METABODY and the

9th Beyond Humanism Conference in Rome – 19th-23rd July

With artistic residency in Florence – Il Sabatino – 10-17 July, preparing the new Metatopia performance

Reverso coorganizes the Conference – Full programme: http://beyondhumanism.org/

Opening Plenary session on the Algoricene:

Metaformance by Jaime del Val:

Activites proposed by Metabody inside the conference:

19th July:

15’00-16’30 – Plenary session – Metahumanism, Posthumans and the Algoricene (Aula Magna) – Jaime del Val, Peggy Reynolds, Yvonne Förster, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. Moderator: Fabrizio Conti.

21’40: Metatopia 4.0: Algoricene – Metaformance by Jaime del Val – Courtyard – (15 min.)

20th July:

10’00-11’30 –  Room 4: Jaime del Val – Metaformance/Workshop/Consultation (part one):  Ontohacking techniques in the Algoricene. Or how to make yourself a metahuman metabody: the theories.

12’00-13’30 – Room 2: Jaime del Val – paper – Radical Movement Philosophy – a metahumanist ontology in the Algoricene

15’00-18’30 – DarkRoom: Jaime del Val – Metaformance/Workshop/Consultation (part two): Ontohacking techniques in the Algoricene. Or how to make yourself a metahuman metabody: embodied practice and experimentation. Come by and experiment!

ABSTRACTS:

19th July at 15’00 – Aula Magna – Introduction to the Algoricene in the Plenary Session:

The Algoricene – A metahumanist genealogy, and Ontohacking politics

Jaime del Val, Metabody Institute/Reverso

The Algoricene is a term I propose to define the emergence and dominance of a calculable account of the world: the era in which algorithmic perceptual ecologies, or the algorithmic reduction of movement’s indeterminate complexity, has become dominant on Earth, as a nihilistic anomaly, an illness on the skin of the planet.  Rather than the humanistic trope of the anthropocene or the posthumanistic trope of the Capitalocene, the Algoricene proposes a metahumanistic approach that looks at movement and its emergent ecologies.

At least since the algorithm of urban grids of ancient Greek cities, through the radical rationalisation of vision of Renaissance perspective, to autonomous algorithms in the Big Data Era, and toward so-called Singularity, the Big B.A.N.G. of convergent technologies (bits, atoms, neurons, genes), and the birth of an algorithmic life form, the Algoricene’s nonlinear genealogy rises along an exponential curve, signalling a will to power of exponential nihilism, a will to total control.

In turn Ontohacking is the metaformative practice of opening up perceptual ecologies from any dominant alignments of capture, in a neverending process of deviation (clinamen) to greater openness (chaos) foregrounding indeterminacy (ápeiron) in its relational complexity (metabodies). This is enacted by mobilising the transmodal sensory continuum and the alloceptive perceptual swarm of metabodies, in excess of any dominant geometrical reductions to trajectories, and by undoing the euclidean-perspectival-cartesian fiction of homogenous fixed space.

20th June at 12’00 – Room 2 – Paper:

Radical Movement Philosophy – a metahumanist ontology in the Algoricene

Jaime del Val, Metabody Institute/Reverso

At the core of metaphysics and philosophy lies the unsolved problem of movement and its complex indeterminacy. The history of the logos can be seen as the negation thereof, culminating in Aristotle’s Physics, after a three centuries long battle between movement and form. Aristotle culminates the subjection of movement to form and causality by transvaluating and assigning a negative value to movement’s undefined nature. I will argue that no philosopher since then has fully undertaken the task of rethinking movement without any of the terms invented to negate its complex indeterminacy (fixity, form, being, matter, actuality, potentiality, causality). Radical movement philosophy is such an attempt to think movement without reducing its complex indeterminacy, whereby all the terms of metaphysics, appear as historical contigencies in the context of imperial, state and slave societies.

RMP seeks recourse to and inspiration in postdeleuzians/bergsonians as much a presocratic philosophers in attempting to elaborate a thinking of movement a sole a priori. Movement is proposed both as radical opening (never concrete) and radical relationality of infinite complexity (never abstract), as always engendering relational fields, metabodies. Neither abstract nor concrete, this new thinking of complex indeterminacy appears as crucial ontopolitical task in the Algoricene, the hypercontrol era of big data, hyperalgorithms and singularity black holes, where the dynamic production of patterns has become a crucial operative logic of power. RMP, in a metahumanistic move, mobilizes the amorphous through ontopolitical practices of perceptual and kinetic hacking.

20th uly at 10’00 and at 15’00 – Ontohacking workshop

Jaime del Val, Metabody Institute/Reverso

Ontohacking is the metaformative practice of opening up the dominant, algorithmic, reductive perceptual ecologies of the Algoricene, from any dominant alignments of capture, in a neverending process of deviation (clinamen) to greater openness (chaos) foregrounding indeterminacy (ápeiron) in its relational complexity (metabodies). This is enacted by mobilising the transmodal sensory continuum and the alloceptive perceptual swarm of metabodies, in excess of any dominant geometrical reductions to trajectories, and by undoing the euclidean-perspectival-cartesian fiction of homogenous fixed space.

The workshop will study the dominant alignments of the Algoricene and techniques for its ontological, perceptual and kinetic hacking. The Algoricene is the era in which algorithmic perceptual ecologies, or the algorithmic reduction of movement’s indeterminate complexity, has become dominant on Earth, as a nihilistic anomaly, an illness on the skin of the planet.  At least since the algorithm of urban grids of ancient Greek cities, through the radical rationalisation of vision of Renaissance perspective, to autonomous algorithms in the Big Data Era, and toward so-called Singularity, the Big B.A.N.G. of convergent technologies (bits, atoms, neurons, genes), and the birth of an algorithmic life form, the Algoricene’s nonlinear genealogy rises along an exponential curve, signalling a will to power of exponential nihilism, a will to total control.

Techniques of disalignments from such control geometries will be explored, through concepts of Radical Movement Philosophy, as metahumanistic practices.

Jaime del Val (Madrid 1974) is transdisciplinary media artist, philosopher, activist, promotor of the Metabody Project, Forum and Institute, and the non profit organisation Reverso. Jaime’s projects propose redefinitions of embodiment, perception and public space that challenge contemporary control society as well as normative conceptions of affect, sex, gender and ability, and have been presented with over 100 performancs and installations in over 50 cities of 25 countries. The recent evolution of these projects led to the Multiannual European Culture project with a 2 million euro fund from the EU commission, coordinated by Jaime with a network of 38 partners from 16 countries. As part of Metabody Jaime has organised over 20 international Forums and coodinated over 60 research projects. The project continues with the Metabody Forum, the Multiplicity University, the Metamedialab and the Metatopia environments. Jaime’s philosophical work has been published in over 30 essays, and has been presented in over 100 lectures in Universities like U.C Berkeley, Stanford, MIT Medialab, Duke University, Yale, Cambridge and others. Jaime has imparted over 60 artist’s workshops in 25 countries. Furthermore as pianist and composer Jaime has recorded 12 CD’s with over 300 works. Jaime’s interests as activist have been elaborated since 1997 in relation to numerous environmental, lgbtq and Occupy movements, some of which Jaime has coordinated at national level. In 2008 Jaime was chosen by El Pais as one of the 100 Iberoamericans of the year, described as: “one of the most outstanding examples of an artist concerned with all art forms and with the problems of his time… a clear example of how it’s possible to change the world through art”.