ken Knabb. USA: Bureau of Pulbic Secrets, 1995.
Theodor Adorno. Aesthetic Theory. USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

Stockholm, 2005.

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Another Neat Idea: FutureMAP

January 2nd, 2009 by jeff

Published in Left Curve. No. 31. 2007.

In the light of various superpower misadventures, it is unsurprising that the intelligence of the US state has recently come into question. Not only was the world’s most extensive and expensive intelligence apparatus unable to prevent the events of 9.11, but as the carnage in Iraq continually reaches new nadirs and what once perhaps appeared to be a tentative victory in Afghanistan proves to have been even more illusory than the cynics suggested, the shortcomings in the strategy of the ‘coalition of the willing’ and their incomprehension of contemporary geopolitics are all the more blatant. Not that they haven’t been trying however. Desperate times calls for extreme measures and one project in particular, which has since been disbanded, stands out as a radical attempt to rectify the intelligence failings that contributed to the current concomitant quagmires in which the US state finds itself. FutureMAP was created under DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the just-crazy-enough-to-work research and development agency at the Department of Defense, and aimed to revitalize the American state’s ability to gather, analyze, and act on intelligence.

FutureMAP fell under the supervision of the notorious John Poindexter: the once disgraced naval officer convicted in the aftermath of Iran-Contra Affair in 1990 of conspiracy and perjury, among other things, before the charges were reversed due to a technicality, and the inspiration for Tom Clancy’s fictional hero Jack Ryan (played in film adaptations by Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck). Poindexter recently described illegally selling guns to Iran and using the money to fund the brutal Contras in Nicaragua as ‘a neat idea’ and the Pentagon was so impressed with his neat ideas for the war on terror, which he presented in the aftermath of 9.11, that he was resurrected by the Bush administration to head the Information Awareness Office (IAO) within DARPA in January, 2002. IAO’s unquestionably creepy logo was emblazoned with the infamous pyramid with the eye on top - the reverse-side of the Great Seal of the United States - gazing onto the Earth over the slogan Scientia est Potentia – Knowledge is Power.

IAO’s mandate was to both expand and enhance the various US intelligence agencies ability to collect and analyze intelligence and to develop ways for them to better cooperate and share the results. IAO’s most prominent program was the Orwellian Total Information Awareness (TIA), whose goal was ‘to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists - and decipher their plans - and thereby enable the United States to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts.’ It was basically a enormous data-mining apparatus that would sift through all conceivable information: telephone calls, emails, academic transcripts, medical prescriptions, credit card transactions, airline tickets, and other commercial databases and even use biometric technologies to track potential suspects on various state-operated CCTV cameras. Fears from the public and politicians alike that TIA would be invasive and violate the Fourth Amendment caused IAO to rename the project Terrorist Information Awareness program in May, 2003 but it eventually lost its funding altogether. Research is continuing in the private sector however.

FutureMAP (Futures Markets Applied to Prediction) may sound less sinister than TIA but it is tactically, as well as conceptually and epistemologically, more intriguing. As the name indicates, FutureMAP was to be a state-run futures market that traded contracts on the likelihood of events, key indicators and indices in the Middle East. One could potentially buy futures contracts on Iran developing a nuclear bomb, the pull out of British troops from Iraq, or Syria’s GNP by the third quarter of 2007 for example. Bets would be limited to $100 per trade and the market was to open with 1,000 registered traders in October, 2003 and aimed to have over 10,000 active traders by 2004.

The background to FutureMAP lies in the notion of efficient markets and market discovery. The basic idea is that markets, by gathering together large and diverse groups of people with varying degrees of knowledge, effectively reveal and aggregate all available information on the level of the group as a whole. Thus the predictions of the market, reflected in changes in the future’s prices, will be a good indicator of the actual future. Many studies have shown that in certain areas markets can consistently out perform individual experts, or even small groups of experts, and that similar markets designed to predict future events - such as the Iowa Electronic Markets where traders buy and sell contracts on things like American elections and key economic indicators, and the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a web-based market where participants buy and sell stock in actors, directors and films - have both proved to be more successful than many experts in predicting future events like congressional election results and opening weekend box office numbers. Various proponents of the program point to the fact that there was clearly relevant information circulating on some level prior to the September 11th attacks, and while it has been debated whether or not stock market fluctuations in the days before the attacks were coincidental or had anything to do with foreknowledge, the argument goes that a market of this type could have potentially provided the mechanism that would have aggregated the existing information and shown the probability of an attack. It may have heard a plot where traditional intelligence gathering methods heard only noise.

