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<h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
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inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size:
1.67em; line-height: 1.1; text-transform: lowercase; color:
rgb(87, 96, 120);"><a moz-do-not-send="true" rel="bookmark"
href="http://choreograph.net/articles/lead-article-social-choreography-steve-valk-and-the-situationists"
title="read article" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
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text-decoration: none; color: rgb(87, 96, 120);">lead
article: social choreography: steve valk and
the situationists</a></h2>
<h3 style="margin: 0.7em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 0.83em; line-height: 1.2;
text-transform: uppercase; color: rgb(87, 96, 120);">BY ALAN
N. SHAPIRO</h3>
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<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">We have to change the world. That’s what
we think. Change society. Change life. Do it for freedom.
Get us out of this prison. We know one thing: this change
is possible. All that remains is to figure out how to do
it. (1)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">With these words written in 1957, Guy
Debord founded the Situationist International, a radical
group of creators searching for new forms of action in art
and politics. The practice of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">social choreography</strong>recently
initiated by Steve Valk carries the promise of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">changer
le monde</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>once
again to the threshold of the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">crossing from dream to
reality</strong>. Two events organized by Valk lead to an
appraisal of what has been achieved and what remains to be
done in conceptualizing an effective contemporary project of
concrete utopia. In<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Smallclub:
Goldcoast</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(2001),
Valk worked with artist-activists from Frankfurt’s<span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">TAT</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Theater to organize
“wanderings” of groups of individuals for several hours
through the Bockenheim section of the city. The idea for
these walking adventures was adapted from the Situationist
notion of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">le
derive</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or
collectively “drifting” through urban spaces.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">In the conference-event-happening<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.daghdha.ie/007/001.htm" title="2005"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);"><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of
Change</em></a>, Valk collaborated with Jeffrey Gormly,
Michael Klien and the Limerick-based Daghdha Dance Company
to pay tribute to – yet also radicalize – William Forsythe’s
“postmodern” choreography of the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">plasticity of the body</strong>.
What the predominant “body movement paradigm” in our society
relegates to the status of autistic or nonfunctional
behavior attains a space of legitimacy on the stage in the
incredible suppleness that Forsythe’s special inspirational
remaking of the dancer’s body allows her to express. But the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">ambition of social
choreography is to extend this paradigm shift from the
dancer’s body to a new radical flexibility of the social
body</strong>. Valk and his associates brought together
dancers, cultural theorists and new media artists to discuss
and enact the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">potentialities of
choreography as a socially active force</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">But the presence at the conference of
technology entrepreneur James Stevens hinted metaphorically
at the decisive step that Steve Valk’s amazingly original
enterprise must still take if it is truly going to change
the world, and it must take nothing less than that as its
goal.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">To achieve real change,
social choreography must intervene in the heart of
capitalist society</strong>, not remain in the separate
sphere of culture, which has long been designed as the safe
place for authorized challenge, creativity, and
pseudo-revolt. The technology corporation is today “where
the action is” in the dynamics of the present, and social
choreography can be brought under the umbrella of a radical
technology corporation that will “change all the rules” in
every aspect of its operations.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Report</strong>:
Louis Althusser,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Eléments d’autocritique</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(1974).<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
bold; font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Update</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>May 2010: Alan N.
Shapiro,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Autocritique</em>, self-criticism.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
I have lived these last few years under an illusion. (<span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family:
inherit; font-size: 1em;">BTW</span>, what is the
difference between an illusion and a delusion? Certainly
Freud did not get this right.) I had a conversation with
Jean Baudrillard in July 2004 about the subject of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">changer le monde</em>. This impossible exchange
with a great thinker led me to the idea of making a new
interpretation of Marxism and Buddhism as the everyday
life practice of utopia within a technology company. I
wrote up this idea in the essay “Play Don’t Work in a
Pragmatic-Utopian High-Tech Enterprise”:choreograph.net.
This was a very successful essay, and I have received a
lot of positive feedback about it, especially regarding
the vision of the future of work that it articulates (<em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">the future of an illusion</em>).<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
However, the dream of the radical anarcho-Marxist
technology-media-ecology-design company – with its
principles of friendship, individual freedom, play,
creativity, and diversity of activities – is only an idea!
