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Title: Affective Disorder @ New School Author: Various Authors Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: academy, anti-fascist, anti-globalization, neoliberalism, post-industrial, post-left, progress, work Source: Retrieved on November 24, 2009 from http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10131
the empire strikes back...
It was only a matter of time; protest at the contemporary University,
and pretty soon the entire state apparatus comes crashing down upon you.
At first, it seems absurd â the federal government of the most powerful
nation in the world, and the worldsâ largest police force, against a
bunch of students. Yet after some thought, this attack begins to make
sense. In totalitarianism, there is complete, unmediated control by the
totality, by the state and commodity forms. In our society, this
complete control still exists, only it is channeled through a complex
system of institutions, mediated and obscured by what we might call an
interface. In our society, we might call this interface liberalism. The
importance of liberal institutions, of the New School, Berkley and Santa
Cruz, arguably the most progressively liberal academies in the United
States, becomes increasingly apparent.
More frequently, however, need for direct intervention is prevented
through the involvement of aid organizations and the United Nations,
which serve to suppress disturbances with minimal, but carefully
targeted aid, or at the very least split opposition into powerless
reformists and isolated rebels. If such agencies claim to be against war
and conflict, it is only because they have far more effective means of
global control at their disposal. It is the process of urbanization
which allows for the installation of wage labor as a totalized form of
economic relation; the ensuring over-population and decline in self
sufficiency has the effect of increasing the potential for exploitation.
The consolidation of the harvesting of resources, and the subsequent
shift towards more automated, corrosive relationship with nature has
poisoned sustainable forms of life. Meanwhile, the complete penetration
of luxury goods, mass media and commercialized entertainment has
annihilated pre-existing cultures in order to solidify the hegemony of
the commodity form.
For it is our foreign policy think tanks and associated humanitarian
institutions that orchestrate a softer form of imperialism, smuggled in
through the aid crates of countless non-governmental organizations. The
age of colonial domination may be over, but the troops of the Peace
Corps ensure subservience: sure, they may help build a school here or
there, but their real modus operandi is undoubtedly to create a global
marketplace, to teach starving children how to drink Pepsi. The aid
provided by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank takes the
form of conditional loans, which demand a prompt restructuring and
privation of the domestic social structure, to bring it in line with the
âintegratedâ economy. Social services and corporate taxes are cut,
tariffs are removed and the local way of life is sacrificed for the
benefit of industrial, often-foreign owned production. When revolts
against this new world order occur, they are crushed through military
coups or right-wing guerrillas, private military contractors or even
direct CIA intervention.
A similar process continues in developed countries, as urban development
agencies and planners pave the way for the further gentrification and
inhibition of urban areas. The Kaplan Center for New York City Affairs,
which would later evolve into Milano, served as a modern prototype for
what would become the definitive socio-economic control apparatus of the
postmodern age. Development, once seen as a means to increase the
productive capacity of a city or neighborhood, becomes an end in itself
following the cessation of production in the metropolis. Development is
now the abolition of poverty through the obfuscation of all the
marginalized forces that were once able to elucidate their poverty. It
is a prerequisite for the post-industrial economy that the old working
class be annihilated as both a political and productive force. The new
metropolis must be seen as a space for consumption, as a space for life
and leisure. It must also a space for the underground economy, for new
forms of servitude and subsistence, though this aspect of its existence
is carefully concealed by the process of development.
