podopolog

{ mayday posters from Just Seeds, and more here }

maydayS maydayS, all cats on deck !

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{ SoCalled in the studio }

< 14.05 > Asphalt Tango brings the incredible SoCalled to town with a new album “SleepOver”, with special guests Dj Podinski … and rumored Daniel Kahn from The Painted Bird, 21:00h, HBC venue, Berlin

[ From The XLt Arts + Praxis Newsletter:  "Now booking SoCalled's euro tour, Asphalt Tango, one of our most beloved musica lables - takes a new venture into unchartered territory... which is already shaking up the charts !! ( over 50,000 view hits on their new videos for the album "Sleepover" in just the first 2 weeks! ) Multi-instrumentalist and archives-surfer Josh Dolgin aka Socalled has this uncanny ability to collaborate with dozens of international musicians from nearly every possible genre like an ol' school community radio junky + jammer who knows no limits of who he can invite to the party ! The short blurb reads: Jewish Hip-Hop Funk , which doesn't even begin to describe what he's done to Puppets on his latest master Mash-up Mix ! " ]

Needless to say, we are honored to be Called in for the afterparty at HBC !
And open our own new link with the Asphalt Tango folks, on their 25th
Jubilee Year ! ( More on that story coming soon to the Podopolog )

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{Re:source design by Jonas Frankki}

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< 11-12.05 > Transmediale Re:source program 001: “Trial Crack” … XLterrestrials and many others from the local scene will be joining the discussion “about networking methodologies of curating and distributed logic of artistic production with cultural producers based in Berlin”. Sharing “ideas on how to build a stronger connection between local – and translocal – agents in the fields of critical media, art and hacktivism in the city.” @ General Public, Senefelderplatz.

More discussions continuing on Saturday, such as Sustainable Disruption, 13.00-14.50, Post Privacy, 15.30-17.00, Queer Shifts, 17.30-19.00

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< 14.05 > Treya & Sasha Pushkin
„Diva Poetica“ music, poetry and ambient eyescapes w/ Vj Podinski, Panda Theater, Berlin

more at the fedbook invite

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{ the planned march for Berlin to Alex , pick yur route ! }

< 12.05 > 12. Mai Berlin | Auf die Plätze! Berlin. AND GLOBALER AKTIONSTAG !

another march, but CAn it be a trigger for the next BIG step… to take back your city, your govt. your future, your present ??! Only way to find it out is to show up !! the critical mass is ALL OF Us !

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< TBA.06 > Citizen Kino at Berlin Biennale, check back for date.

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< 31.5 – 4.6 > Citizen Kino at 3. Welt Kongress der Hedonist International, outside Berlin, more info coming soon !

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< 21-22.6 > Post-Media Lab + MUTE present “the Community Complex” workshops with McKenzie Wark (»Hackers Manifesto«/New York) und Nishant Shah (Center for Internet & Society/Bangalore) and XLterrestrials / CitiZen KiNO at C-base, Berlin + Denkerei.

tbc…

{ Knistern Der Zeit by Sibylle Dahrendorf }

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The premiere of Sibylle Dahrendorf’s KNISTERN DER ZEIT – CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF UND SEIN OPERNDORF IN BURKINA FASO was at Hau Eins on monday.

And will begin a cinema tour in June. See the details at FilmGalerie 451

Before Schlingensief left us, he must have given numerous presentations and pitches for his surreal ‘eurocentrifugal’ dream to build an Opera Haus in Burkina Faso. We were lucky to catch one of them at the Berlinale Festival a couple years ago in the Hau Eins, then, and still, under the direction of his good friend Matthias Lillienthal.

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{ Francis, locals, elder chief, Aino, Christoph }

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Escape Routes And Circus Routines of A German Arts Shaman

The Remdoogo village as it is called among the Burkinabè has taken on its very real dimensions with the beautiful and pragmatic designs by architect Francis Kéré. The first phase, its most urgent, is the school, which already opened in 2011. And now with Sybille Dahrendorf’s inspiring document, Aino Laberenz as the one to carry the torch, and no doubt a cast of many, there is now an ongoing fantastic PR campaign to keep this dream expanding!

