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==CONTEXT==
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">CONTEXT</span>==
[[File:Keplers trigon.jpg|200px|right]]
====<span style="color:blue;">SHIFT OF POWER</span>====


"Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities."
There’s this cycle of Jupiter and Saturn. <br> They come together every 20 years, roughly, and it is called the Grand conjuct.  
- Ximena Peredo in "Infrastructure & Corruption", a photo project by Alejandro Cartajena


Infra- is what is below; beneath; after. In this sense, we can understand infrastructures as not only the basic systems and services that a company an industry, economy, or any other system, but also as what it further than it, more deeply within it. It is what a system needs to work effectively, but it is also the result of all of what might constitute the ideologies, the philosophies, and doctrines and the aspirations of this said "any-system".  
According to it’s astrological meaning it is cyclical conjunction and is a marker of historical eras in traditional astrology. When Jupiter and Saturn come together there is both the intensity of old forms dying and a new growth taking shape.  


I realize just now that I have always had a fascination for intangible matters, like the concept of law, of language, the way I’ve always known that they were major key systems that were enabling me to understand the tangible world that surrounds me.  
Since 1802, Jupiter and Saturn have been aligning in earth signs, and this year, in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will align in the air sign of Aquarius. It’s a new cycle that will last until 2159 ! Also known as the great Upheaval, this conjunction is extra special because it marks the start of a new roughly 200-year cycle during which Jupiter and Saturn will form conjunctions in the same element: air.


Maybe that’s what is urging me to be researching infrastructure. Something with that infra-, this places in the realms of the within, of the around, but never of the "as". Somehow, there is this constant awareness that the words I use, the streets I walk, the flat I live, and the language.s I speak, shape me, and that they are themselves deeply rooted, embodying, or adapting to the forms they have taken throughout history.
In 1980, we got a glimpse of it, when they briefly conjunct in Libra, the beginning of the internet revolution, of information technology revolution, if you like. But it really gets moving at the end of 2020. That’s a very significant point.  


I’m also fascinated by the somehow esoteric knowledge or master crafts that come with them.. From the evocation of the "Sacred" in the conception of property, or the way a chair and a lamp will be gendered in french, or these laws, that are nothing but an amass of dead letters, without an interpretation..  
Any way this means that these planets that have been ruled by earth up until now (oil extraction, heavy machinery, earth industries) have just shifted into the air sign of Aquarius, the sign of progress, innovation, and community. That means that the extractive forces that have been focusing on earth for the past 200 years will now re-orient their interests (the strive towerds more and more data, more controle over communication ressources).


I know it, I can feel it, I’ve seen it, even, but I never really got total grasp of it, never totally could define it*. What are they really, where do our infrastructures of power stem from, where are they going ? These uses of language.s, of collective imaginaries, of cemented ideologies, there’s one thing I know, they’re all corrupted !
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">RELATION TO LARGER CONTEXT</span>==


Infrastructures can sometimes represent some of the innermost and inherent materializations of violence, power, and control. Architecture and urban infrastructures, for example, are both fields that have been massively utilized and weaponized to service the expansion of authoritative or imperial powers.


====<span style="color:blue;">THE DISSOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURE====


==What do you want to make?==
Over the summer I was re-reading Yona Friedmann - "Architecture of survival", in which he explores the ideas of "architecture of survival" as the opposite of "the survival of architecture", in the sens that master creators will never truly answer the needs of the people as much as systems of self-organisation may do. He suggests an approach to architecture where architects would only be consultants supporting collectively determined projects.<br><br>The main questions he is trying to answer throughout this synthesis of his work are : <br><br>
<span style="color:blue;">"Who has the right to decide, and the power of agency over architecture? <br> How to ensure this right to those to whom it belongs? <br> How to do it in a world that is heading towards increasing poverty? <br> How to survive in such a world?"</span><br><br>


Recognizing the patterns is the first step to healing. <br><br>
====<span style="color:blue;">ON THE DELUSION THAT TECHNICAL WORK IS MORALLY NEUTRAL====
THE INSTITUTION OF CARE  FOR CORRUPTED INFRASTRUCTURES (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT)


I will set this dual approach of "Infrastructure" & "Corruption", coined in the eponym work cited above, as a framework to try and define the outlines and patterns that constitute what I might consider a corrupted infrastructure.
There are people -very well educated people- designing our schools, our communication systems, our social media platforms… There are also people designing the prisons, there are people drawing maps, drawing borders…


Then I will develop a system of nodes, research units, and other modalities. When the developed protocol is up and running, it will be weaponized as a tool to further analyzing all the aspects that constitute what might be considered as infrastructure and infrastructure and corruption.  
The original drive for both my project and my thesis was to explore the idea of the "impossibility of innocence" of the architect, the master creator: the delusion that technical work is morally neutral, in the hopes of understanding how different forms of power have been sustaining their dominion by appropriating and corrupting infrastructures to their advantage.  
<div style="text-align:right;">The "cognitivists", the "experts", the "technocrats".</div><br>


A CARE SHEET (Feuille de soins, in fr), that will be designed to support both the writing of my Thesis and my prototyping practice. If the protocole is followed properly, this care sheet should provide you with all the key notions you need to dissect the concept of Infrastructure & Corruption.
====<span style="color:blue;">THE CONTINUING AFFILIATION====


This system will be prototyped into a system that will guide you through organizing elements in order to achieve an all-encompassing networked power, resulting in this platform for experimenting with providing diagnosis and engaging in prognostic speculations.
'''If''' their is a shift in the way the quest for power manifests itself, what are the patterns that we can analyse in order to prevent this spread of authoritarian and centralized powers undermining the possibility of justice and equality ? How could we translate and apply patterns of resistance, like self organization, to potentially new, scarce, digital spaces or ressources, see how this might merge into new forms of organization.  


