consciousness

The Liar’s Kiss

“The wireless, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, all these marvelous inventions are indeed, as you put it, ‘re-inventing the human being’. But I say that if this most fundamental of truths displeases you so, there is no choice: your interpretation of this truth will be rejected. You claim to live without these things but the free society requires the freedom of science to pursue its goals.” — Prescott Conrad (in conversation with Roland Windsor-Young, 1942), The Free Society, Radio Broadcasts, 1940-1963

At 873 Emerald Way, Nasrul was found to be all the stranger for his fiction. After he left the premises and walked into a bar on the corner, amongst some small business owners, landlords, local shop keepers, and some of the office staff from FreeDomination, he drank seven shots of tequila then went back to 873 Emerald Way.

With the help of a convenient dispenser I was compelled to document these events.

Criminal gangs were getting through a loophole, stealing DNA and trading in clones of celebs, politicos and other VIPs. The Entertrainment Consultancy demanded it, although they never would admit to it. The Society of Watchers was placing its faith in the big-time illusions of the big game psy-op and seeking out some new attention seekers. Compulsive viewing had become compulsory.

I joined the Counter-Intuitive Literature Investigation Team (C-ILIT) as a sleeping partner, in the hope of an irrational explanation for the anomalous content of these outpourings. If I could not be described as a function then I was a plain tonal pattern that signified a stereotype. In the context of commerce, I was a set of perceived characteristics to be qualified in accordance with historical tropes. Otherwise, I was a business card for a psychic reader.

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What is the Loop?

“The closed path means the flow of the current cannot be interrupted.” — Indrajit Pranay, Electrical Engineering for All

No wonder Nasrul was such a vagabond. He had assisted in the birth of the anti-psychology movement that was quickly picking up steam in the cafés, bars and restaurants.

Nas was immortalised here. No human had ever done what he had done. He was incapable of retrieving the backlog of requests from the interpretative era because they had been relegated to behind the fridge, but he did not want to move the fridge because the last time he did that it exploded.

N, Lakshmi, Anikulapo-Kuti and Montague had had enough of life without the ritual of crime. They’d lived too long without it and now they were thirsty for transgression in its crudest and most base form: petty crime. They spent hours pickpocketing and shop-lifting, more for pleasure than profit. Picking targets was easy because the encampment was within a mile radius of a large international hotel frequented by Freemasonic lodges, host to aeronautical industry conferences, celebrity bashes and so on, so victims were easy pickings.

Compensating for error, the imitation machine was complying with alien algorithms which meant it was made subject to the dictatorship of the factual.

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Beacon & Vessel

“Allow me the pleasure of your destruction.” — Agapios Stojanov, Bonds

The world inhabited by Nasrul was one in which the rationales of quantification and categorisation were dominant throughout all forms of human action and interaction. His life was experienced by its readers both within and outside this novel, but less via his character than his status as transmitter of the novel’s primary superstitions, yet his absence as a coherent character and his mysterious presence as an anomalous cipher meant that the novel had no conceptual form. Rather than possessing a core integral message as a communicating vessel, whatever was communicated was unknown / anomalous.

One accurate impression that was conveyed was of N as the last man standing. The one who best portrayed N was YOU, but YOU could not realistically expect to fulfil all the requirements of the main character by recourse to facts.

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No Signal

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“The best way to kill a snake is to set a lethal trap.” — Barber Coleman, Into the Outback, a Survival Guide for the Adventurous

The tyranny of chatterers and tattletales had to be overthrown. But even anti-narrative had to have a narrator. The language of transaction was disingenuous, so the problem’s solution would have to be the same as that of the non-self.

In this episode, after a meeting with unity, misrule, phantasmagoria, and various anomalous artefacts, we would be met with a seer whose un-knowledge would finally unravel the confusion engendered by the sign of “no signal”.