The film, aside from being this tactical bridge between the artworld, the NGO-world funders, the European and African mindsets, one also gets a joyous ride into the methods of a mad showman.  We see precisely how an artistic vision can overcome the obstacles of the disbelievers and the often dreary realists. For the XLterrestrials, it reveals many things about how the arts + media worlds can be utilized to its full social potential ! And Schlingensief’s final vision is now a garden + oasis of creative spirits in what was once an oppressive and barren desert!

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added Note:

Schlingensief in juxtaposition to Berlin’s Digital Week (incl. Re:Publica, Next conferences ) technotopians gave us a profound sense of the spirits in action, as opposed to the digital ‘artisans’ who tend “to do the bidding of those who own the world” ( from Iain Boal’s 2008 article, Falling For The Future ), consciously or unconsciously:

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tbc?…

{ Chaplin in Modern Circuit Times }

re: Re:Publica 2012 (part 1 ) – Conference for media, blogs and digital society

Re: Publica 2012 part 2 : In The Shadow Of The Net, S.O.S.!

WHAT IF the campaign to “Save The Net” is just another side of the industrial-strength de-humanization and de-naturing ?! Capitulation to the data regimes !? A futile voting democrat as opposed to republican?! That is, there often feels to be a dubious game in the works, a part of some viral and cybernetic-duping in all this love for our machines, an odd obedience to all this cubicle/screen vortex and disembodied overtime. Did we ever love our factories this much? Are we ourselves camouflaging those corporate tools and shackels into lifestyle trends ?!

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As we were listening to Jeremy Zimmerman from La Quadrature Du Net – a vigilant EFF-like org in Paris – give his passionate pitch to save the internet from the ACTAs, the SOPAs, the CISPAs, and the ever-looming, ever-lurking state or enterprising beast or festering empire, which will always attempt to climb on top… we take a step back to analyze a bigger pic.

Sure, the message is loud and clear! The more corporate, centralized and consolidated the net, the worse the environment for freedom and human + community intelligence will become. Just as we would not in a civil society let our schools deteriorate, though some a little further off the grid would perceive the schools as an instrument of the current social order.  So, from one angle, isn’t a vast majority of the net’s ( and mass media’s) semantics, a corporate vernacular, a corporate order… to efficiently accumulate + transmit, process data, and jack itself in… to the entire din of global traffic ?! i.e. globalization. ??

Of course there’s incredible personal and community empowerment evolving in these tools, but the XLterrestrials cannot resist an analogy with atomic energy ( or also the “plundering + conquering” version of potential space exploration, as we see currently in the new mining of asteroids game-plan coming from the billionaire’s club). That is, until the species and the culture have evolved, these mega-power global-scale sources are quick gains in the hands of a severely dysfunctional society ! Which opens up questions like: which comes first, the maturing into a share society or total surveillance society (empowering the 1%, and the neo-lib technotopian rule) which drive us deeper into a full-on divide and conquer operation !? And a virtual deportation ( of the 99%) ?!

Current picture looks like the crocodile brains ( or as Michel Bauwens calls it “the shark DNA” – but more on that later) are winning. And what is to be done with a species that has a special aptitude for technological advancement ( and their markets), but too little for social evolution?!

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The Circuits And The Rails!

We ventured outside beyond the high frequency buzzing and magnetic field of the Republica conference to get some fresh air and a calmer outlook, took a walk around the old railway grounds of Gleisdreieck station, a strange industrial mash-up intersection of new and old Berlin, criss-crossing traffic routes, formerly Europe’s largest postal station, and all its incessant rebuilding and anachronisms. We walked around the periphery of the Technical Museum, and past the overgrown ruins of unused ( or bombed-out) tracks… and past that old black metal water tower, which looks like a giant Pickelhaube – the Prussian spiked helmut – or like an ancient industrial black phallus totem poking up out of the trees.

In our teenager days we climbed over the fence and up its spiraling iron stairs,  into the mysterious chamber, armed with a recorder, ready to see what industrial noises and/or song of liberation we could beat out of its ominous resonant shell.

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And now, as we listened to Jeremy, we thought of “saving the net” songs in parallel to struggling in another kind of war. A previous century’s war, in a time when protecting and controlling the rail lines, i.e. one’s supply lines, against an enemy was essentially a matter of winning or losing Everything. While the scenarios are so vastly other, the analogy brought our usual XLterrestrial critique of technologically-tied and twisted society into a new focus.

