The pirate is in fact the “war machine”, fighting and resisting the state, operating through intelligent re-appropriation of the small but productive pieces and species of ‘other’ space that were explored during this week’s talks: spaces of transgression, in-betweens, borders, liminal spaces, differential spaces, thirdspaces, hybrid spaces and spaces for collaboration. Protesting, educating, producing differential space, but most importantly, conspiring, incubating and preparing a silent assault on dominant power, actively challenging and successfully displacing hegemonic modes of production.

[El ‘Pirata’ es de hecho la ‘máquina de guerra’, lucha y resiste al estado, operando mediante la re-apropiación inteligente de las pequeñas pero productivas parcelas y especies de los diversos ‘otros’ espacios que se exploraron durante las charlas de esta semana: espacios de transgresión, espacios entre-medias, bordes, espacios liminales, espacios diferenciales, espacios de terceridad, espacios híbridos y, sobre todo, espacios de colaboración. Protestando, educando, produciendo espacio diferencial, pero lo más importante, conspirando, incubando y preparando un silencioso asalto al poder dominante, desafiando activamente y desplazando con éxito a los modos hegemónicos de producción.]

“Since there are pirates and masquerades on all sides, traditional markers will not reveal the side of the right in these constitutions. The principled stance, the moral imperative, the costumes of good guys and bad guys are finally the worst possible indicators. Agresion can relieve tension and reveal information, while fierce passivity can embody violence. Markets assume many guises, sheltering and occasionally surfacing as whaetever bandit or diplomat suits the occasion.

Capital can appear disguised as its own resistance. Likewise, the mischief of a pirate in collusion with the state is tricky to detect”

“Perhaps the comedian tutors another fabled pirate of resistance who is too smart to be right, too smart to be righteous”.

“…A political imagination might productively entertain fictions and masquerades, as well as the success of errant details or germs. This is an imagination that is fascinated with contagions that spawn the most unlikely epidemics of belief”

” The pirate who is too smart to be right respins the abundant psychological weaknesses, comedies, loopholes and errors in the market, por partial, perhaps huge, but never totalizing effects”.

(Quotations from Keller Easterling, “Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades”)

Please check also the following links to small youtube videos provided by Manuel Delgado as an illustration to some of the ideas he was brilliantly explainning last week. He has also sent a text entitled “La Ciudad Levantada” that you can download too, either through the link below or by checking the ‘texts’ section.

Video 1
Video 2
Text W_10_08 delgado_manuel [la_ciudad_levantada]

This post will be updated soon. Comments can be already added through the link below.

Manuel Delgado will deliver a lecture on Thursday 20th of November at 10.30 h at the main lecture room in the ETSAV. The lecture, entitled ” A GREY FOG AT GROUND LEVEL. THE CITY AS AN UNCONTROLLABLE SPACE. ” will offer an alternative approach to the idea of the “urban”, and provide a counterpoint to Wednesday’s class on “The Vigilant Sight”.

Please remember that participants of dissensus must attend the lecture and send a comment to this post afterwards.

otras_miradas_2

This post will be updated soon. Comments related to the last class, film and debate can be already added through the link below.

The introductory “walk” through the first parts of Deleuze’s work on cinema was intended to provide basic tools for an understanding of the ultimate cinematographic material, that is, the image, as well as to take us into the cinematic world and its concepts.

This excursion into the movement-image was followed by the much richer, faster, longer, smarter and more complex deconstructions and reflections of Slavoj Zizek, who is always able to relate the otherwise mysterious complexities of the time-image to the everyday, successfully illustrating his profoundly political and radical project in ways that attract and amuse both the average citizen and the trained philosopher.

Spatial links to such a project are yet to be made visible and explored.

Comments to the class contents and screenings of this week can be already added through the link below.

‘The construction of the film has to show the audience how open to manipulation they really are, and that’s the difficult bit. It shows the audience “here you are, you are a voyeur”, and by doing so it lifts you out of the action. Then it shows you back into the thick of it again so you have this continual shift in perspective.’

‘The question is about the way the audience is involved in violence but without experiencing any sense of guilt. The cinema of violence lives for this sense of being involved in watching violence but without any sense of guilt about that process.’

Haneke, Michael (2001), Interview with Trevor Johnston included in the English version of Funny Games DVD, cited in SANCHEZ DE SERDIO, AIDA (2004), “Fuera de Campo: la narrativa visual como paradigma epistemológico en la investigación en ciencias sociales”.

