VIS 149 Comments

Well, the class is over, but it feels like my education is just beginning.

This quarter was insane. 

I as though I have grown more than I have my entire time in college. I know what I want to do (more or less), and I'm on track to do big things next year.  The biggest reason for that? The convergence of educational knowledge, in and out of the classroom, this quarter, that has totally accelerated me.

I now know why conceptual art is important and why it's art. I know about escalation and de-escalation. I have some coherent questions to explore as an artist now!

HOORAH. 

This has been a hell of a quarter, learning to do a virtual sit-in while planning an actual one, sleeping in my bed a total of TWICE in two weeks, losing a computer and buying a new one...GETTING INVOLVED.

I've got so many projects to do, books to read, art to make, and people's lives to change.

It's interesting to see a past record of actions done.

However, I wish that it was updated up to the present. Maybe it doesn't matter, since b.a.n.g. lab has their own site.

It's also interesting to see the range of actions that Floodnet has taken.

I have been extremely, extremely busy with a play production/organizing for March 1st, but I'm finally able to do some reading and eventually catch up on the reading I've missed, because it's all extremely interesting!

I like this: "the imposition of any one metaphor has a performative effect on the cyberreality it describes, turning cyberspace into the domain of private ownership, or frontier outposts, or rhizomatic community. “Each map,” says Dominguez, 'creates a different line of  sight, a different form of security, and a different pocket of resistance'"

Such an amazing gesture, to attack w/ paper airplanes. The Zapatistas are inspiring performative artists and strugglers.

 "understanding both as performances that combine political protest with conceptual art in an act of social revelation: both involve a simulation of flight and attack that reveals and reverses the logic of military and social domination"

I wonder where this fits on spectrum of gesture/action, metaphor/metonym

or is this in the totally different sphere of intervention? I think so.

this is why it is a poetic gesture: "thousands of armed troops and real airplanes are dispatched to “Žfight” communities armed with little more than paper". It's not power vs. power. It's exposing power.

"embodiment is itself an effect produced by the processes through which bodies are imagined and constituted. If embodiment is an effect, we can, she writes, 'begin to ask questions about how the body is staged differently in different environments'" - Balsamo

hacking theory - "physical, which would engage and possibly harm the hardware itself; syntactical (a favorite of hackers), which would involve changing the codes by which the machine functions—programming, software, design; and Ž- finally, semantic, which involves engaging and undermining the discursive norms and realities of the system as a whole"

written by Sophia Lawson, Jack Beegan and myself

compiled and edited by myself.

Waiting for feedback now.

CALL TO ACTION

On March 1st 2012, this international day of action:

Our physical bodies will be disturbing the material spaces constructed around us. As our corporeal bodies disrupt the violence of an existent landscape disfigured by the artificial cages, borders, and walls of neoliberalism, we will be engaging our virtual bodies in a gesture of electronic civil disobedience.

We, the Public Education Coalition of the University of California (San Diego), are calling for a virtual sit-in on the following websites:

In solidarity with the physical reclamation of the San Francisco branch of Bank of America on November 16, 2011, and the reclamation of 85 ATMS on January 13, 2012, we call for a virtual reclamation of bankofamerica.com, to make it a “truth machine” of its own and call attention to the conflict of interest presented by having a UC Regent sit on the board of a corporate bank.

In solidarity with professor Ricardo Dominguez and the unjust silencing of his voice on September 29, 2010, when he signed a contract prohibiting him from engaging in the very gesture he was awarded tenure for, we call for a sit-in on ucop.edu to show that art cannot be silenced, and as Fred Hampton so famously said, “you can jail a revolutionary but you cannot jail the revolution.”

In solidarity with students and workers of the world we call for a sit-in on universityofcalifornia.edu so that future generation of students, no matter what their race, class, sex, or gender, will not be subjected to the debt slavery that millions of us face thanks to the crippling effects of neoliberalism and globalization.

Students, we call on you to join the physical walk-out(s) in your community on March 1st, and we also call on you to attend this virtual sit-in. In the era of virtual capitalism, we must disrupt virtual space in order to make our voices heard, and you can help the powers that be to see our influence.

Workers we call on you to join this virtual sit-in; even if you cannot join the protest in the physical sphere you can join us in virtual landscape with the phone in your pocket or the computer at your desk.

To the larger community, we call upon you to join this virtual sit-in because you were once students. Because you know the issues we face, and you are facing the same issues. The intersections and contours of the problems at stake are too dire to not become involved.

The constructs of the world that we know are disintegrating and morphing in front of our eyes. In the words of one Wall Street Occupier, “This is the rebooting of history”. We have seen the end of history as prophesied by the proselytes of neoliberalism, and we are unsatisfied.

We call upon you to join in this rebooting of virtual and physical space. Do not stand with scum like UC Regent Monica Lazano, who can claim to be one of the representative voices of over 120,000 students, and yet sit on the board of a private corporate bank.

Do not stand with scum like Mark Yudof who currently makes more than twice the salary of the President of the United States and then complains about not having his own White House.

“Each man must choose between joining our side or the other side. Any attempt to avoid taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco.” - Lenin

As it stands, our future is bleak. The trend of privatization persists at an alarming rate, indifferent to the massive challenges and hostile conditions it creates for an overwhelming majority of the populace.

Students face a future of debt slavery; workers find their labor rewarded with marginalization; the world watches as its public institutions become the stuff of myth.

We say no more.