FutureMAP came to the attention of the Senate in July of 2003 and was portrayed by the senators and the media, rather unfairly it must be said, as being a ‘federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism’. It was lambasted as ‘ridiculous’, ‘sick’, and ‘grotesque’ by various senators and op-ed columnists who argued that it would allow individuals, and potentially even the terrorists themselves, to profit on all sort of horrors. It was terminated by the Pentagon days later, with Paul Wolfowitz, then Deputy Defense Secretary, claiming DARPA had gotten ‘too imaginative’. Poindexter would ultimately resign less than two months later and the Information Awareness Office would be closed for good.

While it is not surprising that the media focused on the more sensational aspects of FutureMAP, the epistemological and methodological issues it raised were never commented upon by the press. Since the Second World War, the methodology behind intelligence gathering - pioneered in the US by Sherman Kent, a Yale history professor who would be pivotal in the early days of the CIA - has resembled that of the social sciences with agents doing fieldwork to gather data that is then processed and analyzed, with policy suggestions then going through a thorough peer-review process. Granted, this conception of intelligence was already being overturned by the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9.11 in which the focus was on speed and decisions were made by an unprecedentedly small group of individuals with similar aims and ideals, but what is fascinating about the logic behind FutureMAP is that if taken seriously, it would seemingly undermine the need for the complex and expensive projects that the IAO was developing simultaneously such as Total Information Awareness, not to mention the mammoth and lumbering US intelligence apparatus as a whole. TIA for example is based on the idea that the state need know everything about everyone, while FutureMAP implies that the state’s intelligence will never be as good as that of a diverse, anonymous group. Unlike the privitazation of many aspects of the US Armed Forces (the shift from so-called military Keynesianism to a kind of military neoliberalism) and the desired privatization of Medicare and Society Security, FutureMAP did not just bet on the efficiency of markets but on the market’s acumen so to speak. Instead of simply privatizing intelligence agencies, FutureMAP was to apply market mechanisms to intelligence itself. Rather than experts gathering and analyzing data and making informed policy recommendations, policy makers would consult a kind of neoliberal general intellect. And while TIA was said to have cost around two hundred and fifty million dollars in its brief existence, FutureMAP was estimated to cost under a million at its start, a relatively small sum for the Department of Defense, and would cost little to run, which is possibly even more of a challenge to the entrenched military establishment.

There is relatively little written about how FutureMAP would be integrated into wider US intelligence operations and it is interesting to note how sharply the logic behind FutureMAP, and the logic of smart markets in general, contradicts the way in which the Bush administration has conducted intelligence gathering and the war on terror. Smart markets in the past somehow identified the company responsible for the Challenger explosion in 1986 (the stock market correctly blamed the manufacture of the faulty part almost immediately while it took investigators many months to discover what caused the explosion) and similar methods based on aggregating the judgments of self-interested actors have located missing atomic submarines deep in the North Atlantic in the 1960s. Would traders have known whether Saddam had any WMDs or where Bin Laden is hiding? Above-mentioned predictions markets have out-predicted the experts on everything from mid-term elections to the Oscars, but what happens when those who make the policy decisions confront the decision the market has suggested they will make? If these markets can accurately predict the future, would they be able to tell Bush when he is going to pull troops out of Iraq or when they will be (once again) victorious? Is Bush’s faith in the market such that he would listen? Since the plug was pulled on FutureMAP after only a day or two of vitriolic, yet rather unfounded, criticism, the answer looks to be no.

London, 2006.

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Chapter 1 Theses on movement First commentary on Bergson, pp. 1-11

December 29th, 2008 by jeff

I’m going to work on turning my notes into something a bit more legible and likely to start some kind of discussion over the next week.

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Bergson’s Matter and Memory

December 19th, 2008 by jeff

There are quite a lot of references to the French philosopher Henri Bergson in Cinema 1, particularly Bergson’s Matter and Memory (1896). The full text to the 1912 English translation can be found online here.

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Deleuze – Cinema 1: The Movement-Image

December 19th, 2008 by jeff

I thought we could use the blog as a place to organize and collect our reading of Deleuze’s Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, and if all goes well other books in the future (Cinema 2: The Time-Image for example.)

Deleuze’s book was published in France in 1983 and was pretty influential, being the first book by a philosopher of his stature to be written on film in particular. Deleuze has defined philosophy as ‘the creation of concepts’, and as he says in the preface, is not a history of cinema but an attempt to isolate certain cinematic concepts. Much more than that I cannot really say at this point.

I think the easiest way of proceeding is to create a schedule, and then perhaps rotate who makes the initial post on the section of text, everyone else can then write in the comments section. I can try to write a post on the first chapter in the next few days. In the meantime maybe we can discuss a schedule in the comments section?