Visible or invisible, all kinds of borders are being set, built, reinforced and extended throughout the world’s geography. Territorial borders, economic borders, political borders, sexual borders, oppressive borders, choice borders, gender and class borders, labour borders… Extreme polarization and difference result from the dramatic dynamics that are set in motion or enhanced by the growing tension and disempowerment produced by all these “walls”.

Should spatial practices contribute to the further development of these and other walls, or rather focus on the design and deployment of all kinds of counter devices that resist, infiltrate, deconstruct and/or make visible the already dividing practices and devices?

The almost opposite narrative machines of Madansky and Biemann make nevertheless certain aspects of these walls visible and provide points of departure for interesting discussions and reflections about the places in which they occur and the consequences of their presence. Beyond the purely symbolic and visual aspects of their techniques, it seems crucial to also reflect on their “disturbing” and “interruptive” functions, their ability to perhaps initiate or ignite other processes and/or create a space, give a voice, provide a visible image of somewhat previously unrepresented, un-heard, un-seen “walls”. (un-thought?, un-discussed?)

The “situated” gaze, the “subjective” condition of their corresponding points of view, should be also taken into account in order to approach the films consciously aware of their “discursive” power and “constructed” realities.

Is there ever a non-fictional filmed product?

Cynthia Madansky
Ursula Biemann
A text on “Performing the Border”

Please check the texts by Teddy Cruz and Saskie Sassen that are also available from the ‘texts’ section.

The series of guest lectures will start next week with the visit of Judit Vidiella, a researcher and teacher at the UB, where she coordinates a post-graduate master program on Visual Culture Studies. She will participate in the WEEK 4 session of Dissensus on Wednesday the 15th, and will also offer a lecture on Thursday the 16th as part of the EDC lecture series at the ETSAV. Please check the PDF poster through the link below.

I strongly encourage everyone to attend both the class on wednesday and the lecture on thursday.
otras_miradas_judit_vidiella_lq

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SSE) announced as of 22 December, 2006, that the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) was the winner of the competition to design its new financial exchange. Located in Shenzhen’s new Financial District adjacent to the administrative and cultural center of the city, the new SSE will be a financial center with civic importance.

Construction works have now started.

At a height of approximately 250 meters and 259.000m2 of gross floor area, the building will house the SSE offices and will include a trading floor, registration and clearing house, the Securities Information Company and ancillary services.

The building features a floating base, edged up the tower to become a platform to support and launch the area which it liberates on the ground. The space between the raised platform and the ground is used as a covered urban plaza, large enough to accommodate public festivals and financial information streams down digital banners hanging from the elevated platform.

“Lifting the base in the air vastly increases its exposure; in its elevated position, it can ‘broadcast’ the activities of the stock market to the entire city,” said OMA founder, Rem Koolhaas.

“The essence of the stock market is speculation: it is based on capital, not gravity. In the case of Shenzhen’s almost virtual stock market, the role of symbolism exceeds that of the program - it is a building that has to represent the stock market, more than physically accommodate it.” He continued, “It is not a trading arena with offices, but an office with virtual organs that suggest and illustrate the process of the market.”

This post will be updated soon. Comments can be already submitted through the link below.

Ulrich Seidl’s cinema of disturbance forces the otherwise passive spectator into an active role: he/she, the viewer, must now “read” the image, think and react. By leaving an open space in the film, Seidl offers the viewer a chance to understand the everyday life scenarios and grotesque episodes from his/her own perspective. This freedom is also a trap, and viewers are often confronted with themselves and thus feel afraid or uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, his work is not so much focused on the individual, but rather deconstructs and criticizes society as a whole, offering an unprecedented look through a series of unexplored gaps and cracks, effectively attacking the overwhelming totalitarism of indifference that currently rules the world.

[El perturbador cine de Ulrich Seidl fuerza al espectador, de otra forma pasivo, hacia un papel activo: él o ella, los que miran, deben ahora “leer” la imagen, pensar y reaccionar. Dejando un espacio vacío en la película, Seidl ofrece al espectador la posibilidad de entender los escenarios cotidianos y grotescos episodios desde su propia perspectiva. Este grado de libertad es a la vez una trampa, y los espectadores se encuentran frecuentemente ante ellos mismos, asustados o incómodos.

Su obra no esta en cambio centrada en el individio, sino que más bien deconstruye y critica a la sociedad en conjunto, ofreciendo una mirada sin precedente a través de una serie de huecos y grietas inexploradas, atacando eficazmente el abrumador totalitarismo de la indeferencia que reina en el mundo. ]

Please check the post I wrote after this class during the first edition of .dissensus:
Leed también el ‘post’ correspondiente a esta sesión en la primera edición de .dissensus:
WEEK_02 // 1.0