It is not a reality. To actually try to do something like
that in practice would amount to madness.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">La folie</em>. Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Since (almost) everyone else who is operating in business
is doing so in accordance with business-as-usual
capitalist principles, he who would attempt to “change all
the rules” – and do everything differently in a utopian
way would be immediately confronted with a whole series of
impossible-to-solve problems. One wants to reinvent
everything, yet at the same time integrate all of this new
stuff with the productivity and viability of a functioning
business. One would be entering a black hole of the
absurdly unattainable. Only a madman or “the idiot of the
family” would try it. Of course, Jean-Paul Sartre
concerned himself at great length with such family idiots
(Gustave Flaubert), and Michel Foucault reflected
profoundly on the meaning of madness and its binary
exclusion for the narrow rationalism of modern European
society. Sartre and Foucault,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">BTW</span>, are at the very heart of our science,
of the human sciences of the West. And as the Dalai Lama
says: develop the heart.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">AAR</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(at
any rate), Social Choreography should be left alone to
stand on its own two feet. It should be de-coupled from
any imperatives put on it to throw in with the New
Technology Company that does not exist.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">La société technologique utopique n’a pas eu lieu.</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We have to change
the world. That’s what we think. Change society. Change
life. Do it for freedom. Get us out of this prison. We
know one thing: this change is possible. All that remains
is to figure out how to do it.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
On the other hand, the software architecture, design and
code of the New Computer Science:link is very real – based
as it is on mathematics that nobody else has – and
investors are coming closer. So what the fuck are you
gonna do, Alan? What would Captain Kirk do? What would
Casey Stengel do? What would Steve McQueen in<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">The Cincinnati Kid</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>do? Live to fight
another day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The
Wandering Spectacle</strong><br style="font-size: 1em;">
If I wager on red or black in roulette,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">pair</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">impair</em>,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">manque</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">passe</em>,
I have a nearly even chance of victory or defeat, of gaining
an amount equal to my stake, or of sacrificing the money
that I have set down, leaving aside the house advantage that
the 37th number, the zero, affords to the gaming
establishment. The only nonpositive number on the wheel of
chance is neither red nor black, neither<em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">pair</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>nor<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">impair</em>,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">manque</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>nor<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">passe</em>.
When this lowest degree comes up, my squandered chips are
positioned by an employee onto a narrow line between further
acquisition and forfeiture, and the issue is deferred. But
the two essential outcomes, being up or down, getting ahead
or falling back, kicking ass or getting kicked, winning a
bundle or crapping out, steamrolling or biting the dust,
would clearly seem to be two separate and distinct
modalities, entirely unrelated stations of existence into
one of which I discretely cross over following the
croupier’s throw and my subsequent instantaneous visual
recognition of which compartment the ball has come to rest
in. See<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/articles/a-proposal-for-developing-quantum-computing-in-software"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">here</a><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>for more in depth
discussions of this.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">I have placed my bet on red, the dishlike
device is spinning, my palms are sweating, my pulse is
racing, the small metallic orb goes ’round and ’round, is
deflected, and collides into several ridges. If the silver
ball tumbles down into the slot of a red number, I will
taste the rush of triumph and of easy street, otherwise the
bitterness of destruction and of hard knocks. The tiny
sphere bounces back up from the first pocket with which it
flirts and lands disadvantageously. A small piece of my hide
is ripped away from me. The two results, winning and losing,
and the differing circumstances which they respectively
bring about, are seemingly divided and dissociated one from
another. But this is only an appearance.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">There is a certain system, a
level of shared reality, to which both winning and losing
belong</strong>. It is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">a dimension which illuminates
what they have in common and which precedes either of them
and makes them both possible</strong>. It is<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">a system of participation</strong>,
call it obsessional neurosis or addiction, call it the game
or seductive play, to which I assent. I consent to having my
mood, my emotional or psychological state, suddenly affected
by an arbitrary change in fortune or in exterior events.
There are other intimate couplings analogous to the pairing
between gain and loss: pleasure and pain, love and hate,
sado and maso, yin and yang. A gambler who begins to
comprehend the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">intricate intermingling</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>between winning and
losing might strive to achieve sovereign indifference
towards the value of money, to espy the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">secret flow of the game
itself</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>–
and if one were to think in this way about the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">game of life</strong>, one
might become enlightened – or risk being swallowed up by the
consequences of his fluctuations and losses.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Like winning and losing, the two key ideas
of the Situationists, an avant-garde artistic and radical
leftist political movement which thrived in Paris, London,
and northern California in the mid-20th century, are like a
perpetual Möbius strip which appears at all points to have
two sides but really has one. The two crucial Situationist
ideas –<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">wandering and the spectacle</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>– have often been
regarded as contradictory and at odds with each other.