This platform would be an aggregation of the studies of the recondites practices that take place in the fields of prediction and past readings.I want the person arriving on the website to feel like they have to engage with the stucture in order to make sens of it, like they have just entered a world they have yet to understand.  
<span style="color:blue;">"When we decide to approach architecture as 'the discipline that organizes bodies in space', countless texts can be commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence. Yet, it is much harder to articulate a tactical ‘positive’ discourse about political architectures as we propose to do throughout this issue."</span><br>
The Funambulist Nº23 - Insurgent Architectures
<br><br>
In this context, I guess my thesis would be an addition to the countless texts that have been commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence.


As the project grows, it will also become a collective archive for these story tellings, that will inherently be decentralized and modular, as the forms the enter a project in a database are only guidelines for you to situate your questited project to its roots, and explore subconscious pattern, and speculate on later outcomes, potential future implications.  
Parallelly, this project will be looking into a more ‘positive’ tactical discourse, and exploring a new forms of insurgency.


While developing this platform, I will strongly be referring to the concept of survival architecture (Yona Friedman for the moment, might expand it to other researches) and following the models of self-organization, through the use of modules, of nodes, ect… I would like to investigate if, and if so, how, can the researches in the fields of architecture and sociology intersect, could be adjusted to conceive new digital spaces. How can I translate and aply the patterns to digital space and digital resources, see how this might merge into new forms.  
Recently I also found this project, which I realized they were aiming for the same methodology but the other way round: looking into free software and open-source cultures to find new answers in urban infrastructures.


"When we decide to approach architecture as “the discipline that organizes bodies in space,” countless texts can be commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence. Yet, it is much harder to articulate a tactical ‘positive’ discourse about political architectures as we propose to do throughout this issue
====<span style="color:blue;">WHO ARE THESE GHOSTS THAT ARE STALKING OUR SYSTEMS ?====
- The Funambulist Nº23 - Insurgent Architectures


I will also be trying to articulate the different ways in which some of the tactical ‘positive’ discourses about political architectures could be translated or applied into the digital realm, where the needs to materialize resistance against imperialism, border enforcement, capitalism, and/or patriarchy, are just as urgent.
I guess the starting point for this research was the idea that architectures and infrastructures can be corrupted to support and cement certain ideologies. Even though ideologies can be criticized, and political regimes can be overthrown and disowned, it always leaves behind some kind of heritage, some ways of thinking and feeling, some good old habits, some obscure and abstruse drives.  


References :
In The Funambulist: "ARCHITECTURE AND COLONIALISM", they state these two arguments: <span style="color:blue;">"colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space"</span>


"A multidisciplinary systematic review of the use of diagrams as a means of collecting data from research subjects: application, benefits and recommendations" : https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-11-11
With this project, I hope to somehow contribute, to embedding the discussion around media and information theory within the context of the imperial and colonial heritage of its infrastructures. I would like to participate in this research by using the insurgent narrative of this shift of power to engage in a process of investigation, through cross-examination and juxtaposition, of the varied pervasive methods that have been used on land. Look for analogies, similarities, and translations that could be happening in our more intangible (soft) networks.


my devotees
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?</span>==


https://n-o-d-e.net/zine/index.html#
🚧 No no
[[File:UNDP.png|thumb|If this were fiction, it would be my project...
source: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2015/12/9/Fighting-corruption-in-infrastructure-a-must-for-achieving-the-2030-agenda.html]]


====<span style="color:blue;">THE INSTITUTION OF CARE  FOR CORRUPTED INFRASTRUCTURES (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT)</span>====


The battle over the Internet infrastructure is often articulated around actual events like the Internet Roundtable for Emerging Countries in Beijing 2012, the World Conference on International Telecom in Dubai in 2012, or the NetMundial in Sao Paulo 2014. I would like to set up, through some kind of fictive simulation, the website of some institution taking part in these meetings (a fantasy of mine).
<br><br>
[[File:corruptioncontrol.png|500px]]
http://www.corruptioncontrol.com/Types_of_Corruption.html
<br><br>
What kind of wider strategies is taking shape in the infinite quest for power? The institution’s goal is to establish a clear understanding of the relationships of dominance, through logic/systems of division and exclusion, and compare the ways in which they develop throughout different economical and cultural sectors, in order to prevent them.


