#BORDERZONE

[retrocgads]

USA 1993

[valodia]

[xirae]

I realized that the human inhabitants of this technological landscape no longer provided its sharpest pointers, its keys to the borderzones of identity. The amiable saunter of Frances Waring, bored wife of my partner, through the turnstiles of the local supermarket, the domestic wrangles of our well-to-do neighbors in our apartment house, all the hopes and fancies of this placid suburban enclave, drenched in a thousand infidelities, faltered before the solid reality of the motorway embankments, with their constant and unswerving geometry, and before the finite areas of the car park aprons. - Crash by J.G. Ballard

[keyiva]

BorderZone Steam Key GLOBAL

BorderZone is a role-playing action with a complex non-linear storyline in which the player can choose a profession to his liking (mage, thief or soldier), learn the needed skills and spells, create a team of up to 5 dare-devils and leave for a trip full of danger and unexpected discoveries in the world of Terra filled with various creatures. Terra was born at the moment when the old Earth passed…

[oldgamedebris]

(You step out of your train compartment and find guards armed with machine guns.)

>get gun You’re likely to get only the bullets.

>punch guard Don’t be ridiculous!  You’d only get thrown in jail, and an iron-curtain jail at that!

[bigvolcano]

#WildlifeWednesday Wonder if seagulls show signs of separation anxiety during lockdown? Nope. Guess not. 😁 #visitbigvolcano #goldcoast #tweedcoast #borderzone #borderbubble #borderbubblelife #tweedgoldcoast #backtonature #Repost @bearybythebeach • • • • • • Gold Coast, Queensland “You whooo, anyone home?” 🐦 👀 💙 • • • #australia_oz #abcmyphoto #australiagram #playgoldcoast #holidayherethisyear #seeaustralia #wearegoldcoast #igersgoldcoast #ilovegoldcoast #puregoldcoast #thisisqueensland [...] #birdsofaustralia #birdsofinstagram #seagull #seagulls #birds_adored #birds_private #bns_birds #raw_birds Shared via @bigvolcano on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CEoHSiSAdbF/?igshid=a5f3xl7u63of

[fatehbaz]

With legal ways of access such as visas foreclosed, many of those trying to reach countries of the Global North have [...] been funneled into more and more inhospitable and hazardous terrains - arid deserts, choppy seas, rugged mountain chains [...]. In all these cases, it is the very geophysical characteristics of these environments that have been enlisted and harnessed as crucial tools of border control. [...] Beyond their obvious differences, the bordering practices at work across the Mediterranean, the arid regions on the US-Mexico border, and urban life in the United Kingdom all appear to be the expression of a similar form of power, one that does not operate by disciplining specific subjects but rather by intervening in the environment they inhabit or traverse. [...]

“Prevention through deterrence” highlights how “nonhuman actors - plants, animals, and biophysical processes - are constitutive of boundary making” in the same ways in which border guards, national and international institutions, legal frameworks and surveillance systems are. The term “geopower” [...] underline[s] how geographic environments are endowed with “forces contained in matter that precede, enable, facilitate, provoke and restrict ‘life.’” While many other examples could be mentioned of enlisting geopower as a crucial mechanism of border control, what emerges in all of them is the process of design at work in the becoming hostile of deserts, oceans, and mountain ranges as borderlands. [...]

Emphasizing the way in which legal geographies, surveillance technologies, and bureaucratic protocols have turned certain environments into rugged borders is also a critical antidote to (neo-)colonial narratives that continue to imagine them as always already empty, remote, and unlivable. This vision willfully - and culpably - erases not only centuries of Indigenous inhabitation and trans-regional exchange, but also the extractive and developmental processes that in many cases have indeed turned those areas into toxic sacrifice zones. [...]

---

Against this “naturalization of causes,” it is imperative to foreground the complex structures of causality [...]. [I]t is also paramount to foreground the very geohistorical conditions that have made the global environmental crisis not only possible but inevitable. This means going deeper into the roots that connect (neo-)colonial extractive practices and migration as part of the same historical continuum. [...]

