The Case for Transparency

The project Opacity proposed and discussed a collaborative and productive model, which researched current conditions of institutional work and proposed and analysed alternative strategies, be they activist, appropriative, mocking, actual or purely utopian. We wanted to initiate a discussion, trying to imagine an institution as a place for temporary withdrawal, for working in an opaque space behind the scene, as one critical strategy among others within the field of institutional work. With the presumption that the participation of artists in institutional systems shouldn't exclusively be aimed towards the show or display, we instead turned software into hardware and set up a temporary model that includes artistic practice as an operation mode for institutions.

Nina Möntmann
Opacity // 2006
From, "Abstraction: Documents of Contemporary Art", edited by Maria Lind

Some Notes on Taste

Taste doesn't matter, it is too subjective and varies according to time. It is too hard to chase after what's 'contemporary' or the latest trend. What's important is obsession, it's the desire for excesses, to go past the edge or fringe into an rabbit hole.

---

"According to Greenberg, the ideal spectator of avant-garde art is less interested in it as a source of aesthetic delectation than as a source of knowledge – of information about art production, its devices, its media, and its techniques. Art ceases to be a matter of taste and becomes a matter of knowledge and mastery. In this sense, one can say that, as a modern technique, avant-garde art is, generally, autonomous – which is to say, independent of any individual taste."

Art and Money
Boris Groys
e-flux journal #24

---

Perhaps it is best to move away from taste and towards questioning the assumptions of where you're coming from. 

Some Notes on Epistemology

Decolonisation as the Horizon of Political Action (e-flux)
Irmgard Emmelhainz 

"If it has been acknowledged that capitalist exploitation depends on the organization of scientific objectivity and reason, why do we continue to uncritically uphold the ways in which we organise knowledge? We must explore forms of knowledge that we ignored by modernity and use non-Western epistemologies to question the disciplinary boundaries imposed by modern science, along with the isolation of political struggles it has led to."

"The majority of aboriginal people have epistemologies based on embodied knowledge–meaning is found in individual and collective presence, and in order to access meaning, it is necessary to live in a way that achieve physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual balance. This implies that aboriginal intellect has no limits and that meaning emerges from context and process instead of from content."

• Art is a form of knowledge that critically questions the ways in which knowledge is generated and organised today in order to generate new knowledge and methodologies. 
• Language structures the way in which knowledge is generated.

On Being Present Where You Wish to Disappear (e-flux)

Nana Adusei-Poku 

"theorist Sylvia Wynter stated in an open letter to her colleagues that the epistemological foundations of dominant forms of thought are one key source of the "chronic day-to-day violence" Clark spoke of. Intellectuals and scientists, argued Wynter, reproduce the epistemological foundations for this violence by treating these foundations as objective and universals." 

• Art questions these epistemological foundations, argues against the universals for a proliferation of the particular experience.  

Modelling (3) Platypus

What is a platypus? 

"We are motivated, after failed and betrayed attempts at emancipation, and in light of their inadequate self-understanding, to re-appropriate this history in the service of possibilities for emancipatory struggle in the present – and the future.

Towards such ends, we might begin (perhaps provocatively) with the list of names that indicate the thoughts and problems issuing from events that still speak to us in the present: Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Adorno." 

(https://platypus1917.org/about/what-is-a-platypus-founding-documents/)

Pedagogy

Primary Marxist Reading Group

I. What is the "Left?" -- What is "Marxism?"
(https://platypus1917.org/2016/07/25/platypus-primary-marxist-reading-group-summer-fallautumn-2016-winter-2017/)

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

(https://platypus1917.org/2017/01/09/london-platypus-primary-reading-group-spring-2017/)

Summer Reading Group

Anarchism

(https://platypus1917.org/2014/06/11/summer-2014-readings-anarchism/)

Marxism and Identity [identity politics]

(https://platypus1917.org/2016/05/23/summer-2016-readings-marxism-identity/)

Content

The Politics of Work 

(https://platypus1917.org/2014/03/21/politics-work-london-3-21-14/)

What is the #Occupy Movement? 

