update on recent research activities:
 
Dear fellow researchers, makers & thinkers we have been quite busy over the last year or so with a number of related research endeavors in the public realm. We would like to share some of the hi-lights of this with you. But first some other news --  many of you will be pleased to note that we have updated our web site (www.spurse.org). It is by no means complete but we are working towards making this a collection point for materials, news, books & DVDs etc. plus a place to support the dialogue of ongoing work. (Note: we have changed our email address: spurse01@gmail.com).
 
Conceptualizing Naturecultures: Over the last couple of years we have been developing ways to rethink practices of nature and culture based in forms of immanence that refuse the problematic metaphysics of nature and culture. An essay that re-writes Marx’s “11 thesis...” & a set of diagrams is being published by the journal WhiteWalls. This will be coming out in the summer (see: http://www.festivalofmaps.com/print.aspx?eid=33). (This essay, & others can be found on our site as a pdf:  http://spurse.org/spurse/texts.html. The diagrams can be purchased directly from Lulu: http://stores.lulu.com/spurse).
 
Holey Space: As the spaces of contemporary control & order become smooth spaces & the processes of subjectivization become linked to the production of fluid identities -- what are our critical resources and techniques? In 2006 we did a project in Montreal with DareDare to experiment with this question. Some of our tentative conclusions can be found in a set of 2 books and a dvd. These can be found at Lulu (note: please do not order the DVD -- there is a format issue.  http://www.lulu.com/spurse. Please contact us directly in regards to this DVD).
 
Excess: Emergent Cosmologies: As part of our interest in developing new experimental metaphysical systems, last summer we developed a “cosmological proposition generator” as part of “Fat of the Land” at Grand Arts. While the exhibit is over and the generator is disassembled -- this is an ongoing project (See:http://web.mac.com/deeprapidtemporality/iWeb/deep%20rapid%20temporality/Welcome.html). The “outcome” of this project is a series of cosmological origami diagrams. Please email us and we will send you the set. For an overview essay on Fat of the Land by Linda Weintraub see: http://www.grandarts.com/exhibits/Fat-of-the-Land1.html.
 
Affective Time: Much of our recent research involves experimenting with new modes of temporality. We are provisionally calling this research endeavor “Deeptime + Rapidtime”. We are interested in developing new practices and tools that allow us to be in the world in a manner that affectively senses the qualitative force of both deeptime & rapid time (as in “rapid climate change”). While this sounds quite vague in such a compressed form we are developing a series specific research projects to investigate new forms of temporality and produce concrete systems (e.g. clothing, temporary architecture, augmented sensory systems, mapping and movement strategies). Most of this work is with Grand Arts in Kansas City who, along with KCAI, will be co-hosting us to develop a modular augmented clothing/housing system for migration in collaboration with KCAI students this summer (If you are interested in this class please be in contact with us asap). We will be having an exhibition coming out of this research at Grand Arts in spring 2009. As part of this research we will be participating in the Cleveland Ingenuity Festival with an augmented psycogeographic project, “Crooked River in First & Third Person” (See: http://www.crookedriversonglines.org/). Another related project developing new intensive forms of sensing time via augmented systems will be at the Dialogue:City public art festival in Denver this August (this will parallel the DNC in Denver). At the end of August we will be traveling through Nunavut testing and experimenting with these various systems in dialogue with local groups. In addition, as part of the Deeptime + Rapidtime research, we are collaborating with astronomers, paleontologists, computer scientists, material scientists, and others (for a general overview of this project please see: http://web.mac.com/iain6579/iWeb/iain6579/deep%20time%20intro.html
 
Geophilosophy: Our mobile research unit developed at the IMA in 2006 to investigate geo-biological questions MICROMOBILIA will be part of Experimental Geography traveling exhibit (an iCI project curated by Nato Thompson, see: http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/exhibitions/experimental/experimental.htm)
 
Entropy is Order: Despite what Robert Smithson imagined, entropy is a complex form of order -- we are rethinking, & experimenting with some of Smithsons concepts to develop radically distinct ideas of morphogenesis and becoming. Hopefully this will lead to a number of walks and photo-essays this fall.
 
Mildreds Lane: Over the last two years we have been assisting our friends Mark Dion & J. Morgan Puett in developing an experimental institution: Mildred’s Lane. They are offering two exceptional courses this summer. Please take a look: www.mildredslane.com.
 
As ever, we are curious what you are up to, what you are thinking about and what you are doing in these similar areas of experimentation. Please be in touch -- we look forwards to new experiments and collaborations towards new modes of becoming.