The struggle for our communication lines is really not so different today. “We need free media or we lose freedom of thought” as Eben Moglen said at the opening keynote. We really are on the verge of, if not already immersed in, a techno-fascist era! Whereby entire populations are rigidly and/or violently managed and coerced into structural ‘nets’  for the well-being of a very few. As various resources become more scarce and without structures for self-autonomous culture, extremely volatile contests over territories and survival is highly probable.

And somehow this info-spectrum battle, while no less urgent, has become grotesquely distorted, as if within (the control of) the railways lies our very culture, and the future of culture. The digital environments have in fact become some so ubiquitous and dominant in the course of our lives, it as if our modus operandi is to become one with the COMMUNICATION GUN. To become one with the DATA PIPELINES.  ( And there are many post+trans-humanists who will consider it our destiny of sorts, but we’ll save THat debate for elsewhere. )

Culture is in the how, the where, the why, and all the poetic inbetweens, of people, body and minds meeting. the music we make. the concerts and performances we attend. the food we eat. the art and rituals we produce. the places we’ve designed to engage in life. And the beauty that can emanate from all this doing. It is not merely in the circuits and the rails!

From the XLt perspective the more we fit ourselves into these parameters and codes and laws, the more danger that we will lose this war. And perhaps, even as strategical thinking, the more we can extract ourselves from its very reductive and managing business, the more power we will be able to regain for our tangible on-the-ground communities.

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some unfinished sketches:

We are in the midst of a potentially calamitous transition, perhaps as we were midway in the last century. A ferocious battle of individual wills, epic-scale agendas vs. the public good, civilization vs. corporate monstrosities, inhabitable and friendly environments vs. an industrialized extraction/invasion, national + economic game boards vs. daily life and livelihoods.

With all our usual ranting about the new digital industrialization schemes, we might have one bright angle to be enthusiastic: the violent upheaval may be largely exportable to a virtual theater. Though clearly there is still much war (for control) playing out in flesh and blood.

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We’ll have to listen to more of Sascha Lobo’s talk in the archive, but we did experience  this rather deep twitter/ netizen moment. we know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but Lobo seems good at plucking out some iconic moments from the web’s ludicrous and profound Modern Circuit Times illuminations. Highlighting a particularly ripe tweet from Markus Angermeier and examining it under the macroscope:

“bratwurst im zoo. so sind die menschen.” / bratwurst at the zoo. that’s the way we are. (mankind).

Maybe in a sense that’s what we are saying about the virtual world. It’s so often and maybe inevitably like consuming a bratwurst at the zoo, while gawking at other animals living in their cages… for our amusement. And in fact the more corporate the zoo becomes, the more we are those animals… at both ends of the stick. Crass !

Hmm, maybe Lobo already said as much, we’ll have to try and go back for the full dose… And off to see what other bits we might absorb in Day 2. Sorry no time for ticker/timelines.

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WHEN will this Net help us shift the thinking from ’saving the industry’ to ’saving our humanity’ ?!

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work-in-progress

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{ Modern Times clip here }

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Added: Here from another angle,  an important analysis from the political, technical, and economics perspective:

Rt: Creator of miscommunication tech i.e. deadSwap, Thimbl & R15N @Dmytri argues Moglen FB claim @republica #rp12 incorrect http://bit.ly/JYI4fj

( Though it could be argued that the social error’s of net culture were inherent from it’s origins, in that they already came from the privileged academic + govt. sector. Is it not possible to glimpse this already in the cybernetics’ dreams, i.e. the Macy Conference ? Were there really the Happy Days of the internet, as techies seem to always insist ? )

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Added: Iain Boal’s article ( and book review-s ) for Mute from 2008, popped back up into our own discussions after Re:Publica, and think it should be revisited after ANY NET conference, as this perspective in such digital bizness arenas is so rarely given voice:

Falling For The Future

( sorry for the repitition, but we already included this link in the plog above in regards to Schlingensief’s work in Africa )

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{ ^ nxt to last foto by a.goetzke }

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< 2-4.05.12 > Re:Publica 12 … Live Streams… Berlin.

Germany’s largest conference for media, blogs and digital society ( good thing they moved to a bigger venue, or i$ it ? )

- gonna party like it’s friendster 1999 !?

