Leads to Interesting Places
"Declaration on the Notion of 'The Future'"
And the complete manifesto from the International Necronautical Association
Two Excerpts of interest
6. To phrase it in more directly political terms: the INS rejects the idea of the future, which is always the ultimate trump card of dominant socioeconomic narratives of progress. As our Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley has recently argued, the neoliberal versions of capitalism and democracy present themselves as an inevitability, a destiny to whom the future belongs. We resist this ideology of the future, in the name of the sheer radical potentiality of the past, and of the way the past can shape the creative impulses and imaginative landscape of the present. The future of thinking is its past, a thinking which turns its back on the future.
. . . .
25. A footnote on Ballard: When, in 2006, a range of writers, scientists, artists, architects, and misc. were asked to contribute a sentence each to Hans Ulrich Obrist’s reader on the Future, J. G.’s cleaned the floor with all the rest. While they came up with sweeping, visionary statements on technology, society, the virtual, and every other futurological motif, Ballard confined himself to four words: “The Future is boring.”
Being nearly completely tone-deaf to irony, I cannot tell in what spirit this was advanced or what its real or intended meanings are. Is it some vast and elaborate joke, a facade, a pretend-play? Or is it to be taken seriously. Or is there some combination of the two? Because I oppose irony (except dramatic irony, which makes for more interesting plays and movies) I read the manifesto as at least semi-serious--which is problematic in itself.
And the complete manifesto from the International Necronautical Association
Two Excerpts of interest
6. To phrase it in more directly political terms: the INS rejects the idea of the future, which is always the ultimate trump card of dominant socioeconomic narratives of progress. As our Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley has recently argued, the neoliberal versions of capitalism and democracy present themselves as an inevitability, a destiny to whom the future belongs. We resist this ideology of the future, in the name of the sheer radical potentiality of the past, and of the way the past can shape the creative impulses and imaginative landscape of the present. The future of thinking is its past, a thinking which turns its back on the future.
. . . .
25. A footnote on Ballard: When, in 2006, a range of writers, scientists, artists, architects, and misc. were asked to contribute a sentence each to Hans Ulrich Obrist’s reader on the Future, J. G.’s cleaned the floor with all the rest. While they came up with sweeping, visionary statements on technology, society, the virtual, and every other futurological motif, Ballard confined himself to four words: “The Future is boring.”
Being nearly completely tone-deaf to irony, I cannot tell in what spirit this was advanced or what its real or intended meanings are. Is it some vast and elaborate joke, a facade, a pretend-play? Or is it to be taken seriously. Or is there some combination of the two? Because I oppose irony (except dramatic irony, which makes for more interesting plays and movies) I read the manifesto as at least semi-serious--which is problematic in itself.
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