Maria X MIT presentation slides

There, there?Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]School of Arts & New MediaUniversity of Hull, UK

Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)1st Act.Cyberspace:Space or Metaphor?By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]School of Arts & New MediaUniversity of Hull, UK

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)Which is the space of live(d) performance?Pics: SwanQuake(2007) & Summerbranch (2005) by Igloo

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)Cyberspace. Virtual Worlds. Augmented & Mixed Reality Environments.Are they spaces? Or are they networks?Are networks spaces?

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier. It was a place, albeit an abstract place, where land was free for the taking, where explorers could roam, and communities could form their own rules. It was an endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility. No longer. As with the Western Frontier, settlers have entered this new land, charted the territory, fenced off their own little claim, and erected “No Trespassing” signs. Cyberspace is being subdivided. Suburbs and SUVs cannot be far off.” Hunter, D., 2002

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“No Trespassing” signs in Second Life

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)SUVs in Second Life

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)(Realistic) Suggestions?A number of “code-based environmental disasters” such as the loss of privacy, censorship, and the disappearance of an intellectual commons are currently occurring.Lessig, 2007“Abandon metaphors altogether”: real-world property assumptions are being forced onto the online environment.Hunter, 200)

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“Space is neither a ‘subject’, nor an ‘object’, but a social reality – that is to say, a set of relations and forms.”Lefebvre, 1991

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“What is missing from cyberlaw’s narratives about ‘cyberspace’ as a catalyst for fundamental change (or as simply more of the same old thing) is a sense of the body in cyberspace: of cyberspace as produced by and producing embodied experience. Cyberlaw scholars have largely ignored the bodies in which selves and groups reside, and therefore have overlooked literatures that might help to illuminate networked space as experienced space.”Cohen, J., 2007

Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)2ndAct.Space as Social Morphology(Tea with Lefebvre)By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]School of Arts & New MediaUniversity of Hull, UK

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“Vis-à-vis lived experience, space is neither a mere ‘frame’, (…) nor a form of container of a virtually neutral kind, designed simply to receive whatever is poured into it. Space is social morphology: it is to lived experience what form itself is to living organism, and just as intimately bound up with function and structure. To picture space as a ‘frame’ or container into which nothing can be put unless it is smaller than the recipient, and to imagine that this container has no other purpose than to preserve what has been put in it – this is probably the initial error.” Lefebvre, H., 1991

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)A(ny) revolution, in order to realise its full potential, needs to produce a new space.

A revolution that does not achieve this might have changed “ideological superstructures, institutions or political apparatuses”, but has failed to change life itself.

“To change life (…) we must first change space.”Lefebvre, H., 1991

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)Networks become spatial when performed as spaces.Pic: The Endless Forest by Tale of Tales (ongoing)

Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)3rd Act.My Body’s Other:Looking Into Foucault’s MirrorBy Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]School of Arts & New MediaUniversity of Hull, UK

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)Q: What occupies space? A: “A body –not bodies in general, nor corporeality, but a specific body” Lefebvre, 1991Pic: TranSfera by SUKA OFF (Intimacy, 2007)

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“Space – my space- (…) is first of all my body, and then it is my body’s counterpart or ‘other’, its mirror-image or shadow: it is the shifting intersection between that which touches, penetrates, threatens or benefits my body on the one hand, and all other bodies on the other. Thus we are concerned, once again with gaps and tensions, contacts and separations. (…) space is experienced, (…) as duplications, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and doublings-up which engender –and are engendered by- the strangest of contrasts: face and arse, eye and flesh, viscera and excrement, lips and teeth, orifices and phallus, clenched fists and opened hands (…)” Lefebvre, 1991

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)The body as a “social, cultural and historical production.”A. Balsamo, 1995Pic: ReiDishon (Intimacy, 2007)

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“In the mirror I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface: I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia (…). From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze (…) I come back toward myself; I begin again (…) to reconstitute myself there where I am. Foucault, 1967

Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)“Utopia seeks a future that itself has no future, a future in which time will cease to be a relevant factor, and movement, change and becoming remain impossible.” Grosz, 2001

Maria X MIT presentation slides

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