28 de Abril de 2020
MACBA, Barcelona
According to
psychotherapist, activist and philosopher Félix Guattari, the intensification
of the dynamics of hierarchization, segregation, and exploitation that emerged
with the advent of neoliberal capitalism converge with the development of a new
type of fascism of planetary scale. Unlike earlier forms of authoritarian fascisms,
this unprecedented biopolitical force operates within the interiority of
subjects, and it aims at making sure that each individual assumes mechanisms
of control, repression, and modelization of the dominant order (2009, 258). By
way of a miniaturization of its logistics, machinic capitalism manages to seep
into our psychic territories, intervening in the basic functioning of the
perceptive, sensorial, affective, cognitive, linguistic behaviours (2009,
262). Deleuze and Guattari's procedural distinction between signifying and
asignifying semiotics offer an accurate understanding of how this molecular
colonization occur (1987, 9).
Advanced capitalism
relies on a twofold semiotic register when mobilizing mechanisms of «social
subjection» and «machinic subservience» by which subjectivity is being
homogenized. Social subjection produces us as subjects through the assignment
of subjective codes, inducing individuals at moulding to prefabricated
representations in relation to sex, race, identity, nationality, job sector
& position, etc., their respective relations of antagonisms and
consciousness (Lazzarato, 2014, 12). It works, therefore, with the
personological coordinates, exerting control through subjective delimitation in
a similar manner as Foucauldian disciplinary techniques, which are based on
‘individualizing governmentality’ (Foucault, 2008).
Relying on the molar logic
of representation and meaning, and evolving through the paradigm of
comunication, subjection through signifying semiotics come about through the
assisted need of adapting to well-defined roles and functions according to the
needs of power –such as the entrepreneur or the indebted man (Lazzarato, 2011)–
in which we are all remaining trapped.
Machinic subservience
operates through asignifying semiotics, that is, sings that do not engender an
effect of signification –such as musical & mathematical writing, data
syntax and stock market codes– that open up the possibility for a direct
contact with its reference, engaging thusly in myriad interactions that unfold
within the paradigm of enunciation. Machinic subservience transforms the idea
of the individual («I») into the notion a relay («It») constituted by inputs
and outputs, capable of allowing to circulate or interrupt the informational
and operational flows streaming within the capitalistic, productive and
consumerist, cybernetic regulatory system (Lazzarato, 2014, 37). The
deterritorialization of the individual into a relay turn the subject into a
hybrid entity, at once subject and object, a component of a more-than human
assemblage that is exposed to a whole set of techno-scientific, macrosocial
and microsocial, and mass media procedures of subjection with which capital
produces a new surplus value that goes well beyond labour’s force variable
capital (Guattari, 2009, 250).
We are thus
confronted with two types of semiopowers at work in the production and
reproduction of capitalistic forms of life, to control the social body. The
biopolitical coordinates of advanced capitalism are defined by both functions
of induced acquisition of massively produced subjective avatars and the capture
of individuals as new components of its productive machinery. The object of
subjection is still population, but coercion is being exerted in the liminal
space between the adjustment to individualized representations and the coupling
of the nervous system of each individual to capitalistic machinery. Seen in
this light, management or control is not only described in terms of external
interference but also of interiorized configuration, signalling a
transformation of individuals into what has been described as «dividual», this
is, a singularity that is not understood as an indivisible, totalized
wholeness, but a multiplicity that divide itself by changing its nature
(Deleuze, 1992, 7).
In Dividuum. Machinic
capitalism and molecular revolution, philosopher and art theorist Gerald Raunig
reinvigorates the concept of the dividual as it allows for shifting the
attention from the individual to modes of collective subjectivation. This
amount to understanding that the existential vulnerability and precariousness
we experiment today is not confined in an individual person's body detached
from the rest, but significantly starts from the social, is something always
shared within an “endangered sociality” which includes the non-human (2016,
98-99). At play in this elemental change of perspective there is also a shift
from «transcendental identity» and its consideration of being as compound of
matter and form, to the «immanence of relations» that conceives subjectivity as
an intensive and differential operation. To further elaborate on the repressive
and liberating aspects of our condition as assemblages that operate across
dividual lines, Raunig has develop the notion of «subsistential territory», one
that “enables considering each singular subsisting in relation to «its»
respectively singular subsistence”, without presupposing a given essence prior
to the pragmatics that require being in a world of contingency and uncertainty
(Raunig, 2016, 100).
The IV International
symposium Mutating ecologies in contemporary art invite practitioners from any
discipline/field/territory whose work can be considered in tapping into the
notions of «machinic capitalism», «dividuals»
and «subsistential territories». The format of the presentation is open: we
welcome either paper presentations or artistic proposals. Each
speaker/performer will be given up to 20 minutes before discussion.
Panelists
will be preceded by a talk keynoted by Gerald Raunig. Gerald Raunig works at
the eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies) as one of the
editors of the multilingual publishing platform transversal texts, and at the
Zurich University of the Arts as professor for philosophy. His books have been
translated into English, Serbian, Spanish, Slovenian, Russian, Italian, Dutch,
and Turkish. Monographs in English: Art and Revolution. Transversal Activism in
the Long Twentieth Century, 2007; A Thousand
Machines, 2010; Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, 2013;
DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Vol.1, 2016; all
translated by Aileen Derieg and published by Semiotext(e)/MIT Press.
Proposals (abstract
max. 500 words and short CV) should be sent to: mutatingecologies@gmail.com
Registration is
required, via this form.
Call for papers deadline: February 28th, 2020
Limited seats
Production: ResearchGroup AGI (Art, Globalization, Inteculturality), University of Barcelona
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario