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Join Art&Critique in June for the second in the series of book clubs on Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, continuing with chapters 4-5 (pages 21-38). If you would like to facilitate one of the following sessions please get in touch.

Saturday, 9 June May 2018, 2:30pm – 5:30pm Yurt Café, St. Katharine’s Precinct, 2 Butcher Row, London E14 8DS Closest Station: Limehouse Facilitated by Sophia Kosmaoglou Suggested donation £2, booking via Eventbrite

download : https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf

Since there are so many people who are depressed – and I maintain that the cause for much of this depression is social and political – then converting that depression into a political anger is an urgent political project… Anti-depressants and therapy are the opium of the masses now. (Mark Fisher and Richard Capes, 2011)

Capitalist Realism was published one year after the 2008 financial crisis, when it became clear that the priority was to return to business-as-usual, rather than tackle the systemic failure of the financial sector, which caused the crisis. Mark Fisher’s book was a desperate attempt to question the unshakable belief that “there is no alternative” to capitalism and thereby introduce alternative conceptions of social and economic organisation into public discourse.

Fisher synthesises the late 20th century postmodern and psychoanalytic theory of Frederick Jameson, Slavoj Zizek and Gilles Deleuze to make sense of the cultural manifestations of capitalist realism in everyday life. In chapters 4 and 5 he unpicks the failures of neoliberalism in education and employment, highlighting the concomitant rising levels of anxiety and depression. As Dean Kenning argues,

Neoliberal apologists can hardly claim that free market capitalism promotes equality; but our consumerist economy does promise pleasure and happiness, above all else. Why, then, are we in the UK suffering from epidemic levels of depression? (Kenning, 2010, p. 33)

Drawing on Frederic Jameson, Slavoj Zizek and Kafka, Fisher emphasises that capitalism requires our complicity in order to function, that we effectively endorse capitalism through our actions and choices rather than our convictions, and that far from being a radical practice, anti-capitalist critique is a feature of capitalism. He draws on William Burroughs and Gilles Deleuze to argue that we have transitioned from a traditional disciplinary regime to a society of decentralised control, where the control imperative is internalised by the subjects of capitalism in self-assessment and self-surveillance.

Fisher uses Burrough’s figure of the “control addict” to unpack the pathologies of capitalism, represented by addiction to instant gratification in the vicious cycle of “depressive hedonia”. This state of distraction is characterised by an inability to concentrate and synthesize time into a meaningful narrative. Time is experienced as a series of unrelated, ahistorical present moments “ready-cut into digital micro-slices” (p. 25), an experience that forestalls intentionality.

The consequence of being hooked into the entertainment matrix is twitchy, agitated interpassivity, an inability to concentrate or focus. Students’ incapacity to connect current lack of focus with future failure, their inability to synthesize time into any coherent narrative, is symptomatic of more than mere demotivation. (p. 24)

Rather than a mere lack of motivation, Fisher understands this “interpassivity” as a symptom of reflexive impotence; an unstated worldview that results from the knowledge that “things are bad”, and more importantly from the knowledge that we “can’t do anything about it” (p. 21). Why do we feel impotent in an era of unsurpassed cultural freedom and technological progress? Fisher argues that the state of reflexive impotence manifests as a retreat from the public sphere into a private space of consumption. Despite the hyperconnectedness available through social media, does this retreat into interiority extend to sites of collaboration and exchange, such as education, research and creative practice? For Fisher, reflexive impotence is also associated with pathologies and mental disorders. Why and how does this “pathologization already foreclose any possibility of politicization”? (p. 21).

On the topic of education, Fisher examines the contradictory status of students, who are both subjects of disciplinary institutions and consumers at the same time. Mirroring the paradoxical predicament of the students, teachers are in turn interpellated by students as authority figures in disciplinary frameworks, while they are simultaneously expected to respond to students’ consumer demands.