Wandering or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">le
derive</em>, which literally means “the drift,” is
connected with the early Parisian Situationists of the
1950s, who were influenced by Dada, Surrealism, and
Lettrism, with the collage art of the Dutch painter Asger
Jorn, and with the utopian theories of city planners
Constant Nieuwenhuys and the Algerian Abdelhafid Khatib(2).
The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">dérive</em>,
a group technique of transient passage through varied
ambiences, evokes<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">activity, creativity, and
cultural optimism</strong>;<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">new encounters and the
exploration of territory</strong>; and psycho-geographical
defamiliarization. It<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">conjures up free association
and the rediscovery of fascination</strong>; the
construction of stimulating “situations;” and<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">an adventurous playing with
architecture and urban space</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">The notion of “the society of the
spectacle” was first elaborated in Guy Debord’s 1967 text<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">La
Société du spectacle</em>, and it attained prominence
during the French student uprisings and workers’ factory and
office occupations of May 1968(3). The spectacle denotes a
certain critique of consumerism, the mass media,
simulations, and “commodity fetishism”(4).</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">It implies a degree of resignation and
cultural pessimism faced with the widespread domination of
images over reality, and in the wake of prevailing
contemporary social phenomena such as television,
advertising, cybernetics, and organized leisure time.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Everything
that was directly lived has moved away into a
representation,</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wrote
Debord. The generalized reduction of the citizen to
spectator status and the alienation of the worker from the
product of his labor are developments which the Situationist
International saw as common to the advanced capitalist
countries of the West and the state socialism of the East.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The spectacle is the dominion
of the mode of mere survival, of economics as separating
category, ruling over life itself and the festival of
culture</strong>. It is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">the
sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity</em>(5).
But<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">in the active critique and
transformation of everyday life</strong>, as in the system
of red and black in roulette, the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">concepts of wandering</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(or the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">dérive</em>)<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">and the spectacle are
revealed as being deeply inter-connected and non-separated
from each other</strong>.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Report:<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">SCHMALCLUB</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Goldküste
25.05.2001.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
Drifting and rambling along the Gold Coast of Bockenheim,
Frankfurt.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Pflasterstrand. Sous le pavé, la plage</em>. The
search for the beach under the cobblestones. Locomotion
without a goal. The hunters of marvels. A sixth-story
dentist’s office overlooking city rooftops. Traffic signs
of vehicular circulation superimposed onto a park’s
greenery. Claustrophobic towers. Touring map distributed
in a travel agency with its entry point at the site of the
travel office itself. A ride on a yellow Post Office
bicycle, on a movable garage ladder, or through the
Palmengarten on a mini-train. Dance studio. Quickie stay
in an inviting hotel room. Wait tables or wash up in a
restaurant’s kitchen. Meet an astrologer or other assorted
celebrity. Get a touch-up at a hair salon or a passport
photo. Stop in at the Institute for the Scientific Study
of Dreams. Carrying handy companionship /<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">wandering spectacle</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of constant cell
phone communications directly in one’s vocal folds and
ear. Arrive or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">be received</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>at the stationary
destination of Telekom’s seamless cylindricality, looking
outwards or homewards with views towards everywhere, as in
an inverted panopticon…</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Our habitual relationships to physical
space and our reasons for movement and action within the
urban environment are largely determined by the functional
and utilitarian patterns of work, daily errands and
commissions, and leisure activities. In the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">dérive</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or meandering,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">one instead lets oneself be
spontaneously seduced by the attractions of the terrain</strong>,
and essays<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">to make an interpretive
stand-up reading of the city</strong>. Wandering must be
wrested back from its consumerist meaning (as in the German
word<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">wandern</em>)
of hiking or walking on foot. On the Gold Coast, you<strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">rove and experiment, study
your surroundings, you follow your instincts, and delve
concretely into where you are and exactly how you are
living</strong>. To dérive is to<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">notice
the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings
resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires</em>(6).</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">As you accelerate your wandering,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">you start to proactively turn
upside down the designated purpose of given locations and
to make more conscious and free use of ambiences</strong>.