(https://platypus1917.org/2012/03/16/what-is-the-occupy-movement-london-i/)

Capital in History: Marxism and the Modern Philosophy of Freedom

(https://platypus1917.org/2011/08/16/capital-in-history-marxism-and-the-modern-philosophy-of-freedom/)

Marx's Critique of Political Economy: Proletarian Socialism Continuing the Bourgeois Revolution?
(https://platypus1917.org/2011/08/19/marxs-critique-of-political-economy-proletarian-socialism-continuing-the-bourgeois-revolution/)

Modelling (2) GSA MFA

Tutor Sarah Tripp's text-based group discussion, Bearing Witness:

On my visit, “Bearing Witness” gathered eleven students to the JD Kelly’s “crit space” to discuss the text “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real: On the Risk of Bearing Witness and the Art of Affective Labour” by the Berlin-based writer and critic Jan Verwoert. Prior to the two-hour session, students were instructed to read and annotate the text, and “choose a quotation which opposes, critiques or extends a section from the Verwoert essay.” They were also asked to choose an artwork that responded to the piece and prepare a short statement describing what the work “witnesses” and how. “Participation by everyone is built into the [discussion’s] structure,” Tripp explained. Seated around two pulled-together tables in the small but high-ceilinged, whitewashed room, most of the students expressed frustration with the text due to its roving, circuitous style. The artworks selected in response to Verwoert’s essay were as diverse as the students: a video of Trisha Brown’s A Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, a scene from Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, works by Pierre Huyghe and Michel Houellebecq. After a tentative start, a wide-ranging conversation around the nature and role of contemporary art in a broader sense and the notion of art-making as affective labor developed, and accents from around the world filled the room. At the discussion’s end, Tripp invited the students to email her with suggestions of texts for future meetings.

On justification: 

Graham Ramsay has witnessed many changes and developments in the program, first as a student from 1995–97 when he was taught by Sam Ainsley and Calcutt, and then as a tutor. He stresses the need for the students to be able to “contextualize their work in a way that’s appropriate to their practice. None of us would be happy with vague talk about intuition; we want them to be able to identify what’s peculiar to their practice in as precise terms as possible. We are relatively analytic and forensic in wanting them to clarify in terms that are important to them.”

Modelling (1) 16 Beaver

http://16beavergroup.org/about

About 16 Beaver
16 Beaver is the address of a space initiated/run by artists since 1999. Since that time, it has served as place where those involved in art, politics, education, as well as a multiplicity of other contexts and fields of activity could discover and develop a common place to share research, questions, understandings, concerns, and struggles. Thus, it has been an open place to share, present, produce, and discuss a variety of artistic/cultural/economic/political projects. It has also been a site where discussions can lead to actions and action can be discussed and rethought.

MONDAY NIGHTS @ 16BEAVER
Since 1999, the Reading Group at 16Beaver has organized presentations, readings, discussions, screenings, and panels with/by artists, curators, thinkers, writers, and activists.
Monday nights have been an evening to share time and generate discussions, links, ideas. Meetings usually begin at 7pm and the location is almost always at 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor.
Of course after 4 or 5 years, Monday became Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday or any day which seemed appropriate. And events, seminars, walks, activities have also been organized in different cities. The initiative for all events comes from people who become involved in the space and from friends or people we are interested in, who are visiting the city.

Common(s)Course: http://16beavergroup.org/mondays/2013/11/18/monday-11-18-13-money-needed-to-abolish-itself-commons-course-week-10/
- Speculations on how to exit the logic of money
- "We were excited by the large group which came at such short notice and humbled by the generosity everyone showed to enter a speculative space of thought and debate in the midst of our attempts to invent new forms of political resistance and common(s) life."

Why I enjoy reading groups?

Why I believe in groupness?

In isolation, our subjectivity becomes a product we consume; an echo chamber of sorts. There is really little possibility of dispersing and challenging these subjectivities on anything beside yourself. I enjoy the prospect of a reading group in the opportunity it presents towards responding to a text within multiple voices. That you aren't just confirming your biases, or being in a loop but a disjuncture.

∞venns∞ ConCon2

Some Container 

No 5, ConCon 2 \ Concepts of Capitalism

_ ConCon2

What exactly is capitalism? How can we better understand the mechanics of the system? Can it be comprehended on terms of economics alone, what about additional specificities like morality, politics and history? In ConCon, we explore the concept of capitalism. 

In ConCon1, we explore capitalism through a Marxist slant, which we will continue this exploration in ConCon2

_ ExAnnotations

This is comparative note-taking exercise that explores how notes are made and organised by situating each individual's sensitivities within a larger network. 