==How do you plan on making it?==
This website would be an aggregation of the studies and practices of the institution for the care of corrupted infrastructure, that aims at articulating the ways in which some tactical discourses about political architectures could be translated, or applied into the digital arena, where the needs to materialize resistance against imperialism, border enforcement, capitalism, patriarchy, and/or neoliberal forces, are just as urgent.


I will be using a narrative of insurgency through a transdisciplinary perspective, in the hope that it might offer a sharper, all-encompassing vision of the different ways architectural projects, frameworks, technologies, and institutions (non-exhaustive list) have been utilized to ensure the well functionning of a corrupted system.
This institution will be investigating concepts like deterritorialization - privatization - delimitation of spaces - master planning - through a multidisciplinary approach, to prove that we are constantly subordinated by powerful forces trying to imisse themselves constantly in our life through infrastructures. 
<br><br>
Depending on how prototyping goes, I see the project being a sort of mash-up of different modules, files, text-based stories. I see this website being supported by several smaller modules that could be open and interact with. Each module would carry a part of the narrative, and the story-telling would be done through the interaction with them.


What is it then that is clearly defined as an infrastructure of corruption ?  Does it have a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined end ? How can I access this esoteric knowledge ? With the little amount of knowledge that I have of structures and organizations (I’m a Virgo), I have been working on suggesting some sort of mystical research center for corrupted infrastructures, a care unit. This platform will be supported by a carefully designed structure, that will guide you through establishing an a sharp diagnosis for your quesited project.  
I want the person arriving on it to feel like they have to engage with it in order to make sense of it as they have just entered a world they have yet to understand (http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/The_Grand_Conjunction), depicting some kind of Kafkaesque involvement with secrecy orders and litigation: a text-based adventure through the institution’s research and documents. As you dig a bit through the, I want the feeling of having crossed some certain boundaries between what "should" be considered sharable, and what is actually shared through this page that you have just fallen upon. You realize you have access to the whole research process of this collective. This will happen through different modules.


This formation of nodes, aggregations, clogs, and all sorts of linking systems that will allow for an almost infinitely expandable research platform, and will propose an alternate trajectory to reading, a non-linear reading paths for the archive.
Not particularly for the esthetic, but for the shape of being able to open files and interact with different modules, I was shown this : https://www.windows93.net/


References :  
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">HOW DO YOU PLAN ON MAKING IT ?</span>==


Here and Now? Explorations in Urgent Publishing
===<span style="color:blue;">MODULES</span>===
Key notions of relations, trust, and remediation :
https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/2020/05/20/here-and-now-explorations-in-urgent-publishing/


The way of the shovel - Dieter Roelstraete
=====<span style="color:blue;">THE ASTERN OPERATOR</span>=====


Recognizing the patterns is the first step to healing. <br>


<span style="color:blue;">"Corruption is not one phenomenon, but many different sorts of abuse, minor and major, all aggregated together. Disaggregation between the different types of corruption is essential in order to tailor the reform measures to the specific problem. In CurbingCorruption we advocate two-levels of disaggregation: First by Sector, second by specific corruption type."</span><br>
https://curbingcorruption.com/corruption-types/ <br><br>


==Why do you want to make it?==
The first module is a research tool, a naked bare structure will allow for the dissection of what might be considered corruption (as in abuse of power for private gain) on the infrastructural level (meaning on a systemic level). It was built for both prevention and detection of these occurrences. <br>
<br>
This formation of nodes, aggregations, clogs, and all sorts of linking systems will provide the research with an almost infinetely expandable analysing tool. As it fills up with new quesited projects, it will be able to propose alternative trajectory to reading, linking and archiving, a non-liner reading paths that will form the data base, for all the investigated structures.<br><br>
[[File:Harris-Miracle-cartoon.png|280px|thumb|Sidney Harris, ''Then a miracle occurs'']]
<div style="text-align:right;">
I will use this module to outline my thesis.<br>When each quesited project is stored and analysed through the module, if the magic works, the different nodes should be easily reorganized to form a coherent thesis in three chapters (see thesis outline).<br>https://www.cameronsworld.net/</div><br>
[[User:Claxhanson/AsternOperation | <span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;margin-left:200px;font-size:18px;"> '''  ASTERN OPERATOR  ''']]</span></div>
It will be accompagnied by a finding aid<br>that will explain how to navigate it :<br>
https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/finding-aid.html<br><br><br>
'''(This finding aid could be a wiki like the Fraternity of shadows one I pasted higher)'''</div>
<br>


SHIFT OF POWER
=====<span style="color:blue;">MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE E-DEATH INDUSTRY</span>=====


There’s this cycle of Jupiter and Saturn. They come together every 20 years, roughly, and it is called the Grand conjuct.  
The second module would be some sort of pop-up window which would open up a chatbot. By talking to it (and eventually going through a "read me" file, you understand that this bot is building up an AI, trying to use astrology to make an immortal version of you. At this point in the narrative I’m hoping the person going through the website starts feeling perplex about the intentions of this collective. <br><br>
[[User:Claxhanson/Makeabot | <span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;align:right;margin-left:500px;font-size:20px;"> ''' * BE RIGHT BACK *  ''']]<br>
'''The rest of the story and modules is to come (see near future).'''


