Biennale Venice 2012

from: A R I S T I D E A N T O N A S antonasoffice@gmail.com to: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> date: 13 August 2012 12:57 subject: Re: [-empyre-] screen and desire/stepping out of the frame mailed-by: gmail.com

FOUND IN THE EMPYRE SOFT SKINNED SPACE [ http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ ]

Dear Johannes, Yes, I believe that Badiou usually disregards facts; he privileges events; he disregards norms in order to prioritize the exceptional: his concept for the "fact" is always represented as part of a finished archived past. His "event" as the exception to any such archiving: it would always stay open to an undetermined future. Nevertheless any exception is linked to the norm it overcomes. Outside the game, outside the frame Badiou finds the field of exception as the one that concerns politics.

I do not agree. I think that it is more challenging to invent norms, not exceptions. The culture of gaming may help to understand this remark and orient towards this direction new concepts of the political.

Excuse me for delaying my response. I am still considering your questions. They are not easy to answer. I try to suggest an urgent constructive awareness towards new communal norms; we may enter a phase where the political may be again identified to inventions of the normal; it seems that this will be the political task for tomorrow. We used to understand the political as a simple attitude of resisting the hegemonic. The hegemonic structures are less and less visible. Norms cannot anymore be stabilized through the function of a state, the state legislative platform seem already more and more old, unpractical and dysfunctional. Most governments cannot even act anymore within the field of their laws.

Pressed by the banking system, the states succumb to demands related to the value of the citizen; the states cannot react anymore to a barbaric "lessez faire". From another point of view norms are produced everyday, mostly related to the Internet and its cultures; such Internet norms create already a multitude of different communal spaces through shared platforms; the platforms function out of the Internet as well, being thus always determined within the net, within this live archive. A multitude of clusterlike platforms will be controlled consciously or will be constructed as an uncontrolled archipelago of platforms. Controlled and uncontrolled formations can here exchange their meanings if we insist on a closer view to them. "Common platforms" will not define

areas accessible to all. Common platforms at the contrary are meant here as isolated spaces for communities, functioning towards a specific goal or into a given protocol. Common platforms may be considered as heteronomous structures: one will have to accept their rules or leave them; they can only be accepted or refused. One will be able to chose other heteronomies, different rules: a multitude of platforms can be accessed deliberately.

But we cannot refuse the platform system by keeping our position on the platform; and if we leave the platform we will be soon included to another one. One may chose deliberately among other clusterlike systems but - while entering them- we shall immediately be limited to their own rules. Their complex world will be formed as an accumulation of heterogeneous matter marked by "free choice" between heteronomous structures. Nevertheless one will only accept fully a protocol by responding to it. There is no in between position in the Internet. Protocols will be less and less discussed; the ability to chose among them will be the user's sole possibility: and choosing was never the synonym to freedom. Freedom will form more and more impossible tasks tomorrow. A user may have the possibility to chose: enter the realm of different platforms or stay out of them. This will be the function of freedom tomorrow. We will be able to accept some protocols or refuse them.

Their norms will be formed as applications or they may have the structure of games.

We can already chose among some of them and participate to their prescribed systems, following the rules they propose or responding to their open questions.

Protocols can be created through different procedures but they form always given systems we can only camp into. Protocols make the differences between platforms; but the protocols will not be questioned concerning their rationale or concerning their concepts. The protocols structure communal schemes; they can form dystopic systems of control or places of rest; they can also organize creative procedures or they can structure commodities.

They cannot guarantee qualities of the future societies but they are building anyway already the societies of tomorrow; the consciousness about this process will be crucial in order to imagine and invent different political agendas. Some crucial questions will be: how those small scale structures, seemingly subordinated to the state, or how the big scale

structures that overcome the limits of states will function together as a multiple, conscious political system? Without any control of the users -only able to chose among given structures and live quietly inside them- or after a conscious decision or a democratic emancipatory decisive intervention by the people?

How can such an intervention take shape within the given Internet culture? How does this archipelago of protocols can have a controlled geography installed by common decisions and not by "undetermined" factors?

Leaving this formation of the archipelago of independent protocols to an "open" and "free" procedure drives already the world towards a tricky situation. Freedom risks to be understood as a technical problem concerning the possibility of participation to given structures.