Put simply, things cannot be allowed to continue as they are. ‘Business as usual’ is a death sentence.

The very people we trust to guide our university have betrayed us for personal gains. The politicians who promise to represent us are unforgivably out of touch with what we go through.

We say no more.

We will fight back and we will win.

Take a stand this March 1st against the privatization of the education of your friends, your peers, your sons, your daughters, and the future leaders of the world.

Click here to access the virtual sit-in, starting at midnight on 1/1/12:

This was a very enlightening video. 

Great introduction to a thinker I can't wait to read more of. I went and checked out some books by/about him at the library and I can't wait to dig into them. That's why I love my classes this quarter. They are really helping me build a theoretical framework with which to educate myself.

I loved the interview where he talked about counter-violence and its occasional necessity. SO TRUE.

This was posted on the wrong blog, but I did it on the 16th.

La Boétie’s essay - Voluntary Servitude

why “consider patiently the evil”? Why not rise up against it?

 ”the habit of obeying him and depending on him to such an extent that they grant him certain prerogatives” - I feel like that’s how most rulers acquire more and more power (e.g. Caesar and Rome, Bush after 9/11, etc.)

Boétie’s language is quite inflammatory, no matter how peaceful he is.

the analogy of a fire running out of fuel to civil disobedience is a really good one.

“Apparently they refuse this privilege because it is so easily acquired” maybe for some people, but definitely not for other oppressed groups

I would be interested to read more about La Boétie’s personal life - was he married? And if so, did he treat his wife well? Did he own slaves? How much did he buy into the cultural constructions of his day as he wrote about freedom for all?

Isn’t farming animals to be fed then subjecting them to involuntary servitude as well then too?

“we learn to swallow and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude” - and oftentimes, the antidote looks like venom to those under the influence of servitude

His discussion about habits acquired at an early age relates to a discussion I was having with someone about whether people are inherently evil, or born with a blank slate. Growing up, I have had the “yoke” placed on me that people are born evil. I don’t think I believe that anymore, but it’s interesting what social systems around you can instill into you and shape the way you think.

Good to know that even timeless essays can go off on tangents sometimes.

Cyrus took a Huxleyan approach - controlled his subjects with things they loved. Like media, games, internet, etc. does today to people.

Assyrian mode of rule - fearing that which you cannot see - is much like the Panopticon of Bentham/Foucault.

Religion and power are a deadly poisonous mix.

The author seems to have a strong nationalistic streak about him, which seems counter to most of what he has been saying so far. Aren’t nation-states built on the idea of a single person/group controlling everyone else? So why would you be so gung-ho about French traditions and French poetry?

La Boétie is talking about the bourgeousie in this section, yes? (pg. 17)

his argument about noblemen keeping fortunes on pg. 18, and how few of them actually do, could be extended to capitalism itself, not just an actual tyrant.

I did not know that Ghandi tried to teach principles of decentralization

I like him relating filtering of information to a camera lenses filtering out types of light; very apt analogy.

great quote: "“The meek may one day inherit the earth, but not the headlines.”

Ghandi's theory goes back to Thoreau and his concept of the best place fore a just man being prison.

“I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill." - this quote of Ghandi's comes straight from tradition of Thoreau.

Does violence ALWAYS have negative side-effects?

If neither non-violence, nor violence, could work, how would one go about erasing oppression?

I had much more detailed notes for Part 2, but unfortunately they got deleted. I will try to recall them here

My favorite quote from this section is "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." It's a great summing up of civil disobedience as a whole.

I understand now why Thoreau is the theoretical underpinning for all civil disobedience movements (at least that I can think of). It all applies, even though he was writing over 100 years ago.

 Thoreau has quite revolutionary concepts and is truly an example of non-violent non-cooperation.

Part 3:

Why exactly was Thoreau sent to prison? How long was he there?

What does it take to "nakedly behold the state?" How can we get others to nakedly behold the state?

Who is this Webster that he refers to?

"No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America" still true, in my eyes.

But, is a state, according to the Weberian definition of "an institution with a monopolization of legitimized violence" ever going to recognize its power as derived from the Individual? I think not.

 I just read a statistic about how the U.S. has been involved in some kind of war for 209 years of its 235(?) years of existence. Little surprise, then, that Thoreau's writing - although it's talking about a different war - still resonates today.

he's not an anarchist, although at the beginning he quotes "That government is best which governs not at all"

I like this text: "I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

When was this written? 19th century? If the standing army has been radically critiqued for so long, WHY DOES IT STILL EXIST?

Thoreau makes a very good point. If a revolution could happen in 1775 over foreign import taxation, why have we not had a revolution yet over much more critical issues of democratic freedom?

I love taking classes where topics overlap - Thoreau is talking about the free-rider problem typified in Resource Mobilization Theory of social movements (even though it hadn't been invented yet)

1/15 

Video - "Robot Wars"

thoughts:

Are the ethical questions worth the costs/changes in warfare?

Very surprising to me (although it shouldn't be) that the CIA runs the drone program

I liked the quote about how no court-martial process leads to NO ACCOUNTABILITY - which makes it very different than other aerial warfare, like bombings in WWII.

also that "the law is not keeping up with development"

where did they find a Futurist to offer comments?

I didn't realize that complete autonomy was so widely discussed in the robotics industry....science fiction moves closer to reality every day.

"engineering out emotions" sounds very scary.

La Boétie's Essay - Voluntary Servitude

I read through to the beginning of the essay and then stopped there. 

Comments: