Download PDF here or read the two articles online here and here.

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TRANSMEDIALE 2010: Liquid Democracies conference
Date: Sunday 7 Feb. 2010, 17:00 – 19:00
Location: Auditorium, House of World Cultures
Web: www.transmediale.de

Participants: Matteo Pasquinelli (it), Steve Lambert (us), Sascha Lobo (de)
Moderator: Tiziana Terranova (it)

To raise a question about the future always also implies to ask for the actualisation of the political and, in particular, ethical concepts for the society that we live in today. We are about to lose our operational sense for ethics, politics and culture. Rather, we see ourselves confronted with a depersonalised politics and a ‘desubjectified’ communication as the result of two factors: the disappearance of the political body with institutions capable of acting on the one hand; and increasingly faster digital social media tools that reduce the space for reaction and reflexion on the other hand. This is a moment of crisis where we must think about the role of social media. Due to the recent events in which social networking sites have replaced traditional news coverage it seems worthy to closely examine the ‘radical’ role of tools like Twitter and Facebook as ‘revolutionary’ media. Are we dealing with a new force, a new social mechanism for the exchange of information, a new truth? Or are we only listening to a new siren song?

www.b-books.de/verlag/ppp

Book launch and celebration at Basso Berlin, 30 Jan 22:00
www.basso-berlin.de

What happens after the pornographic moment? What is the post. . . in porn? What is post to the term that is porn? Why watch porn? Why not? Or why not look for “other” porn? Why not produce post-porn? How do we theorize sex performance? How do we produce new body- and sex-technologies? How do we celebrate critical pleasures? How do we analyze and criticize without censorship? Why affirm the fetish? Why sexualize alienation? How do we intensify the relation between theory and practice? Why is power sexy? Why is the body a victim of capitalist commodification? Why don´t we perform and show sex differently, instead of idealizing a way back to nature? A symposium on the biopolitics of pornography.

The concept called “post-porn” was invented by erotic photographer Wink van Kempen and made popular by sexwork-activist and performance artist Annie M. Sprinkle. It claimed a new status of sexual representation: Through identifying with critical joy and agancy while deconstructing its hetero/normative and naturalising conditions, Sprinkle made us think of sex as a category open for use and appropriation of queer_feminist counter-pleasures beyond the victimising framework of censorship and taboo.

Contributions by:

Murat Aydemir (Visual / Cultural Theorist, Amsterdam)
Bruce La Bruce (Queer Filmmaker, Berlin / Toronto)
Maxime Cervulle (Queer Theorist, Paris)
Shu Lea Cheang (Cyber_Visual Artist, Paris / Taiwan)
Katja Diefenbach (Political Philosopher, Maastricht / Berlin)
Lee Edelman (Queer Philosopher, Tufts University / USA)
Stephan Geene (Political Theorist,Berlin)
Werner Hirsch (Drag_King / Performance Artist, Berlin)
Katrien Jacobs (Visual / Media Theorist, Hong Kong)
Maria Llopis / GirlsWhoLikePorno (Filmmaker / Activist, Barcelona)
Bubu De La Madeleine (Performance Artist / Sexwork Activist, Osaka / Kyoto)
Matteo Pasquinelli (Political / Media Theorist, Amsterdam / London)
Beatriz Preciado (Queer Philosopher, Barcelona)
Annie M. Sprinkle (Performance Artist / Sexwork Activist, San Francisco)
Elizabeth M. Stephens (Visual / Performance Artist, San Francisco)
Terre Thaemlitz (Audio / Visual Artist, Kawasaki / Japan)
Cosey Fanni Tutti (Audio / Visual Artist, London)
Todd Verow (Queer Filmmaker, New York)
Tobaron Waxman (Visual Artist / Toronto, New York)
William Wheeler (Drag_Queen / Performance / Video Artist, Berlin / Mississipi)
Michaela Wünsch (Cultural / Queer Theorist, Berlin)
Chantal Zakari (Visual Artist / Media Researcher, Boston)

28 November 2009, 16:00 – 20:00 hrs
Mediamatic. Vijzelstraat 68, Amsterdam.
Program here

Open #18  includes the essay:  “The City Devouring Itself: Urbanibalism in Times of World Wars, Insurgent Communes and Biopolitical Sieges” by Wietske Maas and Matteo Pasquinelli. +PDF

Abstract: The origin of Google’s power and monopoly is to be traced to the invisible algorithm PageRank. The diagram of this technology is proposed here as the most fitting description of the value machine at the core of what is diversely called knowledge economy, attention economy or cognitive capitalism. This essay stresses the need of a political economy of the PageRank algorithm rather than expanding the dominant critique of Google’s monopoly based on the Panopticon model and similar ‘Big Brother’ issues (dataveillance, privacy, political censorship).

