The agenda:
DAY 1
Location: San Francisco Art Institute, Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street, S.F., CADate & Time: Friday, October 24, 2008, 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
-Opening Statements:
(Peter Maravelis/City Lights)
(Arthur Kroker/ CTheory)
-Session 1 (7:10 p.m.)
War as Planned Disaster
(James Der Derian)
Paul Virilio once said, 'The full-scale accident is now the
prolongation of total war by other means.' National borders were
thought necessary and sufficient to keep our enemies at bay, the
population safe, and the economy robust. However, after 9/11 and Iraq,
Hurricane Katrina, and the financial meltdown, we seem closer than ever
to Virilio's integral accident, where worse-case scenarios, simulation
training, and military wargames - as well as armed forces, earthen
levees, and free markets - not only prove inadequate but might well
act as enablers for 'ultra-catastrophes' that are no longer the
exception but now part and parcel of densely networked systems: in
other words, planned disasters.
-Session 2 (7:30 p.m.)
The Hypersonic Sound of Information Speed
(Arthur & Marilouise Kroker)
A prophet of the wired future, Paul Virilio's thought always invokes
the doubled meaning of apocalypse-cataclysm and remembrance. Virilio's
reflection is nowhere better expressed than in his grisly vision of
information as suffocation. In his theatre of thought, data banks have
migrated inside human flesh, bodies are reduced to granulated flows of
dead information, tattooed by data, embedded by codes, with complex
histories of electronic transactions as our most private
autobiographies.
-Session 3 (7:50 p.m.)
On Politics & War: Paul Virilio & Accelerated Modernity
(Steve Redhead)
Much of the international interpretation of Paul Virilio's work labels
him a social theorist. In fact Virilio has admitted that 'for me all
that is social, sociology, doesn't interest me. I prefer politics and
war'. He also describes himself, more accurately, as a 'critic of the
art of technology'. Where does that leave Virilio in the pantheon of
today's critical theorists? How can he best be employed as a theorist
in a world where cosmopolitanism reigns? Moreover, can his work help us
to track the trajectories of the catastrophic? Steve Redhead looks at
Virilio's work in the context of a pressing need for a 'bunker
anthropology' and 'claustropolitan sociology’ – a social theory from
within what Virilio hails as the 'claustropolis’ and a reflection of
how it is to live within the accelerated, shrunken world we inhabit in
the twenty-first century.
-Session 4 (8:10 p.m.)
From Position to Disposition
(Jordan Crandall)
As Virilio would have it, our culture everywhere advances toward
realtime, and in this realtime arena, "coincidence" takes the place of
communication; consequently, the emphasis shifts from the
"standardization of public opinion" to the "synchronization of public
emotion." In a real time world where there is less and less time to
act, there is also less time for thought. There is a turning away from
external movements and positions and instead a turn toward the
internal: into the affective, pre-interpretative states of the body.
These states may or may not resolve to specific emotions such as fear.
We might refer to them as dispositions -- dispositions to act that
accumulate just at the horizon of the visible.
-Session 5 (8:40 pm)
Cinema of Disasters
(Dominic Angerame will introduce & curate film shorts)
-Images of the SF Earthquake 1906
Since the creation of cinema natural and man made disasters have been
recorded in vivid motion pictures. This program will present shocking
visceral images of accidents, earthquakes and war utilizing both
primitive and high technological devices. The fascination to witness
through the repetition of the cinema speaks greatly to the human
attraction to the accident. This program speaks directly to this
condition.
-Hot Leatherette (by Robert Nelson)
-Odds and Ends (by Jane Conger)
-Home (by Matt Faust)
-New Orleans (by Mark Street)
-Sera/Sera (by John Murphy)
-Anaconda Targets (by Dominic Angerame)
-Session 6 ( 9:10 p.m.)
Roundtable:
Crash Culture & the Politics of Speed
(James Der Derian, Arthur Kroker, Timothy Murray, and Steve Redhead)
DAY 2
Location: Military Bunkers of Marin Headlands, Battery Townsley, Marin County,CADate and Time: Saturday, 12:00 p.m. and 1 p.m. October 25, 2008
Session 7
The Bunker Tour
Docent John Arturo Martini gives a tour of the Battery Townsley bunker. This will be followed by local artist John Rogers presenting
a lecture/slide show exploring the "bunker" works of Paul Virilio. The
talk will explore local military history, architecture, and geography
with references to Paul Virilio’s classic work: Bunker Archeology. The
tour shall be given twice. Admission is free, but requires making
reservations. Admittance shall be on a "first come, first serve" basis.
We request that attendees sign up either at the front counter at City
Lights or by e-mailing their reservation to: info@trajectoriesofthecatastrophic.net.
Please include your name, phone number, and number of persons
attending. Details on how to reach the site will be e-mailed to you in the form of a pdf file or you may pick up a map provided at the front counter at City
Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA. 94133
(Click here for more Bunker tour info)
(Click here for more Bunker tour info)
DAY 2 (continued)
Location: San Francisco Art Institute, Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street, S.F., CADate and Time: Saturday, October 25, 2008, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
-Opening Statements:
(Peter Maravelis/ City Lights)
-Session 8 (4:05 p.m.)