Another form of the "freedom of the Internet" is needed; it will have to deal with a concept of politics within an archived world; it will have to deal with facts. Cluster-like structures produced "spontaneously" organize a galaxy of predetermined worlds. The time of a user responding to a system of games, contributing in a system of applications and acting within predetermined platforms forms the political field of tomorrow. The western concept of citizen will perish, the concept of identity will look more and more perverse; the era of the user seeks for its constitution and its political values.

You insist on my "call to deliberate forming norms"; I feel better to only propose an investigation with examples of norms; there is a need to see how those example function.

In Athens I proposed it some years ago; it would be easy to act towards this research.

The state cannot handle the empty city. A controlled system of legalized occupancies, organized via Internet, can show new exemplary functions for the ruin of the modern city center.Â

system of open research field makes sense.

It will not be installed in order to stabilize the most prominent communal practices but in order to always propose new.  I believe that we cannot engage governments to such a procedure but in any case the existing authorities will have to accept small communal actions inside given frames; we need a local collaboration between governments and the Internet; we need local authorities to use the Internet as part of its constructive power; the aim will be not to destroy completely the citizen of the past in order to install a community of users; how can a part of the political tradition of the west be saved while we enter this new phase of the post network politics?

Formed as protocols and accepted temporarily some examples of controlled heteronomies can be installed and constantly observed by a democratic control system. The concept would remind the idea of renting out parts of the city under strict conditions. In this case it the renting out strategies will concern community structures; the authorities may allow the space to be used temporarily as in a play-testing phase: the play-testing views towards the concretization of a protocol; the permission for a controlled occupancy would be an acceptance of the first draft of the urban protocol. An urban protocol will have the structure of a game, consisted as a series of rules. The city of Urban Protocols will be a field of research that will use empty space in the cities in order to implement examples of communal strategies. An archipelago of such urban protocols could present the vision of a future city.

Gaming seems to be the key structure through which smaller or larger invented platforms will be transformed to systems of action; this will be done after the failure of the state system of today as a political dystopia we cannot predict or it will get organized into that may lead to different futures. Thank you We would not have to think of social / politifor your questions, Johannes, they ask for a cal negotiations necessarily, even if these shape of imagining a new political vigilance may also announce a promising field. We may concerning the ruins of the contemporary city. elaborate the system of a city as an already bankrupted system that will never function as All best wishes it did before. I believe this is the challenge for contemporary cities (Athens is the first).

ARISTIDE ANTONAS In the cities we can play-test with different proposals by allowing them to occur in some terms and follow their evolution. The state, the municipality or a third public structure will permit and will also stop the function of the controlled occupancies of the empty parts of the cities. Neighborhoods of functions can be formed as sharing systems. The urban space can be redefined via the Internet when this

