By: Chipo Mapondera

Kuchema

ABSTRACT

The Shona word for grieving is “kuchema”, which also means “to cry”. In the time around grief, there are a number of ceremonies and practices carried out, in service of sending off the deceased with dignity, and holding space for those left behind, to cry. In the community during this time, wailing, ululating, singing and drumming are heard, as part of the healing process.

This project presents a virtual reality healing space, exploring Shona traditional values. It is a site where users can enter, to find solace through sound, space and communal ceremony. The concept is based on a hypothesis that people are struggling with IRL reality imposed by the systems of colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism. This is exacerbated by technology, which impacts users’ emotional and mental well-being. By developing this VR experience, I seek to hack these systems. Furthermore, traditional gaming theory was influenced by Cold War/ Neoliberal ideologies of instant gratification and winning. In my work, I disrupt these values by designing spaces that explore new realities and foster community.

Finally, the work will hack history by presenting an imagined reality of how Zimbabwean society and contemporary culture might have developed, had it not been disrupted by European colonialism. This is done by exploring the rich culture, values and spiritual modalities of our traditions. The project questions how we would implement our traditional healing modalities for modern life, and how our natural spaces would be used. The visitor is cocooned by mist and I’mspiritual beings, and held by a physical and metaphysical community (in the virtual).

Discover the Kuchema Prototype on Spatial. Create and account on Spatial.io and link to the URL, on your computer.
To view on a VR headset, mobile phone or tablet, download the Spatial app, access your account, and search for Kuchema Prototype.

Collaborators:
3D modellling: Joel Chandauka
Soundscape Design: Fungai Nengare

KUCHEMA: THE SOUNDSCAPE

The spirituality of water carries great significance across Zimbabwean cultures. It is no coincidence that we find ourselves on the shores of a sacred water body, in exploring our traditional healing modalities. The Kuchema Soundscape presents interwoven stories and sacred knowledge collected during the development of this project. Oral history is fundamental to the passing down of information in our cultures. Therefore, it is fitting that a primary research method in the development of this project was to consult with guardians and other custodians of traditional and spiritual knowledge.

The audiovisual is a healing experience that will leave a deep impression. It aims to connect the listener with something deep within themselves, and also beyond ourselves. It is best experienced through headphones.

With special thanks to:

SOUND

Sound designer:
Fungai Nengare

Editor:
Chipo Mapoondera

Featuring:
Biko Emcee (Emcee/ Writer/ Academic/ Philosopher)
Mbuya Humba (Spiritual Healer)
Epheas Maphosa (Painter)
Chipo Mapondera

VISUAL

Filmmaker:
Joel Chandauka

Filming Assistant:
Mufaro Mafunga

Choreography & Performance:
Chaleen Chimara
Absalom Chikwezwera
Ngonidzashe Kamudyaringwa
of AfriKera Arts Trust

Costumes:
Sabina Mutsvati

Follow us to find out about the online launch of Kuchema: The Soundscape.

THE CHIRORODZIVA CAVES & KOREKORE INTANGIBLE CULTRES

Chirorodziva or The Chinhoyi Caves, consist of a system of channels and caves located close to Chinhoyi, a town 117 kilometres from the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The place is a popular tourist site, now run by the Ministry of Tourism. It welcomes hundreds of local tourists on a busy day. 

On entering the National Park, a sign post displays superficial information related to the history of the place. Chirorodziva means “the pool of the fallen”. Legend has it that an incident took place in the 1930s when the Angoni tribe surprised people living near the caves and flung them from the opening of its collapsed roof, down 46 metres to the pool. Another story tells of the outlaw Nyamakwere who murdered many victims by throwing them into the pool. 

The main cave, with its silently sleeping pool, looks and feels quite peaceful, despite the macarbre stories. The myths surrounding the place are murky. The information given by the ministry amounts to little more than that signpost, and a few tales shared by the rangers, when prodded about the place’s spiritual significance. Even at the National Archives there is little to delve into. Despite this, it is generally understood that the space is a sacred one, nzvimbo inoyera. Even when speaking about the project to be undertaken, with writers and archivists of traditional cultures, academics and the like, cautionary tales are shared. Questions are raised on what I think may be drawing me to dig deeper into this place. That there must be an element of the spiritual at play.

It is understandable that such conclusions are drawn, as the spirituality of water runs deep in Zimbabwean cultures. At the ancient city ruins of Great Zimbabwe, totemic statues were found, which became the emblem of the country. A bird, the African fish eagle, or hungwe, perches atop. A fish and a crocodile sit below. The fish and crocodile represent njuzu, the people of the water, water spirits that walk the land. 

