Nolen Gur, P.I.

“What does the “right to the city” mean in a fully privatized, digital city, where access to resources is mediated by the swapping of a “smart card” tied to our identity? How can one effectively exercise it when the infrastructure is no longer in public hands and it’s corporations that determine the terms of access – including the terms on which the protest against them is to unfold? How can cities still claim to be spaces of becoming, contestation, and anonymity when techniques such as algorithmic regulation seek to resolve all conflicts in realtime while imprisoning us in the straightjacket of austerity? Without a parallel fight for technological sovereignty, a fight to protect the right to the city loses much of its potency.”

“A long Sunday afternoon of winter is the hardest thing to face, a kind of death in slow motion, an unmoveable boredom, or, worse, an abyss of anxiety.”

“I’m not questioning anyone’s right to live. I’m saying we must observe the implications of our lives. If what we are talking about is feminism, then the personal is political and we can subject everything in our lives to scrutiny. We have been nurtured in a sick, abnormal society, and we should be about the process of reclaiming ourselves as well as the terms of that society. This is complex. I speak not about condemnation but about recognizing what is happening and questioning what it means. I’m not willing to regiment anyone’s life, but if we are to scrutinize our human relationships, we must be willing to scrutinize all aspects of those relationships. The subject of revolution is ourselves, is our lives.”