cisive comments on the mass ornament in From: J O H A N N E S B I R R I N G E R your recent post, and for bringing Nathalie To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> Bookchin's 'mass ornament' video to our atSubject: Re: [-empyre-] screen and desire/stepping out of the frame tention?? I found an intriguing passage from Message-ID: <DF657B70CB20304DB745D84933F94B1E0250056409@v-exmb01.acaAdorno commenting on the ornament: In demic.windsor> his speech, "Functionalism Today," Adorno Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" breaks down the distinction between ornament and function, pushing it through a historFOUND IN THE EMPYRE SOFT SKINNED SPACE [ http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ ] ical dialectic. Function, he argues, is not only external but is first and foremost a matter of Dear all immanent, artistic function, within the logic of the work itself. What was once functional can How to track back from the psychoanalytic to become, internally, unncessarym superfluous, the political philosophy (or architectural phiand ornamental, when its logic is no longer losophy) that Aristide, to my surprise, brought necessary to internal coherence. The funcup here in the discussion on Monday? tional and the functionless are historically inThere may very well be close connections, tertwined. Adorno then writes of the ornament too, between the two, but it took me a little as "scars of superseded modes of producwhile to ponder Aristide' commentary on how tion." the non-functional [external?] is given "the architectures of gaming are characternew credibility as the "sublimation" of function ized by the limits of the game, the structures (cf. Bauhaus Cosntruct, p. 64). of its interior space and the concepts of its exterior...." and what he critically made of the The "democratic drama," invoked by Scott, distinction between the screenic (if that is how and in extension the Blochian utopia of a he read our discussion via Badiou and B's home that we cannot find, a game we candivide between facts and events) and the ac- not play. can now indeed be critiqued at betion, acting, building, forming interaction etc ing played out at the "limits of contemporary beyond the screen. We have not really disexhortations for self-performance as selfcussed visions of the beyond the screen yet, improvement" - am in understanding you or have we? correctly, Scott? But is then fantasy (gaming culture, Batman?) our hope for non-useful I am not well read in Badiou, so cannot reply innervation? I think not, and as I was tryto a concern with [his] events and facts. But I ing to suggest earlier, I worry that interactivtake it that Aristide worries about cities (and ity is precisely not what we can assume to the troubled times in Athens, Greece) and is bring greater participatory freedom or provide looking at architectures through the lens of stronger political affect. gaming cultures (and games of course would involve screens, desire and fantasy). Or, pro- Aristide wrote me saying "Badiou always disposing that architecture and its discourses regards facts, and privileges events; outside are significant sites for a public production of the game, outside the frame is the field of exknowledge and poliitics? In terms of a media ception and there is the field of what interests archaeology (or anarchaeology, as Zielinski politics for him. I do not agree. I think that called it at one point), on screens and techthe most difficult thing is to form norms, not nique, function, and fantasy, it actually strikes exceptions. I think the culture of gaming may me as remarkable that architects, after World help towards this direction."

War II, invited philosophers to address this need for public production, for new buildHow are we to understand your call to delibering (reconstruction after a traumatic war and ate forming norms, are you thinking of social/ after a period of horrendous fascism), and political negotiations, for example about how for new terms to discuss dwelling and living we want to live, how we engage local govern("Education through Form," "Man and Space" ments or communitarian projects, how we were some of the titles of the Darmstadt Col- might screen banks and our security forces loquia in thew 50s). I am reading a book on who screen us, how we become pirates and the reception history of the Bauhaus (Jeffrey vote for the Pirate party, how we occupy urSaletnik/Robin Schuldenfrei, eds., Bauhaus ban space or share rural space, how we deConstruct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and bate [?] fantasy archiectures, etc? How is Modernism, London 2009), and one of the gaming related to politics in your view? chapters mentions how Bloch, Adorno, and Heidegger addressed the architects in the respectfully 1950s and debated ideas of ornament and function.

JOHANNES BIRRINGER Curiously? and thank you, Scott, for your inDate: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:09:39 +0100