- let’s party like it’s twitter 1999 ?!

- let’s party like it’s stasi v3.0 !?

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Are the gloves off yet ? Or will we continue hyping + constructing the corporate-state dream infrastructures ?

XLt reports/analysis coming soon !

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Ticker: Day 01:

:11:59 : Only caught the last sentences of Eben Mogeln, prof. at Columbia Uni, who pushes hard for the logical and urgent control of your own data and free access to information… saying essentially something like all books coulda-shoulda have been made available online by now, AND with access UNSURVEILLED ! And overheard interesting chats backstage of the U.S. legal spaghetti western. Note to selves: Worth reviewing the archive of his Stage 1 opening speech – his articulations of the scenario + battlefields are informed! ( posting archives are usually quite prompt w/ De. conf. tech services).

( RT @annalist, We need free media or we lose freedom of thought – Eben Moglen #rp12 #keynote )

:12:45: terrible free coffee

:14:00: Confidentiality, Control and Transparency at the intersection of Surveillance, Privacy and Design. Claudia Diaz and Seda Gurses.

:16:00: Anonymous! Frank Rieger, Caroline Wiedemann, Jacob Appelbaum, Ole Riessmann

:17:81: free sekt via some corporate spineless sponsor

18:32 : minds are already blown… shrapnel flying everywhere… geez, sometimes we get more than we ask for ; )

:24:00: Oh FUCK, and the disembodied geeks still invite banal house-thump, button-pusher minimal + plastic pop djs to play for their afterparties… will they ever learn to reconnect to the ethnicly diverse, unfiltered + unquantifiable + non-gadgeted terrestrial waveforms ?  ; )

tbc…

>> Dear Podopolog Readers + XLt fans,  we are raising the stakes and RAISING FUNDS !  Below you’ll find a number of upcoming projects (not just our own ), and NOW’s a really good time to SUPPORT our work, so we can pull it all off. Got some spare CASH ? Or maybe u got THINGS you aren’t using that you’d like to pass on: gadgets, mobile phones, cameras, hard drives, computers, other equipment, or surprise us ! … ( some of which we might be able to trade for services, i.e. friends who are working with us on a new demo video mix of our Citizen Kino #14 show in March. ) Contact us Here. <<

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{ Just Seeds May Day posters }

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A Bucketload of Radical Burbs … to get your Rev on !

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< 27.4 – all month > JUSTSEEDS: Agit-Prop and Interventions at Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin

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{ Os Gemeos 3x }

< 27.4 > dj/vj PoDiNsKi’s spring rev @ Morgenrot Cafe,  fresh “Spring Rev” mix cd GIVEAWAYS  to the first 9 people who share a “pirate cat tale”.Berlin

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< 2-4.05.12 > Re:Publica 12 , Berlin.

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{Re:source design by Jonas Frankki}

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< 11-12.05 > Transmediale Re:source program 001: “Trial Crack” … XLterrestrials and many others from the local scene will be joining the discussion, at General Public, Berlin

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{ SoCalled in the studio }

< 11-12.05 > Asphalt Tango brings SoCalled to town with a new album “SleepOver”, rumored special guests Daniel Kahn and Dj Podinski

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< 19.05 > Noise + Politics, fundraiser for Montenegro Tonstudio w/ Citizen Kino, FT Error, and much more… at Jugend[Widerstands]museum, Berlin

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< June, tba > CitiZen Kino w/ Ella Von Der Haide and “Eine Andere Welt ist Pflanzbar! ” and other special “land reform” and “insurrection landscaper” guests…

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more coming soon…

Learning…

{ from ‘LetItRipple’, part 2 of ‘Connected’ }

Since it seems to be our week for ranting about techno-evangelism and techno-empire, this film just came into the XLterrestrials lab… via a Mckenzie Wark twitter [ A cloud film making manifesto: http://goo.gl/tPcwb ] … And we can’t resist taking it apart, looking into its vital (trade-)organs, and testing it in a safely quarantined area of the web ; ) … so enter at your own risk…

Let It Ripple (trailer) by Tiffany Shlain ( of Webby Awards fame) and Co. – a long list of ‘technotopian’ foundations like The Institute for the Future  (i.e. Jane McGonigal )… Not all dubious, but definitely riddled with Silicon Valley ideologies. And for those allergic to Moby music, you Might want to hit the MUTE button.