âthere was just an anti-war protest in front of 65 Fifth Avenue. at nyu,
they arrest their own students. we donât do that here. weâre a liberal
school.â
â officer cruz, new school campus security, 2008
In Pittsburg, rendered capital of the neoliberal world during the Group
of 20 Summit, we saw the service economy constitute the face of the new
economy. Late stage capitalism sets about to manufacture not things, but
abstract concepts such as health and knowledge. As riot cops attacked
students and protesters, members of Pittsburgâs new middle class
dutifully continued their leisure activities out of fear of losing their
jobs or student status. In the postmodern playground, all interpersonal
relationships are commodified; all existences are subsumed. Yet herein
lies the realities of our new world: we either devote our entire lives
to an empty form of work that consumes our waking life, determines our
existence from cradle, through the abandon of a perpetual adolescence,
to the grave. Or we are marginalized, forced into insecure and often
dangerous forms of subservience. All labor is political, or it is
criminal. Is it any wonder that we choose to appropriate alternate forms
of resistance, ones that deviate from the tired and stifling conventions
of politics? For, if labor is politicized, the converse is surely true;
in todayâs world, politics has just become a new form of work, of value
creation. It could be argued that the affective energies poured into the
Obama movement served not only to reinforce a political system, but also
served to restore confidence to an economy that would otherwise be in
free fall. The illusion of progress, of change, is instrumental to the
entrapment of activism; in a world so focused on branding, novelty
replaces ideology and politics becomes little more than a customer
service department for transnational capitalism. It has entered the
realm of culture, of immaterial products which create their own demands.
Our desire to engage in political activism brought us to New School,
where our liberal forms of resistance were commended and supported by
the establishment. We learned media strategies, methods of theoretical
elucidation. We were given an introduction to a politics that was as
apparent as it was meaningless. We spoke truth to power, and they used
it in their marketing.
âthe new school now prepares to construct a building...
from foundational ideas that are just as radical.â
â ideo, new school design subcontractor
We must therefore ask ourselves: what does it mean, the refusal of
political work, of a form of shallow dissent which both strengthens and
validates the system? Is it a melancholic apathy, as our âstrategicâ
âalliesâ would have us believe? Or is it a potentiality to be explored?
Is it possible that it could take the form of a chronic rupture that
destroys the political dynamo, resulting in a subsequent liberation of
affective capacity? Fear no doubt serves as a resource for the defensive
mechanisms of the sociopolitical establishment, but it is not this force
that perpetuates it on a daily basis.
A human strike at New School, a refusal to participate in the production
of artificial joy in the form of mass culture and political hope,
threatens to disrupt the entire binary in which we find ourselves
trapped. It threatens the opacity of the deception of late capitalism, a
capitalism that appears dynamic, ethical, green, exploiting as its main
resource not products, but the emotional energies and social
relationships of its participants. It threatens the conception of a
democratic alternative in the age of hyper-mediation and assimilation of
resistance movements. It threatens to spread to a generation of
precarious laborers in non-profits, universities and start-ups, who are
barely deluded by the idea of changing the world without destroying the
fundamentals on which it is based. And it has already inspired squats,
sit-ins and occupations at schools around the world, where students
share our conception of the urgency of political disaffiliation.
We seek not to build a movement, to compose strategies, to win demands.
We do not believe we have the means to effect any real changes to the
base structure of Capital or Empire, nor can we conceive of preferable
totality with which to replace it. Our aspirations are towards escape,
towards disruption and disintegration of systemic nodes of control. We
may not be able to stop or change the system, but we see inactivity as
its perpetuation. We do not know if it is possible to build a non-state
community, or develop new forms of social relationships; we donât
particularly care. We know that resistance is an end in itself, while
strategy is an abstraction and politics a myth. We know we have real
potential:
to affect change,
to empower ourselves and others,
to build the common.
of the State)
The New School was founded by anti-fascist scholars and we like to think
on this day we did some justice to their legacy. Today we shut down the
Securing New York and the Nation: The Creation of the Department of
Homeland Security event at the New School in solidarity with prisoners
of the Green Scare, the victims of the War on Terror, prisoners
everywhere, undocumented immigrants, and the anti-capitalists currently
acting against the G20 in Pittsburgh. Tom Ridge was the first Secretary
of Bushâs Department of Homeland Security, formed in the jingoistic days
following 9/11. As Department Secretary, Ridge was responsible for and
complicit in the torture of detainees, the entrapment and harsh
imprisonment of eco-activists such as Daniel McGowan and Eric McDavid,
brutal raids on immigrant communities, the political manipulation of
terror alerts, and countless other abuses. The youth of this nation have
had the misfortune of growing up under 8 years of the Bush
Administration, and we will not tolerate the presence of one of its
central henchman in our community.
