Performance Lecture of the Repository of Irrational Gestures (RIG’s): Dissonance in the era of Fake News

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ATHERTON, Michelle (2019). Performance Lecture of the Repository of Irrational Gestures (RIG’s): Dissonance in the era of Fake News. [Artefact]

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Creators:	ATHERTON, Michelle
Abstract:	In recent years commentators have argued that a post-truth rhetoric has emerged from current populist movements. In an analysis of certain mass movements and motivations, both in the 1930’s and now, many observers are identifying the irrational within the rise of these so called populisms. Such movements are often characterised as irrational, fuelled by emotions and sentiment rather than logical debate. If it is possible to agree that the irrational describes those actions, thinking and behaviours that appear to be more illogical than other alternatives, it is in turn the case that normative conceptions of what constitutes a manifestation of irrationality is often problematic. It is not clear by whose standards we are to judge behaviour as rational or irrational. The performative lecture drew together clips form The Repository of Irrational Gestures (RIGs) archive. This is an artwork in the form of an archive that brings together fact and fiction through a montaged sequence of irrational gestures that will evolve over the duration of the talk. These gestures are collated from a multitude of sources including historical testimony, legends, insect noises, foundational myths, film clips, mathematical equations, avant-garde references and song lyrics. The performance lecture opened up the space to analyse current concepts and the purchase of the irrational; its positioning within fictions and its relation to the formulation of a post-truth culture.
Official URL:	https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/d...
Item Type:	Artefact
Additional Information:	This version of RIG’s delivered in the form of a performance lecture as part of the performance lecture was part of Digital Ecologies II: Fiction Machines: In the introduction to his book Fiction as Method (2017) Jon K Shaw identifies a fictional place called ‘Null Island’, a fiction that is located at a point in the centre of the earth where no one can travel to, set amongst the lava. "From this unreal centre the machines can tag our photos to map our memories and images onto the material world, can align our satellites to coordinate and connect us across the planet. Whenever we perform one of these actions, we pass through this fiction. We are transported home via the fictional island." Our vision of the earth and of each other is increasingly filtered through the operations of a complex assemblage of networked computational writing machines and, as Shaw implies, these exist at the centre of our world and our daily experience. As a result the planet itself is increasingly becoming computational, Nigel Thrift describes how the ‘real’ as we know it is the result of multiple simultaneous ‘writing machines’ using a continuous looping process of algorithms. Humans now exist within complex informational spaces that produce affects, simulate, analyse and respond to user and environmental data. Within these conditions fiction and reality become increasingly blurred, machine and human voices difficult to distinguish. These machines allow for the generation of complex webs of fabulation which exist in a plethora of contexts from corporate identities to labyrinthine brand stories, to political propaganda and the operations of the derivatives market. Furthermore our understanding of the ecological is itself increasingly filtered through multiple layers of networked technologies, sensors, algorithms and data visualisations. Jennifer Gabrys discusses the notion of ‘planetary scale computerisation’ and how this leads to the generation of ‘new living conditions, subjectivities, and imaginaries’. (Gabrys, 2016) Within this context new fictional strategies within creative practice emerge as important weapons for critique, intervention, speculation and change. As Simon O’Sullivan notes: fiction can be used not as a matter of ‘make believe’ but rather in a Ranciere sense of forging the real to better approximate historical and contemporary experience. In the symposium we ask how fictional methods are being employed to rethink and renegotiate our relationship with current and future technologies; how such methods can be used from activist and political perspectives; how they can address and critique post-truth conditions; how they can reveal forgotten histories and non-human perspectives; and how they can be used to speculate on, and design, new futures. As Benjamin Bratton notes: ‘Our shared design project will require both different relationships to machines (carbon based machines and otherwise) and a more promiscuous figurative imagination.’ Contributor’s included:Keynotes from Professor Simon O’Sullivan, Professor of Art, Theory and Practice, Goldsmiths College, London; Dr Tony David-Sampson, Reader in Digital Media Culture; Communication, University of East London and other contributor’s included Ami Clarke, Jennet Thomas, Rod Dickinson, Charlie Tweed, Andy Weir, Harry Meadows, Ada Hao, Ramon Bloomberg, Bjørn erik Haugen, Hugh Frost, Garfield Benjamin, John Wild, Alberto Micali, Maud Craigie, Michelle Atherton, Rebecca Smith, Stephanie Moran and Alex Hogan and Teodora Fartan.
Date:	16 July 2019
Event Location:	Bath, UK
ID Code:	26581
Deposited By:	Symplectic Elements
Deposited On:	08 Jul 2020 11:41
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 00:15

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