“Feels just a LITTLE like a KonyCampaign for Technotopians! Could someone please explain why connectedness and interdependence should taste like an App that you spread open with your fingers ?! Well if there’s one advantage to virtual migration and exodification ( see: virtual exodus ) at least it doesn’t smell like greasy Kentucky Fried Chicken parts all over your bedroom. But as Terrence McKenna ( or was it Zizek ? * ) might say, this is becoming something akin to a fake fast-food religious experiment. ” a rather cranky XLt analyst.

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The article + plug from Tribeca – The Cloud Filmaking Manifesto -  w/ links to the part 1 film Connected… and other stuff which to other media analysts may make you slightly uncomfortable.

excerpt : ” The last section of CONNECTED featured a scene we call “the participatory revolution.” With 5 billion cell phones and 2 billion people online, the film asks, “what is the potential when everyone on the planet who wants to be online has access to the Internet?” The last line of the film states, “For centuries we’ve declared our independence. Perhaps it’s now time we declare our interdependence.” In responding to this last line of the film, we launched our foray into Cloud Filmmaking. “

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{ slick, sexy … and Al Gore likes it, so it probably tastes like chicken. }

Also watch: Connected : 2012 Trailer

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Added: We realize this may be a difficult critique for many. After all this stuff is obviously coming from a positive side of human nature… right? These are the good guys – And powerful Women this time – so what’s our problem?

For XLterrestrials, after too many years of closely observing ( and participating in ) media environments ( as we nearly All do, voluntarily AND involuntarily ), there seems to be some important flaws to examine. And there is potentially a grave error – or maybe not, but we are opening it up for debate  – of the West, and all that festering Silicon venture capital, pushing its agendas on the globe. This rush to connectedness, while portrayed in a primarily optimistic light here, is actually playing out on the ground  for real as an extremely vicious globalization. And in many ways, the communication tools are directly facilitating that! In fact, while not necessarily its intention, you could argue how it is wreaking havoc and instability, and too little social upgrade. Perhaps the main XLt point here is :  Until the corporate/state/market agendas are tamed, the level of technology (products) ‘bombardment’ may be proportional to the increased level of harm and chaos… and inverted progress… they bring with them.

Sure, interdependence is a good message… but we think the western players, All of em,  need to open their ears to first LISTEN to those other voices, rather than evangelically and aggressively ‘rippling’ its own agendas To Them … Otherwise with the corporate forces, who are not just along for the ride but staking claims on future scenarios, can easily turn into, you know, another Kony Campaign ( and counter-rev operation).

A much bigger topic than we can fit in one blog, so it’s sure to be a theme we will be revisiting ! And we are interested in any feedback.

tbc…

* Note: Oh yes, it was Zizek in Pervert’s Guide To Cinema projecting his Lacanian-isms onto The Matrix movie  : ” I want a third pill. So what is the third pill? Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill which enables a fake, fast-food religious experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive not the reality behind the illusion but the reality in illusion itself. ” … Clever as it sounds, actually the XLt would probably add to that: the reality in the delusion itself… and we might suggest that to stay on the pills is not advised ; )

{ Up, up, and away into those trusted Net clouds }

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“Wait, let’s get this straight: So Tim, good ol’ co-founder of the global data pump (net), says the solutions to our clusternetf*ck is to make ALL the data open and searchable so even MORE business ( and govt.) can set up services to crawl up yur data ass! Could it be time to ditch Tim + his MIT buds to play with their own glorious willy-visions of connected-gadget-heaven and the corporate escalator to shopping cloud hell ?! Just because he sold his soul to it, doesn’t mean the next generation has to be so idiotic.”

XLt analysts  ~ re: Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook ( Doh really ?… is that all ? )

Just to belabor the point that this dude doesn’t know what time it is, or worse, he’s binging on the data Crack ! He states:

“Once the data outputs from different sites had been standardised, he said, our computers would be able to offer increasingly sophisticated services such as telling us what to read in the morning. “It will know not only what’s happening out there but also what I’ve read already and also what my mood is, and who I’m meeting later on.”

