Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Slavoj Žižek – ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
http://tomtdowling.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/slavoj-zizek-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology/
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ is a 90 minute documentary film which is a follow up to the collaboration between Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and film director Sophie Fiennes ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’ in 2006.
In order to recreate the scenes for ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’, Fiennes, (sister of Ralph and Joseph) both traveled to original locations and recreated sets in Ardmore Studios in August 2011. One of the few productions to use the sound stages at Ardmore in 2011 for a two and a half week period.
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ uses Slavoj Žižek’s theoretical matrix to explore what psychoanalysis can tell us about ideology. Through Žižek’s compelling direct exposition to camera we learn how ideology past and present functions. From global locations and studio interiors, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology will unearth the prevailing ideologies at work in our world.
Fiennes likened the experience to “an archaeology of film” – “What’s funny is seeing six movie sets in one room,” said Fiennes. “Here’s a fragment from ‘The Dark Knight’ opposite a fragment from the Mother Superior’s office in ‘The Sound of Music.’ And then obviously that is the toilets from ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ So it’s a very absorbing world, Slavoj’s world.”
The film was co-financed by the BFI (British Film Institute) Film Fund, Film4, Channel 4, Irish Film Board, and a new London-based financier/producer called Rooks Nest.
Fiennes admits it was originally difficult to get funding. “We’ve been trying to make this film for five years, and it was really hard to get the finance together because people always stumbled on the word ‘ideology’ like it was something that no one knew what it meant.”
It’s expected that A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” will be release in September 2012; it’s hardly surprising that there were some copy right issues with material featured in the movie. It should make compelling viewing and something that will provoke much debate.
Director/Writer: Sophie Fiennes (Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow)
Producers: James Wilson (“Attack the Block”), Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema), Katie Holly, Blinder Films (One Hundred Mornings), Sophie Fiennes
Executive Producers: Shani Hinton, Katherine Butler (Film4), Tabitha Jackson (Channel 4), Michael Sackler, Julia Godzinskaya (Rooks Nest Entertainment)
Cast: Slavoj Žižek (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”) Designer, Lucy van Lonkhuyzen (One Hundred Mornings)
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ is a 90 minute documentary film which is a follow up to the collaboration between Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and film director Sophie Fiennes ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema’ in 2006.
In order to recreate the scenes for ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’, Fiennes, (sister of Ralph and Joseph) both traveled to original locations and recreated sets in Ardmore Studios in August 2011. One of the few productions to use the sound stages at Ardmore in 2011 for a two and a half week period.
‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ uses Slavoj Žižek’s theoretical matrix to explore what psychoanalysis can tell us about ideology. Through Žižek’s compelling direct exposition to camera we learn how ideology past and present functions. From global locations and studio interiors, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology will unearth the prevailing ideologies at work in our world.
Fiennes likened the experience to “an archaeology of film” – “What’s funny is seeing six movie sets in one room,” said Fiennes. “Here’s a fragment from ‘The Dark Knight’ opposite a fragment from the Mother Superior’s office in ‘The Sound of Music.’ And then obviously that is the toilets from ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ So it’s a very absorbing world, Slavoj’s world.”
The film was co-financed by the BFI (British Film Institute) Film Fund, Film4, Channel 4, Irish Film Board, and a new London-based financier/producer called Rooks Nest.
Fiennes admits it was originally difficult to get funding. “We’ve been trying to make this film for five years, and it was really hard to get the finance together because people always stumbled on the word ‘ideology’ like it was something that no one knew what it meant.”
It’s expected that A Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” will be release in September 2012; it’s hardly surprising that there were some copy right issues with material featured in the movie. It should make compelling viewing and something that will provoke much debate.