names in the theoretic bibliography but we From: A R I S T I D E A N T O N A S can grasp at once its consistence as a unified To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> moral strategy. A plethora of references lead Subject: Re: [-empyre-] stepping out of the frame to play around to opinions that share this concern to negate Message-ID: <CABgKQ9YT=GKpi5gnHKd1gLeMeV_5vPXDOOBcibN2pW_oHhTBwQ@ the stability of a dead fact. This extreme atmail.gmail.com> titude names the end of a process and in the Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 same move refuses to accept this same end as part of the process. Inevitably, an event is FOUND IN THE EMPYRE SOFT SKINNED SPACE [ http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ ] inscribed in a trace field. If not, it is an event that does not happen. It is the possibility that Dear Johannes, the event might leave traces that construct it as a possibility of happening. The “possibil[ ... ] The architectures of gaming are charity of tracing” structures the duration of an acterized by the limits of the game, the struc- event. The event would then be a chance to tures of its interior space and the concepts of trace; the fact would be a mark occupying an its exterior. We may enter the political strucalready traced field. Nevertheless, we canture of the question through a reference to not understand an event without a trace and Alain Badiou’s distinction between fact and a trace without an event. Idealizing the event event, e.g., in Peut-on penser la politique?, a and demonizing the fact can be understood relatively late text (1985) by the writer of Beas honoring extraordinary circumstances and ing and Event. Thus, in Badiou’s description, as a call for extraordinary political action. Furwe encounter a voluntary rupture introduced thermore, the “political” is always precariously between the two notions of “fact” and “event”. refounded while revisiting the normative charThe rupture is presented through Badiou’s acter of a community. definitions of these notions; I suggest that we could shape this distinction in relation to the A particular “inhabitation of becomingness” way we conceive duration: an “event” stays together with an immediate symbolic power alive in the present time, “immediately” prodetected in an action, could describe the jected to the future. A “fact” is presented as definitive force of an event. I believe that an accomplished, ended time: always enthrough this concept we move again into the closed inside a dead representation, a fact is idealization of a living structure compared to necessarily already formed; for Badiou neces- a demonized lifeless one. The trace in a consarily uninteresting, finished. We can already dition of passive reading crystallizes the dead raise an objection: to “reject” a “fact” and inand the disappointing. A long story connects sist with such emphasis on a definition of poli- the roots of philosophy to Heidegger’s Dasein tics through the event could be, I believe, an and to Deleuze’s readings of Bergson. We impetuous act. Badiou, though, gives form to could underline the necessary coexistence of this exact rejection of a bureaucratic concep- these constructed opposite poles: we could tion of the fact. His dichotomy between fact argue that Badiou’s “fact and event” are deand event, even if announced here with a par- fined only when the one refers to another, in ticular, new emphasis, has a profound philoa circular way. They are related in a complex sophical past. It seems ”from a specific point manner. We could argue that thinking is necof view” problematic but it cannot be neglect- essarily a potential reactivation of “facts”; we ed. This past glorifies in a long bibliography will thus keep the distinction between fact and a type of “open durations”: unaccomplished event in effect, in order to think again about facts are sometimes “idealized” in their way to this dichotomy and revisit, in the same time, form unfinished structures, considered open, a city and a video game structure. The game living promises. itself can be the place where an event in the Badiou's sense can never happen. But what We may let down a history of this idealized would be the consequences of such an re“living duration” that is introduced together mark? with the origins of philosophy (an obvious ARISTIDE ANTONAS reference to the pre-Socratic philosophers could find its place here); this is not the time to be exhaustive regarding texts that insist on this trope by conceiving strategies of unaccomplished time; in a Lessing short text on unaccomplished access to truth for example, or more emphatically in longer citations we locate Bergson’s “idealized duration” or even many texts “in political art history” of the Situationist literature. Living duration changes Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:08:32 +0300

ANTONAS of f ice

P O P U L AT I O N O F FR AGMENTS

Negri writes: “The concept of multitude introduces us to a completely new world, inside a revolution in process” [ http://www.nadir.org/ nadir/initiativ/agp/space/multitude.htm ]. We notice that the the “duration of change” represents structurally the exact opposite of the multitude as presented by Hardt and Negri.

This is the reason this quote of Negri seems contradictory. We could claim that their remarks in many levels of their recent texts are characterized by the paradox of a “succeeded deconstruction”. An accomplished deconstruction field or its form seems to haunt the “multitude”. We believe that an accomplished “deconstructed field” gives an idea about the opposite of any “revolution in progress” or any deconstruction; the accomplished view of a multitude of already deconstructed powers names only a political problem, it is not the answer to a problem; it shows the limit of any political understanding of deconstructive strategies; if an accomplished deconstructed field is an accurate description of the multitude, if the multitude could be defined as an accomplished deconstruction we are to reinvestigate about the fragmented city in a different level.

If deconstruction was a strategy that would detect the hegemonic and if it worked as a parasite to deform it, to edit or transform its changing views, the multitude begins its life after a decision that our field of action has no obvious hegemonic structures; the multitude can be better described as a disappearance of the hegemonic than a field where a revolution in process is possible; the elements that form the multitude seem to be juxtaposable, not contradicting one another, never opposed; in this structure the political would have to be reinvented. We try to figure out the consequences of such a silent acceptance of the end of deconstruction. The multitude cannot describe a “revolution in process” if we accept that the possibility of juxtaposition replaces the work of deconstruction. If deconstruction structured polemic attitudes as interior works within the codes of every utterance, the multitude proposes an exterior description of things. An indifference about the internal functions of the structures of the “multitude” is one of its most characteristic aspects.

The Population of Fragments is the name of a project undertaken by the ANTONAS office in Athens. It deals with the condition of the city today and its aspects that could be generalized concerning functions of the post network urban conglomerations. Scarcity and this post network condition create in Athens an open field for research that can investigate and experiment different common structures.

