Crowned Death - On good living and dying in times of Corona

Dying & the modern culture's tendencial incapability to cope with it in any meaningful way seems to be one of the central, yet mostly unacknowledged trigger points that are fueling and distorting the debates around the current Corona crisis. In my article released today at skug | Musikkultur, I argue that we have to understand Covid-19 in relation to the Sixth Mass Extinction - we are, after all, part of the huge, manifold and vastly endangered biomass of this planet and to ignore this fact produces 1) a Backlash into rather trite and meaningless humanist sloganizations of oxymorons like "prevent every unnecessary death" 2) as well as it makes political critiques short-sighted in that they remain in the human, all-too-human realm of only seeing biopolitical regimes of state of exception without any grounding in more-than-human-relationality with other critters from viruses to bats and beyond.

https://skug.at/crowned-death-on-good-living-and-dying-in-times-of-corona/

 *Update: this article has been reposted on NON and production de l'immédiate

Wasting our selves for the environment @/100

 

I have so far only rarely attempted to combine two of my main research topics: that of club culture with that of ecology. In the text Wasting our selves for the environment I try to do exactly that. This text was written last summer on invitation for a Berlin based zine on rave culture which still isn't published. However, a radio version in which I read the text for Entkunstung's new streaming platform /100 has been aired today and you can listen to it if you follow this link.

"Rave culture can operate as one among many experimental fields for developing new and badly needed forms of community-building and sympoiesis on this dying world. To overcome the self-centered, patriarchal culture of the anthropos, we have to waste our selves that are inflicted by its norms, jurisdictions and moral codes : we have to develop new queer forms of relating, of being together, of desiring, even of dying and destroying : of wasting. Amidst the soundworlds of mighty subwoofers and PA towers, we can relate to the power of our machines and include them into our community. A first step to become an ecologically aware society is not to dream about pristine Nature (the anthropos was good at that all along), but to start to see and respect the waste we produce to make the toxic environments we are all (human and non-human) inhabiting in the Anthropocene. In wasted raving, we can achieve the ecstasy of developing a sensual relationship to this planetary state of collapse and transition. Aside our ego-centered, ecologically catastrophic selves we can join the waste we created and become more resilient with it, in a thousand and one new communal ecstatic experiences."

I will make sure to get the text version published soon as well... 

 UPDATE (12/5/20): you can now find the text online at Skug and at NON!

https://skug.at/wasting-our-selves-for-the-environment/
https://non.copyriot.com/wasting-our-selves-for-the-environment/ 

Artist Talk about Toxic Temple for "AIL im Gespräch"

The Angewandte Innovation Lab / Elisabeth Falkensteiner did a talk about our exhibition Toxic Temple this March. In 15 minutes our approach and ideas are summarized in a very good way. Tune in and enjoy!