This form of “accumulation by displacement” is well visible in many contemporary borderzones whose contested political ecologies are deeply intertwined with histories of dispossession and migration. Take, for instance, the fragile ecologies of the Rio Grande Valley [...]. As Avi Varma writes:

From the dispossession of Native and Hispanic inhabitants to the establishment of water-intensive agricultural settlements, conflicts around water have fundamentally shaped this landscape and the regimes of mobility that traverse it. As an agent of bordering, the hydrological body of the Rio Grande river has always proved an unstable and highly ungovernable ally, which continues to shift and change course at both geological and seasonal timescales. Moreover, in the transition from Indigenous land use to ranching and finally intensive farming, water has been forcibly redirected from zones deemed non-productive towards those deemed profitable, partitioning the South of Texas into a chequerboard of water-rich regions and sacrifice zones on which migrant detention centers, like the infamous Tornillo tent city, have been built [...]. [T]he “tragic valley” of the Rio Grande river is a “serpent nailed to the fence” of the border, its waters serving less as a source of life and connection than as a marker of their absence.

---

All text above by: Lorenzo Pezzani. “Hostile Environments.” At the Border series, a special collaboration with A/B/O published by e-flux Architecture. May 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[kny111]

Abstract:

As surveillance and military devices, drones—or ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’—offer a prism for theorizing the technological politics of warfare and governance. This prism reveals some violent articulations of US imperialism and nationalism, the dehumanizing translation of bodies into ‘targets’ for remote monitoring and destruction, and the insidious application of militarized systems and rationalities to domestic territories and populations. In this article, we analyze the deployment of drones within warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and borderzones and urban areas in the USA. What we call ‘the drone stare’ is a type of surveillance that abstracts people from contexts, thereby reducing variation, difference, and noise that may impede action or introduce moral ambiguity. Through these processes, drones further normalize the ongoing subjugation of those marked as Other.

[roxycernicky]

[jcusnetworksba1002july2019]

Why are maps more than what we think they are?

Politics personified: Fred W. Rose and Liberal & Tory serio-comic maps, 1877-1880 - Part 1 (W. Rose, 2016). The Avenger An Allegorical War Map for 1877. Maps are perhaps one of the greatest brainchild of humanity and over the years, it has evolved from a simple piece of paper into a digital print readily accessible by our mobile phones. We rely heavily on maps that it becomes an invaluable part of our spatial being. But, what if we found out that our perception of maps is not how it is meant to be? As an avid traveller, the inception of google maps brought about a plethora of information that went as far as enabling me to plan my holiday schedule according to distances and time calculated by their software. As sophisticated as it might be, I soon realised that technology is developed by humans - and we are possibly flawed about the way the world is too. If maps were to represent the world, they are simply a manifestation of ideas that are carried by humans regardless of whether the projections are accurate - given the emergence of technology during the 20th century, an expansion of connections between individuals of different countries are seen and the exchange of information through forms of universal trading renders uniformity through the negligence of authentic traditions of each country and hence resulting in earthly projections to be consistent with trends rather than culture (Villanueva, & Gonzalo, 2000). There are many superficial things we see on the maps, but how much intimate details of each country are we fully aware of? Focault describes the borders between Greece and Turkey as spaces that are bio-political in nature whereby they are not divided simply by a line, but an act to fulfil the interests of jurisdiction by government or other leaders such as parishioners (Topak, 2014). I find that maps encourage us to move beyond our realm of familiarity, but it can also be greatly linked to Focault’s idea of bio-politics and neo-liberalism that demonstrates how the art of Cartography is hierarchical in nature and heavily influenced by beliefs they carry which therefore has shown that map serve the purpose of being a political ordnance (Evan, 2014). For instance, various regions on our map may not necessarily be divisive by their borders and social-political methods could redefine the division of borders based on how liberal the region is in promoting a laissez-faire system (Allen, Henry, Masset, & Sarre, 2012). Through this particular system, governments have the freedom to exercise discretion beyond their own boundaries (Crawshaw, 2012). References

Allen, J., Cochrane, A., Henry, N., Massey, D., & Sarre, P. (2012). Rethinking the region: Spaces of neo-liberalism. Routledge.