To be honest, this invitation was no surprise, as Kerrey and Ridge are
both politicians with close ties to both the intelligence community and
the military-industrial complex. Ridge and Kerrey both actively argued
in favor of the war in Iraq. Ridge and Kerrey are both complicit in the
harassment of fellow activists, Ridge for the Green Scare, and Kerrey
for his involvement in the National Security Higher Education Advisory
Board which aims to harass college activists. Early this year, Kerrey
admitted to asking NYPD to follow New School activists opposed to his
administration, and on April 10^(th) Kerrey asked the NYPD to lock-up 19
of our classmates for protesting his administration. They received
Misdemeanor and Felony charges that are still not settled. We will never
forget or forgive the actions of either of these scumbags, and want to
hold them accountable. There is no discourse that will lessen our rage.
At 9:00 AM, cellphones began to ring and continued to ring for 5
minutes. As the crowd grew frustrated, Kerrey was forced to stop his
anecdote about the good old days of the Bush Administration. As tension
grew, we began to announce ourselves as opponents to the event, calling
out Bob and Tom as the fascists they are, reminding them of our
imprisoned friends, their complicity in torture and war, and refusing to
leave. After a few minutes of this Kerrey asked for civility, and in a
desperate bid to regain control asked for a question from a student. The
question for Ridge was: âDo you feel that your willingness to sentence
to death more than 200 prisoners during your term as Pennsylvania
governor bore any relation to President Bushâs decision to name you
secretary of Homeland Security?â
Despite the calming protesters and Ridges attempt to answer the
question, it was enough for Kerrey to conclude that the talk could not
continue, and so he shut it down. A large section of the audience
applauded, and the neo-conservative invaders of the New School skulked
out in anger. Not a single one of Ridgeâs books were sold. The entire
meeting lasted about 25 minutes, but if Kerrey did not pull it so early
we had plenty more planned. And we still do.
This communique is republished for informational purposes only, so we
may discuss in depth the events of late September. The Affective
Collective was not involved in the disruption of this or any other
University event, and continues to assert that it exists outside the
boundaries of space and time.
âyou donât need
too many committed to martyrdom
to wreak havoc...â
â tom ridge
The New School, following a joyous demonstration of rage against that
reprobate Tom Ridge, has decided to invoke what can only be described as
a State of Exception. The decision to invite the former secretary of
Homeland Security to speak at a University that was founded on the
autonomy of education from Government and the Military-Industrial
Complex was questionable, to say the least. From our understanding, one
of Milanoâs sinister policy institutes took time out from its regular
schedule of brown bag orgies celebrating gentrification and juvenile
incarceration to bring in an individual responsible for the greatest
campaign against dissent and popular freedom since the start of the Cold
War. As might have been expected, certain New School students exercised
their free speech rights to ask why the fuck he was there, and criticize
his terroristic tactics against the American population. A few cell
phones went off, the word âfascistâ was thrown back and forth. It was a
dull and predictable response. Yet it served to show us all something
about the state of our University. Rather than allow any intervention
from students, Kerrey proceeded to shut down the event, storming back to
his Ivory Fortress. Less than a few hours later, his minions set about
creating a state of emergency, attempting to force the Deanâs Council,
Student and Faculty Senates to pass resolutions condemning the
dissidents and to allow immediate and ruthless disciplinary action.
Meanwhile, other students found themselves in Pittsburgh, the global
capital during the two days of the G20 summit. It was here that the face
of the New Economy was most apparent; glistening skyscrapers with no one
in them, the poor forced outward to crumbling buildings and tent cities.