Download essay in English or Italian.

Extended program and time table here.
Date: Friday, 13 November.
Time: 10:00 h
Place: Trouw, Wibautstraat 131,1091 GL Amsterdam

Common, Rent and Sabotage: Diagrams of Cognitive Capitalism

Download slideshow and notes here.

Draft program here.
Date: Monday, 2 November. Time: 19:30 h
Place: Museo Reina Sofia, Edificio Nouvel, Auditorio 200
Free entry.

Part of VASTAL (Vivo Arts School for Transgenic Aesthetics), Waag Society, Amsterdam. Press release here.

A good understanding of the notion of ’sabotage of rent’ and symbolic capital…

Paolo Pedercini, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Neural magazine, 3 Aug 2009.

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How can gentrification, free culture, pornography and Baudrillard coexist in the pages of the same book? Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons is a peculiar and oblique work that challenges many of cyberculture’s recurring narratives. Matteo Pasquinelli, media activist and net porn expert, successfully combines the most radical media theory with the tradition of post-operaismo (a strain of neo-marxism currently captained by Negri, Virno and Lazzarato). The theme of the collection of essays, the concept of animal spirits, is borrowed from Keynes and refers to the complex amalgam of emotional and instinctual forces that push below the sanitized surface of information age capitalism. The main victim of Pasquinelli’s polemic is ‘digitalism’, the transversal ideology that sees in the network the promise of an egalitarian society free from any conflict. The great digitalist fallacy is to hide the parasitic nature of contemporary capital, a nature that manifests itself in the living labour behind immaterial production – the set of infrastructures, platforms and devices that enables social production and gift economies -or in real estate speculation, that which exploits the value collectively created by urban dwellers. The bestiary includes an imaginary duel between Ballard and Baudrillard and an acrobatic disquisition on pornography and images of war. It’s a book full of suggestions and provocations, sometimes hard but not inaccessible that can work either as introduction to the contemporary debate around immaterial capital or as a politically incorrect antidote to the techno-utopian hot air we breathe everyday. Paolo Pedercini

[In Italian] Come possono coesistere gentrification, free culture, pornografia e Baudrillard nelle pagine di uno stesso libro? Animal Spirits: a bestiary of the digital common è un’opera singolare ed obliqua che mette in discussione molte delle narrazioni ricorrenti della cultura di rete. Matteo Pasquinelli, curatore dell’antologia Media Activism ed animatore della lista Rekombinant, si è dato il difficile compito di incrociare la media theory più radicale con la tradizione del postoperaismo italo-francese. Il tema che lega questa raccolta di saggi è il concetto, preso a prestito da Keynes, di spiriti animali ovvero quelle forze emozionali, istintive che spingono sotto la superficie asettica del capitale nell’era dell’informazione. La principale vittima del fuoco polemico di Pasquinelli è il digitalismo, un’ideologia trasversale che vede nel network la premessa di una società egualitaria e senza conflitti. La grande fallacia del digitalismo è quella di celare il carattere parassitario del capitale che si manifesta come lavoro vivo dietro la produzione immateriale – quel complesso di infrastrutture, piattaforme e dispositivi senza il quale nessuna economia del dono potrebbe esistere – o come la speculazione edilizia che si nutre di valore collettivamente creato negli spazi urbani. Il bestiario include un duello immaginario fra Ballard e Baudrillard e un’acrobatica disquisizione su pornografia ed immagini di guerra. Un libro ricco di spunti e provocazioni, talvolta difficile ma mai inaccessibile che può funzionare sia come introduzione al dibattito contemporaneo sul capitalismo immateriale che come antidoto politicamente scorretto alla fuffa tecnoutopica a cui siamo esposti ogni giorno. Paolo Pedercini

www.bookforum.com/blog/3980