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{ 1984+2012 = TBLee ? ; ) }

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Note: Of course this isn’t to say the current mega- parasites like Google and Fedbook ( who built their empires upon leeching our personal data)  aren’t to be reckoned with, but seriously, Wake The Fuck Up !

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On a similar critical tact, the Share2 Conference in Belgrade will take place April 26-28 and needs some similar diagonal + oppositional views and sound the alarm! It’s Not merely about making the net more open, but less intrusive, less invasive, less a threat to an inhabitable planet:

{ watch the -unofficial- clip … }

< 26-28.4 > Share2, Belgrade

There’s a spectacular gathering about to take place there… some influential tech visionaries and netizen fighters (and others who may need heckling). In any case it’s time for the arts+tech community to seriously address + debate the trajectory, the big picture of Net Worlds. Or else these are just more arty schmooze fests which continue to build + serve the corporate-state infratsructures. When will we start asking the harder questions ? Like :

1. Does the “virtual migration” really support (all) life forms ? 2. Can info-culture really be tamed to become more than a bizness machine language and the new colonial tsunami? 2. How do we defend ourselves immediately in this inflamed and predatory data biz world ? 3. How and When will the economy of data labor begin to empower Us and sustainable communities, rather than actualizing Total Control Inc. ? …

We’re refining these and working on others… but you get the gist … plz send us your suggestions.

… Fundraising …

Btw, we’d like to send an XLT journalist to cover the event and meet with the luminaries shaping the digital environments to better our knowledge for XLt media self-defense and education projects (i.e. Citizen Kino ).  If you would like to sponsor our work, invest in our new model of “open-re:sourced” cinema >>> please contact us.

…tbc

{ The World Tomorrow on RT }

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“All memoir is prostitution!” Julian Assange, upon pulling out of his contract with Canongate to publish his autobiography, which then went ahead and published a first draft Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Biography.

We’re not sure if we should feel a little guilty peering in, and yet it is a fascinating and inspiring read, and we are enjoying the brief refuge from the continuous electroshock of the internetz as we flip the pages of this book in the still cold but breaking Berlin spring.

Tonight, Assange will premiere his TV show – The World Tomorrow – with RT, and we wonder if he can make the ol’ rat-trap medium shoot sparks and/or implode ! Of course, there’s net tie-ins, like a twitter buzz to guess who the first mystery guest will be. And any of us who has gotten our wikileaks ( and indy + pirate media) education over the last years, probably don’t even possess one of those glowing door-stoppers, and we’ll perhaps gawk online, or maybe see what resonace flitters over the net afterwards.

While not opposed to reaching into retro-mediums, it will be interesting if this can become more than melting a celebrity hactivist into a grilled-cheese sandwich snack between adverts.

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The fact that the hacker spokes-personality via the media sausage-factory has grown almost larger than the revolutionary tools themselves, at least via this little theater double window… many have grown disenchanted with the tales of the supreme leaker and troublemaker. But it’s our fortune that we began reading again about the person behind the mission this week, because the information is increasingly valuable in the struggles against Control Inc… in the big picture.

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We’ll have to relay some more thoughts as we absorb and process the book, but one distinct + debatable point in the chapter “My First Computer”, which hits a nerve with XLT analysts is this idea that the hacker generation desire-d(-s) is to turn the world upside-down. A passion told with a brave and beautiful and mad enthusiasm. But the XLterrestrials would like to add one wee bit of wisdom as the e-sabers will obviously continue to rattle and fly, slice n dice,  cutting off ( or constructing ) one Hydra head after another. It may be advised to think of turning the mediated world upside down. It’s the actual (natural) world that we should probably be geting right-side up again… so we won’t get buried alive in all that hardwired, digital, coded and corporate-gadgeted mess.

And here we have one of the famed keyboard ninjas stepping into the TV spotlight, hmm, that does indeed feel like some polar flip has already occurred ! Processing.

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/??o?s????!?!???o??o?o?p??o?//:d???

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Update: ( 15:15h CET ): So the first guest on #Assange’s new chatshow is Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrullah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Nasrallah

about to go live on RT

Lions, tigers, Hezbollahns, oh my : )

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All jokes aside, that was quite beautifully done! At the very least a small antidote to the hopeless and cowardly MSM.