According to it’s astrological meaning it is cyclical conjunction and is a marker of historical eras in traditional astrology. When Jupiter and Saturn come together there is both the intensity of old forms dying and a new growth taking shape.
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">WHY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT ?</span>==
 
<br>
For the last 200 years, Jupiter and Saturn have been aligning in earth signs. They’ve been in earth signs since 1802, and this year, in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will align in the air sign of Aquarius. It’s a new cycle that will last until 2159 ! Also known as the great Upheaval, this conjunction is extra special because it marks the start of a new roughly 200-year cycle during which Jupiter and Saturn will form conjunctions in the same element: air.
<span style="color:blue;">"Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities."</span><br>
- Ximena Peredo in "Infrastructure & Corruption", a photo project by Alejandro Cartajena
<br><br>


In 1980, we got a glimpse of it, when they briefly conjunct in Libra, the beginning of the internet revolution, of information technology revolution, if you like. But it really gets moving at the end of 2020. That’s a very significant point.
====<span style="color:blue;">WHAT IS BENEATH</span>====


Anyway this means that the planet ruling earth (oil extraction, heavy machinery, earth industries) have just shifted into the air sign of Aquarius, the sign of progress, innovation, and community. That means that the extractive forces that have been focusing on earth for the past 200 years will now re-orient their interests (the strive towards more and more data, more control over communication resources).  
Infra- is what is below; beneath; after. We can understand infrastructures as not only the basic systems and services that are needed to support a company, an industry, economy, or any other system, but also as a network of technologies built to support all that constitutes the ideologies, philosophies, the true aspirations of these said "any-system", and the doctrines embeded whithin the minds of whoever is building these networks.  


CONTRAST AND OVERLAP
Lately we’ve been (un)lucky enough to see quite the explicit picture of the disfunctionning of our political infrastructures,  and the course of events has been depicting what tends to look like some ugly hybrid formations coagulating someplaces inbetween economical unilaterality and increasingly martial policies. So why does it feel like there’s such a gap between the current state of democracy and even the bare minimum aspirations one might have towards a truly responsive and democraticly fair system ? (I know that "democracy" falls a bit out of nowhere here, I have intentions of clarifying it in the future)


I would like to engage with people who are receptive to these forms of narratives, who themselves have other stories to tell, other corruptions to account for, and want to prepare together for this shift of power. I would like to explore the options for speculation that exist within this narrative of Jupiter and Saturn to speculate explore the frameworks of Neoliberal and Imperial powers materialize their desires for expansion in the physical world, and speculate on how they could possibly be doing even more so in the digital realm.  
The words we use, the streets we walk, the flats we’ve lived in and the language.s we speak shape us, and themselves are deeply rooted, embodying, and/or adapting from the forms they have taken throughout history.  


My intention is to show that even with that shift of power, physical corruption through master planning and the project that are implemented in the digital area are intriguingly recognizable and are intimately motivated by the same motivations.  
Maybe that’s what’s urging me to be researching infrastrure. Something with that infra-, this places in the realms of the whithin, of the around, but never of the "as". It feels like this question can only be answered by understanding what is further, more deeply, rooted within it. By understanding corruption as not only active methods, but as a constant and perpetual abuse of entrusted power for private gain, deeply deeply rooted into our infrastructures.


https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2015/12/9/Fighting-corruption-in-infrastructure-a-must-for-achieving-the-2030-agenda.html
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">WHO CAN HELP YOU AND HOW ?</span>==


[[File:UNDP.png|If this were a fiction, this would be my project]]
Be cause the structure of the project is strongly based on the astrological system, anyone who could open up or clarify my understanding of this structure, even through casual conversation, could help me. <br><br>


==What is your timetable?==
I would also like to engage with people who are receptive to these forms of narratives, who themselves have other stories to tell, other corruptions to account for, and want to prepare together for this shift of power.<br>
I’ve also very profoundly been inspired by the funambulist magazine, and I believe if I managed to reach out at one point, to Leopold Lambert or anyone working on this project, I could get clearer understanding of architecture as the organization of bodies in space, and share perspectives from a more strictly architectural stand point.


David Marroto also really helped me by introducing me to the idea of "family ressemblance" in philosophical investigation, which is the concept that things that appear to be similar because of one common shared feature may appear to be that way due to many shared similar features that overlap with each other. This really helped me shape the way I understand my project as a fuzzy entanglement of similarities and correlations. I guess anyone who is interested in the use of fiction, and more particularly of fiction embeded within some sort of systems could probably help me strenghten my concept.
<br>
[[File:ugly.png|400px|right|thumb|https://digitalwitchcraft.works/About]]<br>
Of course Michael and Manetta and I believe plenty of other people can help me with the technical side of the project.


