Re: <nettime> What do you read?

[Fed via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On the subject of Langdon Winner, I stumbled recently on the Whole Earth Review "Computers as Poison," volume which he contributed to. As stated: remarkably prescient writing for a collection written in 1984.

I've been thinking a lot about forms of images and art that resist "instant digestion," that resist the sort of mode we are put into when we are consuming images on Instagram or Flickr. A few titles I'm chewing on to work around this concept- 

The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium by Stephan Oetterman - https://www.zonebooks.org/books/86-the-panorama-history-of-a-mass-medium -- Thinking about "all-sight," and images that spill past the bounds of peripheral vision and have to be experienced in the flesh, in designed chambers, or else scanned the way you'd read a sentence. Even the mildest panoramic aspect ratio resists the typical dimensions of a monitor or smartphone. 

On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters by Hollis Framtpon - https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3848/On-the-Camera-Arts-and-Consecutive-MattersThe Just an incredible and timeless collection of theory on photography and the cinema that I come back to all the time. Here I wanted to re-read his great essay on Eadweard Muybridge in the context of Muybridge's psychotic 1877 panorama of the San Francisco skyline- but my favorite essay is "Digressions on the Photographic Agony," https://www.artforum.com/features/digressions-on-the-photographic-agony-209932/ -- continually relevant to the overflowing world. 

Some Aesthetic Decisions by Judy Fiskin - https://judyfiskin.com/book.html - An artist I only just learned about, while looking through photographs of my small enclave in a National Endowment for the Arts (R.I.P) photographic survey of Southern California in the 70's. The interview published with this volume, between Fiskin and John Divola, touches on a lot of interesting topics but most important for me the aesthetic strategies of the new topographics movement. Her work (similar but excluded from that "genre") was committed to a singular strategy of producing images at the smallest enlargement possible in the darkroom. Thumbnails before thumbnails, images meant not to be read and analyzed but digested immediately and totally. An excellent conceptual foil to the excesses of say, Andreas Gursky, or any artist feeling the need to produce photographs the size of studio apartments.

xoxo

Apr 10, 2025, 10:11 by nettime-l@lists.nettime.org:

> That's a really useful idea, Geert. Let the reading lists bloom.
>
> Obviously nettime is mostly concerned with Silicon Valley, technocracy,
> etc. But as the discussion of Christian Nationalism shows, what's happening
> in the US involves a convergence of wildly different conservative forces,
> libertarian, industrialist, religious, and populist. It's a mashup and a
> breakdown simultaneously. To understand how the right thought it could sail
> this leaky galleon, I am currently reading political philosopher Wendy
> Brown's 2019 book "In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of
> Anti-Democratic Politics in the West." It's damn good, and as the title
> suggests, not limited to the US case. She examines the main variants of
> neoliberal political philosophy as it has developed over the last half
> century, reveals how they promise to integrate the different conservative
> currents, and also shows their failures, which we can all see on display. A
> quote in that direction:
>
> "Democracy has been throttled and demeaned, yes. However, the effect has
> been the opposite of neoliberal aims. Instead of
> being insulated from and thus capable of steering the economy, the state is
> increasingly instrumentalized by big capital—all the
> big industries, from agriculture and oil to pharmaceuticals and finance,
> have their hands on the legislative wheels. Instead of
> being politically pacified, citizenries have become vulnerable to demagogic
> nationalistic mobilization decrying limited state sovereignty and
> supranational facilitation of global competition and capital accumulation.
> And instead of spontaneously ordering and disciplining populations,
> traditional morality has become a battle screech, often emptied of
> substance as it is instrumentalized for other ends. As antidemocratic
> political powers and energies in constitutional democracies have swollen in
> magnitude and intensity, they have yielded a monstrous form of political
> life— one yanked by powerful economic interests and popular zeal, one
> without democratic or even constitutional coordinates, spirit, or
> accountability, and hence, perversely, one without the limits or
> limitability sought by the neoliberals. Thus do parties of “limited
> government” morph into parties of exorbitant state power and spending."
>
> There's a November 2024 podcast with Brown and Quinn Slobodian that can
> give you a flavor of this book:
> https://thedigradio.com/podcast/maga-w-quinn-slobodian-wendy-brown
>
> I have also started reading Brian Massumi's very recent book, "The
> Personality of Power: A Theory of Fascism for Anti-Fascist Life." This is
> media theory, and it's also an answer to the kind of mini-debate we had
> here a while ago about whether personality matters in contemporary
> politics. Where traditional theories of fascism postulate a fusional
> identification of the masses with the figure of a charismatic leader,
> Massumi goes to something more sophisticated and more realistic. He
> describes a rhythmic oscillation between fascination with the superhuman
> agency or "full body" of Trump the strongman, and then a fractalization of
> this agency provoked by moments of apparent intimacy or fragility (a
> fragmented body). This second moment of fractalization produces a chaotic
> distribution of power among the highly individualized populations of our
> mediated (post-)democracies. We were actually going to host a live
> discussion at Watershed Art & Ecology between Massumi and the Chicago-based
> performance artist Matthew Goulish, but whaddayaknow, Masssumi now judges
> that he's too likely to get stopped at the border coming over from
> Montreal, so he'll beam in and maybe we can offer some kind of livestream,
> not sure about that yet.
>
> best to all in these dark enlightenment times, Brian
>
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 8:10 AM Petter Ericson via nettime-l <
> nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
>
>> On 10 April, 2025 - David Garcia via nettime-l wrote:
>>
>> > Geert asked
>> > I am curious what you read and find interesting, enlightening,
>> disturbing,
>> > beyond the ordinary news flow.
>>
>> I'm currently reading a classic in Science and Technology Studies: Langdon
>> Winner's 'The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High
>> Technology', and while I'm aware that some of the examples are overblown,
>> and
>> there are occasional passages where you can really tell that it was
>> written in
>> the mid-80s, much of it is incredibly relevant still. I'm sure many on this
>> list has already read it at some point, but for those who haven't I can
>> highly
>> recommend it.
>>
>> Semi-relevant to David's choice is this passage, for example:
>> > Taken as a whole, beliefs of this kind constitute what I would call
>> > mythinformation: the almost religious conviction that a widespread
>> adoption
>> > of computers and communications systems along with easy access to
>> electronic
>> > information will automatically produce a better world for human living.
>> It is
>> > a peculiar form of enthusiasm that characterizes social fashions of the
>> > latter decades of the twentieth century. Many people who have grown
>> cynical
>> > or discouraged about other aspects of social life are completely
>> enthralled
>> > by the supposed redemptive qualities of computers and telecommunications.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> /P
>>
>> > -------------
>> > I am reading Phil Tinline's book on an influential hoax "Ghosts of Iron
>> > Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy". Its
>> about a
>> > fake (1962) 'think tanky style report with lots of foot notes 'so it
>> must be
>> > true' The Report from Iron Mountain claimed that winding down America's
>> vast
>> > war-making machinery would wreck the economy and tear society apart,
>> > necessitating draconian controls over the population.
>> >
>> > It was published as non-fiction - and was frighteningly convincing.
>> > Journalists tried to find out who had written it. Worried memos reached
>> > right up to the president. It became a bestselling cause celebre.
>> >
>> > Even though the hoax was revealed long ago many still refuse to believe
>> it
>> > isn't real. And it has been seized on by eager figures on the political
>> > extremes but most energetically by the far right and militia movement,
>> who
>> > insist that it revealed terrifying government conspiracies to  enslave
>> > Americans and even instigate eugenics. It's been regularly referenced by
>> Q
>> > etc and the legacy lives on and on.
>> >
>> > Many have defended taking it seriously on the grounds that it "feels
>> true".
>> > Following the journey of this conspiracy and its many lives gave me a
>> useful
>> > account on the shifting nature overview of what constitutes 'proof' then
>> and
>> > now.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
>> > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
>> > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
>> > # more info: https://www.nettime.org
>> > # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
>>
>> --
>> Petter Ericson (pettter@accum.se)
>> --
>> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
>> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
>> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
>> # more info: https://www.nettime.org
>> # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
>>
> -- 
> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> # more info: https://www.nettime.org
> # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
>

-- 
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org