…tbc

{ happy to discover the art of Herakut ! }

A follow-up report from Citizen Kino #15, and various Btropolis news coming soon.

tbc…

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{ Antwoord, Lynchian mode }

sketches:

We began C-Kino #15 with the latest Antwoord video by Roger Ballen & Ninja ( with Director of Photography Melle Van Essen ). To give an example of the current trends in high-art Ultra-viddy. Artists at the top of their game, expertly luring your eye to their dazzeling fish hooks.

And this week while walking in the rain, we caught their new posters for a tour stop in Berlin…

It’s interesting to ask how our culture has somehow been set to permanent Lynchian mode. And we uncovered a few reasons as we examined the current media stew.

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standby…

{ Alex in Epic Immersion }

< 06.04 > CiTiZEN KiNO #15 at the Agora Collective, Neukoelln

[ FedBook invite here ]

A LIVE mix of Theater, Film and The Net, CiTiZEN KiNO sets the stage for you to re-access your own internally-generated cinema… unplugged and gadget-free !

Where: Agora Collective / Cafe
Mittelweg 50, (U8 Leinestr.), Neukölln

When:
Doors at 19:00h
Show begins 20:00h

How Much:
4 euros ( but no one turned away for lack of funds )

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About C-Kino #15:

work-in-progress

Strangely most studies on media and violence seem to play rather dumb and claim that there is little or weak evidence to connect violence in media to violent behaviors. And yet every marketing agency is fully aware of the power of the media to condition behaviors. It is a proven and guaranteed tool, which has made the advertising industry one of the major players in shaping our corporate-capitalist, cut-throat and zombie-consumerist culture. These manipulative potentials have become the market engine of the entire entertainment industry. And the Operating System of our culture. Could it be that the brunt of most movies and broadcast television, and now the citizen-generated content on the Net, are becoming merely the viruses which carry this primary malware ?!!

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“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange.

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” Viddy Me Well (Big Lil’ Brother) ! Dangerous Art or Tactical Art ? ”

C-Kino #15 begins by looking back at the fascinating story of the once ‘banned-in-the-UK’ film A Clockwork Orange. Actually few people realize that it was Kubrick himself who pulled it out of ( UK) circulation, because of a number of copycat crimes… threats … and because he wanted to remain living in the UK. We’ll take a look at bits from ‘Still Ticking’: The story behind Stanley Kubrick’s ban on ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – Produced by Channel 4. (Thx Dangerous Minds for turning us on to it ).

There’s no question that both Burgess and Kubrick’s genius works involve a deep and radical meditation on violence in our society, morality, free will, crime and punishment, and the ever-grimmer controlling state. As well as being the most alluring ( ANd penetrating) kind of art !

And we’ve asked Rob Ager, a (psycho-)media analyst in the UK who started the CollativeLearning project, if he’d like to join us. He’s done some incredible research on Kubrick and ACO, ( available on Youtube) which he’s given us permission to share 2gether. Though plz check his site for full DVDs, which he makes available.  Added: neither Rob nor the XLt care much for doing the skype thing at a live event. And it’s almost always a messy glitchy bizness, and hard to have a real dialogue. We’ve decided we’ll ask if YOU have some pertinent questions for him, and try and assemble those Q+A bits in a follow-up article.

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{ Cat Scientists from the 60s }

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IN THE 2ND part of the evening, we’ll project a bit further into the more positive? sides of technology and media. Beyond the ultra-Viddy-violence , we’ll ask what sort of epic immersions +/or programming + messaging could we imagine for more positive cultural reinforcement, and a more collaborative + sustainable society ??!

We’ll look at the uncanny work of Dr. Persinger ( Neurotheologist ),  more on that in the plog below… Bits from the London conference Planet Under Pressure, and other jaw-dropping surprises !!

Added: Cat Scientists (from c.1968) will be performing experiments on the audience, and testing our new XLt anarcho-projectionism to find out whether you are more ‘driven’ by violence or sexuality ?? New technology items or fresh vegetables … or ??

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And what would happen, if we weren’t putting all our eggs in a “technological redemption” basket… but attempting to integrate with a pre-existing natural intelligence that surrounds us all?!  One that is constantly being overriden by the post-modern ‘progress’/product industries !!

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tbc…

more coming soon !