Moving onto the subject of employment, Fisher scrutinises the collapse of Fordism and with it the sites and strategies of working class politics in the transition to post-Fordism, casualised labour, flexibility, decentralisation and precarity. He argues that any resistance to the new labour conditions would be self-defeating because these reforms have been brought about in large part by workers themselves. At the same time, old forms of resistance are useless in this new environment. The old Fordist antagonism between worker’s unions and capital has been internalised in workers, who are caught between traditional class conflict and their new role as investors seeking a maximum return on their pensions. Drawing on David Harvey and Alain Badiou, Fisher argues that neoliberal politics is in fact a return to class privilege, capital accumulation and elite power. Fisher emphasises the need to reframe our disidentification with the system in political terms by shifting the political terrain away from the unions’ traditional focus on pay and onto new areas of discontent. For Fisher it is important to contest the capitalist appropriation of the new and to develop a new language that can elucidate these contradictions. Are these new political configurations emerging already, as the battle lines are re-drawn in identity politics? What would Mark Fisher have said about Brexit, rising nationalism and xenophobia in the rhetoric of neoconservatives, for whom “citizens of the world are citizens of nowhere”?

Arguing that precarity disturbs the stability of working time and space, as well as our emotions and affective states, Fisher draws on Richard Sennett to address the affective changes in the post-Fordist reorganisation of labour and the associated stresses on mental health. Considering the significant rise of mental illness, which has almost doubled in states that have implemented neoliberalism, Fisher condemns the ideology of social mobility that raises delusional aspirations and places responsibility on the individual to achieve material success. Fisher considers the repoliticisation of mental illness an urgent task in the challenge to capitalist realism.

What contradictions do we face in our labour and creative practice? What effect do these situations have on us? How can we respond to these contradictions in our everyday life?

Mark Fisher was a writer and theorist on music and contemporary culture. He wrote for the Wire, Frieze, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was a founding member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths University of London and maintained k-punk, an influential blog on music and cultural theory.

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Waterbabies Dreamboat Cocoon

 At this end of the year, the Water Babies say:

The water is rising.

It is time to do as little as possible.

 Water Bodies invites you for a lazy, intimate and gestational day of floating and dreaming in ‘Unison*,’ as we take a baby step off land and cocoon. We’ll slowly feed on milky light and a secret supply of un-time. In a state “neither active nor passive, and yet both active and passive”**, we dream the bodies that are not-yet, into being.

 Dreaming has long been considered a key part of our evolution into human social beings. We are now exploring the technology of dreaming as an evolutionary process, towards a new kind of being-with-water..

 Dreaming is relational, neither far nor near, or perhaps both far and near, and neither depending on an underlying unity not seeking to achieve wholeness, but most importantly, always coming forth, forming into patterns, finding connections, dancing the making and the unmaking [..] living things as they dance themselves into patterns of care and connection.***

 Water Bodies is a network of artists and researchers developing creative methods for evolving towards, and adapting to, life in and near water.

Dreaming hosted by Zoe Czavda Redo and Tuuli Malla.

 Dreamtimes take place on Sunday, December 17

Location tbc near Clapton

Session one: 11-1pm

Session two: 2-4pm

Limited capacity.

For bookings and location info RSVP: 213hias@gmail.com

£3-£6 suggested donation towards the upkeep of the space

 *’Unison’ is a private and group cocoon, the boat/artspace run by Anastasia Freygang

** Mielle Chandler and Astrida Neimanis, “Water and Gestationality” in “Thinking With Water” 2013

***  Rose, Deborah Bird. “Dreaming Ecology: Beyond the Between.”

 Waterbodies: https://diywaterbodies.wixsite.com/blog

fb event :https://www.facebook.com/events/134152223950244

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15.11. 2017 | 8pm

1hour sound/seduction aboard UNISON with Sigourney Skywalker hailing from berlin :https://www.mixcloud.com/sigourney-ban-pilz/sigourneyskywalker-mix2/

AFLOAT ON RIVER LEA

rsvp 213hias@gmail.com for exact location

fb event : https://www.facebook.com/events/143961999559236/

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#FloatingAssembly : Sunday, 15 October 2017, 1:30pm – 4:00pm BOOKCLUB run by the artist Dasha Loyko from Art and Critique

info and text download :https://artandcritique.uk/book-club/

questions:

why does Foucault call our (or his) time an ‘epoch of simultaneity’, and an epoch of space rather than time?

what is emplacement?

what would it mean for space to be ‘entirely desanctified’? (p.2)

how is a mirror both a utopia and a heterotopia?

what is the relationship between utopia and heterotopia?

how can the concept of heterotopia be related to the notion of public space?

does the idea of heterotopia survive in the age of augmented and virtual reality and the internet?

rsvp

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SERVANT SCALE during ARTLICKS

SERVANT SCALE is a critique of enhancement and power strategies that reverberates in our bodies: architecturally, sensory- verbal and vocal and low fi.

