Second meeting Internet Mon Amour, Internet My Love, Sunday Mai 11th Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Survival kit in a p2p world
Invited :
Alain Prochiantz, neurobiologist,
Michel Bauwens, Fondation P2P
Annie Abrahams, artist (this is the support of my intervention)
11 Mai 2008, Centre Pompidou, 6 - 8 pm,
in the frame of Troisième Œil, petite salle, free entrance
Version Française

code, protocole, fuite, valeur d'otage, machines désirantes, industrie, perspective, territoire, économie, biopouvoir, agent, power, atomic, shift, contract, production, quality, transgression, abundance, competition, business, economie, value, domain, struggle, sustainable, maison, vérolé, machine, homo, géographie, monstres, bord, frontière, territoire, roue de secours, cible, fermeture opératoire, no restrictive future goals Trying to determine my opponents I made this collection of words found in their texts.

In the press release Internetmonamour used the words "survival kit". I didn't agree :
Survival kit - survival? - am I threatened? -I refuse to use the language of fear - I won't flee - I don't want this position
I prefer to place my self in the role of the wandering ant. The one who, against all better judgement turns away from the road leading to the promised food and who could by its mislaying find other, still better, food sources. http://membres.lycos.fr/dmouli/ http://www.rennard.org/alife/english/antstxt/antstxtgb.htm

"a much-used metaphor for metaphors is that they are searchlights that generate highlights as well as blind spots" Cor van der Weele "Moral agendas for genomics: how to find the blind spots?" ?

Do I want an internet that feels like an ant's colony or a beehive?

Are the relations in an ant colony peer to peer?

Can one be free in an ant colony?

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If the video on ted doesn't load please try the youtube version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukS4UjCauUs or watch the video on its origional location.

Armed with a backhoe and a handful of markers, Deborah Gordon studies ant colonies in the Arizona desert. She asks: How do these chitinous creatures get down to business -- and even multitask when they need to -- with no language, memory or visible leadership? Her answers could lead to a better understanding of all complex systems, from the brain to the Web.

No center that controls, roles defined by age and environment, chance included, the structure; the anthill is a real actor in the life of an ant, auto-organisation, communication through environmental changes using chemicals, sounds, the tactile, the visual.
What I like in the metaphor of the anthill is that the colony needs wandering ants to be able to survive and that 50% of the ants do not do anything at all.

"the other" texts written in 1991 - 1994.

Tolstoi: 'Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question important for us: "what shall we do and how shall we live? ' This is why I once left the world of science. But now we live in a post-modern world. Why?, how? could we want to understand anything more than our own world? Now science also knows its limits and becomes again a viewing point, maybe even a possible anchor.

How to live in a world one doesn't understand? How to chose? How to exist? understanding

Internet My Love. What do people do on the internet? They play, spend time, flee, get lost, share, exchange and look for recognition and information.
Why are they there? Why am I here? I observe, I create possibilities for observation.

AttentionS, ViolenceS, PeurS, Confrontation, SolitudeS, "jeveux" in the provi&testi sessions, titre. Revealing the human condition? Creating a cartography of the other, of our contemporaneity, a rhetoric form for a collective voice, a staggering beginning for a language of the multitude.
To give " flesh and bones " to what only exists as a potential in a computer and what seems only light on a screen. Iamanartwork, "Resurrection karaoke for the humiliated" or "Test to predict potential aggressive behaviour", Oppera Internettikka - Protection et Sécurité , Annie Abrahams & The All Star Girls Band, l'envoyer à Mars pour y trouver la quiétude / send it to Mars so it can rest , Le chœur souhaitant / The Wish Choir.
(SolitudeSong. Result from a workshop collective writing with Kathy Kennedy, a Canadian sound artist)

BODY

all you say makes me move further away from you
each word, each phrase, each expression in code, whatever sort of, determines you and makes you more an object, more easy to handle, and thus out of reach
anyway you never say what I want you to say
you never understand me
is it necessary to turn into a state anterior to speech to find this other person that touches us

"one the puppet of the other" "we tend more and more to live in our own bubble, our own sphere, without need for the other, by forming a couple with our virtual doubles."
Always all alone with oneself, with the other in oneself, with the image of the other, without a true relation to reality. simulation, proposals, construction, commutation. Internet - The public space of loneliness ? http://www.ecrans.fr/Le-tchat-de-la-solitude,4021.html http://www.sos-amitie.com/
Will we be satisfied with our own small bubble? Yes I can be afraid, we won't take any responsibility for what is outside this bubble.

Communication? : Distress, emptiness, impossibilities, limits, damages, abyss. " I only have my name". The only thing the baby named Annie and the Annie I am today have in common is their name.
Loss of ones self. The common divider of a stay in a psychiatric hospital and the family is playing cards.
"There, where there are only rules and where standards don't exist, I was happy playing carts." The urgent hospitalisation in a psychiatric department was the result of RSI problems, not recognized by the medical corpus, due to excessive working with a computer. Green oaks. video DVD. 5 min.


I do not want anyone to touch my physical integrity.
My skin is my limit.
All that I can say belongs to the social domain, so also belongs to you. All that is text, image or sign doesn't belong to me and I do not feel the need to protect it. All Internet is an extension of my brain. My brain is over there.
I am wrong to think thus.
Wrong.
How to protect my body from the abuse I inflict on it.
Every survival kit needs a relaxing tool:
Separation : http://bram.org/separation/

BODY
To make virtual behaviour the central object of esthetical contemplation.
don't touch me, painsong, Breaking Solitude

To develop strategies of diversion, of protection, of sheltering, of underground revolt and living, acquire eel or wandering ant properties.

pavu.com interviews Annie Abrahams for P2P[iece], Postartum galery, http://www.bram.org/press/p2p.htm
pavu: The misunderstanding issue flies over all your projects. Does this mean we should all be cautious with vegetarian diets and density variables ?
Annie: No, not at all, misunderstanding is fundamental of human beings. We cannot read another's brain. We are like submarines progressing by the information of our own internal monitors but unable to see what is really going on. In every tentative to understand another human being, we have to let in unknown information, that has the potential to destabilize us. That's dangerous, and so most human beings prefer a misunderstanding attitude over an understanding one.

Constantly more information, always more? How to find my way? I get lost as always:. http://bram.org/press/newsseries/index.htm news series.2

Annie Abrahams articles, biographie etc. http://www.bram.org/info/index.htm et http://aabrahams.wordpress.com
Overview in French: http://artisteslr.fr/index2.html?artiste=abrahams