You begin to discern the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">psycho-geographical
contours, currents, fixed points, and vortexes</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which influence,
encourage, or discourage entries, exits, and flows into and
out of specific prescribed zones of the city(7).</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">The permanent circulation of automobile
traffic, semiotic messages, commodities commerce, and
shopping everywhere is the ceaseless organization of
universal isolation, the unremitting production of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">lonely
crowds</em>, and the antinomy of encounter.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Spectacles
compensate for the participation that is no longer
possible</em>. For Guy Debord, the spectacle is the
incessant auto-justifying and self-legitimating speech of
the established society.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">The
spectacle is the dominant order’s uninterrupted discourse
about itself, its laudatory monologue</em>(8). As designer
lifestyles get manufactured as palettes of niche products,
the spectacle also becomes a system of separation from one’s
own life, an integrated complex of specialization and
fragmentation into widely separated instances of social
existence. But<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">the spectacle is
instantiated, brought into renewed being at each moment by
its actors</strong>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">We partake in the spectacle,
and we can change it</strong>.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">There is nothing outside of
the spectacle and that is good</strong>. Digital
technologies, online interactive networks, and “reality TV”
have not in themselves dismantled or altered the spectacle.
Technophoric claims along such lines tend to miss the point.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">It is not about taking the
side of wandering or of the spectacle</strong>. They are
not in opposition.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">They have always been, and
will always be, intertwined elements in a continuum</strong>,
like winning and losing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">We are always in process</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in the wandering
spectacle, and the urgent question is precisely<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">how do we choose to live our
relationship to that</strong>, as consumers or as
creators. As the physicist-philosopher Hans-Peter Dürr says,
we must change our conception of what human beings are from<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Homo
economicus</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Economic
human) to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">an idea of a Creative human</strong>.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Report:
Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change</strong><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
(Written in the style of R.D. Laing and David Cooper’s
book-length commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Saint Genet</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Critique of Dialectical Reason</em>):</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">The milestone first Framemakers
conference of May-June 2005 – organized by Michael Klien,
Jeffrey Gormly and Steve Valk of Daghdha Dance Company,
Limerick, Ireland – is documented in the book<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of
Change</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(2008).</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Framemakers<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">is an ongoing enquiry into a world understood in
terms of relations, order, and ecologies. Daghdha Dance
Company hosts a new kind of thinking space, one that
invites citizens to enquire into the deeper structures
and dynamics that bind our worlds, in which we have our
being, together</em>. Framemakers<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">expands a metaphor, a new understanding of
choreography as a creative act setting humans, actions,
ideas, and thoughts in relation to one another, to
create or reveal order, and channel energies</em>.
Framemakers<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">is a new perceptual space where pattern emerges, a
new thought in</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>an
ecology of minds<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;" lang="Gregory Bateson">, a growing body of
knowledge about a multi/inter/infra-disciplinary pattern
language</em>.(9)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Pattern languages began in the late 1970s
in the field of architecture with Christopher Alexander.
They have since then spread to fields like Object-Oriented
software design, progressive pedagogy, and user interface
interaction.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Framemakers<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">is a symposium, a series of social choreographies,
a theatre congress, a thinktank, a new kind of
performative speaking, a raw thinking circle, a social
dreaming matrix, a collection of interviews, and now a
book of recommendations</em>. (10)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit; font-style: italic; font-family:
inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>became a
succession of seminal-iconic events enacting (<em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">mettre en scène</em>) what I call<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">The Illusion beyond Art</em>: events which took
place in Limerick and Dublin between 2005 and 2008.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The
Illusion beyond Art</strong>: Society has designated a
certain activity as the officially sanctioned pursuit of
creativity and social critique, and this is called Art. This
role assignment implies, as a consequence, that the rest of
Society is exempt from the enterprise of creativity and
questioning. Museums, cultural centres, and theatres are the
appointed locations where Art takes place. They host this
separate sphere. But Society should not have any separate
spheres. Neither politics nor economics nor engineering nor
death nor madness should be a separate sphere. To call
oneself an Artist is to automatically engage in a kind of
posturing. I am creative. You are not. I am critical. You
are not. But the great creators of the past wrote or painted
