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Coverage of "Quasi-Events" with Elizabeth Povinelli and friends at e-flux in NYC

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#1

In the thread below you will find commentary and images produced live during the event Quasi-Events: Building and Crumbling Worlds, held at e-flux in New York on Thursday, October 30, 2014. Feel free to reply at the end of the thread if you feel moved to do so.

Quasi-Events: Building and Crumbling Worlds

7pm
Joint visual display by e-flux journal contributors Dilip Gaonkar, Gean Moreno, and Ernesto Oroza, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, McKenzie Wark, Tess Lea, Landings (Vivian Ziherl & Natasha Ginwala), and Rory Rowan.

7:30pm
Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Julieta Aranda, Natasha Ginwala, and Dilip Gaonkar in conversation; screening of When the Dogs Talked followed by a discussion with Liza Johnson, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, David Barker, and others.

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/quasi-events-building-and-crumbling-worlds-with-elizabeth-a-povinelli-julieta-aranda-dilip-gaonkar natasha-ginwala-liza-johnson-and-others/

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#5

But the spectacular attacks in New York, Washington DC, London, and Madrid, the relentless quasi- and extrajudicial bombings and drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, or the collapse of financial markets, never quite succeeded in bringing anything down decisively. Yet within and alongside these traps of our ethical attention, other event-forms—aesthetic and argumentative artifacts—live at the precipice of the figured; in the fog of becoming; in a potential realm where something might happen if and when the conditions for support and endurance emerge. There is nothing inherently good or evil, just or unjust in these precipice conditions, and yet they may well be more decisive in shaping the continuity of the world than the spectacles of the 22nd century.

#6

From the joint visual display by Dilip Gaonkar, Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, McKenzie Wark, Tess Lea, Landings (Vivian Ziherl & Natasha Ginwala), and Rory Rowan:

#7

Tonight’s event springs from the October 2014 issue of e-flux journal, which explores the work of Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Some of the contributors to the issue—Dilip Gaonkar, Natasha Ginwala, Liza Johnson—will take part in tonight’s panel.

#9

There’s a packed house, but we’re on artists time, so the panel hasn’t quite started yet. In the meantime, here’s a scene from Charles Burnett’s film Killer of Sheep, which is discussed in this conversation between Elizabeth Povielli and Laurnet Berlant from the October issue of e-flux journal.

#10

And we’re off. The first part of tonight’s event is a discussion among Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Julieta Aranda, Natasha Ginwala, and Dilip Gaonkar.

The second half will be a screening of The Karrabing film collective’s When the Dogs Talked, followed by a discussion with Liza Johnson, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, and David Barker.

Feel free to join the conversation by clicking “Reply” below.

#11

Elizabeth tells the audience that she hopes they “push and shove” against the statements made by the panelists tonight. Here’s hoping for a lively Q&A.

#12

Elizabeth now outlining the concepts of “truth” and “the event” in the work of Deleuze and Badiou.

For Badiou, a consummate example of an event is May '68. Elizabeth offers Occupy Wall Street as another example.

How do we hold onto the new possibilities opened up by such events? Badiou says we need “militant fidelity” to the event—we must refuse to return to the state quo ante.

#13

But Elizabeth wonders, what if it’s wrong to think about events as large-scale ruptures? What if truth is actually disclosed through small-scale, interpersonal moments, in mundane things? She calls these “quasi-events.”

Elizabeth concludes her remarks here. Dilip Gaonkar is up next.

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#14

His remarks are based on his essay “After the Fictions: Notes Towards a Phenomenology of the Multitude” from the October issue of e-flux journal.

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#15

Dilip talks about protesters in Hong Kong, Ferguson, and India—“riotous behavior,” he calls it.

Dilip observes that intellectuals often dismiss uprisings like that in Ferguson, Missouri because they lack obvious goals, because they aren’t “productive” protests.

But Dilip avers, “Every time you riot, you win something.”

#16

Dilip: As long as intellectuals and the middle classes fail to understand the phenomenolgy of the precarious classes, there will always be a gap between them.

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#17

Dilip: Truth to power cannot be spoken by the middle class unless they have the proletariat behind them.

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#18

Dilip: One place where this phenomenology can be found is in literature and art, which explores the “molecular” structures of life (in contrast to, e.g., political theory, which concerns itself with the “molar” structures of life).

Dilip concludes his remarks here. Next up is Natahsa Ginwala.

#19

Corrections: Natasha and Julieta will be in conversation for the next ~20 mins.

Natasha begins by showing footage from an island off the coast of Pakistan in the aftermath of an earthquake.

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#20

Julieta talks about a volcanic eruption in 1831 that produced a new island in the Mediterranean. The island was quickly claimed by multiple nations, including England and Sicily (which wasn’t part of Italy yet). To this day, patriotic groups from each nation still dispute ownership of the island.

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#21

Natasha now discusses Medium Earth by The Otolith Group.

The work is also discussed in Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl’s essay “The Negative Floats: Questions of Earth Inheritance.”

#22

Natasha shows images of the Bradshaw Cave paintings from the Kimberley region of Australia. These paintings are said to date from the Pleistocene, but in reality they defy carbon dating. Bacteria in the pigment of the paintings constantly regenerates itself, renewing the cave paintings perpetually.

#23

Natasha and Julieta have wrapped up their conversation. Next up is a screening of When the Dogs Talked by the Kerrabing film collective from Australia. The film runs 34 minutes.

This film is discussed in “Holding Up the World, Part IV: After a Screening of When the Dogs Talked at Columbia University,” a conversation among Audra Simpson, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, and Liza Johnson.

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#24

Here’s a synopsis of When the Dogs Talked:

“As a group of Indigenous adults argue about whether to save their government housing or their sacred landscape, their children struggle to decide how the ancestral Dreaming makes sense in their contemporary lives. Listening to music on their ipods, walking though bush lands, and boating across seas, they follow their parents on a journey to reenact the travel of the Dog Dreaming. Along the way individuals run out of stamina and boats out of gas, and the children press their parents and each other about why these stories matter and how they make sense in the context of Western understandings of evolution, the soundscapes of hip hop, and the technologies of land development. When the Dogs Talked mixes documentary and fiction to produce a thoughtful yet humorous drama about the everyday obstacles of structural and racialized poverty and the dissonance of cultural narratives and social forms.”

From http://www.karrabing.com/films