#supercargo

A cargo cult is a practice amongst indigenous populations that consists in imitating western culture and technology with the hope of arriving at the same effects. Since 2013, Supercargo has been the means by which Peter Moosgaard has performed ritual appropriations and collected subversive imitations of technology and products of mass consumption.

DARK ANTHROPOCENE (digital collages)

Peter Moosgaard 2015/16

The Cargo Cults of the south-pacific

Locals of Vanuatu started building giant airplanes from wood, carving headphones and radios from bamboo and awaited the messianic serviceman John Frum. Their rituals including the non militant army TAU- Tanna Army USA, marching with wooden rifles, should attract planes to the island. Carrying godlike cargo, bringing happiness and prosperity over its people. “Rituals” and devices of US soldiers were copied by these populations, as the soldiers obviously got hold of supplies, dropped from planes without actually working. The more naive will laugh about these imitations. But did the US soldiers truly understand their technology, their big agenda? 

Surprisingly the local performers of the Cargo Cults succeeded: By remaking western technology with bamboo, by re-enacting western rituals they attracted actual planes full of tourists and anthropologists. People got interested in the exotic parades using western imagery. The John Frum Movement (“John from Merica”) suddenly had an audience, soon bringing actual things (cargo) to the island. The cargo shaman once said: You build your plane too and wait in faith. the waiting is the hardest part. According to some shamans the planes awaited will also bring weapons to throw off colonialist oppressors. The cargo cults are strange mockups of imperialism, at the same time keeping old traditions. But is the cult for real or just performance? It does not matter, no difference, it is about the act. The Tale of the Cargo ringing true on so many levels.

The cult of the cargo is our world exactly: We perform meaningless routines we call work, in hope for future cargo. With a technology that could navigate us to the moon, we write LMAO. The western world itself is a giant cult of imitating things that somehow work, dressing in suits, using buzzwords, mimicing old forms of art. who knows why .. The longing for godlike goodies on the horizon, the usage of things we don´t understand: its a big parable of desire. The waiting, the waiting is the hardest part! Our western world is itself transformed in branding myth & mimesis.

The Production of Supercargo

1. Cargo is not a manifestation of certain ideas, it is the other way round. The idea rises from the process of materials.

2. Cargo is neither subjective nor expressive. It has nothing to do with new ideas. Ideas are found on the web.

4. Most Cargo is ludicrously simple. Successful Cargo generally has the appearance of simplicity because it seems inevitable.

5. Nobody owns Cargo. Cargo is repeated by other people or machines. It is a process of ritual production & appropriation.

6. The materials used, are ubiquitious and free. This gives rise to autonomy. Therefore it is either archaic materials or franchised waste.

7. Making Crago is mimesis >> total variation >> total overproduction >> total autonomy

Why Supercargo?

1. “Meaning” is not up to people anymore. Its machines and the economy that makes sense.

2. Not the people are free, its the things that are free. People are left alone to play the game of “living”. The rules are old.

3. Through the total simulation of the world, the physical world becomes a fetish. Material Culture: All culture comes from cult

7. We repeat a world from the memory of machines.

12. You will be free of progress, free of information.

13. By repeating common forms, you get rid of content, therefore techno- capitalist ideology.

1. In what form should we build?

Supercargo depicts pre-existing objects, that are in some way objects of desire. Commodities, tech products, artworks. In terms of “art” that would mean a way of “speculative realism” reflecting on global conditions. This is necessary because it is neither subjective nor relative. As this introduction by Jack Self states: “Postmodernism is increasingly complicit with the contradiction of late capitalist labour markets: it looks like we have infinite choice of lifestyle and career paths; in reality we are all subjects of a catastrophic restructuring of labour and forms of life to a homogenous, polarised, neo-feudalism.” This new realism of Supercargo mimics a material world of trade and consumption, which simply became uncertain - nervous - in the informational age. We live in an era in which form is now only time-based, think of 3D printing, disappearing industries, entire workplaces now immaterial programs. How would a simple human, omitting globalisation make this object? The materials used should always reflect socio-economic realities: This poorsumer is rich of high speed internet, but poor of material possessions. The poorsumer makes use of free materials like waste and stone.

http://jackself.com/pomo

2. Material is scared

One of the assumptions of Supercargo is that in the total simulation of the visible world (you can always apply “skins”) the physical world becomes visible for the first time. McLuhan described that phenomenon as “one medium becomes the content of the next medium”. When you have satellites, the planet becomes the content of this technology. When the internet absorbs television, TV shows suddenly become a form of art. In total simulation, the material is transformed into something “sacred” because it is the only thing that cannot be saved. Water, rare earths, organisms. This new materialism in our everyday life usually takes the form of the commodity, embedded in a global incomprehensible network of production, labour & marketing. It almost seems like magic as we have no insight of how these products and devices are miraculously “hatched” by capitalism. The qualities of the object are revealed through the framework of the commodity as an unavoidable meta-material. There comes the animistic magic of the Cargo Cult: By imitation one can understand and cope with overwhelming forces, be it a new enviroment or techno-capitalism itself. In the technological singularity, we become our own exotic natives in a world colonised by corporatism. Solastalgia is a portmanteau of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’. It’s a term coined by Glenn Albrecht that captures the particular form of psychological distress that sets in when the homeland that we love and from which we take comfort is radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering it alienating and unfamiliar. “It is the homesickness you feel when you are still at home.” as Bea Fremderman put it.

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/neo-materialism-part-two-the-unreadymade/

3. Deep Time and Dark Athropocene.

In the Anthropocene humans & technology can be seen as a global factor. With information technology it is possible to see for the first time, that the only point of reference is the planet itself. The way i see it, we are living in a time governed by cybernetics alone. The human king is dead, all hail the cloud! It was always in the interest of cybernetics to describe organisms and technology alike. To make a supersystem for processes be it biological or cultural. Maybe through cybernetic thinking we can realise that technology isn’t artificial at all. We are just a material processing species, like bees producing honeycombs. This current condition of cybernetic governing (the invisible total of global algorithms) comes with this planetary world view. Its time is the deep time, allowing instantaneous cross references between the superancient and the hypercontemporary. Devices as fetishes, logos as gods, manual labour as a sacred activity. This deep time, or “death of the future condition” is perfectly described by Bruce Sterling concept of the Atemporal.

http://www.wired.com/2010/02/atemporality-for-the-creative-artist/

4. Why expolit yourself in the illusion of self expression?

Giving up trying to become a subject and trying to ally with other participants in the social sphere such as inanimate objects, or processes of production, or data protocols seems more interesting at the moment. The subject, once the site of emancipation, is now seen as overburdened by subjection, the injunction to produce and perform yourself as a subject intensified to an untenable degree under conditions of global capitalism. Creativity is about the most worn-out, abused concept that used to mean something remarkable. Open up to a whole slew of strategies that are in no way acceptable to creativity as it’s formerly known. These strategies include imitation, plagiarism, mechanical processes, repetition. By employing these methods u can actually breathe life. And it may be that any form of agency, however ineffectual and illusory or self-denying, is preferable to the anxiety of individual helplessness in the face of overwhelming social as well as psychological forces. What comes next are symbolic gestures of Supercargo to merely survive in a global enviroment. It is an Ersatzculture.

https://www.adbusters.org/article/life-in-the-algorithm/ http://www.academia.edu/255777/Hauntology_Or_Capitalism_is_Dead_Lets_Eat_its_Corpse_

5. 21st Century Condition