22.03.26
0. my main line of work is based on the interaction of people and cities in all its different forms. these interactions (and the semiotics of the everyday in general) exist outside the “mundane real”, as they essentially build up collective action. communities benefit greatly from contemplation, which, from what i’ve learned, leads to a deeper and more intricate mutual understanding. cities, design, and urban planning were my gateway to culture work.
semiotechnology as a collective discipline leads one to establish mechanisms, useful for and efficient at spreading culture. now, even more than ever, i believe in the validity and urgency of these mechanisms. (who are semiotechs? read here)
urban studies are seemingly overlooked as a point of ideological and cultural impact. they lead to significant potential for slow-burning change (which seems counterintuitive at first, e.g., “cities are fast”).
1. the “mundane real” is astoundingly lacking.
some time ago, i told a friend that working in art and culture often feels like brushing against the walls of reality.
it’s that feeling you get when you’re trying to find the right word for something, knowing that it’s supposed to be there, just on the tip of your tongue. you’re five sentences in, and you realize that you’ve approached an invisible wall. the pieces don’t quite connect, text and intertext overlapping.
even describing the feeling in words seems impossible. the invisible wall is always there.
this thought may be a little dull (and incredibly self-congratulatory, if not vain), but i’ve come to the understanding that this precise feeling is reality itself. everything else is just layered distraction, built up by
- capital
- the mundane real
- and, for the past decade, the digital mundane.
2. university college school, anycity
this becomes adamantly clear in the absence of culture work. since the first of march i’ve been in vejle, denmark, where i cannot (partly because i don’t know anyone) directly engage in my regular duties.
i saw a person today in 1950s-style school wear (mark-ronson-ted-talk-green-bomber and sweatpants). the back of the jacket proclaimed, proudly, in classic cursive font, a belonging to university college school, anycity. it felt surreal -- because it is surreal, or, rather, not real. an echo of an echo of an echo. “the future is a suburb of dusseldorf” where people attend university college school, read journal magazine and watch film: the sequel. all of that is not the “real”. it is not the question of being in a simulation, existenz or matrix-style.
3. reality and its more passive form, the mundane real, coexist in a shared plane.
in simulacra and simulation, jean baudrillard discusses a “replacement of reality”, caused by the abundance of capital+culture. culture work, in the sense i see it, allows to grasp reality, or what remains of it, by stretching out the possibilities of this mundane real.
culture work (whatever it may be; e.g. science or engineering can be considered culture work, but only if they possess an element of political/ethical/social awareness) is about exploration, sincerity & curiosity (but not the adam savage/kurzgesagt/popsci/hurrah! curiosity). these senses allow to slowly tear down and reposition the invisible wall, but only if care is applied throughout the process.
4. common action
writing these words solidifies my position and removes that sense of the invisible wall. this is, most likely, due to this text being a statement, a proclamation against the mundane real something that the mundane real has, over the past ten-or-so years, become very encouraging towards. in the same way identity politics become capital, almost like a hidden method of keeping in control. it seems that the most radical position one could have assumed pre-war is one of contemplation, one of not always being sure of everything, one of not making loud prepositions. unfortunately, this fragile lever of potential change is no longer valid, at least for an indefinite stretch of time. the seeming inability to perform slow-burning action due to wartime radicalization is yet another pressure point, almost method of invisible control, the true sort of foreign, inhuman agency. it is one of the most unfortunate cultural setbacks caused by this campaign, one, which will not recover immediately.
these anti-sensationalist practices will, hopefully, reestablish, allowing the cultural landscape to be repopulated by contemplative, action, eventually leading to even more thorough forms of collective understanding and expression.