The productive industries, the steelworkers, were all gone, replaced
with the machinery of bio-political reproduction: monolithic
Universities and Hospitals. Scattered rebels fractured the spectacle,
the entrapment of bodies by capitalist normalcy, and students found
themselves in the middle of a Civil War. A State of Emergency had been
declared in Pittsburgh, allowing the Secret Service, direct agents of
sovereign power, to control and empty the city. Heavily armored riot
cops marched through clouds of tear gas, beating back kids and laying
siege to University Dorms. The National Guard was deployed preemptively
and operated with an uncanny precision, abducting students into unmarked
cars. Helicopter searchlights and a virtual curfew dominated the night.
Witness the LRAD, the Armyâs new crowd control device, âsound tanksâ
that emit high intensity resonance waves, causing disorientation, pain,
seizures... Martial law wasnât officially declared, but then what is
nowadays? This is a terror that goes without saying.
As Walter Benjamin writes, âthe tradition of the oppressed teaches us
that the âstate of emergencyâ in which we live is not the exception but
the rule.â So one may be forgiven for countering that this is nothing
new; indeed, many of us cannot remember a time before the End of
History. The imprints of burning towers, of tortured bodies and endless
strip malls have been burned upon our unconscious. We are expected to
live our lives in a constant state of panic. Perpetual fear, caused by
orange alerts and limited-time-only sales, epitomizes our reality. The
natural response to such anxiety is an individualistic,
disaster-orientated mentality. If we are not building bunkers, it is
because we have built them inside our minds. If we are not stocking up
on food, it is because we are perfectly prepared to eat each other. When
we worry about the future, it is only a conscious reflection upon the
millennial orientation of our subconscious. âIn the posturban dimension
of the cyberspatial sprawl, contact seems to become impossible,â writes
Franco Berardi; it must and inevitably will be âreplaced by precipitous
forms of experience that overlap with commercialization and violence.â
We are always lingering in a State of Excitation, having spent a
perpetuity waiting for something, anything, to happen.
The Obama phenomenon was indicative of this fact. The communal feeling
of hope, of an end to the manipulative tension of the past decade, was
inspiring, if misguided. The new President brought not an end to the
crisis, but its more effective management. Change deployed troops to
Afghanistan and threatened attacks on Iran. Change meant millions of
public dollars continue to be poured into banks and health care
insurance companies. Change means more of the same, but faster. But the
multitude grows restless. What we seek is not a more sophisticated form
of entrapment or a more acute excitement. Rather, we seek an escape, the
release that comes from the formation of Common Notions.
A Common Notion is alternatively an idea, a shared orgasm, or an
occupation. It is a mode of living, an enjoyment of being-in-the-world,
collectivized and made accessible, sublime. It stands directly opposed
to the State of Exception, built upon fear and apathy, or a State of
Excitation, which results from the reification and denial of desires, in
the sense that it is born out-of-and-for joy, in the sense that it is
joy itself. The pure engagement of last semester has faded into passion
and excitement for further collective action, yet this is a sorry state
of affairs â this passion is but a passive melancholia. Everybody is
checking the websites, whispering about California, discussing tactics.
Not just the students. The administration sees it fit to create the
illusion of a threat, to exaggerate a few students with a microphone
into a potential apocalypse for establishment values. Yet maybe the time
for a true rupture grows near. New School was once proud of its autonomy
from the surveillance state, from cutthroat capitalists and military
officers. As Walter Benjamin once suggested, âwe shall clearly realize
that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this
will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.â
âlet us to do all we can
to honor all those who
rose up with resolve
to defeat evil,
who were released into
the arms of angels
to see the grateful face of god.â
â tom ridge
These facades[1] employ a view of the interior goings of the university
as an advertisement. The unavoidable performance of the students and
workers in these spaces produces an affect which is then utilized to
make the outsider want to be inside of the space the window excludes
them from. This one-quarter inch of glass represents the invisible
barrier that is the cost of tuition, of privilege, of consumer power.
The very ethos of the university, so blatantly attacked by the
university administration that has created this site of spectacle, is
instrumentalized to attract potential consumers. These spaces offer the
future consumer of the product its advertisement, a simulacrum of the
university, a taste of the affect they might soon purchase and fully
possess. But the advertisement isnât on a billboard or a screen â the
advertisement is the university itself.