- End of november, mid december, I will have finished my first module for the project : "My contribution to the e-death industry". Technically this means that the Astrology chatbot I’ve been working on (at my own little pace) for the past 2 months needs to be up and running.  
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">RECENT PAST</span>==
<br>
As I came in to this Master program, my major focus were Myth-Science and Science Fiction. I was singing the song of Outer Space incorporation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rq_GT6RIk at least six times a day and I was reading "La Horde du Contre Vent", a (shamefully untranslated) novel by Alain Damasio. My ideas were mostly revolving around "Myth-science" that I understood as fiction works that produced alternative perspectives and models to revealing "the habits of thought of the physical, historical and social realities as yet more myth". <br><br>
The central project was a story which was also the work of a collective called the "Metatown Spirit committee". Now that I look back on it, actually, I was spending most of my time trying to fabricate <span style="color:blue;">fake legal document</span> (post search reports, transcrits from official conversations that never happened, a Fake Writt or Cert.)<br><br>


- End of november, mid december, too, I will have commited to my system and will have clearly defined the nodes that will constitute my research project (see thesis proposal), I will have observed if there are (and there will be) swelling points in each of my research unit. Then I will take a bit of time to focus on writting the first chapter, but from the 4th of december on, I will have all the material needed to support my prototyping practice : Case studies, swelling points, diagnisis.  
During '''SP #12''', Radio implicancies, I was working on the <span style="color:blue;">"MYTH, MYTHODOLOGY, MYTHOD"</span>, where we investigated, for 3 weeks, the different ways in which we could use fiction as a method to convey messages. The <span style="color:blue;">"Insecurity Hotline"</span>, for example, "the hotline where we turn insecurities into securities", was a fictive phone service that you could call all day, any day, so that together, we would "reshape a community for you to fit in." This framework allowed us to tackled subjects like memory loss, individual identity, or even the impostor syndrome, in a playful yet compasionate way.  


- By January, I will have started the conception of a second module for the project of the a second research unit.
Two other works I have done for the Radio Implicancy project were called <span style="color:blue;">"Democracy (60 Hz Gamma Waves for faster learning)"</span> and <span style="color:blue;">"Public Damage N2992"</span>. Both of them were already a first step in trying to identify (in a playful yet critical way) the eventual points of corruption within our systems. The first one, a read out thread about how the incarceration system in the USA is corrupting Democracy, and in the second one, how the abusive french police system is being supported by an increasingly authoritative and censoring governement. (Both of them can be listened to on our station : https://issue.xpub.nl/12/ )


- By Febuary, as I will be hands on prototyping the structure for the plateforme and I will be embeding some of the modules in it already. I expect that I will have at least 5 research units either a finished or at least 70% into the process (40% at worst)
Some of the earlier works from last year also resonate with this project, and more particularly the work I had started during '''SP #11''', Post digital Itch, where I embarked in the journey of "recongnizing patterns" of <span style="color:blue;">a dictatorship in twillight</span>. With the rich archive I had at hand, I had started to delineate the different ways in which dictatorships form. What are the swelling points, how can we define and observe the rise and fall of a dictature, of an any other abusive form of power. This work was never published, or shared, but I will be using it to form some of my arguments throughout this project.
 
- Mid-febuary, as I conclude the first draft of the thesis, I will start carry on perfecting the plateforme structure and the last modules (By then there will have been massive amount of thinking about it done).
 
- April should be all done just perfecting everything (would rather have some margin for that)
 
 
 
== Who can help you and how? ==
 
everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody Manetta can help everybody can help everybody Micheal with prototyping can help everybody Clara & Amy can help everybody can help everybody can help my friends here everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help anyone new I meet that stays at 1.5 m everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help my friends back home everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help Marloes everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help
 
 
 
 
== Relation to previous practice ==
 
1 _When I was a kid I wanted to be an architect (or a singer, or a teacher).
 
2_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rq_GT6RIk <br><br>
As I came in to this Master program, my major focus were Myth-Science and Science Fiction. I was singing the song of Outer Space incorporation song at least six tmes a dat and I was reading "La Horde du Contre Vent" by Alain Damasio. My ideas were mostly revolving around the idea of "Myth-science" that I understood as fiction works that produced alternative perspectives and models to revealing "the habits of thought of the physical, historical and social realities as yet more myth". I was spending most of my time actually, now that I look back on it, trying to fabricate fake legal document (post search repports, transcrits of official conversations that never happened, a Fake Writt or Cert*.)
 
MYTHOTECHNESIS was the last Chapter of my Bachelor research, I believe it is a natural cycle that it finds itself here. Mythotechnesis is the ways in which technology enters into discourse and life, through projections of the existing and future influence of machines.  
 
References :
FROM FINANCIAL FICTIONS TO MYTHOTECHNESIS - Simon O’Sullivan
 
*We had been to see a trial with a friend and then we’d been speculating on the idea of making an appeal to the supreme court, how could it be heard ? Then the project turned into this, "allegorical reading of constitution", as we had humbly defined, a facetious and absurd version of governement procedures, a performance of the impossible. Have I mentioned that I was reading Kafka at the time ?
 
Some of the works I have done last year will also be relevant to the pan of history I have chosen to explore. I might use the case of "The beast of the gévaudan" to explore the dynamics of communication powers under the King Louis XV. Not that this really needs to be proved to anywone in my public, BUT the idea is to weaponize these case study to define what an infrastructure of corruption really is. The concept of "Mythodology" was also coined during Radio Implicancies, For our "Myth, Mythod, Mythodology" triptic project. I might also this project as a module for my project.  
 
