The Spirit of Capital

 The Spirit of Capital

On replications 

To replicate is to produce in perfect symmetry the substance of one object, again as another. aka duplication, aka cloning aka the same. aka seth meyers asked “what’s the difference in how you approach fashion to how you approach music? is it similar? is it completely different?” in response kanye replied, “everything in the world is exactly the same”. aka i can’t go on, i can’t go, i will go on, i will go on. 9/11 was not 9/9 or 11/11. 9/11 was 9/11 is 9/11 and is alwaysalready 9/11. The twiness of the world trade center speaks of capital's ability to immaculately reproduce. The replication aka mechanical repetition of 9/11 in speech pronounces what derrida calls an endless “ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain”, and within this mechanical replication of numbers, one fails to know what it is being talked about. It was quoted as an “unprecedented event”, in which derrida defined as “apparently immediate”. For an event of deemed significance to take place re 9/11 and also re covid 19, the recognition of the feeling surrounding the “event” is to an extent conditioned and constructed by way of said media via said technology and said socio-political artilleries. The conditioning begins well before the actioned event. Nothing can, or ever will be able to happen on the 11th of september ever again, except maybe another covid. Within the event consists incomprehension. The surprise of the event, suspends comprehension, and deems it incomphrensionable. The linguistic repetition of 9/11 was a comprehensible incomprehension. We see the same “comprehensible incomprehension” in the known character bella swan in eclipse (2010) when she says, upon openly choosing edward over jacob, “This wasn’t a choice between you and Jacob. It was between who I should be and who I am. I’ve always felt out of step. Like literally, stumbling through my life.” The event of choosing edward over jacob, and the comprehensible, incomprehension of like literally, stumbling through life. 

On time 

“For the question of being, the concept of time is our guide.” – Heidegger

Time has become only distinguishable by the next-ness.This next-ness determines how we relate to and experience time. Even when we do not wish or intend to participate in the next-ness, we do so with graciousness and efficiency. The graciousness in which we all perform the next-ness, stimulates our time’s hyperpresentism (the present in hyper form). The neologism is coined from a defunct substack - in which asked “What do we even want at this point?”Byung Chul Han’s The Scent of Time provides the blueprint for our time’s hyperpresentism. He writes, “Whatever can not be rendered present, does not exist.” Like the past, and, also by default the future, does not and will not exist. What we are calling hyperpresentism, he names “atomized time”. Time in which all temporal points are the same, no one point is distinguishable from the other. Events happen in quick succession, no lasting traces, and no narrations. Replications upon replications.

More on time –  ‘Is this the only time we are here?’, ‘Is it not enough to just have a long and happy life with me? (Edward to Bella)’, ‘how many lives do you have left’, ‘in other words there are no more relevant aesthetic objects in this world and we are at the start of the end of the world.’ ‘only then do you hear: it goes and is gone and goes.’ A state of hyperpresentism can be typified as ‘technological facilitated masturbation’. Masturbation, an act of auto-eroticism, is an act of self-abuse. Aka technological facilitated self abuse. As Han states ‘Meagre time’ is time without God. Time lacking quantity or quality. He writes that God pursues the moments of ‘stillness’  which emerge when the “technical apparatuses are turned off and fall silent.” Perhaps more can be said for pure silence then the technological facilitated self abuse of waking up online. 

“On the day of the Super Bowl while on the way to the Super Bowl God has a plan.” – Kanye West 

On mutations & materiality 

Here, objects are made of recycled banknotes and crude oil. The aus federal government intercepts 1 million aud out of circulation and recycles them into plastic pellets. Regular household objects like  sunglasses, plumbing material and waste receptacles are made from these pellets of polypropylene. Mutative money. A mutation is an alteration in the sequence of the genome of an organism, virus or DNA. A result of an error during the process of replication. 24/7 mutated reality. Or as Lena writes in The Great Reset for Dummies, “24/7 medicated reality”.  Mutating, medicating, together. 24/7 mutated/medicated reality as per the above reference looks like, the micromanagement of the “peasants’” (me and you) everyday movements as per the ever expanding AI, that monitors our medicine (telehealth), education (zoom), sex (porn hub et al), money (crypto et al). In this exhibition, money has mutated into replications, a rorschach window, 9/11 twiness tower, a sculpture citing Jana Euler’s 2017 painting titled (Body (Black Void)).  A cesspool of money, crafted from atomized time, simultaneously delaying the past and delaying the future. We are in 24/7 mutated/medicated reality, but we are together. Forever mutating and medicating. 

~ anonymous