This is obviously objectionable, a disgrace, a vulgar misrepresentation
and exploitation of the university: a place of rigorous study,
innovative design, unbounded artistic expression. But doesnât the
new-New School epitomize the dirty secret of the university in consumer
culture? It is not the product we buy, but what it means, not the
diploma but the experience. We, as students, purchase the guided
formation of a better subject, a future self, a better self. We buy our
futures. But isnât this is the essential hope of education? It is not
the study, design, or art itself that the university desires to create,
but that these things affect us. We hope that the things we pay to learn
in this place might make us part of a better world, which is currently,
for the most part, miserable.
The logic of commercial capital in the age of affective labor has become
fully (un)realized in the new-New School: simply by walking past a
university building, pedestrians come face to face with who they want to
be, who they wish they we were but are not: the student on the other
side of the $200,000 glass. [2]
The students and workers inside are at once standing before you and in
another world, in person and on the screen. And you could be them. You
can see yourself sitting in that library, devouring page after page,
writing a film, meeting your first love. The glass is only thing that
stands between you and the smiling people in phosphorescent orange glow,
the vanguardist concert, the truth, love.[3]
and for $200,000
you can glow too...
The power of collective memory lies not in memories themselves but
rather in how they haunt and manipulate the future like spectres. The
ghosts that haunt us the most are not the metaphysical remains of people
who have died but rather are past, collective, experiences that have
burrowed into tunnels in our brains, seeking to feed and maintain
themselves. In day to day experience we rarely acknowledge that they
exist, as they burrow farther and farther into the brain to drink and
puke and binge and purge until we catch a disease that we donât even
know that we have. Because all organic material â be it wood, silk, or
aloe must come from living things, then culture itself is organic. It is
made of living things. Without the lives of the people that create it,
it would die. Culture must be looked at as a vital entity in itself and
living entities â be them human, animal, plant, fungus â above all else
desire to remain alive. A culture will fight to rid itself of foreign
entities. It will react to foreign substances as if they are allergenic
and it will develop desires that may be counter its constituents â to
its limbs, to its heart, and above all to its people.
We live in an age of mediated information; an age in which visual and
auditory media have become a primary source for information, and very
little is experienced. In this way, our primary sources for information
are secondary; these accounts are played for us on a screen or a radio
as we blink at them. Media is food for culture; it causes homogeneity of
experience. Such homogeneity makes it easier for people to be
subordinated to a cultural norm, where similar experiences create
similar emotions and desires, paving way for an integrated cultural
desire and placating desires for cultural upheaval.
Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854 and was since primarily raised by his
widowed Catholic mother in a provincial town in the northeast of France.
She had high expectations for young Rimbaud, using Latin verse as a tool
to prevent him from falling to the depravity of his poorer friends. He
saw no merit in memorizing Latin and out of fury once wrote an essay,
regarding his disdain for verse memorization, in which he wrote âI will
be a capitalistâ over and over again until he had reached 700 words.
Verse memorization is a very tangible manifestation of how cultural
ideas are transmitted to cultural participants in order to create a
collective memory, an essay in which no matter what words are stated
they all read âI will be a capitalistâ over and over and over again.
In a historic letter, a teenaged Rimbaud writes, âJe est un autreâ,
which translates to âI Is anotherâ or âI Is Somebody Elseâ. The beauty
and horror of these few words lie in their phraseology in that they are
fundamentally grammatically incorrect. If Rimbaud meant to say âI am
somebody elseâ he would have written âJe suis an autreâ. The use of
âestâ suggests a lack of self that âsuisâ could not convey, because
âestâ like the English is can only be used in this way as regarding
something other than oneself. We say such things as âthat isâ, âit isâ,
âshe isâ, âlife isâ, âtime isâ, and âdesire isâ but never âI isâ because
we otherwise would be committing a cultural faux pas whose consequence
is perceived ignorance. From birth, children are immersed in complex
grammatical structures which convey a sense of distinct separation of
self from society as a whole â a separation which isnât really there. At
the same time, we accept âwe areâ as our one and only tool for attaching
ourselves to an outsider or to a whole. By saying âI isâ another Rimbaud
rejects that he is a self outside this other.