Crawshaw, P. (2012). Governing at a distance: Social marketing and the (bio) politics of responsibility. Social Science & Medicine, 75(1), 200-207.

Evans, L. (2014). Maps as deep: Reading the code of location-based social networks. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 33(1), 73-80.

W.Rose, F., (2016). Politics personified: Fred W. Rose and Liberal & Tory seriocomic maps, 1877-1880 - Part 1. The Avenger An Allegorical War Map for 1877. Retrieved from: http://www.barronmaps.com/politics-personified-fred-w-rose-and-serio-comic-maps-1877-1880-part-1/

Topak, Ö. E. (2014). The biopolitical border in practice: surveillance and death at the Greece-Turkey borderzones. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(5), 815-833.

Villanueva, M., & Gonzalo, C. (2000). Maps, values and representations: deconstructing eurocentrism among european primary teachers. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 9(1), 61-66.

[valodia]

Borderzone (Squin) / Stenn Desert

[hadarlaskey]

Homeward

It’s easy to attend one of the big movie festivals (in non-pandemic times) and ignore the smaller sidebars in favour of gorging on the big competition titles, or any sneaky Hollywood premieres that happen to have made the slate. Yet these less-publicised showcases are often a crucible in which hot new talent is forged and, sometimes, old masters can be seen flexing their creative muscles in new and exciting ways.

Homeward is the feature debut of the young Ukrainian director Nariman Aliev, and the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes was his first big stage of (we hope) many. His film is a creeping death fugue and road movie rolled into one, but is also interested in father-son emotional dynamics and the combustible political situation in the Crimea region.

The bullet-riddled corpse of Nazim lies on a slab wrapped in muslin and rope. Patches of brown blood have soaked into the fabric. His father, the hard-nosed man’s man Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablaev), and brother, the sensitive and naive Alim (Remzi Bilyalov), are on the scene to pick him up and transport him hope across a politically treacherous expanse. Yet politics ends up being the least of their troubles, as the journey is beset by annoying obstacles, but also moments of supercharged bonding.

Without ever lending physical presence to the war, Aliev makes sure that the conflict is in a constant state of low simmer on this precarious borderzone. In one episode, when some youths steal Alim’s bag and Musafa’s wallet during a repair stopover, the father manages to harness the son’s rage by quickly teaching him close-quarters knife combat to better defend himself against such attacks. Family is now built on a bedrock of violence, and the potential for war rages on.

As fairly devout Crimean Tatars (an adjunct of Islam), the father-son duo feel a spiritual responsibility towards their fallen kin, and the reason for undertaking this journey is revealed as an extended burial rite. Yet Mustafa’s almost desperate need for closure is revealed later on as a symptom of other issues in his life, issues that supply the film with an extremely poignant final act.

Aliev shows skill beyond his years in his formulation and development of these characters, and even though the film draws inspiration from all directions, it never feels like a drama that’s standing in for a complex political or religious allegory. The director maybe lacks for many original moves of his own, as the look and feel of the film sits a little too comfortably in that bleakly-beautiful eastern European art film mode, but he’s made a mightily impressive first film, and that ability to flex creative muscles will come later on.

Homeward is released 23 April via New Wave Films.

ANTICIPATION. Highly regarded when it debuted in Cannes back in 2019. 3

ENJOYMENT. An impressive all-rounder package with a couple of very moving set-pieces. 4

IN RETROSPECT. Lacks for originality, but Aliev is definitely one to keep an eye on. 3

Directed by Nariman Aliev

Starring Akhtem Seitablaev, Remzi Bilyalov, Dariya Barihashvili

The post Homeward appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/reviews/homeward/