Posted in Film, Deleuze, Reading Group | 1 Comment »

Sport

January 22nd, 2008 by Adam

sport (spawrt, spohrt), n. [There’s been growing confusion in recent years over whether or not certain types of athletic competition officially qualify as sports. This confusion is apparent when fans of one type of competition informally challenge the recognition of some other type of competition. For example, a brash macho man will roar: “Figure skating ain’t a sport - gimme a fuggin’ break! It’s ballet on ice for little girls and queers!” Meanwhile, a snooty northerner will sneer: “NASCAR, a sport, you say? Oh, good heavens, what will they think of next? It’s simply rednecks driving around in circles, that’s all it is; mindless entertainment for beer-bellied Billy Bobs.” At the same time, an urban black dissident will holler: “You must be out yo’ mind, son - golf ain’t no sport! Just some rich-ass crackas hittin’ lil’ balls ‘round wit’ sticks - bunch a tight-ass, pencil-dicked, knicka-wearin’ muthafuckas!” What these examples ultimately reveal is that each complainant has his own personal definition of sport influenced by an underlying subjective bias. It follows then that all of these personal definitions are flawed and must be recognized as such in light of the correct, objective definition of the term. As one would expect, the correct definition of sport is strict and precise and should settle all grievances. (Regarding the examples listed above, each complainant is essentially correct: Neither figure skating nor NASCAR nor golf is an actual sport.)]

A sport, properly speaking, is a competitive contest that possesses all of the following characteristics:

1. The contest must be between two people or two teams (no
more, no less);

2. The contest must involve a physical object of play (such as a
ball, puck, or birdie);

3. The contest must consist of a clear-cut offense and defense
(competing against each other simultaneously);

4. The contest must utilize an automatic scoring system (not one
based solely on judge’s opinion); and

        5. The contest must require a certain degree of both bodily
            movement and physical exertion expended by the
            participants.

In accordance with these criteria, you will recognize that baseball, soccer, football, hockey, basketball, tennis, volleyball, badminton, dodge ball, and ping-pong are all sports. Each of these competitions meets the criteria necessary for qualification as such. Regarding those competitions that do not meet the criteria, there are several noteworthy groups, or classes, if you will:

a.One such class consists of the competitions of track, skiing, swimming, diving, freeze-tag, boxing, and speed-eating - all of which exhibit either no clear-cut offense and defense or no physical object of play, but still require physical exertion expended by the participants. These competitions are properly labeled activities. Activities are defined as competitions you can participate in if you aren’t up to playing an actual sport but you still desire to get in a good workout.

b.Another class of competitions that fail to meet the above criteria includes those which do not require physical exertion but still require a certain degree of bodily movement; examples include auto racing, pool, darts, golf, bocce ball, and horseshoes. These competitions are properly labeled hobbies. Hobbies are defined as competitions you might participate in if you are lacking in athletic ability but you still desire to extend your body through physical space. (Sample usage - Person A: “Excuse me, sir, I see that you are playing the sport of golf.” Person B: “No, you are mistaken. This is just a hobby.”)

c.Next, there are those competitions in which the players must remain stationary throughout, such as checkers, skeet shooting, and jacks. These competitions are properly labeled games in accordance with common practice. Games are by definition meant for little kids and the handicapped.

d.Additionally, there is the class of competitions that involve abstract objects of play, such as trivia contests, spelling bees, math tests, etc. These competitions are properly labeled time killers. You can participate in them if you have nothing at all interesting to do and you don’t really feel like sleeping.

e.Another noteworthy class of competitions includes those involving animals, such as polo, cockfighting, horseracing, and bullfighting. These competitions are properly labeled public displays of indentured servitude. The human gladiator fight - a competition unfortunately obsolete today - can be placed in this category as well.

f.Finally, there are those competitions which involve either an arbitrary scoring system or no scoring system at all. Some of these competitions, such as figure skating and ballroom dancing, are performed before a live audience. These are properly labeled demonstrations. Audience members can study these demonstrations and pick up a thing or two they might use one day when playing an actual sport. In regard to the related class of competitions not usually performed before an audience, examples include skydiving, mountain climbing, hiking, and sex. These competitions are properly labeled situations you might happen to find yourself in. (Sample usage - Person A: “Excuse me, sir, it seems that you are playing a sport.” Person B: “No, you must be confused. I merely happen to have found myself climbing up the side of a mountain.”)

[It’s worth pointing out here the most popular objection to some of these disqualifications: the notion that certain competitions should be labeled sports solely because they are difficult to play. The fact of the matter is, however, that level of difficulty has no bearing at all on these designations. Imagine, for instance, just how difficult it must be for a person to catch birdshit in his or her mouth. Even bird-lovers and other such perverts will tell you that factoring in all the variables – including weather conditions and avian dietary habits – renders such a practice incredibly difficult. Nevertheless, a competition in this field can certainly break out at any given moment; and in such a circumstance one would hardly expect even the most loyal advocate to label this competition an actual sport – not least of all because of the messy oral hygiene issues involved. Obviously, then, birdshit-eating is an “activity”, fundamentally identical to boxing.]