Njuzu are not frightening spirits, but one would not want to anger them, or you risk being dragged down into the waters, most likely to your peril. It is ill-advised to throw stones into the Sleeping Pool, or to swim in its waters. According to traditional laws, such actions would desecrate the sacred space. 

Such stories, and accounts of njuzu, are fairly common. Those that are allowed to return from the underwater realm are said to have been called to receive the spiritual gift, or shavi, of the njuzu. This gift bestows healing abilities, most likely linked to water. In our beliefs, water is a carrier of much spiritual energy and healing properties. 

The Korekore people have lived in the Chinhoyi area, and are the guardians of the Chirorodziva Caves. These people are considered a sub-group of the Shona people, an error of the colonial era. During that period the languages of diverse groups including the Korekore, Karanga and Manyika, amongst others, were incorporated into the unified Shona language, based on the Zezuru dialect. Thus many Zimbabwean cultures became homogenised, flattening the nuances and details of tangible and intangible cultures. 

In the National Archives there is a fair amount of information on the different groups, documented during the colonial era. Materials on the Korekore detail their burial rites and ceremonies. Burials were performed on kopjes, either in natural caves or in holes dug under the rocks. A family would have been buried together in a single cave. Although a Chief would have had a dedicated space to themselves. Young children would be buried in damp soil close to streams, in shallow graves (Powell, 1956, p. 7). Solemn ceremonies of prayer and music would have taken place at the grave sites of adults, with hari, or clay pots of water or traditional brew, left at the graves to honour the deceased. 

With its mythologies of death, questions can be raised about how the Chirorodziva space would have been used today, if it was not for the colonial disruption of our customs. Until today The Mhondoro are the preeminent spirit of a clan, embodied in a chosen individual. This spirit bestows rain and other material needs, and decides the chieftainship (Gelfand, 1969, p.38). Until today the Mhondoro visit Chirorodziva for spiritual rituals. It is an active shrine, a space for us to reconnect with vadzimu, or the ancestors, which is vital to Shona religions and customs, as detailed:

“For those in this world, life is incomplete, unproductive and dangerous without contact with the spirits. Spirit life, too, is incomplete without contact with the living.”

(Gelfand, 1969, p.41)

To know and understand more about Chirorodziva and its spiritual significance, one has to trace the steps to the spiritual guardians. The introduction of Christianity has distanced us from this knowledge. However, it is still maintained through a hierarchy of leadership that starts with the head of the village community, or Sabhuku. The Chief is the next in line. Finally the Mhondoro, shares information with those worthy, as the guardian of knowledge straight from the ancestors, vadzimu, and the Creator, or Musikavanhu. 

White colonial era settlers disrupted the beliefs and traditions around Chirorodziva, swimming in the waters and treating them in ways that traditional groups would not have dared. Thus such spaces were demystified and their value diminished. Traditional beliefs were disrupted and foreign ones encoded, which resulted in a loss of identity and connection to our deeper understanding and power. One could say this was one of the goals of colonial programming.  Through this virtual reality experience, I seek to remystify this space, creating an environment that is loaded with spiritual significance. The experience aims to hack the system by codifying it with information that speaks to the richness of our traditional and spiritual diversity. We will metaphorically swim in its depths, by representing the specificities of Korekore rituals and sites of spirituality. We will explore the mythology of water, its healing energy and the opportunities it affords us to enter the other realm, where njuzu, our water ancestors reign. It is believed that this realm, which is intertwined and relies on the realm of the living, is not much different.

It is, however, devoid of suffering, and a place of higher knowledge that we seek to tap into. In this virtual experience, we come to Chirorodziva to connect with our vadzimu, to honour them and receive comfort from them. Thus, it becomes a place of healing and solace, but also one of learning how to empower ourselves. It is time for a new reading of our mythology to represent and make the collective wisdom of our people more accessible. Technology presents an effective way to do this and to disrupt the limited narratives of colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism that I aim to shake up through my projects.

REFERENCES

Gelfand, M. (January, 1969). “The Shona Religion” in Zambezia: A Journal Of Social Studies in Southern and Central Africa, 1(1), 37-45.