What are our chances for teleportation? Where do we stand in the politics of location? Navigating interdependencies - how far do we go to uncover?

with Jade Wilford, Anastasia Freygang and audio contributions by Lia Mazzari, Rebecca Bellantoni and An Dew Jas 

28.9-1.10.2017 BELOW BOW ROUNDABOUT click HERE for more infos + location

RSVP

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ROUND 1: ‘YOU’RE YOUR OWN     ORACLE.’

#FloatingAssembly with Artist Jade Wilford- more infos on her project at UNISON:  https://1000othersandme.tumblr.com/Pinnacle

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raw percussion ritual

1h inside the sounding capsule with rhythms by JONIEC

31.12.2016. 3 pm RSVP to 213hias@gmail.com FB link

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THE LIFEBOAT FREQUENCY OF BEES by Bioni Samp

Bioni Samp – The Lifeboat Frequency Of Bees 12th, 15th & 16th October 2016

One to One sound performance with Bioni’s ‘Hive Synthesiser’ tuned to this years harvest of honey

Onboard UNISON on the Grand Union Canal near King’s X, London

Sound Meditation & Artist Talk – October 12th, 15th & 16th between 3pm – 6pm

RSVP to 213hias@gmail.com for more details #FloatingAssembly www.younite17or.tumblr.com & www.bionisamp.org

Sponsored by HIAS Health In The Arts 2016

—————-Artist Statement 2016—————————————-

It’s 40 years since the term Lifeboat Ethics [1] was first mentioned, regarding the worlds ever diminishing supply of natural resources.

[1] Lifeboat ethics is a metaphor for resource distribution proposed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1974. Hardin’s metaphor describes a lifeboat bearing 50 people, with room for ten more. The lifeboat is in an ocean surrounded by a hundred swimmers. The “ethics” of the situation stem from the dilemma of whether (and under what circumstances) swimmers should be taken aboard the lifeboat.]

Also in those 40 years the global population of bees has halved [2]. So too has the number of wild animals.

 [2] ‘The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years’. Source WWF 2014 & Scientists studied the pollination of more than 40 crops in 600 fields across … demands of the growing, increasingly affluent, human population. … with their ability to pollinate specific plants falling by more than half. GU 2013

‘The Lifeboat Frequency Of Bees’ is a sound performance and installation that attempts to apply the ‘Lifeboat Ethics’ to bees and not humans. Sonically examining how our cities, urban spaces have become the ‘organic lifeboat’ for many bee species, birds, animals and other insects. All living things, escaping from a ‘ocean’ of pesticide drenched fields, genetically modified crops and industrial pollution. All replacing the once traditional farming in the countryside.

During the residency onboard UNISON I will be collecting different types of honey from around London to create a floating ‘bee frequency apiary’ installation, using the ‘Hive Synthesiser’ by Bioni Samp. Inspired by bee frequencies and the electrical resistance of honey.

Here Bioni explains how the idea for the ‘Hive Synthesiser’ came about... ‘I was trying to create a musical instrument based around bees droning, which was a bio-electrical hybrid. I needed some sort of organic resistors in my ‘Hive Synthesiser’ And was trying propolis [3] in a water solution’.

Honey Viscosity Synth (c) Bioni Samp 2012

[3] Propolis is  a red or brown resinous anti-fungal / bacterial substance collected by honeybees from tree buds, similar to Tea Tree oil, used by bees in the hive to fill crevices and to fix and varnish honeycombs.

‘This failed at first because the water is a super conductor and makes the current pass from one honey tasting stick to another instantly. But when I mixed the propolis with a jar of my runniest honey it worked. This honey I tested at about 17.5 % percent water, making a perfect resistor for integration anywhere in the signal chain of my ‘Hive Synthsiser’. The honey as a resistor, can speed up and down sequencers, change oscillators pitch, playback bee samples / partials, sounds via Bela, even dim or brighten LEDs’.