or composed because they had to. They did it out of
existential and biographical necessity (see Sartre on
Mallarmé, Genet, and Flaubert; see Derrida on Artaud,
Bataille, and Jabès). They did not call themselves Artists,
because a great creation is a Singularity. This Singularity
has nothing to do with any other creation. It is not
comparable or exchangeable with other creations in any
system or nexus of equivalence. Only art historians and
curators have the idea of Art as category. What is most
interesting about an Artwork is the Illusion that is at its
heart, an Illusion that paradoxically makes us see the real
more distinctly and vividly. This Illusion is not some
fanciful fiction oppposed to reality (Baudrillard), but is a
necessary Illusion inherent in the world itself, an Illusion
embedded in reality. It is<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">an embodiment and not a
representation</strong>.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The Illusion beyond Art is a
choreography of the dreamed-of radical flexibility of the
social body</strong>, beyond the sleepwalking society of
discipline-control-self-surveillance, belonging to the
collective cultural unconscious.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Peter Harries-Jones, Emeritus Professor of
Anthropology at York University in Toronto, with whom I had
the privilege of breaking bread several times in Limerick,
writes of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/articles/gregory-batesons-spirited-culture-of-refusal"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Gregory
Bateson’s Spirited Culture of Refusal</a><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Perhaps our leading
Bateson scholar, Harries-Jones is the author of the awesome
book-length study<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">A
Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory
Bateson</em>(11). For Harries-Jones, Bateson was the
originator of an “unnamed” new 21st century science that is
related to cybernetics and is grounded in an<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">ecological
epistemology</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">recursive
epistemology</em>. As Harries-Jones explains in his
contribution to the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>book</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Bateson used the term ‘epistemology’ to
characterize this exercise of human imagination about how
the relationship of people to their environment entered
into the dynamics of environmental change. Yet it was not
until the convention on global climate change in 1997 (the
Kyoto Accord), 17 years after his death, that this
epistemology became acceptable.(12)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">James Lovelock is another proponent of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">cybernetic epistemology</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>who became more
celebrated than Bateson with his series of books on our
planet Gaia as a living organism of unfathomable complexity
(for example, his 2006 book<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">The
Revenge of Gaia</em>) (13).<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Interdisciplinarity is at the
heart of the new 21st century science that it is our task
to develop</strong>, and Harries-Jones importantly
explains that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">it is the embodied metaphor
of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">choreography</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that is the
driving spirit of the scientific<em style="margin: 0px;
padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align:
baseline; font-weight: inherit; font-style: italic;
font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">paradigm shift</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>largely inspired
by Bateson</strong>:</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Bateson was<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">a choreographer of ideas</strong>.
He recognized that whatever the merits of his case for
reform of science, it would have to be supported by art,
poetry, parables and stories if it were to appeal to human
imagination. I have often wondered, especially since
meeting with Framemakers, how a choreography of Bateson’s
ideas, drawn from his own life, could itself be presented
as a sort of parable to be staged or danced. For example,
as a young anthropologist in Bali, Bateson investigated
how the people on Bali danced their ideas. After his Bali
research, he [just like the founders of Gestalt Therapy
Frederick Perls, Laura Perls, Ralph F. Hefferline, and
Paul Goodman] maintained an interest in ‘proprioception’
or the way in which bodily movement forms and alters
sensibility, and ideas about sensibility. (14)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">In his essay<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/articles/lead-article-toward-a-systemic-medicine-combining-old-observations-with-modern-concepts"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Medical
Perception and the Blind Spot</a><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Georg Ivanovas, a
medical doctor specializing in homeopathy and balneology,
and a psychotherapist specializing in Gestalt and systemic
psychotherapy, writes brilliantly about the implications of
quantum physics for holistic mind-body medicine.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">In
physics there exists a clear concept in how the process
of observing influences the outcome</strong>. For
medicine a comparable theory of perception has never been
formulated. There still prevails a kind of naïve
naturalism maintaining that health, disease and
therapeutic interventions can be judged objectively. (15)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Ivanovas argues that there is always an
unobserved blind spot in any medical or psychotherapeutic
perception. The allegedly objective scientific approach or
paradigm applied to an observed process relies on<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">explanatory
principles</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which
are never actually defined within a closed-circuit
linguistic system of self-legitimating and self-contained
redundancy. The labelling of phenomena by the knowledge
system of naming relies on reconciled signifiers that are
not, in turn, signifieds of yet more signifiers, and so on
ad infinitum. The invoked pseudo-principles are the system’s
closure points, the limits to the free play of discourse.