Powell, R.J. (1956). “Notes on Burial Customs in the Bushu Reserve” in NADA: The Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs Department Annual, 33, 6-8.

back to the ball

By: projektado collective

we are you: radical friendships and relational realities

back to the ball

By Nicky Broekhuysen & Mine Kaplangi

When the Dust Settles

An unsettled experimentation on a 2016 exhibition The Digital Archaeologist

Keywords: media archaeology; binary code; collaboration; digital archive; experimentation

How do we remember [ex]hibitions? Feelings of the day, [art]work, space? 
Time runs in various ways in digital realms. I always wonder how we will recall the space when it’s [meant to be] temporary.  

As an independent curator and art practitioner, my understanding of digital event programming, archiving and recalling previous exhibitions changed drastically in the last years, mostly due to the pandemic, an event which has consequently changed many previously held perceptions. As a means to further explore this change, I offer Nicky Broekhuysen’s exhibition The Digital Archeologist, as a pathway to guide us as we meander through these far corners of the digital realm in our search for understanding. 

I wrote this text Dig Deep^[3] in 2016, three years after the Gezi Movement in Turkey, where due to the political situation, digital spaces became safer places to gather yet still we tried to hold on to the physical as long as it was due. Since then, many things have changed in my hometown Istanbul where various [art] spaces have closed and been forced to move or transform themselves—a familiar phenomenon currently occurring in London, my new hometown, thanks to state-led gentrification, the financial crisis and other inhumane policies put forth by the current Tory Government. 

What is our responsibility with these memories, then, these artefacts? Just because you remember them, will you be able to hold them when the time comes or when they are urgently needed? Or should they perish into the [in]visible archives of the digital? Does the past become present when you recall them? Who has the keys to the ongoing archiving of the internet lockers? Mckenzie Wark rightfully and beautifully suggests that “we need another worldview, one drawn out of what is left of the actually collaborative and collective and common practices via which the world is actually built and run, a worldview of solidarity and the gift. A worldview that works as a low theory extracted from worker and hacker practices, rather than a high theory trying to legislate about them from above.”^[4]

Sustainability works differently regarding individual memories and storytelling, yet websites need budgets for eternal open-sourcing. We all do have our open and private libraries of knowledge productivity in the arts, yet when shared in social media, newsletters, forums or even diaries, one can lose their way in the maze even with the help of keywords. The Matrix is expanding, and binary codes are now similar to recipes; all we need to do is to cook with the taste of our own hands.^[5] Therefore experimentation, iş birliği^[6], collective-collaborative practices and repetitive acts of making kins are essential for our times to bound the time with the work and resist the destruction of our worlds in the making.

How our paths were crossed with Nicky Broekhuysen
a short story within a story

BLOK art space, where I first worked with Nicky, has been closed since I moved to London, right before the pandemic started in the winter of 2019. The Bumiller Collection’s studio, which generously hosted The Digital Archeologist, has also since closed its doors to contemporary interventions instead of continuing as a nomadic space. So we follow a phantom of stamps that echoed inside the walls of an Islamic Art Collection’s project space that no longer exists. When I think about apparitions and recalling archives, I always find myself thinking about artist Patrick Staff’s work, The Foundation^[7], which takes place around the iconic Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, an archive dedicated to protect erotic arts. Even though the preserved art and works are different, the methodology of Staff’s response to this archive as building relations and stories between objects, artworks and the foundation’s space rather than categorising them is quite spellbinding, a term I frequently use to describe Nicky’s practice.

It was a vociferous Istanbul afternoon when I met Nicky; we found our peaceful moment in an antique shop next to BLOK art space, where we would work together in the following days. Nicky had a Turkish coffee; I made a silly joke to break my social anxiety by offering to read her future [reading one’s future from the coffee cup is a way of saying for future-telling]; Nicky accepted it gracefully as she is always ready for a midday seance. She closed her cup, turned it upside down, and handed it over. I put a cold 1 Turkish lira on it and waited for a while; we talked about our passions, families, and many others. Time passed impatiently; I opened the cup and immediately realised it was not just another exhibition experience with a temporary companion. Nicky was quite special, and so was her cup, showing me a giant ‘0’ next to ‘1’. Such a poetic way of starting a journey with a magical artist like Nicky, who works with binary codes, intuition and repetition as methodologies that create magic when combined. I smiled and laughed for the entire day as the proper grinagog of the project space I was working at the time couldn’t handle the flow of emotions I was receiving through Nicky’s presence. 

Every year following the summer of 2013 was getting stranger and weirder for Istanbul; I was already convinced that Nicky and I were meant to know each other beyond time and space. Our journey was not for or about us, but for both of us to have the courage to face and to reveal something immense that you would rather prefer to have company while it unfolds.