Life within the university lacks resolution. The goal of the university
is to offer a cure for the sheer nausea we feel every day upon waking up
but itâs a cure that is always undesirable, painful, or a lie. I is not
an activist. An activist exists to subvert one part of the social order
and my goal is to subvert social order. Activists live off of the
rotting fruit of excess while denouncing the farmers who grow it. They
decompose into fertilizer. Not long ago, the island of Manhattan was
filled with tributaries and lakes; these bodies still lie somewhere in
our cultural memory. Tributaries are defined as big holes in the ground
that allow for the free flow of life. Itâs time to stop gathering
signatures and to start putting these vortices back where they belong...
the order,
the ghost,
(the divine intervention)
New School holds true to the values of free expression, but what is
expression without content? Through decades of manipulative
simplification, the potent moment that was the founding of this
University has been diluted into a completely passive event, deprived of
all meaning. We have seen the University spend several million dollars
on its rebranding efforts and there are few who do not find its outcome
ridiculous: the stenciled logo and the allusions to a franchise. Yet
beneath the explicit alteration lies a more sophisticated process, in
which the critical nature of the New School is gradually toned down,
allowing the University to function as a prototypical Neoliberal
institution. The project of modernity, the search for truth, was
problematic to say the least. Yet it still served as a barrier to the
complete moral relativism and exploitative behavior that the modern
economy desires.
Following a recent disruption at a University event, certain students
were charged with âthe disruption of university business and disturbance
of the practice of free speech;â the word choice is telling. In the
postmodern University, âfree speechâ is that speech which is conducive
to university business, in the sense that the âfree marketâ is only free
in that it provides for unlimited profiteering. Following the decline of
truth, the University has restructured itself as a lubricant for the
global economy. New School, with its globalized student body, precarious
academic labor force and location in the worldâs first metropolis, was
an ideal target for a new, twisted experiment.
Yet the New Schoolâs potent history cannot be completely concealed under
the enamel of what is effectively a meaningless concept. The New School
was not founded on any abstract conception of âfree exchange of ideasâ.
Rather, it was founded as an autonomous space in response to a distinct
progression of American society towards totalitarianism. Few members of
the university community are aware precisely how terrifying the moment
of 1918 was for the future of education in the United States.
People are generally aware that as a part of the War Effort for World
War One, the government was given exceptional control over industry,
through the War Planning Board. The construction of this board was, in
many ways, a major benefit of the United Statesâ entering into the war;
the exceptional powers given the board by the United States Government
allowed it to appropriate German chemical patents and allocate them to
American corporations, allowing the US to become the dominant world
power by the warâs end. Yet there were some who sought to expand the
control of the board to encompass biopolitical production, that is to
say, the production of officers and engineers for the war effort.
Amongst these was Columbiaâs present, Nicholas Butler, who advocated
putting every University in the United States under what was effectively
martial law.
The organizational structure to allow this, the Student Army Training
Corps, was already in place on many campuses by the start of 1918. At
Vanderbilt College, for example, a school newsletter jubilantly
explained the fascistic nature of the new University: âIt would even
seem that the college has been transformed into a camp, with its men in
khaki, now parading along the reconstructed roads of the campus, now
drilling on Dudley Field, now marching in squads to their classrooms.â
All but a few students were drafted into the program; at Princeton out
of 2,500 students only 100 were exempted from service. At Columbia, the
New York times reported that âall the able-bodied students above 18
years old will be in the uniform of the Army or Navy.â
Not only were professors forced to take a loyalty oath, to condone the
United States participation in the war, but they were forced to teach
classes designed by army and government bureaucrats, which had as their
aim not an educated population but an obedient fighting force. It is no
small wonder that Professors Dana and Cattell, in conjunction with a
noticeable student movement, refused to cooperate and were fired, or
that Drs. Beard and Dewey resigned in protest, determined to found a
research institution free from government interference. What institution
might that have been? As such, the New School at its inception
understood that Free Inquiry demanded separation between the University
and Government Institutions.
