Pictures of the exhibition Cluster of Benjamin Gaulon, Geraud de Bizien and Antoine Lejolivet in Strassbourg: http://www.esad-stg.org/chaufferie/2007.10.html.

Both Anne Helmond and Micheal Stevenson blogged the talk of Alex Galloway. The urls are in the comments, but it would be a shame if you missed them, so here they are:

http://www.annehelmond.nl/2007/10/27/alexander-galloway-the-game-of-war-mediamatic-amsterdam/

http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2007/10/27/debord-as-programmer-alexander-galloway-on-the-game-of-war/

Omar (Munoz-Cremers, but he’s Omar here) has made a selection of his writing on music (mostly done for Kindamuzik and De Subjectivisten), burned a pdf of it, gave it the title Toekomstdagen 2002-2007 and put it online at lulu.com as a free download. Which means you can order a hard-copy as well: http://www.lulu.com/content/1285472.

Just finished reading Tom McCarthy’s Remainder.

Years ago I invited Tom McCarthy to do a lecture at the Mediamatic symposium on emulation – as I liked the essays he wrote for Mute. He often wrote about technology and literature: Pynchon, DFW’s Infinite Jest, that sort of stuff. He came and gave a great lecture that I remember was mostly on Shakespeare’s Sonnets…

Remainder made a litte ‘row’, because it was first published by a small art press in Paris (sic), managed to catch attention, and subsequently was published in England too – and was very well received.

Remainder is a novel, amusing, intelligent, well-written, thoughtful, and full of great ideas. It is required reading for anybody interested in contemporary art, re-enactment and authenticity. And certainly for artists who deal with the issues of re-enactment and authenticity in their work.

(Btw: I loved it).

Rustig herfstweer, bewolkt, vochtig, natte straat, vieze bladertroep (maar mijn fiets is toch al smerig), windstil, een vlaag regen bij Abcoude en aan de Amstel brak de zon zowaar door de wolken.

Marcusstraat – Overamstel – Ouderkerk – Ronde Hoep – Veldweg – Wilnis – Geerkade – UItweg van Portengen – Boterwal – Oukoop – Loenersloot – Baambrugge – Abcoude – Ouderkerk – Amstel – Marcusstraat

Coming monday you’ll have a change to see and hear the work of Telcosystems at DNK (Amsterdam, OT301, Overtoom 301, 21.30h). Telcosystems is of course Lucas van der Velden plus David and Gideon Kiers.

You’ll get Jozef van Wissem + Tetzuki Akiyama that night as well.

(And a good atmosphere).

http://www.telcosystems.net
http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com

For whomever wasn’t there last week: you missed a superb and very radical performance of Mattin.

Vrijdag, einde van de middag. Bewolkt en een beetje mistig. Rustig herfstweer, weinig wind, wat kil, maar toch dacht ik opnieuw: zo lang het niet regent is oktober mijn favoriete fietsmaand. Jammer dat ik niet meer tijd had.

(Opnieuw reed ik eens aan de Holendrechtse kant naar Abcoude, en dat bevalt me echt niet. Het weggetje is mooi, maar ik kijk altijd richting de snelweg. Aardig om eens via de Hoge Dijk naar de Gein te rijden, maar ook daar geldt: een fijne weg, maar ik rij liever ietsjes verderop – verder van de Amsterdamse stadsrand)

Marcusstraat – Amstel – ri snelweg – Ouderkerkerplas – Holendrecht – Hoge Dijk – Gaasperzoom – Gein – Weesp – Muiden – Diemerpark – Ringdijk – Marcusstraat

Maandag. Een slecht humeur dat de hele dag niet wilde wijken ondanks prachtig weer (ik probeerde te werken, lekker thuis in de zon met de laptop, maar ik het schoot allemaal niet op). Tot ik einde van de middag een ritje ging maken. Had ik eerder moeten doen.

Marcusstraat – Ringdijk – Diemerpark – kanaal – Weesp – Gein – Abcoude – Ouderkerk – Amstel – Marcusstraat

Privacy. Just one of these things that has me thinking a lot. Take for instance the new OV-chipcard (public transport card for the Netherlands). When the system will be operative, your travels are logged and identified. Hardly any public discussion on this. It’s just regarded as ‘handy for the customers”. TLS will own that data – why shouldn’t we get access to it too? We’re past the stage in history, it seems, where we can go back to an absolute notion of privacy. We leave too many traces. It will be about ownership and access to data. “I also own my Google-logs”. We have to start to reimagine our world, radically. A world where all your movements will be out in the open. Not only yours, but everybody’s movements – that of your boss, your friends, the prime-minister. Everybody will be a spook, a spy. Everybody will be surveilled. What will that mean? How would we behave in such a world? It will not be funny. (Or sometimes it might). And the new policy in the United States is not funny either with its “prior government permission” even for citizens of the US, even for domestic flights. Well, anyway.

Tomorrow = thursday night Alex Galloway will lecture at Mediamatic on Debord’s Game of War and a modern-day translation of it in java. I suppose he’ll also talk about his 2006 book Gaming — Essays on Algorithmic Culture, and his 2007 book The Exploit, a Theory of Networks. I’ll be introducing him and moderating the night.

Mediamatic: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-23815-en.html

Alex Galloway: http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/

Btw, I registered at the Mediamatic-website. “To hell with privacy, Google will find out anyway”. (But I want to access my data too, to do ‘things’ with it!)