When we make exhibitions, we respond to certain things, experiment and create spaces and stories, but these come to life through various spatial, emotional, and temporal relations. I have recently grown more tempted and interested in these relationships, more so than even at the beginning of my [art] journey. It took us a couple of years to become close friends. After Istanbul, Nicky invited me to her Berlin exhibition at the Bumiller Collection and to write about her work and practice for the exhibition catalogue as well as to moderate the artist’s talk alongside the exhibition’s programme.

Later on, we had our first lengthy dinner in Berlin and talked about parallel universes, our family secrets and how our generation should be more caring and giving, especially while working together and collaborating when it comes to queer loving. Then we published an interview^[9] where Nicky shared the details of her relationship with her grandmother and her life generously; later on, we decided to call each other and have the same conversation^[10] in a podcast format. It was during the first lockdown, and we never felt closer. It was not the physical boundaries that kept us apart; the limitations of our stories were seeking expansion, fluidity and more space. And we decided to let them have their contagion. 

The Bumiller Collection held a contemporary intervention exhibition twice a year and invited an artist to exhibit their work alongside the collection, creating new understandings and relations between the works, artefacts, objects and their time. Using binary code as ‘her artistic language’ Nicky created these incredible messages that calmly ask roaring questions about language to the collection objects, the space, and the exhibition visitors. There was only one screen placed in the exhibition space that shows the video work of Nicky Broekhuysen (see video II) – ‘inserting the digital space into the physical room as part of the exhibition’s exploration of media archaeology.’ The rest of the works played their parts in fracturing our understanding of time by inviting all to meditate in front of this new language that we usually take for granted as machines and computer systems read before and for us. I never thought that binary code belonged to the machines; it is the universal code of a rudimentary understanding of time and system makings. Taking the codes out of their current use and representation and creating lustful, physically-driven languages out of them is very queering and alluring to our already complex relationship with the digital, which can still be distancing for many due to lack of sweat and spit. The objects exhibited from the Bumiller Collection were related to the early times of writing,  tools of writing, manuscripts, and experimentations which were uniquely loose, open to change and to flux yet remain well-preserved in the passing of time. Inspired, Nicky recalled this freedom by reconstructing some of those methodologies yet maintaining supreme craftsmanship and experimentation. I believe the paper will hold the ink as long as it can and we will trust the printed materials as the continuation of the digital realms, which might give us new ways of looking at digital archives and their sustainability. 

Watching The Matrix for the third time from Nicky’s perspective is a caring experience; Nicky uses binary code to open up [time] portals in our short yet wired existence on this earth.

[end]

BIOS

Nicky Broekhuysen was born in 1981 in South Africa. At the age of 13, her family moved to New Zealand where she completed her studies. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Auckland University, she moved to Shanghai, China, in 2006. It was in Shanghai that she first began working with binary numbers 1 and 0. In 2008 Broekhuysen moved to Berlin, Germany where she continued to develop her language of binary code, exhibiting both in Berlin and internationally for the following 11 years. Recently, in 2019 she relocated her studio to The Pyrenees in France to be closer to nature and where she continues to create and exhibit. Broekhuysen is represented by Davidson Gallery in New York.

Mine Kaplangi (they/them, 1987, Istanbul) is an independent curator and art mediator based in London. They are the co-founder of the curatorial collective Collective Çukurcuma (2015) and KUTULU (2021). They worked as an artist representative and curator at BLOK art space Istanbul between 2014-18. Together with Collective Çukurcuma, they have been curating public programmes of exhibitions and running their reading group events as an ongoing transdisciplinary project since 2016. They are currently working as a freelance editor for the Berlin-based contemporary art platform Artfridge, and publicity manager at a cross-cultural, multilingual, experimental publisher, Pamenar Press (London).

IMAGE CREDITS

Figure 1. Nicky Broekhuysen, The Map is Not The Territory III, Oil on paper, 2016

Figure 2. Photograph of a Turkish coffee cup, taken at the antique store right next to BLOK art space, Istanbul [Photo by Mine Kaplangi]

Figure 3. Nicky Broekhuysen, The Digital Archeologist IV, Oil on paper, 2016

Figure 4. Nicky Broekhuysen, The Digital Archaeologist V, Oil on paper, 2016

Figure 5. Nicky Broekhuysen, The Map Is Not The Territory V, Oil on paper, 2016

Figure 6. Nicky Broekhuysen, The Digital Archaeologist III, Oil on paper, 2016

Video 1.  The Stonebreakers, 2015, A collaboration by Nicky Broekhuysen, Maria Kamutzki and Martin Keane. Originally exhibited as part of the exhibition ‘The Stonebreakers’ at Blok Artspace, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015

Video 2. The Digital Archaeologist, 2016, A collaboration by Nicky Broekhuysen, Maria Kamutzki and Martin Keane custom-built physical modelling program and sound piece

Figures 1-4 and Video 2 are the selected works from The Digital Archeologist exhibition that took place in Bumiller Collection, University Museum Islamic Art in Berlin between 10 September – 15 October, 2015.