Chimeric Architectures- Fractal Flesh, Phantom Bodies & Internet Organs
(Stelarc)
Flesh flows. Organs are relocated and reanimated. Body fluids
circulate from one body to another. Ova are extracted, fertilized and
reinserted into other bodies. This is the time when the personal
becomes publicly accessible and exchangable. Corpses can be preserved
indefinitely whilst simultaneously comatose bodies can be sustained
indefinitely on life-support systems. Bodies never born might never
decompose and might never need to die. This is a world where the dead, the almost dead, the never born, the partially living
and the virtually present co-exist. Alternate anatomical architectures
are constructed from biological bodies, machine systems and virtual
entities that must function effectively in mixed realities, both in
local and remote spaces. This is the time of the of the corpse, the
comatose body and the chimera- the hum of the hybrid...
-Session 9 (4:25 p.m.)
Hacktivism and Critical Dromology
(Ricardo Dominguez)
Paul Virilio's deep vision of the 'politics of speed’ and THE
'aesthetics of disappearance' is full of anxieties about the nature of
post-contemporary art's relationship to the "body" and the "virtual".
His fear of dromology-as-art has created a blind spot, an inability to
see the potential of current art practices over the course of the last
ten years. Hacktivism and Digital Zapatismo have been about creating
visibility for mute body/bodies around the planet. The work of the
Electronic Disturbance Theater [EDT] has created possibilities for
constituting presence in digital space that is both collective and
politicized - performance art as critical dromology. By extracting the
core ideas from the canon of Virilian thought and mixing them with new
modalities in art and performance, a new paradigm emerges- a radical
dromology for our time.
-Session 10 (4:45 p.m.)
Timecode Fallout: Mediamatic
(DJ Spooky)
Paul Virilio is a theorist whose work leads directly to a critique of many of the underlying assumptions of our hypernetworked, hyper accelerated, information saturated digital culture. His work resonates with the working model of dj culture: with its obssesion with active archival re-purposing of audio and video materials, and the irreverence it implies to many of the production models of the 20th century, one could argue that the "rip mix burn" aesthetic has displaced the idea of the "work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction." Mass production acted as the 20th century's impetus to create a global culture based on "hyper-real" economies of scale. This is what the theorist Frederic Jameson called "the postmodern turn" of late capitalism. The "mix" in dj culture is made of many "deterritorialized" rhythms - it speaks from a vantage point of "polyphony" - it is the interplay of many voices, many tempos, many kinds of repetitions. It is a culture that asks a simple question: can the relationship between the representation of a sound object (or a video), create the perception of how we think of "realism" in an era of ubiqitous media? Think of the turntable as a permutation machine, and software, editing environments, and shareware/collaborative filtering environments as a digital inheritance of the playback systems of cassettes, records, radio and TV: in this perspective, electronic music's minimalism becomes a kind of "ecstacy of influences." The kind of repetition I'm talking about has what I like to call the "prolonged present" as a core aspect of sequencing sound and video elements. For me, that kind of repetition becomes a theater of rhythm: it acts is a kind of catalyst of the creative act. Rhythm and ratio - in this scenario, "tempo" becomes a media metronome - it looks at globalization as a mirror of the way music has changed under the impact of the hyper dense information economy. Music, for me, is a mirror we hold up to society. As Virilio once said of the 21st century:
It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.
Perhaps this is just another way of thinking of the cybernetic mechanism of the "break-beat" or the "rupture" that Virilio implies with his notion of contiuity vs catastrophe. The interpretations of any sample or data set can be multiplex - that is what I call the remix: it leads us directly into a kind of politics of sound and image.
It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.
Perhaps this is just another way of thinking of the cybernetic mechanism of the "break-beat" or the "rupture" that Virilio implies with his notion of contiuity vs catastrophe. The interpretations of any sample or data set can be multiplex - that is what I call the remix: it leads us directly into a kind of politics of sound and image.
-Session 11 (5:05 p.m)
Promising Speeds of New Media's Passage
(Timothy Murray)
Reflecting on Virilio's expressed ambivalence about new media art, I would like to open a dialogue on how to grab back for political art and culture the more positive, subliminal elements of speed and its culture. How might we embrace the "automation" that Virilio sees to threaten the arts, from dance to installation? How might we strategically enfold the explosive elements of the "geosphere" back into the numbing drive of the "technosphere"?
-Session 12 (5:35 pm)
Roundtable:
Art & Fear- Ecstatic Enormity, Cinematic Transparency, and the Pitiless Artist
Throughout the pages of the Virilian Canon, the 20th century artist is often seen either as victim or collaborator in the destruction of the human form. Science is considered to have bypassed the arts in it's far reaching effects over culture and has left us to wonder if "art can go the distance." An aesthetic of visible resistance is explored as artists respond to a "crisis of the qualitative."
(Domenic Angerame, Jordan Crandall, Ricardo Dominguez )
Moderated by Lynn Hershman Leeson
Session 13 (5:55 p.m.)
Logistics of Catastrophe
(James Der Derian and Arthur Kroker in discussion)
-Session 14 (5:15 pm)
The Interview
Prerecorded interview with Paul Virilio (conducted by Sylvere Lotringer)
-Final statements & acknowledgments:
(Peter Maravelis/ City Lights)