Assignments: 

≠ Complete Capital Volume One, Part II. The Transformation of Money into Capital Notes

_ Syllabus

(Karl Marx \ ed. Robert C. Tucker) Capital, Volume One, p. 361 - 376 

(Nancy Fraser) Behind Marx's Hidden Abode: For an Expanded Conception of Capitalism, video (link)

(Wolfgang Streeck) The Crises of Democratic Capitalism

(Duncan Foley) Understanding Capital, chapter 1 - 2 

The Labour of Art: What Drives?

"I cringe at the idea of the hardworking artists. Firstly, I'm not at all diligent, I just have nothing else better to do. The sound of art being hard work just isn't attractive at all.

The idea of being diligent and overcompensating on the effort spent on making art, feels to me a desire to expect something in exchange from art labour. It could be an exchange for the feeling of physical and mental tiredness just to get a sense of a day completely utilized. I do not feel a need of deriving usefulness and value from art. It marks my life, turns it into a story, but that's about all I need from art."

Chun Kai Qun

When making art do you believe in rigour or hard work? 
What drives and motivates a practice?  

In making art, I believe in rigour and hard work. I am aware that this belief might emanate from the conditioning of capitalism and its prevalent hunger for productivity and ceaseless growth; a transactional mode of exchange where an anticipated outcome, profit or product is desired from the labour of art. Admittedly, anxiety often precedes over me, prompting a sense of uneasiness in 'wasting' the day away or a appetite to feel that the day has been shrewdly made use of. I want to resist all of that, but I also believe that while capitalism has defined and consumed much of the discussion around productivity, we not should bastardise the term. Creativity is a productive force, not measured in economic output, but on terms of artistic integrity.

As much as I would like to resist the velocity of capitalism or being absorbed into its rhythm in order to come into one's own pulsation, I also don't want to adopt a position of 'own-time-own-target'. I feel a strong sense of human capacity for proliferation and propagation that is derived from the struggle and challenges in working against one's comfort zone and this may or may not coincide with the deadlines, precariousness or anxiety of contemporary life. This is not a position of flowing with capital nor simply being reactionary against it, but being in constant negotiation with the conditions one is present in. I believe in some sort of oblique usefulness and value in art, something non-quantitative, a sense that art is a process that can take you to some form of higher order and in that search I require myself to have rigour, to work hard.

The question of drive is pertinent. What motivates an art practice? What drives a person to aspire towards certain ideas, where do ambition stem from? 

∞venns∞ After the Internet

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some container with lines and edges
Venn'd no. 6, After the Internet 

⥄After the Internet⥂

This reading group is largely based on Dr. Zach Blas's Spring 2016 module, "After the Internet":
(link)

In 2015, Google CEO Eric Schmidt promises that “the Internet will disappear” into our environments, while artist Hito Steyerl—two years prior—has already suggested that the Internet died. Today, how can the Internet be simultaneously everywhere and dead? What exactly is the Internet—and what has it become? This module addresses these simple yet vastly complex questions through the frame of “after the Internet,” meaning both after the historical emergence and global reach of the Internet and digital networks but also the technical forms of communication that come after the Internet’s supposed death. Throughout the term, we will articulate what occurs “after the Internet” in relation to life, technology, politics, activism, aesthetics, art, and critical theory. Structured into four sections, the module commences with a consideration of 1) the histories, material infrastructures, and political impacts of networks and the Internet, followed by 2) the current trend to theorize our contemporary medial present as post-Internet, post-digital, and post-media; 3) critical frustrations and disavowals of the Internet and the network form; and 4) a series of experimental approaches to theorizing and imagining the technologies and techniques that come “after the Internet."

⥄Week 1⥂

"Networking the World": Globalisation and Assemblage 

- Describe globalisation.
- What is assemblage? 
- What are networks? 

Readings: 

• Manual Castells, “An Introduction to the Information Age,” City (2007), pp. 6 - 16 
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Rhizome,” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987), pp. 3 - 25 
• Bruno Latour, “Defining at last what a network is,” Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (2005), pp. 128 - 133 
• Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006), pp. TBA

Art:

• Mark Lombardi, Global Networks exhibition, curated by Robert Hobbs (1998 - 2005), http://curatorsintl.org/exhibitions/mark-lombardi-global-networks 

∞venns∞ ConCon1

Some Container or No Container at all

No 4, ConCon 1 \ Concepts of Capitalism

E-mail invite here. 

