THE EPOCH
This is beginning of the signal to signal the beginning of the end.
What happens when human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, those old saws of Western philosophy and political economics, become unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social?
DONNA HARAWAY: TENTACULAR THINKING
Anthropocene?
Capitalocene.
“Capitalocene”is one of those words like“sympoiesis”; if you think you invented it, just look around and notice how many other people are inventing the term at the same time. That certainly happened to me, and after I got over a small fit of individualist pique at being asked whom I got the term “Capitalocene” from—hadn’t I coined the word? (“Coin”!) And why do other scholars almost always ask women which male writers their ideas are indebted to?—I recognized that not only was I part of a cat’s cradle game of invention, as always, but that Jason Moore had already written compelling arguments to think with, and my interlocutor both knew Moore’s work and was relaying it to me. Moore himself first heard the term “Capitalocene” in 2009 in a seminar in Lund, Sweden, when then graduate student Andreas Malm proposed it. In an urgent historical conjuncture, words-tothink-with pop out all at once from many bubbling cauldrons because we all feel the need for better netbags to collect up the stuff crying out for attention. Despite its problems, the term “Anthropocene” was and is embraced because it collects up many matters of fact, concern, and care; and I hope “Capitalocene” will roll off myriad tongues. But at least one thing is crystal clear. No matter how much he might be caught in the generic masculine universal and how much he only looks up, the Anthropos did not do this fracking thing and he should not name this double-deathloving epoch. The Anthropos is not Burning Man after all. But because the word is already well entrenched and seems less controversial to many important players compared to the Capitalocene, I know that we will continue to need the term “Anthropocene.” I will use it too, sparingly; what and whom the Anthropocene collects in its refurbished netbag might prove potent for living in the ruins and even for modest terrain recuperation.
“If you think you invented it, just look around and notice how many other people are inventing the term at the same time”
“The Anthropos did not do this fracking thing and he should not name this doubledeath-loving epoch”
Still, if we could only have one word for these SF times, surely it must be the Capitalocene.
“The Anthropocene collects in its refurbished netbag might prove potent for living in the ruins and even for modest terrain recuperation”
METAHAVEN & BENJAMIN BRATTON: THE STACK
What is the stack? “Instead of viewing the various scales of emergent ubiquitous computing technologies as a haphazard collection of individual processes, devices and standards (RFID, cloud storage, augmented reality, smart cities, conflict minerals, etc.), it is more illuminating to model them as components of a larger, comprehensive, meta-technology. The Stack is planetary-scale computation understood as a megastructure. The term “stack” is borrowed from the TCP/IP or OSI layered model of distributed network architecture. At the scale of planetary computation, The Stack is comprised of 7 interdependent layers: Earth, Cloud, City, Network, Address, Interface, User. In this, it is an attempt to conceive of the technical and geopolitical structures of planetary computation as a “totality.””
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: NAKED LUNCH
“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative�
“The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute. Poverty, hatred, war, police, criminals, bureaucracy, insanity. All symptoms of The Human Virus.�
For me this book depicts our current reality better than anything. Its never ending sentences that turn corners so sharply you haven’t even noticed you have moved, Leaving you lost and confused. Using drugs to make sense of something so complex as the world may be the only way to understand it. Or to make your own understanding of it. The two quotes above represent my feelings towards humans attitude to the earth and our own society. We are the problem, not the solution.
MEDITATIONS ON THE ANTHROPOSCENE
“IC-98 is a Finnish artist duo comprising Patrik Söderlund (b. 1974) and Visa Suonpää (b. 1968) whose projects combine research, text, drawing and animation. The exhibition profiles their two most recent works: Nekropolis and Abendland (Hours, Years, Aeons) the work made for the Venice Biennale. The exhibition includes screenings of earlier works that can be viewed on BGV’s FlatScreen Programme in the Ragged Canteen Gallery, providing an overview of IC98’s long-term engagement with ideas of global deep memory and the impact of human intervention on the natural world.”
VISUAL LOVE
S E L F
D E S
T R U C T I O N
“I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public� Chelsea Manning
CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
It would no longer be us/them or you/me. The connected world would be so intrinsically interdependent and connected and would evolve to become a single organically technological being. Call it Melba*. A system that works as one, an organic computer of sorts. But where a computer has a purpose, as in it has a task to fulfil, what would be Melbas purpose? What function would it serve. Destruction? Preservation? Creation? In the midst of human instrumentality we become everywhere but nowhere, everything but nothing. Melba would create a state of being for humanity where no individual existed; even identifying this being as a conglomerate would be incorrect, since there would be no such concept as an individual, there would also be no ego, nor self. By placing our own souls within the body of a godlike being, we would effectively create an immortal God with human soul which would represent the pinnacle of human existence, and live through all of eternity. “I am the sea where life began. A world without without your own shape. An ambiguous world where it is impossible to tell where you end and other people begin. A fragile world where you exist everywhere, and thus exist nowhere." *Melba is australian slang for consistently coming in and out of retirement, into different disciplines. A persons who has multiple purposes, not always a consistent purpose but is always there in some capacity.
It is in this context that the narrator of our film speaks. Our narrator does not assume a particular individual’s identity, but rather personifies all organic matter on Earth. The Narrator becomes one conscious being constituted of all natural souls present on the planet. It is thus that it seems as though the very pond where all organic matter would have been formed, has come alive to speak to the 0.1% on Earth that negates mankind’s actions on the Earth. The Narrator, having no body or singular identity, and pertaining to no time, simply has all knowledge of Man’s past, present, and future. It is as though the very essence that allows us and our earthly peers to exist has awoken to condemn us of our harmful indifference of our actions on our planet, to condemn Man’s Ego. This very embodiment of primordial soup comes to remind us of our origins, that we are all one of the same, that the protection of Earth must be a joint effort, and that one’s actions have repercussions on another within our collective. This is from where the film speaks. A being called Melba talks from a future so far beyond anything comprehensible, talking back to the current 0.1% of top earners. The 0.1% that are leading the current economy and in hand with this the demise of the world as we know it. The Character Melba comes from an article I wrote for ‘Super 10 x Now’, the magazine me and Nicole collaborated on in the first ten of this year (Available here to read http://bit.ly/2mEnwFm). From this I began to write the script for the film, with Melba being the protagonist, narrator and only character.
“I am the sea where life began, and where it subsequently ended. A world without your own shape. An ambiguous world where it is impossible to tell where you end and other people begin. A fragile world where you exist everywhere, and thus exist nowhere.”
THE SCRIPT
“A beach is not just a place to pick up pearls... But a bed is just a place to fuck the world and make the universe, my baby.�
VISUALISING MELBA
We decided that the opening shot of the film would be a rendered shot that would be made by Liam. I began to visualise with Liam what Melba would look like, as he had the skills to create renders with Cinema 4D. With some visual stimuli from myself, he created a beautiful representation of what Melba looks like. This was our new starting point for visuals. So me and Liam begun filming some abstract imagery using mist and smoke to represent Melbas shapeshifting abilities.
SOUND SCAPE
https://soundcloud.com/teleopath/scape-15
We decided that to join the dark atmospheric imagery, we needed ambient sound to match and enhance the atmosphere that we were trying to create. We did some research and looked to see if there were any existing sound tracks that we liked, however I thought it would work much better if we made it ourselves or commissioned someone with the skills to do it. I started to experiment with GarageBand and Audacity to see if I could create anything with the small prior knowledge I had of the software. With some playing of various royalty free samples, of things such as fog horns, car alarms, and the addition of synths in GarageBand. I managed to create a piece of atmospheric, ambient sound that I thought fitted the film very well.