Meanwhile, real questions about free speech remain unanswered. What is
President Kerreyâs relationship with the Intelligence Community? We know
that he performed missions with the CIA as a Navy Seal, in which he
mastered techniques of suppression and manipulation. We know that he
served as Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, with
direct oversight over the staff and officers of each of the 16
intelligence agencies (including former DEA Secretary Ray Kelly). We
know that he continued participating in repression and intelligence
gathering even as New School President, taking a position on the
National Advisory Board on Higher Education that the FBI convened in
2005. Are we seeing a revival of COINTELPRO program that illegally
suppressed student dissent in the 1960s and 1970s?
Recently, we have seen anti-terrorist squads deployed on student
protesters. We have seen a Grand Jury subpoena, an intimidation and
intelligence gathering tactic used repeatedly by the FBI, issued against
a New School student. Meanwhile, police forces engaged in a brutal,
coordinated raid on a fundraiser last semester (arresting 15 students
and sending several to the hospital); other activists report being
followed or asked questions by police and other individuals relating to
protests at the University. And the New School has effectively placed a
complete gag order on all student participants of last Aprilâs
occupation, preventing them from engaging in any political activity or
even remaining on campus outside of class time. Faculty and students
must ask themselves which constitutes a bigger threat to free speech at
the New School: a few students asking questions out of turn, or a
federal campaign, supported by Bob Kerrey, to suppress student activism
within the United States.
Some folks went to Times Square to try and disrupt a talk by David
Irving, noted Holocaust denier and friend to many an American Neo-Nazi.
The event had been moved around a lot, since theyâre a pretty unpopular
bunch and have to book events using fake names. Yet some kids came
through, and a barrage of text messages let us know what was going down.
He would be speaking at the Doubletree Hotel; folks would assemble
around five and make magic happen.
As usual, our crew late and missed the entire action, but it sounds like
some folks tried to rush on in there, found the door locked, and ended
up having to rush on out stage left after effectively dearresting one of
their number. It turned out the event wasnât actually starting for a
number of hours. Anyway, those folks dipped out, and folks who were left
decided that since their numbers were reduced, they might as well just
use the affective power of the spectacular disruption to their
advantage. So some folks put on their friendly faces, assumed the
demeanor of the concerned activist, and headed on in there.
They came running out after a few minutes. Apparently the manager had
refused to believe that David Irving, real life Nazi (TM), was hanging
out in their hotel, scheduled to speak in a matter of minutes. The folks
who had been talking decided to engage in dialog with customers instead
and security promptly emerged. I think that one could safely assume that
there was a collective feeling of âWhat the fuck do we do now?â
Minutes later, the manager and a hotel security officer came running
outside; she was visibly shaken, holding a cup of coffee and a
cigarette. But the security officer, with an anxious look on his face,
was the first to speak. âI just want you guys to know I feel like a
complete assholeâ. We think he was the guy who grabbed our friend. Then
the manager, who had minutes before thrown some of us out of the hotel,
began to apologize. We figure she probably did a google search and found
out what her guest was planning to say. Uh-oh!
âListen, Iâm working on getting them out of here right now. But our
guests canât know about this. What would it take to make you guys
disappear?â We look at each other. Sure, it would be amusing, but thatâs
not what we came here for. âUhm, weâre not going to do anything. We just
wanted to tell you about it.â âBut what about... are there more of you?â
âMost certainly.â We waved at a bunch of European tourists on the other
side of the street. They waved back, and continued walking. At this
point, there were several hundred people around the square, and who are
we to say theyâre not down with the cause.
