Entangled Territories | Writing

by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry

Entangled Territories is an event organized by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (in this case, Adrian Blackwell, Greig de Peuter, Christine Shaw, and Marcelo Vieta) as Act 16 of the Public Acts project, was held within Adrian Blackwell’s installation “carpool” on Sunday, August 6th, 2006. In an effort to shift the place of dialogue outside Toronto’s downtown, the event unfolded in North Toronto near Downsview Park, in the parking lot of Idomo Furniture. At the end of a subway line, yet in the middle of the city; amidst the inner suburbs; lodged between an army base, big box stores, and warehouses; and at the confluence of a highway, a subway line, and an airport strip—this site is entangled. It became a temporary commons, animated by bodies in conversation, disagreement, and creative acts in and against the neo-liberal urban agenda….

As we talked, issues, urgencies, tactics, and tensions emerged. We documented them on the paper tablecloths that we gathered around. For us, these conversations confirmed the need to map Toronto’s existing commons, an initiative that would help us to both continue the discussion and further the practice of commoning.

We ate, talked, and listened to the sounds of the political punk project Republic of Safety, who rocked carpool with portable amps. We then left our appropriated site, and dispersed, moving again….

Entangled Territories 2 | Reading Group

CLASS FULL!

Tuesdays, 9:00 – 11:00pm
10 October – 5 December 2006

This 9-week reading group will continue our inquiries across a radical terrain of thought (philosophical, activist, aesthetic) through which social organization is constituted by the collective practices and desires of the multitude. Our point of departure will be a return to Lazzarato’s biopower/biopolitics, via Foucault. We will then extend our encounter with biopolitics with a series of related conceptual/pragmatic tools like state of exception, bare life, sphere of gesture, affect, desire, force, exodus, creative acts, networked resistance, flexible personality…. In combination with a set of theoretical inquiries we will explore contemporary political events, lived relations of power, media activism, squatting, creative actions, the potential of bodies, and joyful life as instances of the multitude innovating alternatives.

Our conversations will inform the design of an event/workshop TSCI is planning with Brian Massumi and Erin Manning for November 2006.

While we have begun to develop a shared lexicon to explore this terrain together, we will continue to create a space of mutual respect and learning, learning that unfolds through grace and joy.

Reading List:

  • Lazzarato. “From Biopower to Biopolitics”
  • Foucault. “17 March 1976,” in Society Must be Defended
  • Agamben. Selections from Homo Sacer and Means Without Ends
  • Massumi. “Fear (the Spectrum Said),” in Multitudes
  • Virno. “General Intellect, Exodus, Multitude: An Interview with Paolo Virno”
  • Simondon. “The Genesis of the Individual,” In Incorporations
  • Malgré Tout Collective. “Manifesto”
  • Negri. Selections from The Savage Anomaly
  • Colectivo Situaciones. “Something More on Research Militancy: Footnotes on Procedures and (In)Decision,” in Ephemera
  • Manning. “Sensing Beyond Security,” in The Politics of Touch
  • Radio Ligna. Radio Ballet
  • Deleuze. “Desire and Pleasure,” in Two Regimes of Madness
  • Deleuze. “What is the Creative Act?” in Two Regimes of Madness
  • Meinhof. “Armed Anti-Imperialist Struggle,” in Hatred of Capitalism
  • Cordingley. “Can Masdeu: Rise of the Rurbano Revolution,” in Making Their Own Plans
  • Goddard. “Felix and Alice in Wonderland: The Encounter Between Guattarri and Berardi and the Post-Media Era,” in Generation Online
  • Holmes. “The Revenge of the Concept: Artistic Exchanges and Networked Resistance,” in Interactivist Info Exchange