I I ConCon1

What exactly is capitalism? How can we better understand the mechanics of the system? Can it be comprehended on terms of economics alone, what about additional specificities like morality, politics and history? In ConCon, we explore the concept of capitalism through a designated syllabus and multiple iterations.

I I ExAnnotations 

An exercise in note-taking! 

Notes on A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [link]

(Karl Marx \ ed. Robert C. Tucker), preface p. 3 - 6 

Notes on Capital, Volume One [link]

(Karl Marx \ ed. Robert C. Tucker) p. 294 - 361

Notes on Rethinking Financial Capitalism and the 'Information Economy' [link]

(Duncan K. Foley) 

I I rereflection

In this session, we discuss some basic concepts of capitalism through a Marxist slant. 

I I Terms in circulation

A list of term explored in this session. 

\ Historical Materialism
\ Commodity
\ Use-value
\ Exchange-value
\ Value
\ Price
\ Abstraction
\ Commodity Fetishism 
\ Reification 
\ Labour
\ Labour-power
\ Labour-time
\

I I Matters Arising

Further Research
\Historical materialism against Dialectical materialism
\

Queries 
\ What are the contemporary forms of production relations, how do they differ from Marx's examples and how would they impact the future? (E.g. the sharing economy, Youtube & content, 'influencer', etc.)
\ 

motion \\ some gradation

Introduction

some gradation interrogates the nature of studio critique, its objectives and the criteria of valuation.

≠ What are the aims of a studio critique?
≠ What constitute a successful studio critique, when does it fail?
≠ What are the grounds for aesthetic valuation and judgement?

+++++

some criticism of critiques I have personally experienced:

• teacher as authority 
• orientation of students in accord with modes of validation defined by set project brief (learning objectives, material/technical requirements, time frame), historical references, authorised apparatus (exhibitions, chosen medium), capitalist institution (galleries, collectors) 
• lack of empathy / inadequate in identifying with the presenter's subjectivities, often due to a lack of time to build relationships 
• ideas sharing session is not a critique 

+++++

some values to be established: 

• “To doubt one’s own expertise and speak that doubt within the framework of a critique is to cleave a space for unlearning.” 

• “It would be prudent to take the contingency of one’s position as a given and use the framework of the critique to reveal and examine the assumptions that underlie the creation and reception of the art work.”¹ 

• A space to investigate and address power structure prevalent within the group and how it affects an individual’s judgement. 

• Intent on helping each individual focus on self-actualisation through the development of criticality beyond received and socially accepted idea, in the setting of a community or groupness. 

some formats to be explored:

• long durational crit 
• affiliated critical theory reading group (alternate week)

References

Michael Asher’s Post Studio Art

In 1977, Michael Asher began teaching John Baldessari’s Post-Studio class as an adjunct professor. The class structures itself around the format of an extended group critique of a single student’s work, lasting for eight or more hours. stamina

Christopher Williams:

“He had an endless supply of questions for any one student, and the duration… I wouldn’t want to say that it would break you down, but at a certain point, bullshitting would be much harder.”²

Quotes from Walk-Through (extract):

“The profession lecturer is aband in the learning process. First of all, the teacher should be hauled down off the podium and into the audience. At which point they would undergo a dramatic transformation from teacher, the embodiment of all wisdom, to discussion leader.”

“I think that one function of it is that it sets a structural value system to think about the work, it says that actually is the most important thing. It is not important to get it done in time, to have it make sense quickly or have a good story.”

“Only when the teacher is so transformed, positionally and functionally, will the student be actively involved in the learning process. Ditto for the chamber itself, uniformity of classroom design will be anathema. The room will be designed for class discussion not stage performance, for dialogue not monologue.”³

Notes

¹ Sreshta Rit Premnath, “Sreshta Rit Premnath: Critique as Unlearning,” e-flux conversations, December 22, 2016, accessed December 22, 2016, http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/sreshta-rit-premnath-critique-as-unlearning/5722

² Christopher Williams, “Christopher Williams on Post Studio and Michael Asher,” East of Borneo, October 15, 2012, accessed December 26, 2016, http://www.eastofborneo.org/archives/christopher-williams-on-post-studio-and-michael-asher

³ Various voices, “Walk Through (extract),” 00:18:00, 2012, https://vimeo.com/100682129

motion\\ Ex Annotate

Ex Annotate

How can a text be digested, questioned and how does a text stimulate and proliferates? How sense are made and how are opinions formed around texts? This is a comparative note-taking exercise that explores how notes are made and organised by situating each individual's sensitivities within a larger network. 