Director/Writer: Sophie Fiennes (Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow)
Producers: James Wilson (“Attack the Block”), Martin Rosenbaum (The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema), Katie Holly, Blinder Films (One Hundred Mornings), Sophie Fiennes
Executive Producers: Shani Hinton, Katherine Butler (Film4), Tabitha Jackson (Channel 4), Michael Sackler, Julia Godzinskaya (Rooks Nest Entertainment)
Cast: Slavoj Žižek (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”) Designer, Lucy van Lonkhuyzen (One Hundred Mornings)
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Corporate Rule of Cyberspace
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/05/02/slavoj_zizek_essay_on_cloud_computing_and_privacy
By Slavoj Žižek on May 2, 2011
Part of the global push towards the privatization of the "general intellect" is the recent trend in the organization of cyberspace towards so-called "cloud computing." Little more than a decade ago, a computer was a big box on one's desk, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks. Today, we no longer need such cumbersome individual computers, since cloud computing is Internet-based, i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones literally putting this access into our pocket.
We already participate in cloud computing when we run searches and get millions of results in a fraction of a second — the search process is performed by thousands of connected computers sharing resources in the cloud. Similarly, Google Books makes millions of digitized works available any time, anywhere around the world. Not to mention the new level of socialization opened up by smartphones: today a smartphone will typically include a more powerful processor than that of the standard big box PC of only a couple of years ago. Plus it is connected to the Internet, so that I can not only access multiple programs and immense amounts of data, but also instantly exchange voice messages or video clips, and coordinate collective decisions, etc.
This wonderful new world, however, represents only one side of the story, which as a whole reads like the well-known doctor joke: "first the good news, then the bad news." Users today access programs and software maintained far away in climate-controlled rooms housing thousands of computers. To quote from a propaganda-text on cloud computing: "Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure 'in the cloud' that supports them."
There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, "transparent" in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
This, of course, holds for any complex technology: a TV viewer typically will have no idea how his remote control works, for example. However, the additional twist here is that it is not just the core technology, but also the choice and accessibility of content which are now controlled. That is to say, the formation of "clouds" is accompanied by a process of vertical integration: a single company or corporation will increasingly have a stake at all levels of the cyberworld, from individual machines (PCs, iPhones, etc.) and the "cloud" hardware for program and data storage, to software in all its forms (audio, video, etc.).
Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all — software and hardware, content and computers. To take one obvious example, Apple doesn’t only sell iPhones and iPads, it also owns iTunes. It also recently made a deal with Rupert Murdoch allowing the news on the Apple cloud to be supplied by Murdoch’s media empire. To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatized.
Apologists present cloud computing as the next logical step in the "natural evolution" of the Internet, and while in an abstract-technological way this is true, there is nothing "natural" in the progressive privatization of global cyberspace. There is nothing "natural" in the fact that two or three companies in a quasi-monopolistic position can not only set prices at will but also filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial and ideological interests.
True, cloud computing offers individual users an unprecedented wealth of choice — but is this freedom of choice not sustained by the initial choice of a provider, in respect to which we have less and less freedom? Partisans of openness like to criticize China for its attempt to control internet access — but are we not all becoming involved in something comparable, insofar as our “cloud” functions in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese state?
By Slavoj Žižek on May 2, 2011
Part of the global push towards the privatization of the "general intellect" is the recent trend in the organization of cyberspace towards so-called "cloud computing." Little more than a decade ago, a computer was a big box on one's desk, and downloading was done with floppy disks and USB sticks. Today, we no longer need such cumbersome individual computers, since cloud computing is Internet-based, i.e., software and information are provided to computers or smartphones on demand, in the guise of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through browsers as if they were programs installed on their own computer. In this way, we can access information from wherever we are in the world, on any computer, with smartphones literally putting this access into our pocket.
We already participate in cloud computing when we run searches and get millions of results in a fraction of a second — the search process is performed by thousands of connected computers sharing resources in the cloud. Similarly, Google Books makes millions of digitized works available any time, anywhere around the world. Not to mention the new level of socialization opened up by smartphones: today a smartphone will typically include a more powerful processor than that of the standard big box PC of only a couple of years ago. Plus it is connected to the Internet, so that I can not only access multiple programs and immense amounts of data, but also instantly exchange voice messages or video clips, and coordinate collective decisions, etc.
This wonderful new world, however, represents only one side of the story, which as a whole reads like the well-known doctor joke: "first the good news, then the bad news." Users today access programs and software maintained far away in climate-controlled rooms housing thousands of computers. To quote from a propaganda-text on cloud computing: "Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure 'in the cloud' that supports them."
