CosmiKnots

autopilot travelers of cosmic ecologies

[cosmiknots]

“Twisted”

LET'S GET "Twisted" Y'ALL!!! 

Told around a CLOCK, unfolded as an UNKNOWING MAP to see situations happening simultaneously across space-time, "Twisted" is a RITUAL of RE-SEARCH to explore GLOBAL INEQUALITIES through EMBODIED INVESTIGATIONS. CosmiKnots will practice "Twisted" as part of the JUST SITUATIONS Performative Convention.

"Twisted" requires twelve spines (representing time's strokes) to be gently entwined by string. CosmiKnots is looking for 12+ people of diverse intersectional axises & across lived divisions of resource access to stand (or sit in a wheelchair) in a fixed or fluid position for max 25 minutes. Concerned with the participative politic$ of artistic production, we wish to conjure your corporal contributions outside the logics of paid capital.

CosmiKnots invites NYC ARTISTS to PARTICIPATE in this 'JUST situation' in EXCHANGE for SHARING RESOURCES amongst each other

Is there something you NEED/SEEK to pursue your art practice that may be facilitated or fulfilled by the community? Is there something you can OFFER/CONTRIBUTE in exchange for a JUST TRADE? (Examples: Seeking recording equipment rental, short-term studio space, creative & critical feedback on a project, etc; Offering short-term studio space rental, time for assistance, mentorship, creative direction for projects, etc ::: ALL IMAGINED IDEAS ARE POSSIBLE!)

If interested, please check out the dates/times and FILL OUT THIS FORM. All participants will be "paid" with a just trade-exchange arranged with other artist(s) in the circle-clock meet-up & a small vegan snack for their hour-long corporal contribution. THANK YOU!!!

[cosmiknots]

CosmiKnots @ JUST SITUATIONS performative convention

JUST SITUATIONS is a hybrid conference, festival, and “political science fair,” hosting artists and active citizens who are working in performative ways, moving beyond the trending commercialization of art “about” politics, into non-representational and non-reproductive modes of performance which directly construct, speculate, design. position, and posit “just” forms of political, social, and personal human being and becoming.

CosmiKnots will be performing ‘TWISTED’ on JULY 22!! More info coming soon...

FACEBOOK EVENT BLOG ACCESS EQUITY

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[cosmiknots]

JIZZ-JAZZ OF VITAL DATA

 on trash aesthetics excess et etc.

(NOTES FROM Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett)

1. “If environmentalism leads to the call for the protection and wise management of an ecosystem that surrounds us, a VITAL MATERIALISM suggests that the task is to ENGAGE MORE STRATEGICALLY with a trenchant materiality that is us as it vies with us in ASSEMBLAGES” (111) --->  <<humans+trash=VIBRANT ASSEMBLAGE>>

2. REJECT HYPOTHESIS THAT MATERIALITY is “ontologically ranked” along “Great Chain of Being”: Human, subhuman, animal, mineral, elemental, atomic… Instead, INFLECT MATTER as “vibrant, vital, energetic, lively, quivering, vibratory, evanescent…” (112). <<WE ARE ONE>> (monster of matter)

3. “I is It: The Outside That’s Within” (113) // SWIMMING IN THE SEE OF ‘Special Species Self’ // Floating worlds…

4. “What I am calling vital materiality or vibrant matter is akin to what is expressed in one of the many historical senses of the word nature” - A LIVING VIBRANT NATURE - A JAZZ SONG SUNG LIKE NEVER BEFORE - in tune to the times…

[cosmiknots]

REHEARSAL B4 REVOLUTION

“I place myself as this kind of theatre director and I PLACE THE SPECTATORS as the MAIN CHARACTERS who have to follow the SCRIPT OF WORK. What the work then does is create a stage for them to get in and walk around or perform in, where that could be just engaging in the site and walking.

If we understand the REHEARSAL as a COLLECTIVE PRAXIS where a CHORUS PERFORMS a symbolic action, then PERFORMANCE is just a TRIAL SPACE (or a fictional site if you wish) which, by the mere fact of bracketed from the context of what we think of as ‘reality’, can thereby bring the possibility of creating something new, different..

In rehearsal, the player or performer has the opportunity to insert him or herself in a temporal space which is constrained by some pre-determined rules or a script. If this text is open enough, then he or she has the freedom to act in a completely different way, much more free than you normally act in real life. But of course this actor is also the link between the fictional, where new ways of making could potentially occur, and the reality, as when the rehearsal is over he keeps on living his or her own life... Rehearsals as potential spaces where we could evoke political and social changes.”

-Rehearsal For Revolution, in conversation with Leonor Serrano Rivas, published in Four By Three Magazine

At some point, distraught by the lost of a loved one on stage, #KrittyKouture of CosmiKnots did not know what to do. We REHEARSED the REFUSAL to the regular SCHEDULE of RITUAL. 

(from Nihilisa Frank)

[cosmiknots]

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“Consumerism promises that magical transformations are easy, available on demand, and that A SELF understood in TERMS of LIFESTYLES and PERSONALITY EXPERIMENTS—rather than in terms of communal tradition, meaningful work, or the continuity of life experience—can be a worthy expression of individual freedom.