While the Social Bureaucrat Party distributed indicators of generally accepted behaviour, the Identity Study confirmed terra firma as the prime location—not ideology, and far less consciousness. Those who claimed they were changing the paradigm and disrupting the status quo were the Party apparatchiks and FreeDomination’s corporate flunkies. So, Nas knew his escape from the factory-prison was bound to be imminent. (more…)

Fiction is Stranger than Truth

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“We live in Utopia amongst the shells of the un-dead, / Unseen behind the veils of empire’s walls. / The emperors kill for pleasure and spoils of war bring them bread, / But we have made the laws that bring their fall.” — Gordon Pearce-Lonsdale, Collected Poems, 1924-1977

Technocrats in smart rooms were asleep and dreaming in barcodes and serial numbers, arguing that the end of history and the end of society had brought more effective securitization and a more sustainable repackaging of the consumerist catastrophe with their branding schemes: FreeDomination, Leaphonine, Equipole, etc.

Those kinds of intellectual gymnastics recalled the triteness of that well-known 1960s Pop Art collage by Feigenbaum of the revisionist Joseph Stalin in 1942 as a Buddha with armalite rifles sprouting from his handlebar moustache.

Branding was what used to be done to slaves and livestock but now there were prized consumers to think about, more worthy jobs, enhanced revenue streams and much improved documentation. Also, convenient social applications that would eradicate needless barriers to communication. (more…)

Surrender to the Movement, Eros

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“I am a nuisance / I am a pest / When it comes to the worst / I am the best / I am the reason / You can’t reply / Cause the answer you’d give / I would deny” – Naii Chatak, Whoreticulture

Edward did not believe the anti-narrative. It was hogwash. Yet something about the novelty of it all appealed to his mustard and puce-green intelligence as it fed into a crude notion about timelessness he’d earlier toyed with and discarded, so he decided to investigate further. He comforted himself in the knowledge that this was comforting.

Suddenly, there was joy in birdsong and the approach of Spring. He squirted a lemon onto a dish of plaice, fell on the couch and surveilled his reading materials…

The Rules of Literature (more…)

All Information is Bullshit

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it says here / read this / it says there / is a definite / sign / look / for the unambiguous / we’re fired up / on noise / we’re deciphered / auto-mobile / we have knowledge / where the word / says so / it says it there / no error — Diarmuid G. McKernan, Voice of Noise, from Bleeding Lines ‘77

Those who identified with Nasrul saw him as an adventurer willing to transgress accepted modes of the rationale of communication. He showed them that the ground of his being was a banquet laid out before them at which all present were consumed by the privilege of free choice, not granted automatically, nevertheless available to the sentient creatures should they so choose.

In their story, N was an anti-hero conqueror of other planets, an astonishingly gifted yet terribly flawed individual. He had appetites he would satisfy but not be controlled by. He would put them to use to advance his ambitions ruthlessly. He was not a man to make a snap judgement. (more…)

To Hell with Protocol

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“The primary model for human relations in consumer society is the ‘contactless’ tap or swipe.” — Milda Tinguali, The Consumer Vortex

Nasrul awoke to the news that the town square had been firebombed and the area cordoned off by military police. Interferences and disturbances had become commonplace in the last few days of the dying of the embers of the empire of the senses.

There were those who said there was a panicked, frenzied grasping for the familiarity of undying chaos and slaughter.

The electricity supply ran out, making it impossible to uphold data transfer rates in another region where the in-communicability of the known impressed itself, rendering members of the general populace speechless, while some stared into space for hours on end, only pausing to eat. Without servility and submission to enterprise, there was nothing left for anyone to speak about, nothing to communicate. (more…)

Statement

[>>> Statement]

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The spectral sign of imagination is superfluous and profane. It is an anti-consumerist luxury, an antidote against the poison of quantification.

It is an anti-artefact, not a psychological reflection of whatever data assigns it an author or creator. It is not a metaphor.

The material out of which this play emerges is by magic ritual and sheer chance. As the reader or viewer you are complicit in the transmission of this play.

And it is play.

The intention is not to make ‘art’ so that it becomes ‘work’ for a political or personal ideology. It is not to fulfill the purpose of an identity. In offering the ultimate, nothing needs to be qualified.

Against self-surveillance and identification, the astonishment of presence is always inconclusive.

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