December 2009 Autonogram

Greetings Autonogram Subscribers,

Here we find ourselves in December, with winter approaching and the days growing shorter. But thankfully this does not just mean the end of the year, but also the start of another, and with that the release of the 2010 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints. Here’s to another year of radical media making, occupying and subverting from California to Copenhagen, and general trouble making and mischief! So without further ado, here’s some recent developments:

1. 2010 AUTONOMEDIA CALENDAR OF JUBILEE SAINTS: RADICAL HEROES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

2. CREATING INSECURITY: ART AND CULTURE IN THE AGE OF SECURITY Edited by Wolfgang Sützl & Geoff Cox

3. NEW DISTRIBUTION TITLES

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1. 2010 AUTONOMEDIA CALENDAR OF JUBILEE SAINTS RADICAL HEROES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM!

Autonomedia’s Jubilee Saints Calendar for 2010! Our 18th annual wall calendar, with artwork by James Koehnline, and text by the Autonomedia Collective.

Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project — a reprieve from the 500-year-long sentence to life-at-hard-labor that the European colonization of the “New World” and the ensuing devastations of the rest of the world has represented. It is increasingly clear — at the dawn of this new millennium — that the Planetary Work Machine will not rule forever!

Celebrate with this calendar on which every day is a holiday! Ships within 24 hours.

http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_i...

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2. CREATING INSECURITY ART AND CULTURE IN THE AGE OF SECURITY DATA Browser Number 4 Edited by Wolfgang Sützl & Geoff Cox

Today we are facing extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. In the course of a gradual neutralization of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security imposes itself as the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several decisive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterion of political legitimation. The thought of security entails an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terrorist.

Following the words of Giorgio Agamben (from his 2001 article “On Security and Terror”), security has become the basic principle of international politics after 9/11, and the “sole criterion of political legitimation.” But security – reducing plural, spontaneous and surprising phenomena to a level of calculability – also seems to operate against a political legitimacy based on possibilities of dissent, and stands in clear opposition to artistic creativity. Being uncalculable by nature, art is often incompatible with the demands of security and consequently viewed as a “risk,” leading to the arrest of artists, and a neutralization of innovative environments for the sake of security.

Yet precisely the position of art outside the calculable seems to bring about a new politicization of art, and some speak of art as “politics by other means.” Has art become the last remaining enclave of a critique of violence? Yet how “risky” can art be?

The contributors to DATA browser 04: CREATING INSECURITY address these questions at the intersection of art, technology, and politics.

Contributors from Giorgio Agamben, Konrad Becker, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Geoff Cox, Florian Cramer, glorious ninth, Brian Holmes, carlos katastrofsky, Martin Knahl, Norbert Koppensteiner, Daniela Ingruber, The Institute for Applied Autonomy, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mukul Patel, Luis Silva, Wolfgang Sützl, Tiziana Terranova, and McKenzie Wark.

http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_i... +++

3. NEW DISTRIBUTION TITLES

UPSETTING THE OFFSET: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CARBON MARKETS Edited by Steffen Böhm & Siddhartha Dabhi

UPSETTING THE OFFSET engages critically with the political economy of carbon markets. It presents a range of case studies and critiques from around the world, showing how the scam of carbon markets affects the lives of communities. But the book doesn’t stop there. It also presents a number of alternatives to carbon markets which enable communities to live in real low-carbon futures.

“If you wondered whether capitalism could ever produce the perfect weapon of its own destruction, try this heady mix of carbon fuels, the trade in financial derivatives, and more than a dash of neo-colonialism, and boom! But this book is far from resigned to that fate. After examining the case against carbon trading… the book turns to alternatives, to hope, to sanity, and to the future.” Professor Stefano Harney, Queen Mary, University of London, UK

http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_i...

SHALOM NEUMAN 40 YEARS OF FUSION ART, 1967–2007 An oversized, full-color, hardbound retrospective volume surveying the visual and “fusion” art of Shalom Neuman, with accompanying texts by Enrico Baj, Donald Kuspit and Robert Morgan, an interview with Neuman conducted by Tsaurah Litzky, and photos by James Dee, Deborah Fries and Francis James.

http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_i...

THE POLYMATH: OR, LIFE & OPINIONS OF SAMUEL R. DELANY, GENTLEMAN By Fred Barney Taylor

A feature-length cinematic portrait of this larger-than-life iconic figure, fluidly fusing meditative and experimental imagery, autobiographical anecdotes, family home movies, and literary excerpts to produce a stylized and highly unusual documentary. The film's nonlinear structure follows Delany's own use of autobiography, science-fiction, social criticism, pornography and semiotics. Also features an appearance by novelist Jonathan Lethem. The bonus disc contains 2 and 1/2 hours of never-before-seen Delany interviews and includes the full version of his own film, The Orchid. 2 DVD set, 80+150 min.

http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_i...

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That, me thinks, is all for now. A happy jubilee to all, and to all a good night.

Cheers Stevphen

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