ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪIEᔕ — ᔕᔕƎᖇᑭ ᴱᵀᴱᴿᴺᴬᴸ 𖣘 ᴿᴱᵀᵁᴿᴺ ᑭᖇEᔕᔕ

ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪIEᔕ

CRIT
06-21-02023

“We should never oppose words to things that supposedly correspond to them, nor signifiers that are supposedly in conformity with them. What should be opposed are distinct formalizations . . . It is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”

- Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Then I go and throw ‘ᕼYᑭEᖇ’ in front of the word ‘ᗷ𖦹ᗪY’, and for what? Well, I was trying to convey a beyond—a beyond and the speed necessary to reach it. By ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪY, I mean a body ahead of itself. In it’s next form before it’s had time to understand it’s last. It’s moving too fast to know what just happened—too fast to choose what’s happening next. The speed blurs things.

I paint my face on the front rim of a Kawasaki Superbike. It’s easy to see myself when the motorcycle is parked. Rolling slow it's tougher but, still, eyes-nose-mouth are discernible. The speed picks up—they all melt into gradients & looping trails of tonality, going all Rothko. Eventually nothing starts. Nothing ends, the speed makes it all-at-once-and-boundless.

Examining a parallel ᕼYᑭEᖇ—ᕼYᑭEᖇᖴIᑕTI𖦹ᑎ—might help us smell rubber burn. I’ll use Mark Fisher’s take on the 1995 film Toy Story to illustrate it further

“In an increasingly familiar pattern, the film functions as an advertisement for the toys, which function as an advertisement for it, in an ever-tightening spiral. The fiction is immediately real, in the most palpable sense: it can be bought. This, then, is hyperfiction: a process whereby fiction and reality are radically smeared.”

— Mark Fisher ‘Flatline Constructs’

So too with the speed of a ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪY. A pace that leaves body - politics - products - identity - capital ░r░a░d░i░c░a░l░l░y░ ░s░m░e░a░r░e░d░.

♫ ᗰY ᖴᗩᑕE Iᔕ TᕼE ᖴᖇOᑎT Oᖴ ᔕᕼOᑭ ♫

♫ ᗰY ᖴᗩᑕE Iᔕ TᕼE ᖇEᗩᒪ ᔕᕼOᑭ ᖴᖇOᑎT ♫

♫ ᗰY ᔕᕼOᑭ Iᔕ TᕼE ᖴᗩᑕE I ᖴᖇOᑎT ♫

♫ I'ᗰ ᖇEᗩᒪ ᗯᕼEᑎ I ᔕᕼOᑭ ᗰY ᖴᗩᑕE ♫

— SOPHIE ‘Faceshopping’

The body as the front of the shop—as a quick heuristic communiqué of the values on human offer and potentiality within—is no fresh phenomena. What’s new is the speed, the ᕼYᑭEᖇ speed of the same-old-same-old objectification.

The blurring & smearing of gender distinctions dom the ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪY discourse, but they are no ᕼYᑭEᖇ novelty. As far as blurs go, the infinity between Dudes and Dudettes is as old as culture. But queer and queer alike are now pushed against a ᕼYᑭEᖇᑕᗩᑭITᗩᒪ mesh.

What's coming through?

♫ ᗩᖇTIᖴIᑕIᗩᒪ ᗷᒪOOᗰ ♫

♫ ᕼYᗪᖇOᑭOᑎIᑕ ᔕKIᑎ ♫

♫ ᑕᕼEᗰIᑕᗩᒪ ᖇEᒪEᗩᔕE ♫

♫ ᔕYᑎTᕼEᔕIᔕE TᕼE ᖇEᗩᒪ ♫

♫ ᑭᒪᗩᔕTIᑕ ᔕᑌᖇGEᖇY ♫

♫ ᔕOᑕIᗩᒪ ᗪIᗩᒪEᑕT ♫

♫ ᑭOᔕITIᐯE ᖇEᔕᑌᒪTᔕ ♫

♫ ᗪOᑕᑌᗰEᑎTᔕ Oᖴ ᒪIᖴE ♫

— SOPHIE ‘Faceshopping’

I find the smearing of body, politics, and capital ᕼYᑭEᖇ novel . . . and ᕼYᑭEᖇ troubling. Again, this ain’t new. The body has long been colonized by external apparatuses of power. The body is a landscape after all; a organic field of curves and balances. The body is—look closely—an ecosystem.

Built upon it are the machinic forms. Apparati of reproduction and labor. Bodies are forced to become war machines, pleasure machines, and—when forced into a prison machine—pain machines and fear machines. When an external power needs your landscape resources, it plugs into you. It claims them.

Anti-abortion legislation codes the body as a ‘reproduction unit’, laying claim to womb machines. Anti-Trans legislation maps the bodies territory, creating militarized borders of humanity—a pen for us dwell in. Draft dodgers destroy the war machine erected on their body.

Resisting arrest? Always a slave rebellion.

I think of a passage from Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ . . .

“He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.”

These trees will be my rafters, these fingers will fly my military drones, these soils will grow my soy, these breasts will feed my offspring, these cobalts will become my lithium-ions, these minds will code my Ai . . .

Hell, if the speed keeps ramping up ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪIEᔕ may become our freedom, a line of flight to explode us beyond the boundaries power created.

Too often it takes catastrophes to move culture.

“It is through populations that one is formed, assumes forms, and through loss that one progresses and picks up speed.”

- Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

A crisis sweeps over my landscape, stripping me bare of what was built. This could be a health crisis, an identity crisis, a financial crisis or, hell, all three. A perfect ᕼYᑭEᖇᑕᗩᑭTIᗩᒪ storm. As below, so above?

The evermore available optionality body augmentation excites my ₵Ɏ฿ɆⱤ₱Ʉ₦₭ sensibilities. But I fear the political & capital structures that map the territories within which these augmentations must—for now—be performed. Capital aims away from peace and towards disaster. Accepting the bump in my nose bridge costs nothing—it's bad for biz. Surgically altering it is good for biz. Having that surgery botched, suing the surgeon, paying the lawyer and using what remains to hire yet another surgeon to correct it is GRRREAT for biz.

It is within ᕼYᑭEᖇᑕᗩᑭITᗩᒪ that we augment ourselves to reflect our desires. It is imperative that we build into our lives means of determining if our desires are truly our own. Not something built upon us by a power apparatus.

“We have all lost our real shadows, we no longer speak to them, and our bodies have left them.”

- Jean Baudrillard Symbolic Exchange and Death

It is no easy task; to reside in age of ᕼYᑭEᖇᗷ𖦹ᗪIEᔕ, and carve time to commune with the sacred perfection of the ghost within the shell, to decide from that place what we desire. In my experience, it is not a place of haste.

“We should never oppose words to things that supposedly correspond to them, nor signifiers that are supposedly in conformity with them. What should be opposed are distinct formalizations . . . It is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”

- Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

— Mark Fisher ‘Flatline Constructs’