REFERENCES

^[1] Kaplangi, Mine. “INTERVIEW: NICKY BROEKHUYSEN.” Artfridge.de, 2018, www.artfridge.de/2018/10/interview-nicky-broekhuysen-mk.html.

^[2] Hernàn’s band is called The Depth of Delusion Ensemble in Memoria. 2021. [film] Directed by A. Weerasethakul.

^[3] Kaplangi, M. (2016). Dig Deep. On Nicky Broekhuysen’s Solo Exhibition “The Digital Archaeologist.”

^[4] McKenzie Wark, Digital Labor and the Anthropocene, dis magazine transcript from Digital Labor Conference, New School, 2014, http://dismagazine.com/disillusioned/discussion-disillusioned/70983/mckenzie-wark-digital-labor-and-the-anthropocene/

^[5] Taste of the hand [elinin lezzeti] is a Turkish saying that the dish will taste differently even if you follow the same recipe due to each unique flavour and taste of our hands and fingers.

^[6] This means ‘collaboration, partnership’ in Turkish.

^[7] Staff, Patrick, dir., The Foundation. 2015, www.vdrome.org/patrick-staff-the-foundation/.

^[8] See Video 1.

^[9] Kaplangi, M. (2018). INTERVIEW: NICKY BROEKHUYSEN. http://www.Artfridge.de/. http://www.artfridge.de/2018/10/interview-nicky-broekhuysen-mk.html

^[10] Collective Cukurcuma [CC STATION]. (2020, May 12). Conversation with Nicky Broekhuysen [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wbXkwdZrTI&ab_channel=CCSTATIONICOLLECTIVECUKURCUMA

^[11] Proust, M. (2022). Remembrance of Things Past (Complete in Two volumes) (Reprint ed.). Random House.

By: Clemens Poole

AIR ALARM CAMERA ROLL

Keywords: Ukraine; Lviv; war, war photography, digital practice

Project Statement

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plays tricks with time. War compresses aspects of the past and flattens expanses of the present.

There are, of course, the grand narratives; the past is brought back, or projected into an imperial future of a new “Russian world” [Русский мир], a concept which merges the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the current Russian Federation into one seamless expression of manifest destiny. Consider the invaders’ chillingly atemporal slogan “we can repeat” [можем повторить], which affirms an endless capacity for the glory of victory realized in “The Great Patriotic War” [Великая Отечественная война]. This slogan is an almost perfect affront to the rest of Europe’s common chant of “never again”, which emphasizes the horrors, rather than the glory, of World War II (even the episodic character of the common title “World War II” anchors its referent in history, in contrast to the superlative and timeless implications of its Russian counterpart).

[end]

BIO

Clemens Poole is a US American artist based in Kyiv. Since 2014 he has been active in Ukraine, working both with various Ukrainian arts organizations and independently. Recent independent projects in Ukraine include the exhibitions ( ) (2020) and Casual Colonizations (2021), The Desperate Tone is an Act (2020), Entangled Transposition (2021), Closed Futures (2021), and the film Dima, Dmitry, Dmytro. Glory to the Heroes (2021).

REFERENCES

^[1] On the tension between personal experience and the digital information space, see Milena Khomchenko’s article “The Digital Fog of War” in Spike Art Magazine, March 23, 2022. https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/milena-khomchenko-digital-war

^[2] Hito Steyerl. “In Defense of the Poor Image”, e-Flux #10, November 2009. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

^[3] RIA Novosti, a Russian state media outlet, published a text attributed to Timofey Sergeytsev called “Что Россия должна сделать с Украиной” on April 3, 2022. It appeared the following day, April 4, 2022, in a translation by Mariia Kravchenko under the title “What should Russia do with Ukraine?” on Medium. https://medium.com/@kravchenko_mm/what-should-russia-do-with-ukraine-translation-of-a-propaganda-article-by-a-russian-journalist-a3e92e3cb64. Timothy Snyder referred to the original article as a “genocide handbook” on Substack, April 8, 2022 https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook.