We use the term population of fragments and not the one of “multitude” in order to avoid a quick reference to the literature we already mentioned; nevertheless we owe much to it.

We name our population of fragments and not any multitude in order to show directly our point of view that prioritizes the problems of the disappearance of the hegemonic and invests at it towards the concepts of the political it implies. We elaborated experimental strategies that would enter the city with some proposals for new communal functions based to a change of what we conceive normally as its public sphere. A key word for those works is the concept of Urban Protocol.t

ANTONAS of f ice

URBAN PROTOCOLS

The concept of Urban Protocol names a strategy concerning the condition of Athens today.

It would serve as an experimental pseudomethodology that faces the condition of the city. The Urban Protocols are meant to introduce legal temporary occupancies of the abandoned city center that will be accepted and controlled by a municipal authority; the purpose of an Urban Protocol would be to establish cluster-like mikro-legislative constructions with communal functions. Urban Protocols are formed as systems of rules. Using a video game terminology we may say that the Urban Protocols are “play-tested” in the city, performed and improved via Internet. The system of rules they represent could be transformed and re-established easily.

of user would function better for its performance than the one of citizen. Nevertheless its most sophisticated part would have to deal with the relation between user and citizen. Its most challenging legislative part is ruled by the relationship between the Internet and the state; the Internet is understood as the quick functional basis for the formation, installation and function of an Urban Protocol.

Why could a city like Athens needs Urban Protocols in order to enter a phase of a new function? Scarcity made obvious that alternative initiatives were more welcomed than any bureaucratically conceived systematic action in the city. Nevertheless the initiatives cannot form a frame for a city change. The Urban Protocol would be the name of legislative schematization of urban initiatives. It function A first example of Urban Protocol was proposed by the Antonas office with the “Athens as an invitation to think the city in a different Terraces” project. The major part of this pro- scale within the relation between a crucial tocol was consisted by the legislative unifica- municipality board and a power given to Intertion of the terraces of typical Athenian blocks; net users in order to operate in the city field. an existing, typical athenian block’s terrace The concepts of “provisional”, “improvisais now divided to the number of buildings tional”, “guerrilla”, “unsolicited”, “temporary”, that form it. The protocol of a unified block “informal”, “DIY”, “unplanned”, “participatory”, would construct the communal representa“open-source”, used abundantly in Athens tion of a unified legislative entity, the field of the block’s terraces. This unification may ex- during the last years are also used for example in this year’s participation of the US paviltend to other neighboring blocks or can be repeated elsewhere in the city. The unification ion; those concepts do not only name a trend can also be enriched by a covering system of of not canonical architecture. Architecture sophisticated canopies. The project proposed seems to propose its own end if we forget its power to produce programs. An uninteresta reuse of the existing metallic grids of the city for its cover. It can also include photovol- ing lessez-faire will be the result of such an taic surfaces that could produce electricity for idealization of the free initiative. A city was conceived as a system of coexistence and its common use of the block’s inhabitants. legislative system is already old. The Urban protocol could be first and foremost the call A second example of Urban Protocol was proposed by the Antonas office with the “Ur- for a new legislative phase for the city of the ban Hall” project. An area of the city was an- future. Athens is only a good example. nounced as open to a systematic change of function. The municipal authority or a selected voted board would be responsible for the programmatic change of function. A division of time makes here possible a the coexistence of different functions in the same space.

The “Urban Hall” can become an open air public hospital for a month or program a music scene or a theater space depending to the decisions of its board.

The Urban Protocol challenges the relation between the city and the Internet; the concept

T h e P O P U L AT I O N O F F R A G M E N T S i s a n a r c h i v e o f p r o j e c t s d e a l i n g w i t h contemporar y Athens by the ANTONAS office. Here is only presented a small par t of the wor k edited for the G reek Pavilion of the Venic e Biennale

by Aristide Antonas and Katerina Koutsogianni. The parallel â&#x20AC;&#x153;reference projectâ&#x20AC;? with some QR references placed in selected parts of the printed matter was operated by the Kernel group: Thodoris Giannakis, Petros Moris and Peggy Zali.