development of circulations (an overview)
some key areas of problematization: commons, institutions, urbanism, modulators, exaptive systems, holey space
commons:
The co-production of the commons involves matters of concern. A matter of concern in this sense is not necessarily something in crisis with which we are concerned. Matters of concern are our everyday collective becomings -- the micro institutions of entangled practices, discourses and things -- rituals of coffee, habits of walking, public space etc. A matter of concern from the perspective of production has these four qualities: (1) it must matter, (2) must be cared for, (3) be populated with things, systems, peoples, interest groups etc., and (4) it must be durable. A simple idea that allows one to move quickly across cultures and natures to see specific entanglements as forms of collective becomings -- collective institutions of human and non-human agents. (here we are simply following from the work of Alfred North Whitehead).
projects:
writings: spurse discarded recipies & partial.pdf.
institution:
Entities are complex assemblages that cross many borders and boundaries -- biological, technological, social, and material. An assemblage is composed of relations of exteriority -- which is to simply say that entities are composed of heterogeneous parts that are detachable and re-attachable -- and that the relations between these parts are distinct from the parts themselves. If relations are separate from terms, then relations have their own distinct reality. Relations can change without the components of an entity changing. An entity is thus a whole that is distinct from its parts -- and is fundamentally irreducible to its parts. This brings us back to the point that assemblages cross the seeming boundaries of the biological, social and technological -- if entities cannot be defined by what is internal -- a relation of interiority -- then the distinctions between the natural and the cultural are trivial. To think in terms of assemblages is to think in terms of the co-production of collectives -- what form of collectivity is worth having?
All Entities are material practices, ecosystems and territories. Entities -- things, tools, concepts and organisms, for all of their crucial differences, are expressive material practices. These practices are part of systems, networks and ecosystems -- which are historical, dynamic, unstable and responsive. Yet they exhibit resiliency- they have forms of order and organization that are stable within specific environmental dynamics. These could be called habits -- the robust habits of specific systems.
Habits are achievements. It is a great achievement to have lungs, or a distinction between public and private space. Habits emerge as relations inside a complex evolving assemblage. As such they are a form of co-production that leads to a robust collective. And the form of collective that is such a practice is best termed institution. Habits, we could say, are the constant practice of producing institution.
Institutions are not simply organizations that are imposed upon us or within which we are forced to work. The collective and its distributed practice of an evolving institution is dynamic, contingent, and open-ended. Freedom involves, as Spinoza so carefully articulated, understanding the causal nature of our bondage. We would understand this as knowing the collective (human and non-human) forms of becoming that we both are and are agents within -- becoming and belonging -- the two key creative qualities of institution.
projects:
the center for the study of the collective
writings:
urbanism:
If urbanism is the rubric under which this work develops it centers around a set of linked issues (1) an ethics of things -- an ethics of the active agency of the displaced and the marginal (2) the production of the commons -- the development of the actuality of public space (3) the actuality of the local -- new forms of distributed locality (4) the question of the body (5) temporality (6) cartographies/choreographies -- not as representation but as new methodologies and strategies for engagement.
Current definitions of urbanism are founded upon population density, land use, and infrastructure. By this measure, Mexico City is the most urban place on planet earth. We do not seek to decry these measures, nor are we seeking some pearl of knowledge that will crystallize the urban condition as if it were a singular entity. On the contrary, urbanism is constantly building and rebuilding itself. It is a complex field situation which is in flux. Like a virus, it morphs in order to survive. It is a type of open-ended becoming. It is, as Deleuze states, an assemblage which “has neither base nor superstructure, neither deep structure nor superficial structure, it flattens all of its dimensions onto a single plane of consistency upon which reciprocal presuppositions, mutual insertions, and intersections play themselves out”. Our interest is in developing forms of action and becoming that are part of this event of urbanism such that urbanism itself becomes a tool towards new forms of subjectivity and ethics that distribute agency fully across this assemblage of our future. Thus Mexico City is, for us, a type of non-deterministic guide, an experimental territory, and a fully global space. Urbanism becomes a method of engagement that begins from the proposition ‘the world is wholly urban’.
projects:
writing:
mediators/modulators:
Reality is, then, a co-constructed achievement. Yes, constructed -- but not in the sense of social constructivism. Here is where we wish to most strongly separate ourselves from standard forms of realism and its social constructivist critics. Reality and the facts about reality are constructed -- but this makes neither of them either fixed or relativistic. Rather, construction involves complex forms of consultation and activation of forces across both human and non-human realms. The world is a participant in our development of facts, systems and truths -- and it is, like us, changed by these facts, systems and truths -- for concepts too have agency. To be well constructed is a question for our actuality. When we wander out into the world and engage with a bird perching on a bench beside us, we are changed by this experience, and so is the bird by our reading of bird lore. Agency. This world is for us an issue of widening and shrinking assemblages of collectives that are becoming institutions deeply enfolding and unfolding within the pluriverse. Institutional constructivism rather than institutional critique.
Agency is everywhere and agency is everywhere distributed agency. This is to say that everything affects and is affected by everything else. Everything has the potential to affect and be affected -- this means all forms of assemblages -- concepts, things, organisms, events, practices etc. As Deleuze says, following Spinoza, we do not know what a body can do. Stratify. Vary. Fold. And in this it is best to see events as being emergent and autopoetic -- agency cannot be located and in a singular position or fixed moment. It is not a question of where the beginning is, but where to begin.
If classical views of experience are skeptical of mediation -- mediation being so often seen as that which contaminates pure experience -- for us mediation is fundamental to the very possibility of experience. All action requires systems of active mediation -- mediation is what breaks habits and systems -- what pushes a systems towards otherness -- newness -- the dark night of the future. Mediators -- our ambassadors of difference.
project:
writings:
exaptive systems:
In evolutionary biology this process is called exaptive -- defining an expressive material event that is outside of (hence ex-) adaptive behavior (habit). Matter as expressive, auto-poetic, emergent and exaptive. Entities are affective and auto-poetic transformers -- triggers -- of systems. Our movements within this world -- our entanglements are emergent -- new and irreversible. We are involved in the production of the future in our actions -- our collective becomings and practices of institution are always at the edge of rupture -- this world -- this hypernature, that involves everything is not fixed -- does not have an ideal state it is in, coming from or moving towards... -- the universe is radically contingent. Its stability is temporal. It is fully open to transformation.
Life is thus an ethics of collectivity, institutional production, and spaces of situated sustainability -- belonging. Belonging? Yes, belonging -- but not in the sense of identity or representation but rather belonging in relation to that great Spinozian question: what a body can do? How does a hybrid complex of multiple forces and systems -- moving across and beyond the biological, conceptual, technological -- sustain a becoming that is open?What can a body do? This form of question is not one of simply interpreting the world -- or having a world that is composed of differing interpretations, rather it is an experimental question -- how do things compose and recompose, fold, unfold, and refold? Belonging, that is emergent, multimodal, multiscaled, heterogeneous, and nested, in asking: What new linkages can be sustained? What new infoldings can be welcomed? How do we begin then? Perplexity, curiosity, and active experimental consultation...
project:
writings:
holey spaces:
(coming soon)
project:
writings:
human and non-human psychogeograhy