By: Karl Logge

Towards a fourfold digital weaver theory: notes on a past-future praxis

Keywords: Weird design, Weird digital, Weaver Theory, Speculative Fourfolding

Cyborg informatics, recrafting bodies / Artificial intelligence, C31 operations coding
Multiple databases, umbilical network / Breath engine, indestructible heart

…We are the first to program your future / We are the first of cyber- evolution
We are the first, we are the last… 

— ‘The 1st’, X-Dream, 2004

What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time.
When the only people that existed were troglodytes…cave men…
cave women…Neanderthal…troglodytes. Let’s take the average
cave man at home, listening to his stereo.

— ‘Troglodyte (Cave Man)’, The Jimmy Castor Bunch, 1972

via GIPHY

open_access.direct: digital-fourfold
^Initiate: Opening up the digital weavescape^

On and Off.
Input / Output.
One, Zero.
Compute…

When did the digital begin? Does it begin with device or apparatus, the design of circuits or tapping at computer terminals? Is it numbers, the invention of zero, or the counting that counts? Is it the language of programming or the alphabetic grammata of writing^[1]? Is it computation, signals sent and received or the pulse of electricity that gives the digital its presence? Is the digital media or medium, the message or the manage? Could it be that the digital is simply another way of naming a technological Rubicon, where we suddenly tipped into a so-called modern way of life?

To add to this, what does it mean to be digital? Is it calculating, coding, gaming, snapping selfies or sunsets, swiping left and right, checking out or checking in? Is it the act of negotiating a life amongst technical objects, swimming within data flows, charging, uploading, clicking? Writing up, clocking on or switching through nodal points? Is it getting the invite to virtual block-parties with our virtual, blocky meta-selves? Is the digital act separate from the digital process and the things we use to enact these processes? Or is there something more fundamental to the idea of the digital? What if we go back, way back… back into time and ask ourselves if perhaps we have been digital beings for longer than we care to remember? Perhaps, somewhere along the line, we merely got lost, disoriented, having dropped the thread that could lead us out of the labyrinth?

Over and Under.
One Naked, One Dressed.
Weave…

Once naked, so the story goes, those avatars of the first human souls were free and easy in the garden where everyone knew everything on a first-name basis. Then it all went pear-shaped and the first binary entered the equation: good…evil. For better or worse, forbidden fruit leaves quite the aftertaste, a bitter mix of exile and shame. And so, as the story continues, it’s been fig leaves over naughty bits ever since. 

Still, you might say the tree of knowing stuff has its uses. At some point fig leaves swapped out for pelts, or deer gut, or twine or hemp or wool, silk, cotton and jute — each materialises another binary. Warp and weft begets cloth and dress, toga, tunic and trousers, and before you know it, the sails on ships open up new worlds taking us into this uncertain future.

Let’s say then, that for almost as long as we have been dressed (and probably well before) that we have long been working on a certain digital equation. This is based on passing lines, between other tightly stretched  — over and under, under and over, over and over again. Let’s call this DIGITAL-0.

Access_portal.unfold: To continue reading this essay you can navigate the digital fourfold by clicking through each quadrant below.

BIO

An installation and live-art artist, redirective designer, undisciplined academic and irresponsible researcher-writer, and student of the Master Weaver Chira Vigo, Karl Logge holds a PhD in Design from Charles Sturt University and creates projects that focus on teaching the ancient art of weaving to children and young people. This includes works presented together with Marta Romani as part of the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels, the Nature, Art and Habitat Residency in Val Taleggio, the Earth Rising Festival at IMMA and BOOM! Festival in Portugal.

REFERENCES

^[1] This is activated by Bernard Steigler’s work on digital ontologies and technologies of attention where he states: “Alphabetical vocalic writing, which appeared between the 8th and 7th Century B.C., allowed the constitution of a singular attentional process … ceaselessly reformed, deformed and transformed as the process of psychic and collective individuation ….If we want to analyse and understand the stakes of this transformation (insofar as this is possible), we must analyse what, as process of ‘grammatisation’, leads us from the appearance of the writing of grammata up to the digital apparatuses and the new attentional forms that they constitute. For these inaugurate a new process of psychic and collective individuation that emerges at the heart of what must be understood as a network society of planetary proportions.” Stiegler, Bernard. 2012. “Relational ecology and the digital pharmakon” in: Culture Machine Vol 13, 4-5.

back to the ball