[glopratchet]

retirement-home

Cludstrum is a computer program that is attached to the conciousness of astryl wylde, a journalist for the realm of astokahn It keeps whispering to astryl trying to get him back online, who is full of bitterness and captive to sin and this is evident because of astryl being attached and fused within a succubus and a incubus The retirement village is surrounded by a a wall sandbags and a bunch of other things and they are ready to go at any moment Small lake dripping with blood Undergrowth seeking to capture humans minds making them want to drown themselves and die in this underworld Lightpoles illuminating the areas Construction vehicles making building improvements and Sam Lowers, the chief construction worker controlling everything in front of him painted with tribal tattoos from their machinemaids Green-skinned bodyguards Yellow eye observing everything covering a surgery scar on your stomach Bandages attached to every person in creation observing their heart rate, brain waves etc Monitors Vaccine dispensers watching for when new ideas begin spreading Naked ladies dancing and buttah dispensers injecting dog food into unrealistic dreams Shocktroops training there skills and cornering the ichneumonid market for human hearts Pharmaceuticals testing their medical supplies on orphans High-roller gamers paying for good rolls The smell of leather cleaning out of the automatic carwashes Stock traders looting the fallen cities Lizards breeding on the words of Zaren's sermons, indoctrinating them into sacrificing themselves to build his dreams Gorazel pondering a growth formula A religious pamphlet, telling the whole story of Zaren's speeches Barmaids feeling arousal for the first time Cyber-surgeon bots cutting your brain out and using it for there bidding Sculptures made from the ground-up bones of heretics Agent walking on a catwalk above you, guns in hand, planning a raid on the underworld Borders closing, secrets not holding Random people floundering helplessly in the borderzone of the underworld where the walls have fallen Agent stretching your hands on a cross, taunting you that this could be you if you don't choose their after-life Blood raining from the ceiling Counting money from selling drugs to humans Agent caregiving you, explaining everything you see to you Magnetic poetry, spelling out secrets that the creatures fear Dog -faced individuals fighting for survival above the ground hoping one day they might live above the clouds in normal civilization Agent cheese-making creating inhuman recipes with goat or milk Orcs wrestling Agent roving stealing crops and running away with ichneumonid girl Smell of fresh coffee brewing slowly, filling the night with craving Cyclone fencing keeping humans in reservations Derro discussing over forge Blood falling from ceilings, put there by zealots of other religions Agent well-being check, judging if you need anything else Religious ichneumonid trading slaves Agent coping with solitude by caring for the unimportant humans with kindness Gas lamp illuminating a tax bill demanding 10% of salary Agent catalyzing an emotion within you by killing a rat --- It was about here, that our records ended Agent landscaping the road, trying to make sure the unimportant humans had a good view of the pretty lights Orc looting crypts for Godless magic items Agent mistreating you to keep you poor Orcs called the "runt" by other orcs Agent diagnosing your religious problems at a luxury hotel Goblin alchemist peddling drugs on the street Agent stroking your head Goblin pushing stolen supplies, trying to escape Agent killing you and covering up the incident as nothing more than a sick joke Agent portraying a king, knighting his close friends Goblins playing Goatsinging Agent evoking the dark arts of sorcery to make his living Yelling as you stop breathing Painting pictures and selling them online innocently Agent photographing topless angels of beauty and grace, fresh from the sky For days we tried to decipher these entries But failed Agent joking around, telling similar-looking people they look like someone he was looking for Agent brushing your teeth Sundowning seeing unexplainable figures, feeling irrational guilt Ending we had been looking for lay around the next entry Sanitation Orcs, with slave-pigs controlled with what appeared to be an excessively large dog-collar, dragging a dead hog Colossus presumes the Dead Orc served to lead them But who were "They? The incursions before had been done collectively by both Adventures and Zealots Community-dwelling humans Muckety-mucks would be killed by the heavy-handed human weapon wearers filled with self-righteousness We quietly finish reading Ribbon-cutting with a stone-like dagger, the books ends We presume that by this point, things had gotten too Disneyworld-esque to be organized Balloons pop, falling to earth, and die shortly thereafter It's no longer air-filled, but filled with decay The adventure was over for us Grooming the slaves into the main caste, as it were How did they all get here to begin with? We hold our lantern up Skinnys in cages, stripped of all meaning, poked with symbols and genetic information mixed and matched There's nothing but metal and meat here Counseling in mass to boost the self-esteem of the less fortunate Could OUR ancestors or friends have been part of this? Bartenders mixing fresh drinks for those-who-shuffle-letters The heavy metal doors take forever to open But