English

Europe's Agony

Written by Franco Berardi Bifo, 01.11.2012
The form is swallowing the content.
Capital as a form is no more able to hold together the entropic force of global society, but so far the agony of capitalism is not coinciding with the emergence of autonomous forms of society.  Biopolitical innervations of capital in the collective mind and the body are producing in fact a spasm paralyzing the process of subjectivation.
The black hole of financial abstraction is swallowing and destroying the product of two centuries of development and civilization, and is aggressing its content: the productive potency of the general intellect. The social civilization, created during the Modern age is invested and corroded by the metastases of the financial cancer.
How can the content get free from the form? This is the question that we should answer, while, as you can see, the building of civilization is crumbling.
 

Gotta Catch ‘Em All: Navigating the Pokémon Environment

Written by Lucy Mercer, 19.10.2012
Video gaming is an immersive experience that allows players to navigate new worlds and synthesise abstract concepts. However, the effect of video games on players’ perceptions of nature has not been particularly considered, despite the noted ‘stealth learning’ potential of video games as a tool for environmentalists. With this in mind, in this article I discuss Pokémon, a video game series that has been formative in the development of my own visions of a utopic environmental future.
 
Primarily, I suggest that Pokémon World can in some senses be perceived as a model environmental utopia, the flaws of which mirror the conflicting demands projected onto landscapes by ecological and free-market ideologies IRL (In Real Life). I then go on to examine the contradictory implications of the games’ adoption of scientific observation as a navigational framework in relation to its necessity of ‘winning’. I conclude by indicating that Pokémon’s attempt to reconcile some of these tensions between harmonious ecology and exploitative modernism assumes the form of a specific type of contemporary nature worship or totemism.
 

What We Are Fighting For

Written by Federico Campagna, 01.10.2012

 

A brief excerpt from the new volume 'What We Are Fighting For', published by Pluto Press, edited by Federico Campagna and Emanuele Campiglio. Contributors include Franco Berardi Bifo, Mark Fisher, David Graeber, Owen Jones, John Holloway, Saul Newman, Alberto Toscano, Christian Marazzi, Nina Power, Zillah Eisenstein, Michael Albert, Dan Hind, Richard Seymour and Peter Hallward.
 
“Here are the first flowers of spring: the beginning of an epochal dialogue about the human future. Inspired by the Occupy movements across the world, What We Are Fighting For should inspire all of us to join the conversation.” Mike Davis

The Idea of Wilderness: Debunking New Primitivism

Written by Lucy Mercer, 20.09.2012

The natural world may be conceived as a system of concentric circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations, which apprise us that the surface on which we stand is not fixed, but sliding.[i]                                                                                                  (John Elder)

In this review, I would like to look at Max Oelschlaeger’s seminal environmental text The Idea of Wilderness[ii] (1991), an intellectual history of the Western world’s relationship to nature. This will be split into two parts: firstly, I will address the problematic dichotomy that The Idea of Wilderness is predicated on – the civilisation versus primitive binary – and examine the implications of positing primitivism as a solution to the current environmental crisis. I will then attempt to suggest an alternative approach for the modern environmentalist.

Act Quickly, Make Your God Happy

Written by Rebecca Lamarre, 15.09.2012

Over the last year my artistic practice has involved inserting myself into various artistic and institutional settings, performing the role of a therapist by taking participants to a separate room and asking them to describe the sensations they experience in their body. The question is simple enough, and when repeated and answered thoughtfully both the person asking and answering the question can enter quickly into a trance-like state. The activity is derived from a therapeutic practice called Self Regulation Therapy (SRT), a technique used in the treatment of anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I made many attempts to render the activity visible, to exhibit it. In my various efforts I encountered a number of sub-texts, which for an activity primarily concerned with language’s effects on the body, makes a great deal of sense both linguistically and practically. I am continually surprised by the degree of overlap between linguistic, physical and emotional experience, things that are generally thought to function independently of one another.

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