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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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I was moved and impressed by Steve Kurtz and Greg Bordowitz during their talk here on Saturday night. Kurtz is sardonic and eloquent and gave a good slide show on the history of Critical Art Ensemble's troubles with authority. The upshot being that art works that threaten to disrupt the flow of capital are more likely than not to draw negative attention from the powers that be. Bordowitz is like a can of pressurized charisma. He was passionate and articulate and a lot of what was said is sticking with me:
1) USA is working hard right now to establish an 'enemy within.' This case against Kurtz is a test for them to see if they can go after rebellious white middle class intellectuals as well as visible minorities and protestors. If the US government can gain enough oppressive power at home to subjugate its own middle class, then they are operating with even fewer checks and balances...bad news for US citizens (obviously) and super-bad news for the rest of us in the world too. The CAE Legal Defense Fund is in solidarity with other who are persecuted under the Patriot Act, and hopes to expand after the case in order to help more people.
2) There was refreshing talk about protest and the nature of rebellion. CAE has held for years that protesting in the streets is the not necessarily always the most effective way to voice dissent. Says Bordowitz, "I don't feel like performing rage anymore. I feel like performing deppression," and "the politics are here in this room, in what we say later to our co-workers and students." Says Kurtz, "what's important is the process of coming to the decision that you will no longer go along with what you know is wrong."
3) The question was raised, has rebellion itself been commodified to the extent that it is no longer possible to rebel? The answer was refreshingly sincere and complex. Yes it is possible, even vitally necessary to rebel. Kurtz spoke about how rebellion is a dynamic, an ongoing relationship with power, and that success is measured in increments, over time, as part of a continuum rather than a coup. Bordowitz pointed out that we operate under a false myth that, in any field, if we perform to competency we will succeed. In fact, very qualified, hard working intelligent people are not succeeding. So the question is raised...rebellion may be flawed but as opposed to what?
4) Bordowitz noted a rise of anti-intellectualism -- scary, and close to home -- as many charge that the use of expert language (research language, as Bordowitz put it) is elitist and exclusive, when in fact it can simply be seen as people communicating with one another in the technical terminiology of their trade. This is something that's been nagging at me more and more recently in all this (my) talk of accessibility and general audiences for art. I like intellectuals...they ("we," if I may presume...) come up with good and interesting ideas.
There was lots more good stuff too. If you attended the talk and anything stuck out for you (anything other than the stellar and mind-blowing job of moderation by your's truly) please post it in the comments. And if you want to help out with the legal defense fund, please click here and find out more.
I can't resist poaching this! So far my very favourite explanation of E=mc˛
e=mc2 means energy (ie pure energy) is equal to mass. if a particle could be converted into energy, its a hell of a lot. i remember reading that a cup of water has more thatn enough energy to boil all of the oceans of the world. it also implies that nothing can travel at or above the speed of light, because it would take pure energy to accelerate a particle that far, because as an particle (or object) gets faster its mass increases. this isnt a very good explanation i know, but im a bit pissed (drunk if your american) and need to go to bed. anyways, read up stephen hawking and einstien if you can be bothered.
originally posted in June, 2004 by "dan" in the comments on a blog called "What Really Matters"
Steven Kurtz is coming to Toronto this Saturday to give a talk hosted by InterAccess (details here). Kurtz is a political artist -- a founding member of the collective Critical Art Ensemble -- and he was spuriously charged with bioterrorism last spring.
Here's a bit from the IA press release: "Kurtz’ appearance in Toronto offers the public the opportunity to hear Kurtz and Gregg Bordowitz, spokesperson for the CAE Defense Fund. They will speak about the work of CAE and the importance of creative freedom and privacy rights to educating the public about the effects of “militarized” biotechnology practices. A moderated discussion period will follow Kurtz's talk, led by Sally McKay."
CAE employ "Contestational Biology" as a means of bringing amateur citizens into the ethical discourse around biotechnology. Says CAE: "Within a very brief period of time, anyone who is modestly literate can learn the fundamentals of scientific study and ethics." The publisher Autonomedia puts out the collective's highly readable manifestos in the form of cute little books, and CAE also makes the papers available in PDF format on their website. The stuff is easy to read, and while they play with coporate terms and turns of phrase, the stance is only a tad tongue-in-cheek, offering very solid analysis on modes of resistance, the power dynamics of technological mythmaking, and functional info on how science works.
CAE is all about information, and the website provides an excellent access to the work. In the project "Free Range Grain", the group set up in Europe with a portable lab for testing food for genetic modifications. The equipment they use is detailed in a webtour, as well as photos of the event and an articulate, thorough position paper, which states: "Biotechnology and the science behind it have to be one of the most misunderstood areas of production in the cultural landscape. Myths, fantasy, misleading speculation, disinformation, and so on abound in the public sphere. Part of the reason for this state of communicative disorder is that the scientific process never makes a public appearance, only the miracle products as commodity fetish. We want to bring the routinized processes of science to the public to let them see them and act within them.
For information on the US federal case against CAE, and how you can help, go here.
NB: On the occasion of Kurtz' arrest back in May, I made a post on CAE quoting their publication Flesh Machine on the false promise of virtual reality.
Penrose Tiling
I made some poorly substantiated complaints about string theory in a recent post. Roger Penrose, who might be the most famous mathematician alive, has some complaints too, which carry just a little bit more weight than mine! There is a series of his lectures -- Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe -- available free online at www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/ [many many thanks to Marc Ngui for the tip].
String theory relies on the theory of supersymmetry as a "central ingredient." Supersymmetry calls for each particle to have a supersymmetric particle. But discovering these particles is proving very difficult. Says Penrose:
If you haven't seen the supersymmetric partner that's because we haven't built a powerful enough accelerator yet. As long as you don't find these things you just say "Well, we've got to build a more powerful machine," and it doesn't get disproved.Another famous fact about string theory is that it requires extra dimensions. Penrose says:
When I first heard about string theory I really thought it was a fantastic idea, I must say. It looked very beautiful...But then I learned it doesn't work unless space/time has 26 dimensions. Some people might say, "Oh well, space/time doesn't have 26 dimensions, so that's the end of that." But that wasn't the reaction of some people. They say, "Well, if it doesn't have 26 dimensions, we'll make it have 26 dimensions.But Penrose is far from dismissive of the theory. He recognises that it is compelling. In doing research he talked to Richard Thomas, a pure mathematician, who had the following to say:
Everytime there is a prediction made [by string theorists], and suitably interpreted mathematically, they turn out to be true. We have no idea why they're true, they must come from a higher reason.Penrose asks, how much of the current interest in string theory comes from fashion, and how much from physical motivations? He feels that it is not the latter, that string theory does not hold together, and is not a theory of quantum gravity. But, it's not just fashion either. Says Penrose:
I'm jolly glad that people are doing it, and something deep about physics is being revealed by these ideas.I've only watched the first lecture in the series so far, and it was excellent. The math and a lot of the concepts are beyond my grasp, but an untrained person like me can certainly follow the basic ideas, and the overhead projector diagrams and careful logic are a welcome antidote to the whizz-bang graphics of Brian Greene's Elegant Universe series.