âWell, can you tell them, uh, not to do anything for half an hour? Weâre
doing the best we can.â âNot really. But if we see them leave, we can
text our friends. But we canât promise anything. There are some real
crazies out there...â She runs back inside, and we proceed to giggle a
little bit. We cross the street and wait for the media. But media is all
around us, giant garish digital screens and abrasive pixels. So we make
fun of tourists for a little while, and contemplate disrupting an Apple
commercial thatâs being filmed. Every few minutes a bunch of tourists
would ask the cops where the olive garden was. We giggled. After twenty
minutes, some angry looking old white men started emerging from the
hotel, getting into cabs. They looked around, trying to find the punks
that had disrupted their event, but only saw a crowd of ambivalent
tourists smiling at them. We hung back, avoiding cops and waiting for
the big fish. Apparently more folks had repeatedly gotten inside,
stirring up some more mayhem. So when he came out and saw a bunch of
kids running at him, he headed for his limo pretty fast. He got away, or
perhaps we did. After all, he was flanked by three huge skinheads, each
weighing double what we do.
Antifa is fun now and then, but the far right is really not what we need
to worry about nowadays. Instead, itâs the complex mediated environments
we find ourselves in, the cultural milieu of sublimination that we
experience every day. An Iphone might not exactly be a copy of Mein
Kampf, but itâs an indoctrination nonetheless. Neoliberal society has
taken the most compelling element of fascism, of futurism; itâs ability
to aestheticise everything. The giant screens show explosions, fashion
and conspicuous consumption; sex and poverty without missing a beat. Our
universities, our workplaces; our homes and our lives are theirs. Our
analysis has granted us a degree of nihilism. How could it not? It may
be that our actions have no effect, since the system is so malevolent,
so entrenched that few can even perceive it...
...yet we survive
in moments of joy.
an affective current
encircles
&& threatens
to liberate a world.
universitaet augsburg
otto friedrich universitÀt, bamberg
universitÀt basel
universitaet beograd
university of california, berkeley
bergische universitÀt
alice salomon hochschule, berlin
beuth hochschule, berlin
freie universitÀt, berlin
humboldt universitÀt, berlin
technische universitÀt, berlin
universitÀt bern
universitÀt bielefeld
universita degli studi di bologna
universitÀt bonn
hbk, braunschweig
technische universitÀt, darmstadt
heinrich heine universitĂ€t, dĂŒsseldorf
universitÀt erfurt
universitÀt erlangen
universitÀt duisburg-essen
universitÀt freiburg
technische universitÀt, graz
uni greifswald
universitÀt hamburg
leinbiz-universitÀt, hannover
universitÀt hildesheim
university of illinois, urbana
universitÀt innsbruck
universitÀt jena
technische universitÀt kaiserslautern
universitÀt klagenfurt
universitÀt zu köln
kunstuni linz
universitÀt linz
university of the arts, london
london college of communications
universitĂ€t lĂŒneburg
universitÀt giessen
johannes gutenberg universitÀt, mainz
h.sch. niederrhein, mönchengladbach
ludwig maximilians uni., munchen
universitĂ€t , mĂŒnster
universitĂ€t nĂŒrnberg
universitĂ€t von osnabrĂŒck
universitÀt passau
fh, potsdam
universitÀt potsdam
universitÀt regensburg
universitÀt salzburg
universitÀt des saarlandes
university of california, santa cruz
uniwersytet marii curie, sklodowskiej
universitÀt stuttgart
universitĂ€t tĂŒbingen
universitÀt ulm
akademie der bildenden kĂŒnste, wien
boku wien
technische universitÀt, wien
universitÀt wien
universitĂ€t zĂŒrich
& more to come
we «3 you all!
Â
[1] Ray Fogelman Study Space, the University Welcome Center, Sheila
Johnson Design Center, the proposed 65 5^(th) Avenue Concert and Retail
spaces.
[2] Fine Print: the affect you pay to create will be expropriated in
turn and used to hook the next good consumer.
[3] This image is from the postmodern designs for the new 65 5^(th)
Avenue, the building twice brought to life by occupations last year.
Maybe theyâll give us a star.