Escape from the Future

 


“Had he found a way to change life as we know it? No, he was only searching, he said”

-Rimbaud,” Delirium”




Why write anything to begin with? Things are looking bad and they don’t seem to be getting better any time soon. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is a way out. Are we going to be able to get on the off ramp or will we simply miss our exit?


Debates around what to call it seem at this point redundant. Techno Feudalism, political capitalism, and cybernetic capitalism are only terms that point to the fact that something is wrong, profoundly complex and evil.



Taking after the Beacon Cinema we should all take a moment to update our about page, to express publicly what exactly it is we are doing. Citing Marx they say that “it will transpire that mankind begins no new work.” In short it's exactly as Audre Lorde puts it “there are no new ideas.” I could post 100 books on instagram and tell you to read them, but that wouldn’t tell you why. If we assume there’s a way out (and that is by no means a given) then it follows that all the pieces are already in place. I keep coming back to Benjamin’s image of the pass as a tangled up knot of moments just waiting to be unraveled and redeemed. So what follows now is an attempt to complete the work of the past. And of course it can never be complete, but we can perform the gesture that proves we thought utopia was possible in our lifetimes.


“We shall patiently suffer the trials which Fate imposes on us; we shall work for others, now and in our old age, and we shall have no rest.” (Uncle Vania)

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