Whereas homeopathic, traditional Chinese, and quantum
medicine emphasize<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">networks in and of the body</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">singularity/individuality</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the patient’s
circumstances, within mainstream Western medicine<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">where
diagnosis and therapy are mainly based on statistics,
individuality is rather regarded as a nuisance</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(16).</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">This lack of interest in the individual
impressed me already at university. When we were first
presented a psychotic patient hearing voices, we wanted to
know more about these voices, what they said, what they
meant in the context of the patient, and so on. But all
discussion was interrupted. It was sufficient for the
diagnosis and the therapy that he heard voices. Everything
else was mysticism. This is how poor observers are
educated. (17)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Another possible mistake of contemporary
Western medicine is that a disease or infection is rarely
left to take its own course to the end. Everything is
treated in an interventionist way with drugs, cortisone (a
steroid hormone), or antibiotics. Antibiotics, for example,
only suppress an infection; they don’t cure it. According to
the World Health Organization, 46% of the world’s population
is chronically ill (as of 2005), and this will increase to
60% by the year 2020 (18). As in Baudrillard’s famous
description of the precession of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">simulation
and simulacra</em>, our medical science provides<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">a partial map that precedes a
nearly unknown territory</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">R.I.C.E. –
Agentur für soziale Choreographie</strong><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
Steve Valk’s organization, currently most active in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is called R.I.C.E., which stands
for, alternatively,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Radical Ideas for the
Creative Enterprise</strong>,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Research Institute for
Cybernetic Epistemology</strong>,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Real Institute of Civic
Engagement</strong>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Recovery of Intuitive
Creative Experience</strong>, or<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Reality-Informed Catalytic
Events</strong>. In his published conversation with
Michael Klien in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers
book</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>entitled<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/articles/lead-article-social-dreaming-social-choreography"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Social
Dreaming, Social Choreography</a><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Valk refers
explicitly to the ideas of Guy Debord and Joseph Beuys:</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">One can go back to the Situationists, who
wanted to abolish the notion of art as a separate sphere,
a specialized activity. They saw the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">social realm as a realm of
creativity</strong>, a utopian topography which habours
vital and socially transformative possibilities. Beuys is
another figure of historical importance. In the 22 years
that I have lived and worked in the arts in Germany, Beuys
has rarely ever been mentioned, even though so much of the
work that I was involved in, in places like Ballett
Frankfurt, was conceptually close and begging for
comparison. We transformed a traditional state theatre
structure into<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">a new kind of creative
civic interface</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>whose flexible
interior design was done entirely in matted felt, Beuys’
favorite material. Thousands of people<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">came in, performed,
participated</strong>. No one mentioned Beuys or his
ideas(19).</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">New
perception shapes new worlds</strong>. R.I.C.E. is an
agency for Social Choreography. It engages with<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/raw/a-note-on-applied-dramaturgy"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">the
dramaturgy of everyday life</a>. R.I.C.E. explores<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">the mutually transformative
effects which the world as we perceive it, and the
activities through which we shape it, have on each other</strong>.<strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Which thought patterns leave
their mark on our consciousness? How does that inscription
find expression in our actions? What form do we thereby
give to the world around us?</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To explore these
questions, R.I.C.E. does projects in Frankfurt, Germany;
Limerick, Ireland; and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://choreograph.net/raw?thread=uni"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px
1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;
text-decoration: none; color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Helsinki</a>,
Finland. The heart of the agency is Steve Valk, chief
dramaturg of the Daghdha Dance Company, and Berit Mohr,
theatre studies academician. Grouped around them is a
network of partners from all areas of society. Working
closely with R.I.C.E. is the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">ID_Frankfurt / Independent
Dance</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>collective,<strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">kindling feeling and movement
to rouse the social body back to life</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The social
body as a dancing body</strong><br style="font-size: 1em;">
R.I.C.E. has its roots in Frankfurt am Main. The first ideas
leading to today’s work were formulated between 1999 and
2004 at the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">TAT</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Theatre, through the
cooperative work with William Forsythe and the Ballett
Frankfurt. With the choreographer Michael Klien and the
Daghdha Dance Company in Ireland, Steve Valk further
developed these approaches. R.I.C.E. was created in 2006.