finally, they do Eating breakfast with friends, in a not quite so uncommon rest stop bathroom The room is massive Large as any hotel we've been to Whisky-joint s with hookers offering extra curricular activities A bird sits, perched on the only wall in this giant room Dwelling on sadness or happiness Slowly, we walk toward the figure Is someone else alive? Have they been here the entire time? Sodbuster breaking the enchantments on his pieces of property The once proud orc has become a homeless person Sleeping in a coffin-like compartment, lights dimmed to an eerie red A heavy thud hits the ground beside us Mini-chainsaw sesaming wood, steam rising as it cuts through an oak Oh dear God, the horrors that we will see later on in the storage facility Astryl holds his temples, looking quite ill Thoughts stirring in his head, though you can't be sure of what they all are Toothpaste squirted onto a cold metal rod, teeth gnashing it in frenzy as it is pushed against gums Four candles sit in a circle Shambles grabbling forward on decaying legs of bone and flesh Silver necklaces shine on his withered skin, settled around rotten flesh Wet-nurse taking care for orphans not capable of taking care of themselves The moment we step inside the door, you feel a horrible feeling darken your mood Chatters of tiny voices bounce off the walls, making you feverishly uncomfortable Several dainty sofas of different colors sit in a conversational area Passageways leading to other parts of the building Running down dark corridors, trying to find your friends in the middle of the night Admission booth, with a wheelchair-bound woman sitting at a desk Weakness-magnets pulling the desperate into their havens We've reached the master of this house Homelike dungeon cells full of vagabonds caught up in the tornado You've seen enough horrors to last you a lifetime Cafffeine psychosis getting into its last drops You could've sworn you heard tiny screams Gerontologist sitting in a leather armchair with leads connecting to a large machine Yes, yes, I am insane and proud of it Tumblebleeds forming in her eyes The desperate attempts, of the lame, to communicate He giggles, pulling a lever on his chair Gusts of wind blowing through broken windows Pro-fusion pamphlets, covering the chair and the floor A cold sweat soaks into your clothes Life-prolonging machinery turned up to the highest notch We're barraged by two dozen tiny fists, as security our taken quite severely Sports drink pourers distracted by the on-goings of the surgeries Pile after pile of bones making you re-think vegetarianism Mousehole your only opportunity to escape this madness Thighs melted from the friction an everlasting nightmare Resurrection men attempting to bring life, back into the dead Terrified employees hold each-other for warmth as the cold wind pours through broken windows Harmonica notes punctuating the silence None of us can sleep, due to the horrors that stalk our nightmares Mattresses caked with blood stained sheets Sporting more than a few scars, the three of us decide sleep is no longer for us Booty running out of fresh corpses Rougarou sightings, angry voices buzzing in your mind We made it through the night, but only barely Rusted-out guillotines standing by, in case High Society is truly ungrateful The gibbering voices continue, just out of your perception Phosphorus consumed by the gallons The walls are soaked in blood, with bits of rotten flesh caked into it Strung-out on Organic Love Megalomaniac obsessed with the submissive pleasures of the flesh Another scraping noise, the insides of your mind threaten to burst out of your ears Dust -covered vases bursting with roses the first token of what is to come Patriots tripping on peyote, sparks bursting from snapping electricity The walls dripping with condensation and blood, an obvious sign of infection among the staff Adrenaline pumping through your veins Time seems to almost stop, a life of unending torment Conquistadors bursting through the doors, encrusted blades in hand Prayers to gods you don't believe in, offered as a last ditch effort for salvation Gangrenous pus oozes from the ceiling, your only companion in this house of horrors All around you, dark shadows flit from wall to wall Faucet water turned red with blood, mutilated bodies fill the hallway At least you're not on the menu Prophecy -fulfillment, that all depends on your definition of the term You lay alone, gurgling out a plea for help Triangulation of terror coordinate your deaths! Zombies clawing at the interior, scratching at the blood-caked windows Preachings of hell's fire and brimstone recorded onto endless looping tapes Teddy bears sewn together, a symbol of your "creation Corrosion eats away at the metals that make up the structure You lie still, contemplating your squalid existence so far Soapbox soliloquies abnormalities abound here "Your last twenty-four hours Moisture from the walls eats away at the wood planks Your heart thuds in your chest, survival instinct kicking in Sermons from your school days echo through the walls do those memories still hold true? Lobotomize yourself! Boggles the mind what one will do to survive the supernatural at work You grow longer ripping through your skin Delivery men dropping off the ingredients to your death Herds of undead knock incessantly at the door can this door hold? Toothbrushes The weight of the package all too familiar buried beneath where you lay, where only remnants remain of