Nouvelle Laurentine / Hors les Murs manifestations de la Maison Laurentine

La Maison Laurentine is participating in this event with a lecture / performance by Pierre Bongiovanni and I-Wei Li (Sidebysidestudio de Berlin).

Conferences / performance

• Franco Bifo Berardi ;
• Luc Boltanski ;
• Roland Cayrol ;
• Yves Citton ;
• Ivana Dragsic ;
• Dominic Gagnon ;
• Sophie Gosselin and David G Bartoli ;
• Jodi ;
• Katharina Klotz ;
• I-Wei Li and Pierre Bongiovanni ;
• Matteo Lucchetti ;
• Jean-Marc Manach ;
• Anne Morelli ;
• Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese ;
• Fédéric Neyrat ;
• Béatrice Rettig ;
• Timothée Nay and Omnes ;
• Efflam ;
• Société Réaliste ;
• Samon Takahashi ;
• Tzuchien Tho ;
• UBERMORGEN ;
• Olivier Voirol ;
• Paul Willemsen ;
• Wunderlitzer :
• Stream sur selfworld.net chambre #44 ;

Installations / videos / workshop / documentation

• Benoît Durandin and Alexandre Xanthakis ;
• Dominic Gagnon ;
• Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica ;
• Jodi ;
• Jorge Luis Marzo and Arturo “Fito” Rodríguez ;
• Ricardo Mbarkho ;
• Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese ;
• Société Réaliste ;
• Le Dispositif (Pacôme Thiellement and Thomas Bertay) ;
• Samon Takahashi ;
• UBERMORGEN ;
• sélection Argos : Charley Case, Tzu Nyen Ho, Gert Verhoeven ;

http://incident.net/theupgrade/politique0/

Politique Zéro is organised by Upgrade ! Paris, the editions MF and RYBN.ORG

The performance of I-Wei Li & Pierre Bongiovanni

streaming video directed by Ivan Chabanaud
(sound correct, poor quality images)
http://www.selfworld.net/
http://www.selfworld.net/chambre.swf?id=44

Squirt without Barriers

Squirt Without Barriers will unpack the links that connect the cardinal points of social and political control exerted now on each and everyone. The police, the mafia, the military, and the media are consistent entities with complementary skills, particularly in the areas of research, innovation and use of electronic communication technologies. Further, by using concrete examples, real or fictional, we demonstrate how artists and cultural operators today have become new forms of complacent and complicit servitude and domination through mighty deployment of cultural capitalism.
Squirt Without Barriers will be performed in both English and French.
Nous allons montrer pourquoi, en tant qu’artistes et créateurs, nous devons soutenir et accompagner, les actions innovantes imaginées par la police, l’armée ou la mafia.

We will show why, as artists and creators, we must support and accompany the innovative actions imagined by the police, the military or the mafia.

Why, we artists are hardworking and reliable agents by which capitalism can now enjoy our labour without hindrance.

We, artists, now can do even more since the political landscape has collapsed, neither the left nor the right wings is trusted. One after another politic today has become circus attractions. Our presence at this forum tonight, in the headquarter of Party
Communist de France is the ultimate confirmation.

And the collapse of politics finally opens wide new avenues for experimentation and research, because the world is finally without barriers, including those of morality and law.

We must seize these opportunities because we, artists, have special responsibilities : we know the news, we are conscious of the world changes, we are aware of the issues and challenges and above all, we have read and understood the great philosophical texts on economic, politic, and innovation. Furthermore, we have
mastered the craftsmanship of art production of previous centuries.

We, artists, are able because we are experienced and tireless when it comes to negotiate our demand with the authorities and even if we are ready to sell our skin for peanuts, we proclaim loudly the conditions of creation.

Moreover, we are not alone. We, artists, have a vital role to play for the creation of future world. Respectable American economist, Jeremy Rifkin, advocates clearly that the deployment of cultural capitalism needs artist to invent the future markets in order to ensure its growth and glory.