‘Before the rational framed hive, before industrialisation, before ecocide, there were bees and their sounds. Listening to the gentle buzzing of bees is known to have a calming effect… But bees can be angry too… Bees are the sentinels of our ecosystem, our pollinators, our society blueprints… and more’.

The ‘Lifeboat Frequency Of Bees’ performance attempts to create a symbiotic frequency relationship, like those between pollination and nectar exchanges, or between beekeeper and bees. Samp performs with his ‘bee frequency electronic apiary’, a sound installation set up during his residency where harvesting (recordings), processing (audio) and distributing (listening) take place via qr code ‘seed’ cards.

Samp has been building his ever expanding modular ‘Hive Synthesiser’ and collecting bee hive sounds from London, Sweden, Slovakia France, Linz, Scotland. Bee recordings are amplified inside the tube of the log hive, the distorted sounds reverberate off the circular walls and are projected outward. The simultaneous international bee voices across Europe call our attention. Collectively they are a loud global protest, a link to the past, to an active, sustainable connection with nature.

‘During my residency onboard UNISON I will be collecting different types of honey from around London to create a floating ‘bee frequency apiary’, in an attempt to raise the vibrational energy & empathy of humans towards planet earth & all things bee’.

This work furthers my ‘Bee Frequency Farming’ research started on STWST Eleonore, Linz and STWST48 during ARS Electronica 2015.

BIO: Bioni Samp creates experimental electronic music, live and on recordings. He also seasonally works with bees. When not beekeeping, he makes custom audio software and hardware, which he uses in creating his sound and installations, constantly evolving between ‘ambient / experimental / field recordings / noise / techno‘. More info @beespace on twitter or www.bionisamp.org

Links to research info:

www.bionisamp.org

http://projects.stwst.at/stwst48/bee-frequency-farming-by-bioni-samp/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-bees/5375684

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf

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INVISIBLE CITY SYMPHONIES

video by Madeleine Stack - live score by Dan McBridge

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SPACE DRONE MEDITATION FLOATATION with ZENTRIC BAU

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https://www.facebook.com/events/1664719817179946/

more information here : http://ignite17or.tumblr.com/

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SUBMERSIVE CRASHTEST performance Nadege Preaudat + Juliette Feck

Collaboration. Music.Performance.Installation. Art Work. Video. Crash.

Reflection. Mortal coil. Double Personality. Black and white. Light ride, dark side. Third eye. Omniscient eye. Public light. Public actor light.

Trouble in memory.

Different realities. Survival blancket.

The Artists Nadege Preaudat and Juliette Feck spent the last two weeks at Unison developing the performance SUBMERSIVE CRASHTEST

Come to the showcase this Sunday, 9pm rsvp : 213hias@gmail.com

Unison is currently moored in Hackney wick, write for confirmation of place and location, limited capacity

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action shot

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nourishment

with Tereza Silon

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2come

Performance in the making with Nadege Preaudat and Juliette Feck in residency at UNISON

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ZENTRIC BAU will be playing a live set DRONE MEDITATION FLOATATION at UNISON, rsvp to attend the session : 213hias@gmail.com

16 juli, on the river lea, limited capacity

[younite17or]

~* MOTHERSHIP *~ Nest. Trust. Nourish. Rethread yourself into the womb. You are the umbilical chord. Breathe. Feel Gentle, be tender. We meet the placenta. An isolated sensorial space. Explorative forms of self mothering. Connect to... .._ . . Monday 20.06, 5-9pm Aboard UNISON on the canal ~ RSVP 213hias@gmail.com for exact location ~ ////////////// croCHICKS is a temporary female collective assembled at Central Saint Martins by Ana A., Belinda Gredig, Cecily C-Eley, Kyle Chapin and Rakel Lindgren with the proposition to explore the boundaries of crochet and textiles in the context of interaction and space. ////////////// *UNISON (http://younite17or.tumblr.com/) is a floating assembly space hosting workshops, readings, sound sessions and other experiments curated by Anastasia Freygang