The goal: the possibilities of exploring<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">choreography as an<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">aesthetics of change</em></strong>. In order to do
that, R.I.C.E. draws together participants from public and
private life, brings commercial and cultural organizations
side by side and into a network, and deconstructively
synthesizes differing knowledge and differing experiences
issuing from the most varied sectors of society.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">To give
absolute authority to the present</strong><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
R.I.C.E. thinks, dreams and choreographs novel social
settings and situations. R.I.C.E.’s ambition is to reach
deeper layers of the collective consciousness (a term
originated by the French founder of modern sociology Émile
Durkheim) and individual consciousness. The agency wants to
generate increasing awareness about the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">shared contexts in which we
as individuals and as a society move – and that we design
together</strong>.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Badiou:</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We are in a new
phase of emancipatory politics.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
bold; font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">DIE</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;
font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">ZEIT</span></strong>:
What is that?<br style="font-size: 1em;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
bold; font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Badiou:</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The revolutionary
movements of the 19th and 20th centuries are over and are
not coming back. The Proletariat. The Party. Strategies
and tactics. This whole edifice has collapsed, and we must
reconstruct emancipation from scratch. We are in the same
situation as the early Marx:<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">CAPITAL</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is
in command. The problems of society are escalating. But no
tendency towards catastrophe is in sight. One must seek
out. Far away from the State.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
bold; font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica,
Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"><span class="caps"
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">DIE</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;
font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">ZEIT</span></strong>,
German weekly cultural newspaper, December 1, 2009,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Interview with the Philosopher Alain Badiou</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em; quotes: '', '';">
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">That’s why<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">we will have to gamble on
the invention of new models that create a societal
surplus value</strong>, that<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">seek out the connections
and cooperations among areas of society which are still
demarcated from each other</strong>. We will bet on new
models which<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">generate hybrid forms</strong>,
and which will<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">emanate from disparate
thinking and living worlds</strong>.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
Adrienne Goehler,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size:
1em;">Liquefactions: Roads and Detours from the Welfare
State to the Culture Society</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(20)</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">The problem with our Western societies
today is the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">immense gap between
creativity and ordinary daily life</strong>. We have high
culture, universities, and churches. But these<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">institutions operate without
real interconnectivity to routine everyday existence</strong>.
They are the officially designated sites where intelligence,
drama, beauty, awareness, and spiritual flexibility are
allowed to happen, and are alleged to be happening. To
experience<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Art</strong>, one goes to the
gallery, museum or theatre. To acquire<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Knowledge</strong>, one goes
to the lecture hall or enters the bookstore<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">where one places one’s trust
in publishers’ judgments of what constitutes critical
thinking, wisdom or science</strong>. The “ghettoized”
condition of Art and Academia is a symptom of the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">fundamental separation
between ideas and reality that defines our impoverished
collective quality of life</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">While professionals of culture, politics
and the media congratulate themselves for their “valuable
contributions,” the masses (<em style="margin: 0px; padding:
0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: inherit; font-style: italic; font-family:
inherit; font-size: 1em;">les masses, les multitudes</em>)
of people go about the business of their daily lives without
any really useful information or dialogue to help them. They
are processed – like lab mice on a treadmill – through the
neuro-disciplinary society of work, consumerism,
simulated-fake-pseudo-communication, real-time advertising
images around the clock, clunky logistics, and inconvenient
transport. They spend ever longer hours at the office, the
factory, or the school. They are in transit for hours in a
commuter train. They wait anxiously in the queue in the
state employment agency or to be cared for by a doctor in a
hospital. They eat in a fast food restaurant. They inspect
endless aisles of commodities at the supermarket or the
chain drug store. They spend money compulsively at the
shopping mall or the sports betting parlor.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">In these mundane quotidian situations,
people are essentially bored, restless, passive, frustrated,
and alienated. They live in fear of deteriorating economic
circumstances. They try to find meaning and purpose, but are
stifled. They may be on the edge of violence or
self-destruction. They must deal with the boss, with
difficult co-workers, with self-important teachers, with
rivals and bullies. Intelligence, creativity and the
exploration of new ways of seeing must be jacked out of
their segregated cultural spaces and brought to bear on
these real life scenarios.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">The heart and soul of the Situationist
International was its idea of the<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">critique and transformation
of everyday life</strong>. It is time to renew that
historical project.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Social
Choreography changes the relationship between Artist, Art,
Audience, Participant, Experience, Artefact, and Society</strong>.
One is tempted to say: Social Choreography changes
everything. But what exactly does that mean?</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;
font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-family:
Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">We cannot
change the world. But we can talk about changing the world</strong>.