Cultural capitalism implies the production through the use of symbols ; it is gradually replacing previous forms of capitalism. Industrial capitalism which involves the production and consumption of inventory where as for financial capitalism, it
involves the continuous circulation of number streaming.

For those who remember will recall that in 1970, Rank Xerox firm financed at great expense a research laboratory, known as the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, where artists, engineers and intellectuals could search, innovate and experiment freely with unlimited budgets. From these fruitful years came out
the most advanced production and then further developed by MIT in Boston. New applications, new products, new markets, new behaviors, new civilization, one might say, are directly the result of these successful marriages between capitalism and creative artists.

This fine tradition continues today with the addition of DARPA research laboratory, a close collaboration between U.S. Army and the best universities in the world, which has huge budget and focus its research in biotechnological advancement : how to
understand, control and manipulate emotions, how to devise weapons of mass destruction next-generation operating with new developments arising from the understanding of brain mechanisms. Cognitive science and desire for domination will
allow the emergence of the information war to destroy the human brains by saturating the enemy with information overload until they become desensitized. The logic is simple, in order to destroy, one needs to know how it functions first.

On the artistic side, through the knowledge of military and university research labs on media bombs, we artists can create ‘informational clouds’ hovering over the country and people, affecting directly on their mind and emotions. This opens up
incredible opportunities for disseminating a perfect egalitarian pattern of beauty.

This is only made possible with the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (as some may remember, these events did actually exist) so the ‘informational clouds’ will not be too far. While the media-bombs are legitimate, we, artists, should also experiment and create with these new tools.

There have been ambitious artists who have managed to face up to the challenges of their time and for sure, more will come. For example, the fantastic operation mounted by Orson Welles at age 23, (23 !!!). On October 30, 1938, he announced on the American radio the factious invasion of extraterrisals.

It is true that we are still waiting for the power of artistic actions in the field of electronic media. What we remember is also the dramatic role of ‘Radio Mille
Collines’ in the Rwanda massacres. What is possible for the worst, should also be possible for the best. To create the best is a special responsibility for us, artists should invent artworks using media bomb technology like Disney to transform these territories with delight.

Fruitful alliances between the military and university laboratories seems so natural and logical. If one follows the analysis of Jeremy Rifkin, it will soon be deployed between military research and artistic experimentation. This would allow us, artists, to access new resources and knowledge. On one hand, it will bring the military and civilians
together but also the art and people closer.

In the introduction we said, we, artists and creators, with the support of mass media, we sustain innovative actions imagined by the police, the military, or the mafia. These four systems of power and organization have common features indeed :

1. they mobilize the intelligence and knowledge ;
2. they promote innovation and research to enhance the conditions for their survival ;
3. They are pioneers in technology and therefore, they are always fully informed of new developments and innovations ;
4. They are also pioneers in the field of data protection, encryption, and surveillance ;
5. finally, they have a culture of secrecy that allows them to enjoy experimentation in peace and free of democratic oppositions.
   Because the primary result of the democratic discourse today seems to delay of any innovative progress infinitely.

These systems somehow demonstrate the matrix and strategies of conquest and domination of the future. Now look what’s going on with the police. For the police, as with artists from elsewhere, the rising of social networks is one of the best news in recent decades. Whether it’s the facebook or twitter we now have powerful
surveillance tools for observing, understanding and controlling populations through their voluntary disclosure. Imagine how it is now possible to set up systems for massive betrayal. It’s easy, free, accessible to anyone with Internet access and almost no risk.

The inventors of the Internet and GPS, by no coincidence are the U.S. military. Together with mobile phones, telecommunication today gives us the opportunities to track emotions, gestures, and mood swings, to geo-locate the opinions and to predict the movements of the crowds. All these elegant persuasions have a smooth starting point, by our so-called, virtual "friends”.

