XX. NON-CONCLUSION
23.03.2019

“Any social theory (art practice) worthy of its ambition requires a space for enigmatic, chaotic, incoherent, and structurally contradictory attachments;” Lauren Berlant

This blog was initiated for academic purpose and from a deep defensive stand. Herein, as I believed that relevance laid in criticality, I realised this disposition concealed deeper uncertainties. Uncertainty in voice, in thinking, in tone — disguised by the imposition of my language upon theories and concepts, I intuitively grasped but refused to listen to, as I though I had to be the loudest. Meanwhile it might be of necessity to embrace the silence of trouble, the peacefulness of uncertainty ceasing with systematic criticism and judgment. To adopt a form of passionate distance. As we discussed in our last session, there is no such thing as a fixed conclusion. To be able to formulate this open-fragility, in both writing and creating, could be a way to embrace this absence of conclusion. I will never be able to state, to conclude, to prove nor to affirm. All the words written there are just a part of some semi-cosmic un-planned travel I seem to have enrolled myself in together with many other voices. An assemblage of thoughts.
Reflecting on this travel and reading “To be two” by Luce Irigaray, I became aware of the urgency to be many in this journey. Although there would be several things to be said about the way this year was dis-organised, I realised the biggest relief reached was that of not being one. I finally felt that my voice, although noisy, incoherent and incomplete, could be heard by people that cared and listened for the sake of curiosity while thinking together about new ways of being in our mess. Indeed, this course, this moment, pulled me out of solitary reasoning, helped me to not conclude in haste while taking time to listen, as Irigaray would say, to you and therefore to me.
I would like to unpack a bit the following posts as they echo what we referred to during our group discussion in that of the non-necessity of conclusion toward an acknowledgment of process as “art” in itself. The following texts are traces of the r-evolution of my thinking and being. Although I did tanned them a little to make them more readable to you, it is important to acknowledge that they result from a weekly writing started 8 month ago and are the literal translation of my though process but also emotions, struggles, doubts and events which occurred during this time-lapse. It is a re-transcription of theoretical processes; an endured search for what could be my voice echoing your voices. It is the morphing of a very critically insecure voice into something less definable, still in trouble, but not single anymore.
Farther, It is also the re-transcription of sensations I felt while reading the voices of other. Notably a few of those authors changed the way I consider myself, yourself, my practice and the matrix. Sadie Plant changed my way of understanding cyberspace and its contingency as an activist realm; she gave me confidence in believing that my insane cyber-thinking might has a place out there. Donna Haraway made me realise I was somehow right to doubt the hegemonic systemic structures inbuilt in science discourses. Suchman gave me tools to re-configurate and apply my technical knowledge in something more useful than dominating machine and enslaving them to neoliberal labour. Luce Irigaray and Lauren Berlant taught me love was a method, that silence was as important as words and that to be is to love to you but not love you. Francisco Varela and Fred Moten took me through phenomena of being other, being many, acknowledging bodies as something equal to mind and beyond imperialist control. This year’s Transmediale brought some sort of humour and satisfaction toward the fact that sad-socialism was and is not the only solution. Meanwhile, poetry, queerness, commoning and caring could be alternative solutions. Barad introduced me to quantum physics and our cosmic potency of being apart while connected to one another; that time might not really exists and therefore that all the structures depending upon it are more than relative. Negri and Hardt gave me methodical keys for commoning as a resisting practice against the neoliberal art market and toward a less ego-centric way of making — art. I could go on for quite a while, but I will stop here, I think you get the picture.

Please be tolerant while reading the first posts as they are shyly critical and uncertain and I did not want to re-write them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Salter, C. (2015). Alien agency. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Rosner, Daniela K. "Making Core Memory: Textile Legacies of Innovation Work". Critical Fabulations: Reworking the Methods and Margins of Design. MIT Press, 2018.URL
Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. M Archive: After the End of the World. Duke University Press, 2018.URL
AFROFUTURISM 2.0 & THE BLACK SPECULATIVE ART MOVEMENT Notes on a Manifesto by Reynaldo AndersonURL
IMAGES
String game: http://www.alysion.org/figures/introkids.htm
The never ending story: http://www.sky.com/tv/movie/the-neverending-story-1984
Physarum polycephalum: https://phys.org/news/2016-04-intelligent-brainless-slime.html
The life cycle of Physarum polycephalum: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-life-cycle-of-Physarum-polycephalum3-9-35-Notes-Spores-released-from-mature_fig1_232257023