 
 
 
== Relation to a larger context ==
 
 
(I will be adding references as I go) <br>
<br>
The Funambulist : WEAPONIZED ARCHITECTURE /// THE ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS AS MILITARY AND JUDICIARY DOCUMENTS


The Funambulist : ARCHITECTURE AND COLONIALISM /// <div style="color:blue;">"The two editorial arguments of this issue are simple: colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space".</div>
==<span style="color:blue;font-family:papyrus;">NEAR FUTURE</span>==


Architecture Without Architects, Another Anarchist Approach - Marion von Osten, e-flux journal reader 2009
'''December:'''
Finish the first module for the project : Technically this means that the Astrochatbot I’ve been working on (at my own little pace) for the past months needs to be up and running soon.


Architecture of Survival - Yona friedman <div style="color:blue;">"Who has the right to decide, and the power of agency over architecture? <br> How to ensure this right to those to whom it belongs? <br> How to do it in a world that is heading towards increasing poverty? <br> How to survive in such a world?"</div>
'''By Febuary:'''
Start having some sort of structure for the website and start embeding some of the modules in it already.


For the shape :
'''Mid-febuary:'''
as I conclude the first draft of the thesis, I will carry on working on the plateforme structure and the last modules.


Fiction as method, HALF 10K, TOP SLICE PLUS FIVE - Matthew fuller - Edited by K S Shaw and Theo Reeves, Sternberg Press
'''April :'''
should be just perfecting everything (hopefully)

Latest revision as of 00:07, 30 January 2021

CONTEXT

Keplers trigon.jpg

SHIFT OF POWER

There’s this cycle of Jupiter and Saturn.
They come together every 20 years, roughly, and it is called the Grand conjuct.

According to it’s astrological meaning it is cyclical conjunction and is a marker of historical eras in traditional astrology. When Jupiter and Saturn come together there is both the intensity of old forms dying and a new growth taking shape.

Since 1802, Jupiter and Saturn have been aligning in earth signs, and this year, in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will align in the air sign of Aquarius. It’s a new cycle that will last until 2159 ! Also known as the great Upheaval, this conjunction is extra special because it marks the start of a new roughly 200-year cycle during which Jupiter and Saturn will form conjunctions in the same element: air.

In 1980, we got a glimpse of it, when they briefly conjunct in Libra, the beginning of the internet revolution, of information technology revolution, if you like. But it really gets moving at the end of 2020. That’s a very significant point.

Any way this means that these planets that have been ruled by earth up until now (oil extraction, heavy machinery, earth industries) have just shifted into the air sign of Aquarius, the sign of progress, innovation, and community. That means that the extractive forces that have been focusing on earth for the past 200 years will now re-orient their interests (the strive towerds more and more data, more controle over communication ressources).

RELATION TO LARGER CONTEXT

Infrastructures can sometimes represent some of the innermost and inherent materializations of violence, power, and control. Architecture and urban infrastructures, for example, are both fields that have been massively utilized and weaponized to service the expansion of authoritative or imperial powers.

THE DISSOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURE

Over the summer I was re-reading Yona Friedmann - "Architecture of survival", in which he explores the ideas of "architecture of survival" as the opposite of "the survival of architecture", in the sens that master creators will never truly answer the needs of the people as much as systems of self-organisation may do. He suggests an approach to architecture where architects would only be consultants supporting collectively determined projects.

The main questions he is trying to answer throughout this synthesis of his work are :

"Who has the right to decide, and the power of agency over architecture?
How to ensure this right to those to whom it belongs?
How to do it in a world that is heading towards increasing poverty?
How to survive in such a world?"

ON THE DELUSION THAT TECHNICAL WORK IS MORALLY NEUTRAL

There are people -very well educated people- designing our schools, our communication systems, our social media platforms… There are also people designing the prisons, there are people drawing maps, drawing borders…

The original drive for both my project and my thesis was to explore the idea of the "impossibility of innocence" of the architect, the master creator: the delusion that technical work is morally neutral, in the hopes of understanding how different forms of power have been sustaining their dominion by appropriating and corrupting infrastructures to their advantage.

The "cognitivists", the "experts", the "technocrats".


THE CONTINUING AFFILIATION

If their is a shift in the way the quest for power manifests itself, what are the patterns that we can analyse in order to prevent this spread of authoritarian and centralized powers undermining the possibility of justice and equality ? How could we translate and apply patterns of resistance, like self organization, to potentially new, scarce, digital spaces or ressources, see how this might merge into new forms of organization.

"When we decide to approach architecture as 'the discipline that organizes bodies in space', countless texts can be commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence. Yet, it is much harder to articulate a tactical ‘positive’ discourse about political architectures as we propose to do throughout this issue."
The Funambulist Nº23 - Insurgent Architectures

In this context, I guess my thesis would be an addition to the countless texts that have been commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence.

Parallelly, this project will be looking into a more ‘positive’ tactical discourse, and exploring a new forms of insurgency.

Recently I also found this project, which I realized they were aiming for the same methodology but the other way round: looking into free software and open-source cultures to find new answers in urban infrastructures.