There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, "transparent" in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
This, of course, holds for any complex technology: a TV viewer typically will have no idea how his remote control works, for example. However, the additional twist here is that it is not just the core technology, but also the choice and accessibility of content which are now controlled. That is to say, the formation of "clouds" is accompanied by a process of vertical integration: a single company or corporation will increasingly have a stake at all levels of the cyberworld, from individual machines (PCs, iPhones, etc.) and the "cloud" hardware for program and data storage, to software in all its forms (audio, video, etc.).
Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all — software and hardware, content and computers. To take one obvious example, Apple doesn’t only sell iPhones and iPads, it also owns iTunes. It also recently made a deal with Rupert Murdoch allowing the news on the Apple cloud to be supplied by Murdoch’s media empire. To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatized.
Apologists present cloud computing as the next logical step in the "natural evolution" of the Internet, and while in an abstract-technological way this is true, there is nothing "natural" in the progressive privatization of global cyberspace. There is nothing "natural" in the fact that two or three companies in a quasi-monopolistic position can not only set prices at will but also filter the software they provide to give its "universality" a particular twist depending on commercial and ideological interests.
True, cloud computing offers individual users an unprecedented wealth of choice — but is this freedom of choice not sustained by the initial choice of a provider, in respect to which we have less and less freedom? Partisans of openness like to criticize China for its attempt to control internet access — but are we not all becoming involved in something comparable, insofar as our “cloud” functions in a way not dissimilar to the Chinese state?
Hegel on Marriage
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/hegel-on-marriage/
Slavoj Žižek
Far from providing the natural foundation of human lives, sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature: the idea of sexual perversion or of a deadly sexual passion is totally foreign to the animal universe. Here, Hegel fails with regard to his own standards. He only considers how, in the process of culture, the natural substance of sexuality is cultivated, sublated, mediated—we humans no longer just make love for procreation, we get involved in a complex process of seduction and marriage by means of which sexuality becomes an expression of the spiritual bond between a man and a woman, and so forth. However, what Hegel misses is how, once we are within the human condition, sexuality is not only transformed/civilized, but, much more radically, changed in its very substance. It is no longer the instinctual drive to reproduce, but a drive that gets thwarted as to its natural goal (reproduction) and thereby explodes into an infinite, properly meta-physical passion. The becoming-cultural of sexuality is thus not the becoming-cultural of nature, but the attempt to domesticate a properly un-natural excess of the meta-physical sexual passion. This is the properly dialectical reversal of substance: the moment when the immediate substantial (“natural”) starting point is not only acted upon, trans-formed, mediated/cultivated, but changed in its very substance. We not only work upon and thus transform nature; in a gesture of retroactive reversal, nature itself radically changes its “nature.” (In a homologous way, once we enter the domain of legal civil society, the previous tribal order of honor and revenge is deprived of its nobility and appears as common criminality.) This is why Catholics who insist that only sex for procreation is human while coupling for lust is animal totally miss the point and end up celebrating the animality of humans.
[…]
Slavoj Žižek
Far from providing the natural foundation of human lives, sexuality is the very terrain where humans detach themselves from nature: the idea of sexual perversion or of a deadly sexual passion is totally foreign to the animal universe. Here, Hegel fails with regard to his own standards. He only considers how, in the process of culture, the natural substance of sexuality is cultivated, sublated, mediated—we humans no longer just make love for procreation, we get involved in a complex process of seduction and marriage by means of which sexuality becomes an expression of the spiritual bond between a man and a woman, and so forth. However, what Hegel misses is how, once we are within the human condition, sexuality is not only transformed/civilized, but, much more radically, changed in its very substance. It is no longer the instinctual drive to reproduce, but a drive that gets thwarted as to its natural goal (reproduction) and thereby explodes into an infinite, properly meta-physical passion. The becoming-cultural of sexuality is thus not the becoming-cultural of nature, but the attempt to domesticate a properly un-natural excess of the meta-physical sexual passion. This is the properly dialectical reversal of substance: the moment when the immediate substantial (“natural”) starting point is not only acted upon, trans-formed, mediated/cultivated, but changed in its very substance. We not only work upon and thus transform nature; in a gesture of retroactive reversal, nature itself radically changes its “nature.” (In a homologous way, once we enter the domain of legal civil society, the previous tribal order of honor and revenge is deprived of its nobility and appears as common criminality.) This is why Catholics who insist that only sex for procreation is human while coupling for lust is animal totally miss the point and end up celebrating the animality of humans.