And we shall do so with every means available to us.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">With every language available
to us</strong>. By hook or by crook.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Science fiction is never about the future,
predictions of the future, or the ‘accuracy’ of those
predictions. Science fiction is about the present,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">the reality of the present</strong><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that dominant ways
of thinking prevent us from seeing.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">I close my eyes and recall my conversation
with Jean Baudrillard in July 2004. I cannot hold back these
tears for his illness and death. But surely he would want me
to hold them back and to keep fighting.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">From the potential future of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">changer
le monde</em>, Jean, we are separated by the chasm of
chaos. No one predicted the fall of the Soviet Union or the
World Trade Center.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">changer
le monde, je m’en fiche</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(I don’t give a
flying fuck). But talking about changing the world: that I
can do, I want to do, and I will do.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">Flow my tears, the policeman said.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">And pouring down my cheeks they came, in
buckets, not to be lost in the rain.</p>
<p style="margin: 0.7em 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;"><span class="caps" style="margin: 0px;
padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align:
baseline; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;
font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">NOTES</span><br
style="font-size: 1em;">
1 Guy Debord,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Rapport
sur la construction des situations… suivi de Les
Situationnistes et les nouvelles formes d’action dans la
politique ou l’art</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(originally
published in 1957) (Éditions mille et une nuits, 2006).<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
2 Simon Sadler,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">The
Situationist City</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Cambridge,
MA: The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">MIT</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Press, 1998).<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
3 Guy Debord,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">La
Société du spectacle</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Paris: Éditions
Buchet-Chastel, 1967).<br style="font-size: 1em;">
4 See Sadie Plant,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">The
Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a
Postmodern Age</em>(London: Routledge, 1992). See also
Anselm Jappe,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Guy
Debord</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(translated
from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith, with a Foreword
by T.J. Clark and a New Afterword by the Author) (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1993).<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
5 Debord,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">La
Société du spectacle</em>.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
6 Guy Debord, “La théorie du dérive” in<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Internationale
situationniste #2</em>, December 1958.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
7 Guy-Ernest Debord, “Exercice de la psychogéographie,”<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Potlatch</em>,
no.2 (Paris, June 1954).<br style="font-size: 1em;">
8 Debord,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">La
Société du spectacle</em>.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
9 Jeffrey Gormly, ed.,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers:
Choreography As an Aesthetics of Change</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Limerick, Ireland:
Daghdha Dance Company, 2008); pp.8-9.<br style="font-size:
1em;">
10 Ibid; p.9.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
11 Peter Harries-Jones,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">A
Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory
Bateson</em>(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
12 Gormly, ed.,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers:
Choreography As an Aesthetics of Change</em>; pp.29-30.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
13 James Lovelock,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">The
Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back and How We
Can Still Save Humanity</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(London: Allen Lane,
2006).<br style="font-size: 1em;">
14 Gormly, ed.,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers:
Choreography As an Aesthetics of Change</em>; pp.32-33;
Frederick Perls, Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin:
0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;
vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Gestalt
Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality</em><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(London: Souvenir
Press, 1951).<br style="font-size: 1em;">
15 Gormly, ed.,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers:
Choreography As an Aesthetics of Change</em>; p.129.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
16 Ibid.; p.135.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
17 Ibid.<br style="font-size: 1em;">
18<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span
class="caps" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border:
0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight:
inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit;
font-size: 1em;">WHO</span><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>– “Chronisch Kranke:
Neue Betreuungskonzepte gesucht,“ <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="http://www.medizinauskunft.de/artikel/service/politik/18_10_chronisch_krank.php">www.medizinauskunft.de/artikel/service/politik/18_10_chronisch_krank.php</a>.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
19 Gormly, ed.,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Framemakers:
Choreography As an Aesthetics of Change</em>; p.148.<br
style="font-size: 1em;">
20 Adrienne Goehler,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em
style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline:
0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: inherit;
font-style: italic; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1em;">Verflüssigungen:
Wege und Umwege vom Sozialstaat zur Kulturgesellschaft</em>(Frankfurt
am Main: Campus, 2006).</p>
</div>
<h4 style="margin: 0.7em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px;
outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;
font-style: inherit; font-family: Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif; font-size: 0.83em; line-height: 1.2;
text-transform: uppercase; color: rgb(87, 96, 120);">PUBLISHED
18 DECEMBER 12</h4>
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