WHO ARE THESE GHOSTS THAT ARE STALKING OUR SYSTEMS ?

I guess the starting point for this research was the idea that architectures and infrastructures can be corrupted to support and cement certain ideologies. Even though ideologies can be criticized, and political regimes can be overthrown and disowned, it always leaves behind some kind of heritage, some ways of thinking and feeling, some good old habits, some obscure and abstruse drives.

In The Funambulist: "ARCHITECTURE AND COLONIALISM", they state these two arguments: "colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space"

With this project, I hope to somehow contribute, to embedding the discussion around media and information theory within the context of the imperial and colonial heritage of its infrastructures. I would like to participate in this research by using the insurgent narrative of this shift of power to engage in a process of investigation, through cross-examination and juxtaposition, of the varied pervasive methods that have been used on land. Look for analogies, similarities, and translations that could be happening in our more intangible (soft) networks.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?

🚧 No no

If this were fiction, it would be my project... source: https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2015/12/9/Fighting-corruption-in-infrastructure-a-must-for-achieving-the-2030-agenda.html

THE INSTITUTION OF CARE FOR CORRUPTED INFRASTRUCTURES (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT)

The battle over the Internet infrastructure is often articulated around actual events like the Internet Roundtable for Emerging Countries in Beijing 2012, the World Conference on International Telecom in Dubai in 2012, or the NetMundial in Sao Paulo 2014. I would like to set up, through some kind of fictive simulation, the website of some institution taking part in these meetings (a fantasy of mine).

Corruptioncontrol.png http://www.corruptioncontrol.com/Types_of_Corruption.html

What kind of wider strategies is taking shape in the infinite quest for power? The institution’s goal is to establish a clear understanding of the relationships of dominance, through logic/systems of division and exclusion, and compare the ways in which they develop throughout different economical and cultural sectors, in order to prevent them.

This website would be an aggregation of the studies and practices of the institution for the care of corrupted infrastructure, that aims at articulating the ways in which some tactical discourses about political architectures could be translated, or applied into the digital arena, where the needs to materialize resistance against imperialism, border enforcement, capitalism, patriarchy, and/or neoliberal forces, are just as urgent.

This institution will be investigating concepts like deterritorialization - privatization - delimitation of spaces - master planning - through a multidisciplinary approach, to prove that we are constantly subordinated by powerful forces trying to imisse themselves constantly in our life through infrastructures.

Depending on how prototyping goes, I see the project being a sort of mash-up of different modules, files, text-based stories. I see this website being supported by several smaller modules that could be open and interact with. Each module would carry a part of the narrative, and the story-telling would be done through the interaction with them.

I want the person arriving on it to feel like they have to engage with it in order to make sense of it as they have just entered a world they have yet to understand (http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/The_Grand_Conjunction), depicting some kind of Kafkaesque involvement with secrecy orders and litigation: a text-based adventure through the institution’s research and documents. As you dig a bit through the, I want the feeling of having crossed some certain boundaries between what "should" be considered sharable, and what is actually shared through this page that you have just fallen upon. You realize you have access to the whole research process of this collective. This will happen through different modules.

Not particularly for the esthetic, but for the shape of being able to open files and interact with different modules, I was shown this : https://www.windows93.net/

HOW DO YOU PLAN ON MAKING IT ?

MODULES

THE ASTERN OPERATOR

Recognizing the patterns is the first step to healing.

"Corruption is not one phenomenon, but many different sorts of abuse, minor and major, all aggregated together. Disaggregation between the different types of corruption is essential in order to tailor the reform measures to the specific problem. In CurbingCorruption we advocate two-levels of disaggregation: First by Sector, second by specific corruption type."
https://curbingcorruption.com/corruption-types/

The first module is a research tool, a naked bare structure will allow for the dissection of what might be considered corruption (as in abuse of power for private gain) on the infrastructural level (meaning on a systemic level). It was built for both prevention and detection of these occurrences.

This formation of nodes, aggregations, clogs, and all sorts of linking systems will provide the research with an almost infinetely expandable analysing tool. As it fills up with new quesited projects, it will be able to propose alternative trajectory to reading, linking and archiving, a non-liner reading paths that will form the data base, for all the investigated structures.

Sidney Harris, Then a miracle occurs
I will use this module to outline my thesis.
When each quesited project is stored and analysed through the module, if the magic works, the different nodes should be easily reorganized to form a coherent thesis in three chapters (see thesis outline).
https://www.cameronsworld.net/


ASTERN OPERATOR

It will be accompagnied by a finding aid
that will explain how to navigate it :
https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/finding-aid.html


(This finding aid could be a wiki like the Fraternity of shadows one I pasted higher)


MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE E-DEATH INDUSTRY

The second module would be some sort of pop-up window which would open up a chatbot. By talking to it (and eventually going through a "read me" file, you understand that this bot is building up an AI, trying to use astrology to make an immortal version of you. At this point in the narrative I’m hoping the person going through the website starts feeling perplex about the intentions of this collective.

* BE RIGHT BACK *
The rest of the story and modules is to come (see near future).