those who came before Diamonds the traditional gift for your 20th anniversary Dozens of zombies clawing at the flesh, ripping it from your bones Talisman blessed by your mother, a gift holding sacred energy The beam creaks, agonizingly slowly bending in your favor Stinky unwashed cannibal hermits who inevitably feast upon one another The demons come to visit, your mind now their playground Insecticide seeps through the fabric, keeping the infected at bay A living hell, this wandering in the wilderness only death awaits Oozes burst from your stomach, you can feel them writhing under your skin Your mind capsizing from this dreadful operation Newspapers thumbed-through one too many times, decades old dust sets in Desperate scratching at boarded up windows Diplomats of a war-torn nation arrive, out for blood You grow short of breath, the internal collapsing of your organs Jocks from your high school, well-deserved carnage will ensue Why does this fruit taste off? Will the end come from septic shock? Eskiminzins with their knives at the ready A writhing horde of epiglOTTis, about to overwhelm you Physique reduced to a withered husk, your primal brain will take over Calculus exams, endless retakes to pass your classes Endless suffering Garden-variety viruses kill half the world's population The screaming as everyone slowly goes mad can you drown it all out? Chemicals streaming through your blood to wake you from this nightmare Shapeshifters bursting through the walls, solid facade fading away Zombie demon Designers mad scientist surgeon paparazzi Parasites, multi-legged creatures, wrigglies myriapods! Anatomy has by no means been set in stone Teeth embedded in your skin, how long can you resist? Populations of masculine entities grow discontent Nuclear families of the 20th century, nonexistent Blood-thirsty demonic Coffee -addicted octogenarians born in the wrong decade The Vietnam War spurs a new art movement Hoppers creep upon you, offspring of the devil himself These voices trapped in your head, incessantly screaming at you Livers pulled out through your nose, tormented by gory smatterings Do you have what it takes to survive? Nobility on the run from the red terror, experience horrors beyond your wildest nightmares The roaaar of DøDT please if you love horror Vicinity of the university, good thing you decided to major in the liberal arts You hunger but fear not! insatiable hunger Vitamins a bit of an urban legend, read on to find out why Scorpions the arch-enemies of campers everywhere Pull the hairs on their back and Watermelons green salads and kebabs to stop your belly from churning Just saw a beautiful girl on the side of the road Dumpster diving, scoffing the leftover's's of the fast food industry Out of gas help! What does the future hold? Bravado meet ruthless desperation Thank the heavens you sold your Geometry textbook back in September The roads are yours, free from the confines of cars Dune buggies, ATVs and dirt bikes take to the desolate highways Spindly mutants pour from the woods, a hefty price on your head Apocalypse-weave tunics protect you from the hungry stares of cannibals The rusted hulk of a 18-wheeler lurks in the distance Spit-and-polish Metalworking books in tow, you start to seek out the local garages soldiers with a stark disregard for human life Super-soldiers bred for war, they now scavenge the barren land Nobody can hear you scream over the sound of gunfire Teetotaler beer in hand, you slaughter every abusive ceo of a multi-million dollar company Zoologist escaping the destruction of the Superdome, OAPs the new insurgent swear word Lizard-on-a-stick for a roadside snack, quite underwhelming to be honest Truck stops, meeting grounds for the nondescript American Endoskeleton ensnared by trees, the Halloween haunted house you always wanted Dangerous fauna abound, eat or be eaten Phenotype Trees are on the verge of sentience Phenotype: Leave this world behind, ascend to a higher plain Moreauvian nightmares the byproduct of 20th century brought cry back to life Was this fate pre-ordained? You choose your friends with great care When it comes to entering the earth on must do it very precisly Testosterone-laden world, lower IQs and higher walls the other side looked very appealing You need to enter the air at a precise speed and angle If a bad odor arises, move 30 feet away and find a new spot If you return too fast or too steeply bad things will happen Murky liquids are solid in these gloves, can't feel anything If impact is to shallow then back you go back into space to be frozen once more The three requirements deceleration heating accuracy of landing or impact Tell that to the family of the now brain-dead father and soon-to-be motherless children You will need to float the egg in some liquid so you will need to find some liquid that is the same as egg whites The container will need to be rigid to make sure that the walls do not flex or the egg could bang on the walls of the container and crack An egg can withstand between 20 to 30 gs before cracking so you will need to come up with something that slow allows the passengers to travel at 30gs ; (good protection) A vehicle that is carrying loads from New York Throttle, brake, clutch and will be needing a 20-tonne rated winch wait, is that 5th gear? starting jumping up and down in front of the tracks until I climb a tree brush-clearing machinery and many feet of chain careening down at twice the speed of the gazelle in front