The reign of Big Brother has finally arrived, it is now transformed via a true participatory democracy. Everyone, even the humblest becomes a potential prescriber and content provider. Everyone participates in its own way in the reorganization of the
world on the basis of informational transparency and consumerism. What the massive consumption of hyperactive chemicals failed, what television hypnosis failed, namely the complete and final domestication of individuals, social networks are realizing it ! Now, try to imagine what Orson Welles would invent with social networks today !

Not long ago, Jasper Johns, pointed the role of mafia in the explosion of prices for contemporary art. Other artists have spotted this and are also reported (Picasso,
Hans Haake, etc.). We know the role of the art market in the dynamics of money
laundering. We know the relationship between the mafia and the art community. In addition to consuming the drugs manufactured by the former, the latter also copy their mode of organization. All this is old, well known and well respected. Besides, artists are now offering to go even further. ARTOUT, The international collective of artists propose to operate similar services like the Russian mafia prostitution via the Internet (you choose your escort artist on the website, you pay online discreetly and securely, you leave your comments about the qualities and performance of the escort artist).

ARTOUT Artists, intends to be hired as artist escorts to sell their artistic being as the ultimate art product. These avant-garde artists understand perfectly the logic of cultural capitalism, without emotional conflicts, they adopt the models of
mafia prostitution as an alternative economic model for contemporary cultural workers. They open the way to further advance the production and dissemination of artistic works.

This issue of art prostitution began smoothly with the video servers such as YouTube, MySpace that are currently experiencing a massive success and becoming huge economic stakeholders. Artists join these massive networks to distribute their films by
losing once for all their copyrights. This new and modern attitude of artists, proudly declares themselves as free artistic content suppliers benefits only the broadcasting channels.

The pessimistic says that the desire for reputation outweighs the artistic integrity. Artists who are willing to accept the coup that their work falls in the mainstream media in which they get lost and drown in indiscriminately. Bullshit. Besides copyright, the story is now delivered by the multinational art institution, the Guggenheim (New York, Venice, Bilbao, Berlin, Abu Dhabi) with its Biennial resulting from an agreement with "YouTube", "HP" and "Intel" for the organization of the Biennale’s video creation.

An art biennial in which published artworks for which copyrights no longer belong to the artists, thereby addressing the issues of copyright and artistic property as obsolete.

Now, we suggest to end our presentation with a proposal for collective action and pleasure : a standing ovation dedicated to cultural capitalism so that it can manifest at all times and in all places. For cultural capitalism to squirt without barriers and to
celebrate newly wedded artists with the police, the military, the mafia and the media.

Here is the manifesto of the standing ovation :

• given the disappearance of political parties
• given the disappearance of class struggle
• given the disillusion of radicalism in the artistic sphere of Entertainment
• given the obsolescence of collective action
• given the disqualification of all past and current theories

We affirm that it is still possible to temporarily intervene in the public space. We propose a manifestation with private individuals, simply in agreement or disagreement with any particular news event, any particular behavior of politicians, any particular
consumer decision, any particular cultural or artistic administration, by visiting the symbolic place with any apparatus for a small bench about 30 cm high in which only one person can rise to engage in the Standing Ovation.

The Standing Ovation is a radical and greeting gesture that can be practiced anywhere, and that can bring one, ten, hundred or thousand people together.

The Standing Ovation is a form of joyful despair, low noise, little binding, which defies any form of control, recovery, diversion, or suppression.

The Standing Ovation is neither superior nor inferior, consequently, has opportunity to receive immediate form of efficiency.

The Standing Ovation is a modern approach, but also that we do not care.

• A regular place, not elegant, not neglected, or eccentric ;
• A humble posture, serene, without passion, definitely without passion ;
• We will be attentive to the environment around but without affectation ;
• Applause, conventionally practiced regularly without precipitation will have a duration of 3 minutes or more ;
• To the question "What are you doing ?" It will be answered simply :
  "I applaud." For example, I applaud to the policy of the Ministry of Culture, the work of Jeff Koons, or any irrelevant events.