The true self, from this point of view, doesn’t precede the process of being encoded in social media; instead the real self — real in the sense of being influential — emerges through information processing (sharing, being shared, being on a social graph, having recommendations automated, being processed by algorithms, and so on). As information is processed and assimilated to the archive of self, it begins feeding into the algorithmic systems that report back to us the true nature of who we are.”

“Google Alert for the Soul” by Rob Horning in The New Inquiry

(from nihilisa frank)

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[cosmiknots]

"We are vital materiality and we are surrounded by it, though we do not always see it that way.”

(pg. 14 in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett)

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“Techno-Animism”

“The more computed our environment becomes, the further back it returns us to our primitive past, boomerangs us right back to an animistic world view where everything has a spirit, rocks and lions and men. So all the objects in the world become more responsive, things that were once regarded as dumb become addressable, and that universal addressability—a network of things—creates this enchanted landscape. Magic is literally in the air. And that is an altered state, and an endlessly productive one.”

Techno-Animism with John Kelsey, Katja Novitskova, Jacolby Satterwhite and Mark Leckey in Mousse Magazine

///

SETTING OF A SERMON: What do we see and what do we choose to look at? What is vital, is visible, is virtual and valued attention? What is overturned underground, forgotten from the surface? How to begin to reconcile and re-cognize our footprints on the planet?

A TEMPLE OF ALTER-TIME At the pulse of plastic An altar of trash A sacred surplus (of stuff) Accept holey excess Access holy space of human x_here_x a-men.

[cosmiknots]

Celebrating Amidst a Crisis

Saturday Night LIVE. CosmiKnots tried to continue the three-day celebration, Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption. Surrounded by our sacred altar of trash, we were ready to keep the party going. But then our friend/follower, Hardly/OK, got into an accident and ended up in the hospital. How could we celebrate our cult of stuff when our close friend couldn’t be there? WHAT MATTERS IN THE WORLD? ( #blacklivesmatter! )

“Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism... but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond...

The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick).

”Cosmic Pessimism” by Eugene Thacker in Continent Continent

(from Nihilisa Frank)

[cosmiknots]

Trapped in the Light of the Looking Glass

“Is the internet dead? This is not a metaphorical question. It does not suggest that the internet is dysfunctional, useless or out of fashion. It asks what happened to the internet after it stopped being a possibility. The question is very literally whether it is dead, how it died and whether anyone killed it...

...So what does it mean if the internet has moved offline? It crossed the screen, multiplied displays, transcended networks and cables to be at once inert and inevitable. One could imagine shutting down all online access or user activity. We might be unplugged, but this doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. The internet persists offline as a mode of life, surveillance, production, and organization—a form of intense voyeurism coupled with maximum nontransparency.”

-”Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead” by Hito Steyerl in E-flux

/// FYI, we were not in sync enough to live stream the three-day show, so we performed ‘off-line.’ Still, we were always connected to the screen... 

(from Honey Boo Boo Philosophy)

[cosmiknots]

Procession, interrupted / Crisis, inverted 

[ A chalk of courage, like a pen. A container for feelings, spilling over, upside-down, inside-out. A sad clown performs for the stage.]

“Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it...

The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope.”

-Eugene Thacker in Continent Continent

The shred of human hope, like the salt in your tears [before ocean’s rise]. 

[cosmiknots]

We are humanity. We are the dead. They have become us, as we will become the dead of future generations.

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton, pg. 94

[cosmiknots]

ReCap/Rewind/Move_Forward: Day2Details

CosmiKnots is envisioned a creative network embodying spirtu-ecological/decolonial concerns through live arts productions that stage critiques of contemporary issues and current events. Much as cosmonauts command control of a spacecraft, we imagined our co-conspirators and ourselves as physics-defying autopilots journeying through a universal entanglement of embodied dimensions.

In A Call=OUT B4 the Fall-OUT: Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption, CosmiKnots includes #KrittyKouture, who brands herself as an avatar that seeks recognition through crafted composite of popular consumer expressions, which she critiques to be too simple; blonde, pink and bossy, she is a decoupage of all that she sees as being desired. She plays as a foil to Coupon, whose lack of cultivated taste is balanced by her glittered pop-color palette and daydream play. Then, we positioned a character known as guardian alien as a non-earthly conscious entity that watches the unfolding process of humanity’s planetary situation and our staged drama. Finally, our confused cult believer, Hardly/OK, straddled the state of suspension, stuck between ritual belief and bold refusal.

We were a mini-polity representing disparate figures for communication and conflict. And of course, excesses of consumer stuff surrounded us, bringing us figurative ‘believers’ in conversation with surplus garbage materiality habitually ignored. We wanted to create an inverted ritual space of commercial animist ‘worship’ for the performance-art public audience, though we also sought to touch on today’s obstacles in the collective orientation towards community. Although we published a schedule of events, we barely followed it; we were too busy being divided in conflict or collectively distracted by our digital devices. This played out the contemporary story of human life, celebrating through techno-material consumption but on the whole, still incapable of coming together in conscious unity.