[…]
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Udi Aloni with Slavoj Žižek: What does a Jew want?
http://www.joespub.com/component/option,com_shows/task,view/Itemid,40/id,6108
Upcoming Shows
Show Description
What Does a Jew Want? is a remarkable series of visual Midrash presenting philosophy, video art, story-telling, and performance. The event portrays theological political fragments of a “split Jew” through the eyes of an outrageous philosopher and an obscure artist. The talented actress, Hani Furstenberg, will be an eminent part of this event.
Hani Furstenberg is one of the most preeminent actresses in Israel. She has starred in television series and fiction films, including CAMPFIRE by Joseph Cedar, for which she won the Israeli Oscar. As cast member in Israel's prestigious theater The Cameri, her roles have included Ophelia in HAMLET, Constanze in AMADEUS, and Hodel in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. She received the Israeli Tony Award in 2010 for GHETTO, as well as the Most Promising Young Actress award given by the city of Tel Aviv. Hani was born and raised in New York. In her first American leading role, she stars opposite Gael Garcia Bernal in THE LONELIEST PLANET by Julia Loktev, due to be released this summer
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. His is one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary thinking. His books include "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more. His recent book is Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, (Verso2012)
Udi Aloni is a writer, artist and filmmaker whose work explores the discourse between art, theory, and action. Among his films are Kashmir: Journey to Freedom (2009), Forgiveness (2006), and Local Angel (2003). His recent book: What does a Jew want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (2011 Columbia University Press)
Last fall The Public Theater presented his Arabic adaptation of Waiting for Godot.
"Slavoj Žižek is the most dangerous philosopher in the West."
-Adam Kirsch of The New Republic
“Aloni’s secular theology is definitely one of the most fascinating innovations of our time. So if you want to dwell in your blessed secular ignorance...then do not come to this event – at your own risk”
-Slavoj Žižek
*A book signing by Žižek and Aloni, in conjunction with St. Mark’s Bookshop, will follow the show.
Upcoming Shows
Show Description
What Does a Jew Want? is a remarkable series of visual Midrash presenting philosophy, video art, story-telling, and performance. The event portrays theological political fragments of a “split Jew” through the eyes of an outrageous philosopher and an obscure artist. The talented actress, Hani Furstenberg, will be an eminent part of this event.
Hani Furstenberg is one of the most preeminent actresses in Israel. She has starred in television series and fiction films, including CAMPFIRE by Joseph Cedar, for which she won the Israeli Oscar. As cast member in Israel's prestigious theater The Cameri, her roles have included Ophelia in HAMLET, Constanze in AMADEUS, and Hodel in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. She received the Israeli Tony Award in 2010 for GHETTO, as well as the Most Promising Young Actress award given by the city of Tel Aviv. Hani was born and raised in New York. In her first American leading role, she stars opposite Gael Garcia Bernal in THE LONELIEST PLANET by Julia Loktev, due to be released this summer
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. His is one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary thinking. His books include "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more. His recent book is Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, (Verso2012)
Udi Aloni is a writer, artist and filmmaker whose work explores the discourse between art, theory, and action. Among his films are Kashmir: Journey to Freedom (2009), Forgiveness (2006), and Local Angel (2003). His recent book: What does a Jew want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (2011 Columbia University Press)
Last fall The Public Theater presented his Arabic adaptation of Waiting for Godot.
"Slavoj Žižek is the most dangerous philosopher in the West."
-Adam Kirsch of The New Republic
“Aloni’s secular theology is definitely one of the most fascinating innovations of our time. So if you want to dwell in your blessed secular ignorance...then do not come to this event – at your own risk”
-Slavoj Žižek
*A book signing by Žižek and Aloni, in conjunction with St. Mark’s Bookshop, will follow the show.
Monday, April 9, 2012
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