\ Make and organise notes around the text provided. Think about the structure of your thoughts.

\ There should be a delineation between how you make sense of the text and your opinions on the text, perhaps using different colour fonts. What does the author mean against do you agree with what the author mentioned.

\ Quotes should be cited with page numbers. 

\ Attempt to make a list of definitions, keeping in mind the expansive and flux-like nature of certain terms. 

How to read better?
Can reading be an event? 

Notes on A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Notes on A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

(Karl Marx \ ed. Robert C. Tucker), preface p. 3 - 6

This passage set forth the materialist conception of history or historical materialism.

What is historical materialism?

Base and Superstructure

“...a guiding thread for my studies, can be briefly formulated as follows: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (4)

• Material productive forces or forces of production: see below
• Relations of production: the way people organise themselves to satisfy their basic necessities of survival, people have to enter into social relations.

In Marxist theory, human society consists of two parts: the base and superstructure.

• Base: forces of productions & relations of production / sum total of production
• determines (conditions) the superstructure, but is susceptible to influences from the superstructure
• Superstructure: everything other than production
• Relationship between the base and superstructure is reciprocal.

Base	Forces of production	Relations of production
	...refers to the physical means and techniques of production to which labourers add value and transform raw materials into capital. This includes the combination of the means of labour (tools, machinery, land, etc.) with human labour (techniques, knowledge).	...the relationships people enter in order to produce and reproduce their means of life (to survive) Social relations of production occurs between people. Technical relations of production occurs between people and object. E.g. the relationship between those who own the means of production and those who do not.

Social Revolution

“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or...with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto… Then begins an epoch of social revolutions.” (4)

• Social revolution occurs when there is conflict/contradiction within the base.

“In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic--in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.” (5)

• The process of being conscious of your social conditions, relations can change the system, but this change is explained through the ‘contradiction of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production’.
• Perhaps art can inflect and disrupt conventional social norms, thinking and therefore relations thereby changing the relations of production, creating conflicting within the base. An inquiry into the relations of production, and then a critique.

“No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.” (5)

• Only when new forms of bases developed can the superstructure of society change.
• Not enough to be conscious, but the structures, potentialities for change have to exist concurrently as well.

Historical Materialism

What is historical materialism?

“Marxists are far from denying the importance of ideas or the active role of individuals in history. But precisely because we are active, we understand the limits of individual activity, and the fact that the appropriate social conditions must exist before our ideas and our activity can be effective. We understand, with Marx that people “make their own history… but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” We need to understand how society is developing in order to intervene in the process.” (http://www.marxist.com/historical-materialism-study-guide.htm)

Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of human societies and their development over time.

motion\\ space container

This is a simulation of the eventual motion: space-container

Introduction
Space Container collaborates with artists by interlacing aspects of their creative practices with various social technologies, virtual communities and network. Probing various modes of art distribution, circulation and exhibition, Space Container pursues new horizons for creative cultivation for a digital milieu.

Format

(Basis)

• Short-format documentary exploring an aspect of an artist’s practice

(Medium)

• Innovative image-making and video-producing techniques with particular attention paid on how to best capture the work for social technologies and digital platforms

(Distribution)

• Circulated on various social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat)
• Content is customised according to the intricacies of each platform
• Aspire to cultivate interactions and engagement

Q

How can art be affective and effective within the digital milieu? How can virtual communities and networks extend the distribution, circulation and exhibition of art?

What happens to the content of an artwork when its exposition leaves the traditional exhibition format and is dispersed onto the extensive global system of participative network? How does the medium massages the message?

Is there aesthetics in the circulation of creative processes through digital media? Can the documentation of creative processes, thoughts, inspirations mediated by pervasive technologies be an aesthetic experience?

motion\\ fault-bend

This is a simulation of the eventual motion: fault-bend

∫Introduction∫

fault-bend aspires to propagate artistic practices through the intersection of creative research and production with the intimacies of dialogue, groupness, exchanges and touch. Approaching the discursive potential of an artwork beyond its often supplementary relation to production and exhibition, the project formats itself as a public forum across social technologies and physical spaces.