Unexpectedly, on the second day, the character that played Hardly (Rachel J!<3) had an accident and went to the hospital. I could barely prepare for the performance knowing that my good friend had gotten into a total crash. Four became three --- #KrittyKouture, Qpon and Guardian Alien (xfatherfigurex). Me, I could do nothing but turn my clown’s face into a frown, with blue sparkle tears literally falling down my cheeks... The next series in this tumblr cascade will be from Day 2: Crysis, Crisis -->>

[cosmiknots]

Selfie Snapshots of an Existential Crisis :::

Do I Exist If I’m Not Screen Seen??? 

“...Selfies, when one is willing to engage with oneself only as a media object. We start taking pictures of ourselves to remove ourselves from the experience of ourselves. We mediate ourselves to become external phenomena from which we can detach ourselves. But the principle is the same: Broadcasting allows us to be audience to ourselves, because we are speaking to no one else in particular and it may as well be ourselves too...

The screen is an easy metaphor for “audience-ification” — it stands like a barrier between the watcher and what is being watched and creates a frame that seems to set the viewer outside of it. But we are pulled through and repelled by screens all the time, and the ramifications of what we see spills out beyond the frame.

Broadcasting is a mentality that one adopts toward potential perceived audiences that conveys that their attention is desired but not necessary to the message being projected. Broadcasting makes attention not a condition of communication but its outcome, its product. It alienates attention and makes it a commodity. And most of all, it has this effect on the broadcaster, who becomes self-alienated.”

(from “Speaking to No One” by Marginal Utility in The New Inquiry)

[cosmiknots]

Existential Crisis /// The Selfie as a Ritual of Reflection

[[ REVELATIONS ---> #KrittyKouture (aka Kk): I admit I had high hopes on the first night and felt frustrated that I could not get into serious discussion with audience members about the sacred stuff of trash. The night ended with my existential crisis, captured in a selfie video. Our volunteer comforted me, letting me know that she liked the piece and could see how I tried to turn trash into a living conversation in a community like Fort Lauderdale, where consumption is the unquestioned normcore. This public existential crisis of both Kk & #Kritty may have diverged from my intended direction, but ultimately it speaks to the multiple rifts in the making of self within spectator society. ]] 

[cosmiknots]

"Nature is Imperfect / but / Technology is Perfect"

blip_clip from ritual07:

TranceDance 2 TechnoFutures 

// an ancient trance music meditation on transcending materiality through the techno-machine // 

(see ‘cybernetic & metaphysics’ by luciana parisi @ ica_miami)

(video forthcoming on you_tube)

[cosmiknots]

TranceDance 2 TechnoFutures

In this ceremony, #KrittyKouture played mouth harp, an ancient shamanic musical instrument for entering the self-induced state of trance. By using this technology for trance from the past, #Kritty wanted to create a space for consumer cult worshippers to meditate on the future of techno-materiality. Our hope is that by praying around the trash altar, all the material garbage we have accumulated on this planet actually enables the technological means of transcendence into the higher dimension of auto-mated human-machine life. /// 

from the DIRT to the SKIES [cyborg_disguised life] / from the FLOOR to the WIRES [see_underseanetwork&oceancables] / from the GROUND to the GODS / from the ROOTS to the HOLOGRAM / from the SEED to the NET/ TRASH is TRANSCENDANCE ~Let’sTranceDance2TechnoFuturez ///

CosmiKnots. A Call-OUT B4 the Fall-OUT: Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption (TranceDance 2 TechnoFuturez), 2017. Mixed Media: Trash & Avatars on PhotoBooth Screenshots [under the shadows of Leandra Arvazzetti’s Untitled, hanging installation.] 

[cosmiknots]

CAUGHT UP W/ the CAMERA

1. The Documentarian (performed by Mariyn Doddi of Eggplantian Spring Meditation) stops by and disrupts attention with her digital eyes. #KrittyKouture wags her legs as the camera lens walks by. Hardly can hardly speak. Coupon gives her a coupon. 

2. Another photographer grabs Coupon & #KrittyKouture’s attention, while Hardly and Guardian Alien dance to work-out videos in the back. 

[cosmiknots]

A Mantra Meditation on ME

#KrittyKouture opens the ‘Woke-UP Work-OUT’ ceremony with a 3-minute bija ‘seed’ mantra : ME. The power of ME. Say it with me: me Me me Me me ME me ME me. Daily practice of this seed mantra harnesses today’s techno-industrial force of hyper-individualism. With each participant of the consumer class equipped with their own set of clothes, cellphones, computers, etc., we must remember and resonate the power of ME that connects us all. A-men. 

[CosmiKnots. A Call-OUT B4 the Fall-OUT: Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption (Shaking Up the Chakras: A Woke-UP Work-OUT), 2017. Mixed Media: Trash & Avatars & Google’d Images (under the shadows of Leandra Arvazzetti’s Untitled, hanging installation) on PhotoBooth Screenshots.]