Click here to see slides used for this presentations: Problem Lab Session 3_Tam Hare_Black stack presentation
Discussed topic / reference: Benjamin Bratton’s essay The Black Stack, e-flux journal
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-black-stack/
Tam Hare’s presentation about The Black Stack: Problem Lab Session 3_Tam Hare_Black stack presentation.pdf (in DROPBOX – CuratorLab (1) – Course 2015-2016 – ProblemLab)
Comments by Tam Hare:
The paper was produced initially for this event and therefore you can hear Bratton present a version of this text from about 42,30 in the video. I would recommend watching the whole keynote though, as this event is all related and Metahaven, who speaks first, also gives an extremely interesting talk, fully applicable to the ‘subject’ in the post-internet/post-human age. In addition, I think those of you who do want to read the essay, I would do this before watching the talk as I think this is a better way of understanding the ideas he is attempting to address.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c3jXPBG-NY
I will firstly attempt to present this paper by discussing the themes that interest me and relate to my work and research, at this time. After this, I hope my thoughts will stimulate a discussion between us all. I feel that Bratton’s essay and notion of ‘The Black Stack’, regardless of your reading, opposition or points of agreement with him, certainly deal with issues that are omnipresent. Therefore, I considered this a fitting subject for a session and hopefully one that will contain plenty of rigorous debate(s).
Lastly, here are some other clips, that I would like to flag up in relation to this. I will try to get a projector for this presentation and with any luck we can watch some of these at the session together and in the process, I can hopefully describe how I consider they relate to certain aspects of what Bratton is alluding to in his paper. I may add one or two more examples too, depending on the time. Also, particularly as I have many ‘problems’ with much of these subject matters and the debates therein, I deemed these videos give some insight into my research and were in that sense, relevant to our idea of the ProblemLab as such. I have noted some time codes alongside, for specific sections that I judge are particularly telling, but of course watch the whole video(s) if you want. For me, they are all worth seeing anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md6_WfF9Ky0
9,55 to 12,00; 33,50 to 36,10; 49,45 to 53,00; 1,11,00 to 1,12,40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBBzYG8szmc
taken from this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IpDTUhQA5U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REG6qIQbQpQ
46,45 to the end…
(Finally, the Tariq Ali talk, I put in a previous email has a relevance here I suspect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MncHuv4OZ9k )
Comments by Rowan Geddis
This comes delayed, but in relation to Tam’s presentation last week , I wanted to mention a reference i have been interested in through my own research (and that some of you may be familiar with already)- which seems on reflection super relevant to the Black Stack, and Tam’s interest in the implications of ‘state’ action on the individual- :
Lewis Mumfords incredible 2 part publication ‘Myth of the Machine’,(1967) in which Mumford proposes some scarily relevant understandings of the relationship between technology and power/state: what Mumford calls “the machine,” and later “the megamachine.”: the social structure organized not around any organic human needs, but around the “needs” of the machines that have come to characterize and control our lives:
“With this new ‘megatechnics’ the dominant minority will create a uniform, all-enveloping, super planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of functioning actively as an autonomous personality, man will become passive, purposeless, machine conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians, now interpret mans role, will either be fed into the machines or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of de-personalized, collective organizations. ”
Myth of the Machine, page2.
Willian Manson has a concise 2-pager of thoughts on these books here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/21/homo-technomorphis/
Manson touching on Mumfords concept of the ‘megamahine’- ‘how centralized power systems have utilized technical means for the military, bureaucratic regimentation of immense human populations, and how technical means have served power elites, modernity= reduction of the unique individual into “the calculable person” (Foucault).
Particularly thinking about where we left the last session- touching on the cyborg and mans inevitable transition into becoming machines :
“Ultimately, the totalitarian technocracy, centralizing and augmenting its “power-complex,” ignoring the real needs and values of human life, might produce “a world fit only for machines to live in.”