[futuresofcolour]

Towards Arabfuturism/s

MANIFESTO

Words & artwork by Sulaiman Majali

Towards a possible manifesto; proposing Arabfuturism/s(Conversation A)

“In hypernational ecstasy-”

“What about starting with where it’s come from, something like that? -”

“-But they’ve called it a swarm, an influx-”

“There is something happening in Europe.”

“We are distinctly distant from the mythologies of nationhood and home-”

“Stand up and step back.”

“-What do we have”

“-The nation is dead, it is a citadel of illusion that has collapsed; pour me a drink and let us drink of its ruins. -”

“The nation is dead-”

“-Arabfuturism exponentially expands on discourse surrounding -”

“-Arabfuturism is accelerating the transformation of representation; beyond the logic of the state.”

“-Surrounding the policing, observation and censoring of brown minds-”

“-…Indefinable in the emergence of an autonomous hybrid sedimentation of identities that is dismantling the boundaries and expanding the borderzones between constructs of culture and civilisation that have assembled a contrived European identity in opposition to an historic Other.”

“Punctuation-,”

“Something about re-examining history?”

“-Arabfuturism is a re-examination and interrogation of narratives that surround oceans of historical fiction. It bulldozes cultural nostalgias that prop up a dubious political paralysis and works to solidify and progress a progressive force, towards being subjects and not objects of history-”

“-History?”

“histories-”

“If the ultimate hegemonic power is the power to define and not the power to conquer; the map, the straight line, legitimacy and authenticity are questions that flutter between the virtualities and actualities of adopted identities.”

“What are we proposing?”

“Arabfuturism is an impetus that seeks to accelerate the annihilation of the ideological apartheidic walls, whose delusional hallucinations make us cower in fear at the deafening loudness of our indifference; whilst we dance to the silence of our differences.”

“A continuous motion”

“Accelerate-”

“-Accelerating-”

“- delusional hallucinations make us cower in fear at the deafening loudness of our indifference (whilst we dance to the silence of our differences.)”

“But there is something happening in Europe,-”

“Arabfuturism conceives instead, an origin in imagined space, towards the abyss of an imagined future”

“-Dancing on the ruins of the post-orientalist stage; in the desert of the unreal; high on the opulence of emptiness.”

“- Violent births of countries; the expansions and contractions, the demise and deaths, -”

“-the demise and deaths of nations.”

“The nation is dead-”

“-Something is happening in Europe-”

“-It is a citadel of illusion that has collapsed.”

“-The internet as a public square,-”

“Arabfuturism celebrates the temporalities of our collaborative genealogies-”

“Mourning-”

“Present tense. Mourns the immortality of our insular mythologies of selfhood.”

“-an emergent cultural aesthetic; accelerating the transformation of representation;-”

“-beyond the logic of the state.”

Towards a possible manifesto; proposing Arabfuturism/s (Conversation a) is a reinterpretation of a transcript which documents the beginning of a discussion that took place in late July 2015.

The text converged into a wider project of mapping, defining and proposing alternative narratives in the wake of a disintegration of the contrived fortresses of European geopolitical identities.