WHY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT ?


"Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities."
- Ximena Peredo in "Infrastructure & Corruption", a photo project by Alejandro Cartajena

WHAT IS BENEATH

Infra- is what is below; beneath; after. We can understand infrastructures as not only the basic systems and services that are needed to support a company, an industry, economy, or any other system, but also as a network of technologies built to support all that constitutes the ideologies, philosophies, the true aspirations of these said "any-system", and the doctrines embeded whithin the minds of whoever is building these networks.

Lately we’ve been (un)lucky enough to see quite the explicit picture of the disfunctionning of our political infrastructures, and the course of events has been depicting what tends to look like some ugly hybrid formations coagulating someplaces inbetween economical unilaterality and increasingly martial policies. So why does it feel like there’s such a gap between the current state of democracy and even the bare minimum aspirations one might have towards a truly responsive and democraticly fair system ? (I know that "democracy" falls a bit out of nowhere here, I have intentions of clarifying it in the future)

The words we use, the streets we walk, the flats we’ve lived in and the language.s we speak shape us, and themselves are deeply rooted, embodying, and/or adapting from the forms they have taken throughout history.

Maybe that’s what’s urging me to be researching infrastrure. Something with that infra-, this places in the realms of the whithin, of the around, but never of the "as". It feels like this question can only be answered by understanding what is further, more deeply, rooted within it. By understanding corruption as not only active methods, but as a constant and perpetual abuse of entrusted power for private gain, deeply deeply rooted into our infrastructures.

WHO CAN HELP YOU AND HOW ?

Be cause the structure of the project is strongly based on the astrological system, anyone who could open up or clarify my understanding of this structure, even through casual conversation, could help me.

I would also like to engage with people who are receptive to these forms of narratives, who themselves have other stories to tell, other corruptions to account for, and want to prepare together for this shift of power.
I’ve also very profoundly been inspired by the funambulist magazine, and I believe if I managed to reach out at one point, to Leopold Lambert or anyone working on this project, I could get clearer understanding of architecture as the organization of bodies in space, and share perspectives from a more strictly architectural stand point.

David Marroto also really helped me by introducing me to the idea of "family ressemblance" in philosophical investigation, which is the concept that things that appear to be similar because of one common shared feature may appear to be that way due to many shared similar features that overlap with each other. This really helped me shape the way I understand my project as a fuzzy entanglement of similarities and correlations. I guess anyone who is interested in the use of fiction, and more particularly of fiction embeded within some sort of systems could probably help me strenghten my concept.

https://digitalwitchcraft.works/About


Of course Michael and Manetta and I believe plenty of other people can help me with the technical side of the project.

RECENT PAST


As I came in to this Master program, my major focus were Myth-Science and Science Fiction. I was singing the song of Outer Space incorporation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rq_GT6RIk at least six times a day and I was reading "La Horde du Contre Vent", a (shamefully untranslated) novel by Alain Damasio. My ideas were mostly revolving around "Myth-science" that I understood as fiction works that produced alternative perspectives and models to revealing "the habits of thought of the physical, historical and social realities as yet more myth".

The central project was a story which was also the work of a collective called the "Metatown Spirit committee". Now that I look back on it, actually, I was spending most of my time trying to fabricate fake legal document (post search reports, transcrits from official conversations that never happened, a Fake Writt or Cert.)

During SP #12, Radio implicancies, I was working on the "MYTH, MYTHODOLOGY, MYTHOD", where we investigated, for 3 weeks, the different ways in which we could use fiction as a method to convey messages. The "Insecurity Hotline", for example, "the hotline where we turn insecurities into securities", was a fictive phone service that you could call all day, any day, so that together, we would "reshape a community for you to fit in." This framework allowed us to tackled subjects like memory loss, individual identity, or even the impostor syndrome, in a playful yet compasionate way.

Two other works I have done for the Radio Implicancy project were called "Democracy (60 Hz Gamma Waves for faster learning)" and "Public Damage N2992". Both of them were already a first step in trying to identify (in a playful yet critical way) the eventual points of corruption within our systems. The first one, a read out thread about how the incarceration system in the USA is corrupting Democracy, and in the second one, how the abusive french police system is being supported by an increasingly authoritative and censoring governement. (Both of them can be listened to on our station : https://issue.xpub.nl/12/ )

Some of the earlier works from last year also resonate with this project, and more particularly the work I had started during SP #11, Post digital Itch, where I embarked in the journey of "recongnizing patterns" of a dictatorship in twillight. With the rich archive I had at hand, I had started to delineate the different ways in which dictatorships form. What are the swelling points, how can we define and observe the rise and fall of a dictature, of an any other abusive form of power. This work was never published, or shared, but I will be using it to form some of my arguments throughout this project.

NEAR FUTURE

December: Finish the first module for the project : Technically this means that the Astrochatbot I’ve been working on (at my own little pace) for the past months needs to be up and running soon.

By Febuary: Start having some sort of structure for the website and start embeding some of the modules in it already.

Mid-febuary: as I conclude the first draft of the thesis, I will carry on working on the plateforme structure and the last modules.

April : should be just perfecting everything (hopefully)

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