∫Format∫

• Series and episodes
• Each episodes is developed alongside an artist, focusing on an aspect of their practice, running the course of a week.
• Stimulants [questions / thoughts / references / etcetera] will be released gradually over the week on social platforms with a main anchor of a Facebook group or an email chain.
• Additionally stimulants contributed by participants and collaborators is encouraged which forms the core of the project.
• These discussions would eventually lead to a physical gathering to reflect on the week’s topic.

∫Structural Integrity∫

• • How does communication differ across the interface? How much of conversation is mediated by the interface?
• • What gets lost or proliferates in the translation from the virtual mode of communication to the physical?
• • What differs ‘discourse’ from ‘practice’, if any? Can the discursive be aestheticise?
• § How can knowledge be disseminated, shared and created? We will consider the importance of building references, reading lists, repositories of knowledge for expanded and further study.

(of a surface) tree

🌫 (of a surface) reflections 🌳

Notes towards a self-destructing manifesto:

The concept of community is imputed with consensus; of mutuality. In such circumstances, durable relations participating in shared values, vision, identity is negotiated alongside fissures, tension and nuances.

the necessity of struggle} to value challenges, discomfort in the search for new ways of being, to want to grow, learn and prosper.

interest and affection} to remain curious, engaged with other practices, research interests, questions. To empathise. To give. To take ownership.


Structural integrity:

Twitter•••The feeds, archive, chronologically scrolling-downwards as a resolution of the fragment within the totality of feeling; collectivised emotions. Honesty is recognising the moment, even when you appear unrecognisable. These tweets function as fractions of a manifesto that encompasses futurity, ambivalence and growth. A tendency towards eradication.

Instagram•••A visual repository exploring the sign, symbol, logo economy and turn towards a more image-based literacy. How can these images add a latitude to a project largely based on language and the discursive?

¡Notes! on Censorship

Julian Assange on a political society versus a fiscalised society:

“Correct, and optimistic about any organisation, or any country, that engages in censorship. We see now that the US State Department is trying to censor us. We can also look at it in the following way. The birds and the bess, and other things that can’t actually change human power relationships, are free. They’re left unmolested by human beings because they don’t matter. In places where speech is free, and where censorship does not exist or is not obvious, the society is so sewn up–so depoliticised, so fiscalised in its basic power relationships–that it doesn’t matter what you say. And it doesn’t matter what information is published. It’s not going to change who owns what or who controls what. And the power structure of a society is by definition its control structure. So in the United States, because of the extraordinary fiscalisation of relationships in that country, it matters little who wins office. You’re not going to suddenly empty a powerful individual’s bank account. Their money will stay there. Their stockholdings are going to stay there, bar a revolution strong enough to void contacts.”

When politics is deeply embedded with money, a ‘free’ society might just be deceiving, with less room for change as compared to a society whose power structure remains political and therefore more open to reorganisation:

“Censorship is not only a helpful economic signal; it is always an opportunity, because it reveals a fear of reform. And if an organisation is expressing a fear of reform, it is also expressing the fact that it can be reformed.”

In thinking about these in relation to Singapore, it is interesting to note how speech still matters here, how journalism and writing can invert power structures, how art can inflect reform. Perhaps, the condition to aspire here is to be censored.

How can knowledge and information be factually disseminated to the population? How can it circumnavigate censorship without the risk of being tainted by money, corruption and other exploitation by the power structure? How can we reinvent the power structure of society so that freedom is not illusionary but remain a core value, upheld by all?

...;;;...

ETA: December 28, 2016

"It is a myth that an art withdrawn from the realm of public inspection and disapproval is a freer and superior art. The impulse to evade censure can inspire raptures of ingenuity. (The passage of the prim Hays Code in 1932, which led to four decades of censorship in Hollywood, increased the sophistication and wit of American films by a magnitude.) We hear much about art enriching the human experience, which is an agreeable platitude. But it is the other way round. The human experience is needed to enrich art, and without a meaningful living connection to the society that nurtures it, art is a plucked flower."

Michael J. Lewis, "How Art Became Irrelevant," Commentary Magazine, July 1, 2015, accessed July 2, 2015.

 https://somerepository.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/111/