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Frog

January 20th, 2008 by Adam

frog (frog), n. the frigid Biology teacher directs her pupils through the dissection. They slice, they grope, they insert fingers. Jimmy says: “See those slimy legs, hard and rubbery like cartoon cheese.” Suzie says: “It smells real funny, reminds me of my great uncle.” Dark green matter laid out on a tray, once so alive and springy, fresh like lemon-lime soft drink. He was a noble fly-catcher, this one, his weapon unlike the darting tongue of the serpent or the drooling pink meat of the fluffy St. Bernard, but a gentleman’s tongue of tact and precision, like a rolled-up fruit snack but with purpose and physical attachment. Surely we would eat flies too if only we could catch them. Recall the open-mouthed retarded boy, cheeks flapping in the breeze as he mounts his head outside the window of a speeding automobile, catching insects against his teeth and gums, smiling like a proud king. An elderly woman once walked into a pet shop to purchase several frogs only to wind up with wet lily pads draped across her bosom and valuable diamond jewelry handed to her in a gift box. For who would want a frog to turn into a prince when you can have the frog as he is, in all his compact glory, that bulbous throat puffing out like a shiny scrotum, eyes otherwise indicative of thyroid disorder but now signs of vigor and panorama. Of all the great villains in the history of world cinema, none is more detestable than The Muppet Movie’s Doc Hopper, that pudgy racketeer of ripe, detached frog legs, blind to the beauty of those elongated specimens, so free and bouncy, green like guacamole. One can easily imagine a frog pedaling a bicycle, cautious yet determined, hesitant yet poised. Surely we know the altitude he is capable of achieving once he unfurls those glorious appendages, yet you will never see the frog standing on a street corner at full height, bragging about his span, properly showing off his attributes to his fellow countrymen in fine tuxedo pants. It is understood that with one single hop the frog accomplishes much more than most men do in entire lives, forgetting lost loves and heartache, concentrating on the slippery stone to which he will stick his fine pods, leaping like the erect member of a pimple-faced schoolboy as he scuttles his fat fingers through a dirty magazine. To leap! To leap perchance to fly! Ay, but there’s the rub! For in a leap what flight may come when even our gifted friend suffers from the law of gravitational attraction. Through the slimy swamp he will continue, only stopping once or twice to measure wind. Often he will swim with friends and possibly exchange ideas on math. The late comedian George Burns may have been a frog, yet comedy isn’t their specialty. They say frogs cause warts though this has never been scientifically proven. Planters warts grow on the bottom of your feet.

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Sport

A sport, properly speaking, is a competitive contest that possesses all of the following characteristics:

1. The contest must be between two people or two teams (no
more, no less);

2. The contest must involve a physical object of play (such as a
ball, puck, or birdie);

3. The contest must consist of a clear-cut offense and defense
(competing against each other simultaneously);

4. The contest must utilize an automatic scoring system (not one
based solely on judge’s opinion); and

5. The contest must require a certain degree of both bodily
            movement and physical exertion expended by the
            participants.

c.Next, there are those competitions in which the players must remain stationary throughout, such as checkers, skeet shooting, and jacks. These competitions are properly labeled games in accordance with common practice. Games are by definition meant for little kids and the handicapped.

Frog

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Deleuze and Film

Publications

Arkiv

A sport, properly speaking, is a competitive contest that possesses all of the following characteristics:

1. The contest must be between two people or two teams (no more, no less);

2. The contest must involve a physical object of play (such as a ball, puck, or birdie);

3. The contest must consist of a clear-cut offense and defense (competing against each other simultaneously);

4. The contest must utilize an automatic scoring system (not one based solely on judge’s opinion); and

5. The contest must require a certain degree of both bodily movement and physical exertion expended by the participants.

c.Next, there are those competitions in which the players must remain stationary throughout, such as checkers, skeet shooting, and jacks. These competitions are properly labeled games in accordance with common practice. Games are by definition meant for little kids and the handicapped.

Blogroll

Deleuze and Film

Publications

Arkiv

1. The contest must be between two people or two teams (no
more, no less);

2. The contest must involve a physical object of play (such as a
ball, puck, or birdie);

3. The contest must consist of a clear-cut offense and defense
(competing against each other simultaneously);

4. The contest must utilize an automatic scoring system (not one
based solely on judge’s opinion); and

5. The contest must require a certain degree of both bodily
movement and physical exertion expended by the
participants.