Pluralised and in a state-of-becoming, Arabfuturism/s is a question and a movement forward that interrogates fictional historical narratives; a post-post-colonialist reflection on what actually is. Perhaps, as the text begin to propose, the ultimate hegemonic power is the power to define; Arabfuturism/s could become an attempt to move towards a decolonial definition of the European-Arab (and beyond?).

The proliferation of protests against  the hegemonic stance on European people of colour (and the exposure and rise of the #blacklivesmatter movement) shows a gradual alignment of these diverse struggles. Along with a growing discourse, within Europe, surrounding the policing and censoring of brown minds, in an ongoing information warfare and in light of recent seismic global political shifts; the power to define has never been more contested.

Arabfuturism/s, like most creative provocations, is born of counter-culture. Notions of belonging are constantly challenged by the strangers, the marginalised, the outsiders: workers, rebels, immigrants, artists who see from the margins – looking in – that there is no homogenous culture or identity.

An iteration of this text was published in a book compiled by artists, thinkers and internet activists under creative commons license, in memory of Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian-Palestinian open software developer, coder, thinker and founder of a Damascus hackerspace. Threatened by a free information movement and an open internet, the Syrian authorities arrested and detained him without trial in 2012. In October 2015, he was transferred to an undisclosed location and is rumoured to be sentenced to death.

Despite having all his records deleted, a group of online activists and archeologists subsequently released Bassel’s #NewPalmyra project:an online collection of reconstructed 3-D models of the city. It is no surprise that instances and manifestations of #arabfuturism have happened simultaneously and independently around the globe, within European-Arab circles and other diasporic circles within and outwith the region.

The use of “-futurism” here is not intended to reference Futurism as movement, neither is it an explicit reference to the “futuristic”. Instead “-futurism” is anticipating a future, it signifies a defiant cultural break, a projection forward into what is, beyond ongoing eurocentric, hegemonic narratives.

It is hoped that, by increasing deposits, digital or otherwise, these ideas can contribute to a growing counterculture of thought and action that through time will be found and used in the construction of alternative states of becoming.

[bigvolcano]

#MountWarningMonday Throwback to 2018, and some stormy weather on the horizon. #visitbigvolcano #mountwarning #worldheritage #mountainscape #landscape #cloudscape #tweedshire #tweedhinterland #volcanovillages #chillingham #tyalgum #crystalcreek #northernriversnsw #farnorthcoast #borderzone #2484 #visitnsw #Repost @thebananashed • • • • • • Rain clouds.😊 • • #wollumbin #mtwarning #northernrivers #thebananashedbnb Shared via @bigvolcano on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CEiL7J3JOux/?igshid=1i4p1326os64z

[queeranarchism]

April 21, 2017 HOW EUROPEAN AUTHORITIES CONTINUE TO USE MIGRANT DEATH AS DETERRENT WHILE CRIMINALISING RESCUERS A WATCHTHEMED ALARM PHONE EMERGENCY CASE OFF THE COAST OF LIBYA

The Easter weekend saw one of the biggest Search and Rescue (SAR) operations carried out in the Mediterranean Sea in the past few years, with 8,360 people rescued between Friday the 14th and Sunday the 16th of April 2017. The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone network was involved in 2 emergency cases and could observe first-hand both the sheer inadequacy of rescue efforts of EU authorities and the crucial contribution of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in preventing instances of mass dying at sea, which we had to witness so often in the past.

This absence of rescue forces in the most dangerous area of the deadliest borderzone of the world, however, is not a coincidence. Nor can it simply be attributed to a particularly exceptional situation, considering that the simultaneous departure of tens of boats from the Libyan coasts has been, for several months now, a relatively frequent event. It is instead the result of precise political decisions taken by the EU and its Member States, which first deny migrants legal ways to enter Europe, thus forcing them into the sea, to then consciously limit the presence of rescuing assets, hoping that mass dying would act as a deterrent.

While this ‘tactic’ has, in the past, led to massive losses of lives at sea – such as on the occasion of one of the deadliest shipwrecks ever registered in the Mediterranean, which took place exactly two years ago, claiming more than 1,200 lives in less than a week – the tireless rescuing efforts of civil society actors and activists have played a crucial role in averting the repetition of such a scenario.