Stratagems for Communality

Robert Newton in Blackbeard Pirate, 1952

Robert Newton in Blackbeard Pirate, 1952

‘All human creatures are divided into two groups. There are pirates, and there are farmers. Farmers build fences and control territory. Pirates tear down fences and cross borders.’ (Hickey, 2013)

Since the Thatcher-Reagan economic era of the late 1970s, continuing with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2000s Internet Revolution, major societal shifts encouraged the processes of human individualisation, community dissolving and exclusion of vulnerable individuals.

Contemporary socio-economical factors affect people’s state of wellbeing, sensibility and empathy. According to Berardi (2009) economic competition and technical systems of digital networks are the most burdensome brain stimuli. He argues that the global consciousness witnesses a collapse, with people becoming unable to elaborate in a conscious way, due to the acceleration of information. Human beings become less curious, more stressed, more aggressive; anxiety, fear, autistic behaviour, emotional atrophy become their daily routine.

Social innovations are my objectives. As Anti-Solutioner, I stand up against the ingrained established order. I question the entire logic of a system and develop disruptive frameworks through creative blending and recombination of disparate elements and ideas.

My research bridges two concepts: (1) Catherine Malabou’s Brain Plasticity (2012) and the idea that the human brain possesses a continuous transformative potential, and (2) Alexander Galloway’s Protocol (2004), a management platform responsible for openness, multiplicity of connections, and contingency in Internet’s architecture.

The goal of my research is to explore to what extent these two concepts might help shape an alternative modus operandi in the process of community and collective consciousness forming as a resistive response to the increasing tendency of social fragmentation, isolation and exclusion.

This blog post was initially published on the MA Innovation Management blog at Central Saint Martins as part of MAIM 2015 Degree Show ‘Unveiling’.

*Bauman, Z. (2014) Giving and Taking Online: Serpentine Gallery. < http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/park-nights-2014-zygmunt-bauman > [Accessed March 2015].
*Berardi, F. B. (2009) Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the pathologies of the post-alpha generation *Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson: Autonomedia.
*Galloway, A. R. (2004) Protocol: How Control Existes after Decentralization. Cambridge, Masachusetts: MIT Press.
*Hickey, D. (2013) Pirates and Farmers London: Ridinghouse.
*James, I. (2012) The New French Philosophy In: Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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What is Social Innovation?

Cloud Brocade by Philip Beesley Arhitect Inc.—http://philipbeesleyarchitect.com/sculptures/1114-1214_Cloud-Brocade/index.php

Cloud Brocade by Philip Beesley Arhitect Inc.—http://philipbeesleyarchitect.com/sculptures/1114-1214_Cloud-Brocade/index.php

This is an excerpt from the ‘Self-Positioning Essay’ written in May-June 2014 for Central Saint Martins, MA Innovation Management course.

According to Nicholls & Murdock (2012 p. 35) there are various definitions for social innovation in the literature review, including Stanford University (Phills Jr., Deiglmeier & Miller, 2008), OECD and NESTA (Bacon et al., January 2008) most of them describing it as a field related to ideas, products, services, for the public good.

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www.flathierarchies.control

Deleuze & Guattari

Hierarchies – inspired by D&G campaign, postproduction Luminita Molico

by Luminita Molico

Assuming the period starting after the end of the Cold War as postmodern, Lupton (1999 pp.11-2) states that the status quo is dominated by a constant reevaluation of established thought and deconstruction of tradition. Further citing Giddens 1990; Massumi 1993; Lash and Urry 1994; Featherstoe 1995; Lupton (1999 pp.11-2) identifies postmodernity as an era dominated by uncertainty and ambivalence towards ‘change and flux, cultural fragmentation and the breakdown of norms and traditions’. This period—Lupton (1999 pp.11-2) claims—is also chracterized by the compression of time and space or an escalation in human, goods and services circulation leaving the individual in an expanding state of ‘uncertainty, complexity, ambivalence and disorder, a growing distrust of social institutions of traditional authorities’. As a result, decissions of individuals are questioned and defined as a root cause of disasters thus laying grounds for the concept of risk as a dominant feature of the decision making process. (Lupton, 1999 pp.11-2)

It is in this context that distributed and non-linear hierarchical organizational models are challenging traditional working environments suggesting alternatives for the future of the ‘liquid’ society (Bauman, 2007).

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Is Crowdsourcing the Future of Sustainability or a Tool For Economic Growth?

Resurrection of Gaia

Resurrection of Gaia by Billelis — http://bit.ly/VQAbO5

Overview

This essay was written in December 2013 as part of a collaborative project—Discourses to Foresight—from MA Innovation Management course from Central Saint Martins.

First we were asked to research Sustainability, to develop critical analyses of observations and insights and to present it to the whole year—our final solution for the future discourse of sustainability was ‘Crowdsourcing‘.

Then our task was to write an individual essay with our own critical opinion of the position developed by the team. As a democratic regime doesn’t necessarily mean unanimity, my standpoint is summarized in following writing.

A big thank you to my jolly team made of Lis, Keit, Mafe, MaruRichard, SaiSally & Sasa.

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