A few upcoming things
See you in London in October, Buenos Aires in November, Middle East in winter?
Friends, I’m still knee-deep in the quicksands of book writing, but I hope to have good news on that soon. In the meantime, there are a few things upcoming which I’ll shortly hit the road for. Hope to see you around! You can keep up with latest goings-on in my lil’ Telegram channel. If you happen to be London in October, Buenos Aires in November, or the Middle East in winter let me know! I will be doing some discursive/creative things as I move around and happy to do more :)
Also, last reminder that there is an exhibition FORKED at Trust in Berlin, which includes the 2023 0xSalon work Prophet Motives. If you look closely, you might just recognise the saintly figure on the feigned glass. Trust is open in the daytimes until the end of the week.
Events
Wed 8th October 6:30pm at Newspeak House, London ::: RSVP
Software as Fascist Operating System ::: an evening of discussion and gameplay
Today, new forms of imperialism are emerging on land, sky, sea, and space, led by messianic anti-democracy elites who seek to reshape the global polis. These new patriarchs wish to challenge the nation-state system itself, through the creation of privatised zones of exception such as seasteads, charter cities, and network states. Framed as libertarian utopias, these emerging polities leverage ecological exploitation, patriarchal chauvinism, and colonial logics to enshrine the crowns and empires of tomorrow. What can be learned from the Athenian democracy and piratical governance, to destabilise today’s strongman supremacy?
Taking a cue from the theme of an upcoming edited collection of writings published by Aksioma, we'll use our bespoke FAU0X SALON card deck to discuss together anti-charismatic, anti-scalar, and anti-individualistic approaches to collective governance, including sortition, mutiny, and sapphirepunk.
Thu 9th October 5pm at Goldsmiths College, London ::: details to follow here
The Chain Mail Gaze: from Holy War to Technofascism (public lecture)
What if the medieval Crusades never truly ended? Instead, what if they became the template upon which modernity was modelled: a blueprint that reveals its true horror in our current age of technofascism. We will explore the possibility that the libidinal forces within medieval Europe – which fueled militarised pilgrimages to the Levant in the late 11th century onwards – persist today, haunting contemporary politics and technology.
With their dreams of new Network State empires, resource extraction, and supremacist domination, today’s tech overlords are the descendants of Europe's Crusaders. Though the methods have evolved, the Western will to power and conquest – The Chain Mail Gaze – remains the same, a thousand years later. From Pope Urban II to George W. Bush, from Dwight Eisenhower to Christopher Columbus, from Richard the Lionheart to Heinrich Himmler, the cultural logic of the Crusade as a righteous, civilisation-defining ideological war has left an indelible mark on the world's past, present, and possible futures.
Sunday 16th November at Cypherpunk Congress, Buenos Aires ::: details here
Open Swords Software (public lecture)
This talk will speculate upon the possibility that antifascist forms of governance could emerge from virtual communities, distributed infrastructures, and computational networks, themselves shaped by cryptographic cultures and software traditions.
Something TBA in the Middle East, late Jan / early Feb
I’ll write back with more on this once announced :)
Writings
I have three major texts on the verge of publication, once they’re out I’ll post about them in my lil’ Telegram channel.
A series of speculative fictions titled Love Language Models which are included in an anthology called Entanglements, published by Posthuman Press. You can read some out-takes from those sessions elsewhere on these pages.
Some memoiristic autotheory on Axiomatic Realism is included in the forthcoming issue of Ars Scientia journal. You can read parts of that in the very earliest posts here.
I wrote on Open Swords Software for Aksioma, as part of an upcoming edited collection on Software as Fascist Operating System.
For the second half of this survey, let us turn from problem to solution, in order to mitigate, destabilise and overthrow the fascist operating system that softwhere has become. If software has become an infrastructure of enclosure, what would antifascist design look like in practice? What alternative governance practices, counter-politics or ethical frameworks might undermine technocolonial manoeuvres to reshape the world map? Today’s culture of individual exceptionalism gives the wily operator power through what we might call charismogenesis, leading to what Max Weber characterised as charismatic authority and Herbert Marcuse’s authoritarian personality. Cults of personality allow demagogues to game democracy; antifascist design must disrupt their formation. Can we conceive of an anti-charismatic stack of technologies and strategies to counter the illiberal strongmen and corporate oligarchies of today and tomorrow?
That’s it for now, I think…
Wassim