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]

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.

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 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”.

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.

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

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.

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